12 September 2013 (Day 255) – What’s The Best Album Ever? Usual Suspects Pt. 1

A few weeks ago a couple of Australian journalists Toby Creswell and Craig Mathieson published a book titled The Best 100 Albums of All Time.  It’s been out for a few weeks now but only now do I think I’m ready to start addressing the general topic.  I’m not going to attempt to put a top 100 together, or even a top 10, but over the course of the next week or so, I’ll play and then give some idea of what I think about the usual suspects that clutter the upper end of such lists, give an indication of some of the albums I think are worthy of a high placing but which are frequently overlooked, suggest some live albums, some Australian albums and finally reveal my number 1.

As is the norm for such exercises, I should indicate my reservations about this as an exercise and then give my idea of my criteria for inclusion.  Given that I’ve decided to embark on this exercise by the publication of the Creswell/Mathieson book, here is the top 10 that they’ve come up with:

1.       Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
2.       The Beatles - Revolver
3.       The Clash - London Calling
4.       Nirvana - Nevermind
5.       Van Morrison - Astral Weeks
6.       Joni Mitchell - Blue
7.       The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
8.       Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
9.       The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico
10.   Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

From what I understand the duo did this by deliberately limiting the number of Beatles, Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan albums for inclusion.  They also did not solicit anyone else’s opinion by conducting a poll of experts, however randomly or carefully constructed, favouring an analysis of the polls that have been undertaken in the past.

Fair enough.  After all, many types of biases can come into such polls as analysed depending upon who you talk, the most obvious being a preference for Amercian vs British acts (and vs Australian acts if one was conducted in this country), more recent vs older releases and the inevitable marginalisation of genres such as dance music, blues, jazz, hard rock/metal, alternative, electronica, reggae, etc by inviting one of two genre experts to flavour the overall result.

And then there’s the concerns I have about the construction of such lists.  Not only are many genres sufficiently underrepresented by such polls, I would also suggest the concept of focusing on albums effectively reduces the number of candidates down to a time frame that would start in the mid 1960s when artists began to conceive of albums as artistic statements.  Thus, many albums from rock’s pioneers, especially from the 1950’s, when albums were basically one of two hit singles with a lot of filler attached, are never considered. 

But I would also argue that the same applies to albums from around, say 1990 when the CD became the dominant format for releasing albums.  The extra running times have caused many acts to release albums with extravagant running times which ensured that a typical CD could hold about the same quantity as two vinyl albums.  Add, record company practices of releasing new albums by artists every second or third year, you essentially had acts releasing the same amount of new material in the same time frame but with varying numbers of individual releases.  And we’re really yet to see what impact the all digital era is going to have on the concept of the album.  With many acts gaining control of their release schedules and choosing to release albums via their own websites, the tendency – led by Radiohead – has been for such acts to return to vinyl length running times.    

Ultimately notions of what constitutes “the best” is an extremely subjective matter and the odds of any two people on the planet delivering the same 100 tracks would have to be extraordinary.  My own notions are no different.  For the purposes of this exercise, my criteria is to arrive at the album that gives me the greatest pleasure and has been able to consistently do so over a long period of time.  My selections will:

- include only officially released albums conceived by the actual artist; single artist or multi artist compilations (which are not standard across the world in any case) are excluded as are box sets and CD + DVD packages.

- consider only the original version of the album; extended versions, collector’s, legacy or special anniversary editions are largely excluded but albums re issued with additional tracks with the intention of that becoming the standard version are included, and

- to allow live albums, excluding those which are complications, box sets, special editions, etc.   Bootlegs are excluded.

I’ve also got some ideas to deal with the issue of not clogging issues through having to decide between albums by certain acts, but I'll justify these when we'll get to them.  

And so, I started this process today by listening to some of the records in my collection – the usual suspects, as it were – that tend to routinely appear in these top tens:

(# 588) The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

Apparently Creswell and Mathieson have not included this album – a frequent winner of such polls – in their top 100.  I’m not sure what their reasoning is but I would not include this in my top 100 either.   In fact, I’d doubt it would get in my top 200.  Whilst I have no doubt whatsoever, that this is probably the single most significant album ever released – after all it pioneered conceptualised album cover art, is a form of early rock opera (though not sustained), was one of the first to publish lyrics on the sleeve – it doesn’t come close to even being my favourite Beatles album.  Either of Revolver, Abbey Road, the White Album and probably Rubber Soul has it covered.  Although the Sgt. Pepper/With A Little Help From My Friends opening is almost the strongest to any Beatles album, and the epic A Day In The Life is the best closure to any album in history, it’s the tracks in between that let the side down.  Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite sounds fairly dated now, Harrison’s Within You Without You is too long to justify its inclusion and When I’m Sixty Four and Lovely Rita are trite.    She’s Leaving Home, whilst an effective track, sounds out of place within the largely joyful tenor of the rest of the album.  And the failure to include Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane is just plain unforgiveable.   Put another way, being the most significant album of all time doesn’t necessarily result in the best album of all time.

