All-Time Top 1000 Albums?

947 - Eric Clapton "Slowhand" (1977)

2010-04-10T16:34:00.013+01:00

My Rating: 2.67 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: √

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 23/2

Favourite Tracks: The Core, We're All The Way, Peaches and Diesel
Least-Favourite Tracks: Next Time You See Her

Firstly to anyone who has noticed an audible glitch on their remastered edition of Eric Clapton’s albums… err, sorry about that. You see, as a young lad I got my first job in the music business at a certain major record label to which Mr Clapton was signed. I spent most of my time working in their dingy basement storeroom which was actually quite good fun as I could listen to all the rare demo tapes & nose through their performer’s royalty statements to see how much they were getting paid. Now since I couldn’t reach the top shelves & since nobody had thought to provide me with a ladder, I used my youthful initiative to build a makeshift set of steps out of dozens of small plastic cartons that I found stacked in a dark corner. They were a bit wobbly & would make a horrible crunchy, cracking noise with every step I took, but eventually I figured out a way of stacking them together so the whole thing wouldn’t keep collapsing under my weight. Ah yes, I can still remember sorting the top shelves standing proudly atop my creaky plastic podium when I was distracted by a strangulated gargling sound from the doorway. This turned out to be one of the record company big cheeses who, when he’d finally calmed down enough to shriek coherently, pointed out in less than complimentary terms that I had constructed my staircase out of Eric Clapton’s original 24-track studio master tapes. Oops.

Now I have to confess that in addition to stomping all over his priceless recordings, I have always found Eric Clapton a little dull. I saw him live at the Albert Hall several years ago & I remember thinking that it was one of the most passionless exhibitions of guitar-playing I’d ever heard. And I’ve never been able to equate this reputation he has a “guitar-god” with what I’ve heard of his soloing which, while technically-accomplished, always seems to have this going-through-the-motions feel that lacks any great spark of inventiveness. Before the lynch mob arrives at my doorstep, I should also point out that I have never listened all that closely to Clapton’s recordings, so I was rather looking forward to hearing this album properly & perhaps being made to eat those words.

So what’s the verdict? Well, in some ways it was pretty much what I expected but I will concede that I was also pleasantly surprised… yes, even by much of the guitar work. I would still argue that Clapton is greatly overrated as a guitarist, but I may indeed have to consume a snack-sized portion of my words as he does demonstrate a great deal of versatility on this album, in addition to delivering some admittedly impressive solos. I particularly liked the eclectic nature; the understated fluidity of the solos on Cocaine, the compressed country-picking on Lay Down Sally, the Led Zep like riffing on The Core (complete with an energetic heavy rock solo at the end) and the dirty blues of Mean Old Frisco.

So having got completely obsessed with the relative merits of Clapton the guitarist, I was rather shocked to notice what a lousy singing voice he had. It’s not that’s he’s out of tune but his vocals are just rather limp & characterless. Plus of course he’s just so nasal - on Wonderful Tonight he literally sounds like he’s got a clothes peg stuck on the end of his nose. Such weak vocals flatten all the life out of the lyrics for me & if you need convincing try playing John Martyn’s poignant original of May You Never next to Clapton’s cover... even Pinky & Perky could have sung it with more emotion.

Clapton is often criticised for his over-reliance on cover versions & relative lack of songwriting which is valid in some senses but perhaps also not entirely fair as he did pen 5 of the 9 tracks on this album (& I thought his compositions were more effective than the covers anyway). If composing songs was the only measure of musical greatness then we’d have to start downgrading Elvis & Sinatra too, but we celebrate them as great interpreters of songs and in a similar way I think Clapton tries to use his guitar-playing to add an extra dimension to the original. And on the strength of this album, I’d say with mixed results. At first Clapton’s version of Cocaine doesn’t stray all that far from the J.J. Cale original, but his guitar work & soloing did eventually add (just) enough for me to make the cover worthwhile. On the other hand quite what he thought he could bring to the John Martyn song is beyond me.

Glyn Johns is usually a pretty solid rock producer but I was a little disappointed by some of the production values here. Perhaps it was tempered by Clapton’s need for commercial success at this point in his career, but I felt that rather too many raw edges had been smoothed over. The Core cries out for a heavier touch, Next Time You See Her sounds like a sanitised version of Ian Dury & The Blockheads and there’s a touch of the pub band about several of the other performances that could have been lifted by more inspired arrangements.

Overall though, I’d have to say that this was a better record than I expected. It meanders easily across genres, from rock to blues to country; it rocks out then drops to a soft ballad and then surprised me further by closing out with a melodic pop instrumental. Others might disagree, but for me despite such varied material it still held together as an album. Shame it didn’t hold together quite so well as a staircase.

948 - John Martyn 'One World' (1977)

2010-02-06T17:09:00.002Z

My Rating: 3.00 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 54/--

Favourite Tracks: Small Hours, One World, Certain Surprise
Least-Favourite Tracks: Big Muff, Smiling Stranger

John Martyn could sing the assembly instructions to a piece of flat-pack furniture & still move most of us to tears… the man was blessed with one of the richest, most emotive, melodious voices in rock and yet (and I feel strangely-guilty for even saying this) I found this album a little disappointing. There are some patchy bits here and while Martyn’s voice does much to paper over the cracks, it’s not quite the masterwork I was expecting considering its almost-universal critical acclaim.

On the positive front, let’s start with that voice; slurred, anguished and honeyed, like some bizarre cocktail of Michael McDonald, Robert Wyatt & Mark Hollis, it can transform even the most ordinary lyric into something dripping with emotion. There’s not many who could sing a simple line like it’s “just a cold and lonely world, for some” (from One World) and have you snivelling into your hanky. Likewise, how many times have we heard singers trot out a ho-hum corny line like “I couldn’t love you more”, and yet when Martyn does it we somehow get the feeling that he really means it.

Like so many people blessed with great natural talent, Martyn did his level-best to squander his gifts & the lyrics here offer an intriguing perspective on his troubled & often contradictory personal life. Martyn undoubtedly had a gentle, introspective side and that ran at odds with his hard-living reputation (a fact clearly illustrated, according to bandmate Danny Thompson, by the fact he would play something incredibly beautiful, yet burp loudly at the end just in case you thought he was going soft). Similarly both sides of Martyn’s character feature here, from the delicate sentiments of ballads like Certain Surprise & One World to the personal demons of Big Muff & Dealer and in a sense made the album feel that much more authentic & heartfelt.

Musically, the songs sound like they evolved out of jam sessions & while this loosely-structured approach complements the slow, ambient compositions I didn’t think it worked that well for the up-tempo numbers like Big Muff & Smiling Stranger which end up sounding a little unfinished. Both kick off with promising Can-like grooves but dashed my hopes by not really going anywhere special with them. Where Can might slip in a guitar solo or two here we just get far too much vocal repetition and not nearly enough musical inventiveness. It’s frustrating - especially when tracks like One World & Small Hours remind you what a great guitarist John Martyn was.

Small Hours closes out the album & this is where the unstructured, jam-session approach really comes into its own. You can really lose yourself in the ethereal drift of Small Hours, its muffled heartbeat rhythm, the echoing guitar & synth swells, the whispered vocals, the geese squawking in the distance… wait a minute, geese? Well, apparently it was rather fittingly recorded outside in the countryside at night & such ambient sounds only enhance the atmosphere. Almost nine minutes long but I can’t say that I noticed.

Overall a good album, but I was rather expecting more.

949 - Neil Young & Crazy Horse 'Weld' (1991)

2009-11-05T12:28:00.007Z

My Rating: 2.25 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: √

Chart Peak (UK/US): 20/--

Favourite Tracks: Hey Hey My My, Cinnamon Girl, Cortez The Killer
Least-Favourite Tracks: Blowin' In The Wind, Like A Hurricane, Tonight's The Night

Any live album that leaves your ears ringing can’t be all bad. Well, Neil Young might disagree since he apparently developed tinnitus as a direct consequence of mixing this record, but for me the ear-ringing effect was rather less permanent. I certainly felt like I’d just come out of a gig though & for a live recording that’s some achievement.

I’m not a big fan of live albums; they rarely do justice to the experience of being there in person but I have to admit this one comes a little closer than most. I didn’t know much about this record but in an effort to recreate the original ambience of a live show, I donned my best headphones & cranked the volume right up… and almost blew my head off. What’s that chainsaw guitar doing on a Neil Young album? I was expecting something all soft & acoustic (which perhaps reveals my limited knowledge of Neil Young) so the ultra-heavy opening bars of track one Hey, Hey, My, My (Into The Black) made me think I’d put on the wrong album.

So it’s loud & it’s heavy but does that make it any good? Clearly a lot of Americans didn’t think so, since this was the first Neil Young album that didn’t enter the US top 100 since his 1969 debut. I’m not really sure why because while it certainly has its flaws, I found there was an awful lot to praise here. First & foremost, it’s that lead guitar. Great rock bands need great guitarists & the guitar work here is mightily impressive; it’s brutal, edgy & bristling with raw energy & emotion. I’d normally find a line like “Rock & Roll can never die” to be the corniest of clichés, but when you hear it surrounded by the strangulated solos & vicious power chords of Hey, Hey, My, My it somehow becomes validated – almost as if it was the very distillation of what rock music was about.

Of course, any old band can turn their amps up to 11 & thrash the hell out of their guitars but what makes this album interesting is the way that it never quite descends into some pointless wall of noise; as violent as the guitars may sound, they are always tempered by the melodic nature of Young’s songwriting. That contrast between his tuneful vocal harmonies & chord progressions & those angry snarling guitars works superbly well here, especially on tracks like Cinnamon Girl, F*!#in’ Up & Powderfinger.

As good as the musical performances are though this record still trips over the same old stumbling block that every live album encounters; namely what works for a live show doesn’t necessarily work on a record. Some of the songs are drawn out too long & are then stretched out even further with interminable “concert” endings & even a bit of the dreaded crowd singalong. The 14 minute version of Like A Hurricane might have breezed by if you were there in person but sitting here listening to the album the song just drags & drags. I’m not against long tracks – both Love To Burn & Cortez The Killer run to 10 minutes & held my interest throughout, but tracks like Rockin’ In The Free World, Tonight’s The Night & Like A Hurricane just seem too one-dimensional to merit their extended running times. Similarly the overblown cover of Blowin’ In The Wind, complete with machine gun fire & explosions may have seemed a timely statement during the (first) Gulf War but I just found it as dull-as-dishwater. It might have worked OK as a final encore but as the third song in the line-up it just stops the show dead & destroys all the energy & momentum of those opening numbers (which I presume was his intention).

An enjoyable album – frustrating towards the end, but in this age of endless X-Factor & soul-less prissy pop, it’s a powerful reminder of what live rock music is all about.

950 - Liz Phair 'Whitechocolatespaceegg' (1998)

2009-10-22T13:58:00.015+01:00

My Rating: 1.50 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/35

Favourite Tracks: Johnny Feelgood
Least-Favourite Tracks: Headache, Girls' Room, Uncle Alvarez

So 1998 was a truly vintage year for music… well at least according to the All-Time Top 1000 Albums book it was. It might have seemed a pretty ordinary year to the rest of us, but for the people who voted on this list in 1998 it must have seemed the zenith of a glorious era that saw the release of some of the greatest albums ever recorded. Yes, let’s forget ’57, ’67 or ’77 and just try to imagine the heady excitement of 1998 & what a mind-blowing experience it must have been when people first heard those masterworks by Shawn Mullins, Embrace, The Goo Goo Dolls & now, Liz Phair.

Putting the sarcasm aside, I think we’ve established by now that these types of lists are of course fundamentally flawed and results are always skewed towards the year the list was compiled. Besides, you only have to look at the winner of this year’s [2009] Nobel Peace Prize to see the bizarre results that can occur when you start letting people vote for their greatest-ever’s.

Anyway on to the album & this was the first time I’d ever heard any Liz Phair. It opens with title-track White Chocolate Space Egg which starts promisingly enough with its thudding drums, plodding bass & echoey sliding guitar. But mix in some rather aimless lyrics along with a bit of a limp chorus and the whole song starts falling flat. Unfortunately weak choruses abound on this album; Only Son, Go On Ahead, Shitloads Of Money & Fantasize all have particularly lame chorus melodies too.

As the album progresses it becomes clear that musically there’s really nothing special going on here – it’s pretty standard alt-rock guitar fare with plenty of well-worn riffs & hooks and no real surprises. The performances all feel a bit passionless too; not sure if her backing band are all session musicians but they certainly don’t have any of that intuitive feel you often find in groups who have played together for years. The one-dimensional & rather lifeless production doesn’t help matters either.

While Liz Phair was lavishly praised for the lyrics on her Exile In Guyville album (#243 in this list), I really couldn’t find anything special about the words here. First of all, it’s difficult to relate to lyrics when you have no idea what they’re on about. Take the opening lines of Big Tall Man: “I’m a big tall man / I cut the grass / My left eye hurts / I am waiting & reading parts / I can be a complicated communicator / Yes I’m winning, spinning / I feel energy being pulled off from all sides / And it feels good / Like relieving a headache”. Eh? I’m sure it’s all very personal & meaningful to Liz Phair but to me it’s little more than random wordplay.

Even the songs without such cryptic content rarely moved me & there often seemed to be a lack of emotional potency to the lyrics. Not always though; Only Son struck a much more visceral tone with lines such as “All these babies are born / Like a field full of poppies / Who’s gonna know which are torn?” Similarly, the breakup song Go On Ahead sounds a good deal more heartfelt & includes the Matt Johnson’esque “You say you’re a ghost in our house / And I realise I do think I see through you”. It’s just a shame that both songs are so feeble musically.

The album would have also benefited from some quality control. There are 16 tracks included but at least a quarter of these have ‘B-side’ written all over them & really should have been dropped. The aptly-titled Headache sounds like something that John Shuttleworth might have knocked up on his home organ during the tea break. Even worse, both Ride & Girls’ Room sound like something Phoebe is performing in the coffee shop in Friends. Seriously – have a listen if you don’t believe me:

Not quite what you expect from the 950th greatest album of all-time is it? It might have seemed like something very original in 1998, but now all the hype has died down we are left with a very ordinary collection of songs. Oh well, let’s hope this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner lives up to the voters’ expectations a little better.

951 - Duke Ellington & Johnny Hodges 'Back To Back' (1959)

2009-08-12T12:47:00.004+01:00

My Rating: 3.14 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/--

Favourite Tracks: Loveless Love, Wabash Blues
Least-Favourite Tracks: St. Louis Blues

There’s been no shortage of regal epithets in the music world, though not all have been deserved. Artists like Queen and Prince have lived up to their royal aspirations, though others like King and Princess have proved to be nothing more than pretenders to the throne. (And don’t even get me started on “Lady” Gaga). Edward “Duke” Ellington, earning his moniker as a youth on account of his snappy dress-sense, belongs firmly in the first category, however it’s still something of a surprise to find this particular album in the Top 1000.

