This is another headscratcher. It's not that it's a bad album, just that it's a mediocre one. And when there are so many great albums that have been left out of the book, its inclusion is pretty weird.
Let's start with the good. The Electric Prunes (such a terrible, terrible band name) have a great sound. There's a lot of effects, a lot of reverb, some genuinely solid and innovative playing, and even a few primitive electronic flourishes in the form of keyboards and tape effects. The whole album has a dark, weird sound, loose and jazzy sound to it that obviously helped to influence the dark, vaguely gothy sound of a lot of punk and post-punk. Unfortunately, the material is just not up to the sound. In fact, (and, to be fair, the band were forced to record a lot of these songs instead of their own material) often the full-blown psychedelic sound is at odds with the more conventional songs.
There are a few exceptions, of course. The title track/opener just kicks ass. It starts with a fuzzed-out, reversed, oscillating guitar that sounds like something from outer space. This slams into a hard, dark, totally rocking number that sounds like nothing else, and is basically all hook. Yeah, the lyrics are stupid, but they're also pretty trippy. It's a great song.
Another good song is the pretty ballad "Onie", which is about someone growing up too fast and not enjoying their youth. Musically, it's basically just a 50s-style ballad, but the Prunes' dark and mysterious sound warps it into something rich and strange.
And then there's the kick-ass, Bo Diddley-swiping "Get Me to the World on Time", another stellar rocker that actually plays to the band's strengths as psychedelic exploraters instead of sticking them into a pop-rock straight jacket.
Otherwise, it's mostly just weak songs with nifty production, and there are even a couple of outright stinkers in "The King Is in the Counting House" and the execrable "Toonerville Trolley".
So is this a bad album? No. But you're basically only listening to it because the title track was on the first nuggets compilation. One great song does not an indispensable album make. I get that this was not the Electric Prunes' fault - they were hamstrung by their producer, who insisted they perform songs written by his pet songwriters. It's pretty good, but fails to meet the standard of being one of the 1001 albums you should hear before you die. Especially when (and I'll gripe about this forever) albums like Homogenic, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Aquemini, and I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One were left out of the Book. But hey! Two Supergrass albums and Billy Fucking Joel, so it's alright.
Anyway, here's "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)", to save you the trouble of listening to the album:
Well here we are at album 100. I didn't think I'd make it this far. Only 901 albums to go! I thought maybe I'd do something special for this, but then I couldn't think of anything, and nobody reads this anyway. So, eh.
Anyway, this is a great album to have at number 100. We've had a lot of gradual shifts and developments so far, but nothing like this album. The opening of "Foxy Lady" - a warbling chord that fades in only to explode into the biggest, loudest, dirtiest riff imaginable - was like nothing else in 1967, and it still sounds incredible today. There's not much you can say about Jimi Hendrix as a guitarist that hasn't been said before, really. His approach to music was like nothing else before, and while I don't love all his songs, his best pieces are fucking incredible. He was also an innovative singer, with his stoned-out, declamatory style hitting as hard as a drum kit. I remember seeing a documentary on Hendrix once, where he wanted them to hire someone else to do the singing, but he kind of got pushed into it because he had such a unique and incredible rhythm and tone.
The backing band, too, were pretty damned great. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was effectively assembled by Hendrix's manager to support and highlight Hendrix as a performer, and the drums and bass really are the perfect foils for Hendrix's guitar and vocals. I know this was the Jimi Hendrix Experience, but the other two guys are often unfairly overlooked.
Still, it's Hendrix we remember, and we remember him as a brilliant guitarist and songwriter. I've adhered to the original UK track listing for this album, which means no "Purple Haze" or "The Wind Cries Mary", but there's still a great range of styles on display, all brilliantly executed, and really there's not a bad song on the album. The great thing about Hendrix is that he was a brilliant guitarist, but (at least on this album) he didn't give in to proggy excess. So you have a massive stormer of a song like "Manic Depression" anchored by a hook you could learn to play approximately ten minutes after first picking up a guitar, while at the same time featuring utterly blistering solos. Then you have softer songs like "Remember" and "Love or Confusion", and even a kick-ass blues number in "Red House", showing that Hendrix could play "normal" music, too, and wasn't just hiding behind acid-tinged weirdness and studio trickery.
And as for that trickery? Well, this album is at the same time very well-produced, and, due to budgetary and technical limitations, possessed of a fuzzy rawness that perfectly complements the music. So you have both the slick sci-fi weirdness of "3rd Stone from the Sun" and the skull-crushing dirtiness of "Foxy Lady" on the same album. And through all the sound is big and distorted in a way that seems logical to us in the present day, but was quite revolutionary at the time. I tend to think Hendrix gave in to excess a little on his next two albums, but here the Experience are straining against the limitations of the technology, and that gives the music a verve that can't be matched by a more polished recording. Although advances in studio recording would of course lead to classics like "Castles Made of Sand" and "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)". Then again, my favourite Hendrix album is Band of Gypsys Live at the Filmore East.
Anyway, that's my opinion to the extent I can be bothered defending it. Here's to 901 more rambling, incoherent observations.
I criticise the Book for its chronological inconsistencies, but the editors obviously knew people were going to try and listen through the List in order. So it is that we emerge from a cloud of incense and hash smoke and into the clear air of a pretty solid country album. It's a welcome respite.
