19 September 2013 (Day 262) What's The Best Album Ever? Australian Albums Pt. 1

Next up in my nomination of albums to feature in my own top 100 albums are those released by acts from Australia.  Some of these have already been played in the year to date.  These are The Saints (I’m) Stranded, AC/DC’s Back In Black and Highway To Hell, Midnight Oil’s Place Without A Postcard and recently Tame Impala’s wonderful Innerspeaker.  With not many commitments at work today , I was able to play another 5 albums starting with:

(# 608) The Avalanches – Since I Met You (2000)

This is a staggering album of electronica based on hundreds of samples that have somehow been moulded to form a seamless whole.   Among the samples are incredibly obscure and well known tunes (including the first authorised use of a Madonna track) as well as found sounds, instruments and vocals.  Part of the fun of listening to this album lies in picking out whatever sample you can recognise whilst simultaneously marvelling at how these are all deployed in the service of catchy original tracks.  The opening title track, immediately puts you into a great happy place and subsequent tracks such as Two Hearts in ¾ Time, Close To You, Electricity and the memorable Frontier Psychiatrist keep you there for the duration.  The only drawback is that its now 13 years since its release and I’m getting rather impatient waiting for the follow up.  But I can understanding why; this is unquestionably one of the most accomplished, not to mention audacious albums ever released by act from this country.

(# 609) Cold Chisel – Circus Animals (1982)

In 1981 Australia’s premier mainstream hard rock band Cold Chisel toured the United States.  A supposed major push by their US record company saw them largely ignored and playing out of the way venues to disinterested punters.  (Ironically, then US label mates Motley Crue thought their early progress was being undermined by the label's promotion of Cold Chisel and have repeated this is some of their memoirs.)  When Cold Chisel returned home they decamped to the studio and produced this scorching album.  At its core are three angry rockers in which they really vent their spleen, producing the highlights of their entire repertoire; You Got Nothing I Want supposedly directed at their US record label rep, Wild Colonial Boy in which they assert their identity overseas and the brutal Houndog in which they look forward to returning home.  To this they added the pop smarts of Forever Now and When The War Is Over, Ian Moss’s epic Bow River containing arguably the single greatest solo unleased by an Australian guitarist, and male bonding sing a long No Good For You.  Backed up with a snarling production sound this is unquestionably their finest hour.

(# 610) Rose Tattoo – Rose Tattoo (1978)

Most of Australia’s biggest bands in the 1970s and early 1980s – AC/DC, The Coloured Balls, early Cold Chisel, early Midnight Oil, Buffalo, The Hitmen – played an Australian version of pub rock which, for the most part, fused blues, rock and boogie which was played very fast and very loud.  But no one did this louder or tougher than Rose Tattoo, arguably the Australian band that has exerted the most influence on impressionable minds overseas.  This was the album that started it all and it’s full of some of the best four on the floor, head banging rock ever released.  Nice Boys (Don’t Play Rock And Roll) might very well be the best anthem about rock ever recorded.  One Of The Boys is similarly epic, Rock ‘n’ Roll Outlaw and Bad Boy For Love are just brutal and Astra Wally is just the perfect ending.

(# 611) The Go-Betweens – Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express (1986)

Not many bands were blessed to have as two accomplished songwriters as the Go-Betweens with the late Grant McLennan and Robert Forster.  This is arguably the best of the albums from the first phase of their career where drummer Lindy Morrison was a fixed third member and its all because of the songs.  The jaunty Spring Rain gave them something akin to a hit single and a number of tracks including To Reach Me, In The Core Of A Flame and Head Full Of Steam.  But it was the ballads that really provided the highligts, The Wrong Road and Twin Layers Of Light leading the way, only for everything to trumped by the stately magnificence of the closing number Apology Accepted.

(# 612) You Am I – Hi-Fi Way (1995)

One of the finest Australian albums of the 1990s, this is a brilliant collection of rocking tunes showcasing the great interplay of the band’s three members and the lyrics and vocals of charismatic front man Tim Rogers.  The fuse was lit by a trio of cracking singles; Cathy’s Clown, Jewels And Bullets and Purple Sneakers which are positioned as tracks 4, 5 and 6 following on from the inspired sequencing of opener Aint Gone And Open, Minor Byrd and She Digs Her.  This opening half dozen tracks simply flash by and yet it only gets you to half way mark.  The second half still finds room for The Applecross Wing Commander, Ken (Mother Nature’s Son) and the inspired closer How Much Is Enough. Overall, it provides conclusive proof of the thrills that can still emerge by focusing on concise three minute songs.

