143. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Green River (August 1969)

1. Green River

2. Commotion

3. Tombstone Shadow

4. Wrote a Song for Everyone*

5. Bad Moon Rising*

6. Lodi*

7. Cross-Tie Walker

8. Sinister Purpose

9. The Night Time Is the Right Time

***1/2

A lot of great bands sell an attitude as much as the music. I think CCR fit that mould. They have a lean, stripped-back sound, there songs are short and direct, and things are as much about the vibe as anything. A good example is "Green River", which is sort of a spiritual successor to "Born on the Bayou" - another song about the good old days in the Louisiana backwoods that sells an idea of earthiness and the "real" America. Never mind that apparently it was actually about growing up in California. 

This is a better album overall than Bayou Country, although it lacks the stripped-down, fast-paced rockers that I really enjoyed from that album. The song writing is more complex both lyrically and musically. "Wrote a Song for Everyone" may be a straight rip-off of the Band's "The Weight", but its lyrics about a crumbling relationship are quite poignant. "Wrote a song for everyone, and I couldn't even talk to you" is just a great line. "Bad Moon Rising" contrasts apocalyptic lyrics with upbeat music that just makes things even creepier - should the end of the world really sound jaunty? And "Lodi" is a great song about being ground down by life on the road.

The extent to which you like the rest of this album depends on how much you like bluesy rockers. I can go either way, really. There isn't a bad song on this album, but there isn't really anything about, say, "Tombstone Shadow" to get especially excited about. Partly this is the fault of history. When Green River came out, no-one else was really doing this. But unfortunately I can't subject myself to some kind of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-style memory erasure that allows me to experience this music with fresh eyes. Plus I guess I've just never been a huge fan of blues rock, and also half the time I can't understand a word John Fogerty says. Which all makes me sound like I don't like this album, but I'm actually quite fond of it. The good songs are really damned good. It's just kind of patchy at times. There's even a quote included in the book about CCR being one of the all time great singles bands, and I think that may be true. They released a great number of amazing songs during their brief existence. So far their albums have been good, but I think you'd be better served with a greatest hits collection. Which I'll admit is kind of a backhanded compliment. Green River is a very good album, it's just not really my cup of tea. 

142. Johnny Cash - At San Quentin (June 1969)

1. Wanted Man

2. Wreck of the Ol' 97

3. I Walk the Line*

4. Darling Companion

5. Starkville City Jail

6. San Quentin*

7. San Quentin (performed a second time at the audience's request)

8. A Boy Named Sue*

9. (There'll Be) Peace in the Valley

10. Folsom Prison Blues

***1/2

I should point out that the Book notes that At San Quentin is only available these days in an expanded format. I would have preferred to listen to that, but Spotify has the original album these days and I thought I should listen to that version because, after all, that's the way everyone heard this album until the 2000 expanded edition came out.

So anyway, there's a lot to like about this album, but it can't really compare to At Folsom. Cash sounds tired for the first half of the set, and doesn't really find his voice until "Starkville City Jail". The material is all well chose, and includes career bests like "I Walk the Line" and the hilarious and timeless "A Boy Named Sue". I didn't really need to hear "San Quentin" twice, though. It's a great song, and the audience reaction is stirring, but I kind of wish they'd included "Big River" or something instead. I guess the inclusion of the second version helps to replicate the feel of the live show, and how the audience responded to it, though.

The album is very well-recorded, and has a muscular and punchy sound that really carries these songs along. Cash may be a bit weary here, but his band are in top form. The interactions with the audience are also pretty great. Cash has an understated wit and a great way with banter. It's interesting listening to the original version of the album, because the recording is punctuated with lengthy beeps as Cash cusses his way through the proceedings.

This is a very good album, and the cachet or mystique or whatever you want to call it of being recorded live at a prison certainly enlivens things. At Folsom is definitely the one to listen to, but I can see why this was a hit. And really, this album is worth it for the performances of "San Quentin" and "A Boy Named Sue" alone. I think if I listen to it again, though, it will definitely be the uncensored, expanded version.

141. The Flying Burrito Brothers - The Gilded Palace of Sin (February 1969)

1. Christine's Tune*

2. Sin City*

3. Do Right Woman

4. Dark End of the Street

5. My Uncle

6. Wheels

7. Juanita

8. Hot Burrito #1*

9. Hot Burrito #2

10. Do You Know How It Feels?

11. Hippie Boy

****1/2

I don't know who was in charge of country selections for the Book, but they've done a damned good job. Of course I knew very little about country before beginning this project, but I've enjoyed every country selection so far, and this is arguably the best one we've had yet. No, that's probably At Folsom. This is a close second, though.

The core of the Flying Burrito Brothers was Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, both of whom had split with the Byrds for a variety of reasons (Parsons' ego and Hillman's dissatisfaction with the group's direction, as best as I can tell). The Gilded Palace of Sin sees them shedding the nigh-claustrophobic arrangements that typified the Byrds and exploring a looser, more laid-back country rock sound. I've encountered criticisms of the production and recording, but I think the slightly scruffy quality of the music is a part of what makes it work so well. From a modern perspective, this album just seems natural and obvious. Its innovations have been pretty thoroughly absorbed into popular music, and you hear echoes of it everywhere from the Eagles and Townes Van  Zandt to Gillian Welch and Yo La Tengo. Parsons' desire to create an amalgam of American music means that there are flashes of country, soul, psychedelia and R&B, but all folded into something new and organic that works perfectly, and manages to sound fresh and exciting without losing the connection to its deep roots. It's impressive to produce an album where the twangy draft-dodger song  "My Uncle" fits in perfectly with a cover of the soul classic "Do Right Woman".