Merle Haggard is a great singer and guitarist, and he wrote or co-wrote most of the songs here. Most of them are rough-and-ready bar room numbers about the usual country themes - lost love, caring for your sweetheart, and the mixed blessing that is alcohol. The sound is somewhere between Buck Owens and Patsy Cline, with a steady back beat and lots of bluesy flourishes and nods to jazz and swing. The production is pristine, and the arrangements (lots of pedal steel here) are tasteful while still being tough. But still, it's very much what people think of when they think of old country music. I can imagine Hank Hill loving this album.
Probably one of the most notable elements of this album is the songs focusing on crime and poverty and wasting your life. This is interesting because Merle Haggard was a former criminal who did multiple stretches. Apparently the title track was written without knowledge of this fact, but it appealed to Haggard due to his past and he made it his own. But as bleak as that song is, it's still kind of a romance that pays court to the allure of being on the run (America, much like Australia, loves its outlaws). Much bleaker is the harrowing "Life in Prison", a song Haggard co-wrote. What do you make of a song about a man facing life without parole, whose only wish is that he might die and be freed from his torment? It also raises a good point about capital punishment, or at least something I've always felt, that is that killing some prisoners might be considered a mercy they don't deserve. I mean, obviously if there's a God and a Hell then it's just to send monsters to meet their maker, but if you're like me and don't believe in any of that it's a much more fitting punishment to have them rot in gaol for the term of their natural life. Although that's just my opinion, and actually antithetical to the real point of the song.
Anyway, equally bleak is the song "House of Memories", which is kind of like "There's Always Something There to Remind Me" I suppose. The narrator has nothing left but his house, and everything in it is a constant reminder of the lover he's lost, to the point where it's driving him mad.
Another good song is "Drink Up and Be Somebody". It's a dark song, although delivered in an upbeat style, dealing with a man who's been spurned and drinks to feel important and hide his true feelings. A lot of songs about alcohol either wholly endorse it or tell some bleak tale, but this song actually captures why a lot of people drink, and both the pros and cons of it. This kind of honest appraisal of working class life is one of the things I've grown to like about the country music I've listened to.
But it's not all bleakness and despair. There are a few upbeat love songs, and some cheeky almost-rockers. Really, the whole album is pretty good, and the lyrics are complex and clever enough to support sitting and listening to it through (ideally on a Sunday afternoon, with a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other). One of the things I've liked about this project is being forced to listen to more Country music. It often gets written off as a load of depressing, ultra-nationalist clap trap, and to be fair I wouldn't want to have to listen to the overproduced crap that passes for a lot of country these days. But there's also a lot of great stuff, and artists like Gillian Welsh and Neko Case wouldn't exist without it. I'm looking forward to listening to more of it over the course of this project.
So another screw-up, chronologically, by the Book. This album was released in the USA in 1966, and the eventual British release the following year uses a completely different track listing. It's important to note this because music was changing so rapidly at the time that placing things in context becomes vital. Had this album been released in '67 it would have still been a big deal, but it was actually released in '66 just a couple of weeks after the Beatles' Revolver blew everyone's minds. Which makes this not only one of the earliest psychedelic releases, but an incredibly innovative album.
Musically, this album is brilliant. The clever trick it plays is to mix folk and rock music which rich pop production. The best example of this is the title track, which is a storming singalong with "everything but the kitchen sink" production values. Lyrically, it's about a man setting out to woo a woman, but in a lot of ways it's also something of a mission statement for Donovan - defiantly odd, but at the same time incredibly catchy. And the line "everybody's hustling to make a little scene/ when I say we'll be cool, baby, you know what I mean" seems to point a way forward in search of a genuinely free and unconventional way of life, not just counter-cultural conformity and attempts to "make it".
"Sunshine Superman" is a brilliant song, and a deserved smash hit, but it's also somewhat atypical of the album. The very next song, "Ballad of a Girl Child Linda", is a long and rambling chamber-folk piece rich with mediaeval imagery, which seems to be an attempt to conjure the joy and mystery and terror of listening to stories as a child. There are references to talking parrots, wizards, knights in armour and fair damsels, and the imagery is so rich and dense that at times it's almost overwhelmingly sensual. There's also a tactile sense to the lyrics (Donovan uses the word "velvet" at least half a dozen times on this album). "Three King Fishers" follows the folky, mediaeval bent, and then there's the beautiful "Ferris Wheel", a lilting pop-folk number about stumbling upon a carnival during a walk on the beach, which is again about feeling free and following your dreams, and has a very pretty melody. After that comes "Bert's Blues", a dense, strange number written for Bert Jansch, which introduces old timey jazz into the mix, and which involves cold winds blowing on their way to Hades and fairy castles terrible in the moonlight.
I'll be honest - I love this sort of crap. When I think of hippies of the 60s, the British folk revival and songs about knights and elves and the like is where I gravitate towards. And it helps that side one of this album is just incredibly pretty.
On side two, things get darker and weirder and ultimately less successful. "Season of the Witch", with its classic scratchy guitar riff and paranoid lyrics about "beatniks out to make it rich" and the like, is a stone cold classic. It's also carried by a prominent, simple bass line, which is one of the most distinctive elements of the album's sound as a whole, often filling in where chords would on a lesser album. "Guinevere", another mediaeval number, is just a pretty song about Arthurian times, rich in imagery and with a haunting melody. It's pretty great.