(# 589) Van Morrison – Astral Weeks (1968)

I love Van Morrison and I think this is a great album which brilliant combines soul, folk, blues and jazz influences.  Sweet Thing, Cypress Avenue and Madame George are awesome and The Way Young Lovers Do employs some interesting Spanish influences.  And yet, no matter how many times I’ve played this, it only holds my interest for as long as it lasts.  Even today, after owning this for about 30 years I did not have the ability to recreate the melodies in my mind.  If the album isn’t on, I simply can’t do it.  Even today I’m not sure what to make of this; is it proof of the musical complexity and hence genius of the music or has the penny simply not yet dropped?  I simply don’t know.  With such a fundamental dilemma, I can’t place this anywhere near my top 50.

(#590) Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues (aka Bringing Them All Back Home) (1965)

(#591) Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

Two albums, combined length 99 minutes (only 25% longer than the longest CD) and, more importantly, released a mere 5 months apart, it is almost impossible to overstate the significance of these two albums on modern music as we know it today.  These were the albums, or should I say the music, that changed rock from silly love songs with even sillier lyrics. Both albums, with their mixture of acoustic and electric music, employed some of the most abstract lyrics ever committed to vinyl and completely demolished all notions about popular song lengths.  In other words, Dylan succeeded almost by himself in setting up rock music as an art form like other forms of “serious” music.  Consider some of the tracks on these albums; She Belongs To Me, Maggie’s Farm, Mr Tambourine Man, It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, Like A Rolling Stone, Ballad Of A Thin Man, Highway 61 Revisited, Desolation Row– these are some of the most admired, and in some cases, covered songs in the history of recorded music and have inspired countless acts over the years.  Their influence over The Beatles, for example, probably cannot be calculated.

Over the years, I’ve steadfastly refused to separate between these two albums.  Given the combined running time which could make for a reasonably priced double CD and that the music was recorded and released over a timespan in which some of today’s mega acts would struggle to record an EP, I do not have the slightest hesitation in grouping these two albums as a single entity which occupies the no. 2 position on my list.

I’ll go through some more usual suspects tomorrow.

11 September 2013 (Day 254) – In Memoriam

I didn’t need to look for inspiration for today’s listening.  As soon I opened up my musical journal and read the date I knew what today’s theme would take.

I remember the events of 11 September 2001 very clearly because music played a major role in my witnessing the awful events which took place that day in New York City.   I was lying in bed at the end of an extremely busy day at work waiting for the documentary When We Were Kings to be played on the ABC.  All I wanted to do was hit the record button of my VCR with the intention of going through it at my leisure later on to enjoy the awesome musical footage of James Brown, B.B.King and others who had gone to Zaire to accompany the Muhummad Ali v George Foreman Rumble In The Jungle.  I dozed off for a few minutes as the preceding program was coming to end; by the time I woke up the documentary had begun and, rather than hit record or turn it off, started to watch, only to doze off again.

When I awoke again, I was jolted awake by the image on my screen.  There were no images of Ali, Foreman, Brown or B.B; instead there was footage of the World Trade Centre with what appeared to be a smoking hole in one of the towers.  No sooner had this registered, I saw a plane emerge from the left hand side of my screen and crash into the other tower.  Whoever was speaking at the time clearly wasn’t watching their monitor and I screamed at my TV set in a futile attempt to get that person to acknowledge what had just happened.  To this day I don’t know whether I saw that particular crash live.  But I stayed up until well into 12 September as the news from the Pentagon and Pennsylvania came through; it was only after the second tower collapsed that I tried to force myself to sleep.  I didn’t succeed all that well and then kept the television on for the entire night.  I wasn’t the only person who did this that night and the following morning was one of those weird days when everyone who witnessed the events had a compulsive need to speak to each other, almost as a form of therapy or consolation.  That afternoon I accompanied my then Manager to a meeting on the 12th storey of a building on the outer fringe of Melbourne’s Central Business District network of skyscapers.  To this day, it remains the only meeting I’ve ever attended that everyone involved was sitting on the one side of a table facing the windows.

Since then, September 11 is marked by various events to commemorate the innocent victims and the heroic rescue workers who lost their lives.  Some musicians were moved to record music about the day; Neil Young wrote Let’s Roll, Bruce Springsteen was inspired to record The Rising and a variety of musicians (including Young and Springsteen) performed largely inspired versions of well known songs in a live television fund raiser called America: A Tribute To Heroes.   Additionally, just about every biography or autobiography written about an American musician talks about their response to the day.  For example, Pat Benatar in her autobiography wrote of dilemma about whether to perform her show that night.  She decided to go ahead, figuring anyone that would come probably wanted to find some form of solace in music.  As a result, she gave an acoustic performance to a full house and found some of her songs, especially the opener that night We Belong, invested with a new meaning.