18 September 2103 (Day 161) – What's The Best Album Ever? Not So Usual Suspects Part 2

Today I managed to play another four albums that are favourites of mind but which do not normally feature in best of polls.  All of these would comfortably fit inside my personal top 100.

The interesting thing about most of these albums is that I’m able to identify these as personal favourites despite the acts having lengthy catalogues.  But there are some acts which cause me headaches whenever I try to nominate a single album.  These would include at the very least Neil Young, Sonic Youth, John Coltrane, Patti Smith, P.J Harvey, Mudhoney, Kraftwerk, Can, Elvis Costello, Prince, R.E.M., Paul Kelly or Nick Cave and I’m sure there’s more. But these perhaps could be issues for future postings.  Today I shall be lavishing praise upon:

(# 604) Randy Newman – 12 Songs (1970)

It’s only 30 minutes long but this album is crammed full of quality tracks and possibly is the best way to enter the daunting Newman catalogue.  For the most part the tracks contain minimalist backings which allow you to focus on Newman’s always great lyrics, his unique voice and sheer mastery of melody. It includes some of his best known tracks including his own versions of Mama Told Me Not To Come, Yellow Man and My Own Kentucky Home.  (I remember the latter track being sung by the 4077^th in an episode of M.A.S.H, which is remarkable feat given it hadn’t yet been written at the time of the Korean War.)  Have You Seen My Baby is a rollicking opener but it is the slower numbers that are absolutely stunning.  Let’s Burn Down The Cornfield, If You Need Oil and Uncle Bob’s Midnight Blues all pitch Newman, his voice and his words against the wonderful understated guitars or either Ry Cooder or Clarence White.  All in all it is an essential listen.

(# 605) Ry Cooder – Paradise And Lunch (1974)

Ry Cooder’s stretch of albums released during the 1970’s consisting of what we would now call “roots” music or Americana is one of the greatest sequences high quality albums released by any artist.  For me, this is the absolute highlight, a deft mixture of blues, jazz and other stuff without a dud track anywhere to be heard.  The traditional number Tramp ‘Em Up Solid is a great start, feature some intricate guitar work.  A cover of Blind Willie McTell’s Married Man’s A Fool is an up-tempo  delight which should be the anthem of divorced men everywhere. Another traditional number, Jesus On The Mainline starts off as a gospel driven number which blends beautifully with some stinging guitar and a cover of It’s All Over Now is great fun.  But the absolute highlight is the stunning Ditty Wah Ditty in which Cooder goes head to head with jazz pianist Earl Hines.    If you want an introduction to Cooder’s work, start here.

(# 606) The Cure – Pornography (1982)

A howl from the absolute darkest of places, this is the true downward spiral.  It is a dark and thoroughly claustrophobic album with little light and shade and NO respite.  And yet, it is an album I’ve never stop listening to in absolute fascination as I try to pick apart the dense instrumentation from Robert Smith’s anguished vocals.  As a result every listen reveals something new, sort of like being locked in a completely dark building and bumping into new items as you grope towards finding an entrance that never quite appears. There’s almost no point in distinguishing between tracks, so tightly do they link into each other.  However, One Hundred Years is a heart stopping opening, The Hanging Garden somehow provided a hit single and the title track is truly a wallowing in the dark epic.

