So 1978 was the best year and you go and pick Blondie’s Parallel Lines to represent it? Really?  (see here)  C’mon Norman - there’s All Mod Cons, Another Music in a Different Kitchen, More songs about buildings and food, The Modern Dance, even Dire Straits. There’s surely more.

I listened to Parallel Lines recently for the first time in 30 years - awful. Well, it has 3 great songs. Hanging on the Telephone, Picture This, Fade away. That’s it. Maybe that’s not so bad, I mean Picture This is a great song. But it has a lot of rubbish too.

To be honest, 1978 seemed about the worst year for music to me - I was too young for punk and the likes of Joy Division and The Fall and Postcard Records and all the good stuff were yet to come.  Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside. That’d be my choice, maybe. Or Public Image Limited, although I hated that at the time. The Kick Inside it is then.

But 1978 was generally a really bad year for music.

But this is a lovely photo by Mike Burnell, a celebration of a great little record shop that’s closing after 46 years. (via Brighton Source magazine)

A Brighton institution it is, was. The same age as me. Ten years into rock’n’roll. I guess Revolver and Blonde-on-Blonde came out the year Rounder opened. It’s hard to imagine it/I was only 12 years old when the Kick Inside came out. Twelve more years and it’s 1990 and I was listening to Public Enemy, Pills n Thrills and Bellyaches, Nick Cave’s The Good Son, Sonic Youth’s Goo. The Smiths had come and gone already. Weird how nothing much happens for years once you’re fully grown. 

Steve from Rounder Records Brighton is playing some vinyl at The Prince Albert Pub tonight. If I was in town I’d go, it’ll be a lovely little night I’m sure.