As I sit down to write this, there are reports that sensational Welsh rocker Dave Edmunds is in very poor health after suffering a serious cardiac event. Edmunds is 81, and his prognosis appears dire.
As any baby boomer is acutely aware, we have reached an era in which second and third-generation rock stars are beginning to leave us. Mick and Bruce may march intrepidly onward, but each year, more of their comrades end their tours.
The news about Edmunds hit me particularly hard because he has always been one of my personal favorites. That spirit of pub rock, coupled with jangly guitar and superbly crafted pop melody, strikes a sweet spot in my ear. I put on his 1979 album Repeat When Necessary to get a fix of that sound, and it got me thinking….
The evolving state of rock and roll at the end of the 1970s
1979 had some sensational rock and roll. It doesn’t usually show up on the “greatest year in rock” lists that flood the internet these days. The mid ‘60s through early 1970s, and the early 1990s have claimed that particular territory. And really, I tend to agree. I’m not going to argue that 1979 was among the rocking-est of years.
But there were certainly some achievements worth remembering. Achievements that I kind of think have been long forgotten.
Here’s one interesting way to view where rock’s stood in the cultural landscape at the end of the 1970s.
The Grammys of 1980 – recognizing music from 1979 – had four rock-specific categories. It was the first time that had happened, and it was essentially a case of subtraction by addition.
Prior to 1980, the Grammys didn’t need rock categories because it was understood that rock was the category. Rock albums and artists didn’t always win. In fact, they often lost to more mainstream pop. But they were always contenders. Rock and roll wasn’t merely a genre of music.
It was an umbrella term for a very wide range of musical styles that defined a good chunk of what was considered pop music. The evolution of the term is a point of contention to this day. Check out the debate over what should and should not be eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame if you want to see the current state of the argument.
What is truly amazing looking back is which artists received those initial “Rock” Grammy awards in 1980. Let me remind you that even though this was generally considered a kind of bridge period between the waning days of disco and the emergence of new wave, the following artists put out rock albums of some note in 1979…
Elvis Costello, Blondie, Motorhead, AC/DC, the Clash, Bad Company, Kiss, Joy Division, Talking Heads, and Van Halen. That’s ten. You could easily come up with ten additional popular rock and roll albums from 1979.
But here are artists that won those inaugural “rock” Grammys…
Donna Summer, Bob Dylan, the Eagles, and Paul McCartney and Wings.
You can consider “Hot Stuff,” “Gotta Serve Somebody,” “Heartache Tonight,” and “Rockestra Theme” (the tracks for which each artist won) as “rock,” but only if you use the broad generic definition of the term. Which begs the question… Why single out “rock” as a genre in 1980 if you weren’t really going to focus on actual rock performances?
That’s a debate people like me (i.e., old people) like to have over a couple of beers at the trendy brewpub. For now, I just want to highlight five great rock and roll albums that came out in 1979 that won no Grammys, and which I suspect are largely forgotten today.
These albums also expand on the notion of rock by incorporating differing influences into their sound. But I don’t think anyone would question their bona fides as genuine rock and roll music.
Repeat When Necessary by Dave Edmunds
I’ll begin with the artist who set me down this road. Edmunds was not an innovator. He was simply an outstanding proponent of old school rock and roll. Variously labelled as roots rock, pub rock, and jangle pop, his music looked backwards to rock’s seminal days but offered a refreshing, modern take on what was already turning into nostalgia by the late ‘70s.
This was his fifth solo album, sandwiched in between stints with Love Sculpture and Rockpile, the pseudo supergroup resulting from his official pairing with Nick Lowe in 1980. Edmunds had really found his groove on 1978’s Tracks on Wax 4, and a year later, he was ready to expand on that sound.
The album opens with the blistering trio “Girls Talk” (written by Elvis Costello), “Crawling From the Wreckage” (Graham Parker), and “The Creature From the Black Lagoon (Rockpile guitarist Bill Bremmer).
The pace never lets up, save for a wimpy rendition of “Take Me For a Little While” toward the end. But he redeems that one misstep by closing with two sensational bluesy tunes, “We Were Both Wrong” and “Bad is Bad.”
Thanks I’ll Eat it Here by Lowell George
The common wisdom is that George was growing increasingly unsatisfied with the direction of Little Feat throughout the ‘70s. He had founded the band after leaving Frank Zappa in 1970 as a showcase for his unique songwriting vision, which blended rock, blues, and country with a healthy dose of New Orleans.
Though Little Feat was always a collaborative affair, in the early days, George’s expressive voice and cool slide guitar were at the forefront of their early albums.
He returned to that formula for his first – and sadly, only – solo album, Thanks I’ll Eat it Here. He begins with a tribute to New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint with “What Do You Want the Girl to Do.” He offers a back-to-basics take on the original Little Feat song “Two Trains,” and a somewhat bluesier take on Ann Peebles’ classic soul standard “I Can’t Stand the Rain.”