The other three songs are good, but not especially good. "The Trip" is some beat nonsense about a trip Donovan took to LA, where he met a bunch of folk luminaries who he name-drops in the lyrics. It's kind of fun, but not up to the standard set by the rest of the album. "The Fat Angel" is very catchy, but it's just a silly song about a man who "brings you happiness in a pipe" and then "rides off on his silver bike". It's kind of notable because Donovan references Jefferson Airplane in it, I guess. The last song is "Celeste", which opts for a full pop ballad approach and really doesn't work.
So, this is a pretty great album. The production and arrangements are gorgeous, the songs are all trippy without being druggy, there are lots of catchy melodies, and the side openers are two of the best songs of the 1960s. It's not perfect throughout, but it's a lot of fun, full of wit and warmth and optimism. Although if you dislike whimsy, and songs about magic and mystery, I would not recommend it.
You know, I'm quite fond of the Kinks, but for some reason the only albums of theirs that I've actually heard in full are this and Face to Face (I might have heard Lola Vs. Powerman but I honestly can't remember). Well I suppose one of the reasons I'm doing this project is to remedy things like that.
Anyway, this is one of my personal favourites. Face to Face saw Ray Davies maturing as a songwriter, and Something Else... is the album where that really bears fruit. The songs I've marked above are three of the finest ever written. "David Watts" is a hilarious character piece, about a school boy both wishing he could have the life of the paragon that is one of his class mates, and kind of crushing on him. It really shows Ray Davies at his wry best as a lyricist, as well as being a driving monster of a song musically. "Two Sisters" is a beautiful chamber pop number about a married woman resenting her single sister for the carefree life she leads, only to find meaning and purpose in the faces of her children, ultimately deciding that she's better off. And "Waterloo Sunset" is just jaw dropping, a wonderful song about finding beauty in the grimy world around you, of coming to terms with loneliness, about the way we create stories for the people we observe, and the redemptive power of love, all set to some of the prettiest music ever recorded.
Obviously you can see from those descriptions that this is no ordinary pop album. Plenty of bands had done little character studies and vignettes at this point, but Something Else... leans into these sorts of stories with a dedication and skill pretty much unmatched in 1967. I mean, there's a rock song ("Situation Vacant") about a man being driven to ruin by his demanding mother-in-law, who's ultimately revealed to be trying to steal her daughter back for herself. There's a song about an ageing player who, thoroughly conservative and uptight, has lost touch with modern society and laments that he can't make it with women anymore now that Labour's in ("End of the Season"). "Harry Rag" is a music hall paean to the cigarette, listing a variety of bizarre characters who all "curse themselves for the lives they've led, roll themselves a harry rag and put themselves to bed". "Afternoon Tea" is a celebration of the quintessential British ritual in which the narrator invites his desired to share a cuppa with him.
The rest of the songs aren't quite as good, but there isn't a bad number on the album. Probably the weakest track is the rocker "Love Me Till the Sun Shines", written by guitarist Dave Davies. But then again, Dave also contributes the surreal, hilarious sing-along "Death of a Clown", and the delightful "Funny Face", so I guess he can be forgiven.
Musically, this album is also very strange, ranging from music hall to chamber pop to psychedelic rock. There's a bossa nova song, for some reason. "Two Sisters" is powered by a harpsichord, and features strings. "Lazy Old Sun" is a deeply peculiar song in which Ray Davies chastises the Sun for not doing its job properly, all set to a rather queasy sort of psych-folk sound. "Waterloo Sunset" is anchored by a series of distinctive descending guitar riffs, a fleshed-out with slightly tongue-in-cheek "sha-la-la" backing vocals and some genuinely pretty harmonies reminiscent of the Beach Boys. Really, there's such a variety of styles that it shouldn't really hold together (which could explain its poor chart performance despite the success of the singles), but that eclecticism is really the album's chief virtue. Something Else... has such a wide range of styles, all executed very well, that it's tremendous value for money.
There's also a sort of unity of theme, I suppose. The songs on this album all deal, in one way or another, with the ordinary people leading lives of quiet desperation. The Davies brothers thankfully possess a wry sense of humour that stops these songs from becoming oppressive. The pathetic figures at the heart of "Tin Soldier Man" and "End of the Season" may be contemptible, but they also make sense as real people, and that attention to character elevates what might otherwise just be lame piss takes into excellent pieces of satire. I wouldn't call this a concept album, but the songs do hang together thematically despite the sonic variety.
To be honest, though, I like albums that are all over the place. There's nothing more annoying than buying an album because you like one of the songs, and discovering that every piece on it is just a shitty variation on the same theme.
Anyway, I've ranted long enough. I don't have much more to say about this. A rambling, confused review for a rambling, confused album.
Conventional wisdom has it that there are only two good songs on this album. I used to agree with that, and was honestly not looking forward to Surrealistic Pillow. Coming back to it now, years later, I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. I think the big problem with this album is just that the two hit singles ("Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit") not only both stand head and shoulders above the rest of the material here, but they aren't at all representative of the sound of the album as a whole. So people coming to this album hoping for the Grace Slick experience, and a load of druggy psychedelia, are probably going to be disappointed by the more folk-rock sound of the other songs.
