160. Sly and the Family Stone - Stand! )April 1969)

1. Stand!*

2. Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey

3. I Want to Take You Higher

4. Somebody's Watching You

5. Sing a Simple Song*

6. Everyday People*

7. Sex Machine

8. You Can Make It If You Try

****

Some albums piss me off because they're terrible and annoying. Stand! pissed me off because it's six great songs and two of the biggest wastes of time I've ever been subjected to. You have here amazing stuff like "Sing a Simple Song" and "Everyday People", and then you have complete bullshit like "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey" and the thirteen minutes of aimless crap that is "Sex Machine". And fair enough - "Sex Machine" is repetitive and funky and exactly long enough to have a reasonably rewarding conjugal engagement to, but it's also fucking annoying. "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey" is a far worse offender - not only is it cheaply provocative sophomoric claptrap, but its refrain will bury itself in your head so that you'll spend the next few days after hearing it with unpleasant racial slurs running through your mind. And that vocal wah-wah crap is just terrible.

If you can get past those two profoundly mediocre songs, then Stand! is an absolutely incredible album. The mix of styles is in and of itself political, as much about integration and coming together as the mixed race nature of the band. "Stand!" itself isn't a great song, but then the coda kicks in and it's one of the most glorious gospel-funk-whatever grooves you'll ever hear. "Everyday People" is almost tear inducing in its earnest plea for racial harmony. "Sing a Simple Song" swipes from James Brown and the Meters to create one of the funkiest songs ever recorded. And even if I hate "Sex Machine", I can't deny the obvious influence it exerted on Miles Davis' far more successful forays into long form funk rock jamming. 

The mix of styles here has echoed down through popular music for decades. The experiments aren't always successful, but Stand! represents a watershed moment in popular music. It's kind of sad, really - in a lot of ways the story of the band is the story of the 1960s. They went from this glorious, optimistic band to Sly Stone alone in his bed crooning coked-out nonsense over drum machines. With the benefit of hindsight it's obvious that the 60s dream was never going to work, if only because everyone had a different idea of what they wanted and you had everyone working at crossed purposes. Stand! is as much a testament to the power and conviction behind that dream as There's a Riot Going On is a bleak portrait of just how badly everything went wrong. Given the state of the world at time of writing, Stand! was a welcome reminder of what we're still, all these years later, working towards. 

159. The Temptations - Cloud NIne (February 1969)

1. Cloud Nine*

2. I Heard It Through the Grapevine*

3. Runaway Child, Running Wild*

4. Love is a Hurtin' Thing

5. Hey Girl

6. Why Did She Have to Leave Me (Why Did She Have to Go)

7. I Need Your Lovin'

8. Don't Let Him Take Your Love From Me

9. I Gotta Find A Way (To Get You Back)

10. Gonna Keep on Tryin' till I Win Your Love

***1/2

This is another two for one album. Side one sees the Temptations straying a long way from "My Girl" territory, exploring a hard and expansive form of psychedelic soul that employs funky guitars and complex vocal interplay. Side two is more conventional - the production is still quite innovative, but it's all short love songs more in line with what people would expect from the group at the time. So I guess I'll mostly talk about side one.

"Cloud Nine" is a pretty astonishing opener. An admitted bid to stay relevant in a changing pop landscape, it sees the group telling a story of a poor black youth escaping into drugs to deal with the general shittiness of existence. However, it's also quite a clever song because on a cursory listen you might mistake it for a song about the power of positive thinking. It's also quite ambiguous about whether it condones or condemns drug use. Then, musically, it incorporates psychedelia and funk to create a hard, slightly spooky backdrop for the vocals. It's not really surprising that it won a Grammy, as it's an obvious template for so much of the harder edged, socially conscious soul that would dominate the early 70s. 

The Temptations' version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" isn't about to knock Marvin Gaye's version from the top spot, but it's a great cover in any case. There's a stripped-down, jazzy feel but the repeated use of the famous riff holds the song together despite its explorations.

