ZZ Top
The Trooper / Piece of Mind (5) / May 1983sablespecter's Album of the Year for 1983 (RDF: 89%)
Three in a row?! Ah, you must think this is getting boring! Well, lookit it my charts and it's no surprise, is it? I'm only being honest. This is in fact my favorite album of the original Dickinson era. (Tough to compare to the present, but give 25 years of listening to the albums from this decade and then check back. PoM could still be my favorite, then, too!)
So how come it only scores an 89% RDF? The only reason that this album doesn't reach a perfect 100% RDF isn't because I don't like one track. As explained in a discussion with Grant (about a week or so before the 25th anniversary of this album!), it's because two tracks earn pink dots. If you look at the rules for the AotY awards, you see that pink dots count for a half-point, leaving us with 8/9 or 89%.
OK, so why is POM the AotY over the runner-up, which scored 100%? Am I just playing favorites since Maiden is my favorite band? I'll be honest: could be at a subconscious level, though I'm not intentionally gaming the process. Really, this is another case like we had in 1972 when a 100% RDF album got passed over by one with a lower RDF. In this case, it's the strength of tracks. The first six songs on Maiden's album are infrared dots, verus only five on the runner-up. And over the years, I have listened to the complete POM far more times than the runner-up, for which I have tended to listen more to selected tracks.
This album came at the end of my first year of junior high school, just in time for the summer soundtrack. That was my first real school year as a buying music fan, and looking back I feel so very lucky to have just started buying albums right at this time when there was so much good stuff to choose from. POM is one if five key albums that I purchased during the spring of seventh grade and kept me sane at that crazy time.
This track is definitely not one of the pink tracks! I've been saving this track for the day I would formally announce this album as the AotY for 1983! The mental images of Bruce running around in the trooper jacket and waving the Union Jack are one of the defining iconic images of my personal music life, and will always be one of the best high points of a live Maiden show. I never tire of it and it's usually with this song that I blow out my voice.
Fun fact: I mentioned in the entry for 1981 that BÖC's "Burnin' for You" was the second video that I ever saw on MTV. This one was the first. We didn't have cable when I was growing up, but I remember the day that I visited my cool uncle (the one that got me started on my vinyl collection a couple of years prior) at his place shortly after he got it, and the first channel I turned on was MTV. And this was what I saw!
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Rounding out the Top Five of 1983 (in order of descending RDF):
Dio: Holy Diver (100% RDF): Had this been released in most any other year than going head-to-head with my top Maiden albums, it would have been and AotY. It is still to this day the best Dio album. This was the second of my five key albums from the spring of '83.
Metallica: Kill 'em All (90% RDF): As strong as the spring was, I had no idea what was being recorded during that time! The best of the five that would be my key albums from the back half of 1983! (The others are noted in the honorable mentions with a ‡)
Def Leppard: Pyromania (90% RDF): The third of my five key albums from the first half of 1983. (The other two are noted in the honorable mentions with a †) I have mentioned purchasing this album before, but never that I did so accidentally. Sometime in late 1982 I joined the RCA record club. You remember, right? One of those clubs you join where you get a whole bunch of albums for almost nothing, in exchange for a pledge to buy so many more before a certain time? And then they send you that card each month that you have to return if you don't want that month's selection? This album was the selection of the month for RCA, but I didn't quite have the cash when I got the card. I forgot to return the card, though, so it showed up before long (mine selections came on vinyl). By the time I did get it, though, I wanted it so bad I kept it...and skipped lunch for a week to pay for it! Skipping a week's worth of school lunches in exchange for a lifetime of good memories of spinning this vinyl, which I still have? Priceless!
Thin Lizzy: Thunder and Lightning (89% RDF): Though none of these rankings were assigned at the time, this one would not have been in the Top 5 had I been doing these back then. In fact, they wouldn't have been even in the honorable mentions, because I didn't even like Thin Lizzy back then. I've told the full story before of how I came to this album and Thin Lizzy generally, around 10-15 years after the album was released and long after Phil Lynott was gone. Makes me wonder if there's something else out there that I've missed that would be high on this list? It'd be hard to believe there's something that great that I've missed for 25 years, though!
Honorable Mentions (in not-entirely-correct alphabetical order by band/artist name):
AC/DC: Flick of the Switch‡
Accept: Balls to the Wall
Alcatrazz: No Parole From Rock N' Roll
Black Sabbath: Born Again‡
Blue Öyster Cult: The Revölution by Night
Bryan Adams: Cuts Like a Knife
Dokken: Breaking the Chains
Fastway: Fastway
Genesis: Genesis
Journey: Frontiers†
Krokus: Headhunter
Mercyful Fate: Melissa
Mötley Crüe: Shout At The Devil‡
Motörhead: Another Perfect Day
Ozzy Osbourne: Bark at the Moon‡
Quiet Riot: Metal Health†
Slayer: Show No Mercy
Steeler: Steeler
Suicidal Tendencies: Suicidal Tendencies
Triumph: Never Surrender
Yes: 90125
Zebra: Zebra
ZZ Top: Eliminator
Is your favorite album from 1983 on this list? Are there any others you would add?
\m/ (ò_ó) \m/