The dilemma faced by Benatar has been shared by many acts or record companies when they are forced to address the loss of loved ones or comrades in music.  Today’s playlist contains some examples of the different ways they’ve gone about it:

(# 584) Lou Reed And John Cale -  Songs For Drella (1990)

The two original front men for the legendary Velvet Underground put aside their differences to record this tribute to that band’s patron, Andy Warhol.  (Drella was his nickname.) It is a dignified, moving and reasonably straightforward rendering of his life in music.  Smalltown is a great character setting opening; Style It Takes memorably namechecks the VU and tracks like Trouble With Classicists, Faces And Names, Slip Away (A Warning) and Nobody But You brilliantly carry the story along.  But it is the closer Hello It’s Me that raises lumps in throats as they address his death and convey the wish that they hoped he enjoyed the show before a final goodbye.

(# 585) AC/DC – Back In Black (1980)

Just about everything associated with this album is the band’s tribute to fallen lead singer Bon Scott.  There’s the title, the all black cover, the church bells ringing in the start of opening track Hells Bells, but for the most part, the greatest tribute was that the band kept going, following exactly the trail Bon probably would have done.  Some of the tracks were started by Scott but were finished by the Young brothers and his replacement Brian Johnson; certainly it’s hard to conceive of tracks like Have A Drink On Me or Let Me Put My Love Into You coming from anyone other than Scott.  But none of this will explain why this is now, with Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon, the second biggest selling album of all time as well as the biggest selling heavy metal/hard rock album and the biggest by an Australian act.  Rather this is because this album is the home to Hells Bells, Shoot To Thrill, the title track and the memorable hit single You Shook Me All Night Long all classics of the genre and the culmination of everything Scott and his comrades had sought to achieve.

(# 586) Stevie Ray Vaughan And Double Trouble – The Sky Is Crying (1991)

Record companies usually don’t do acts who died at the height of their powers any favours when it comes to posthumous releases of previously unreleased studio material.   Usually the main problem is in finding someone sufficiently well versed to distinguish the good from bad.  This is not one of those cases.  Released a year after Stevie Ray’s tragic death in 1990, his label brought in his brother, Jimmie Vaughan, to select the tracks for this album.  And Jimmie chose extremely well showing off all aspects of Stevie’s work.  The title track is a an explosive slow blues (even if too obvious a title for the album), Chitlin Con Carne is a jazzy instrumental similar to some tracks on his last studio album and which may have indicated a direction he was to go and Jimi Hendrix gets another nod through a cover of Little Wing.  But the killer tracks is, again, the final track.  Life By The Drop is the sole acoustic number in the SRV catalogue and it is absolutely brilliant with lyrics that could easily be misinterpreted as a career overview. There is no other track that could have conceivably been used to end the album.

(# 587) Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here (1975)

What’s this doing here you wonder?  Many people's choice for the mantle of the finest Floyd album, this was never conceived as a memorial album but is rapidly becoming one.  As all Floydheads know, the bookends of this album, Shine On You Crazy Diamond is about former member Syd Barrett with at least two other tracks, Welcome To The Machine and Have A Cigar relating to the music business and the way in which it gradually unhinged him.  Now that Syd is gone, these tracks take on a much greater relevance.  It has also been magnified by the death of Richard Wright whose keyboard work on Shine On is now viewed as a fitting epitaph.  Then there is the remaining track, Wish You Were Here, a track that Floyd Fans now apply in their minds to Barrett and Wright and presumably the remaining members when their time comes…..

….which brings me back to 9/11.  One of the musical highlights from the America: A Tribute To Heroes broadcast came from the unexpected combination of Limp Bizkit and John Rzeznik of The Goo Goo Dolls.  Their number was a solo acoustic cover of Wish You Were Here.

10 September 2013 (Day 253) – Post Election Blues

One of the hardest things I’ve had to do for this blog is to think of a title for each posting.  Most of the time I try to link it to something that’s happened during the day or, more frequently and obviously, something that links my listening for the day. 

But today is different because there is a certain ambiguity in today’s title that I feel needs explaining.  So let me make things perfectly clear.  “Post Election Blues” does not mean that I’m lamenting the end of this particular electoral campaign.  Who would?  Some might say we were in a campaign since January when the then Prime Minister set a date of 14 September. A number of “political journalists” (an oxymoron if ever there was one) thought so, conveniently ignoring the fact that half of the States and Territories now have fixed election dates.  And no, this isn’t a comment that this particular campaign has ended.  This was just about the tamest election I could ever remember and one  in which anything of note appeared to occur in the first couple of days and then fizzled out as our conservative politicians  tightened up their discipline and learned to hide their weakest campaign assets which included their leader.  After all, nothing disciplines ego driven, self centred Australian conservative politicians into putting aside their natural impulse towards seeking ways to drive marketplace competitors to economic ruin more than an imminent election victory aimed at obtaining the power to reapply that natural impulse upon the same population that elected them in good faith to run an economy and provide them with the social services they need. 