For starters, it’s not really fair to describe it as an Ellington album. The main players here are Johnny Hodges & Harry “Sweets” Edison while Ellington seems content to sit in the background. Make that very far in the background… could they not fit the piano in the studio or something? It’s so quietly recorded that it sounds as if he’s out in the hallway. It’s not a typical Ellington big band line-up either but a more intimate small combo setting. Moreover, there are no Ellington compositions here as all the songs are classic blues numbers from the pre-war era.

So what’s so special about a bunch of jazzers knocking out a load of old blues numbers? On the face of it, not a lot – however the more you listen to this album, the more you realise what an extraordinary job they make of it. In one sense, the blues offers a fairly limited scope for original improvisation yet the inventiveness & imagination shown in the soloing here is hugely impressive. I’ve always thought that good improvisation was all about playing the right note at the right time & that’s exactly what you find here. Moreover each performer has his own unique character and the more I listened to the interplay between these differing styles, the more enjoyable I found it.

I’ve read some criticism of Ellington’s playing on this album, suggesting that he was just going through the motions & didn’t put much into it. You only have to listen to his piano solos on Loveless Love, Wabash Blues or Basin Street Blues to realise what a load of cobblers that is. It is certainly a laidback, sometimes minimalist performance but his unusual chord inversions & the effortless ease with which his solo progressions dance around the melody were a highlight of this recording for me. Another standout performance comes courtesy of Harry “Sweets” Edison, a much-underrated player who somehow manages to play the blues with trumpet solos that have a smiling, winking, feel-good quality. Add in Johnny Hodges’ silky-smooth alto sax holding down the melodies & some fine guitar work from Les Spann & it’s pretty hard to fault the musicianship.

It’s also a very accessible album for people who might not typically listen to jazz. There are no tricky solos, the progressions are all simple blues (though admittedly more jazz-blues than blues-jazz) and it has a mellow, after-hours feel throughout. You can stick it on the next time the family come to dinner & it’ll breeze gently past without ruffling any feathers, but take time out to listen closer & you’ll find it has hidden depths.

952 - Third Eye Blind 'Third Eye Blind' (1997)

2009-07-31T10:24:00.007+01:00

My Rating: 2.00 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/25

Favourite Tracks: Graduate, Good For You
Least-Favourite Tracks: Semi-Charmed Life, God Of Wine

If you asked people today to vote for their greatest albums of all-time I wonder what delights we’d find. Some Lady Gaga or Nickelback perhaps? What about Rihanna, Mika & Miley Cyrus? Almost certainly the soundtrack to Mamma Mia The Movie. I shudder at the thought. Fad voting really screws up these lists. If any publisher is thinking of cranking out one of these top 1000 books, my suggestion would be to make all recently-released albums ineligible. Ban all records less than 5 years old & you might get an all-time top 1000 that owes more to genuinely great music & rather less to hype, fashion & the occasional smash-hit single.

So yes, here we go again… much like Sean Mullins, Third Eye Blind owe their appearance in this list to the fact that they scored a mega-hit in the US around the time that the book was being compiled. Is it one of the top 1000 albums ever made? No it’s not. Like Mullins, you won’t find this record in any other of the numerous greatest-ever lists that exist. Of course, that fact doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad album. There’s a stack of albums I love that never make it onto any of these lists either but this record is just too ordinary & unoriginal to stake any real claims for greatness.

The album kicks off with Losing A Whole Year. It’s a decent song with strong production, powerful drumming, interesting lyrics but that vocal melody & guitar owe rather too much to Oasis. And the musical magpie is busy elsewhere too; the chorus on Jumper conjures up The Smiths, the middle-eight reminds me of The Police, Motorcycle Drive By cruises firmly into U2 territory. The weak link here seems to be the lead guitarist who seems rather too keen on borrowing ideas from everyone else rather than developing his own individual style. He’s a competent guitarist but I’d argue that the best rock bands need more than that; the riffs here aren’t all that memorable, the solos often bland & wayward, the chord progressions simplistic & predictable.

Which leads us neatly onto Semi-Charmed Life, a Frankenstein’s monster of a song that seems to have been assembled entirely out of other people’s parts. Need a song for the closing credits of American Pie #17? Well here it is. It’s one of those numbers designed to appeal to the most basic of musical responses with a chirpy wordless “doo-dee-doo” chorus and three Major chords that repeat through verse, chorus & middle-8. And it worked… American radio played it to death (i.e., more than 3 times) & it was a huge single hit. [edit: I’ve just found out it was actually featured in the first American Pie movie… so much for sarcasm, eh?]

It’s not all bad though & a track like Graduate shows what Third Eye Blind can do when they’re not chasing universal chart approval. The guitarist finally sorts himself out & knocks out a monster riff with a gurgling, unhinged solo like something off a 70’s album by The Tubes (that’s a good thing by the way). In fact, the band seems to work better when they lose a bit of their polish & tracks like London & Good For You likewise benefit from being a little rougher around the edges. The problem is just that nagging feeling that you’ve heard all this somewhere before. And the bigger problem of course is that you probably have…

953 - Miles Davis 'At Carnegie Hall - The Complete Concert' (1961)

2009-06-26T12:35:00.012+01:00

My Rating: 2.64 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/59

Favourite Tracks: Meaning Of The Blues/Lament, New Rhumba
Least-Favourite Tracks: Oleo

I’ve never seen a greatest album list that didn’t feature at least one Miles Davis record but by the same token I’ve never seen one that featured this particular album either. And there’s a reason for that… it’s really not one of his best.

So why, considering all the classic Miles Davis albums out there, did the people who voted for the All-Time Top 1000 Albums choose this one? Well, for jazz fans it represented something of a historical event; Miles did countless live performances over the years but he only ever did two concerts alongside his celebrated collaborator Gil Evans. Yet as an archive of this momentous occasion, the original 1961 live album was flawed because it only included half the concert. Then after four decades or so, someone at the record label finally twigged that it might be a good idea to reissue an expanded version of the album that featured the complete show. This new 2-CD edition caused something of a stir with jazzers on its release in 1998, which coincidentally was when the All-Time Top 1000 book was being compiled and hence it grabbed a good deal more votes than it might in polls nowadays.

Like many teenagers I was a music nut. Back in the vinyl days I used to head into London’s West End every weekend & scour the second-hand record shops looking for anything interesting (and cheap). I’m not sure why, but one day I returned home with a brand new Miles Davis LP – Porgy & Bess. It was the first jazz album I’d ever bought & like many new listeners, the combination of Gil Evans’ lush orchestral arrangements & Miles’ melancholic trumpet solos soon had me under their spell. So I was very much looking forward to hearing this album, but have to report that I found it rather disappointing. First & foremost the recording quality is simply not good enough; the first horn blast of opening track So What squawks painfully out of the speakers and throughout the album unpleasant distortion occurs whenever Davis hits the high notes. Of course it doesn’t help that his trumpet is placed so piercingly loud in the mix. You can be pretty damn sure that Miles insisted on being the loudest thing onstage but the overloaded sound & the volume hike every time we move from a sax or piano solo to his trumpet just ruins almost every song.

Next disappointment for me was the lack of Gil Evans. Having gone to all the trouble of assembling his orchestra & installing them all onstage, Davis curiously leaves them twiddling their thumbs for most of the concert & only employs them on a handful of songs. OK we do get the 17 minute long Concierto de Aranjuez but considering it was such a rare event for him & Evans to perform live together, I did expect to hear more than 3 songs with full orchestration.

As for the content, well naturally there are some terrific performances here (especially from saxophonist Hank Mobley) but on the whole it has the niggling feel of a greatest hits run-through. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising considering the nature of a Carnegie Hall audience, but I still felt that some of the playing was a little scrappy and often lacked the intensity & emotiveness of the studio recordings. Apparently the day before the concert, Davis had peevishly decided that he didn’t want to perform & even refused permission for the event to be recorded. That might explain the uncharacteristically aggressive edge to his playing on this album. It certainly explains the poor sound quality as some reviews state that the recording had to be secretly captured using a few microphones hidden onstage. Either way, I'd say this is one for Miles Davis buffs only.

954 - Tim Buckley 'Happy Sad' (1968)

2009-06-02T16:52:00.005+01:00

My Rating: 2.00 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/81

Favourite Tracks: Love From Room 109 At The Islander
Least-Favourite Tracks: Gypsy Woman

Happy Sad proved an appropriate title for an album that offered up such a pleasing first half yet such a disappointing second. It was a scorching hot day so I stuck this on whilst stretched out in a shady corner of the garden and it soon seemed like the perfect setting. Strange Feelin’ kicks things off oh-so gently with languorous marimbas & a meandering double bass and the track strolls along as if it has all the time in the world; an electric guitar solos lazily, the vibes plink-plonk for a while and the effect is all rather serene. Wait a minute though… isn’t that tune lifted from Miles Davis’ All Blues? And what about those marimbas & double-bass – is this a jazz album Mr Buckley? Well no, not really; the musicians clearly aren’t “jazzers” but what they lack in technical proficiency, they more than make up for in feeling. So this is something of a folk-jazz hybrid and for a while at least, quite a successful one.

The album’s highpoint was Love From Room 109 At The Islander (On Pacific Coast Highway), a big mouthful of a title that signals an equally large-proportioned song. Weighing in at a hefty 11 minutes or so, this epic track starts off like some acoustic session by The Doors (complete with its Yes The River Knows-style guitar break) yet soon morphs into something quite unique. The tempo plummets to a funereal pace and a complicated melody starts weaving its way around scratchy violins & the sound of a crashing sea. It’s a song with a loose organic structure, as if the band members are composing it on a Ouija board, all pushing it in a certain direction yet never quite knowing who is in overall control nor where they will heading next. And yet, it works. And back in the days when music emanated from those grooves in black vinyl
it would have closed out “side one” with a flourish.

However that minimalist, organic technique continues into “side two” and here it begins to show its limitations. Gypsy Woman feels particularly under-produced; a song whose naked ambition outstrips its naked arrangement, it flounders flimsily under Buckley’s impassioned cries, like Kenny G doing a cover of Metallica. The unstructured approach, so successful on Love From Room 109 fails dismally here and the song lurches along aimlessly like some drunken, drummer-less jam session. As for Buckley’s vocal histrionics, well when The Flight Of The Conchords do it it’s funny, but here the falsetto swoops, growls & off-key vibrato are just irritating. With a 12 minute runtime, make that bloody irritating.

I was a bit disappointed with Tim Buckley’s singing. I’d read dozens of glowing reviews and Allmusic has dubbed him “one of the great rock vocalists of the 1960s” but on the evidence of this album I can’t agree. For a start he has a “gnarrrrey” timbre coupled with a wavering pitch that can make him sound a bit like Mr Bean gargling. Stylistically inconsistent, his voice also seemed a little short of range & struggled to jump through the many flaming hoops Buckley placed in front of it.

I also felt many reviewers overstated the poeticism of the lyrics. Take Strange Feelin’; “Well it's just like a mockingbird a-singing on a hillside / Chirping at his morning song / But don't you weep don't you fret don't you wail don't you moan / Can't you hear that whippoorwill a-callin? / Now don't you worry / Your daddy's comin' home / He's gonna chase those blues away”. Yes Buckley evokes typical pastoral “poetic” imagery, birdsongs, mountain breezes & the like, but allied to rock clichés like “your daddy” & “chasing the blues away” the sentiments often seemed woolly & rather hollow. The exception being Dream Letter where Buckley uses much simpler language yet suggests much deeper emotion; “All I need to know tonight / How are you and my child? / Oh is he a soldier / or is he a dreamer? / Is he mama's little man? / Does he help you when he can? / Oh does he ask about me?” OK we know he’s talking about his estranged son Jeff & the tragedy that surrounded both their lives certainly adds an extra dimension, yet I still found it a powerful song about the genuine anguish & regrets of a broken family.

Just 6 songs here so the original 1968 LP was neatly divided into 3 tracks per side. And if I had owned this album on vinyl, it would have been one of those where side one was covered in scratches & fingerprints, yet side two would have remained forever in shiny mint condition. Happy Sad indeed.

955 - Jack Bruce 'Songs For A Tailor' (1969)

2009-06-01T17:12:00.002+01:00

My Rating: 3.00 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: √

Chart Peak (UK/US): 6/55

Favourite Tracks: Rope Ladder To The Moon, He The Richmond
Least-Favourite Tracks: Boston Ball Game 1967, The Ministry Of Bag

Very 60s, this one. My first listen was as I cycled alongside the Grand Union canal & within a few minutes I was transported into some kitchen-sink drama; the industrial landscape around the half-finished Olympic stadium faded out into black & white & I half-expected a youthful Rita Tushingham to wave at me from one of the rusty iron bridges. It’s funny how the 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s all have their own distinct signature sounds. Can’t think what the signature sound of the 00s will be though; perhaps an anonymous voice singing through Auto-tune accompanied by the shuffling noise of marketing men rubbing their clammy hands together & the distant rumble of Simon Cowell’s wallet dragging on the ground? But this album is almost the antithesis of today’s music – it’s unrefined, unpredictable and credits its listeners with having more intelligence than a goldfish – all of which makes it refreshingly enjoyable.

It kicks off with Never Tell Your Mother She’s Out Of Tune – all squawking horns & grimy distorted bass like a cross between Blood, Sweat & Tears, Spirit & some wacky incidental music from The Prisoner. The reviews I’d read referred to this album as ‘jazz-rock’ but I’d say ‘art-rock’ was a more accurate description. For me, jazz-rock conjures up images of Miles Davis in kooky shades or John Mclaughlin grappling a guitar with about 27 necks. I suppose I’m confusing jazz-rock with fusion but however you want to describe this record, it’s certainly more about rock than jazz.

I wasn’t all that familiar with Jack Bruce - I know Cream’s big hits of course but that didn’t prepare me for this album which grew on me the more it went on. Unusual chord progressions steer songs like Tickets To Waterfalls into odd directions, yet whenever it seems to be heading too far into the unconventional we get a delightfully melodic line to haul us back from the brink. Having spent my formative years listening to a lot of avant-garde material, I was especially taken with Rope Ladder To The Moon which with its dark acoustic guitars, melancholic scratchy cellos & angular vocal melodies seemed to have more in common with acts like the Art Bears than any conventional rock outfit.

Lyrically it’s rather a poetic album but that’s not to say it’s portentous or overblown; there’s some quasi-psychedelic quirkiness with lines like “The cook’s jumped in the river / The menu smells of feet” (from The Ministry Of Bag) but generally the words seem heartfelt and, to me at least, rather profound. Weird Of Hermiston has “Skies are no longer a comfort / Leaves turning black with the autumn / The corn is hung down with the heaviest weight that I’m feeling” while on He The Richmond Bruce sings “Yes my name it is written in the sand / And it can’t escape your sweeping hand”; worthy of Brian Wilson that one & a league above the standard flimsy pop/rock sentiments. (Having just researched a little further, I’ve discovered that the lyricist Pete Brown also penned the words for Cream’s hits & published poetry too so that explains a lot).

For all its inventiveness, the album doesn’t always hit the mark. Boston Ball Game 1967 is a bit of a mess, The Ministry Of Bag sounds musically like something dragged from the KPM archives & the jam-session second half of To Isengard drifts perilously close to Derek Smalls’ Jazz Odyssey. But I’d gladly listen to any of them on a 24 hour tape loop ahead of anything that Mr Cowell digs up during the rest of this decade.