Still, they aren't bad songs (well, mostly - "3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds" and "Plastic Fantastic Lover" both kind of suck). And this album was obviously pretty influential. I know Jefferson Airplane had a pretty big impact on the Fairport Convention, for example; and I love that band. Almost 60 years later, it can be easy to forget that what sounds like generic folk rock now was actually new and exciting when it first came out. And the song "Today" is genuinely beautiful, with a haunting high-pitched guitar riff and simple lyrics about giving yourself to someone in love. I also quite like "Comin' Back to Me", another gentle folk ballad. And "Embryonic Journey" is a very pretty, and very impressive, instrumental guitar piece.
Really, though, the main reason anyone cares about this album these days is because of Grace Slick. Her voice was one of the most distinctive and beautiful in rock, a laser-focused contralto that could swing from gentle cooing to the banshee wail of "Somebody to Love" to the twisted acid declamations of "White Rabbit" (which she also wrote). Slick unfortunately only sings lead on two songs, but her voice twists and winds its way through the background of many of the songs here, and it's easily the best thing about the album. I don't think anyone forgets the first time they hear "White Rabbit", with its bolero rhythms and acid-drenched, Alice in Wonderland-inspired lyrics, all delivered by Slick in her stern, icy tones like she's the Ancient Mariner or something. I believe I first encountered it in the movie The Game, for example.
So, a handful of brilliant songs, a fresh new sound, and only a couple of clunkers. Apparently this was the album that introduced San Francisco to the wider world, being as it was a massive hit. Which means that it's incredibly important album irrespective of musical quality. I am glad that this project has forced me to give it a second chance. I doubt I'll listen to it again any time soon, but it's definitely better than I remember it being.
You know, I'm not sure if the Young Rascals were very successful in Australia. I used to listen a lot to an oldies station specialising in music from the 50s through the 70s, I don't recall ever hearing one of their songs. Meaning that while this band were quite popular and influential, they were also completely new to me. Which is nice, in a way, as it let me come to this band free of preconceptions and take the music on its own terms.
And really, this is very good music. Nothing mind-blowing, but a delightful mix of soul, R&B, garage rock and psychedelia. I wasn't overly impressed with it at first, but I think it was the title track that won me over. Possibly because my work week starts on a Friday, so listening to this today (Thursday) I was effectively groovin' on a Sunday afternoon. I've also had a couple of glasses of Canadian Club.
Things kick off with the wonderful, Turtlesesque "A Girl Like You", then there's the equally good "Find Somebody", which anchors a soul sound with a chiming ostinato guitar part. The Young Rascals are (at least on this album) very much an R&B/soul act, but they're also happy to augment their sound with borrowings from rock, jazz and psych. Thankfully they have the good taste to do this with a degree of subtlety and avoid burying their catchy, poignant songs under trendy new sounds. The result is an album that sounds fresh and invigorating when so many other acts of the time just seem dated. A good example of their willingness to experiment is the track "Sueño", which opens with Latin guitars before morphing into a strange sort of garage rock number, returning to the Latin guitar part when appropriate.
The first half of the album is mostly upbeat pop numbers, but the second half is where things get looser and weirder. "Groovin'" is a beautiful, laid-back song, quite unlike anything we've had up to this point (in fact it was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fames' list of the 500 songs which shaped rock and roll). Apparently Atlantic didn't even want to release it, it was so strange. Of course now, listening to it it's just a sweet song about taking it easy, a very gentle bit of psychedelic soul. Another great song is "I Don't Love You Anymore", which is a subdued and melancholy number with a great chorus. And "It's Love" incorporates jazz flute to wonderful effect.
I don't have much to say about this album, but it's a lovely record. It's really a time capsule of a moment in pop, covering a wide variety of styles all done quite well. It's a little thin at times, production wise, and not all the songs are strong, but it's a fun listen and an intelligent and well-crafted pop album. In a lot of ways, this is the real sound of the Summer of Love.
Which, unfortunately, is not something that can be said about the next album on the List...
The Byrds will never be one of my favourite bands, but I'm enjoying dropping in to see how they're going every now and then. A lot of this has to do with the distinctive Byrds sound. Their mix of jangly guitars, heavy bass, angelic harmonies and scribbly, distorted solos is intoxicating.
At a time when bands were constantly pushing to be more "progressive", the Byrds double down on their sound and attempt to refine it, resulting in a truly gorgeous record. The eclecticism of 5D (Fifth Dimension) is still present, but there's a unity of sound that helps to knit the various songs together. There aren't really any tracks that stand out as much as on earlier Byrds releases (nothing to match "Wild Mountain Thyme", "I Come and Stand by Every Door", or "Turn, Turn, Turn"), but this is compensated for by (with one notable exception) strong song writing throughout.
And what and exception! "Mind Gardens" is easily one of the worst songs I've had to listen to for this project - a tuneless waste of time that sounds like a stoned teenager's first attempt to write a Tim Buckley song. Which is surprising, given that David Crosby, the songwriter for "Mind Gardens", also contributed the beautiful "Renaissance Fair" and "Everybody's Been Burned". The first is a gorgeous evocation of the title subject, which manages to evoke beautifully one of the few aspects of hippiedom that I actually like (tapestries, incense, saying "thou" a lot - leave me alone, I grew up reading fantasy novels). The latter is a truly great song, a subdued, jazzy number about getting hurt but being willing to still take a chance on love. The lyric "I know all too well how to turn, how to run / How to hide behind a bitter wall of blue / But you die inside if you choose to hide / So I guess instead I'll love you" is, especially when delivered in Crosby's pure tones, incredibly affecting. It's also essentially the same message as "Mind Gardens", which makes me wonder why the rest of the Byrds let Crosby put that turd on the album.
