ITT: /mu/ in 1970
WTF is with the new Dylan album? It's just a bunch of random garbage. Is he officially washed up?
>>128020117this board needs a vinyl general
SOMETHING IN THE WAY SHE MOOOOVEESSS MEEEEEEE
>>128020184
>>128020208Congrats, George, you get your token hit that the braintrust let you have out of pity and may it be covered by everyone and their dog.
JUST LIKE METHEY LONG TO BECLOSE TO YOU
Made the mistake of clearing my browser cache/cookies so I have to wait 120 seconds to post.
MAYBE I'M AMAZED AT THE THINGS YOU SAID
Has anyone else heard of Nick Drake?Just me?Groovy, I prefer it when only I know the musicians that I listen to.He's dead now so his name will fade into nothingness too.
>>128020142when's he gonna do a song about Vietnam already? it's been how many years now?
Steve Stills always projects an effortless swing and his tradeoffs with Eric Clapton on "Go Back Home" are classic. There's only one thing that remains undefined--oh wait, it's the songs. C
>Greil Marcus wrote in his original review of Self-Portrait in Rolling Stone simply "What is this shit?" RSM founder and chief editor Jan Wenner subsequently retracted the one-liner with a glowing appraisal of the album.[3]
>>128020666he put Dylan on his short list of artists who were never allowed to get bad reviews
>>128020531>>128020464>picture for ants
For over-fifties and Ringomaniacs only--the reports that he recorded this set of standards for his mums appears to be true. B-
>>128020736always assumed it was just because Ringo was always really a jazz/big band guy at heart
IMPEACH NIXON
AOTY:Burnt Weeny SandwichWeasels Ripped My FleshChunga's Revenge
>>128020790
How do you feel about Jefferson starships new album? And why do they still use the Jefferson name when no airplane member is apart of the band?
Bullshit necromancy? Yes, bullshit necromancy. E
>>128020879Shut up Bob.
>>128020117It's peakhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL0xci_rGXs
While David Crosby yowls about assassinations, Young divulges darker agonies without even bothering to make them explicit. Here the gaunt pain of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere fills out a little--the voice softer, the jangling guitar muted behind a piano. Young's melodies--every one of them--are impossible to dismiss. He can write "poetic" lyrics without falling flat on his metaphor even when the subject is ecology or crumbling empire. And despite his acoustic tenor, he rocks plenty. A real rarity: pleasant and hard at the same time. A+
>>128020941It's not quite an A plus mostly because of track 4.
Alright, everyone, time to lay off the Something covers already especially coming from geriatric dipshits who peaked before Elvis was even around.
>>128020941Title track is trying a little over hard to emulate Dylan's songwriting tbqh.
>>128020117This hippie chick invited me to a demonstration on the campus commons but idk the National Guard are here and they seem pretty pissed off. If I say no I won't get laid should I go?
>>128021040hope you get shot, long haired America hatin' vermin
Of the five (or seven, I forget) memorable tunes here, N's "Our House" is a charming but cloying evocation of puppy domesticity, while both N's sanctimonious "Teach Your Children" and C's tragicomic "Almost Cut My Hair" document how the hippie movement has corrupted our young people. S half scores twice and in-law M provides the climax. Which leaves Y's "Helpless" as the group's one unequivocal success this time out. It's also Y's guitar--with help from S and hired hands T and R--that make the music work, not those blessed harmonies. And Y wasn't even supposed to be in on this. B-
F
>>128021121Whose next? I'm betting on Keith Richards
What on Earth is happening to me? It must be that damned billboard. Or maybe I'm finally starting to appreciate (note I said appreciate) their combination of youthful energy, camaraderie, and beatsmanship. After all, rock-and-roll has always been described as "loud" and its rhythms as "heavy." And at least Mark Farner doesn't aspire to bluesmanship. B-
Black Sabbath made me SATANIC! HAIL SATAN!
Well heck.
>>128021170Every critic in the early 70s--"Derf this band has a mostly working class fanbase therefore bad."
>>128020764This, Cuckgau is a mean spirited and just generally awful person.
