(Paul Kaufman of Manual Scan and Lemons Are Yellow reflects on the decline of empires.)
My favorite albums were always those that weren’t just a collection of songs but presented a unified picture of their time and place, a map to their own little world. Coming of musical age in the late ’70s, one notable example was the first Clash LP, which presented a rich portrait of London as a decayed and violent landscape where one struggled for survival. This echoed the theme of how the lost power and fortune of the British empire diminished the expectations of its current citizens; this was presented by many bands, from the Kinks to the Jam.
These were distant but clever and interesting voices, and very different from the “Morning in America” world view that pervaded the US in the ’80s. They seemed especially far from San Diego, where the nearly perpetual sunshine provides a completely different backdrop from London’s rain.