Science fiction themes also re-emerge. "C.T.A. - 102" is a strange song about trying to contact extra-terrestrial intelligences, which plays the neat trick of switching halfway though from the band playing to song, to a couple of aliens listening to the song and commenting on it in a language that sounds suspiciously like the Jawas from Star Wars. It's pretty funny. Also pretty funny is "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star", a satirical take on the music business and the way it manufactures bands and hits and chews up and spits out artists. Given that the Byrds went from being the biggest band in the world to obscure weirdos in about a year, it probably has a bit of an autobiographical slant.
The rest of the album is solid love songs, and one Dylan cover. The songs are all good, although there aren't really any standouts. Bassist Chris Hillman distinguishes himself by penning a number of lovely love songs, and there are a few ventures into country rock.
This is a lovely album, even if "Mind Gardens" is fucking terrible; full of wit and warmth and intelligence and anchored by the Byrds' wonderful guitar-bass-harmonies formula. It won't blow anyone's mind, but it's a great listen, and at this point in the List probably the place to start if you want to explore the band's work. I'd give it a higher rating but seriously - "Mind Gardens" is just that fucking bad.
Now bear in mind, I went into The Doors fully expecting to hate it. I've never had much time for the Doors. I think this is a two-fold problem - on the one hand, I find Jim Morrison insufferably pretentious and representative of most of the things I hate in rock; on the other, I find that the Doors' fanbase is made up mostly of people who want to be Jim Morrison.
And really, Morrison is the weak link on this album. He's a fine singer, and capable of cooking up a decent vocal melody when he wants to. His lyrics are also largely meaningless gibberish. Although I did read a comment he made about "The End", that he was aiming more for rich imagery that could be about anything the listener wanted rather than a coherent thesis. Which would be fine, if not for fans who consider Morrison some kind of poet-prophet-genius (I once had an argument with someone who believed JM was the single greatest poet since William Blake - was this because he quotes Blake in "End of the Night"? Who knows).
I also think the Doors' cover of Willie Dixon's "Back Door Man" is an utterly dreadful version of a mediocre song.
But on to the good. can't deny that this album is ground-breaking sand influential. The mix of jazz, garage, R&B, the blues, baroque (mostly in the keyboards) and Kurt Weill is something pretty much unprecedented. And musically, this album is pretty great. Maybe not "Light My Fire", which destroys the goodwill generated by a great organ riff and a fun melody by featuring some of the dumbest lyrics in the classic rock pantheon, bookending several minutes of "I guess it's OK" instrumental jamming. But it's pretty solid, and innovative in its use of space and reverb. A good example of how this album defies convention is "Break on Through", which opens with a bossa nova beat and switches to hard rock for the choruses. The lyrics are pretty stupid, but still. And then there's "The End", the City of Ur of spacey goth jams, with its haunting guitar riff and spooky atmospherics. Once again, lyrically risible, but pretty great musically. I guess it's meant as a journey into the heart of darkness at the centre of consciousness, and it makes sense that it was used in Apocalypse Now.
Still, if it sounds like I'm dumping too heavily on Morrison I should I suppose qualify things. Morrison is not half as smart as he thinks he is, but his approach is brilliant. The lyrics on this album open up possibilities for new directions in music. I may not care for the Doors, but I have to admit that a lot of the music I love wouldn't exist without them. No Joy Division. No Suicide. Possibly (since this album was released at the start of 1967 and for some reason comes halfway through the year in the Book) no Piper at the Gates of Dawn. His willingness to attempt the poetic, despite not being qualified to manage it, is admirable. And "Soul Kitchen" is actually pretty great. I prefer the cover by X (putting me in the odd position of viewing the original as a fascinating alternative version of one of my favourite songs), but this slower version is still pretty good.
So. This is a good album, and a remarkable debut. If you can tune out the fifty-odd years of people lauding the Doors as the last word in Serious Art, it's definitely worth a listen. I'm actually kind of looking forward to the next few Doors albums, as I suspect Morrison will improve as a lyricist, and I have "People Are Strange" and "Roadhouse Blues" to look forward to. I suppose one good thing about this project is that it's forcing me to reassess a lot of my prejudices as regards music. I would like someone to explain what "She's got the world locked up inside a plastic box" means, though. Is it about drugs? This album mostly seems to be about drugs. For some reason I listened to The Doors three times, and each time I was sober. So maybe if I'd ever taken acid, or if I were drunk while listening to this, I would have liked it more.
Well this is a short, sweet album. It's also one of the most polished recordings we've had so far. The album is beautifully recorded, and impeccably played and arranged. I'm not quite sure why it was included, though. I suppose if you like Frank Sinatra (and I've been won over to him over the course of this project), then it's both an enjoyable and an interesting album. After all, it's one of the greatest singers of the era teaming up with one of the greatest and most influential songwriters. And this is a very good an album.
