Artist	Song
The Cure	All Cats are Grey
Passions	Alice's Song
Depeche Mode	Any Second Now (Voices)
Durutti Column	The Missing Boy
Elvis Costello	Gloomy Sunday
MX-80	Promise of Love
Talking Heads	Once in a Lifetime (Edit)
New Order	Doubts Even Here
Pete Shelley	It's Hard Enough Knowing (Edit)
The Sound	Winning
Japan	Ghosts
This Heat	A New Kind of Water
Raincoats	Only Loved at Night
Gist	Love at First Sight
Gary Numan	Dance
Psychedelic Furs	No Tears
Gang of Four	Paralysed
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark	Romance of the Telescope
Ultravox	Rage in Eden
Weekend	Nostalgia (Demo)

Comment:

This is one disc from a 10-disc "boxed set" mix of music released in 1981. I've been working on it off and on for over a year, from about August, 2003 to October, 2004. I don't even want to tally the amount of time and money I've spent--hundreds of hours, probably, and possibly thousands of dollars. I didn't set out to make such a massive set--I had in mind something more like 4 discs. But the more I started culling from my collection, the more stuff I realised I had to include. Eventually I decided I'd just go for it--make a mix anybody who got a copy wouldn't forget, and would hopefully spend a lot of time with. 396 tracks, 350 bands, 21 hours.
I made a website for the mix: http://www.clockwatching.net/~vroom/ian/1981/
The following are the "liner notes" from the set's 32-page booklet:
1 9 8 1
My first idea of how to introduce this set was to start with a question: "what do we do when we realise Pandora's box is never going to shut?" I wanted to persuade you that the music heard on this set provides one answer to that question: if our belief in fundamental order is shaken, we resolve to make a beautiful mess. I wanted to argue that a lot of this music is part of a lineage of noble "outrT" and progressive popular art made by people trying to restore hope and meaning amidst derelict shells of classicism, modernism, and post-modernism. I would also have tried to say something pithy regarding the historical context of this music, about how the shattering of the notion of monolithic cultures made music like this possible, and necessary; and about Thatcher, Reagan, suburbs, post-industrial economics, the dole, the rise of fundamentalism and yuppiedom and anti-disco rockism.
But the truth is, I was in diapers in 1981. As far as outrT music is concerned, I have less than a decade of experience with the stuff. I "know" about as much about music as could be expected of any musically obsessed twenty-four year old. What I mean is: I still function musically primarily on passion, not knowledge. I'm confident about my abilities to put together a good mix for just about any tastes; do a decent radio show; and hold my own with young know-it-all record clerks in Chicago. But I don't know enough to write cool, authoritative, impressively linernotish liner notes. The fact that I know all this music after-the-fact or "second hand" should not affect the quality of the music; an attempt to give you the storytelling goods secondhand would probably do a disservice to the story.
I admit that a portion of these tracks are undeniably dated (if charmingly so,) and will probably trigger nostalgia even if you've never heard them. Progressive (in pop terms) as these tracks were at the time, they established the paradigm for the infamous "sound of the 80s," and by extension the cartoonish aesthetic currently revered by college students too young to actually remember the decade. The majority of the music of this particular 1981, however, would set a fire were it released today; the paradigm they operated within (or without) was expansive enough that a lot of the best "progressive" music is still exploring it today (in just the way that many of these bands can be said to have been working in virtual homage to Can or the Velvet Underground).
For some of you, there is little new to you here. For a good many, this may be all the "post-punk" you'll ever want. I don't need to change your life, I just want to play you some music; so if you enjoy any of it, my effort has been worthwhile. It is my secret hope, however, that for a few of you, this will be another step toward deep, passionate addiction to music you might not have known existed. Music does not truly exist without both passionate playing and passionate listening; you make music out of noise by listening well.
Ian Manire
25 October, 2004

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