>>128021170it's understated how much Black Sabbath stole from them. think track one sounds like War Pigs? you probably guessed right.
>>128020939Canned Heat are fucking great, real music.
>>128021009weird guy buying patti page records, what are you my mom?
>>128021275it was on his aunt's shelf i guess next to The Sound of Music
>>128021170This was the last album where Mark had a good guitar tone before turning into buttrock.
>>128021245even stole an album title from a Grand Funk song
>>128021294The sound of music is actually good if you smoke a joint before you listen to it.
If the great blues guitarists can make their instruments cry out like human voices, it's only fitting that Robert Plant should make his voice galvanize like an electric guitar. I've always approved theoretically of the formula that pits the untiring freak intensity of that voice against Jimmy Page's repeated low-register fuzz riffs, and here they really whip it into shape. Plant is overpowering even when Page goes to his acoustic, as he does to great effect on several surprisingly folky (not to mention folk bluesy) cuts. No drum solos, either. Heavy. B+
>>128021009all the old fucks did Yesterday/Something covers because they had a straightforward melody that was digestible to them
>>128020631what is this guy's beef with Stephen Stills anyway?
it's only 19 years until Taylor Swift is born. enjoy it while it lasts.
>>128021369Probably has a drinking problem and hates that based Steve gets fucking wrecked every day and still puts out great music. Where's the Village Voice nerd's album?
Now I regret all the times I've used words like "power" and "energy" to describe rock and roll, because this is what such rhetoric should have been saved for. Shall I compare it to an atom bomb? a wrecker's ball? a hydroelectric plant? Language wasn't designed for the job. Yet despite its sonic impact I find that the primary appeal of the music isn't physical--I have to be in a certain mood of desperate abandon before it reaches my body. It always interests me intellectually, though--with its repetiveness beyond the call of incompetence and its solitary new-thing saxophone, this is genuinely "avant-garde" rock. The proof is the old avant-garde fallacy of "L.A. Blues"--trying to make art about chaos by reproducing same. A-
>>128021369btw Cuckgau said in 1970 he was dating this self-described radical feminist and she was raped outside their apartment and then he had sex with her later that night and said he regrets doing that.
You promised you'd end the war, not bomb Cambodia, Tricky Dick!
>>128021455get a haircut and a job, hippie
>>128021455Nixon is a good guy he's just misunderstood.
(side one, cut one) Q: Mommy, what's a Funkadelic? A: Someone from Carolina who discovered eternity on acid and vowed to contain it in a groove. (side two, cut four) Q: Mommy, what is soul? A: The ham hock in your cornflakes. You get high marks for your questions, guys. C
They have a great, even a grand audience. But an audience and an album aren't the same thing, no, not at all. C-
Jon Landau wrote to suggest I give this a D, but that's pique. Conceptually, this is a brilliant album which is organized, I think, by two central ideas. First that "self" is most accurately defined (and depicted) in terms of the artifacts--in this case pop tunes and folk songs claimed as personal property and semispontaneous renderings of past creations frozen for posterity on a piece of tape and (perhaps) even a couple of songs one has written oneself--to which one responds. Second, that the people's music is the music people like, Mantovani strings and all. But in order for a concept to work it has to be supported musically--that is, you have to listen. I don't know anyone, even vociferous supporters of this album, who plays more than one side at a time. I don't listen to it at all . The singing is not consistently good, though it has its moments, and the production--for which I blame Bob Johnston, though Dylan has to be listed as a coconspirator--ranges from indifferent to awful. It is possible to use strings and soprano choruses well, but Johnston has never demonstrated the knack. Other points: it's overpriced, the cover art is lousy, and it sounds good on WMCA. C+
>>128021388who?
>>128021417Iggy was convinced to get up and jump around in the booth to recreate their live sound better here since his performance on the debut album was kinda flat (there's photos of him recording it, he just sat in a stool)
>>128020879Awesome new band and the other album they put out this year is even better. Something real special about this one, more than any psychedelic act I've heard in years
>>128021597ALL THESE TIRED HORSES IN THE SUNHOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GET ANY RIDING DONE?