There's nothing here to surprise you, mind. Several of the songs have already appeared on the list in better versions, although it's nice to have them translated into English. This isn't really an innovative album so much as an excellent example of the form. Sinatra's voice is a surprisingly good fit for Bossa Nova, and he's joined on vocals on "The Girl from Impanema" by Jobim, effectively duplicating the English/Portuguese/English approach of the more famous version with Astrud Gilberto. The songs choices are all very solid, including a few American numbers to pad out the length. As said, the arrangements are lovely - very subtle and understate, providing a perfect counterpoint to Sinatra's world-weary vocals and anchored by Jobim's pulsing guitar.
I guess this album is kind of interesting as a bookend to a particular period in popular music. The Beatles, Velvet Underground, Who,. Rolling Stones and so forth were changing music. Led Zeppelin was on the horizon. Bossa Nova had been thoroughly absorbed into the Western canon, and Sinatra's years of relevance were reaching a close. So this is a light, understated album of unassuming grace. It really isn't trying to be anything more than thirty minutes of pretty, slightly wistful music, and on those terms it succeeds admirably.
What the hell can I say about this album that hasn't already been said? Then again, I tackled the Beatles, so I guess I can tackle this.
I first heard the Velvet Underground during the gap year I took after high school. Unable to find a job for quite a while, I spent a lot of time sitting around at home reading and listening to Triple J (N.B.- this was back before Triple J sucked). On one of the morning shows, I heard a reference to the Velvet Underground. I'd never heard of them, but the presenters said they were important, and the name was mysterious and cool. So I trotted off to the library, and borrowed a copy of the What Goes On box set. Suffice to say I was not prepared for what awaited me. True, I was familiar with a lot of VU-derived music, but the rawness and strangeness of the songs, the droning guitars and unhinged ventures into noise, were something I was wholly unprepared for. And then of course what do you make of a band that can produce both "Heroin" and "After Hours"? And bear in mind that at the time I was staunchly anti-drugs, anti-alcohol, and anti-smoking. Still, I found I loved it. I am a walking contradiction.
Of course as a friendless loser in a provincial town, I didn't really know anyone else who liked the Velvet Underground, or had much time for real left-of-the-dial stuff at all. So imagine my surprised when I went to University, got to talking about music with a guy in my fine arts class, asked him if he liked the Velvet Underground, and his response was "Of course. Everyone does". No, guy from my art class 18 years ago, everyone does not love the Velvet Underground. Just ask my cousin, who made me turn White Light/White Heat off halfway through on the grounds that it was "really depressing". But then again, the other month I heard them playing "I'm Waiting for the Man" on Triple M. So I guess the world has changed a lot since my youth.
In any case, the Velvet Underground remain the quintessential cult band, even if that cult is truly enormous. And there's a simple reason for this - no matter how many people love "Sweet Jane" or "Stephanie Says", their first two album with John Cale are just fucking weird.
The album starts nicely enough, with "Sunday Morning" a very pretty song that lulls you into a false sense of security. But that said, it's a slightly queasy piece of music, replete with strange overdubs, a celeste, and Nico's deadpan backing vocals. The lyrics are also somewhat sinister, recounting waking up after a night of excess and facing the cold day. "Watch out! The world's behind you" indeed. It could almost be a warning about the next song, "I'm Waiting for the Man". We've had heavier music, but nothing this primal and strange, and the "day in the life of a junkie" lyrics coupled with the distorted two-chord stomp of the song add up to what is easily one of the most influential songs ever recorded. I mean, bands have built careers on ripping this song off. Without it, "Heroes" wouldn't exist. Hell, most punk music wouldn't exist.
"Femme Fatale" is another of Lou Reed's Factory songs, a story about a dangerous, but incredible inviting, woman. It's also quite pretty, and would be memorably covered by Big Star (a version arguably more influential than the original). "Venus in Furs", on the other hand, is really one of a kind. I mean, it's a blow-by-blow account of a man in love with a dominatrix, set to squalling drones, tribal drumming, and John Cale's screeching viola. There was literally nothing like it (that I'm aware of) at the time, and hasn't really been much since,
"Run, Run, Run" is a pretty minor song, a vaguely Stones-inspired rocker (as original as this album is in some respects, it owes a clear debt to both the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan). Things pick up with the chiming, epic "All Tomorrow's Parties", another song about the New York demi-monde, that owes a clear debt to modern classical and has a vaguely Eastern flavour, while recognisably inhabiting the confines of psychedelic rock. Nico gives a strong vocal, and it really sums-up the mix of experimentalism and immediacy that typifies this album.
The best song, to my mind, is "Heroin". Mo Tucker's tribal drumming, which clearly inspired a host of Krautrockers, underpins a reverb-drenched panegyric to the joys of dope. The line "I wish I was born a thousand years ago. I'd sail the darkened seas on a great big clipper ship" is one of those most evocative in rock, delivered with a sort of haunting resignation by Reed, and capturing the desire to escape in any way possible. The song also mimics the effects of drugs quite well, starting out slow and sinister and gradually building to a distorted roar.
Unfortunately, as with most LPs, the back half can't really match the front. "I'll Be Your Mirror" is another one of Reed's pretty love songs, and I like the violas in "Black Angel's Death Song". I also love how the album ends - "European Son" starts out as a demented riff of Bo Diddley featuring a killer walking bassline, and gradually dissolves into a nightmare of distortion and feedback as loud and crazy as anything to come before or after. But unfortunately side two also leans a bit more towards Reed's quasi-Dylanesque lyrics, and he's really a much better songwriter when he sticks to concrete subjects. That may be an unpopular opinion, but I don't much care.