956 - 2Pac 'Me Against The World' (1995)

2009-05-13T16:42:00.011+01:00

My Rating: 2.20 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/1

Favourite Tracks: So Many Tears, If I Die 2Nite
Least-Favourite Tracks: Heavy In The Game, Old School

Like it or not, gangsta rap has been one of America’s most successful musical exports. 2Pac alone has sold over 75 million albums which represents one hell of a soapbox for his particular musings on life. Such popularity also inspires a form of cultural imperialism, with people around the world tossing away huge chunks of their own identity & replacing it wholesale with that of their favourite US rappers. Here in the UK, there’s nothing more cringe-worthy than hearing a middle-aged, middle-class, white Englishman trying to speak like a young, working-class, black American. How much more removed from your own origins do you need to be? I recently worked in a trendy music biz office where one plummy Oxbridge graduate regularly used “ghetto-talk” without a hint of irony; the worst thing was that it’s become so normal that nobody else there even noticed.

Although Tupac spent several years at drama school, the way he spoke & behaved didn’t seem to be an affectation. He grew up in a harsh environment & while aspersions have been cast about the “street” credentials of some rappers, the very nature of Tupac’s life (& death) means nobody could really accuse him of faking it. Authenticity is a highly-prized commodity in the world of gangsta rap, so when you issue an album just after you’ve survived being shot 5 times & whilst serving a prison sentence for sexual assault, it is bound to add a certain gravitas to your words. Released against that backdrop an album titled Me Against The World was always going to be taken seriously.

I should confess at the outset that I know very little about rap. Everyone has holes in their musical knowledge & gangsta rap represents a point-blank .45-calibre exit-wound in mine. If you’d mentioned “Tupac & Biggie” to me several years ago, I might have assumed you were talking about some kiddies’ cartoon show. And I laughed the other day when a guy on a radio phone-in mistakenly referred to 50 Cent as “50 Pence” but secretly knew I wasn’t all that far away from making the same blunder. Rap certainly polarises opinion amongst people I know in the music world too; some pretend to know a lot about it in order to boost their credibility, others loftily dismiss the whole genre without ever having listened to a single note.

Back to the album & if anyone was not aware that Tupac had been shot, the opening intro-track soon remedies that; what starts out as a soulful instrumental soon turns into something of a brag-fest as dozens of sensationalised news reports about his shooting & discharging himself from hospital are interwoven through the music. It’s as subtle as a sledgehammer – you’re a tough guy, we get it for heaven’s sake. But as the album progresses we get glimpses of some vulnerability & for the critics that is one of the things that sets this release apart from its peers. Most of the lyrics (predictably) glorify his violent lifestyle, yet there’s a contemplative streak running through all the songs that simultaneously express his doubts & fears. It’s like Tupac had one of those cartoon devils whispering in one ear & an angel in the other. A track like If I Die 2Night talks of “plottin’ on murderin’ motherfuckers” & “duckin’ the cop.. as I’m clutchin’ my Glock” yet conversely complains “I’m sick of psychotic society, somebody save me” & “I hope I’m forgiven for Thug livin’ when I die”. It’s a contradictory stance yet in a sense it works because it comes across as an honest internal struggle. Having said that, I think many critics overplay the vulnerability-line; they hold up a track like Dear Mama & point out how few hardcore rappers would record a gentle ballad tribute to their mum. That may be so but Tupac still can’t bring himself to state directly that he loves her – his big repeated chorus line is “you are appreciated” which as a sentiment is not exactly overflowing with warmth & tenderness.

The spectre of his untimely death looms large over the whole album & it’s something I found intriguing. It’s partly the dying-young effect; I get the same thing hearing Ian Curtis or Nick Drake, though in Tupac’s case the album feels more like a self-fulfilling prophecy than a eulogy. The paranoid mistrust of Death Around The Corner is eerily-accurate & on track after track, Tupac predicts his own violent demise. Lines like “I’m having visions of leaving here in a hearse” or “my every move is a calculated step to bring me closer to embrace an early death” (from So Many Tears) take on extraordinary significance. I couldn’t help wondering what we’d make of such lyrics had he not been shot dead. If he’d gone on to great success as an actor & got fat by the pool in his Bel-Air mansion such lyrics might have come across as just empty posturing, but following his murder they stand as a kind of validation & that certainly adds a powerful edge to the record.

Musically the songs are well-produced & surprisingly melodic but I do find it hard to get all that excited about songs constructed entirely from samples of other peoples’ songs. Also there’s a (jealous) side of me that resents anybody who doesn’t write the music, doesn’t play any instruments, doesn’t sing & yet can still make over $80 million of record sales in one year. Considering the Poet Laureate earns £5750 a year that’s pretty good wages for a bit of rhyming. And I do have misgivings about a lot of the lyrical content, not because I find it offensive but mainly because its obsessive uber-machismo focus on murder, sex, drink & drugs just seems so childish – to me it’s the sort of thing that 14 year old boys boast about, not grown men.

Rap fans have long revered this album; as an outsider to the genre I found it something of a mixed bag. It was certainly more accessible than I expected & the murky world it portrays, whether fact or fiction (or a blurring of the two) offers a vicarious thrill to those of us peering in from our comfy suburban lives. The cycle is neatly completed with the final track Outlaw & its chilly closing lines - “Muh’fuckers wanna see me in my casket… I never die, thug niggaz multiply, cause after me is thug life baby”. As my plummy Oxbridge friend might put it; “Believe”.

957 - Shawn Mullins 'Soul's Core' (1998)

2009-04-11T18:22:00.004+01:00

My Rating: 1.92 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 60/54

Favourite Tracks: Tannin Bed Song, Twin Rocks Oregon, Ballad Of Billy Joe McKay
Least-Favourite Tracks: Shimmer, Soul Child, And On A Rainy Night, Lullaby

Shawn Mullins is not exactly a household name. Even in the Mullins household I’ll bet some people have never heard of him. So to find one of his records in the Top 1000 means that either; (a) he released a fantastic album that never got the exposure it deserved or (b) he released a rather ordinary album that just happened to be popular when the Top 1000 was compiled. Sadly, I have to report that the answer is (b).

That’s one of the problems with getting people to vote on these lists; they often confuse the greatest with the latest. And back in 1998, when the All-Time Top 1000 book was being compiled, Shawn was the latest, Grammy-nominated, singer-songwriter riding high in the US charts, so when they asked the public to vote for the greatest album ever, Soul’s Core inevitably bagged plenty of votes. A decade later & I’d bet my house on the fact that this record wouldn’t get a sniff of the Top 1000.

For a start there seem to be two very different Shawn Mullins on this album. On one hand we have Shawn the stoner-surf-dude, a travelling troubadour knocking out an earnest set of songs on his acoustic guitar. But on tracks like Lullaby & Shimmer, we get Mullins the media product, his songs forced through a marketing mincer to create an easily-digestible slop for MTV’s toothless target audience. Why’d you let them do it Shawn? I’ll bet Lullaby sounded just fine when you busked it out the back of your VW Combi, but once the Suits got their greasy fingers on it, it became an over-produced, anthemic mess. They turned you into a chart-topping star & then they turned their backs on you once the cash registers stopped ringing & left you languishing in one-hit wonderland.

So Lullaby proved something of a double-edged sword; it was the reason why most people rushed out to buy this album, but also the reason why many of them found the other country-tinged songs such a letdown. Even at Amazon.com, the home of the ubiquitous 5-star review, you find a surprising number of disgruntled voices who “bought this CD for Lullaby” but complain that it’s the “only decent song” & the others are “boring” or “dull”. For me it’s the other way round; I think the album works best when Mullins drops the pop-hit-by-numbers formula & sticks to something a little more heartfelt & personal. He’s got a good voice with a pleasing gravelly tone & the simpler acoustic numbers like The Ballad of Billy Joe McKay or Twin Rocks, Oregon work well (in a singing-round-the-campfire kind of way).

Lyrically it wanders through familiar Tom Waits territory with semi-spoken tales of drifters, dropouts, dope & drinking. I liked the simple, wistful sentiments of tracks like Tannin Bed Song ("this Kansas life is a hard one / for a girl from Miami / just staring out at the oil fields / and that's all that I can see") but elsewhere it just gets mired in hackneyed phrases & clichés (e.g., Soul Child’s trite chorus of "Be strong / Hold on / Stay wild / Soul child"). And doesn’t it seem a little contrived to mention being stoned in at least 3 songs?

So I suppose if we were compiling a list of inconsistent, over-produced & unremarkable albums then this might be in with a shout. But since we’re talking about the 1000 greatest albums ever made, I think it’s probably high time that we moved on.

958 - Tom Waits 'Small Change' (1976)

2009-02-21T12:40:00.034Z

My Rating: 3.00 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: √

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/89

Favourite Tracks: Step Right Up, Invitation To The Blues, Can't Wait To Get Off Work
Least-Favourite Tracks: I Wish I Was In New Orleans, Pasties & A G-String

Like a butterfly that transforms into a caterpillar, Tom Waits has undergone a peculiarly topsy-turvy musical career. Back in the early 70s, he fluttered onto the scene all gentle, jazzy melodies & lightly-rasping voice but over the decades metamorphosed into a guttural, growling maniac, crawling ever-deeper into his own shadowy, discordant world.

To stretch my flimsy (and grossly over-written) metaphor to breaking point, this album then represents his 'pupal' stage; a kind of halfway point still rooted in jazz, yet edging ever-closer towards the experimental (a transition evidenced on The Piano Has Been Drinking). And that can be a bit of a problem - fans of early-era Waits often bemoan the overbearing gruffness of his vocals, fans of the later years run screaming from the room at the merest hint of jazz. I have some sympathy with both viewpoints. Listening to a tender ballad like I Wish I Was In New Orleans, part of me yearns for the older, softer vocals, rather than the Louis Armstrong-through-a-cracked-megaphone style we get here. On the other hand uptempo numbers like Step Right Up really come alive as he roars out emotive lines like "Christ, you don't know the meaning of heartbreak buddy!"

Ah yes, the words. Let's face it, if we were rating these albums solely on lyrics, this would be a perfect '5'. Like all of Tom Waits' albums, it's the lyrics here that stand towering over everything else. The music, good as it is, is often little more than a conduit for those astonishing words. In fact, Pasties & A G-String dispenses with the music altogether, its sole instrumental backing being a cheesy stripclub-style drumbeat while Waits rattles off gems like "I'm gettin' harder than chinese algebra-ssieres". Or on the title-track Small Change, where he abandons singing in favour of a spoken novelistic monologue over a lone 'Sam Spade' saxophone. And I'm not sure that anyone but Waits could get away with that 1950's Ellroy'esque hipster-speak either; tracks like The One That Got Away & Jitterbug Boy are crammed with outmoded phrases like 'deep six holiday', 'easy street' & countless nostalgic American references. (Visit the excellent Tom Waits Library for comprehensive annotations). Of course, purists might argue that the art of songwriting, like poetry, is condensing a great deal of meaning into very few words and in that sense, Waits is sometimes less a lyricist & more akin to an author who sets his stories to music. A kind of 'Charles Bukowski - The Musical' if you like.

As far as influences go, Waits has cited performers like Mose Allison & Ken Nordine & you can certainly hear that here in the wry humour, the clever puns & the whole hepcat word-jazz style. Where Waits elevates himself above those influences however is his ability to pen such poignant love songs. There's not many who could deliver a cliche-free ballad of such yearning emotion as Invitation To The Blues. I must have heard it a hundred times yet I still find myself wistfully wondering about the waitress who "looks like Rita Hayworth" & the "broken down jalopy of a man" she left behind.

It was an odd experience returning to this album because back in my younger days I played all my Tom Waits LP's to death (literally, in the case of The Heart Of Saturday Night, which is one of the few vinyl albums I did actually wear out). Small Change was never one of my favourites, not that it's a poor album, just that musically it's not as consistently good as many of his others. Quite why this one made it onto the Top 1000 ahead of those is a bit of a mystery (though perhaps the popularity of its opening track Tom Traubert's Blues has something to do with it). By Tom Waits standards then it's not a great album, but that still trumps the best that most have to offer.

959 - Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers 'Moanin' (1958)

2009-01-26T13:04:00.021Z

My Rating: 2.86 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/--

Favourite Tracks: Moanin', Along Came Betty
Least-Favourite Track: Drum Thunder Suite

A few posts back I pledged to get this blog moving & write more regularly. Unfortunately fate had other plans for me & dropped a dungball the size of Wembley Stadium on my head from a great height. This isn't really an appropriate forum for my health woes so I'll just say that I've discovered an awful lot about life in the last few months, not least that cancer is not always something that happens to other people. Having spent way too much time around doctors & hospitals, it's a relief to finally be back at home & to get back to listening to some music. So I'll just get on with it.

I love the cover of this record; a frowning Art Blakey looks like he's about to punch someone in the gob (presumably unleashing his fists with a few press rolls & paradiddles). It's an apt photo too because as a drummer he's got an aggressive, raw edge to his playing that seems to propel every track along with its vitality.

I already knew Blakey could thump those skins, but I never realised quite what an expressive performer he was too. Listening to the album several times, you start to notice how cleverly his drum rolls punctuate & accentuate the melody lines, subtly steering the songs in whatever direction he wants them to go. It's almost as if his drumsticks are a pair of conductor's batons, lifting & dropping the mood of every track. Such a strong rhythmic emphasis is one of the benefits of having a drummer as bandleader - one of the drawbacks is the rather self-indulgent Drum Thunder Suite; seven & a half minutes of what is essentially drum soloing & showboating with a few other instruments chucked in here & there.

The album rating also suffers a little by the rather odd decision to feature an alternate take of title-track Moanin' right after the original. It is not significantly different & simply disrupts the flow of the record having the 9+ minute long opening-track (good as it is) more or less repeated straight after it has just ended. (I notice in later CD releases this alternate version was shifted to the end of the album which makes a lot more sense).

Those gripes aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this album. I've owned it for several years but, like many of my records, prior to doing this blog I never took the time to listen to the whole thing properly from beginning to end. I'm still slightly puzzled how it came to appear in the (largely rock & pop dominated) Top 1000. I guess part of it is that like Miles Davis' A Kind Of Blue or Coltrane's A Love Supreme, it's regarded by the critical cognoscenti as one of those 'classic' jazz albums that every music fan should own. It certainly introduced two cracking jazz compositions in title-track Moanin' & Along Came Betty and is a very good example of hard-bop's more soulful (and accessible) sound. Personally I think there are better Art Blakey albums out there (Free For All for a start) but Moanin' works well as a starting-point for anyone interested in his music.