No, this title is just an expression of my frustration at the result which, due to the egos of just a couple of individuals and their supporters over the past 6 years, has opened the door to an opposition that is clearly not going to govern in the interests of a greater public good.  I used to be puzzled about how any conservative political parties anywhere in the world have managed to get elected any time in history, however, this is one occasion where I’ve understood why this has happened.  Perhaps I could adopt the stance of the great and immortal Kent Brockman, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Democracy simply doesn’t work”, but the people have spoken and their wishes must be respected.  

Anyway this was my thinking as I returned to work and I took with me an album that I think was made in a similar mindset:

(# 581) Ry Cooder – Election Special (2012)

Written and recorded in the lead up to last year’s US Presidential election when the election of a Republican candidate was more than a distinct possibility, Cooder ruminated on the possible consequences.  Remove one or two tracks and delete references to Guantanamo Bay and Jim Crow and he could very well be singing about Australia as of last Saturday night.  And you don’t need me to tell you that, as a Ry Cooder album, all the playing and production is top notch.  It’s not in the upper echelon of the Cooder catalogue but it would worth a spin once every three years here (and four years in the States).

(# 582) Vieux Farka Toure – Self Titled (2007)

Vieux Farka Toure is the son of Ali Farka Toure, a singer and guitarist from Mali who was largely  brought to public attention when Ry Cooder collaborated with on the rather wonderful Meeting Across The River.  This is Vieux’s debut album and on it you can hear how is paying respect to his father who died close to its release but not before hearing a rough mix.   As such it is an album dominated by the Malian version of the blues as mastered by his father (subsequent releases have seen him move away from this template ) and it comes as absolute no surprise that the highlight of the album are the two duets with Ali, Tabara and Diallo.

(#583) Beirut – The Flying Club Cup (2007)

Sometimes the packaging of an album just about describes the music within it.  Take the album title and apply it to a front cover showing and English/French type seaside scene from the 1920s or 1930s and a back photo image of what appears to be two girls from the same era and you’ve already got the setting to an Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot mystery. Thus it comes as no surprise to find stately music with period era French (or should that be Belgian?) musical influences complete with the melancholy vocals of Zach Condon.   But what comes as a total surprise is the realisation this is an American band.  I’m not sure this particular album is my cup o’tea but I suspect other albums – which utilise other musical influences – should be worth exploring.

5-9 September 2013 (Days 248-252) – Sick Again (incorp: The Miseducation of otis.youth Part 3)

I woke up on Thursday morning feeling quite ill.  Whilst part of me would like to have thought that this may have been caused by the thought that Australia was going to, of its own free will, elect a new Government led by, of all people Tony Abbott, I knew that I had merely caught “M”’s malady.

As “M” herself was still ill, we ended up spending the next five days in bed, although we did venture out to get some groceries and vote (fortunately our polling booth is about 100 metres away en route to the supermarket). It also meant that I played no music whatsoever and could not get around to playing more music related DVDs.  We did see a number of DVDs we’d recently bought or had loaned to us including the sensational Iranian film A Separation and Hitchcock’s Rebecca and Notorious so it wasn’t a dead loss.  Plus we watched all four matches in the first week of the AFL Finals which were all magnificent contests.  Port Adelaide’s shock win over the hated Collingwood provided the only warmth during Saturday night’s dismal election night when long held fears turned to a predictable and uncomfortable reality.

And so this is as good a time as any to look at the next stage of my musical development:

The Miseducation of otis.youth Part 3

My years as a student at the University of Melbourne proved to be very productive.  I managed to obtain a degree with honours, training in my future career, a prize, an early introduction to my current employer, more friends, mastery in the art of playing pinball, a record collecting habit and a thirst for music that has never left me.

The early 80’s were a great period for Melbourne in terms of live music.  By the start of the decade, Melbourne’s great range of mostly inner suburban pub and club venues had become established and flourished throughout the decade.  These included small pub venues such as the Tote, The Punters Club and The Club in Fitzroy and Collingwood; larger ones including the Corner Hotel and Central Club Hotel in Richmond, The Seaview Ballroom, The Prince Of Wales Hotel and The Esplanade Hotel in St. Kilda and the neighbouring Middle Park Hotel and larger beer barns in outer suburbs such as Tarmac Hotel in Laverton, Bombay Rock in Preston, The Croxton Park Hotel in Thornbury, The Village Green Hotel in Mulgrave, the Mentone Hotel in Mentone and one in Mordialloc whose name escapes me.  The largest venues short of concert venues would have been The Venue on The Upper Esplanade St. Kilda until its closure whereupon the slack was taken up by The Palace on the Lower Esplanade.  To this was added all three of the Melbourne’s Universities at the time – LaTrobe University, Monash University and the University of Melbourne.  Each of these had student unions that would put on union nights during the year, effectively pub gigs.  Occasionally, they would land a major overseas act although today the only ones I can remember were Gary Glitter (!) and Snakefinger.  The unions would also put on bands during lunchtimes, some good, other not so and many I’ve forgotten. 