So, Pitchfork listed this as the greatest album of the 1960s. If I'm being perfectly honest, I think Pet Sounds edges it out, just because all the songs on Pet Sounds are good, while this album has a couple of clunkers. But that said, it's pretty difficult to overstate the importance and influence of this album. It's fair to say most of the music I listen to wouldn't exist if this album had never been made. People have been twisting, distorting and reimaging these songs for almost sixty years now, and the best of them still have a frankness and vitality that's truly astonishing. I really wish I could go back and listen to these songs again for the first time, and do them justice. But then, I suppose this album has been something of a victim of its own success.
We're in a nice period in the List where I'm already familiar with a lot of the albums, and can look forward to revisiting a lot of old favourites. The Who Sell Out is one of the only two Who albums I'd actually heard before commencing this project (the other being Who's Next, which I've never much cared for). And really, it's a brilliant album. Or rather, a brilliant side A of an album, and a fairly solid side B. I should probably point-out that the version available on Spotify is the '90s CD reissue, which includes a lot of bonus tracks. That's the version I'm familiar with, but in the interest of adhering as close to the original releases as possible, I'm only reviewing the original track order.
Even without the bonus tracks, though, this album is a blast. The concept is, frankly, brilliant - at the height of the movement towards authenticity and away from commercialism in music, the Who released an album stitched together from radio adverts and featuring songs plugging deodorant and pimple cream. The album cover is one of the most iconic in rock, featuring joke ads and the timeless image of Keith Moon sitting in a bathtub full of Heinz baked beans. This is the period where the Who declared themselves pop artists (as opposed to pop stars), and this album is dripping with irony about the commercialisation of music and the role of the musician. It's also structured as a pirate radio broadcast (hence the ads), and intended as a loving tribute to the medium that made the Who stars in the first place. The result is an album that, in concept, might be a little dated, but the humour of the proceedings (as well as the incredible strength of the songs) more than compensates.
As with My Generation, there's a wonderful variety to the music here. Opener "Armenia City in the Sky" is, oddly, not about the country of Armenia. It is however a storming psychedelic stomper that will stick in your head for days. "Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand" is a lovely, lilting pop number. "Tattoo" is a hilarious song about two boys getting tattoos to make themselves manlier, but musically it's almost impossible to pin down - a clear example of the Who innovating a new direction in rock. "Odorono" is a hilarious song about a woman undone in love due to the wrong choice of deodorant. And of course you have "I Can See for Miles", a thunderous psychedelic rocker featuring truly immortal drum work from Keith Moon, that manages to put down a lover completely without ever veering into misogyny.
The rest of the album can't really match these songs, and really after the infinite possibilities of side one side two is a bit of a let-down (although it does feature an early foray into the epic with the lengthy narrative "Rael", which I honestly can't follow). The radio format is largely abandoned, and the songs aren't as funny or catchy, though they're still good. But really, as with My Generation, that patchy, try anything quality is part of what made the Who at this point so endearing. This album is a treasure trove of unique, engaging songs, all tied together by the notion that these are different bands having their own songs played on the radio. It may not be perfect, but it's an amazing amount of fun.
Unfortunately after this the Who would become more serious, start producing rock operas, and wind-up creating the blueprint for overblown, pretentious rock. Which is a pity. I know some people might not think that, but as I said I don't even especially like Who's Next, so I doubt I'll be thrilled by Tommy. Then again the Who have won me over twice in a row now, so I'll remain optimistic. Even if they are directly responsible for ELP's Tarkus, they're also to be thanked for pioneering the medium that led to Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds.
And so, after a long and gruelling trek, we come to one of my favourite bands. But this isn't the polished, high-concept Pink Floyd of the mid to late 70s, no. This is the dark, strange, childlike world of Syd Barret-era Floyd, and an album so peculiar as to be positively unclassifiable.
On the one hand, there are many songs here with an immediacy to them. I don't know if you could call them pop, but they do employ pop structures and are relatively short. "Astronomy Domine" kicks things off with a voyage to the edge of the solar system. "Lucifer Sam" is easily the best song ever written about being freaked-out by a cat. And "Matilda Mother" is a wonderful, yet surprisingly dark, evocation of being read a story as an infant. But then you have stuff like "Pow R Toc H" and the mind-bending "Interstellar Overdrive", which drag your consciousness through inexplicable vistas of weirdness. The latter is especially noteworthy for featuring one of the greatest riffs ever recorded, book-ending ten minutes of nigh-formless free jazz experimentation.
It's really difficult to sum this album up. I guess the music is pretty inseperable from Barret. As the principle songwriter and guitarist at this point, his fingerprints are all over everything. His approach to lyrics is strange, but quintessentially British in its use of nonsense and anti-logic - a sort of Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear for the LSD set. But there's a solidity and a darkness to his whimsy, if that makes sense. His songs are about things, and resonate even when it's not entirely clear what he's on about.
Musically, this is probably the most extreme album we've had up to this point. It even makes Freak Out! look sedate. The addition of David Gilmore would smooth some of the rough edges out of Floyd, but at this point there was a sort of "try anything", devil-may-care approach that yielded some enjoyable, but deeply strange, music. One can't help thinking that this album was the genesis of krautrock, featuring as it does strange improvisations reminiscent of Can and Faust. And "Interstellar Overdrive" basically invented noise rock twenty years too early.