(# 607) 2ManyDJs – As Heard On Radio Soulwax Part 2 (2002)

So far there has not been a better album released this millennium.  This album is the high water mark of mashing, the practice of taking element from at least two different tracks and somehow making them fit. Only on this, the Dewaele Brothers from Belgian rock outfit Soulwax, take all of their inspired mash ups and run them together to form a seamless 60 minute triumph that will win over even the most suspicious anti dance music punter.  The album starts magnificently; the brothers contribute a circus ringmaster introduction over a live Emerson Lake And Palmer version of the Peter Gunn theme that is mashed perfectly with elements of the vocal track from Basement Jaxx’s mighty Where Your Head’s At.  (Actually this isn’t the opening track.  The Dewaele’s have placed a hidden track – a remix of Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Mind – at the start of the album.  You’ll need to hit the back scan on your CD player and keep it going past the first official track in order to find it.)  From there the highlights come thick and fast utilising a strange mixture of tracks, many of which you’ve probably never heard. Peaches gives way to The Velvet Underground, French act Polyester goes to battle with Sly And The Family Stones Dance To The Music and an acapella number called Oh Sheila by Ready For The World and The Stooges No Fun is brilliantly combined with Salt N’Pepa’s Push It.  But the most inspired bit comes when a mash up of another French number and Nena’s 99 Luftballons gives way to the vocal track from Destiny Child’s Independent Woman which becomes the vocal to a mash up with 10CC’s 70s hit Dreadlock Holiday only for it to be gradually replaced by Dolly Parton’s 9 To 5.  From there you’re taken through tracks including The Breeders Cannonball, The Cramps Human Fly, weird covers of ELO’s Don’t Bring Me Down and Kiss’s I Was Made For Loving You and New Order’s The Beach before ending with, naturally, a countdown.  It’s a rarity and a novelty item to be sure, but it’s funny, memorable and has stood the test of time.  And I cannot even estimate the number of copies that have been sold just on people hearing my copy.

17 September 2013 (Day 260) – What's The Best Album Ever? Not So Usual Suspects Part 1

I had time to play five contenders for the mantle of my favourite album today.  What binds together all of today’s albums is that these are albums by established acts that polls usually don’t feature very highly, mainly because the artists concerned have released at least one other album that capturing the attention of critics.  I started today with the lowest profile released by the original version of:

(# 599) The Velvet Underground – White Light/White Heat (1968)

In my opinion each of the first four Velvet Underground studio albums is eligible for consideration in my top 100.  Yet when these polls are put together it’s their debut album, The Velvet Underground And Nico that usually gets the nod.  I understand why this occurs given how Lou Reed’s and John Cale’s unorthodox lyrics paradoxically mesh with the fragile beauty of Nico’s voice.  With Nico (and Andy Warhol) now out of the picture a much truer version of the original line up of the band emerged on this album and the result is one of the most uncompromising albums ever released.  To me, this album is the sound of a savage decaying urban environment, sort of like a musical equivalent of the classic movie set in New York City, The French Connection.  The title track zooms part in a rush; the catchy I Heard Her Call my name is drench in feedback and the epic Sister Ray songs is the sound of the album getting lost in the city.  And yet there is still space to feature the breathless, almost poppy, Here She Comes Now and the bizarre spoken word jam The Gift.

(# 600) The Mothers Of Invention – Absolutely Free (1967)

I’ve always found it hard to justify my enthusiasm for Frank Zappa, especially given the puerile nature of some of his lyrics.   What’s beyond reproach, however, is his musicianship which at times is like listening to someone you know knows more about music than you.  That’s not to say he’s showing off, rather there’s so many influences going on throughout his works that you need to have an explanatory guide book to assist you.  No wonder The Simpsons Matt Goering is a fan and was a close friend on the man; a classic episode of The Simpsons similarly contains so many popular culture references that one cannot hope to understand them all, yet that doesn’t prevent its enjoyment.  As for the Mother’s albums; I’ve omitted We’re Only In It For The Money, because there are very few references in it that I do get and, in any case, it doesn’t have as natural a flow as either the debut album Freak Out! or Absolutely Free.  I tend towards the latter, due its presence of classic Zappa tunes including Plastic People, Call Any Vegetable and Brown Shoes Don’t Make It.  It also appears that future issues of this album, like my copy, contains the absolutely irresistible single Big Leg Emma and its magnificent B-side  Why Dontcha Do Me Right?  But realistically, I could have made as compelling a case for Freak Out!