960 - Beth Orton 'Trailer Park' (1996)

2008-11-12T15:42:00.037Z

My Rating: 1.55 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 68/--

Favourite Tracks: She Cries Your Name, Touch Me With Your Love
Least-Favourite Tracks: Whenever, I Wish I Never Saw The Sunshine

I listen to music for a living which is usually a wonderful way to pay the mortgage, though today I spent 8 hours listening to nothing but Christmas songs. Ropey old Christmas songs; some with ruddy pan pipes. After that kind of ear-battering I thought I'd relax by listening to the next record in the all-time top 1000 list, but uh-oh, B.O... wouldn't you know it, but it's another Beth Orton album. My heart sank & my ears almost started ringing in anticipation; you see her 'Central Reservation' album featured just a short time ago (here at no. 982) & it proved a painful listen, largely on account of her excruciating vocals. Compared to that racket, I'd take another 8 hours of pan pipes anyday. But this is a different album, her debut, perhaps this one will be better?

Err, no. And here's a little audio montage to demonstrate what I mean:

Here's the problem. Beth Orton can't sing. I know, I know, there's plenty of great singers who can't hold a tune (and I like loads of them) but some voices just annoy you so much that you can no longer hear the music. For some people it's Bob Dylan or Tom Waits, Cher or Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Morrissey, Edith Piaf, and so on. For me it appears to be Beth Orton. If you took a pancake & ironed it, then drove over it with a Sherman tank, it would still not be as flat as Beth Orton's vocals.

What makes it worse is she does her own backing vocals as well. So that means we get three Ortons simultaneously failing to hit three different, yet very flat, notes. (Why didn't the producer suggest some decent backing singers? 'Quirky' voices can sound fine with decent backing harmonies). Then there's the tone; she has this thin, reedy quality that makes her sound like a singing kazoo. And as far as emotion goes Orton doesn't really have enough control of her voice to vary the delivery, so we get the same expressionless drone whether it's an uplifting feelgood number or a sad emotional ballad. Oh & perhaps the greatest sin of all is she sounds a lot like Dido.

Having said all that, every review I've seen has nothing but praise for Orton's vocals so I realise I'm out on my own on this one. And I'll concede there are also times when her voice can work pretty well. She Cries Your Name has a really organic feel, with scratchy strings, double bass & low-key yet funky drums; it's an unusual arrangement & Orton's vocals sit comfortably in that context. The blend of acoustic elements, such as dulcimers or bouzoukis with electronic music is definitely another successful element of the album. But faced with the lush orchestral backing of a ballad like Don't Need A Reason & Orton just does not have the voice to carry it off.

As good as the music is, it all becomes rather irrelevant if the singer just sounds like a walking set of bagpipes.

961 - Aimee Mann 'Whatever' (1993)

2008-11-08T15:20:00.014Z

My Rating: 3.23 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: √

Chart Peak (UK/US): 39/--

Favourite Tracks: Say Anything, 4th Of July, Could've Been Anyone
Least-Favourite Tracks: Jacob Marley's Chain [but only because the melody reminds me of Nik Kershaw's 'The Riddle'..]

I never judge a book by its cover. Well that's what I sanctimoniously think about myself but the truth is I must do precisely the opposite because otherwise I'd have heard this record a long time ago. I blame the album title; you see I didn't read it as Whatever - I took one look at the cover, saw a young blonde American woman & it became (cue Californian accent) 'Whateverrrrrrrrrrr'. Like most opinions forged from flimsy prejudices that one stuck so I really wasn't looking forward to hearing this album. But before the opening track was over I could feel my face stretching into something of a donkey head as I realised I'd got it all wrong; this was not the frivolous, piece of froth that I'd presumed - it's an accomplished rock record. Four minutes in & it already had more hooks & harmonies than you find in 40 minutes of most albums.

First surprise is that it's such a full-on production. I was expecting an oh-so earnest singer-songwriter backed solely with an acoustic guitar, but that's partly thanks to Allmusic who describe this album (here) as 'folk-tinged'. (Long afternoon down the pub was it lads? 'Folk-tinged', my arse) No, from the start this has a bold & confident feel; the production is excellent & is tailored to fit the mood of each song. That means we get an incredible variety of arrangements & instruments, from electronic samples & drum machines to strings & full orchestration; you get the impression that they just raided the studio stockroom & grabbed every single musical instrument they could lay their hands on.

What about Aimee Mann herself? As a singer she sounded a little like a cross between Chrissie Hynde & Alison Statton of the Young Marble Giants (remember them?). I wouldn't describe her voice as commanding & yet she has a remarkable ability to scythe through a wall of guitar noise. And even better, she sounds like she means every word she sings which is quite a rare commodity these days.

As a songwriter she also does an admirable job; everytime I thought a track was getting a little predictable, it'd suddenly spear off into an unexpected bridge, middle-8 or instrumental break. And it's a tuneful album; the vocal melodies & backing harmonies are always pleasing & the lyrics are intelligent & thought-provoking (especially when you read between the lines of songs such as I Could Hurt You Now).

And that's the best thing about doing this daft project; every so often you discover some good music that you never knew existed.

962 - Fleetwood Mac 'The Dance' (1997)

2008-10-31T21:49:00.024Z

My Rating: 2.65 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 15/1

Favourite Tracks: The Chain, Temporary One, Don't Stop
Least-Favourite Track: My Little Demon, I'm So Afraid, Bleed To Love Her

So what do you do if you're Fleetwood Mac and every single person in the known-universe has already bought one of your greatest hits albums? Record a live album featuring all your hits so that everyone buys them again is what you do. More than 5 million people did exactly that making this one of the best-selling live recordings ever.

I must admit I'm not a big fan of live albums. I can see the point when it chronicles a performance of truly epic proportions (like Jerry Lee Lewis At The Star Club or The Who Live At Leeds), but all too often we get some insipid, badly-recorded show from the 137th night of the Estonian tour that bands punt out instead of a studio album because they can't think of any new songs.

And that's pretty much what you get here; superannuated supergroup crank out the old faves for MTV Unplugged, bung in a few hastily-assembled new numbers to make sure all the fans buy it & go home with enough cash to build yet another guest wing on the mansion. Ah, but of course the big difference here is that this band are a little bit special. They can actually play, they can sing & they can really write tunes. You'd have to be a cynical, black-hearted fellow not to be beguiled by songs like The Chain, Dreams, Go Your Own Way, Silver Springs, Rhiannon (etc, etc, etc).

And that means this album scores pretty well but that's not quite the whole story. I enjoyed it as a showcase of great old songs & slick musicianship (particularly Lindsey Buckingham's guitar) & the recording quality is crisp, but as a live performance it feels more like a run-through than an electrifying once-in-a-lifetime event. The new songs don't stand up well alongside the classics, the classics never deviate all that far from the studio versions (a point that is underlined when they finally go out on a limb for show-closer Don't Stop complete with brass band accompaniment) & even the banter between tracks is a bit 'ho-hum'. Calling it 'The Dance' is hardly inspired either. You just get the feeling that they could have done it so much better if they really wanted.

963 - Deana Carter 'Did I Shave My Legs For This?' (1996)

2008-10-30T14:40:00.011Z

My Rating: 2.27 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/10

Favourite Tracks: If This Is Love, Strawberry Wine, Did I Shave My Legs For This?
Least-Favourite Track: How Do I Get There

When I was a young kid my dad would sometimes take me out of school for day trips. He had a big American Chevrolet with an 8-track tape player (remember them?) though only a handful of tapes. That didn't matter because the only one that ever really got played was Glen Campbell. To this day whenever I hear Wichita Lineman it makes me think of those stolen moments; long sunny days bunking off school & cruising through the countryside with my dad.

So while most people I know detest country music, I've always had a bit of a soft spot for it & was quite looking forward to hearing this record. I didn't know anything about Deana Carter but I thought the album title was intriguing & suggested I was in for some sophisticated bittersweet songs. But I must admit to being a little disappointed.

For starters, the lyrical content is a good deal more lightweight than the title suggests; it's not full of empty pop sentiments by any means, but neither is it achingly poignant. More Shania than Dolly in that respect. Musically it's similarly inoffensive. That sounds so trite but to my ears it's a bog-standard, contemporary country-pop record; not one of the songs was bad, but neither were any of them particularly special. No guitar solos jumped out, no fiddles tore at your heart, no chords dared to tinker with the formula (apart from the middle 8 on Strawberry Wine - why couldn't we have a few more surprises like that?).

So is this one of the top 1000 albums of all-time? No. It may well be one of the top-selling albums of all-time, but that's an entirely different thing. Pleasant as it is, I can't imagine we'll still be talking about it in 20 year's time.

964 - Thelonious Monk 'Brilliant Corners' (1957)

2008-10-29T17:02:00.043Z

My Rating: 2.40 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/--

Favourite Tracks: Brilliant Corners, Pannonica
Least-Favourite Track: Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are

I just worked out that at my current rate of progress I shall be finishing this blog on 2 August 2040 (it'll be a Thursday in case you were planning anything). As I'll be 75 by then there's a strong possibility that I'll be a little bit senile, a little bit deaf and/or a little bit dead - all conditions which may well improve my writing, though it might just be simpler to try & speed things up a bit. So in an effort to overcome my suffocating sense of slothfulness & to avoid having to continue writing this from the after-life I hereby decree that I shall be listening to 7 albums in 7 days. Starting with this one.

The album opens with title track Brilliant Corners and from the opening piano intro it's hard not to think of Les Dawson. Or perhaps someone trying to play piano whilst wearing boxing gloves. Who's had a bit too much to drink. You get the picture.. Anyone unfamiliar with Monk must think the same because on first listen he sounds like someone who's just not very good at playing piano. Then the rest of the group join in, all twisted horns & stuttering rhythms like some second-rate Salvation Army band & you begin to wonder whether Napalm Death might not be a little easier on the ear. But after a minute or so, the tempo suddenly picks up & the whole thing starts to swing; not traditional swing but like some twisted swing from an alternate universe. The song lurches around, stopping, starting, speeding up & slowing down & yet somehow the whole things hangs together. Just. And out of all that chaos you end up emerging with something rather beautiful.

By contrast track two Ba-Lue Bolivar...(etc) is a skanky blues of the sort that you'd find from some burlesque strip club band - I half expected Tom Waits (circa 1974) to start growling lyrics over the top & it's a shame that he doesn't really as with a running time of over 13 minutes even the charm of Monk's solos began to fade. I'm not sure that the simplicity of the blues provides enough scope for someone like Monk anyway, though if I said that at a jazz convention I'd be dragged out to the car park for a good kicking.

In an effort to save myself from angry mobs of hipsters (not that I've ever seen a mob of hipsters, or even a lone hipster for that matter, but I'm not taking any chances) I should point out that there's an awful lot to like about this album. Four of the five songs are Monk original compositions (& it's worth emphasising the word 'original' there). And as any self-respecting jazzer will tell you, saying Monk is a bit rubbish at piano is like saying that Picasso wasn't much cop at painting. Their art is abstract & abstraction requires you to abandon some of your preconceived notions. The problem is that we're all conditioned to think that hitting bum notes=bad player, so while many people might appreciate Monk's innovative style after hearing one track in islolation, I wonder whether a whole album's worth might be too much for all but the most ardent jazz fans.

965 - Talking Heads 'Speaking In Tongues' (1983)

2008-10-27T13:38:00.009Z

My Rating: 2.33 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 21/15

Favourite Tracks: Girlfriend Is Better, Making Flippy Floppy
Least-Favourite Track: I Get Wild: Wild Gravity

I have always had a problem with Talking Heads but I've absolutely no idea why. They sound like the kind of band I really should like, with a charismatic frontman, original songs, inventive production and yet... it's a bit like one of those recipes where you combine all your favourite ingredients but end up with a meal that just tastes wrong. Like a KFC Zinger Tower Burger.

Since just about everyone I know seems to love Talking Heads I approached this album really wanting to like it, or at the very least to understand why I didn't like it, but several listens later and I have to confess that I'm still not totally convinced & I still can't figure out why.

Plus points first. For a 1983 album that leans heavily on keyboards & electronics it is remarkably un-80's sounding. There's none of your schmaltzy digital piano presets here - the synth positively shrieks, wobbles & belches all over tracks like Making Flippy Floppy & Girlfriend Is Better, with the latter including a bonkers solo that is more Throbbing Gristle than Thompson Twins. I liked that.

I also liked David Byrne, who invests his nonsensical lyrics with the kind of authoritative intensity that makes you feel like you're the one who is missing the point. E.g., on Swamp he sings "Click click see ya later/Beta beta no time to rest/Pika pika risky business/All that blood will never cover that mess". No wonder then that his lyrics are a bit of a thorny subject; I've seen some reviews that dismiss it all as meaningless gibberish & yet I've seen others that try to unearth all sorts of hidden meanings & metaphors. Actually both views are missing the point; in this interview (former Heads producer) Brian Eno said that Byrne combined words together largely for their sonic effect, using them as a kind of musical instrument to create interesting sounds & rhythms. In that sense, I'd have to say his lyrics succeed.

So what's my problem then? Perhaps it's partly one of expectations - I was anticipating an album by Talking Heads but it is so dominated by David Byrne that it just doesn't sound much like a group anymore. Byrne's voice thunders across every track; every abrasive noise or twitchy synth reflects his character to such an extent that there's hardly any space left for the guitar, bass & drums. They forge an uneasy alliance with all the electronics anyway - on Moon Rocks the funky guitar licks & percussion integrate reasonably well, but on tracks like Slippery People or I Get Wild they're rendered so far in the background as to be largely superfluous.

The truth is I still don't know why Talking Heads leave me a little cold. I used to work with a guy who absolutely hated Green Onions by Booker T & the MG's. It puzzled me how anyone could dislike that record so I asked him one day & he answered "Oh I just don't get it." As flimsy as that sounds perhaps that's all there is to it sometimes.

966 - Teenage Fanclub 'Songs From Northern Britain' (1997)

2008-08-30T14:58:00.025+01:00

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 3/--

Favourite Tracks: Can't Feel My Soul, I Don't Want Control Of You, Your Love Is The
Place Where I Come From
Least-Favourite Track: Mount Everest, Take The Long Way Around

Call me a fuddy-duddy old traditionalist but I was under the impression that the best time for painting the outside of your house is the summer. A balmy, sweaty month like August you would think? Wrong. Here in Britain it has been raining throughout August. And raining. Oh, and today it's raining again. And in my haste to pack away all my brushes, paints & ladders, I somehow failed to notice the mammoth slimy dog turd on my front path, so now I've got sh*t-stinking footprints splodged all over my carpet too. And it's still bloody raining. So I wasn't exactly enthusiastic to find that the next album in the Top 1000 is called Songs From Northern Britain. The title immediately conjured up stereotypical images of grim, grey industrial towns - with lots of songs about rain - which is just about the last thing I want to hear right now.

Happily, Songs From Northern Britain turns out to be a bit of a misnomer because this is a warm & tuneful album that sounds more like it should be called 'Songs From Southern California'. Admittedly only a pompous London ponce like me would automatically equate the words 'Northern Britain' with a certain damp dreariness, but such narrow-mindedness just made the shimmering jangly guitars & uplifting vocal harmonies all the more enjoyable.