All of which wouldn't matter much if the lyrics didn't match the music. But freed from the Byrds' reliance on covers, the team here show themselves to be genuinely great and versatile songwriters. Opener "Christine's Tune" is a classic "she done him wrong" song. "Sin City" is a nigh-apocalyptic song about the perils and pitfalls of LA. "My Uncle" is a funny and clever character study of a draft-dodger who musing that "Vancouver might be my kind of town". The two "Hot Burrito" tracks show both ends of a relationship, both the yearning of wanting to be with someone and the cold reality of trying to live together once the honeymoon period is over. "Hippie Boy" is a slightly tongue-in-cheek call for togetherness across the cultural divide. A lot of ground is covered, and it's all done very well.

Still, this is at its core a country rock album, and as such some people will love it, some will dismiss it as long-hair bullshit, and others will consider it redneck crap. You only have to look at the album's dismal commercial performance, not just on release but in subsequent years. This is a cult album, really. I can definitely see why it's exerted such an influence over the years, though. Other musicians would tweak this formula with greater commercial success, but this album is really something special. I've listened to it like three times today. Maybe because before that I had to suffer through two albums of over-produced, self-important crap. There have been times doing this project when I've found myself thinking "God damn it! When will punk finally happen?". I guess, in lieu of that, The Gilded Palace of Sin will do nicely.

140. Blood, Sweat & Tears - Blood, Sweat & Tears (December 1969)

1. Variations on a Theme by Eric Satie (1st and 2nd Movements)

2. Smiling Phases

3. Sometimes in Winter*

4. More and More

5. And When I Die

6. God Bless the Child

7. Spinning Wheel*

8. You've Made Me So Very Happy*

9. Blues - Part II

10. Variations on a Theme by Eric Satie (1st Movement)

**1/2

I kept confusing Blood, Sweat & Tears with Earth, Wind & Fire. It's annoying, as I'd much rather have listened to the latter band.

The big problems with this album are ones that will plague a lot of the albums I'm going to have to listen to until at least the mid-70s. 1) This album is pretentious, and 2) BSAT seem to think that "more is more". The result? A patchwork of "high art" influences that mean that every song goes from a simple R&B number, to high-energy soul, before wandering into big band jazz, and then finally collapsing inelegantly back into R&B. None of these elements are well-integrated. I can't but quote from a Rolling Stone review at the time of release, which observed something to the effect of "the combination of all these elements is meant to trick you into thinking you're hearing something new, when really you're just hearing mediocre rock, then mediocre R&B, then OK jazz". 

The annoying thing is that BSAT are obviously highly talented musicians, and if they'd thought a bit more about how to integrate their influences this album might have been something special. Instead they wound-up with some sort of Frankenstein with pretensions to jazz-fusion. 

There is one song here I genuinely like, although even it has been jacked-up with pointless jazz nonsense. "Spinning Wheel", written by the singer, actually has a solid hook and a good rhythm, at least when David Clayton-Thomas is singing. I was surprised to find that I recognised the song. I think someone must have recorded a stripped down version at some point. I guess I also like the understated (for this album, anyway) "You Make Me So Very Happy". 

Unfortunately, those songs are islands of sanity in a sea of madness. I mean, the album is bookended with flashy rearrangements of Satie's Gymnopedies. The second to last track, "Blues - Part II", is twelve minutes long, and really I thought that the opportunity to work-out their musical ideas in a looser, non-pop format might have shown BSAT in their best light. Instead, it just sort of meanders for a while, then quotes "Sunshine of Your Love" and Willie Dixon's "Spoonful" for some reason. It's not very good.

If you're one of those people who's really into technical, flashy music, you might enjoy this. If you're looking for well-crafted songs and instrumentation that serves the lyric, you'll probably be disappointed. As the write-up in the Book observes, this album is just too big for its boots.

139. Crosby, Stills & Nash - Crosby, Stills & Nash (May 1969)

1. Suite: Judy Blue Eyes

2. Marrakesh Express

3. Guinnevere

4. You Don't Have to Cry*

5. Pre-Road Downs

6. Wooden Ship

7. Lady of the Island*

8. Helplessly Hoping*

9. Long Time Gone

10. 49 Bye-Byes

***1/2

One of the things about undertaking this project is that it means I frequently have to listen to and engage with music I normally wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. I am no great fan of West Coast rock, and this is the sort of album that makes Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles seem wild and dangerous by comparison. There's an almost eerie perfection to the music, and I can't fault it on a technical level, but I also can't bring myself to give a shit about it.

There's a lot to admire, if you're that way inclined. The close harmonies are faultless, even if I tend to agree with Robert Christgau that they sound like they're being performed by a trio of castrati. The playing is impeccable, even if the bass is largely buried and the group only make occasional efforts to attempt anything approaching a decent groove. The lyrics are the sort of impressionistic confessional bullshit that people seem to eat up, but which I have little patience with (and quite a few of the songs are of that mansplaining, "girl you just don't get what it takes to really live" type that set my teeth on edge). The end result is basically just pleasant make-out music for annoying bohemians, a great soundtrack to smoking a joint and sitting around talking about what really matters, man! that never once threatens to harsh your buzz.

And look, there's a place for that sort of music in the world. I'm not condemning this album, and if you look at it purely as a work of craftsmanship it can't be faulted. I just don't like this sort of music. It is, quite frankly, anaemic. But it was also quite popular, and influential, and a lot of people like this kind of stuff. The odd thing is I actually quite like mellow, expertly crafted music. I think the problem might be that this stuff just exists in a region so far outside of my worldview that I can't really understand it as it was meant to be understood.