(# 601) Public Enemy – Fear Of A Black Planet (1990)

I’ve never understood why this album gets so overlooked in favour of its predecessor, It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back.  Cresswell and Mathieson included Millions at number 10 in their recent top 100 book and this album invariably is the highest ranked rap album in such polls.  Whilst Millions is a great album, I think it pales against Fear Of A Black Planet.  In fact, I think almost every album ever released pales against it.  A certain member of my top ten, it is the both the finest rap album ever released as well as arguably the finest piece of black music put out since the Stevie Wonder masterworks of the early 1970s.  Yet while Wonder was able to produce albums with songs that eloquently argued the poor state of life for the urban Afro American in a way that still kept him in favour with middle America, PE simply didn’t stand for such niceties.  They simply told it as they saw it with a palpable rage and with an explosive production to match.  And listening to the album, the reason for the rage is thoroughly understandable.  911 Is A Joke bemoans slow response times for emergency teams in black areas, Burn Hollywood Burn about the stereotypical or non representation of blacks in movies and Hollywood’s expectation that movies need not be created for that audience, the hit single Fight The Power rejects notions that white people held up as heroes can’t be racist and the meaning of the title track doesn’t require explanation.   Revolutionary Situation even addresses the misogynist nature of hip hop culture.  Add in some awesome aural collages and brilliant sampling this is the rap album that should be played to any anti rapper who can’t see any merit in the genre.

(# 602) Pink Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973)

Sometimes sales figures can be taken as a reliable measure of quality.  And when you have the equal second biggest album of all time (with AC/DC’s Back In Black) you’d think this album would actually rank higher in many best of polls that it does.  Yet frequently it gets trumped by other Floyd albums, notably The Wall and Wish You Were Here.  Why I’m not sure because the more I play this, the more I’m coming around to believing this is their masterpiece.  It is a brilliantly conceived suite of music that appears to be about the greatest fears that spin around inside the heads of humans.  The themes – time, greed, money, illness – are universal ones which are accompanied by magnificent performances.  No other album has as many individual highlights packed within it; the gradual fade in incorporating early sampling and the sound of jack hammers, the 2001 A Space Odyssey freak out that is On The Run,  the clocks heralding the start of Time, David Gilmour’s mighty solo in the same track, Doris Tory’s performance in The Great Gig In Sky, the use of cash registers to create a rhythm at the start of Money, the voices that appear during the instrumental sections Us And Them as well as the completely  unexpected sax solo, the lyrics in Brian Damage (“The lunatic is on the grass” and “I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon”) and the gradual fade out to the sound of heart beats at the end of Eclipse, ready to have you start the record all over again.

(# 603) David Bowie – Station To Station (1976)

I was never much of a Bowie fan during his early years.  However, a lot of people were which is why The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars usually gets a high ranking in many polls.  Hunky Dory too. But, for me, his career really took off with the wonderful albums he recorded with Brian Eno in Berlin and this is the best of them.  This album brilliant absorbs a lot of the experience Eno had gained from working with some of the key German experimental artists of the era (such as Cluster and Harmonia) and brilliantly reinterpreted it for English speaking audiences.  For many people, including myself, it was this album as well as Kraftwerk’s Autobahn that (eventually) opened my eyes to the scene and for that alone is reason to heap praise on this.  Not that it needs to as it stands on its own merits. The epic title track that opens proceedings introduced the world to Thin White Duke; Word On A Wing is one of his more convincing ballads; TVC15 is a cracking number and Stay is seriously funky (especially on live recordings from the era).  Golden Years provided the requisite hit single.   

16 September 2013 (Day 259) – What’s The Best Album Ever? Usual Suspects Part 3

Back at work after the weekend and my commitments limit the number of candidates for my title of the best album ever released to four albums that routinely get mentioned in other polls.

(# 595) The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds (1966)

About 15-20 years ago, one would have tempered the acclaim for this album with a statement along the lines that if best ever polls were limited only to albums released by American acts, this and some of the classic Dylan albums would slug it out for the honour of being number 1.   Today there is no further need to do so as Pet Sounds has increasingly captured the number one spot or just falls short.  A mere look at the Wikipedia entry for the album also reveals the extent to which this album is now regarded.  It’s all the more incredible for an album that was essentially a Brian Wilson solo album, played largely by session musicians and for which the efforts of the remaining Beach Boys was essentially limited to providing vocals and the album cover shoot.  Clearly influenced by The Beatles Revolver, this album is the home to some of the most enduring songs in the rock cannon – Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Sloop John B, God Only Knows, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times and Caroline No. If one things hurts this album, it was Wilson’s inexplicable decision to keep Good Vibrations off the album; anyone, like me, that attended the shows where Wilson played this album in sequence, knows just how beautifully it topped off the whole thing.