OK, so we know it confounded my expectations, but how good an album is it? Well, if most US music critics are to be believed, this record stinks worse than my carpet (I have GOT to go & clean that up soon). Rolling Stone dismisses this album as nothing more than a rather dull imitation of The Byrds, which makes me wonder whether they listened past the first two tracks. Yes the album kicks off with a distinctly retro-60's-feel, but it's hardly the carbon-copy of The Byrds that some reviewers suggest. (And how come it's OK for artists like Tom Petty to have a Byrds-influence going on?) Anyway, by the time we get to the third track Can't Feel My Soul, that's all been supplanted by a much more contemporary rock sound with crashing guitar riffs & driving drums.

Although the record starts strongly it doesn't maintain that songwriting standard & we hit the dreaded mid-album slump. Actually it's more of a lull than a slump as even the worst songs aren't terrible - they're just a bit predictable, with open 'cowboy' chords & rather uninspired guitar solos that do little more than repeat the vocal melody. Worst offender is Mount Everest which limps along behind the rest of the album like some mangy stray dog (like the one that crapped on my path - I'm not letting this go am I?) Anyway I reckon that climbing the real Mount Everest would require less strength & endurance than listening to that track.

Another minor gripe would be the lyrics - they're nothing special & pretty much all the songs are of the love-affirming kind with choruses like 'I can't feel my soul/Without you' (Can't Feel My Soul), 'I don't care about where I'm going/Because I'll be there and so will you' (I Don't Care), 'Only you & me add up' (Speed Of Light), 'When I'm on my own I'm lost in space/My freedom's a delusion/Your love is the place where I come from' (Your Love Is The...) etc, etc. It's not that I'm against positivity but a whole album of that feels a bit like when your flatmate has his girlfriend over for the weekend. When I think about it perhaps it IS just me being a miserable sod but I do maintain that sad songs have more emotive power than happy ones.

See, now all my negativity is making this sound like a bad album - which it's not. There's a clutch of catchy, feelgood songs here & I found myself humming them after only a couple of listens. It might not change your life, but it's the perfect soundtrack for one of those long, rainy days. Like today.

967 - Supertramp 'Crime Of The Century' (1974)

2008-08-27T13:39:00.018+01:00

My Rating: 4.00 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: √

Chart Peak (UK/US): 4/38

Favourite Tracks: School, Bloody Well Right, Dreamer
Least-Favourite Tracks: If Everyone Was Listening

Older brothers don't have much going for them when you're 9 years old. You learn how to take a punch, how to run away fast (before getting punched) & how to eat a variety of pet foods, but did they really have any positive uses? Well actually, yes there was that one saving grace; their record collection. Back in the mid-70s when about all I had were some scratched-up, hand-me-down Disney soundtracks, an album of orchestral war movie themes & one David Essex LP (ahem), my big brother literally held the key to an exciting new world of music. Behind the locked doors of his LP cupboard were dozens of shiny new records & despite the threat of almost-certain death, I eventually buckled under the temptation & busted my way in, rather appropriately choosing Crime Of The Century as one of my first ill-gotten gains. For this particular 9 year old, music was never quite the same again.

Skip forward several decades & I'm sitting here listening to this album for the umpteenth time & it still sounds great. But I suppose I would say that, wouldn't I? I grew up listening to it, it's intertwined with all sorts of childhood memories, it's the first record in the Top 1000 I already owned, so while I'm desperately trying to be objective about it, the truth is how the hell can I be? Wait a minute though, I don't feel that way about that bloody David Essex LP so there must be more to it than just some nostalgic feelings.

From the opening bars of the first track School you know this is going to be something special. Wailing harmonica with rumbling ethereal bass notes in the background & as the intro builds we get spooky guitar effects, children's voices, what's that - an oboe in there too? Then we get that creepy kid's blood-curdling screech (which scared the crap out of me the very first time I heard it) & the whole thing kicks off. But this is not your typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure; like 10cc every 30 seconds the melody seems to change completely & yet somehow the whole thing hangs together perfectly. And that's just it, much of the artistry of this album is that it can take something so complicated & make it sound so simple & accessible.

It's not just the songwriting, the production & arrangements are also interesting & innovative. Subtle little touches are everywhere; the chorus of Bloody Well Right with the Wurlitzer electric piano panned over to one speaker & a hokey, out-of-tune upright piano in the other; the theremin (or saw) whistling away under the chorus of Hide In Your Shell; the strings, orchestration & even clanging bell on Asylum (I only recently noticed the cuckoo clock at the end - I've heard this album hundreds of times & I'm still discovering new things buried in the mix). But it's not like all this production trickery is there as some kind of gimmick, it's been deftly applied to enhance the meaning of the songs. Rudy starts off at the station boarding his 'train to nowhere' & the arrangement creates the impression of a train rattling ever-faster down the tracks. Yes I know that's nothing new, but with its sweeping strings & wah-wah guitar stabs, I've never heard it done better.

Lyrically the songs are rather impressionistic. There is a common thread with themes of madness & isolation but the precise meanings are left open to interpretation. To me it is clearly a concept album - the songs segue into each other taking us on a journey that starts out at School, progesses through teenage rebellion, adult mental breakdown & culminates with the album-closing Crime Of The Century. Exactly what that crime is, we're never really told - I've got my own idea though & I quite like it like that.

Back in 1974, it wasn't long before my big brother discovered that I'd made off with his LP. But strangely I didn't get the pulping I'd imagined. I think he may have secretly been rather proud that he was having such a strong influence on my musical tastes. More likely he was just relieved that he didn't have to hear that David Essex album again. Either way it's a shame he wasn't so understanding when I discovered his stash of 'jazz' mags...

968 - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers 'Hard Promises' (1981)

2008-01-25T14:49:00.050Z

My Rating: 2.30 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 32/5

Favourite Tracks: A Woman In Love (It's Not Me), The Criminal Kind, You Can Still Change Your Mind
Least-Favourite Track: Letting You Go, A Thing About You, Insider

I found it really hard to have any strong opinions about this album but perhaps that explains a lot. It's not awful but neither is it awe-inspiring, it's not pretentious but neither is it inventive - it's just a no-nonsense, straightforward rock & roll album. And having read Tom Petty's withering views about the music business, I reckon that's exactly what he was aiming to create.

From the opening twelve-string chords of The Waiting it's clear that Petty's not afraid of showing his influences on this record - the Byrds, Springsteen & Dylan all immediately come to mind but I don't have a problem with that, after all there is only so much you can do with 3 chords & a guitar, bass & drums. And as A Woman In Love (It's Not Me) demonstrates, Petty knows exactly how to turn a handful of simple chords into a solid rock song; the reflective lyrics of the verse get the soft wistful musical backing & the anger of the chorus prompts the big drums & monster guitar riff treatment - it's not groundbreaking stuff but it works.

Production-wise it's very well recorded but if anything I feel it's a little under-produced - there's not much in the way of studio trickery or fancy arrangements which gives it the impression that the band just turned up & played the thing live in the studio. Although that adds to the no-nonsense rootsy feel of the album, I also found it a little limiting; the band don't stray too far from their formula anyway so a few more overdubs & production surprises would have stopped it sounding too samey.

Lyrically I thought it worked pretty well & the words are enhanced further by Petty's Southern twang. Take the conversational narrative of Something Big (Speedball rang the night clerk / Said, "Send me up a drink" / Now the night clerk said, "It's Sunday man... wait a minute let me think / There's a little place outside of town that might still have some wine" / Speedball said, "Forget it, can I have an outside line") - it might not look like much when you read it but when delivered in Petty's distinctive nasal drawl it somehow comes alive.

The album makes a welcome change of direction at the end with the ballad You Can Still Change Your Mind - a contemplative song with a melodic Brian Wilson / Todd Rundgren thing going on ('Everybody wants all the world can give 'em / Everybody wants to get all they can get / Everybody's waiting on somethin' that hasn't come yet'). I liked it a lot & the long fade as it meandered along uncertainly made it the perfect track to close out the album. An honest uncontrived record with a couple of great songs, a few good ones & handful of fillers.

969 - Tina Turner 'Private Dancer' (1984)

2007-12-20T16:47:00.027Z

My Rating: 1.50 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 2/3

Favourite Tracks: Private Dancer, Let's Stay Together
Least-Favourite Tracks: Steel Claw, Help!

You know how some albums (usually the classic ones) transcend their own eras, never sounding outdated or unfashionable? Well, this isn't one of those. It's utterly rooted in the 1980s & rather like leg warmers or Mr T, it really isn't ageing all that well. The All-Time Top 1000 stats suggest I'm not the only one thinking that; in the 1994 list this record was voted at #25, by 1998 it had slipped to #242 & for the latest (2000) edition its rank had plummeted down to #969. And after listening to it several times I can understand why.

First of all, it really is very much of its time. Tracks like I Might Have Been Queen or Steel Claw sound like something lifted straight off the soundtrack of 80s movies like Footloose, Flashdance or Fame - you know, schmaltzy US rock with big, bland major-chord choruses. It's also a masterclass in mid-80s production values & while I've always been fond of electronic music, I think that the heavy-handed 80s way of shoe-horning drum machines, synth bass & keyboard brass stabs into MOR mainstream rock created some real horrors (does anyone really like the 'power' synth riffs on Europe's The Final Countdown or Berlin's Take My Breath Away ?)

Then there's the substance, or rather the lack of it - virtually half the tracks here are cover versions & that makes it sound like those dreadful debut albums we get these days from any old X-Factor contestant. I mean, her cover of Help! sounds like something that was knocked up by the guys who normally record backing tracks for kid's karaoke machines.

The original compositions don't fare much better either. Is anyone really moved by hackneyed lyrics like 'Prisoner of your love / Entangled in your web / Hot whispers in the night / I'm captured by your spell' ??! (from Better Be Good To Me). And once you know that What's Love Got To Do With It was originally written for Cliff Richard (by the same guy who wrote him Devil Woman) that sickeningly twee synth solo suddenly makes sense. It doesn't help that there are so many different songwriters & producers - the record sounds like a mish-mash of wildly different ideas & styles.

It's a shame as there are also fleeting glimpses of what a good album it could have been. It goes without saying that Turner's voice is a fantastic instrument & her uncharacteristically laidback approach on Mark Knopfler's Private Dancer remains a highlight of the album. And while most of the Heaven 17 collaborations would have worked better on their own records, their inventive reworking of Let's Stay Together still stands out. Of course, with over 20 million copies sold & 4 Grammy awards, I doubt that anyone involved with the album is too worried about its longterm credibility, or indeed the fact that some middle-aged nobody in England thinks it's a little bit crap. Ultimately, the fact that such an insubstantial offering achieved such enormous success perhaps says more about 80s consumerism & mass marketing than anything else.

970 - Goo Goo Dolls 'Dizzy Up The Girl' (1998)

2007-12-04T10:06:00.014Z

My Rating: 2.08 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 47/15

Favourite Tracks: Bullet Proof, Dizzy
Least-Favourite Track: Amigone

Back in the days when my connection with music actually involved performing it, rather than lounging around pompously pontificating about it, I'd occasionally attend musical instrument shows. There'd always be some demo band assembled by the instrument manufacturers & they'd run through a set of songs designed to show off the shiny new guitars, keyboards & effects. The music would always be slick, polished & textbook; not a note or beat out of place, everything perfectly as it should be according to the 'rules' of the genre. And that just made it all rather hollow & characterless.

So I've listened to this album several times now & it reminds me of one of those music show demo groups every time. Everything feels a bit formulaic; a sort of 'alt-rock-by-numbers' that's been designed precisely for maximum mainstream appeal. Just the right amount of guitar distortion, just a touch of gravel in the voice, a few power ballads peppered around, here comes the big chorus, there goes the hook. Don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly acceptable rock record - the songs are fine, the playing is fine, the production is fine - it's just missing a certain something.

For a start, it's treading very familiar ground - there's a sense of 'where have I heard that before' on every track. You won't find any surprises lurking anywhere either. I got all excited when one of the tracks started with a bizarre time signature, but amusingly it turned out that it was just a glitch on the MP3. The album tended to wash over me & I even had trouble doing my song ratings because every time a track ended I couldn't really remember much about it. Lyrically it's poor - anthemic choruses with the words 'Hold on / Dream away / You're my sweet charade' (Hate This Place) or cheesy lines like 'Cry / Don't cry out loud / You've gotta bear your cross but never dream too loud' (January Friend) may have the sales reps singing along thumping the steering wheels of their Mondeos, but just leave me totally cold. It's okay but it's no classic - just another album that was a big hit when the Top 1000 list was compiled.

971 - Suzanne Vega 'Solitude Standing' (1987)

2007-11-20T14:27:00.012Z

My Rating: 2.36 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 2/11

Favourite Tracks: Language, Night Vision
Least-Favourite Track: Gypsy, Tom's Diner (Reprise)

It's hard to find anything all that objectionable here - this is a melodic collection of songs, well performed & well sung. I was expecting a typical solo singer-songwriter album, you know just one folky woman & her guitar, but this has much more of a group feel with crisp, full production throughout. On the downside, the production is rather 80's with lots of compression, flanged guitars & digital synth presets, which I guess was a (successful) way to move this into the mainstream market back in 1987. Listening to it twenty years on, I kept wishing the album had gone for a more organic feel, but that's got more to do with my own personal distaste of 80's production values (of which I will undoubtedly drone on endlessly elsewhere). Having said that, this is the first album in the top 1000 list that I haven't needed a lyric sheet in order to understand the words, so producer Steve Addabbo did a good job in that respect.

I read somewhere that Suzanne Vega was suffering from writer's block when making this record & so she utilised some of her older songs dating back to 1978. According to the Allmusic review these tracks are just as strong as the new ones & add to the diversity, but actually I found them to be by far the weakest things on the album. Early compositions like Calypso & Gypsy are rather naive, both lyrically & musically and simply don't have the depth or craftmanship of the later works. The instrumental home-organ style reprise of Tom's Diner also has 'filler' written all over it & having such a bland & uninspiring track to close out the album didn't make a fitting finale for what was largely a decent record.

972 - Beach Boys 'Endless Summer' (1974 - Compilation)

2007-11-19T09:34:00.020Z

My Rating: No Rating disqualified

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/1

Favourite Tracks: Warmth of the Sun, All Summer Long, Let Him Run Wild
Least-Favourite Tracks: Be True To Your School, Shut Down

There's that great bit in Alan Partridge when he's asked what his favourite Beatles album is & he answers, 'Hmm. Tough one... I think I'd have to say The Best Of The Beatles.' I was dismayed to find that like that comedy character, the All-Time Top 1000 book seems to think that certain compilations & 'Greatest Hit' albums are comparable to original releases. Colin Larkin in the book's introduction states 'We do not allow them [compilations] to be counted because the idea is for the album to really be a showcase of songs put together by an artist at a particular time.' Very true, except he then goes on to totally contradict himself & attempts to justify the inclusion of some 'Best Of' albums by saying, '(but) there were so many votes for these "carefully created compilations" that I would have distorted the final picture if I had not included them.' Sorry but that's just utter bollocks (and at least Larkin later concedes that this is a 'lame answer'). In my view, compilations are simply not valid for inclusion in any classic albums list. So what if people voted for them? If thousands of morons accidentally voted for their favourite film or hot meal would he have included them in the list too?