If you can feature the great candy-stripes grown up, then this is far more satisfying, I suspect, than Smile ever would have been. The medium-honest sensibility is a little more personal now, soulful in its Waspy way. Maybe they weren't really surfers or hot rodders, but they were really Southern Californians, and that's what their music was about. It still is, too, only now they sing about water, broken marriages, and the love of life. Still a lot of fun, too. A-
>>128021661it's about all the dirty unwashed hippies laying on his front porch
>>128021597He wanted his annoying groupies to fuck off for a while and quit bugging him about not singing about about the Kent State Shootings.
Melodic. B
Ian Anderson carries himself with a principled arrogance that has very little to do with talent or concrete artistic accomplishments. He does however have one great gift, he knows how to deploy riffs--nearly every track on this lp is constructed around a good one, sometimes two, and after 3-4 listens you'll have practically the entire thing memorized. But I defy you to recall any lyrics--for all his wordcraft and careful en-un-ci-at-ion, Anderson creates the impression that he either can't or won't care about his principle subject matter, which I take to be love/privacy/friendship or something along those lines. I'm sure I hear at least one satirical exegesis on the generation gap, though. B-
>>128021902>Ian Anderson carries himself with a principled arrogance that has very little to do with talent or concrete artistic accomplishments.so much projection
Yeah I was at the Garden when this was recorded and had a blast, but there is not one song on here, including the two Chuck Berry covers, that doesn't exist in better form elsewhere. B
>>128021902That flute drives you nuts after a while.
As a rule, American songwriting is banal, prolix, and virtually solipsistic when it wants to be honest, merely banal when it doesn't. Newman's truisms--always concise, never confessional--are his own. Speaking through recognizable American grotesques, he comments here on the generation gap (doomed), incendiary violence (fucked up but sexy), male and female (he identifies with the males, most of whom are losers and weirdos), racism (he's against it, but he knows its seductive power), and alienation (he's for it). Newman's music counterposes his indolent drawl--the voice of a Jewish kid from L.A. who grew up on Fats Domino--against an array of instrumental settings that on this record range from rock to bottleneck to various shades of jazz. And because his lyrics abjure metaphor and his music recalls commonplaces without repeating them, he can get away with the kind of calculated effects that destroy more straightforward meaning-mongers. A perfect album. A+
Of course the lyrics are often crude psychotherapeutic cliches. That's just the point, because they're also true, and John wants to make clear that right now truth is far more important than subtlety, taste, art, or anything else. At first the music sounds crude, too, stark and even perfunctory after the Beatles' free harmonies and double guitars. But the real music of the album inheres in the way John's greatest vocal performance, a complete tour of rock timbre from scream to whine, is modulated electronically--echoed, filtered, double-tracked, with two vocals sometimes emanating in a synthesis from between the speakers and sometimes dialectically separated. Which means that John is such a media artist that even when he's fervently shedding personas and eschewing metaphor he knows, perhaps instinctively, that he communicates most effectively through technological masks and prisms. A
>>128022019OH RANDY MY MANCRUSH YES PLEASE CUM IN MY TIGHT LITTLE ASSHOLE
Believe it or not, the, er, suite on the first side is easier to take than the, gawd, songs on the second. Yeah, they do leave the singing to an anonymous semi-classical chorus, and yeah, they probably did get the horns for the fanfares at the same hiring hall. But at least the suite provides a few of the hypnotic melodies that made Ummagumma such an admirable record to fall asleep to. D+
This is either a hilarious takeoff on circa-1964 folk music, complete with sensitive vibrato, hard little guitar parts, and very moderate good intentions, or--more likely, unlikely as it may seem--one of the most atrocious records ever made. Perfectly awful, right down to liner notes and cover portrait--Huntington, a dyed-looking Minnesotan blonde who appears very reluctant to celebrate birthdays, is wearing a red minidress. Noted primarily as a Remarkable Occurrence, which I trust someone at United Artists is already investigating. Pick: the apparently unsarcastic "Right to Poverty." E
Better you should graft bebop harmonies and solos onto a rock (or even artrock) trunk for your jazz fusion than arrange rock and not-so-rock songs for a Stan-Kenton-goes-to-Nevada bouquet. If only Edgar didn't try and conceal his mild-mannered vocal tendencies behind that shriek. And if only he scatted and soloed like a brother. C