(# 596) Miles Davis – Kind Of Blue (1959)

This album has received many accolades including that of the best selling album in the history of jazz.  Sales usually don’t factor into judgements as to the subjective merit of an album but it seems to be a factor in its inclusion.  (That is of course provided the compliers of the poll have not excluded it owing to it being a jazz album.)  For me, the album has been so overplayed, that it’s easy to take it for granted; I mean how many times have you been to a dinner party and your hosts have put this on as background music?  Opening cut Say What! – a brilliant piece of jazz and probably the genre’s most recognisable tune – has been flogged to death in movie scenes or commercials where something smooth of sophisticated is required. But it’s not the only triumph on the album; Blue In Green is a magnificently languid piece and All Blues harks back to some of the musical cues in Say What!  But, it falls a long way short of even qualifying as my favourite Miles Davis album, preferring his Quintet releases (especially Workin’) and his gritty electric works such as Bitches  Brew, A Tribute To Jack Johnson, On The Corner as well as the live albums from that era.

(# 597) Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced (1967)

I remember once reading a review that concluded that the only thing missing from the album is the question mark on the title.  I beg to differ, as attested to the bonus tracks on my Experience Hendrix edition that reminds you that, although this was the debut album, singles and tracks as strong as Hey Joe, Stone Free, Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary were excluded.  Despite that, this is astonishing album that still contained some of the tracks that revolutionised the way the electric guitar was played, heard and perceived.  These include tacks such as Foxy Lady, Manic Depression, Fire and the evocative instrumental Third Stone From The Sun.  But topping off all of these is the title track, superb combination of hard rock, blues, psychedelica and Beatles influences.

(# 598) The Rolling Stones – Exile On Main Street (1972)

This album is very much like Pet Sounds in that its popularity and critical approval continues to improve so that today it seems unchallenged as the best album released by the Stone.  A sprawling double album of the type that I usually enjoy greatly, for many years the only thing that prevented my enjoyment of it was the horribly thin sound of the production.  (It’s also got Tumbling Dice on it which is by some margin the Stones mega hit I like least.) There was no doubt that the songs were there but whenever I listened to it I would always get frustrated how certain details got lost in the mix, especially the brass sections work on Rocks Off and Keith Richards best ever vocal track, Happy, when they really should have been front and centre.  Today was the very first time I allowed myself to listen to the 2010 remastered version and, to these ears, it’s one of the remastering jobs that’s made an appreciable improvement to the recording whilst keeping the elements of what made it great in the first place. Noticeably, the guitar lines of Keith and Mick Taylor can be untangled and there is now a warmth to the tracks that was definitely missing.  Rip This Joint and All Down The Line are now much more powerful more in keeping with their live sound from the era whilst more delicate fare such as Sweet Virginia, Shine A Light and Soul Survivor are now much more nuanced.  Perhaps the big three of Let It Bleed, Beggar’s Banquet and Sticky Fingers have a competitor.

14 & 15 September 2013 (Days 257 and 258) – The Miseducation Of otis.youth – Part 4

It was another busy weekend with not a lot of time for listening and so another dose of my music history is in order.

The Miseducation of otis.youth Part 4

By the time I graduated from University, I had accumulated a basic record collection including a handful of items on pre-recorded cassettes and an even smaller number that I’d taped myself. In a gap between finishing studies and commencing full time employment, I assembled my first catalogue which I still have today.  Originally, it was a single sheet of paper in which all 114 items in my collection were listed in alphabetical order by artist.  A gap at the bottom of the reverse side is headed “subsequent additions” and lists every item added to my collection since in the order in which I had obtained them.  I’m reasonably sure librarians and archivists describe this form of document as an “accession register” but to me, this has always been my “subsequent additions” list and I’ve maintained it, in an increasingly indecipherable handwritten scrawl, to the present day. 

