October 15th
album anniversaries

A leaflet to fans explained that the band had decided to produce, manufacture and distribute their records themselves, and Wake of the Flood became the first album on Grateful Dead Records. It was recorded in August 1973 at the Record Plant in Sausalito.

It was also the first album without founding member Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, while Keith Godchaux’s keyboards and Donna Jean Godchaux’s voice are part of the lineup. “Eyes of the World” and “Stella Blue” sit alongside “Weather Report Suite,” a long piece built around Bob Weir’s writing with lyrics by John Perry Barlow.

Swindon’s railway works, then facing closure, form the backdrop to The Big Express, and the title points both to express trains and to artistic expression. XTC produced it with David Lord, recording between March and July 1984 at Crescent in Bath, with overdubs at Odyssey in London.

“Wake Up” opens the record and “Train Running Low on Soul Coal” closes it. “All You Pretty Girls” went out first as a single, peaking at number 55 in the UK, and “This World Over” followed. Phil Thornalley completed the mixing at RAK Studio Two in early August.

A table on the inner sleeve of The Age of Consent listed the minimum age for lawful sexual relations between men in each European country, together with a telephone number for gay legal advice. In 1984 that age remained 21 in the United Kingdom, and MCA left the table out of the American release.

Mike Thorne produced the album for London Records. “Smalltown Boy” had already reached number three in Britain and “Why?” made the top ten. A medley built on “I Feel Love” later climbed to number three as well, and the album peaked at number four in the UK.

Warren Bolster, a photographer better known for pictures of skateboarders and snowboarders, took the image of an uncrested wave that covers Nowhere. Inside, “Seagull” opens a record that Marc Waterman recorded at Blackwing in London.

Waterman partly produced the album before backing out of the sessions, leaving Alan Moulder to mix the final version. Creation released it in Britain, where it reached number 11, and Sire issued it in the United States that December. “Vapour Trail,” which closes the sequence, became a US-only single in 1991 and was later ranked among Pitchfork’s top tracks of the 1990s.

Each track on Music of the Spheres corresponds to a body in The Spheres, a fictional planetary system of nine planets, three moons, a star and a nebula. Max Martin, new to Coldplay’s records, produced the album, with Jon Hopkins and Rik Simpson among the other credited contributors.

Released through Parlophone in Britain and Atlantic in the United States, the album opened at number one in the UK and reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200. “Higher Power” arrived first as a single, followed by “My Universe” with BTS, while “Let Somebody Go” pairs the band with Selena Gomez.

British-Irish-Bangladeshi heritage runs through Skin, which Joy Crookes described as an autobiographical body of work about young adulthood, heartbreak and identity. Producers include Blue May, Eg White and Tev’n, with Crookes herself also credited.

“Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” came out in June 2021, and the title track, “When You Were Mine” and “Trouble” followed before the album arrived. “19th Floor” became a single early the next year. Skin reached number five on the UK Albums Chart and was nominated for the 2022 Mercury Prize.