This candidly Stonesish studio quasi-hype is dutifully class-conscious, but it bears about as much relation to the prison homosexuality alluded to in the ads as an aspirin dramatization does to open heart surgery. That is, lest my rhetoric confuse you: this is not a record about bugger-rape. Docked two notches for misrepresenting itself. D+
>>128022054>track 3*tips fedora*
Ginsberg's singing--crude, human, touching, superb--is an antidote to the temptation to transform Blake into artsong. Tricky melodies and virtuoso accompaniment would subvert the material. And this material is too good for that. A-
Folk-rock is a doubly willful idea in England--our bluegrass and acoustic blues are closer to rock than their Child ballads. And Fairport's eleven-minute version of "A Sailor's Life" doesn't come up to the three Dylan songs (one in French) or Richard Thompson's quite un-English "Cajun Woman." But they do inject a droning energy into the material that suggests real synthesis. Thanks be to Thompson's guitar, Dave Mattacks's drums, and Sandy Denny's fondness for booze. A-
Of course they don't sing as pretty as CSNY--prettiness would trivialize these songs. The sparse harmonies and hard-won melodies go with lyrics that make all the American connections claimed by San Francisco's counterculture; there's a naturally stoned bemusement in their good times, hard times, high times, and lost times that joins the fatalism of the physical frontier with the wonder of the psychedelic one. And the changeable rhythms hold out the promise of Uncle John's Band, who might just save us if we'll only call the tune. Inspirational Verse: "Think this through with me." A
>>128021009https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRHhOITqz6wIt's an ok cover of "Something" but doesn't get near Peggy Lee's.
I hate to sound like a fuddy-duddy, but the best moment here is unaccompanied--"Nobody Loves Me but My Mother," all 1:26 of it, with King singing and playing piano. B.B. King, that is--most of the piano here is by Carole King, who sounds fine, as do Leon Russell and Paul Harris. Even the strings and horns avoid disaster--B.B. goes pop with real dignity. But he's rarely brilliant, and the only songs on this record with a chance of being in his show a year from now are "Chains and Things" and Leon Russell's "Hummingbird," hooked on the deathless line "She's little and she loves me." I mean, what good does it do to perform that kind of tripe with dignity? B
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un6ySO2WfI8most self-aware rock pedos ever
>>128022529those guitars are sick despite of it just being the Wrecking Crew with the Raiders name on it
As a Canadian, Burton Cummings is no doubt aiming his "symbolic" rage more at the "American" than at the "woman," but his choice of "symbol" is no less despicable for its putative naivete. I like the riff that goes with it, though, and except for the poetasting "Talisman" can find it in me to enjoy every cut on this record. The beat is unyielding as well as wooden, Randy Bachman's square yet jazzy guitar style is one of a kind, and the lyrics usually give up a phrase or two worth humming. AM fans should be proud. B
When the music's density and country-soul accent surround an obscurantist lyric like "Seven Sleepers' Den" you'd swear you were listening to the Band. But at times Jeffreys also achieves uncanny resemblances to M. Jagger and B. Dylan, which must be how he got to write "They Call Me Fortune and Fame." And he says more with good-time rockers like "Sister Divine" and "Won't Ya Come Back Home" than with "Steven Sleepers' Den" or "An Imaginary Invalid." Molière, eh? B
If Soul '69 didn't convince me she was made for standards, this lp convinces me she's better suited to lightweight pop novelties like "Son of a Preacher Man" and the title cut than overwrought rock statements such as "Eleanor Rigby" and "The Weight." I admit, when she sings "The Weight" she sounds like she really knows what the words mean. But I still don't. B-
A lot of people consider John a future superstar, and they may be right; I find this overweening (semi-classical ponderousness) and a touch precious (sensitivity on parade). It offers at least one great lyric (about a newborn baby brother), several nice romantic ballads (I don't like its affected offhandedness, but "Your Song" is an instant standard), and a surprising complement of memorable tracks. But their general lack of focus, whether due to histrionic overload or sheer verbal laziness, is a persistent turnoff. B
I believe I've solved the Taylor perplex, which revolves around whether he was a verier godsend as he was gracing MacDougall Street with the Flying Machine, discovering the Beatles at Apple, or now. I vote for none of the above. After all, just which god is supposed to have sent him? Not the one in rock-and-roll Heaven, that's for sure. C
>>128022796https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3uaXCJcRrE>shorts remixing this video>Jelly Roll - Fire and RainFuck you, Youtube. Just...just fuck you.
