ally wrote:
I'm not sure but fans who believe it's the band's peak output must've really hated the later stuff... all 25 years of it? 
All that frivilous, poppy shite 
Not really hated as such, more just kind of saddened and disappointed as the years went on and they became just another band. The one-two of Blue Monday and Confusion brought an end to something very special and, in my (gulp) 30 years of being fascinated by music, something that was totally unique.
To me, Movement(and pretty much everything else they did up to the end of '82) still retained that spiritual, transcendent aura that JD had but from '83 onwards they just somehow lost it, both live and on record. Again, they still made great music but they were no longer in a league of their own.
I also thinks it's a bit much to slag Barney's early lyrics (and it seems that at least some of those early lyrics were written by Hooky and Steve also). At least I could show them to people without cringing unlike the majority of his later efforts. Oh, and his voice was also much less annoying before he learned to sing 'properly' i.e. in that bizarre, strangled American accent he does now.