So, anyway. A very pretty, very well-made album of post-hippie nonsense. 

138. Credence Clearwater Revival - Bayou Country (January 1969)

1. Born on the Bayou*

2. Bootleg*

3. Graveyard Train

4. Good Golly Miss Molly

5. Penthouse Pauper

6. Proud Mary*

7. Keep On Chooglin'

***

As someone who grew up listening to classic rock radio, back in the good old days when stations like Gold FM still played music from before 1983, I of course have a fondness for CCR. Not enough to bother engaging with their albums much, but I enjoy their singles and have a mild respect for John Fogerty as a singer and songwriter. So it's good that this project is going to force me to listen to a bunch of their stuff. What isn't especially good is this album.

Don't get me wrong - there are some good songs here, and the approach and sound of CCR is a breath of fresh air after being pounded with self-indulgent acid rock for several albums now. The band have a simple, effective formula. Come up with a rock solid groove, and then have Fogerty growl and moan over the top of it. Mix in some nonsense about the Deep South to make it all sound mysterious and cool and swampy and "authentic" (even though the guys were from California). Throw in a Little Richard cover for good measure. It's a fun album. 

The problem is that a couple of songs on this album take the "groove and growl" formula to an extreme it can't support. "Graveyard Train" is literally just a single bass line and a plodding drum beat. It lasts eight minutes. The lyrics, about ghosts or something, are kind of cool, but the song is monotonous. And "Keep On Chooglin'" is just terrible. Even the title is annoying. It would probably go over well live, but on the album it left me cold. Throw in the Albert King-esque "Penthouse Pauper" and that's three mediocre songs on a seven song album. 

The other stuff, though, is really pretty cool. Of course everyone knows "Proud Mary". It kicks arse. The cover of "Good Golly Miss Molly" is solid, even if it doesn't really add anything to the original. The songs that really got my attention, though, are "Born on the Bayou" and "Bootleg". They're built around driving, minimalist grooves, feature a propulsive rhythm section, and are generally awesome. I guess part of why this album didn't wow me that much is just because those first two songs sound so cool and vital, and killing the momentum with the ponderous "Graveyard Train" is a mistake the album can't really come back from. 

This is a good, if minor, album, and I know that CCR would go on to bigger and better things. At this point in their career, though, they were basically just the world's best bar band. Except for "Proud Mary". That song still sounds like nothing else. 

137. Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica (June 1969)

1. Frownland

2. The Dust Blows Forward 'n the Dust Blows Banck

3. Dachau Blues*

4. Ella Guru

5. Hair Pie: Bake 1

6. Moonlight on Vermont*

7. Pachuco Cadaver*

8. Bills Corpse

9. Sweet Sweet Bulbs

10. Neon Meate Dream of a Octofish

11. China Pig

12. My Human Gets Me Blues

13. Dali's Car

14. Hair Pie: Bake 2

15. Pena

16. Well

17. When Big Joan Sets Up

18. Fallin' Ditch

19. Sugar 'n Spikes

20. Ant Man Bee

21. Orange Claw Hammer

22. Wild Life

23. She's Too Much for My Mirrror

24. Hobo Chang Ba

25. The Blimp (Mousetrareplica)

26. Steal Softly thru Snow

27. Old Fart at Play

28. Veteran's Day Poppy

****

There's a quote from John Cage - something to the effect of "Finnegan's Wake is a book I greatly admire but have never read". In a lot of ways, I feel like Trout Mask Replica is the Finnegan's Wake of albums. It's immensely important, people have been debating its merits and impact for ages, and the average person has never actually gotten through the whole thing. And truth be told, you don't really need to listen to this whole album. Pretty much every trick and innovation it has to show you is present in the first side, which also contains the two best songs. Hell, really all you need to know is that this album exists, and that it basically throws every idea about what makes for listenable guitar music out the window. The music here has been incredibly influential, and loads of bands have expanded upon Trout Mask Replica's jagged, atonal skronk to produce music of their own which is far easier to digest. But the sheer abnormality of this album is its raison d'étre, and while you could die happy never hearing "Hobo Chang Ba", this album is, I think, worth experiencing and engaging with. As opposed to Finnegan's Wake, which is really only worth reading if you're like me and want to justify possessing a degree in Literature when you've wound up working as a cleaner. 

I think this album probably worked better on vinyl. It's not really meant to be listened to all in one go, I think. It would be better to pick and choose between sides, listen to twenty minutes here and there, and just sort of dip into this music. That said, playing Trout Mask Replica through from start to finish can be an enjoyable experience. I remember when I first bought this album, over twenty years ago, I was drawn in by the allure that surrounds it. Of course I found it baffling, and after listening to the CD once put it away somewhere and promptly forgot about it. But I've come back to it now and then over the years, and listening to it through a few times for this project something really clicked. At times it sounds like senseless noodling, but after a while the various guitar lines and odd time signatures click, and Beefheart's fractured poetry takes on a kind of surreal resonance. I wouldn't sit and listen to it through on headphones, but it's great to have on around the house.

