Your Word Is Fire

1980 was a huge year in pop music with every genre competing for hits. We have already included more than 150 tracks on the CDs of the 1980 Yearbook, the 80-84 Final Chapter, and their extras so far in our appreciation of the year… Those tracks were generally the bigger hits of the year, with their chart achievement a factor in their inclusion – however – that’s not the whole singles story of the year, and our celebration of 1980 wouldn’t be complete without shining a light on some of the years’ singles that have been compiled much less frequently over the years. Welcome to THE VAULT for 1980…

Creativity. Think of the word itself for a second. What does it mean to you? Who comes to mind as a creative leader, past or present? What are some companies that thrive on creative thinking? You see it at Apple, Google, and top advertising and marketing firms.

It has been 45 years since the release of Fire – the song we all know and love him for – hurtled to the top of the charts, but Arthur Brown is far from slowing down as time goes on. 2014 saw the release of his latest album Zim Zam Zim; the result of a popular pledge campaign that has helped to create a triumphant musical masterpiece that is everything you could hope to hear from Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

Zatoichi (座頭市, Zatōichi) is a fictional character featured in one of Japan's longest running series of films and a television series set in the Edo period. The enduring popularity of the character has been likened to that of James Bond in Western countries. The character, a blind masseur and swordmaster, was created by novelist Kan Shimozawa (子母澤 寛, Shimozawa Kan). This originally minor character was developed for the screen by Daiei Studios (now Kadokawa Pictures) and actor Shintaro Katsu, who created the screen version. A total of 26 films were made from 1962 to 1989.
Film number 17 of the original series was remade in America in 1990 (by TriStar Pictures) as Blind Fury, an action movie starring Rutger Hauer.

The West Coast's answer to The Last Poets, The Watts Prophets played an integral part in the raising of black consciousness and laying the foundations for rap. Formed at the Watts Writer's Workshop, Anthony "Amde" Hamilton, Otis O'Solomon, and Richard Dedeaux began performing together as Watts Prophets, setting their socially and politically conscious poetry to spare, often jazzy musical backing. They made high-profile guest appearances on Stevie Wonder's Songs In The Key of Life and Quincy Jones' Mellow Madness. And were later the subject of an Emmy-nominated documentary, Victory Will Be My Moan. In 1969, the group debuted with The Black Voices: On the Streets in Watts and, two years later, followed with Rappin' Black in a White World, which featured accompaniment by ex-Motown songwriter/pianist DeeDee McNeil. The radical, incendiary tone of their work fit right in with the emerging black power movement and attracted unfavorable notice from the government, with the home of the Watts Writers Project being destroyed by fire in 1975 after having been infiltrated by an FBI informant. Throughout the years, they've remained sporadically active as performers, and were rediscovered by the hip-hop generation as their records were sampled frequently by many hip-hop artists including Ice Cube, Digable Planets, and Coolio. The Watts Prophets remain dedicated community activists today, promoting creative self-expression and the arts to young people around Southern California and beyond. Two bonus tracks. Deluxe Arigato Pak! Water Records. 2005.