Lastly on side one, you have the truly epic "Runaway Child, Running Wild", which goes for almost ten minutes and tells the story of a teen runaway who finds the world is too much to handle, with the Temptations urging them to go back home before they come to a bad end.

So that's three great songs, two of them dealing with some pretty weighty themes, all representing a new direction musically for soul music. When you consider the towering achievement that is side one of Cloud Nine, it's not really surprising that the more conventional fare on side two comes as a bit of a let down. That's talking as someone with little knowledge of the group, mind - for long time fans at the time side two's collection of pretty ballads was probably quite welcome, showing that the group had matured as artists but weren't about to abandon their roots as purveyors of smooth pop. And the sonic innovations of side one are largely carried over to side two, in a more understated form, with psychedelic tinges and wah-wah guitars and the like. 

In the end, I enjoyed this album quite a bit but I feel it would work much better on vinyl, where you can treat it as two separate listening experiences. Playing through the whole thing on Spotify, there's a contrast between the material that means it doesn't quite work, even if all the songs are solid. 

158. The MC5 - Kick Out the Jams (February 1969)

1. Ramblin' Rose

2. Kick Out the Jams*

3. Come Together*

4. Rocket Reducer No. 62 (Rama Lama Fa Fa)

5. Borderline

6. Motor City Is Burning*

7. I Want You Right Now

8. Starship

***

I'm really of two minds with this album. On the one hand, this is the birth really of overdriven riff rock of the sort that would lead to punk music in a few years. You can see it as a point of origin for everything from stoned out noise jams to the Saints' debut. Unfortunately, on the other hand the lyrics are moronic and the songs all kind of sound the same. And don't give me that crap about the mystique of the band, and how they were violent revolutionaries or what have you. Violent revolutionaries can eat my shorts. This is a stupid, stupid album of stupid, stupid music, made by a bunch of drug addicts who seemed to think that the best solution to the world's myriad problems was to burn everything down and start again.

Musically, though, this album is pretty great. There's a bigness to the sound that more than compensates for bullshit like stealing the riff from "I Can See for Miles" for "Come Together". There are also moments of technical virtuosity which show that the band were playing dumb more as a stylistic choice than because of technical limitations. And if you want a big, dangerous album of overblown garage rock nonsense then this is definitely the album for you. Personally, I don't think the MC5 do anything here that wasn't done much better later on. Yes, they were first, but they seem kind of quaint in retrospect. And frankly, their politics are a bunch of confused, hedonistic bullshit. If you want the same experience, only done really well, I suggest checking out Raw Power by the Stooges or the Saints' debut. 

I could probably write a bunch about the socio-political stance of the band or their impact on future musicians but honestly I will just say this - they opened the door for a lot of great shit, but they themselves were a bunch of pretentious idiots. "I Want You Right Now" features grotesque sucking noises that are less sexy than troubling. And "Starship" is eight minutes of my life that I will never get back.

Also make sure if you're listening on Spotify to choose the Japanese release of the album - the other version doesn't have the rude bits included.

157. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II (October 1969)

1. Whole Lotta Love

2. What Is and What Should Never Be*

3. The Lemon Song

4. Thank You*

5. Heartbreaker

6. Living Loving Maid (She's Just A Woman)

7. Ramble On*

8. Moby Dick

9. Bring It On Home

****1/2

I can't imagine what it must have been like for rock fans in 1969. They were probably still reeling from the first Zeppelin album when along comes "Whole Lotta Love" and blows a hole through their heads. What's really impressive is that "Whole Lotta Love" isn't even the best song on the album. Yes, it's totally awesome, and that riff is the wellspring of so much metal and hard rock - a brilliantly simple loping arpeggio that distils the hardest, most primal elements of the blues into pure rock. But I don't really think the weird psychedelic freak-out that comprises the middle of the song has aged that well.