As self-indulgent as Two Virgins or Life With the Lions, yet marketed as pop, this struck me as a real cheat at first. But I find myself won over by its simulated offhandedness. Paul is so charming a melodist (and singer) that even though many of the songs are no more than snatches, fragments, ditties, they get across, like "Her Majesty" extended to two minutes. And though Paul's do-it-yourself instrumentals stumble now and then, the only one that winds up on its fundament is the percussion-based "Kreen-Akrore." Maybe Linda should take up the drums. She wouldn't be starting from any further back than hubby. B
WHAT THE FUCK IS A COMPUTER
>>128022895the thing NASA uses to do calculations when astronauts land on the Moon
As you can read on the back, funk isn't a style or something like that--it's just, well, Etta. Etta with chorus, Etta with full brass, Etta with strings even. Etta singing a Gershwin song, Etta singing a Bee Gees song, Etta singing three Acuff-Rose songs, Etta singing four Pearl Woods songs. (Pearl Woods?) Highlights: the Acuff-Rose songs. B
I suppose I could learn to enjoy them as camp--the title cut is certainly screamworthy, after all, and they do take heavy to undreamt-of extremes. I mean, their audience can't possibly take that whole Lucifer bit seriously, can they? Well, depends on what you mean by seriously. Me, I always assumed horror movies catharsized things I was too rational to care about in the first place. C-
From sodden blooze to steady, unpretentious rock and roll in three progressively simpler--as opposed to easier--albums, climaxing with "All Right Now," a bone-crunching single you can groan along with. Recommended follow-up: a shortened "Mr. Big." Predicted follow-up: the already shortened "Fire and Water." B
>>128020117Damn. These dudes from Macon can really play.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoxxUmlymVU
This ought to be a good record. She's tough (and sexy) live, and she sure does pick good tunes--Mickey Newbury's new-Nashville "Are My Thoughts With You?," which in Newbury's 45-rpm version has gotten a lot of play on my bedroom jukebox, says a lot about love and its dislocations, but so does Mel Tillis's old-Nashville "Mental Revenge," which I'd never heard before. Country material over rock-flavored arrangements is the concept, and the honky vulgarity of Ronstadt's voice the reason. But only occasionally--"Lovesick Blues" and "Long Long Time" are both brilliant--does she seem to find Kitty Wells's soul as well as her timbre. B
>>128023205Talk about a fivehead.
The most heartwarming thing to the wonderful world of pop music since Georgia Gibbs recorded "Dance With Me, Henry." Mike Curb strikes again. C
Despite the departure of the miraculously fluent Peter Green, the mansions in their jazzy blues/rock and roll guitar heaven are spacier than ever. A country parody called "Blood on the Floor"--a clumsily convoluted "Dear Doctor"--is less charitable than one would hope, but it's more than balanced off by Jeremy Spencer's membership pledge to the rockabilly auxiliary, "This Is the Rock." And somebody up there loves Buddy Holly so much he unearthed "Buddy's Song," by Buddy's mother. A-
>>128023205moms needed music too i guess. did you expect them to listen to the Stooges or something?