So this is the first of several 'Greatest Hit' collections in the Top 1000 & I'm going to do what the book should have done in the first place & totally ignore it. By that I mean I'm not going to give any of the compilations a rating or score. Of course I'm still going to listen to the complete album, but that's just to satisy my pathetic, obsessive-compulsive disorder that insists that I hear every single track of every single record in the list. I just noticed that the book also published a 'bubbling under' list of 50 albums ranked from 1001-1050, so it might make sense to move one of these valid recordings back up the order to replace each compilation I find.

Oh & regarding the album itself, it's just a standard surf-era Beach Boys comp. In amongst the fluff, there's some real gems but that's for another discussion...

973 - The Fall 'Wonderful & Frightening World of the Fall' (1984)

2007-11-09T11:54:00.012Z

My Rating: 2.94 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 62/--

Favourite Tracks: Pat-Trip Dispenser, Lay of the Land, Disney's Dream Debased
Least-Favourite Tracks: Oh Brother, Bug Day

A girl from my work went to a dinner party where one of the guests was The Fall frontman Mark E Smith & the next day she described him as 'the most unpleasant person I have ever met'. I think I would have been disappointed to hear anything else - it strikes me that if anyone is the living embodiment of Punk, it's Mark E Smith. For a start, he'd never consider himself to be punk. And I'm not talking about punk the fashion uniform or punk the corporate machine, but the original anti-establishment, do-it-yourself attitude. It was supposed to be a way of life, but these days even John Lydon is doing reality TV & Sex Pistols cash-in tours. Yet Mark E ploughs on, 29 albums down & he's still spitting venom at everything & everyone around him.

I haven't listened to a Fall album for many years but I really enjoyed this. Unlike the squawky teenage angst of the last record in the list (#974 - Violent Femmes) there is a real simmering malevolence here. While the Violent Femmes swore & sang (rather unconvincingly) about murderous urges, Smith sings of 'Curly-Wurly' chocolate bars & a 'Georgian glazed porch' yet somehow manages to create an atmosphere that is dark, amusing and as the album title suggests, also a little frightening. There's something intriguing about Smith's semi-spoken, oddly-articulated delivery - the way he precisely enunciates lines like 'His oppression abounds / His type is doing the rounds / he is a scum egg / a horrid, trendy wretch' (from C.R.E.E.P.) It might not always be obvious exactly what he's on about, but the enjoyment here is often less what he means & more the way he says it.

Musically it was much more tuneful than I expected too. I especially liked the rumbling, rattling groove of Pat-Trip Dispenser and I suspect a lot of that is down to John Leckie's production. It even gets pretty mainstream in places - Disney's Dream Debased is the harrowing story of a death that Smith witnessed at Disneyworld which has a gentle, lilting melody that makes it all the more unsettling. I suppose the best summary is that I've listened to this album several times now & it's certainly reawakened my interest in The Fall. The fact is that Smith sounds like nobody else & you either love him or hate him. Either way, I'm sure he truly couldn't give a toss.

974 - Violent Femmes 'Violent Femmes' (1982)

2007-11-06T15:35:00.011Z

My Rating: 1.90 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/--

Favourite Tracks: Blister in the Sun, Kiss Off, Gone Daddy Gone
Least-Favourite Tracks: Please Do Not Go, To the Kill

Well I've known a few violent femmes in my time, but I don't know much about this band. I quite like that though - listening to a record with no preconceived ideas, opinions or other baggage. I also try not to read any reviews or artist biographies until after I've heard the album for myself - just in case my puny viewpoint crumbles under the might of collective critical opinion.

For some reason, I'd imagined this group to be a good deal more sophisticated than they are - probably just because they use a french word in their bandname or they have an arty album cover. Anyway it's not what I expected. For a start, it turns out that I do know something about the band - I recognised the opening track Blister in the Sun straight away - all twangy guitars & a maddeningly catchy riff. I like the acoustic, quasi-rockabilly feel, but like so many songs with instantly infectious tunes I can also imagine tiring of it pretty quickly. (A measure of its catchiness/disposability is that burger chain Wendy's have used it for their adverts). But it's a bright start & the second track Kiss Off continues in a similar vein with more pleasing acoustic bass work & singer Gordon Gano, a cross between Lou Reed & Howard Devoto, continuing to display a certain fey charm.

The problem is as the album progresses its one-dimensional appeal begins to wane; the songwriting starts getting very ordinary, the often tuneless vocal melodies & squeaky intonations start getting irritating, the whimsical lyrics make way for the kind of 'kill the world' nonsense you can read in the margins of a thousand school roughbooks & the musical arrangements never stray far from sounding like some busking trio. (I just read here on Wikipedia that it was actually penned while they were at high school & that they used to busk the songs on street corners so that explains a lot). The album closes out with Good Feeling, a slow number that sounds like a rip-off of Lou Reed's Perfect Day to me & I was left wondering why so many people rate this album so highly. Judging by the gushing customer reviews over at Amazon.com I think I may well have felt differently if I'd been brought up in the US & I'd first heard this when I was fourteen. But I wasn't. When I finished listening to it, I took off my headphones & Avril Lavigne was playing on the radio and I hardly noticed the segue at all. Which is probably not a good thing.

975 - Pogues 'If I Should Fall From Grace With God' (1988)

2007-10-22T16:32:00.015+01:00

My Rating: 2.54 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 3/88

Favourite Tracks: If I Should Fall From Grace With God, Bottle of Smoke, Worms
Least-Favourite Track: Streets Of Sorrow/Birmingham Six (because of the lame
chorus, not the lyrical content)

As a spotty-faced youth back in the 80s I spent a lot of time in the Irish clubs in London, so listening to this album conjures up some strange disjointed images from the past. Sounds like some clichéd stereotype but it was pretty riotous - absolutely everyone really was smoking, drinking, laughing & (occasionally) fighting (well that's how I remember it anyway). I have a bizarre memory of one particular comedian who used to drag tramps in off the street & dress them up as women. They made quite a grotesque spectacle on stage in flouncy dresses & full make-up, especially as he'd then generally abuse them & kick them up the arse as part of his act. They'd endure it all on the promise of free Guinness & I'd see them drunkenly flailing around later in the night still wearing smeared lipstick & mascara.

The bands that played the Irish club circuit were generally pretty riotous too, but also patriotic, nostalgic & cheeky & listening to this album The Pogues seem rooted in much the same tradition. I like the way they update the traditional storytelling ballad form using modern subject matter - Bottle Of Smoke tells the tale of a big win at the horse track in Shane MacGowan's inimitable style ('The moon is clear / The sky is bright / I'm as happy as horses' shite'). And I think MacGowan is the key here; his lyrics are poetic, witty, irreverent & drenched in nostalgia & historical imagery; his voice is bristling with character & passion. Moreover the tracks that don't feature MacGowan tend to fall a little flat, as without him they can sound like any other 'fiddley-diddley' band. Similarly I felt that another key ingredient was the band's energy; on the faster tracks there's a manic punky influence that really works alongside the traditional Irish instruments, whereas on the slower, reflective numbers the band loses much of its originality & can sound like any number of bands that used to play the clubs. That's not to say that it's exclusively Irish - there's a European flavour on Fiesta, Worms & Turkish Song Of The Damned that allied with the evocative lyrics sounds very much like late-era Tom Waits. All in all an enjoyable listen - shame it reminds me of grizzled old men in bras & tights.

976 - 10cc 'Original Soundtrack' (1975)

2007-10-18T10:17:00.012+01:00

My Rating: 3.38 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 4/15

Favourite Tracks: Blackmail, The Second Sitting For The Last Supper, I'm Not In Love
Least-Favourite Tracks: The Film Of My Love

According to the All-Time Top 1000 book this album is too clever for its own good, complaining that 'too many changes within a single track can be irritating' & 'sometimes it would be nice to have just one long lovely bit'. Yeah well maybe if you're the kind of person who marvels at the musical sophistication & intellectual lyricism of Whigfield's Saturday Night, but I found it a breath of fresh air. Sometimes it can feel a little like rock music has run out of ideas, after all there's only so much you can do with the same old blues progressions, 3-chord cycles & 'ooh baby' lyrics. But from the opening track Une Nuit a Paris you know that this is going to be different - conventional verse-chorus pop structure is abandoned in favour of an eclectic series of musical vignettes (I counted over 20 unique 'verses' in that song alone) that has more in common with the world of showtunes than pop. Yes it's complex, but that only serves to reward repeat listening & unravel deeper layers. And unlike a lot of mid-70s guff, this band doesn't take itself too seriously; there's none of that pompous overblown nonsense here - tongues are only ever taken out of cheeks in order to be stuck out & waggled at you.

I was also impressed by the technical sophistication throughout - I'm Not In Love would be tricky to create with today's samplers & digital recorders, never mind back in the days of tape loops & analogue studios. Then there's the musical proficiency - check out the venomous slide guitar solo in Blackmail or the frantic piano outro on Second Sitting For The Last Supper. Oh and did we mention the effortless stylistic about-turns, lyrical pastiches or genre changes? By the time you reach the album-closing The Film Of My Love, a mickey-taking cheesy ballad in the style of Renee & Renato, you realise that you've been on one hell of a journey - and that's what classic albums are all about, right?

977 - Van Morrison 'No Guru, No Method, No Teacher' (1986)

2007-10-08T12:03:00.011+01:00

My Rating: 2.40 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 27/70

Favourite Tracks: Got To Go Back, Tir Na Nog
Least-Favourite Track: Oh The Warm Feeling

You know, I only found out today that 'Van' is actually short for 'Ivan' which demonstrates how little I know about him... Van Morrison commands loyal devotion from his fans & since I only know his Moondance LP & the obvious hits I was looking forward to seeing what all the fuss is about. And while nobody could claim that this is one of his masterworks, there's still plenty on this album to admire. I liked the sense of nostalgia, the warm & evocative arrangements, Van's gravelly & souful vocals, some of the swirling, mantra-like song structures. Equally there's things that I disliked - rather too much soprano sax (I still get terrifying visions of Kenny G whenever I hear one), the overt religious content (not for me, I'm afraid), the rather samey tempo & style. Perhaps the most frustrating thing was that while the music is often melodic & poignant, the lyrics can be a little vague & obtuse. I felt the songs would have had a great deal more emotional power if the music had been allied to lyrics that really said something, rather than lots of oblique references to gardens, rain & Christ. So another middling album really, neither terrible nor fantastic, but then we are at the tail end of the Top 1000 after all so perhaps that's to be expected.

978 - Sly &The Family Stone 'There's A Riot Goin' On' (1971)

2007-09-27T15:00:00.017+01:00

My Rating: 2.91 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: √

The Mojo Collection: √

Chart Peak (UK/US): 31/1

Favourite Tracks: Family Affair, You Caught Me Smilin', Runnin' Away
Least-Favourite Track: Spaced Cowboy

Over the years everyone harped on about Sly & The Family Stone so much that I was put off listening to them. It always seemed to be the ultra-trendy people; they'd regurgitate everything they'd read from the critics, smugly explaining to me about Sly's innovative & original approach as if they'd just thought of it themselves. And I suspected that they only thought he was cool because he took lots of drugs. (Don't forget these were the same morons who would pay more for a pair of jeans with designer rips & spots of paint than I paid for my car).

Anyway I digress... so I finally listened to this record & my initial impression was 'what a mess'. The album opens with Luv N' Haight & the recording is hissy, lead vocals are mumbled & distorted, bass guitar & horns are out of tune and the song sprawls along like some directionless demo-jam session. But as the album progresses, it all starts making more & more sense. Yes it's raw & unrefined, but it's also inventive & groundbreaking stuff with drum machines, psychedelic filtered vocals (often recorded when he was lying in bed according to this wikipedia feature) and tons of tape edits & overdubs. There's no doubting it's the twisted funk prototype for bands like Funkadelic & Parliament. And I must admit that the critics largely got it right - this may be the sound of Sly slow-falling into a drugs abyss, but it works because it also mirrors our own nagging feelings of aimlessness & disintegration. The lyrics aren't the great social statement that they'd have you believe though (there aren't enough of them for a start) & it doesn't always hit the spot (e.g., the ill-advised yodelling on Space Cowboy), but it still bears all the hallmarks of a classic album.

979 - Eric B & Rakim 'Follow The Leader' (1988)

2007-09-22T13:06:00.010+01:00

My Rating: 2.00 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/22

Favourite Tracks: Follow The Leader, To The Listeners
Least-Favourite Track: No Competition, Beats For The Listeners

In an era when so many acts think that songwriting is simply sampling huge chunks of someone else's song & shouting over the top of it, it's refreshing to hear someone using a sampler as a truly creative instrument. The title track that kicks off this album is a musical collage constructed of many fragments of other songs; honking horns, swirling strings & spooky sci-fi effects all combine over a driving synth bassline that holds the whole thing together. Sadly the rest of the album doesn't quite live up to this early promise - tracks like Microphone Fiend & Lyrics Of Fury use the standard James Brown-type sample repeated ad infinitum & while Rakim's self-congratulatory rapping may be impressive to hip-hop afficianados, an old fart like me found it all rather dull. Good as it is, Rakim's rapping is mainly about Rakim & how good he is at rapping, though thankfully there's none of the guns & gangsta nonsense here. There's a welcome change of mood on To The Listeners - its raw 80s synth sounds reminded me of Wally Badarou (remember Chief Inspector? Anyone?? Oh forget it) though Beats For The Listeners, an instrumental version of the same song is the ultimate filler track & not really a fitting way to close the album.

980 - Hole 'Live Through This' (1994)

2007-09-13T13:59:00.012+01:00

My Rating: 2.17 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: √

The Mojo Collection: √

Chart Peak (UK/US): 32/52

Favourite Tracks: Doll Parts, She Walks On Me
Least-Favourite Tracks: Softer Softest, Rock Star (Olympia)

In the unlikely event that I was invited to a dinner party for drugged-out, self-destructive pop stars, I must confess that I'd make a bee-line for a seat next to Courtney Love. Unlike say Pete Docherty, Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears et al, she always seems to me to have a sense of self-deprecating humour, something interesting to say & a streak of sincerity. Listening to this album for the first time has done little to alter my opinion either, because without Courtney Love it'd be a pretty ordinary record. Musically it's not all that original - quasi-punk, mainstream grunge - however you define it, it's still pretty straightforward guitar rock but Love's voice & lyrics elevate it into something a little more special. Her voice may not be note-perfect but it bristles with character - on Doll Parts she switches from sarcastically purring 'I want to be the girl with the most cake' to an anguished guttural cry of 'Someday you will ache like I ache'. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it sounds genuine - I was expecting to find some kind of 'grunge-lite' created by marketing men but this actually has a lot of emotive power running through it.

Reviews always tend to draw musical comparisons to Nirvana though for me there is a distinctive retro quality to the music that harks back to the 1980s UK New Wave acts. I read on Wikipedia that Courtney Love used to live in Julian Cope's house in Liverpool during The Teardrop Explodes era & it sounds like she has absorbed some of that musical pedigree - Jennifer's Body has a jangly guitar & bass line straight out of The Monochrome Set & there's even a (not very good) cover of The Young Marble Giants' Credit In The Straight World. I do wonder how well Hole would have fared without the Cobain connection though - if you strip away all the hype & hyperbole you're left with a reasonable album, but not one I'd regard as a classic.