Anyway, this may not be for everybody, but if you're interested in the ultimate psychedelic rock album, I'd say this is it. Set the controls for the heart of the sun.
So this is another one of those highly regarded albums that I don't particularly like. There are some great songs here, mind - it just doesn't manage to sustain my interest all the way through. I think the problem is just that I don't particularly like British Blues, Heavy Psychedelia or Hard Rock. Which is a pity, because this album really is an excellent example of all those things. Just, you know... things I don't give a damn about.
I think the biggest problem is Eric Clapton. I don't know what it is about him, but I just don't like his music. I think the problem is that he's technically perfect, and that renders his music slightly bloodless as a result. But I have to admit, he's been massively influential, and a lot of bands I do like owe a debt to his work with Cream.
Anyway, I'll focus on the good. "Strange Brew" is not the most famous song on this album, but it is the one that best encapsulates the highs and lows of the group. It's a shuffling monster of track, complete with quasi-funk guitar jabs and an excellent vocal by Clapton. It's also slightly too long, and once again a little bloodless. "Sunshine of Your Love", of course, needs no introduction. I think babies are born knowing the riff from this song. It's easily one of the greatest guitar tracks ever recorded, which helps because lyrically it's pretty stupid. I mean, the whole song is an extended metaphor for fucking a woman all night until you run out of cum, for Pete's sake. I also have a personal grudge against it because I once had the riff stuck in my head for a fortnight (a record only bested by Journey's "Any Way You Want It", which stuck around for three weeks). Still, the excitement and breadth of possibility suggested by the opening riff probably couldn't be matched by anything, so there's that. And in any case, it was an obvious influence on Hendrix and Black Sabbath, two acts I genuinely love.
My favourite song here, however, is "Tales of Brave Ulysses". It's a bizarre song, coping the melody from Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" to tell a story rich in psychedelic imagery that makes "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" seem positively sedate, all interspersed with rollicking wah wah guitar riffs. It's totally awesome, and if they ever send a gold record into space to explain psychedelic rock to extra-terrestrials, it should be on it.
The rest of the album, while innovative and obviously influential, is in my estimation merely "pretty good". And really, "three classic songs and the rest is OK" is a pretty good achievement for an album, especially one that falls so far outside my scope of interest. Anyway, this is my blog and I can say what I like. This is worth listening to, and others might find more to like in it, but personally this sort of nonsense leaves me cold.
7. Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale*
8. Live and Let Live
9. The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This
10. Bummer in the Summer
11. You Set the Scene
A+
So this will be an overwhelmingly positive review. In the interest of fairness, please refer to this absolutely spot-on takedown of Forever Changes by AltRockChick. Which I can't find because her site is a mess. So you go do that. I have better things to do (not really, I'm home sick with the flu and, as Irma Thomas might say,time is on my side).
Anyway...
Released in November, eh? Not so much the Summer of Love as the Late Autumn of Love. And really, that suits this album fine. It really is a perfect synthesis of the gorgeous, optimistic music of mid-60s hippiedom with the bleak outlook of the 1970s, when everyone realised that the legacy of the Summer of Love was a bunch of burn-outs, a messy ending to Vietnam, and the wider availability of heroin. Really, this is a deeply strange and beautiful album. How do you classify something that melds gentle, Beatleseque folk rock with Burt Bacharach, mariachi music, classical strings and harpsichord, and occasional ventures into proto-punk (although, as I said when discussing Da Capo, it's more like post-punk before punk happened). As with Pet Sounds, Sergeant Peppers, and the first VU album, first listeners are walking into something completely unexpected and infinitely rewarding.
I suppose it's kind of funny that I like this album so much. Many of the criticisms I've levelled at psych rock albums before are valid here. There are a lot of odd time changes, and the lyrics are frequently impenetrable. But what Arthur Lee and co have done here is focus on the musicality of the proceedings. This is, musically, a beautiful album. And while the lyrics don't always make literal sense, Lee and co-writer Brian McLean have an intuitive grasp of emotional resonance, that makes the songs strike home even when you're not quite sure what they're about.
Speaking of Brian McLean, I should address an issue with this album, and with Love in general. There is very much a myth surrounding Love of Arthur Lee and the tortured genius. But it's worth pointing out that McLean wrote "Alone Again Or", which is easily one of the most beautiful songs recorded - and astonishing examination of what it means to hang all your hopes on a person who doesn't give a damn about you, and just views you as an adjunct. He also wrote the lovely "Old Man", which is the sort of song they'd play at weddings in Heaven.
Ok, with that out of the way, back to Arthur Lee, who wrote all the other tracks. His lyrics are strange and dark and cryptic, but that makes sense. One of the reasons people keep coming back to this album, when so many others are forgotten, is because Lee understood the darkness at the heart of the Summer of Love, and that it was ultimately not going to pan out as people hoped. I mean, it's 2023. How many people do you know who've snorted heroin and taken acid and come out as anything other than fucked? It's almost as though real change had to come through grass roots political action and a total, gradual change of consciousness in the global population! But, yeah - smoke a joint and listen to Country Joe and the Fish. That'll help.
Anyway, I haven't really done this album justice but I can't be bothered going on about it. This is simultaneously one of the most beautiful albums you will ever hear, and the soundtrack to a man going slowly insane. This really is one of the few albums you have to hear before you die.
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