You could be forgiven, listening to this for the first time, for thinking it was all made up on the spot. But this music was tightly composed and obsessively rehearsed. In fact the conditions under which this music was created were infamously cult-like. Beefheart locked his musicians in a house, psychologically dominated them, and at one point allegedly threw a guy down a flight of stairs. The musicians rehearsed for twelve hours a day. If you play the guitar, you'll appreciate how difficult it would be to replicate this music, but apparently the Magic Band could do just that. It's a bit sad, really - I encountered a quote once from a member of the band where he observed something along the lines of "Never have people suffered so much for so little reward". And really, if I spent months living on soy beans and playing till my fingers bled and the end result was "China Pig" I'd be a bit miffed, too. But then again there are minor classics like the anti-war song "Dachau Blues", the sprawling "Moonlight on Vermont", the groovy "Pachuco Cadaver", and the surreal song-story "Old Fart at Play". These are all pretty great songs. Personally, I think this is another double album that should have been paired down to a single disk of the best material, but the sheer excess of the enterprise is sort of the point. The Magic Band mine every possible variation from the formula they're working with here, and while the results aren't always all that memorable you can't ever say you're not getting your money's worth.

Well I've gone and written a post as long, rambling and weird as the album it deals with, and I haven't even said everything I wanted to. You should definitely listen to Trout Mask Replica, though. It's bizarre, rambling, surreal and more often that not very annoying, but it's not quite like anything else you'll ever hear. 

136. Neil Young with Crazy Horse - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (May 1969)

1. Cinnamon Girl*

2. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

3. Round & Round (It Won't Be Long)*

4. Down by the River*

5. The Losing End

6. Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets)

7. Cowgirl in the Sand

****

I'm switching to a 5-star rating system, because if I'm being honest I don't really understand letter grades. I'm Australian! We don't use them here! I suppose I could go with a percentage system (which we do use), with grades of Credit through High Distinction. But no.

This is easily one of the most important guitar albums ever recorded. The attention getters - the sprawling "Down by the River" and "Cowgirl in the Sand" - feature hypnotic grooves and skronky, one note guitar solos unlike anything else we've had at this point. The big, dumb power chord riff on "Cinnamon Girl" is timeless. The playing on these tracks is angular, rambling, and somewhat atonal, and it's kind of a new language for the electric guitar - something that moves away from the blues predominant at the time. 

The great thing about Young, though, is that he's not just some oddball experimentalist. He has a great grasp of a catchy (if peculiar) pop song, and the tracks on this album are all incredibly listenable. "Cinnamon Girl" could almost be considered a punk rock song (or at least, has a riff worthy of early Stooges), but it's followed by the mellow country rock of "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere", which leads into the beautiful and haunting folk rock number "Round & Round". Side two features more country rock, and "Running Dry" shifts from the guitar-centric nature of things with the introduction of a fiddle. 

The most enduring numbers, though, are the lengthy jams that close both sides. These songs were both written while Young had a fever, and then recorded more-or-less live with no overdubs and spliced together from a few different takes. The results are a pair of songs that are hallucinatory and hypnotic. Guitarist Danny Whitten provides rambling grooves over which Young's fragile vocals soar, and Young's tense bursts of lead guitar are a lesson in minimalism to every bloated guitar hero out there. 

The "live in the studio" feel also gives these songs a great sense of spontaneity. Apparently there was virtually no rehearsal, and most of the songs were captured in one or two takes. So the album has a loose, jazzy feel to it. It could certainly be more polished, but the ramshackle, "lightning in a bottle" feel is a large part of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere's charm. 

So, no bad songs and four great ones. This isn't peak Young - he'd release albums like After the Gold Rush and On the Beach, after all - but in its best moments it's mesmerising. 

135. The Mothers of Invention - We're Only in It for the Money (March 1968)

1. Are You Hung Up?

2. Who Needs the Peace Corps?*

3. Concentration Moon

4. Mom & Dad

5. Telephone Conversation

6. Bow Tie Daddy

7. Harry, You're a Beast

8. What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body?

9. Absolutely Free

10. Flower Punk

11. Hot Poop

12. Nasal Retentive Calliope Music

13. Let's Make the Water Turn Black

14. The Idiot Bastard Son

15. Lonely Little Girl

16. Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance*

17. What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body? (Reprise)

18. Mother People

19. The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny*

B+

This is another of those "I guess you just had to be there" albums, I think. It's a good album, with some clever songs and some impressively strange and challenging music, but I think to really get it you'd have to immerse yourself far more deeply in the social climate of the late 1960s than I have any intention of ever doing. 

The big sticking point for a lot of people, I'd imagine, is the album's structure. A parody of concept albums and psychedelic excess, it consists of a variety of short, satirical songs intercut with music concrete, whispered monologues, electronic mucking about, and bursts of noise rock that rival early Boredoms for sheer oddness and abrasiveness. Still, this is kind of cool - listening to the album the first time through is sort of like falling down the rabbit hole. You never really know what's going to happen next, and while it's a frequently jarring experience it's also a great deal of fun. The sudden changes and weird asides are so frequent that after a while they seem to become the point of the album, and largely negate the possibility of almost anybody finding this album a comforting listen. The result is an album the simple existence of which becomes a political statement, even before you start digging into the lyrics.

As to those lyrics? Well, Frank Zappa wrote "Trouble Every Day". This album doesn't feature anything as complex and incisive as that song, unfortunately. I've encountered criticisms of Zappa that deride him as sophomoric and misogynistic, and this album is certainly open to both charges. "Harry, You're a Beast" is an attack on the vacuousness of American womanhood that ends with a rape played for laughs (although I should qualify that statement by saying that it doesn't condone said rape). I'm not one for edgy comedy for the sake of being edgy, and it's kind of unfortunate that people of a certain time thought these kind of jokes were cutting satire. 