Most of the songs on this album are firmly rooted in the blues, even if it's Zeppelin's trademark overblown, expanded, thunderous version of the blues. Sometimes this works extremely well ("Whole Lotta Love", "Heartbreaker") and sometimes it doesn't ("The Lemon Song", which I don't much care for even though it has a cool riff). What's really interesting, though, is the move into, I guess I'll say "softer" territory, although even the ballads on this album rock pretty hard. "What Is and What Should Never Be" features a delicate flanged vocal and jazzy elements which contrast beautifully with the heavy chorus. "Thank You" is the pretty, stoned-out power ballad that every pretty, stoned-out power ballad wants to be when it grows up. And "Ramble On" is not only great musically, but introduces Tolkien into the classic rock lexicon. At first it just sounds like a cool song about someone looking for love, but then Plant starts warbling about Gollum and it starts to seem like this is actually a song from the perspective of a Ranger of Middle Earth. 

The lyrics are interesting on this album. Plant stills wails the blues, but he also shows a move towards the quasi-mystical High Fantasy prettiness that makes up a lot more of Zeppelin's catalogue than most people seem to remember. So you have something as simple and beautiful as "Thank You" contrasting with "The Lemon Song", in which Plant asks a woman to squeeze his lemon till the juice runs down his leg. Then there's "Whole Lotta Love", in which Plant promises to give the listener every inch of his love. Pretty risqué. 

I suppose I should mention the rhythm section. John Bonham cements himself here as probably the best drummer in the history of rock, while at the same time wasting everyone's time with the rather unimpressive solo that makes-up the bulk of "Moby Dick". John Paul Jones is an extremely nifty bass player, and his keyboard contribution on "Thank You" is just beautiful. Put them together and you have a rock solid foundation for Plant's vocal wanderings and Page's restless guitar work. It's kind of amazing that four people could meet and click so well musically. They haven't quite reached their peak on II, but there are several career highlights here, and the bulk of the record more than makes up for duds like "Living Loving Maid". Sometimes their experimentalism gets the better of them, for example on the largely pointless "Moby Dick", which is not the awesome song about Moby Dick which I really wish Zeppelin had written, but instead a drum solo bookended by a kind of cool riff. And it seems kind of silly to me to bury the totally rocking bulk of "Bring It On Home" between two muddy patches of faux-blues nonsense. But really, I'm not complaining about an album that features songs like "Heartbreaker" and "Ramble On". This is an incredibly fun album, and I've listened to it half a dozen times in the last few days. It's not perfect, but the risks taken here more often than not pay off in spades. 

The Band - The Band (September 1969)

1. Across the Great Divide

2. Rag Mama Rag

3. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down*

4. When You Awake

5. Up on Cripple Creek*

6. Whispering Pines*

7. Jemima Surrender

8. Look Out Cleveland

9. Jawbone

10. The Unfaithful Servant

11. King Harvest (Has Surely Come)

*****

I found Music from Big Pink to be both beautiful and frustrating. It was unique for its time, but the lyrics were a bit confused and vague and some of the experiments didn't really work. Still, it was a brilliant album and I doubted the Band would be able to top it. As it turns out, I was wrong. The Band does everything Music from Big Pink did, but better; and it has quite a few new tricks to surprise the listener.

Normally, I find listening to these albums multiple times a bit of a chore. I think I'm on my fourth or fifth listen of The Band, and I still haven't tired of it. The sound and approach of this album is so complex, deep and layered that there's something new to like every time you listen to it. The music is deeply experimental and retains the debut's woozy charm, but there's also a much more commercial sound to it - there are genuine pop songs here, even if they're pretty odd by 1969 standards. More than anything, this is what I term one of those "Aha!" albums. When I first heard Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' Greatest Hits, I suddenly realised their music was the origin of so much stuff that I love. I won't say that I love all the music that The Band inspired, but it's pretty clearly the source from which so much 70s rock flows. I mean, I can't imagine Pretzel Logic or the Eagles existing without it, for example. 