It was also at Uni that I met one of my longstanding collaborators in musical archaeology who I shall call BJ. Initially we shared tutorials in a couple of subjects we studied in common, but we bonded over our love of music.  It is another friendship that exists to this very day but these days our ability to influence each other has been greatly diminished owing to his moving a considerable distance away from Melbourne.  (Hence, the lack of references to date in this blog.) Indeed, throughout the 80s and 90s and indeed right up until my relationship with “M” began, BJ was my musical consigliere and the person most likely to have accompanied me to a gig.   

It was at Uni that my collection began to really grow.  BJ was one influence as we swapped tapes of albums from our respective collections.  The campus record shop also was a source although their range of stock wasn’t a great one.  But Uni played an indirect role in my collecting activities. In the latter years of my study, I took to taking the train to Flinders Street Station into town and then walking the 2-3 kms it took down and around Swanston Street to get to the campus. I mean “down and around” as I’d devised a walking route that took me past most of the key record shops in Melbourne at the time, including Missing Link Records (then at the start of the Port Phillip Arcade in Flinders Lane), the Allans record shop in Collins Street, the Brashs store around the corner in Elizabeth Street, the record bar at the Myer flagship store in Bourke Street, the Batman Record Library in Elizabeth Street and Collector’s Corner, a second hand shop that at varying times operated out of at least  three different locations in Swanston Street. (There also was Au Go Go records but, for the life of me, I cannot remember where it was located.)  I didn’t necessarily visit all of these shops on the one walk; I divide them up in my mind and would ensure that I popped into each at least twice a week during my trips to and from the train station.  There were two reasons for doing this.  First a number of these shops were either second hand shops or contained a reasonable amount of second hand stock that was forever changing.  These locations also tendered to specialise in the sort of underground or non commercial music in which I’d been developing an interest.  The chain stores (i.e Allans, Brashs and Myer) essentially stocked only Top 40 stuff and tendered to be quite ruthless in discounting stock when demand for the items ceased.  In this pre internet era, you were never quite sure when a Brashs or Allan’s record sale was going to start. It was imperative to get in on the opening day – indeed the opening hour – as single item discounted stock as well as the biggest bargains tendered to be snapped up then and usually this included the sort of stuff in which I’d developed an interest.  Even better, some of the cheapest items were for really obscure stuff that I could purchase for, say, a dollar and thus explore practically for free.

So what was fuelling my musical explorations?  At decade’s start I’d continued to watch or listen to Nightmoves and Billy Pinnell’s Album Show.  Countdown too but this was more out of habit than anything else.  BJ joined this elite group but his taste was groping in the same direction as mine so all we could do was encourage each other with the discoveries we’d made on our own.  But a couple of other sources came to the party and it was University which played a major role.

Among the things our student union fees paid for was a “leisure library” (The Rowden White Library to give it its proper name).  On the whole, this library holds (it still exists today) material that is largely unconnected to the subjects taught at the Uni though although the quantity of political tracts held there would naturally apply to political science or international relations students.  Indeed, signs throughout the library area proclaimed that it did not exist for the purpose of study.  For the most part, or at least what I remember today, it held material relating to politics, socially aware stuff that uni students are mostly likely to protest about and popular culture.  This translated into newspapers, books, magazines, and records.  I’ve described the music library in a previous listing so won’t repeat it.  But it’s significance lay in that its catalogue eschewed top 40 material in favour largely of underground music (I don’t think the term “alternative” had been invented at this stage), punk, new wave, blues, jazz and classical.  I never bothered with requesting the classical albums for listening as I’ve never had an affinity for it, but for the most part, I was willing to the play the role of a musical explorer, prepared to go in and give just about anything else a listen.  It was here that I first seriously listened to jazz, succumbing to Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and the strange world that was Sun Ra.  (Most of my other jazz discoveries at the time came from studying the music credits to Woody Allen films.)  I also started to distinguish between the blues, essentially understanding the difference between the electrified Chicago blues (and developing a love of Muddy Waters) and the acoustic delta blues of the deep South. 

But what I really obtained there was the detailed knowledge of the key rock texts from the era, more or less as they were released or only a few years old.  This meant, in no particular order, the New York and Cleveland punk scenes of the late 70s - it was here that I heard the bulk of Patti Smith’s early albums for the first time, the first two Talking Heads albums and Remain In Light, anything by The Ramones, Television, Per Ubu, etc;  the British punk scene from the same time and the post punks that followed – The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Wire, Buzzcocks, Magazine,  Siousixee And The Banshees, XTC, The Slits, Joy Division, The Au Pairs, early Simple Minds, as well as the more interesting mainstream rock acts that started to emerge such as The Pretenders and Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers.  Once I heard something I really liked, and the opportunity presented itself, I would ask to hear these albums unless, of course, something else was playing that took my interest.

