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Joseph “Afroman” Foreman’s cautionary comedy about the drawbacks of the weed serves as the most effective anti-drug song of the 21st century thus far. The iconic riff remains a bedroom guitarist’s rite-of-passage, still pertinent in the Guitar Hero age, while the song’s surprisingly sparse arrangement predates modern minimalists such as Chicago rock trio Shellac. The sky-scraping verse, with its themes of immortality, was a typically audacious way for the band to reaffirm itself.
![french horn panic at the disco music french horn panic at the disco music](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2018/08/18/PPHX/33958dea-10b2-497b-88db-b3c322084dcc-C05A8002a1.jpg)
Instead, they recruited singer Brian Johnson and released their best single a few months later. When vocalist Bon Scott died of alcohol poisoning in 1980, AC/DC briefly considered calling it a day. But it’s the musical mix of light and shade that brings this psychodrama to life, the way in which an effortlessly funky disco beat and Benny Andersson’s triumphant piano pounding are slyly undercut by the neurotic strings and the bittersweet vocal delivery. Not so much a celebration of dancing, more a piece of reflective melancholy told from the position of the wallflower, a broken-hearted woman who takes vicarious pleasure in watching a 17-year-old dancer. Their first two albums, Newbuild and Quadrastate, were pioneering records, and their big crossover hit Pacific State still sounds like nothing else. Massey and Price brought in two fresh-faced DJs by the name of the Spinmasters, aka Darren Partington and Andy Barker, who also hosted a seminal radio station on Sunset Radio. The original line-up was Martin Price, Graham Massey and Gerald Simpson, but the later soon went solo as A Guy Called Gerald and made his own mark with Voodoo Ray. Very much done a disservice by being lumped in by some with the whole Madchester movement, 808 State, named after the Roland TR-808 drum machine, were true electronic innovators.