The sound is hard to describe, really. The band are continuing their fusion of classic country and rock with soul, and even throw a bit of funk in. A good example is "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)", which is a soul-funk song about the unionisation of farmers. At the other end of the spectrum you have the utterly brilliant "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", a heart-breaking folk rock song about a poor Southern farmer at the tail end of the American Civil War, trying to make sense of his life and the the loss of his brother in combat. It's not really the sort of song that would get much traction these days, because it's actually complicated thematically and requires you to think a bit to realise it's not glorifying the Old South. But it is a beautiful song, the sort of thing that sounds like a genuine artefact of the Civil War despite being written in the 60s by a Canadian. It also shows how far The Band had come as lyricists - the metaphysical balderdash that hurt Big Pink so much is replaced by intelligent lyrics about real issues, full of wit, compassion and warmth. 

I haven't heard the Band's later work, but I have little doubt this is their peak. Unfortunately after this album tensions would begin to mount in the group, and several of the members would slide into heroin addiction. I still intend to look into their music, though. Not being able to match the brilliance of The Band is hardly surprising. It really is a great album - by turns funny, sad, wistful and rocking. The mixture of soul and country is brilliant, and there are so many odd little moments to love - the fiddle intro to "Rag Mama Rag", the sudden fade out on "When You Awake", the funky keyboards on "King Harvest". You can put it on in the background, or sit and listen to it carefully on headphones, and either way it's a rewarding experience. I'm really glad I heard it, as discoveries like this make doing this project worthwhile. 

155. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin (January 1969)

1. Good Times Bad Times*

2. Babe I'm Gonna Leave You

3. You Shook Me

4. Dazed and Confused*

5. Your Time Is Gonna Come

6. Black Mountain Side

7. Communication Breakdown*

8. I Can't Quit You Baby

9. How Many More Times

****

Homer Simpson once quipped that Jimmy Page was "the greatest thief of Black American music of all time". This is kind of true, but it's worth noting that back in the late 60s British bands engaging in borderline copyright-infringing reworkings of old blues songs was a pretty common thing. And Page didn't just rip off Black people - he ripped off Jeff Beck's version of "You Shook Me" and straight-up stole the foundations of "Dazed and Confused". In any case, I don't know that that line of reasoning is especially productive. Whatever his sources, Page's approach was ground-breaking and unique. I can't imagine anyone preferring Beck's version of "You Shook Me" (though, to be honest, I don't much care for either version). And "Dazed and Confused" is one of those songs that pretty much rewrote the rules of popular music. Without it there'd simply be no heavy metal. Or at the very least no Black Sabbath. 

65 years later, the idea of skull-crushingly heavy riff-based stadium rock is pretty old hat. The genre's been celebrated, buried and resurrected any number of times over the years. But Zeppelin endure through it all, for the simple fact that they rock so fucking hard. Yes, Robert Plant's lyrics are, at this early point, not overly complex and frankly rather misogynistic. And he hasn't really learned to control his voice yet. But putting that aside, you have three of the finest instrumentalists in the history of popular music backing him up. And best of all, these guys can all play brilliantly, but they're not too proud to play dumb when it's called for. So you have immediate, ultra-rocking riffs backed up by a pounding rhythm section, but you also have blistering, technically dazzling solos and forays into gentle, complex folk and psychedelia. 

This is not my favourite Led Zeppelin album, mind. Of course that's IV. And truth be told, I find it difficult to sit through any of their albums except for IV and Houses of the Holy. But Led Zeppelin is a pretty kickass album. The eclecticism for which the band are famous is already present, and so you get a good mix of heavy rock with folk and even Indian influences. But there's also a simplicity and rawness to the album - probably attributable to the brief time and low budget of the recording, as well as the fact that most of these songs were worked-out live before hand and so tend to reflect one of their sets. "Dazed and Confused" is, I think, the only song here that can really stand alongside their later classics, but it's one hell of a brilliant song and worth the price of admission alone. The "so dumb it's brilliant" riff on "Communication Breakdown" is another highlight, and "How Many More Times" is a ferocious workout that highlights all the band's strengths (and gets pretty funky, too).