Sometime in the past (can it be?) eight years, Little Stevie became Big, and so did his frantic one-smash-a-year style--wheezes, shrieks, and all. Consistent Motown albums are rare, and Wonder is still an immature ballad singer, though at least now he's covering "We Can Work It Out" (some ballad) rather than (I'm not making this up) "The Shadow of Your Smile." All the good stuff here is stuffed onto one great side--the most exciting music by a male soul singer in quite some time, and it fits no mold, Motown's included. B+
Second-rate material stupidly overproduced and unreflectively emoted. Even the title song, which retains a lot of power, sounded better when she was duetting it with Mick Jagger--that is, _she_ sounded better. Maybe that's what it means to be a great backup singer. C+
So that Vince Guaraldi can live on? C-
Like Bobby Sherman, Zappa is a selfish exploiter of popular taste. That Bobby Sherman wants to make money while Zappa wants to make money and emulate Varese is beside the point--if anything, Zappa's aestheticism intensifies his contempt for rock and its audience. Even Hot Rats, his compositional peak, played as much with the moods and usages of Muzak as with those of rock and roll. This is definitely not his peak. Zappa plays a lot of guitar, just as his admirers always hope he will, but the overall effect is more Martin Denny than Varese. Also featured are a number of "dirty" jokes. C+
On the debut most of the originals were credited to "Santana Band"; this time individual members claim individual compositions. Can this mean somebody thought about these melodies (and lyrics!) before they sprung from the collective unconscious? In any case, they've improved. And in any case, the best ones are by Peter Green, Gabor Szabo, and Tito Puente, none of whom is known to be a member of the Santana Band. C+
"I left one thing out of my Woodstock article," says Tom Smucker, author of a good one. "I left out how boring it was." And though you can be sure it's not like being there, this three-record set does capture that. As is inevitable in a live album featuring stage announcements, crowd noises, and sixteen different artists, not one side is enjoyable straight through: CSNY are stiff and atrociously flat in their second gig, Paul Butterfield sounds wasted, Sha Na Na should never record, Joan Baez should never record, and so forth. But a substantial proportion of this music sounds pretty good, and three performances belong to history: Ten Years After's "I'm Going Home" (speed kills), Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help From My Friends" (mad Englishman), and Jimi Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner" (wotta ham). Also, the stage announcements and crowd noises are better than most. B
Separated from Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff when they left Mercury, Butler Pursued His Own Artistic Interests by working with a songwriter's workshop on the South Side of Chicago, which is a lot better than Keith Relf or Richie Furay can claim. Unfortunately, this follow-up to G&H's The Iceman Cometh and Ice on Ice is lukewarm, and a big problem is the student songs--only Terry Callier's "Ordinary Joe" is _more_ than professional, which ought to be the idea. B-
Outsiders since Pat Boone have had the dumb idea that rock and roll means projecting the kind of sham intensity that the worst kind of opera lover is a sucker for, and here's more--"rock musical" is too kind. Tommy, in which real rock and rollers pursued a grandiose dramatic concept, was risky enough. But set semiclassical-twice-removed melodies amid received, overrehearsed rock instrumentation and all the verve and spontaneous power which is the music's birthright gets crucified. C-
Pretties for You had its pseudo-decadent and -psychedelic charms, and so does this, only not as many, which makes very few indeed--"Mr. and Misdemeanor" (featuring Lucky Luciano and Kenny Passarelli) and a junkie shoe salesman to balance off all the tuneless singing, tuneless playing, tuneless tunes, and pseudo-musique concrete. C
The songs about going to the country, going to Mexico, and eating chili are more substantial than those about Vietnam, Jackson-Kent, and the military-industrial complex. Fortunately, all three of the latter are supposed to bring the album to a rousing (zzzzz) climax, which leaves side one free to bring you back humming. B
In moments of self-criticism I sometimes believe I'll praise anything that's tight and tuneful. This record proves those suspicions unfounded. That'll teach 'em to print their lyrics on the inside jacket. C-
Joni's new dependence on piano implies a move from the open air to the drawing room--or at least living area--that's reflected in richer, more sophisticated songs. Sometimes the wordplay is still laughably high school--"lookout thru the pain" my eye. But "Both Sides Now" was only the beginning, and this album offers at least half a dozen continuations, all in different directions. Side two leads off with songs to a (real) FM DJ and a (figurative?) priest and includes her versions of "Woodstock" and "The Circle Game" as well as my own favorite, "Big Yellow Taxi," an ecology song with a trick ending. A-
>>128021099>and C's tragicomic "Almost Cut My Hair"He ends up imitating Neil's vocal mannerisms almost as much as George Harrison does his bosses.
