Good, Great or Garbage: 1981's ANTHEM by Toyah [Poll Closed]
(The poll is officially closed, and by a margin of 75% to 25%, 1981's Anthem by Toyah has been inducted into the TRAPPO Essentials Can(n)on! Thanks to everyone who voted! -D)
Welcome back, dear listener! Good, Great or Garbage month marches on with our third new episode highlighting 1981's new wave classic Anthem from Toyah! Have you heard Anthem before, dear listener? You should have. If not, you can listen to it here. Or here. Or even here. So there's no excuse. It's recently been beautifully remastered and re-issued with a cornucopia of bonus material for your pleasure, so there's no better time than now to hop on the Toyah Willcox bandwagon, friends. Then why, you may be asking yourself, is 1981's Anthem being tackled in an episode of Good, Great or Garbage and not in a more flattering "spotlight" episode? To be frank, my co-host (this is Dustin typing, by the way) had never even heard of Anthem or Toyah WIllcox before I brought up the album as a potential topic for discussion, so this format made more sense to him. You may not know this, but the idea of Good, Great or Garbage is that we discuss an album that either one or both of us may be unfamiliar with, and we argue whether that album is deserving on its own merits of a place in the illustrious TRAPPO Essentials Can(n)on. It's essentially a way to introduce "new" music to each other, no matter how old that music may, in fact, be. So Anthem certainly fits the bill in this case.
You can listen to this scintillating new episode below, or find it on Apple, Google, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic, Spotify, Anchor or Amazon, so choose your own adventure and immerse yourself in the twisted and wonderful worlds of Anthem at your leisure...
While you're hanging around, you might as well join the conversation. What conversation, you may well ask? Why, the conversation below, of course! Just scroll down a bit and leave a comment telling us your thoughts on 1981's Anthem, and if you have any new (or new to us) media you'd like to recommend while you're typing, feel free! We always love reading your feedback, and we may address your questions and comments in a future episode of TRAPPO's Mail Bag! And if you would like to share your thoughts with us but feel constrained by the boundaries of a blog comment, you could always send us an email, which we certainly appreciate. We know you won't, but our door is always open. Lonely, but open. So very, very lonely. There's also Instagram, but who even cares about that social media crap anymore? Not us, obviously. If we did care about all of that, we may have a larger audience. An audience that might actually send us the occasional email. But we're not bitter!
That's it for this week, but be sure to return next Friday for the final installment of our month-long Good, Great or Garbage extravaganza! Thanks for listening, and thanks for voting!
There's a kind of Italian metal supergroup out there called NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM, and I only just discovered them through their massive triple album titled EONS, and I don't know what to think about it other than I figured I needed to bring this to your attention if it's not already on your radar. I know one of you has expressed a love for John Zorn's work in the past (you even made up an award category for his work, and that's no small feat), and this is reminiscent of that, but it's also got black metal and doom and drone and freeform and I don't know what to make of it. The band's name is very apt, because this music absolutely sounds like an explosion of otherworldly maximalism. The TRAPS need to keep apprised of these developments, after all. Just listen to this epic madness and let it obliterate your sanity for a while.
ReplyDeleteAnd ANTHEM is great.
I don’t care for this stuff. It’s just goofy and a little too juvenile to be taken seriously.
ReplyDeleteI don’t know anything about this artist, so the episode taught me a few things. That is kind of messed up regarding the double standards women still often have to face in the music industry, but no journalists could get away with giving a prominent female musician the nickname “lisping ferret” in this day and age. I also like the album. Thanks for introducing me to Anthem.
ReplyDeleteWhat drives me nuts about your podcast is that you two just ramble about this stuff. You don't seem to do a lot of (or any) prep work, and when you're having your little conversation you end up just getting lost in pointless tangents and you stammer a lot while you're trying to figure out if you're actually making any points or just blabbing to hear the sound of your own voices. Do you really think your "banter" is so good you need to share it with people? Because I assure you it isn't.
ReplyDeleteDo some research. Prepare some real notes. Pretend to be professionals. If you apply yourselves you might actually make an entertaining podcast. I wanted to hear a show that actually went in-depth with ANTHEM, an album that you pointed out has precious little content available on the web. And there are a few nuggets of information on here that I appreciate, but it's all presented in this cringy, amateur hour show that can't really get into any groove. This show had the chance to be an actual resource for fans of Toyah Willcox, but instead it's just a waste of potential.
I looked through your podcast library, and there are a fair number of subjects I'd like to hear more about, but if they're anything like this I can't see myself wasting anymore of my time giving TRAPPO another chance. Sorry, guys. Life is too precious a gift to waste it being frustrated listening to a podcast like yours.
Life’s too precious, but you were happy to waste a bit of yours posting on the show’s blog to tell the hosts how much they suck. TRAPPO is far from perfect, but they’re “spirited amateurs”, and that’s okay, too. They could always do better, but at least they care.
DeleteToyah Wilcox taking wild swings and making some weird damn music back in the day. This stuff is like a messed up combination of Kate Bush and Nina Hagen with a heavy pulp sci-fi influence that I really appreciate. She straddled the line between commercially accepted pop music and off-the-wall experimentation with her early work, and I think it's all pretty fascinating, with ANTHEM standing head and shoulders above the rest of her catalogue with the group "Toyah". I love this stuff, and thanks for putting it in your cannon, whatever that means.
ReplyDeleteJungles Of Jupiter is out there, man. I dig it. This chick is spaced-out and it's good, man.
ReplyDelete