Flood + snowballs = avalanche. And so it continues. 1979 has 28 LPs of a quality I would consider to be #1 in some ordinary year. Thousands of records -- worthy but lesser quality -- follow in the wake of these 60 gems. This was the “indie rock revolution.” It began here and continued onward, into the current decade and century. 1979 was a very good year for music by any objective standard. At risk of encouraging the tossing of genre names, 1979 was the beginning of the “post-punk” era (1979 – 1982). These 4 years are 2^nd only to the proudly nameless 1968 -1972 period as great rock moment

1979

1. The Fall: Live At the Witch Trials (Step Forward)
2. Pere Ubu: New Picnic Time (Chrysalis)
3. Public Image Ltd: Second Edition (aka Metal Box) (Virgin)
4. Swell Maps: Trip to Marineville (Rough Trade)
5. James Blood Ulmer: Tales of Captain Black (Artists House)
6. Red Crayola: Soldier Talk (Radar)
7. This Heat: This Heat (Piano, UK)
8. Wire: 154 (Harvest)
9. Air: Air Lore (Arista Novus)
10. The Clash: London Calling (CBS)
11. The Fall: Dragnet (Step Forward)
12. Magazine: Secondhand Daylight (Virgin)
13. Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures (Factory)
14. Caberet Voltaire: Mix Up (Rough Trade)
15. The Gang of Four: Entertainment (EMI)
16. The Slits: Cut (Antilles)
17. Throbbing Gristle: 20 Jazz Funk Greats (Industrial)
18. XTC: Drums & Wires (Virgin)
19. Elvis Costello: Armed Forces (CBS)
20. The Jam: Setting Sons (Polydor)
21. Buzzcocks: Singles Going Steady (A&M)
22. Soft Boys: A Can of Bees (Aural)
23. Linton Kwesi Johnson: Forces of Victory (Island)
24. Graham Parker: Squeezing Out the Sparks (Arista)
25. The Talking Heads: Fear of Music (Sire)
26. The Mekons: Quality of Mercy (Virgin, UK)
27. Cecil Taylor: 3 Phasis (New World)
28. Various: Tooth & Nail (Upsetter)
29. Lou Reed: Bells (RCA)
30. LaDonna Smith, Davey Williams & Andre Centazzo: Velocities (Trans Museq)
31. Tom Verlaine: Tom Verlaine (Elektra)
32. Leonard Cohen: Recent Songs (CBS)
33. Marianne Faithful: Broken English (Island)
34. Michael Jackson: Off the Wall (Epic)
35. Only Ones: Even Serpents Shine (CBS, UK)
36. The Pretenders: The Pretenders (Warner Brothers)
37. Angelic Upstarts: Teenage Warning (Warner Brothers, UK)
38. Patti Smith: Wave (Arista)
39. Arthur Blythe: Lenox Avenue Breakdown (CBS)
40. John Fahey: Visits Washington DC (Takoma)
41. Lizzy Mercier Descloux: Press Color (Ze)
42. Ian Hunter: You’re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic (Chrysalis)
43. Crass: Stations of the Crass (Crass)
44. The Residents: Eskimo (Ralph)
45. Ornette Coleman & Charlie Haden: Soapsuds, Soapsuds (Artists House)
46. Anne Lebaron, Davey Williams, & LaDonna Smith: Jewels (Trans Museq)
47. Nurse With Wound: Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine (Dirter)
48. Alternative TV: Vibing the Senile Man (Deptford)
49. Fred Frith & Henry Kaiser: With Friends Like These (Metalanguage)
50. Germs: GI (Slash)
51. ACDC: Highway to Hell (Atlantic)
52. Neil Young: Rust Never Sleeps (Reprise)
53. The Ramones: Its Alive (Sire)
54. The Undertones: The Undertones (Sire)
55. Adam & the Ants: Dirk Wears White Socks (Do It, UK)
56. Richard Lloyd: Alchemy (Elektra)
57. David Bowie: Lodger (RCA)
58. Peter Tosh: Mystic Man (Rolling Stones)
59. Bob Dylan: Slow Train Coming (CBS)
60. Robert Fripp: Exposure (EG)