>>128024487some pretty good white soul on that track though, no?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnufC8zhaOMBrenda still plugging along, sounding more adult these days. Also not bad white soul.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnufC8zhaOMFinal hit for these fatuosos.
This is slightly better than the albums the Gibb brothers put out during their separation--Cucumber Castle, which at least sold some, and the solo flop Robin's Reign. But "Lonely Days" sounded more distinctive on the radio than it does here amongst its epigones and the collective vibrato is turning into a grating affectation. Presumably they broke up because they sensed the formula was getting stale. To try and recreate it now is the surest way to go from good pop group to bad one. C
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKQ9--_ZgB4How many times do we have to warn you, old man? Yet you still continue to invade our radios like some kind of flu bug that won't go away.
>>128024658hey now, he's like your favorite uncle. trends and singers come and go but he's always there to comfort you no matter the decade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWtIADUwVjw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gZ1LfqEb-wMarty's final Billboard appearance.
>>128024775bit needlessly maudlin. damn, dawg, you shoulda ditched her for some new 18 yo instead of telling the world how wonderful her old lady form is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gZ1LfqEb-wWhat's a Tommy Roe? I dunno but he's been around for quite a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUe_1vWeyzQOf course big big '70 hit we need in 2025 too imo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDFFHLrzTDM
>>128023162cool song. derek shreds that song these days
This special-price two-record set has excited reviewers, all of whom get off on the group's ethnicity--Redbone (said to be a Cajun word for half-breed) comprises four honest-to-Gawd Injuns! But can a red man sing the whites? Sorry, not this time. After all, what in Native American tradition would predispose a band toward rock and roll? Much more impressive is that Pat and Lolly Vegas wrote "Niki Hokey," but except maybe for "Witch Queen of New Orleans," there are no more of these here. Better you should send your five bucks to the Piutes. C
>>128022572I heard he is very good, one of Hendrix's heroes.
>>128022272A C minus would have been too generous.
>>128025101This album was like Take 2 on TBSTGHOT from the previous year, an album he famously detested.
>>128023027https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JATPWiWKF9QThey really didn't bother cleaning up the tape hiss here at all.
Owen Bradley steals a trick from Andrew Loog Oldham here even if he never heard of the fella--like Flowers, this is a "concept album" conceived largely to recycle old material, and like Flowers it works anyway. No cover filler or publishing tie-ins, just the continuing saga of a strong-willed woman committed to a male-defined world. In most of these pungently colloquial songs (punch line of "You Wanna Give Me a Lift": "But this ole gal ain't goin' that far"), Lynn is either boasting or telling somebody off, and even when she's addressing herself to a woman, what's got her excited is a man--her man, for better or (usually) worse. A-
The Velvets are to Manhattan what the Rascals are to New York--that is, they really make "Rock & Roll" (a title), but they're also really intellectual and ironic. Lou Reed's singing embodies the paradox even on beat-goes-on throwaways about cowboys and trains. Other subjects include drag, poverty, not loving nature, and the new age, mysteriously connected to an over-the-hill actress who would like her old age back. A
One side is called "Hard Rock Cafe," the other "Morrison Hotel." Guess which I prefer. Now guess which is supposed to be more "poetic." And now guess which is more poetic. "The future's uncertain and the end is always near" is just the Lizard King's excuse for mingling with the proles who "get on down," but it sure beats the Anaïs Nin tribute for originality and aptness of thought. Still, the band is rocking tighter than it ever has, Robbie Krieger's phrasing keeps things moving, and Morrison's gliding vocal presence--arty and self-absorbed though it may be--provides focus. He's not the genius he makes himself out to be, so maybe his genius is that he doesn't let his pretensions cancel out his talent. B+
Admittedly, the charm of hearing an eleven-year-old cover Smokey, Stevie, and the Delfonics may not be enduring. And admittedly, some of the filler--"The Young Folks," for instance--is embarrassing even by Motown standards. But in fact the eleven-year-old doesn't disgrace himself against Smokey and Stevie and beats the Delfonics going away. And some of the filler--"ABC" you know, but how about "2-4-6-8"?--recall the days of great B sides.