But putting that one song aside, there's a lot of good stuff here. The standout is "Who Needs the Peace Corps", which is about a youth setting out to have the quintessential hippie experience, which has become standardised and commodified to the point where he can plan the whole thing out in advance. As the title states, it contrasts the youth's expectations of the hippie experience - basically, to go to San Francisco and get loaded and fuck around - with people who are reacting to the problems of the world by actually taking concrete steps to help people and effect social change. Another good song is "Flower Punk", which is about someone planning to start a psychedelic band so they can sell records, make a tonne of money, and go into real estate. And then there's "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance", which is basically a monologue from the POV of some exponent of peace and love about how we'll conquer all the evil in the world, that suddenly shifts to an observation about how some people are unfortunately so mired in poverty that they can't afford fashionable trousers - but it's OK, because one day we'll progress to a point where you can take your clothes off when you dance.

I have little experience of genuine hippies (thankfully - what little I've had has been more than enough), but I think the focus in this album on the commercialisation and commodification of youth culture in general is what keeps it relevant. I think back to when I was in my twenties, when hipsterism became a global phenomenon and people were obsessed with listening to the right music, wearing the right clothes, taking the right drugs and so forth. Of course, a lot of people were just kooks with far-Left views, but I genuinely knew people who researched the phenomenon so that they could fit into it. It was pretty depressing. I even tried to be cool, once or twice. It did not end well.

In the end, I guess this album is sort of baffling, and frequently kind of annoying, and I probably won't listen to it again. But it's a meticulously crafted work of art, and manages to balance a critique of phony lefties with an astute understanding of the repressive social conditions which created them. It's also pretty amusing that such a defiantly non-commercial work would be titled We're Only in It for the Money, only for it to go on and become a modest commercial success. I think the electronic stuff has probably proven most influential over time, but it's a smartly written album with some good points to make. It is also, at times, borderline unlistenable. But then again, making the listener uncomfortable, and resisting easy categorisation, is kind of its point. 

134. The Beatles - The Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album) - (November 1968)

1. Back in the U.S.S.R.

2. Dear Prudence 

3. Glass Onion

4. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

5. Wild Honey Pie

6. The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill

7. While My Guitar Gently Weeps*

8. Happiness Is a Warm Gun

9. Martha My Dear

10. I'm So Tired

11. Blackbird*

12. Piggies

13. Rocky Raccoon

14. Don't Pass Me By

15. Why Don't We Do It in the Road

16. I Will

17. Julia*

18. Birthday

19. Yer Blues

20. Mother Nature's Son

21. Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

22. Sexy Sadie

23. Helter Skelter

24. Long, Long, Long

25. Revolution 1

26. Honey pie

27. Savoy Truffle

28. Cry Baby Cry

29. Revolution 9

30. Good Night

A-

You know, I usually listen to these albums a few times to get a feel for them. There's no way in hell I'm putting myself through this shit twice.

I like the Beatles. And I like a lot of the songs on this album. But The Beatles also includes some of the worst shit the Fab Four ever wrote. The four song run of dreadfulness that is "Glass Onion" through "Bungalow Bill" nearly broke me. I sat there with my head in my hands going "Please end". And that's the reason I'm only giving this an A-.

If you can make it past those four songs, though, The Beatles is pretty good. It's disappointing that the group never really expand upon the promise of Sgt Pepper's, though. Most of these songs were apparently written on acoustic guitar, and The Beatles features a more stripped-down style in terms of structure. Unfortunately, the simplified structure is offset by a whole heap of over-production. It seems like the group had reached a point where they felt they could do no wrong, where they were enamoured with all the new sounds possible in pop music, and so they drape every song here with countless unnecessary bits of arrangement and bury some pretty solid tunes. The result is an album featuring career highlights like the gentle "Blackbird", the strange and moving "Julia", and the truly epic "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", along side sonic nightmares like "Wild Honey Pie", "Piggies", and the infamous "Revolution 9".

Between these two extremes you have a lot of good, if mostly inconsequential, songs. This album shows real development for the group musically - The Beatles is one of the more important releases when it comes to an influence on punk and alternative rock, for example (check the manic "Birthday", for example). And the sheer scope of the album is pretty impressive. I guess I said once that it's inevitable that every great band will eventually release an incredibly self-indulgent double album. The Beatles is really the ne plus ultra of such things. But at the same time, the willingness to try anything, and the sheer range of styles and sounds, broke new ground for pop music. Other Beatles albums are a lot easier to like (and, to my mind, feature far better songs), but this is the one that really forces you to stand still and think about it as a piece of complex, challenging art. Until "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" comes along and makes you want to throw a shoe at the stereo. But then McCartney redeems himself with something fucking bizarre and wonderful like the proto-headbanger "Helter Skelter". I don't know.

Speaking of "Helter Skelter", I guess there's an elephant in the room. This album has since become infamous for inspiring Charles Manson to go off the deep end. If you haven't read it, the book Helter Skelter provides a fascinating overview of the case. The author makes an observation at one point that really sums up something about the Beatles (and, I guess, The Beatles). Listening to "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" (another great song, although the Breeders did it better), he wondered how Manson could interpret something that was clearly intended to be cheeky and sexual as a call to political violence. Especially when "Revolution 1" is explicitly against that sort of thing. It's been said a million times before, but people have really overthought the Beatles. People act like they're the be all and end all of music, like they have this profound wisdom to share with people. At least Lennon thought this was a bit silly - hence the satirical "Glass Onion", which was intended to gently rebuke fans for just this sort of obsessive misinterpretation of their music. 

