Armed Forces is the third studio album by British musician Elvis Costello, released in the UK by Radar Records and in the US by Columbia in 1979. It was his second album with the Attractions, and the first to officially credit the Attractions on the cover. The album had the working title Emotional Fascism.
The North American version omitted the track “Sunday’s Best” and replaced it with Costello’s version of Nick Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding,” which had been released the previous November as the B-side of Lowe’s “American Squirm” single. Initial pressings of the album in the UK and US also included a promotional three-song EP, Live at Hollywood High.
Armed Forces has appeared on various “greatest albums” lists in both Q magazine and Rolling Stone magazine.
1. “Accidents Will Happen” 3:00
2. “Senior Service” 2:17
3. “Oliver’s Army” 2:58
4. “Big Boys” 2:54
5. “Green Shirt” 2:42
6. “Party Girl” 3:20
7. “Goon Squad” 3:14
8. “Busy Bodies” 3:33
9. “Sunday’s Best” 3:22
10. “Moods for Moderns” 2:48
11. “Chemistry Class” 2:55
12. “Two Little Hitlers” 3:18
12. “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding”
This Year’s Model is Elvis Costello’s second album and his first with the Attractions, released in 1978. It was mainly recorded at Eden Studios in West London.
Steve Earle is a songwriter with a gift for telling stories with his lyrics, and he’s also a leftist populist who likes to sing of the lives and challenges of working people and how they often struggle against an economic system not meant to favor them. Once upon a time, that wasn’t an unlikely combination for someone working in folk or country music, yet in an era where “country” is mostly a lifestyle brand and “folk” means just about anyone who plays an acoustic guitar rather than an electric, that makes him somewhat more unusual. Given his talents and inclinations, Earle was the ideal choice to write songs for Coal Country, a play written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen about the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, in which 27 West Virginia coal miners lost their lives in 2010. There is a certain irony that Earle created a song cycle about the real costs of being a blue-collar worker in America in the 21st century for an off-Broadway play staged by New York’s Public Theater, where the majority of people who lead the lives he’s singing about will never see it. That said, that does nothing to change the emotional power and honesty of Earle’s songs, and thankfully they can be heard outside of the context of the show on his 2020 album Ghosts of West Virginia, with Earle joined by his road band the Dukes.
Hold Your Fire is the twelfth studio album by Canadian rock band Rush, released on September 8, 1987. It was recorded at The Manor Studio in Oxfordshire, Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey, Air Studios in Montserrat and McClear Place in Toronto. Hold Your Fire was the last Rush studio album released outside Canada by PolyGram/Mercury. ‘Til Tuesday bassist and vocalist Aimee Mann contributed vocals to “Time Stand Still”, appearing in the Zbigniew Rybczyński-directed video.
The River & the Thread is the fourteenth studio album by Rosanne Cash, released in 2014 by Blue Note Records. The album received critical acclaim from music critics. The album won 3 Grammy Awards on February 8, 2015. The album swept all the categories that it was nominated for: “Best Americana Album”, “Best American Roots Song” and “Best American Roots Performance” for “A Feather’s Not a Bird.”
Alabama & Friends is a tribute album to American country rock group Alabama. It was released on August 27, 2013 via Show Dog-Universal Music. The album includes two new tracks, “That’s How I Was Raised” and “All American,” performed by Alabama.
The daughter of country legend Mel Tillis, Pam Tillis made her own way in the music business, eventually becoming a contemporary country star in the ’90s. Tillis was born on July 24, 1957, in Plant City, FL, but raised mostly in Nashville and started taking piano lessons at age eight. She switched to guitar at 12 and played in talent contests during her teenage years. Somewhat wild and rebellious, she survived a near-fatal car crash at age 16 that required extensive facial reconstruction. Fortunately, she recovered fully and pursued music aggressively at the University of Tennessee, singing with the High Country Swing Band (which played country-rock and jug band music) and in a folk duo with Ashley Cleveland. She quit school in 1976 and worked at her father’s publishing company, placing her composition “I’ll Meet You on the Other Side of the Morning” with Barbara Fairchild. She also formed her own backing band, which soon relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area and renamed themselves Freelight; they developed an adventurous style based on jazz and rock, not country. Tillis returned to Nashville in 1979, though, and sang backup for her father while raising her first child as a single parent, fronting an R&B band, and continuing to write songs, a couple of which were recorded by Gloria Gaynor and Chaka Khan.