981 - Chemical Brothers 'Surrender' (1999)

2007-09-06T12:52:00.011+01:00

My Rating: 2.09 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 1/32

Favourite Tracks: Music:Response, Out Of Control
Least-Favourite Tracks: Hey Boy Hey Girl, Under The Influence

This album kicks off with a bang - the opening track Music:Response has a thundering bassline with enough sudden stops, dramatic changes & 70s computer game bleeps to keep me interested. After such a promising start though the quality tends to slide & as this record progressed I was surprised to find myself getting increasingly bored. Part of the problem of course is that this album was not designed for people to sit down & listen to - it was designed specifically for dancing. The segued tracks, repetitive synth sequences & single-line vocal chants may work fine when you're jiggling around in a club, but it's all a bit incongruous for me sitting here on a sofa in suburbia. The next problem is that dance music as a genre moves along pretty quickly so although this was only released in 1999 it already sounds incredibly dated. There's a disparate mix of styles - from big beat & house to tracks with a distinctly indie/alt-rock flavour. The fact that a number of the songs use big name guest vocalists (like Noel Gallagher, New Order's Bernard Sumner, Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie, etc) just adds to the diversity & makes it sound even more like some kind of compilation album.

I've been racking my brains trying to figure out why I don't like this more - I normally enjoy stuff with analogue synths & this has plenty of vintage squidgy sounds but it simply doesn't work for me. It has a bit of a 'going-through-the-motions' feel, as if they couldn't really be bothered to try too hard anymore. Just select preset #12, stick on the sequencer & go and make a cuppa while it's recording another hit.

982 - Beth Orton 'Central Reservation' (1999)

2007-08-31T12:57:00.012+01:00

My Rating: 1.92 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 17/--

Favourite Tracks: Sweetest Decline, Central Reservation (Ben Watt Mix)
Least-Favourite Tracks: Pass In Time, Feel To Believe

According to CDNOW's review of this album Beth Orton's voice 'aches and yearns, caressing the ears like a worn, wool mitten on a winter day.' Hmmmm. I'd say her voice was more like scraping the ears with a brillo pad soaked in paint stripper. On a very cold winter day.

I was so dumbfounded when I read that review, that I wondered whether I'd actually listened to the right album. I seriously went back & played the whole thing again through a different music system. After that I concluded that it must have been just the lone ravings of a crazed mitten-fetishist, but hang on, over at Allmusic we discover that 'the focal point is Orton's evocatively soulful voice' & down at Amazon that 'she's blessed with the rich, warm voice of a true pop singer'. I mean, is it just me or do we have a serious case of the 'Emperor's New Clothes' here? Because all I could think of was what a great album this would be if it was performed by someone who could actually sing.

When Orton keeps it laidback she sounds ok, but as soon as she starts pushing her voice it really starts to grate. She has a tendency to go very flat & then hits this thin, reedy tone like one of those toy plastic saxophones that occasionally swells to a full nails-down-the-blackboard screech. Dont believe me? Listen to Couldn't Cause Me Harm or Feel To Believe & tell me that I've got it all wrong. It's a shame because both the music and lyrics are really very good. It's a mellow, organic sounding record that often reminded me of Everything But The Girl (if only Tracey Thorn was singing it). Perhaps one of the problems is that Orton's piercing vocals just sound so incongruous over such gentle music. There's some excellent arrangements too, with melancholic strings & shimmering vibraphones, but for me everything was just overshadowed by those vocals.

983 - Stone Temple Pilots 'Core' (1992)

2007-08-28T14:54:00.008+01:00

My Rating: 3.42 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 27/3

Favourite Tracks: Sex Type Thing, Piece Of Pie, Plush
Least-Favourite Tracks: Where The River Goes

I wasn't looking forward to listening to this album; I'd never heard the band, I know nothing about grunge, all the reviews I'd read slagged the record AND I was nursing a hangover from hell. So I put this on expecting a relentless guitar thrash that would send my whisky headache off the scale but found myself pleasantly surprised - yes, there's no denying that it's heavy rock but it's also hook-laden, accessible and well, kind of tuneful. Like most others, Allmusic's review is not complimentary, branding the band as 'fifth rate Pearl Jam copyists' & the album as 'gormless post-grunge sludge' - as I said, I don't know anything about the grunge scene so I can only judge this record on its own merits & to me it sounds pretty good. Big bad drums & monster guitar riffs dominate but just when things start getting predictable, we get a melodic middle-8 or a twisted guitar break. Add in a vocalist with a rich gravelly timbre who can shift seamlessly to a powerful growl and some solid production values and you have a pretty decent album. Shame that they chose such a stupid band name though.

984 - Paul Simon 'Paul Simon' (1972)

2007-08-22T12:17:00.009+01:00

My Rating: 3.45 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 1/4

Favourite Tracks: Everything Put Together Falls Apart, Run That Body Down
Least-Favourite Tracks: Duncan

The album cover photo says it all; here's Paul Simon up close & personal, he peers shyly out from under his hood & there's a warm, glow over everything. Oh and most importantly he standing there on his own with no sign of the curly-haired guy. And that sums it up pretty well, for this is a richly melodic collection of songs that offers an intimate portrait of Simon the solo performer.

I was quite surprised by this album as there's quite a variety of musical styles from reggae to gipsy jazz and yet it all holds together as a complete & unified record. It's almost as if he set out to prove just what he could do once he was freed from the shackles of the 'Simon & Garfunkel' formula. The versatility & songcraft he demonstrates puts a lot of today's trendy singer-songwriters to shame - a song like Everything Put Together Falls Apart manages to be both complex & catchy at the same time and craps all over the bland balladeering of people like James Blunt & Daniel Powter. I also liked the deeply autobiographical nature of the lyrics - he sings about the minutiae of his own life & relationships and that makes the whole thing sound so sincere & heartfelt - especially compared to the contrived so that everyone-can-relate-to-it songs that dominate our airwaves these days.

985 - Various Artists 'Oklahoma!' (1955)

2007-08-20T11:58:00.010+01:00

My Rating: 2.58 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 4/1

Favourite Tracks: The Surrey With The Fringe On Top, Oklahoma!
Least-Favourite Track: Pore Jud Is Daid

Alright, I admit it... I quite enjoyed this. I tried to resist, but it was no use - yes it's twee, chintzy & cheesy but it's also as infectious as Ebola (and twice as deadly). I listened to it in the morning and then spent my whole lunch hour sitting in an Indian restaurant humming I'm Just A Girl Who Cain't Say No. The precious little street cred I had left has been shattered.

So this album was pretty much what I expected - it's a good ol' knee-slappin' collection of showtunes & I guess the only real surprise is that it's in the Top 1000 at all. It's an incongruous entry compared to all the rock, pop & soul material, though that's fine as the whole idea of this was to expand my listening horizons. Like the previous entry Superfly (see #986) this is an original film soundtrack, though unlike that recording Oklahoma! doesn't really work as a standalone album. As a musical it relies heavily on the dialogue between the songs for plot development & having never seen the film the lyrical themes didn't make a lot of sense. But the strong orchestral arrangements & singing performances on this 1955 version do compensate for that in many ways - when I was trying to track down this album I stumbled onto some fairly modern recordings of the show & in comparison to this they were just horrible.

Right, I'd better go & turn myself in to the taste police now.

986 - Curtis Mayfield 'Superfly' (1972)

2007-08-16T16:14:00.012+01:00

My Rating: 3.89 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 26/1

Favourite Tracks: Freddie's Dead, Pusherman
Least-Favourite Tracks: No Thing On Me

What's this doing propping up the tail end of the Top 1000? Surely one of the definitions of a good album is whether you can play it from start to finish without encountering one duff track & that's exactly what we have here.

This is seventies funk at its most supercool - driving rhythms & groovy basslines coupled with lush strings & slick brass. If this music hadn't been written for a movie in the first place, you can be sure that Tarantino would have grabbed it by now. But what elevates this beyond being just another solid funk record are Mayfield's incisive lyrics & stunning vocals; his singing is straightforward and yet so soulful. And I mean soulful in the sense that he is genuinely emotive & stirring - there are none of the vocal acrobatics & showboating that seem to define 'soulfulness' to a whole generation of X-factor-Mariah Carey-wannabees.

It does share many similarities with Isaac Hayes' Shaft soundtrack (which incidentally did come out a year before this) though what sets it apart for me are the brooding, streetwise & influential lyrics on songs like Pusherman ('I'm your momma, I'm your daddy / I'm that nigga in the alley / I'm your doctor, when in need / want some coke, have some weed').

It may have been penned as a movie soundtrack but this record works supremely well as an album in its own right. It's no surprise then that according to Wikipedia Superfly is also one of the only films ever to have been outgrossed by its soundtrack. Let's face it, if you don't like this one, you're as dead as Freddie.

987 - Manic Street Preachers 'This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours' (1998)

2007-08-15T11:38:00.008+01:00

My Rating: 2.31 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 1/--

Favourite Tracks: S.Y.M.M., The Everlasting, My Little Empire
Least-Favourite Track: Nobody Loves You, Born A Girl, Be Natural

One of the problems with these all-time/top/classic lists is the way they always get unnaturally skewed towards recent releases. For example, in a 2006 poll by Virgin Radio the track voted as the best song ever (I repeat, EVER) was Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol. So that makes me pretty sceptical about albums like this released round 1998-99 as that's when this edition of the all-time top 1000 was being compiled. Embrace (see album #993) was a classic example of 'fad' voting in my opinion and seeing this record was released the same year I expected more of the same, but happily this wasn't the case. In fact, this album was a lot better than I thought & succeeded in all the ways that the Embrace record failed.

I only knew the snappily-titled singles If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next & You Stole The Sun From My Heart but they aren't really that representative of the album. There's a lot of depth here - the songs are varied & can take unexpectedly melodic or dynamic turns. The arrangements are similarly creative with touches like cellos, sitars & reversed drums all added to the mix. The mellower songs tend to work better here - James Dean Bradfield's voice is not all that powerful so on the heavier tracks he either sounds a bit strained or gets drowned out (or both), but I can forgive him that as I once stood next to him & was delighted to find that he is one of the few people on the planet who is shorter than me (just). (I must also confess to admiring the band for keeping 25% of their royalties aside for missing member Richey Edwards). All in all, a pretty strong album - one that I have already listened to a few more times & only really let down by a few filler-tracks towards the end.

988 - Paul McCartney 'Flaming Pie' (1997)

2007-08-14T09:48:00.008+01:00

My Rating: 2.29 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 2/2

Favourite Tracks: Heaven On A Sunday
Least-Favourite Track: Young Boy, Flaming Pie

There's this quote about novelist Joseph Heller that when someone tells him he's not written anything as good as his early masterpiece Catch-22 he replies, 'Neither has anyone else'. You could apply the same sort of argument to Paul McCartney; in the Beatles era he could seemingly knock out a classic composition whenever he felt like it, but his subsequent work has not always been all that errrr, fab (sorry). This 1997 album isn't terrible by any means, but it's really nothing special either. I think like Neil Young's Freedom LP it was critically acclaimed more because it marked something of a return to form after a period in the doldrums, rather than being a sensational recording in its own right.

It's got a back-to-basics approach with simple acoustic-tinged arrangements & that really works well on some tracks, adding a level of unfussy sincerity. It doesn't work so well on tracks like the straightforward blues numbers though because it just sounds too ordinary - I kept waiting for some McCartney magic but all I got was a competent blues run-through that you could hear from any half-decent pub band. There are some Beatles'esque bits, but ironically people like XTC do faux-Beatles better than the ex-Beatle himself. With Jeff Lynne on production duties there's naturally a large helping of ELO in the mix too, along with flashes of Dire Straits & Steely Dan - that's okay but I really wanted to hear something purely McCartney & that's not really here.

989 - Bob Dylan 'Bootleg Series, Vol.4: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert' (1966)

2007-08-10T16:25:00.011+01:00

My Rating: 2.00 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 19/31

Favourite Tracks: Ballad Of A Thin Man, Baby Let Me Follow You Down
Least-Favourite Track: Visions Of Johanna

Dylan's got thirteen albums in the top 1000 & I have to confess that I've never listened to any of them. I could never quite equate the nasal'ey droning voice & one-man band style with the god-like status heaped on him by every music critic, so I was hoping that listening to this album would finally show me what I've been missing.

The first half of this live album (i.e., the opening set of the gig) delivered exactly what I expected - stereotypical Bob & his acoustic guitar & harmonica. Now, I like melodic acoustic songs but I found the music here very uninspiring; basic open guitar chords repeated at length with little or no variation (we're talking 11 minutes of Desolation Row & a 9 min rendition of Mr Tambourine Man) with a bit of harmonica ubiquitously lumped on the end. One thing I never realised before was that he's such a terrible harmonica player - his solos didn't seem to have any pattern or direction, or indeed purpose. To me, the music just seemed to be a conduit for his words (in much the same way as John Cooper Clarke used to recite his poetry over backing tracks). The lyrics were very impressive - intelligent & poetic - but I must admit I didn't have clue what the songs were about. Listening to them at face value, without knowledge of the metaphorical meaning, it often just felt like a collection of pretty rhymes.

Halfway through the album I was beginning to regret my pledge to listen to every LP all the way through but then he kicks off the second set & suddenly he's transformed himself from folk troubadour into The Doors. This was the moment when he came back on with an explosive rock band & drove the folkies away in disgust. This is more like it; the band are rocking out & the songs really come alive. Someone in the crowd shouts "Judas!" but listening to this half of the album it's pretty obvious why Dylan went 'electric' - he was probably just bored to death of doing the same old routine. An interesting historical document, but not an album that I will be returning to in a hurry.

990 - Pink Floyd 'Atom Heart Mother' (1970)

2007-08-09T14:34:00.009+01:00

My Rating: 2.80 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 1/55

Favourite Tracks: Summer '68
Least-Favourite Track: If

Many years ago I used to make regular visits to Notting Hill Gate's 'Record & Tape Exchange' in order to be insulted, humiliated, ignored and occasionally even to buy some secondhand vinyl. I liked the cover, so I always remember noticing dozens of copies of this album languishing in the racks (not a good sign) & the shop policy of reducing the price every fortnight that a record remained unsold meant that most copies of this had dropped to the bottom price of 20p (definitely not a good sign). I can't remember exactly how I ended up buying it, but I probably brought in a mint acetate of a previously-unreleased Beatles single & ended up spending my generous "10p cash or 20p exchange" on it in a panic before the staff sneered at me again.

Anyway, I was surprised to find that I owned this record on vinyl because I certainly don't remember listening to it & that's a shame as I think my adolescent self would have rather enjoyed it. The orchestral title-track starts off like some classical avant-garde piece but during its 23 minute journey takes us on some unexpected turns - yes, there are some pretentious & pompous excesses but there are also enough flashes of brilliance to keep me interested. The album closes with another long soundscape Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast which made me chuckle with its bowl of Rice Crispies up front in the mix (the 'snap, crackle & pop' must have caused some confusion to vinyl listeners). I was also surprised that after about 10 minutes it starts hitting a groove that sounds uncannily like Stereolab.