George Martin has said that he personally though The Beatles would have worked better as a single album consisting of the strongest songs here. I agree that would make for a far better album. But at the same time I do like the sloppy mishmash that we actually got. It's strange, thrilling, at times unlistenable, but it's never boring. I'll defend Revolver as their peak with my dying breath, but The Beatles is a great deal of fun, and it's nice to see the biggest band of all time refusing to take themselves seriously. I just don't see how anyone could consider something with "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" on it one of the ten greatest albums ever released. 

133. The Byrds - Sweetheart of the Rodeo (August 1968)

1. You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

2. I Am a Pilgrim*

3. The Christian Life

4. You Don't Miss Your Water

5. You're Still on My Mind

6. Pretty Boy Floyd

7. Hickory Wind*

8. One Hundred Years from Now

9. Blue Canadian Rockies

10. Life in Prison

11. Nothing Was Delivered*

A-

More Byrds. More impeccably played and produced easy listening music for freaks. 

This album completely bombed when it came out, and it's not hard to see why. I mean, one of the quintessential psychedelic rock groups releasing an album of understated country music, all awash in pedal steel and elevated by the Byrds' trademark lovely harmonies? The hippies were baffled, and the country music establishment thought they were taking the piss. Time has been kind to this album, though. And that's fair, because it's really very good.

They call this "country rock". I guess because it has a slightly harder, beefier edge that traditional country, and sometimes the bass will kick in and the melody and rhythm will shift to a more rock-oriented sound. Then of course there are a couple of Dylan convers, which are all countried up but then the chorus on "Nothing Was Delivered" will kick in, for example, and suddenly your back listening to 5D or something. Most casual listeners, though, will probably just think of this album as country music. And while I'm not really familiar with most of the original versions of these songs, the cover of "Life in Prison" for example shows that the Byrds didn't always grasp exactly what made things work (this version completely lacks the bleak desperation of the Merle Haggard original). The result is a strange, transitional album - one that hasn't quite managed to shake 60s rock, but also hasn't quite developed into 70s country and country-rock.

What really does make this album work is the music. It's beautifully played and recorded, and the whole album has a lovely laid-back vibe to it. There are a lot of honky tonk sounds, lots and lots of pedal steel, forays into banjo and piano, and of course the vocal harmonies that the Byrds are best know for. The album is really deceptive for how simple and unassuming it is. Listening to it now, almost 60 years later, there's a lot that trickled down into country and rock music, and it doesn't seem startling so much as pretty and charming. At the time, of course, this was an incredibly bold step for a band to take, but nowadays you can just enjoy Sweetheart of the Rodeo for what it is - a very pretty, very well-played collection of well-chosen songs. 

132. Van Morrison - Astral Weeks (November 1968)

1. Astral Weeks

2. Beside You

3. Sweet Thing*

4. Cyprus Avenue

5. The Way Young Lovers Do*

6. Madame George*

7. Ballerina

8. Slim Slow Slider

B+

I don't think I've ever been so disappointed as I was the first time I listened to Astral Weeks. I was of course familiar with Morrison's singles (my dad was fond of playing his greatest hits), and kind of filed him away as a pretty good singer with a few fun songs. Then I heard "Sweet Thing", which captivated me. So of course I bought the album, put it on, and I think my reaction could best be summed up by the phrase "What the fuck is this shit?". 

Of course, this was over fifteen years ago. I've grown and changed a lot since then. But I'm still a cold-hearted cynic, and I still don't think this album is as amazing as people make out. 

Coming back to this album, the first time I listened to it for this post I couldn't get past Morrison's occasionally ear-splitting vocal delivery, and the sameness of the music. But there's a reason I always listen to these albums more than once, and getting up this morning and listening to Astral Weeks first thing with my cup of tea, I found it to be pretty good. Not "life changing", which a lot of people seem to consider it, but solid and occasionally brilliant. Though to be fair, this album came out almost sixty years ago. What Morrison is doing here has since been done as well or better by many, many musicians, and you can't really expect it to pack the punch it initially did. Unless I guess you've never heard a jazz, folk, or arty alternative rock album before, in which case I can certainly see why you'd go gaga over it.

Anyway, musically this album is pretty impressive. The style is a mix of folk, jazz and R&B, very loose and mostly improvised. Apparently Morrison played his musicians the songs once or twice on guitar, then locked himself away in a recording booth after telling them to play more or less what they wanted. This means that the music lacks the sheer studied complexity of a lot of jazz, but it also has a wonderfully spontaneous, loose quality. Unfortunately the jam session nature of the recording process also means that a lot of the songs sound more or less the same. Some people seem to enjoy this, viewing the album as one long song. I kind of got frustrated with waiting for choruses that never came, although the idea of building interest through tension and the layering of instruments rather than complex song structures is a clever one. There's also some excellent use of a string section, which apparently Morrison was deeply annoyed by the addition of, but which I think is vital for expanding the album's sonic palette.

The lyrics are another thing you'll probably either love or hate. A lot of people seem to throw around the term "Stream of Consciousness" when talking about Astral Weeks, but that's only partly true. The lyrics are more free form and impressionistic than anything. This is hardly Virginia Woolf's The Waves. And, truth be told, most of the songs are kind of vague and irritating. There's only so many times a guy can talk about rain before it gets annoying. Then again, Morrison was in his early twenties (and younger) when he wrote these songs. For someone of the age he was, the lyrics are quite mature and complex. Most of the songs are about love, about the distance between people, and about standing on the cusp of adulthood. And they're all fine. Just not mind blowing or anything.

