October 17th
album anniversaries

Sessions for Street Survivors began at Criteria Studios in Miami in April 1977. Producer Tom Dowd left during the later sessions and the mixing at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia, and the band finished the record with Kevin Elson and engineer Barry Rudolph.

“What’s Your Name” opens the album and became a US Top 20 single, and “That Smell” follows it. Steve Gaines sings lead on “Ain’t No Good Life”. Three days after release the band’s chartered plane crashed in Mississippi, and MCA replaced the original sleeve, which showed the group standing in a burning street.

“The Ties That Bind” opens The River, and for a while it was meant to name a single album. Bruce Springsteen shelved that version and kept recording at the Power Station in New York until August 1980, co-producing with Jon Landau and Steven Van Zandt.

The finished record stretched to twenty songs across four sides. “Hungry Heart”, first written for the Ramones, became his first US Top 10 single, and the album became his first to top the Billboard chart. His own site describes a balance of party songs and darker storytelling, a range the sequence covers between “Sherry Darling” and the closing “Wreck on the Highway”.

Memphis and London both left their mark on Copperhead Road. Steve Earle and Tony Brown produced the album at Ardent Studios and Livingston Studios, and MCA moved Earle from its country division to its rock-leaning Uni imprint for the release.

The title track takes aim at the war on drugs, while The Pogues back Earle on “Johnny Come Lately”. Maria McKee joins him for the closing duet, “Nothing but a Child”. Earle has described the record as a blend of heavy metal and bluegrass, and the grinning skull on its pirate-flag sleeve signalled the change.

Derrick McKenzie joined Jamiroquai as drummer while this second album was being made, replacing Nick Van Gelder after an audition track. Jay Kay and Mike Nielsen produced the sessions at the Townhouse, Battery and Falconer studios in London, and a creative block during production shaped the album’s intricate songwriting.

Kay wrote “Space Cowboy” partway through and regarded it as a turning point; it closes the record. Five singles came from the album, from “The Kids” at the end of 1993 to “Stillness in Time” in 1995, with “Half the Man” and “Light Years” between them.

Fremantle, Kevin Parker’s hometown, and his Wave House studio in Injidup were where most of Deadbeat took shape. The fifth Tame Impala album was also the project’s first on Columbia Records, and Parker again wrote, produced and mixed the music himself.

Western Australia’s bush doof culture and rave scene fed into the record. The seven-minute “End of Summer” arrived in July as the first single, followed by “Loser” and “Dracula”, and the album opens with “My Old Ways”. Loren Humphrey added recording and production on three tracks, including “Obsolete”.

“Agnus Dei” begins a record that The Last Dinner Party describe as a collection of stories, held together by the idea of the album as mythos. Markus Dravs produced their second album, Alan Moulder mixed it, and Island released it.

“This Is the Killer Speaking” announced the project in July, and “The Scythe”, “Second Best” and “Count the Ways” followed. The band called the material a little darker, rawer and earthier than Prelude to Ecstasy, their 2024 debut. The ten songs close with “Inferno”.