After I listened to this, I read that the album had been ill-conceived, poorly-executed & that the band pretty much disowned it. But neither the record's genesis or what the performers feel about it has any bearing really (after all, the Beatles didn't care much for the 'Let It Be' LP). All that matters is how my brain responds to the music & for all its supposed faults, to me it sounded like a fairly cohesive, unified & progressive record.

Out of interest, I asked my friend who is a massive Floyd fan what he thought of the album & he simply replied "Rubbish". I'm guessing he was one of the many people who sold their copies of it down at 'Record & Tape Exchange' all those years ago.

991 - Depeche Mode 'Speak & Spell' (1981)

2007-08-08T09:31:00.008+01:00

My Rating: 1.45 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 10/--

Favourite Tracks: New Life
Least-Favourite Tracks: I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead, What's Your Name

I must have sinned terribly in a previous life as recently I had to do some work compiling music for German toddlers - high-energy squeaky synth saccharine songs that almost drove me insane. Putting this album on, I felt my eye twitching Herbert Lom-style because it just reminded me of all that appalling pap.

I hated this album when it was originally released, not because I didn't like electronic music, but conversely because I loved electronic music. Back then I had loads of analogue synths myself & I loved the fact that you could make so many wild & exciting sounds. The versatility of the instruments seemed to inspire early electronic bands (Kraftwerk, early Human League, Throbbing Gristle, Devo, etc) towards experimentation & to subvert the traditional verse-chorus structures. Then this album arrived & electronic music was delivered to the masses as a big pink candy bunny with a bow in its hair.

The main culprit is of course Vince Clarke, a man who liked the presets on his first synth so much that he went on to use them for the next twenty-five years. From this album, through Yazoo (or 'Kazoo' as they should be called) to Erasure, Vince always plumped for the shrillest, most twee & feeble sounds that is is possible to extract from a silicon chip. Producer & Mute Records boss Daniel Miller should also hang his head in shame. After listening to this album, I went back & listened to his 1980 Silicon Teens recordings & the production & sounds are identical.

By the time I'd reached the closing track Just Can't Get Enough, I'd truly had enough. This was the third song where it 'whooshed' into a middle eight of Dave Gahan repeating the chorus over a lone drumbox. Depeche Mode became a much more interesting band after this album (i.e., once Vince had gone). If you really want to check out early 80s electronic music, I'd suggest people like Fad Gadget, Thomas Leer, etc - unless of course you're a 3 year old from Germany in which case I'd recommend this album wholeheartedly.

992 - The Isley Brothers '3 + 3' (1973)

2007-08-04T19:56:00.010+01:00

My Rating: 3.11 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: √

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/8

Favourite Tracks: That Lady Pt. 1 & 2, The Highways Of My Life
Least-Favourite Tracks: Listen To The Music

So I was lucky enough to see Prince on the opening night of his Dome concert-athon a few days ago & I was thinking what an original, innovative performer he was. That was until I stuck this album on. It kicks off with That Lady, all Ernie Isley & his bonkers rock guitar licks over a slick funk backing (hmmm, now where have I heard that recently?) Of course I'd heard the track many times before, but this was the first time I'd ever sat down & listened to it (full blast) & it was just stunning. The record closes with another accomplished Isleys' original composition Highways Of My Life and it made me wonder why they relied so much on rather pithy cover versions inbetween, because it just diluted the whole album. Apart from that there's really not a lot to complain about here though - it has crisp, clear production and strong musicianship & vocals and that makes it stand out compared to most of the top 1000 albums I've heard so far.

993 - Embrace 'The Good Will Out' (1998)

2007-07-30T10:33:00.012+01:00

My Rating: 1.93 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 1/--

Favourite Tracks: Come Back To What You Know, Higher Sights
Least-Favourite Tracks: The Good Will Out

If you took Oasis, Coldplay and the Verve and shoved them all into a giant blender (now there's an idea) the Britpop smoothie that you produced would have a distinct flavour of Embrace. Any rough edges & individuality from those bands would be mushed away & the result would be a watered-down & rather bland goo. Sorry, but I just didn't find anything to get really excited about here. So what's wrong with it? I read quite a few reviews where singer Danny McNamara got roasted for not being completely in tune, but since when has that been a problem in rock music? Singers like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Ian Brown & Sean Ryder are hardly pitch-perfect, but for me the crucial difference between those guys & McNamara is that they sound distinctive & individual - he just sounds like some bloke from the pub.

Fronted by such a characterless singer, the songs really need to be something special, but what we get are turgid major chord progressions, rather-predictable guitar riffs & largely-forgettable lyrics. You might expect the addition of some (Verve-like) orchestration to add a rich extra dimension, but the horn & string arrangements are just so woefully uninspired - I mean, I've often heard bands that make keyboards sound like real orchestration, but this is the first time I've ever heard a group make a real orchestra sound like a keyboard. When the band finally break away from their midtempo, plod-rock formula & start rocking out (on tracks like Come Back To What You Know) they start to sound much more interesting, though sadly that's also when they start sounding like Oasis too.

I suspect that this album's inclusion in the 2000 edition of the All-Time Top 1000 had little to do with its inherent musical qualities & rather more to do with the fact that the band were fashionable round the time the votes were being compiled (1998-99). And I'd be amazed if it was still there in any future editions of the book. It's not an awful album by any means, but it is a bland one. And it's just so derivative that I'm astounded they even got a record deal. Then again, they've sold bucketloads of albums over the last decade & on Amazon UK they have an average customer review of 5 stars, so what the hell do I know?

994 - Miles Davis 'Someday My Prince Will Come' (1961)

2007-07-29T13:01:00.010+01:00

My Rating: 3.83 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/--

Favourite Tracks: Old Folks, Drad Dog
Least-Favourite Tracks: Teo

This album has scored pretty well in comparison to the others which may suggest some kind of pro-jazz bias on my part, though that really isn't the case. It's really more to do with the nature of a top 1000 list largely comprised of rock & pop; as Colin Larkin explains in the book's introduction "most jazz votes are from rock fans who like a bit of jazz". What that means is that the few jazz albums that make the list actually tend to be pretty good ones. And as it's all ranked according to public votes & jazz has a minority appeal, those good jazz albums are always going to be found in the lower levels of the chart.

As with every album so far, this was the first time I had listened to this LP. Like Davis' much-heralded (or should I say much-trumpeted? Errr no, maybe not) Kind Of Blue, this record has distinct crossover appeal; there's no difficult rhythms or dissonant solos, it's just a laidback & melodic jazz album that flows well from start to finish. As you'd expect, Davis is in fine form throughout, though I did feel that his muted trumpet was a little too high in the mix sometimes & could sound a little piercing. Pianist Wynton Kelly was the standout musican for me & I really wanted to hear a lot more of him than I got. I also felt that both Davis & John Coltrane missed the mark on Teo - neither soloist really seemed to complement what the rest of the band were playing & so the whole thing got a bit bogged down (which is a shame as the track had a lot of potential to really go somewhere special). Of course 'proper' jazz fans would shoot me down in flames for suggesting such a thing but luckily nobody but me is reading this so I can say anything I like. In short, if you like Kind Of Blue (and you're not a jazz snob) you'll like this album.

995 - David Bowie 'Diamond Dogs' (1974)

2007-07-28T13:42:00.014+01:00

My Rating: 3.00 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 1/5

Favourite Tracks: Rebel Rebel, Candidate
Least-Favourite Tracks: Rock 'n' Roll With Me, Big Brother

I used to play quite a lot of David Bowie in my younger days, though I haven't listened to any of his albums for years. These days I work with a couple of music producers who utterly hate Bowie - whenever he gets played at work, they sigh, tut & grimace with such venom that I began to question whether my spotty youthful self actually had terrible taste in music. So I approached this album with a certain trepidation, wondering if he really was as overrated as my colleagues suggest...

Sorry chaps, but I think you're wrong (and what a surprise that I should side with myself, eh?) This is the first time I have heard this album, but it feels a class above the other records I have listened to so far - in fact I don't really understand why it's ranked so low in this list. For a start, the production is powerful & innovative so it really jumps out of the speakers. The track segues & intros also worked very well & helped make the record a really cohesive work. Unlike Neil Young's largely-superfluous reprise of Rockin' In Free World (from previous LP in the list), the reprise of Sweet Thing sandwiching Candidate really added an extra dimension & helped build the intensity of the record. Like much of Bowie's output, the whole thing manages to be inventive & experimental, while still remaining accessible & mainstream. Perhaps by the high standards of his other works, this album was something of a disappointment - it's not chock-full of hits after all - though for me it was an engaging listen.

996 - Neil Young 'Freedom' (1989)

2007-07-23T15:54:00.011+01:00

My Rating: 2.08 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 17/35

Favourite Tracks: No More, Don't Cry
Least-Favourite Track: On Broadway

This was the first time I had heard this album & my initial reaction was a little apathetic. It's OK, but it's not the masterpiece that I'd anticipated after reading several reverential critical reviews. Seeing as it's languishing near the tail-end of the all-time top 1000 (and waaaay below Britney Spears who, as we have established elsewhere, is the barometer for measuring the greatness of all recordings) I can assume that most people are of the same opinion. Although there is a drugs theme running throughout, I found that the album sounded a little disjointed. Yes I know that I also complain when albums sound samey, but this just sounds a bit too much like a compilation to me. Some of the tracks would not have been out of place on his melodic 70s releases, while others reminded me more of mid-80s Dire Straits. The mad guitar break on Don't Cry had more in common with 'The The' than any soft rockers though & I quite liked the unpredictability & raw aggression of that. The songs have a strong political element - I can imagine the matches being held aloft for Rockin' In The Free World & while I like the storytelling style, I do feel the lyrics lack a certain depth & emotion.

997 - Carly Simon 'No Secrets' (1972)

2007-07-17T16:34:00.012+01:00

My Rating: 2.40 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 3/1

Favourite Tracks: We Have No Secrets
Least-Favourite Track: Embrace Me You Child

I was a little disappointed by this album & I'm trying to figure out why. For a flagship recording from the peak of the singer-songwriter era, I think I was expecting well.. great singing & great songwriting but both seemed a little shaky. Her voice quite literally does waver around of course, not in the same league as Larry the Lamb or his alter-ego Boy George (well you never see them in the same room do you?) but occasionally a little too wobbly for my tastes. Likewise, the songwriting is not quite as strong as I'd anticipated; I imagined this record to be awash with intricate melodies but again it fell a little short. Perhaps it's just my high expectations that are the problem because it's not a bad record by any means. I liked the intensely-personal, 'confessional' nature of the lyrics which are a million miles away from the usual clichéd pop fodder, though the subject matter (missing a childhood friend, relationship worries) may seem a little lightweight for some. I suppose coming from such a privileged background it would have been difficult for her to sing about social inequalities or bringing down the state with any degree of sincerity. And there's a strong argument that those kind of subjects are just another set of rock clichés anyway.

Once again, I found that the final third of the album tailed off slightly but improved for the closing track. Listening to all these records in their original running order it's a pattern that I have noticed a lot already; a track's postioning says quite a lot about what the record label thought of it at the time.

998 - John Scofield 'Still Warm' (1986)

2007-07-15T12:54:00.020+01:00

My Rating: 2.29 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/--

Favourite Tracks: Still Warm
Least-Favourite Track: Picks & Pans

I had heard some John Scofield tracks before, but I've never listened to a complete album. This was a lot funkier than I expected with some intros reminding me more of Earth, Wind & Fire than anything else. Elsewhere it reminded me of Pat Metheny & Weather Report. As you'd expect, all the musicans here are technically very proficient, but I was surprised by just how tightly unified they were as a band. Too many jazz quartets feature four guys trying to out-solo each other, but here they seemed to be working together as a solid, cohesive unit. I was particularly impressed by bass player Darryl Jones who really seemed to hold the whole thing together. Although the production is very clear, with good definition between the drums, bass, keys & guitar, it did feel a little too clinical for me at times. The keyboards occasionally venture into that yeuchhhy Yamaha DX7 sound (well this was the 80s after all) & added to the squeaky-clean production sometimes made it sound a little soul-less. That's a pity because Scofield's guitar playing is quite inventive & he does try to avoid just noodling around jazz clichés. By the end, I really wanted him to turn off that Chorus effect too, so perhaps a little more variation in his guitar sound would have helped.

999 - Cowboy Junkies 'Trinity Session' (1988)

2007-07-14T14:59:00.025+01:00

My Rating: 2.50 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/26

Favourite Tracks: I Don't Get It
Least-Favourite Track: Sweet Jane

For some reason I imagined the Cowboy Junkies were some wall-of-noise grunge outfit so this album really took me by surprise. I didn't quite know what to make of the folky acapella opening track but as I went along the album really grew on me. It's got a really laidback, ethereal quality coupled with an alt-country feel that reminded me of Lambchop or early Tom Waits. I probably made a mistake listening to this on a bright sunny morning as this is a real 'after-hours' record - I think I'd have scored it a lot higher listening to it late at night after a few beers. I like the unrefined, demo-like quality of the recordings too (including the chatting at the end of the session) as it gives the album a real stamp of sincerity. Ah, I just read on Allmusic's review that it was all recorded live in one night with just one microphone so that explains a lot. On the downside, it can sound a little samey on first listen; these cowboys are riding a bit of a one-trick pony (ouch, sorry about that), but it's a rather a nice trick so I think I can forgive them that.

1000 - Todd Rundgren 'Todd' (1974)

2007-07-06T14:51:00.031+01:00

My Rating: 2.06 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/54

Favourite Tracks: I Think You Know, An Elpee's Worth Of Tunes
Least-Favourite Track: In & Out The Chakras We Go

I do have a few Todd Rundgren records, though I'd never heard this album before. I enjoyed the first half more than the second, partly because the songs were stronger & partly because it wore me out as it went on. (Probably didn't help that I had a hangover either). The songs are quite inventive & diverse but it did lapse into self-indulgence at times. It's one of those flabby old double albums that could have been slimmed down into a super-fit single LP because the good bits are as good as anything that I've heard Rundgren do. I liked the sound of the album, with its seventies synths & overdriven guitars - it reminded me a lot of The Tubes Remote Control LP, but then that's hardly surprising as Rundgren produced that too.

My Ratings

2007-07-05T23:00:00.019+01:00

My album ratings might seem a little stingy but that’s just a legacy of my ill-advised attempt to make this a bit more scientific. As I'm trying to gauge the strength of a complete album, I thought it'd make more sense to mark each individual track out of 5 & then do an average of those to get an overall score for the record. I wanted to avoid dishing out high scores to an album just because I loved one or two songs & this way a record with too many 'fillers' will always get a lower overall rating.

So each track gets a score according to this scale:

0 - Hate it

1 - Generally dislike it, but has saving grace (e.g., strong chorus)

2 - OK, nothing special, can take it or leave it

3 - Quite like it, need to hear again, possibly a 'grower'

4 - Like it a lot, very good but not perfect (e.g., dodgy production)

5 - Love it

Then the total is divided by the number of tracks on the album which gives us an accurate album rating (well, sort of).