There are, however, three songs that really stand out. "Sweet Thing", of course, is a beautiful love song, as well as one of the most structured songs here. "The Way Young Lovers Do" I quite like because, while still vague and abstract, it's the most conventionally "Van Morrison" song here, and features a actual, catchy chorus and a pretty great horn section. The real surprise for me, though, was "Madame George". This is the song on the album where impressionism meets story telling, a moving portrait of an Irish drag queen and the sad, strange minutiae of their life. It's a pretty, sad, odd little song, and I was very pleased to encounter it. 

I feel bad for talking down an album so beloved by so many people, but at the same time everything I've read indicates that Van Morrison himself doesn't particularly care for Astral Weeks, and can't understand why everyone likes it so much. After a bit of effort on my part, I can understand why everyone likes it so much. It's just not the sort of thing I'm ever likely to be floored by.

131. The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle (April 1968)

1. Care of Cell 44*

2. A Rose for Emily

3. Maybe After He's Gone

4. Beechwood Park

5. Brief Candles

6. Hung Up on a Dream

7. Changes

8. I Want Her. She Wants Me

9. This Will Be Our Year*

10. Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914)

11. Friends of Mine

12. Time of the Season*

A

I feel like I've hopped in a time machine and travelled back to my second year at university. At the time, the combination of personal freedom, a decent internet connection, and spending a lot of time on the internet sifting through blogs, Pitchfork and Pop Matters, meant that I was constantly exploring music new and old. This is one of those albums that struck me at the time, and while I rarely listen to it these days it's still a personal favourite.

Musically, it's all quite difficult to categorise. The Zombies started out as a beat combo, as so many did, but didn't really manage to achieve much success. So they basically said "fuck it", and recorded an album of complex chamber pop, then broke up. Looking at the cover, you might think this is all hippy-drippy sunshine pop, and it's true that the most famous songs here (the ones that pop up in TV shows and advertisements) are glorious, up beat numbers. But there's a vein of darkness running through this music that keeps it grounded, and gives it a substance lacking in your typical pop album. I mean, "Care of Cell 44" is about someone counting the days until their beloved gets out of prison. "A Rose for Emily" may seem like just a sad ballad about a spinster, but it's actually based on Faulkner's classic Southern Gothic short story of the same name (which you should really read if you haven't - I won't spoil the ending but it has a great twist). "Brief Candles" explores the way an intense romantic experience can gradually fade into background noise the further you get from it. And then there's "A Butcher's Tale". Sandwiched between to glorious feelgood numbers, it's a truly harrowing account of life in the trenches, sung over a demonic organ vamp. Had cooler heads prevailed, it probably would have been left off the album. Which I'm glad it wasn't, as it's one of my favourite songs.

Stylistically, this album is hard to peg. From a modern perspective, it kind of sounds like eclectic indie pop. That type of music didn't exist in 1968, though. The song structures seem to owe a debt to the Kinks' more mannered works, with odd time changes and verses and chorus that sound like they're from different songs thrown in for good measure. There's also an obvious Beatles influence (think something like "Penny Lane"). The really great thing, though, is the vocals. Singer Colin Blundstone has a pure, smooth and almost feminine voice. And there are glorious multi-part harmonies throughout, some of which rival the Beach Boys for sheer prettiness and complexity. 

So really, this is a must have. It's complex musically, incredibly sophisticated and literate, but at the same time very pretty and fun. The stylistic range also means it's hard to get tired of it. A lot of bands have mined this particular sound since, but the Zombies really caught lightning in a bottle here. 

130. Scott Walker - Scott 2 (March 1968)

1. Jackie*

2. Best of Both Worlds

3. Black Sheep Boy

4. The Amorous Humphrey Plugg*

5. Next*

6. The Girls from the Streets

7. Plastic Palace People

8. Wait Until Dark

9. The Girls and the Dogs

10. Windows of the World

11. The Bridge

12. Come Next Spring

A-

This is an unusual album. Which isn't really surprising if you know anything about Scott Walker. But even so, this album stands at a crossroads. Stylistically, and in terms of content, it's a very old fashioned pop album. Lush yet tasteful orchestral arrangements and a mix of covers with a few originals thrown in. If not for the lyrical content (and the sheer quality) it could be mistaken for any number of sixties crooner albums currently clogging up charity shop milk crates across the world. 

What really sets this album apart is the song choices and the delivery. Walker has an odd voice - at once technically excellent and archly theatrical, with a tinge of bombast. The arrangements supporting his vocals are almost uniformly of a dark, slightly sinister type. And the songs themselves! Well - let's just say there are a lot of prostitutes mentioned. The result is a sort of grand, decadent album chronicling the dark side of life in the classiest way possible. Which must have been odd for fans of the Walker Brothers still hoping for another "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore".

The lyrics are uniformly excellent. The standout tracks are two Jacques Brel reinterpretations. "Jackie" is a galloping song about a man dreaming of every possible life he could lead and all the glory it would entail, but who ultimately just wants to bum around with low-lifes. "Next" is harrowing. We've seen it before back on the Jacques Brel album we had a while ago, but here in excellently translated English it's fucking bleak (if you're wondering, it's about the psychological trauma of having been forced to lose ones virginity in a mobile army brothel during the war). However, this album is noteworthy for showing Walker's development as a songwriter, and his originals are pretty good, too. My favourite is "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg", which is a musically gorgeous song about a repressed man who escapes the drudgery of children and work by wandering the red light district, imagining himself drowning in a sea of kisses. "The Girls from the Street" is basically what it says on the tin, and "Plastic Palace People" is an impressionistic song about slightly sinister bohemians.