Because Billy Cox and Buddy Miles are committed (not to say limited) to a straight 4/4 with a slight funk bump, Hendrix has never sounded more earthbound. "Who Knows," based on a blues elemental, and "Machine Gun," a peacemonger's long-overdue declaration of war, are as powerful if not as complex as anything he's ever put on record. But except on the rapid-fire "Message to Love" he just plays simple wah-wah patterns for a lot of side two. Not bad for a live rock album, because Hendrix is the music's nonpareil improvisor. But for a Hendrix album, not great. B+
I liked these musicians better when they called themselves the City--seemed to protect them against string arrangements, folkie jazz, and other exurban excrescences. Must admit, though, that the first side is a lot more eloquent, confident, and tuneful than the nice little album the City put out in 1968. Now if only the Drifters cover on the second side had some company--the reason I'm listening, after all, is that she also wrote hits for the Chiffons, the Shirelles, Little Eva, . . . B
christgau is a hack
>>128025245Yes, yes, he is.
The Velvet Underground and Nico plus Chelsea Girl convinced me that Nico had charisma; The Marble Index plus Desertshore convince me that she's a fool. The difference is that now Nico writes the songs--songs with titles like "The Falconer" and "Abschied," songs that indulge her doleful monotone instead of playing rhythms and tempos against it. Nothing new here--bohemian hangers-on always get to publish their work while the less socially adept ("charismatic") are shafted. John Cale, with his "spare" arrangements, plays patron. C
>>128025272>Nothing new here--bohemian hangers-on always get to publish their work while the less socially adept ("charismatic") are shaftedso much projection
>>128021353Fortunately certain other 50s singers we won't name are on hiatus at the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jahz-LF7Bo8
Hello? Anyone still there? I made a nice HW tribute album...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4lB7Ujw8IkAnd that other ex-Sun Records guy.
The sound of young America grows older, replacing momentum with progress and exuberance with nuanced cool. Producers Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson provide all but one of the songs--they've written a couple of great ones for Marvin & Tammi in the past. Unfortunately, the same couple (of songs) provide two of the three high spots here. And there ain't no high spot high enough. (Catalogue number: S-711.) C+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prU5xpSQQu4
>>128025559man she had some huge-ass feet
I suspected Stewart of folkie leanings the first time I saw him do his broken-down bluesman imitation with Jeff Beck at the Fillmore. But his solo debut proved such a landmark that when he opened this one with a title tune about the slums featuring only mandolin and acoustic guitar I didn't even snicker. Much all-around excellence here--Stewart writes songs with almost as much imagination as he picks them, and his band is as (dare I say it?) sensitive as his voice. Nothing as revelatory as "Handbags and Gladrags" or "An Old Raincoat Won't Ever Let You Down," though. A-
Guys The Beatles are finished ;(
>>128026434those fags are old newshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9G3QeFPe8Y
>>128020464they're finished. at least they had two good albums. I hear they're getting axed after the tour, so there won't even be a dappm4th album.
>>128020691guess everyone was below Springsteen on that list
>>128021657This isn't music, it's just noise.
>>128022885Wtf is he talking about? It's well known that Paul can play drums, he did it on some Beatles tracks.
"I hope we passed the audition," says the leader as the record ends, and they do. Their assurance and wit would be the envy of veteran rock and rollers, and though this is a little lightweight, it makes up in charm what it lacks in dramatic brilliance. Even when the arrangements get tricky--"Let It Be" is a touch too ornate in this version--their spontaneity of impulse comes through. And while fave rave "One After 909" is pure teen simplicity, it sounds no fresher than "Two of Us," an adult song about couple bonding that I hope applies to their songwriting duo. The one mistake is "The Long and Winding Road," sunk in a slush of strings worthy of its shapeless philosophizing. But even the great are allowed to falter now and then. A-
>>128023170She liked showing her feet off for some reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG8FFJQYoTM
>>128029825these guys sure loved their crawling guitars