Side two of the original album kicks off with one of his greatest recordings, a cover of Ricky Lee Jones’ “Easy Money,” which beautifully maintains Jones’ voice while making it a uniquely Lowell Goerge creation. On “Twenty Million Things,” one of the few George originals on the album, he delivers one of his most beautiful ballads.
Less than four months after Thanks I’ll Eat it Here was released, George suffered a heroin-induced heart attack and died. He was 34.
Bop Till You Drop by Ry Cooder
Cooder’s eighth solo album has become better known for its historical significance than its actual music. It was the first full-length album to be digitally recorded. That distinction has led some to hail Cooder as an innovator, and others to lament the move away from “authentic” music.
One of the benefits of reconsidering an album 46 years after its release is that you can largely ignore those types of arguments. Suffice it to say that it was indeed a first, and if Cooder hadn’t done it, someone else would have in short order. In other words. Cooder neither saved nor ruined music.
On Bop Till You Drop, he just did what he had been doing for more than a decade. He was playing some of the best guitar music on the planet. Cooder has always been an in-demand session player, but he has also put out a string of excellent solo efforts that showcase his expansive embrace of musical genres beyond traditional rock.
Bop opens with the classic Doc Pomus rocker “Little Sister,” which scored big for Elvis, before tilting tropical with the lovely “Go Home Girl.” His expressive guitar carries the quieter tracks, but he can get downright funky on his original “Down in Hollywood,” with a vocal assist from Chaka Khan, and on Jerry Ragovy’s “Look at Granny Run Run.”
He continues the experimentation right through to the end with a couple of gospel-inspired tunes – the more rock/funk-oriented “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing” (also sung by Chaka Khan), and the more traditional soul-based gospel of “I Can’t Win.”
Machine Gun Etiquette by the Damned
If Cooder is drifting too far afield for your rock and roll tastes, you can pull back with the classic punk of the Damned. The Damned's debut album, in 1977, actually beat the Sex Pistols by half a year, but they were soon overshadowed by the publicity of their rival punks and by the quality of others like the Clash.
But by the time Machine Gun Etiquette dropped a few years later, the Damned had settled into their best lineup and produced their most accomplished album.
Emerging from a cacophonous sludge, “Love Song” reveals a band that was experimenting with post-punk and pop punk before most American bands bought their first guitar. The title track showcases Rat Scabies’ (not his real name) take-no-prisoner drumming, while “I Just Can’t Be Happy Today,” is an intoxicating merging of punk, art rock, and a weird type of dark emo, which found singer Dave Vanian abandoning his usual shouting for something completely different.
The second side of the album is something of a return to banging rock with tracks like “Plan 9 Channel 7” “Noise, Noise, Noise,” “Looking at You,” and “Liar.” Three-quarters of the Clash help out on a couple of tracks, and if you stumble upon the 1986 reissue, you get to hear Motorhead’s Lemmy playing bass on a raucous cover of the Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz.”
The Specials by the Specials
A decade after Sly and the Family Stone revolutionized American music, another multi-racial, cross-genre outfit created a musical explosion – this time in the U.K. From the opening strains of “Message to Rudy,” rock steady and ska music found their way into the British bloodstream.
They followed it up with a string of 2-tone numbers that combined the political concerns of late ‘70s British punk with unstoppable dance rhythms.
They pay homage to Toots Hibbert with a cover of the Maytals “Monkey Man.” Producer Elvis Costello, who considered it his mission to capture the raw energy of the young band, eschews pristine tones and gets fabulously messy concoctions like “Nite Klub” and “Stupid Marriage.”
Through it all, band leader Jerry Dammers sticks to his vision of combining elements of reggae with old-school British rock and roll. The result is infectious.
READ MORE: 5 best bands of the 1970s that fused great horns and killer guitars
The Specials continued putting out albums until 2021, though Dammers left the group under contentious circumstances before their 2008 tour. Original lead singer Terry Hall passed away in 2022 which effectively ended their long run.
A note on the term “forgotten.”
I just want to end with this brief observation. I’m calling these forgotten classics, but that won’t ring true for everyone. A lot of people have never heard of these albums, which kind of makes “forgotten” an illogical descriptor.
Others – no doubt a small group – love these albums and have never forgotten them. But since I began by talking about the Grammys, let me close by saying one reason we have “forgotten” so much great music is because the mainstream music tastemakers insist on giving “rock” Grammys in 2025 to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
The most damaging aspect of this infatuation with one isolated vein of the past is that it helps convince audiences that there is no good rock and roll being produced today, when in fact there is. A smaller casualty is that it erases a lot of great older music from our collective consciousness because it suggests that if you weren’t one of the staples of classic rock radio, you didn’t matter.
These performers – and these albums – mattered. In a perfect world, they still would.