The rest of the songs, a mix of covers, are kind of all over the place. There isn't a bad song on the album, but it's odd to suddenly veer from the ballad "Best of Both Worlds" to the melodramatised country of "Black Sheep Boy". And, as is often the case with old pop albums, side two can't really match the quality of side one. Still, this is a really good album. Very much a "late night with half a pack of smokes and a bottle of red" sort of affair. 

It's not really hard to see why Walker became such an important cult figure in music. His refusal to cater to contemporary tastes (this was released right in the heart of the psychedelic 60s, after all), coupled with his willingness to take some pretty odd risks, means that he manages to be both exciting and frustrating in exactly the way you want a slightly obscure, "difficult" artist to be. His music is as much about raising possibilities as it is about providing concrete artistic statements. This becomes far more evident on Scott 4 (which we'll be getting to in a while), which opens with, of all things, a bizarre art piece recapping the plot of The Seventh Seal, and features a truly gorgeous song about the dangers of Stalinism, of all things. And then there's something like Tilt, which is just fucking weird. 

Well this album wasn't really new to me, but it was nice to revisit it after a long absence. If you want something grand and eloquent and strange it's certainly worth checking out. Just maybe don't play it around any small children.

129. Caetano Veloso - Caetano Veloso (1968)

1. Tropicalia*

2. Clarice

3. No Dia em que Eu Vim-Me Embora

4. Alegria, Alegria*

5. Onde Andaras

6. Anunciação

7. Superbacana

8. Paisagem Util

9. Clara (feat. Gal Costa)

10. Soy loco por ti, America*

11. Ave-Maria

12. Eles

A

Another Brazilian album which I can't hope to do justice to. The biggest problem is of course language. Thankfully, we live in an era when I can google translations of these songs. That doesn't really help, since lyrics are about how they're sung, and a literal translation can't convey that. Also, Veloso seems to have peppered his songs with countless references to pop culture Brazilian and otherwise, which means there's a whole weight of meaning lying in these songs that I can't hope to grasp.

Putting all that aside, this is a great album. The sound is hard to explain. At its core, it's Latin pop, but it's all been subtly mutated by psychedelic pop and rock from around the world. The result is something thrillingly modern, but also defiantly Brazilian. The rhythms are Brazilian, and there's the tasteful string arrangements and the like that one associates with the classier sort of samba, but there are also fuzzed out guitars, odd instrumentations, elements of studio trickery and forays into a more rock-oriented sound. Through all this wind Veloso's understated, vaguely feminine vocals, which can swing from tender to declamatory in the course of a single song. As for the lyrics, they manage to be political in outlook more than explicit content. As with Os Mutantes, Veloso is pushing a mindset and a worldview rather than openly attacking anybody. It's telling that he wound-up making enemies of the far Left (who thought he was selling out to American culture) and the far Right (who considered him an enemy of the state, and wound up first imprisoning and then exiling him).

All of which sounds pretty heavy, but since I don't speak Portuguese my main take-away from this album was that it's a pretty, quirky album of ultra-sophisticated pop. Tucked down here at the bottom of continental Australia, it's the start of Winter and things are (by my country's standards, at least) getting very grey and cold. No matter how long I run the heater, or how many cups of hot tea I drink, I have to accept that I'm going to spend the next three to four months with cold toes. So a buoyant album of tropical pop was exactly what I needed. 

128. Jeff Beck - Truth (July 1968)

1. Shapes of Things*

2. Let Me Love You

3. Morning Dew

4. You Shook Me

5. Old Man River*

6. Greensleeves

7. Rock My Plimsoul

8. Beck's Bolero*

9. Blues De Luxe

10. I Ain't Superstitious

B

With the title "Truth", and that arty cover, one could be forgiven for expecting something strange and mystical. Instead, this is mostly a straight blues album, although a very well-performed one. Jeff Beck is a great guitarist (at this point in the List, I'd rank him second only to Hendrix), and the rest of the band are great, too. Rod Stewart provides vocals, and while he obviously hasn't quite found his voice at this point, there are glimmers of the guy who'd eventually unleash "Maggie May" on an unsuspecting populace. 

Really, the amount of talent present here can't help result in the album being a bit of a let down. "Shapes of Things" is an amazing, exciting opener, somehow mixing the Who at their most anthemic with British Blues and pointing the way forward for 70s rock. But at the same time there's a gentler, I guess more feminine quality that means that songs like "Old Man River" and "Greensleeves" don't seem out of place. And then there's the instrumental "Beck's Bolero", which just flat out rocks.

But then the rest of the album is just, you know, old blues songs. Well-performed blues songs, I guess (the sound of this album is gorgeous), but nothing to get excited about. It doesn't really help that the group take bog-standard blues, trick it out with a bunch of new-fangled studio techniques, and then have Rod Stewart sing it even though he's not really suited to the material. In attempting to update the sound of the blues, they rob it of the vitality that made it work in the first place. 

These are all personal gripes, though. If you like British blues then this is a fine album (certainly a hell of a lot better than that Bluesbreakers album we had a while back). And there are a few really great songs here. I just don't much care for this sort of music. And why call an album "Truth", when the truth you're telling is "Oh baby you shook me", or "When you walk, you shake like a willow tree"? Plus that piano solo on "Blues De Luxe" sucks so hard I took a point off just for it. 

Anyway, your mileage may vary.