I always took reading matter into the listening room for these sessions and it was from this that I supplemented my growing knowledge.  If I could get my hands on them I would read the latest copies of NME or The Face to arrive in Australia or Rolling Stone from the United States.  (I don’t think the library had a subscription to Creem.)  I didn’t get much out of The Face given that I’ve never thought that there is or should be a conscious connection between music, style and fashion, but NME and American Rolling Stone were almost like bibles.   Indeed the library had bound annual volume of Rolling Stone going all the way back to the first edition as well as the then current copy of The Rolling Stone Record Guide and I would note what they thought was good, see if the library held items, and then sample them.  It was via this method that my love of iconic American artists such as The Velvet Underground, Modern Lovers/Jonathon Richman, Big Star/Alex Chilton, Randy Newman, Ry Cooder, Dr. John and many others originated.

This reading habit has never really left me since although I moved on from the NME after I left Uni and Rolling Stone once they started an Australian edition.  For the most part, I’ve always preferred the US edition, especially for the investigative and feature articles that were invariably dropped from the Australian Edition.  Eventually, I lost interest in the US edition, especially when they started writing reviews of new albums without actually mentioning important information such as track names and whether it was any view. 

But I digress.  Supplementing these new sources were two radio developments.  The first was the introduction of commercial FM radio into Australia when EON-FM commenced operation in Melbourne in the middle of 1980.  This station no longer exists, having changed identity into the conservative commercial rock station MMM, but EON-FM in its early years was an absolute revelation.  It paid no attention to the basic rules of commercial radio; Top 40 tracks were barely played and there were no limitations as to the length of songs played.  More often than not, if a major act released a new album that the station liked, it would be the key album tracks that were played in preference to the single (for example, Comfortably Numb instead of Another Brick In The World Part 2).  The only times I’ve ever heard, the full live version of Lynyrd Skynrd’s Freebird on commercial radio, for example, was on EON. The same applies to iconic epic tracks such as Kashmir, Down By The River and Cowgirl In The Sand among many others. It also championed new Australian acts such as Mark Gillespie who couldn’t get airplay even on the public access FM stations.   But none of this surprised me.  In fact I expected it given that Billy Pinnell was its first program manager and Lee Simon, the host of Nightmoves, was one of their DJ’s.   Sadly, and dare I say it inevitably, this programming approach wasn’t commercially successful forcing their eventual mutation into MMM. 

And it was also whilst I was a student at Uni that I became aware of community access radio and Melbourne rock radio’s true beating heart, 3RRR.  It started broadcasting in 1976 as an educational station out of RMIT (the Royal Melbourne Institute Of Technology, located just a few blocks shy of the University of Melbourne) but gradually the students gained control over the station and its playlist.  The link with RMIT was severed and the station continues largely on the basis of subscribers; today it claims to have the largest per capita listener supporter broadcaster in the world.  It’s hold over the Melbourne audience was such that it took a long time before the Government run “youth” station JJJ debuted here and even today its influence effectively neutralises any major impact the Sydney based JJJ manages over the tastes of this city.

This is because 3RRR became, and remains today, Melbourne’s greatest supporter of music on the fringes be that underground/alternative, metal, Americana, etc and young Australian talent.  In fact, if any of the music it actively promoted started to gain popularity and garner airplay on commercial radio, it would be swiftly dropped from the playlist so that other acts could get a go.  A number of their DJs proved to be influential in guiding me towards this new music, none more so than Bohdan X who had the plumb Friday evening gig.  Probably the closest anyone in Australia came in expressing extreme opinions on new music along the lines of British journalists Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill (Bohdan himself is also British), he like the station played the best of the new material released each week until well into the 1990s.  To listen to his show was to become informed about what was bubbling under the surface. It was largely through 3RRR that I starting discovering the Australian independent scene and the connections between early punk bands such as The Saints, Radio Birdman and The Celibate Rifles with the great Detroit bands such as The Stooges and The MC5.

And it was largely through 3RRR that the penny finally dropped with me regarding the music industry and its workings.  Prior to starting at Uni, I’d had unconsciously linked Top 40 music, radio airplay and television exposure.  It was a chicken and egg reasoning; only the best quality music got played on the radio and TV and the music charted because people heard the songs on the radio and saw them performed on TV which reinforced its status as the best music available.  I’d already experienced the mystery of why I didn’t hear something as inspirational as The Saints (I’m) Stranded on the radio.  I was to go through another similar experience in 1979 when I heard Midnight Oil’s Back On The Borderline and Cold Cold Change and couldn’t figure out why these hadn’t charted, Peter Garrett’s voice notwithstanding.  But it was the sheer volume of stuff I heard on 3RRR and at Uni that never charted and was never mentioned on Countdown that made me realise that the best stuff wasn’t necessarily that which was being promoted on radio, TV and in record stores such as Brashs.

By the time I left Uni, I finally understood what was meant by hype and realised that the “best music” was effectively a matter of individual taste and to rely on commercial entities such as commercial radio, TV, media and record companies for guidance was not the way to go.  I had to learn how to judge music on its merits and according to my developing tastes.  The next few decades were to see me expanding my knowledge and finding what I liked in the face of a record/media industry that was attempting not only to divert my interest and money into "music" they didn’t necessarily like or understand  but thought I'd like or understand whilst simultaneously trying to change how I was going to consume it.

