2008年 11月 30日 日曜日 22:20

Guns 'n' Roses / Welcome to the Jungle / Appetite for Destruction (1) / Jul 1987

sablespecter's Album of the Year for 1987 (RDF: 100%)

Outside of L.A., did anyone see these guys coming? We hear new artists/albums/songs on the radio all the time (less that I care about these days versus back then), and most of the time I can't recall details of exactly what I was doing at the time I first heard some band or song, but I do remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the first time I heard this: in my car, on the way to pick up my girlfriend sometime that summer before senior year. There were no singles from this album until 1988, but thank the stars for Z-Rock, because they played cuts from this that summer, leading off with today's album-opener selection. I usually don't buy an album after hearing just one song, but in this case I didn't even wait to hear that one song a second time. Once was enough for me. This is the only time ever that I decided to get something after I heard only one song, the first time. In this case, immediately. I took a detour straight over to the mall to pick up a copy of this, what turned out to be the single biggest album of my summer soundtrack that year.

Until that point, I had basically been rotating between Whitesnake and The Joshua Tree, and had recently added Keel(!) So given that context, it's not surprising that I was floored by what I heard, is it? Something that shook me from 1987's stupor of bluesy, hair-ish pop and rock. Up from the gutter: Axl Rose's gritty howl provoked a more visceral reaction, Slash's guitar played with a take-it-or-leave-it, I-don't-give-a-fuck if you like it or not L.A. street attitude, and that music! Izzy Stradlin's contributions - lyrics and/or music on ten of the album's 12 songs - never got the acclaim they deserved. (The one former partner that Axl could really use the most now.)

IMHO 1987 was the beginning of the end for the hegemony of the golden era of metal. It wasn't obvious at that time, and in fact wasn't even apparent since we were flush with all the great albums of the past seven years or so, but looking back now you can see a sort of a dilution of the scene, less solidarity. The posers-vs-thrashers battle had been pitched for about four years by this time (longer in some scenes), but now it was just a plethora of styles, and the fortunes of metal would start to sort of sink as the hair rose ever higher after this point. By the time the early 90s rolled around, metal was ripe for an upset. From this vantage point in time, it now looks so easy for Nirvana et. al. to have come out of Seattle to knock metal off the perch of its empire, rotted from the inside, without even trying. And to think: Kurt Cobain even found inspiration in GnR!

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Rounding out the Top Five of 1987 (in order of descending RDF):

Pink Floyd: A Momentary Lapse of Reason (89% RDF): A new machine indeed! Shaking off the dust, and after getting his second solo album out, David Gilmour firmly took the Pink Floyd into their third era of leadership, and one that I enjoyed just as much as the era dominated by Roger Waters. For me, it really didn't even feel like much of a gap between The Final Cut and this album. I only really started to get into Floyd once The Wall came out, and I spent the intervening years checking out the back catalog and adding to my collection in the spaces between the metal. So much of the older Floyd was still relatively fresh to me. This album just seemed a natural progression, just minus Roger.

Dokken: Back For The Attack (85% RDF): For me, the high water mark for them. This is when it all came together in a relatively consistent package front to back: great songs, great guitar work, great vocals. Maybe it was the creative result of the tension from the clash of the titantic egos that unfortunately split them for a good number of years after. Hey, at least we got a couple of good albums out of Lynch Mob in a few years.

Anthrax: Among the Living (83% RDF): The fourth of the Big Four got their defining album out a few months after the other three, but at the time it was my second favorite after Master of Puppets (Peace Sells… has since surpassed it). I don't know how many school desks I scrawled the "NYHC" X label on in the wake of this. It also led to the biggest music event of that summer after junior year. We actually bolted school early on the last day of school to get over to Record Revolution for an in-store meet-and-greet album signing with Anthrax and Metal Church, followed that evening with their show at the old Phantasy Theater. I still have all that autographed merch, though the shirts long ago shrunk to "junior high gym tee" size…

King Diamond: Abigail (78% RDF): I just recently commented on this album, but couldn't give away too much about where it ranked at that point with this list coming soon. I got by without my own official copy of this for quite awhile, just owning a dubbed cassette copy from a friend. I didn't listen to it much during the nineties, but it was one of the last cassettes that I retired from my regular tape rotation, only leaving my car once I got a new car with a CD deck. Still my favorite King Diamond work, including over anything by Mercyful Fate. Abigail II ain't on par with the original, though.

Honorable Mentions (in not-entirely-correct alphabetical order by band/artist name):
Armored Saint: Raising Fear
Candlemass: Nightfall
Great White: Once Bitten...
Grim Reaper: Rock You To Hell
Helloween: Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part 1
Keel: Keel
Saint Vitus: Born Too Late
Testament: The Legacy
Trouble: Run to the Light
U2: The Joshua Tree
Whitesnake: Whitesnake

Is your favorite album from 1987 on this list? Are there any others you would add?

\m/ (ò_ó) \m/