Anyone reading this initial list today might form the view that my taste was fairly conservative compared to what I’d been hearing at University.  The first four Dire Straits albums are there, so are two albums by (grossly) underrated Atlanta Rhythm Section, three by each of the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, two by The Little River Band, four by Pink Floyd, two by 10CC and even Toto’s self titled debut.  This reflects nothing more than my ability to find and purchase albums at a very cheap price or via tape trades.  I didn’t really know anyone who collected the material I loved hearing at University. The number of shops selling such music at the time was rather limited and the items were priced well outside my reach. 

This is also a fairly reliable indicator that I was still listening to a lot of music on the radio and watching it on TV at that time.  Television’s influence was to die once I started full time employment and I could obtain precisely what I wanted to hear.  Countdown became increasingly irrelevant, especially when it started using gimmicks to attach viewers such as dance contests, and Nightmoves eventually ceased production.  Radio, and in particular 3RRR, led my ears to strange new destinations.

Looking over my first record catalogue I can well remember the circumstances of some of the early purchases.  I obtained one of Atlanta Rhythm Section albums, the rather fine A Rock And Roll Alternative, on cassette from a Brashs sale one of my walks from Flinders Street Station to Uni.   My introduction to the recorded works of Randy Newman began when I bought a cassette copy of his Born Again album for 99 cents at a Coles Variety Store on a suburban Friday night shopping excursion.  My vinyl copy of Pablo Cruise’s Part Of The Game was purloined for about two dollars from a Coles store in the City, my having remembered a great review it had received in the paper a few months earlier.  Mulder taped my first Neil Young studio album, Hawks And Doves in return for my taping Live Rust for him.  That turned out to be a good deal as I had to rely on that tape whenever I wanted to listen to that album right up until Neil finally sanctioned its release on CD a few years ago.  

All of this was happening against the background of the very gradual introduction of the compact disc. I managed to resist this for an incredibly long time initially due to the need to save money to obtain a CD player and then the discs.  Later on, I was opposed to them for the very simple reason that I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about.  A friend of mine, who I shall call Andy, was an early and, for me, only convert to the cause.  He would play me CD versions of the early Dire Straits albums pointing out spots where there was a marked improvement in the sound quality.  I’d nod my head in approval, but in reality, I couldn’t hear a better sound.  I still don’t; if you haven’t played your vinyls for a number of years now trying doing do. You’ll find that the vinyl sound has a depth and warmth to it that’s not apparent in many CDs.  In any case, I couldn’t see the benefits of buying a CD player without having assembled a library of discs first.  Even then I didn’t start really gathering CD’s until the late 1980’s when it became apparent that vinyls were being phased out.

Finally, I got a full time job and with it the need to get a car.  Fortunately a sibling was upgrading and so I obtained her, already used car.  The combination of steady job (plus income) and car had a major effect on my habits.  Almost immediately, I started to buy the items I wanted for the collection.  My first real target were the albums released by the members of the so called US West Coast Paisley Underground – acts such as The Dream Syndicate, The Long Ryders, Rain Parade, etc and other acts loosely attached to the scene such as Jason And The Scorchers.  A strange act from Athens Georgia called R.E.M. also caught my attention and I started to add albums from Blues giants including Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Bo Diddley, young guns Robert Cray and Stevie Ray Vaughn and many others.  In fact it was an awesome Stevie Ray performance I saw in Melbourne on 26 October 1984 on his first Australian tour that set off this bout of blues exploration.

The car gave me the freedom to do a lot of things.  For starters it meant that I could go to great many my shops in sourcing additions to the Collection.  This was a godsend.  In my student and unemployed era, I was a slave to public transport and I was able to devise these mental maps where I could criss cross my part of Melbourne’s suburbs to visit the stores I knew would hold cheap product for purchase. It also enabled me to visit BJ who lived on the other side of the Melbourne metropolitan area and he introduced me to the places in his area where he obtained his music and it put me within reach of this new yellow shop in East Keilor which sold albums incredibly cheaply. 