4 September 2013 (Day 247) – An Addition To The .youth Clan

Sometime yesterday, probably whilst I was playing either Mark Lanegan’s The Winding Sheet or Pete Townshend’s Empty Glass, the numbers of the .youth inner circle increased by one.  One of my siblings and their spouse became the proud parents of a healthy child; our love goes out to the little one. 

However, it might be a while before I get to see the latest .youth bundle of joy as “M” has come down with a severe dose of influenza.  Obviously no one, least of all mother and child, would want to be cradled and kissed by someone who is a potential germ carrier.  And so I needed to think of some grand gesture.

Naturally, the bub was on my mind when I sat down at work this morning and I selected album that many fans of my age would probably choose in celebrating such a moment:

(# 578) Stevie Wonder – Songs In The Key Of Life (1976)

Although arguably Wonder’s best album and also widely regarded as one of the landmark soul/r&b albums ever released, the main reason for playing this is due to the presence of Isn’t She Lovely, a song about the wonders of birth that has a universal feel good vibe that can be appreciated by any new parent irrespective of the baby’s gender. A lot of the rest of the album deals with a person’s life cycle with the presence of some social aware tracks such as Village Ghetto Land and Black Man suggesting the life cycle for an African American. However, the album has been embraced by successive generations since its release impressed by Wonder’s insistence in the power of love and a belief in god.  And it’s also got on it Sir Duke and Pastime Paradise which Coolio subsequently sampled in creating Gangster’s Paradise.

Once I heard Isn’t She Lovely I had an idea.  I cued my boom box back to the start of the track, rang the mother in the hospital and after a few words started to play it over the phone.  Although I didn’t know it at the time, child was resting on top of mother as I played it, which probably accounted for latters tears of gratitude when I started to talk to her again. 

After that I had a number of varied tasks to attend to and it was a while before I could add to the playlist.  Still feeling a warm inner glow over the events of the morning and still being in a celebratory mood I opted for:

(# 579) Dolly Parton – Little Sparrow (2001)

I usually don’t spend too much time analysing lyrics but I think I’ve sussed out that the title track really isn’t a song that one ought to celebrate a new life.   Yet I’m taken by the chorus of and early lines of the song which convincingly convey the essence of a young innocent in need of guidance in the face of what can be a cruel world.  And the track also sets the tone for this wonderful album of bluegrass music sung and impeccably played by Ms Parton.  Originals such as the title track go head to head against some well chosen and odd covers such as Cole Porter’s I Get A Kick Out Of You, Steve Young’s Seven Bridges Road (a song more familiar to listeners by The Eagles cover on their live album) and Collective Soul’s Shine.  Parton’s career and catalogue is a daunting one and, apart from a well selected anthology, this is as good a place as any to enter it.

(# 580) Julian Cope – 20 Mothers (1995)

One of Cope’s last commercially successful albums, this is a pretty accessible and enjoyable album of his form of psychedelic rock and folk but with added lashings of other genres.   Nowhere is this better seen in the hit single Try Try Try which veers dangerously close to being classified as an infectious pop song. But he wisely placed this track in the midst of a number of his more patented musically and lyrically eccentric tracks (Wheelbarrow Man, I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud and Stone Circles ‘N’ You) to keep fans happily bemused.  For new parents there’s also Queen/Mother, I’m Your Daddy and Cryingbabiessleeplessnights to chew over.  And there’s also the front cover image of 20 mothers that includes Mrs Cope (second from right first row).

3 September 2013 (Day 246) – Some Favourite Solo Albums

Todays playlist consists of some of the most frequently played solo albums in my collection. 

(15 minutes later.)  Err….

(10 minutes after that.)  Mmm…

(5 minutes after that.) First up today was:

(# 574) Chris Cornell – Carry On (2007)

Released during Soundgarden’s period of inactivity whilst simultaneously being a member of Audioslave (does that make this a double solo album?) Cornell released this very much underrated gem.   An album of mainly straight ahead rock with some surprises up its sleeve, No Such Thing gets things off to a crackling start, Safe And Sound could easily pass for a Eric Clapton solo track, a slowed down cover of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean is extremely effective and Your Soul Today has a nice Black Crowes feel to it. You Know My Name, aka the theme to Casino Royale, is one of the finest Bond tracks ever recorded and the funky Today that follows is a delight.  If, like me, you were underwhelmed by his unbelievably twee Eurphoria Morning and too scared to listen to Scream, don’t deny yourself the opportunity to hear this. 

(# 575) McAltmont & Butler – The Sound Of McAltmont & Butler (1995)

After he left British indie darlings Suede in 1994, Bernard Butler hooked up with soul singer David McAltmont and eventually released this absolute beauty.  More soul than rock, the album kicks off with the magnificent Yes with McAltmont’s sublime falsetto vocals meshing wonderfully with Butler’s understated yet inspired played and a majestic orchestral backing.  What’s The Excuse This Time? and Don’t Call It Soul both sound like a long lost Prince tracks, especially vocally and You Lose A Good Thing ends the album on a suitably dramatic note.  But the highlight of this album is the brilliant Disappointment/Interval a near 9 minute ebb and flow epic with McAltmont’s passionate vocals matched by masses of crunching guitars, electric organs and just about everything else.