What really sets this album apart from its peers is the approach. Plenty of bands had rocked really damned hard before Led Zeppelin, but none in quite this way. The incorporation of so many different forms of music into a cohesive sound, rather than diluting the impact of the music, resulted in something incredibly immediate and thrilling. I'm actually looking forward to revisiting the first few Led Zeppelin albums, as I suspect I may find myself enjoying them a lot more than I did previously - especially coming to them from behind, as it were, with a better knowledge of just what preceded them and how they fit into the history of rock. It's fun to discover new music, but it's also fun to rediscover bands and albums you never gave a fair shake in the first place.

154. Quicksilver Messenger Service - Happy Trails (March 1969)

1. Who Do You Love Suite -

I. Who Do You Love (Part One)

II. When Do You Love

III. Where Do You Love

IV. How Do You Love

V. Which Do You Love

VI. Who Do You Love (Part 2)

2. Mona

3. Maiden of the Cancer Moon

4. Calvary

5. Happy Trails

**1/2

Does a twenty minute long exploratory jazz-acid reworking of the Bo Diddley classic "Who Do You Love" sound like a good time to you? If so, I strongly recommend Happy Trails. Personally, though, I kind of think this album is a waste of time.

I think I would have enjoyed the "Who Do You Love" suite a bit more if I wasn't intimately familiar with the original. As it was, I couldn't help thinking of how much I liked Diddley's version and how much the Quicksilver Messenger Service got wrong with their interpretation of it. The original is spooky, fun, sexy, concise and a rhythmic monster. The suite is a long, jammy exercise in so-so guitar heroics, anchored by some extremely unimpressive drum work. I mean, Bo Diddley is considered one of the fathers of punk rock. The Quicksilver Messenger Service are a freeform acid-jazz-rock combo built around twenty minute guitar solos and feedback experiments.

After a few listens, I was able to shed most of my preconceptions and appreciate Happy Trails for what it is, instead of what I wish it would be. And I have to admit - there are a few moments of real beauty here, and the musicians have some pretty impressive chops. But this really just isn't my cup of tea. And it's not just the Diddley covers. The two originals that close out the album are sort of pointless. I've bemoaned the fact several times, but I think you really need to be stoned to appreciate this music, and I'm not about to risk another psychotic break just so that I can properly appreciate "Maiden of the Cancer Moon".

I can see why people like this stuff. I think the problem is I sit and listen to these sorts of albums through, when they're really intended as party soundtracks. As background music to a swinging party, Happy Trails would be excellent. I tried listening to it drunk once while on the computer dicking around, and I didn't mind it. But my last listen was twenty minutes ago, at 11 in the morning, stone cold sober and preparing to go to work in a few hours. Not really an environment conducive to getting all groovy, to use the parlance of the time. 

Happy Trails is a solid album, and its approach points the way forward for a lot of jammy, exploratory music. I can definitely see why people liked it at the time - it manages to go to to some very strange places while remaining pretty accessible, and we haven't really had much like it in the Book at this point. Doing this project, I've found that I'm no great fan of the San Francisco sound, but for a lot of people in the 60s and onward this album must have been a window into a world, and a legendary scene, which a lot of people idolised and still mythologise and pine for to this day. Then there's the fact that this album's approach - taking classic songs and reworking them into long, unrecognisable forms - would be pretty popular through the early 70s until punk came along and remind everyone how to rock. Happy Trails manages to strike a solid balance between direct rock and proggy excess, and I kind of admire the Quicksilver Messenger Service for that. I just really doubt I'll be listening to this album again any time soon.