Finally, a car and a wage meant I could start gigging on a regular basis.  By the end of 1986 my gig rate had started to accelerate that I started to compile a list of all the gigs I’ve attended.  In that year alone, I saw the same number of gigs as I had over the previous three.  Fortunately, I had retained the ticket stubs from these gigs and so my gig list starts with a Festival Hall gin on 19 March 1983 by Dire Straits.  The support act that night was The Church and it was that performance that made me a fan of theirs.

And so with money, mobility and no long term marriage prospects, the gates to Nirvana had been opened and I was ready to participate in an orgy of consumerism.  The next 10-15 years were effectively to see me married to my passion.

3 September 2013 (Day 256) – What’s The Best Album Ever? Usual Suspects Pt. 2

It’s half way through the day when I realise today is Friday the 13^th.  Not that it matters as I’m not very superstitious and, in any case, far too busy with work commitments.  As it is, I could only play through three albums that routinely feature in the top 10 whenever polls of the best album ever released are published.

I started my day with a classic double album:

(# 592) The Clash – London Calling (1979)

Bookended by two mighty singles, the title track and unlisted Train In Vain, this is generally regarded as the best punk album ever released.  Now don’t get me wrong, this is a superb album, but it’s Sandinista! I keep playing in preference.  I figure it this way; The Clash were an English band that generally saw the world through English eyes.   Lyrically speaking that’s largely the case here too but, in some cases, this gets lost in arrangements that sound like the band has back tracked on its instincts in favour of seducing the United States by producing the great sprawling American rock album.  Examples: Brand New Cadillac and its rockabilly fervour; The Right Profile with its hard rock attack and references to Montgomery Cliff; Koka Kola; even London Calling with lyrics that appear to be referencing Three Mile Island -  when these moments come they jar and makes me wonder whether the band actually believed in their sloganeering.  It’s a minor point, to be sure, but enough to sway me in favour of its underrated successor.    Still it’s a brilliant listen, Hateful, Clampdown, The Guns Of Brixton, The Card Cheat, I’m Not Down and Revolution Rock providing the back bone of what could have been the best British album ever released.

(# 593) Nirvana – Nevermind (1991)

It’s the album that certainly help save rock in the early 1990s by encouraging a generation of fans, men and women, to pick up guitars.  It also help the underground to become the mainstream albeit for a little while by opening the eyes of the musical establishment to the wealth of talent that existed in unlikely locations, if they were prepared to look.   But these are statements about its significance and, truth be told, it is almost the perfect album.  A couple of factors hurt it just a little in my eyes.  First, is the clean, pristine, state of the art production which, although it works beautifully on the sublime Come As You Are, Polly or Something In The Way, is simply too much for tracks of such brutal power as Smells Like Teen Spirit, Breed, Territorial and Stay Away.  These are tracks that seriously require some “dirtying up” along the lines of what was achieved on In Utero, an album I distinctly prefer.  Whenever I hear that terrifyingly roar that accompanies the opening of that album’s Scentless Apprentice, I think back to some of the tracks on Nevermind and wonder what could have been.  Also, when you have an album that ends on as magnificent a note as Something In The Way, there is absolutely no excuse for the hidden Endless Nameless that follows.  Only The Beatles’ placement of Her Majesty at the end of Abbey Road is a greater crime.

(# 594) Radiohead – OK Computer (1997)

These days this is the album that is most likely to top a best ever poll voted for by Brits.  Once again it’s a damn fine album but I distinctively prefer the albums either side of it – the straight ahead indie rock on The Bends and the absolutely fearless, expectation defying Kid A.  It is filled with highlights such as the monumental, Pink Floydish Paronoid Android, the delicate Lucky and the glorious The Tourist.  (Listen to the last 60 seconds or so of the latter and you can hear the first stirrings of the sound MUSE were going to master.) But I suspect the band were already looking far ahead; the album highlight for me is the grandiose No Surprises, the ironically titled track that foreshadows the direction they were to move into.  Put another way, what I saying is that ever since Kid A came out and in view of the albums that have followed that album, OK Computer is clearly the band’s transitional album in which they take their first, albeit confident, steps to their brave new world.  How such an album can be regarded as one of the best ever, when it doesn’t even have that function in the band’s own catalogue, is beyond me.

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.