(# 576) Mark Lanegan – The Winding Sheet (1990)

Until he released this album, Lanegan was known solely as the lead vocalist of The Screaming Trees.  This was his first solo album and marked the first time he launched his magnificent, smoke mixed with gravel vocals on the type of slower material for which he is more often known and celebrated today.  Lanegan wrote most of the material with future Dinosaur Jr guitarist Mike Johnson all mostly mid to slow tempo material with throbbing bass and clearly picked out guitar lines so as not to divert attention from that voice.  Down In The Dark features Nirvana’s Curt Cobain whose guitar and vocals seemingly is an attempt to sound like the Meat Puppets.  Cobain and Nirvana bassist Kirst Novoselic also joined Lanegan for this album’s most famous track, a cover of Where Did You Sleep Last Night which Nirvana were to subsequently include in their celebrated Unplugged In New York City set.

(# 577) Peter Townshend – Empty Glass (1980)

This was the first proper Townshend album full of tracks that were better than those released on The Who’s Face Dances the following year.  The, at times, pointed lyrics provide the listener with a fascinating insight on this troubled era in Townshend’s life as he battled with alcoholism, the death of Keith Moon, doubts about the continuing relevancy of his band and other issues.  The music is majestic.  Rough Boys is a hard rocking opener, Let My Love Open The Door one of the most tender songs he’s ever written and Jools And Jim is an angry tirade directed at the British music press, especially Julie Parsons of the NME. Keep On Working sounds like a mantra he employed to not fall into depression during this time and the closing trio of A Little Is Enough, the title track and Gonna Get Ya is Townshend at his best.

2 September 2013 (Day 245) – Other Acts From The NYC Late 70s Punk Scene

After a rather busy weekend, I returned to work ready to embrace something a little downbeat.   On scrolling through my iPod I arrived at one of the lesser known acts from the New York City Punk Scene of the late 1970s.   This was a group of disparate acts that played at only a handful of venues within Greenwich Village and notably at the now sadly non-existent CBGB’s nightclub.   These days, most people have heard of the scenes biggest lights, The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith and Television but how many know of the following?

(# 571) Suicide – Suicide (1977)

Very few acts have been known to divide audience opinion as electronic duo Suicide, Martin Rev and Johnny Vega.  Tracks essentially consist of Rev’s organ/synth, a drum machine and Vega’s Elvis Presley influenced vocals.   Despite this combination of sounds not exactly being to everyone’s taste, there are a number of out and out classics on this, notably the oft covered Ghost Rider and Rocket U.S.A. and closing track Che.  But it is the 10 minute Frankie Teardrop that could qualify as the definition for “acquired taste”.  Lyrically, it would not sound out of place on a Bruce Springsteen album and The Boss himself has stated how it influenced his songwriting on his Nebraska album.   Like Bruce’s output from this era, this minimalist and claustrophobic track tells the sad story of a factory worker who lost his job, but Vega’s vocals raise it to the truly terrifying.  Unfortunately I only have a copy of the album as it was originally released.  If you want to know how badly some audiences reacted to the band live, listen to 23 Minutes Over Brussels, a bonus track on some reissues of the album.  This documents and entire Suicide set in Brussels before an already hostile audience, which takes matters into it’s own hands during Frankie Teardrop. 

(#572) Richard Hell And The Voidoids – Blank Generation (1977)

Hell was an original member of Television as well as Johnny Thunder’s Heartbreakers.  He formed The Voidoids with future Lou Reed guitarist Robert Quine, Marc Bell (subsequently to become Marky Ramone in The Ramones) and Ivan Julian.  Collectively they recorded this album which is one of punk’s all time classics.  It is a thrilling album choc full of great songs and inspired ragged playing.  Love Comes In Spurts, Down At The Rock And Roll Club and Liars Beware are simply great rock tracks.  Even then, such tracks are surpassed by the magnificence of the title track, a rant against the seeming cultural wasteland into which he and his generation had been born.

(# 573) The Dead Boys – Young Loud And Snotty (1977)

Although they were a product of the Cleveland underground scene, the Dead Boys relocated to New York City apparently at the behest of Joey Ramone.  This was the debut album and is led off by this band’s major claim to fame, the awesome and frequently covered out and out rocker Sonic Reducer.  Unfortunately most of the rest of the album wastes the band’s undoubted power on really juvenile lyrics, especially on Caught With The Meat Ion Your Mouth, I Need Lunch and Nothin’ To Do.  Look past this – and I rarely take lyrics seriously – and it is a cracking album.  A fine live version of Hey Little Girl (also covered by The Divinyls as Hey Little Boy) is oddly placed in the running order.