ITT: /mu/ in 1975
DO A LITTLE DANCE, MAKE A LITTLE LOVEMAKE A LITTLE LOVEGET DOWN TONIGHT
not feeling the new Bowie album somehow
>>129915582Nuts to you for pardoning Tricky Dicky, Ford.
>>129915582Hunter S Thompson was here
Got Aerosmith tix?
Wings is based
It's only 14 years until Taylor Swift is born. Enjoy it while it lasts.
In which Steve recycles his "Favorite set of changes/Good for a couple of songs." His supporters will find that endearing, I know. They may even dig him copping a lick from Alice Cooper later on in the lyric. But me, I find it pathetic. C-
>>129915605Speaking of disco, I'm hearing rumours that the Bee Gees are recording a disco song. Really now? The guys behind maudlin tripe like "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"? It's gonna be a disaster.
>>129915879nobody's cared about those guys since Odessa. they're about as relevant as Paul Revere & the Raiders at this point.
Look at this stupid piece of shit kek
One expected a lousy album but not this lousy. The record takes off from an unused Neil Sedaka hit arrangement (admirers of the single are advised to purchase a copy of Sedaka's Back). Elsewhere they spread the middle-of-the-road so thin they make "Rainy Days and Mondays" sound like "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting." D-
>>129915905Yeah they're also washed.
What's our AOTY?
>>129915923>the back cover with his giant coked out pupils
>>129915923>>129915869Stop posting Christagus reviews you fuck. I read enough of his shit in the papers, I don’t need to see it here!
For four cuts--"Wide Open" and "Slippery When Wet", surrounded by "The Bump" (which more than earns its reprise) and "I'm Ready", they make the case for their funk. I already believed, but found the argument enjoyable, anyway. For the remainder of the album they make the case for their soul. I'd have been more inclined to believe if they hadn't bothered. B-
>>129915869What is this guy's beef with Stephen Stills anyway?
>>129915963>white boy in charge of deciding who is funk
>>129915963HEY! DON’T FUCKING IGNORE ME
Alice's ear for what the kids want to hear remains almost as keen as his imperviousness to moral suasion. "Cold Ethyl" is his catchiest necrophilia song to date, "Department of Youth" his catchiest teen power anthem to date, and "Only Women Bleed" is the most explicitly feminist song yet to hit top 40. Since Alice's ear for what the kids want to hear remains as keen as ever, it's a safe guess to assume a few of the more obvious feminist truisms have caught on with about half our young people. A promising sign. B-
>>129915923it's just background noise for housewives to put on while washing the dishes, no need to be upset about it
>>129916021HEY STOP THAT
>>129915869he played at my dad's college around when this album came out. there was this dude in the audience who was talking loudly and he told him to shut the fuck up.
>>129915582Fuck KISS and the Eagles. Rock and roll is dead, man.
>>129916067You going to write text or what?
I was in Japan and this guy is about to change jazz.
>>129916067Prog is for people who look like the Gentle Giant guy.
These boys are learning a trade in record time--even the sludgy numbers get crazy. Too bad the two real whompers are attached to rockstar lyrics, albeit clever ones, because Steve Tyler has a gift for the dirty line as well as the dirty look--anybody who can hook a song called "Adam's Apple" around the phrase "love at first bite" deserves to rehabilitate a blue blues like "Big Ten Inch Record." B+
>>129916182>>129916195Are you two autistic or something?
Rock is dead, man. Wish it was '69, back when the music meant something.
As concepts go, a hard-ish folk rock group led by two women is a mildly interesting idea, epecially when their composing beats that of the twixt-Balin Starplane, whom they otherwise recall. Note I said mildly. C+
>>129916313You going to post something that isn’t a review?
>>129916350POST SOMETHING THAT ISNT A COVER YOU INVALID
>>129916350Styx fucking blows, man.
>>129916390POST WORDS
>>129916390they didn't have an album out in 75
I'll take Johnny Cash instead, thank you very much and nice bell bottoms.
>>129916390Keith was so high back then.
>>129916390>70s OsmondsGay
As see previous about prog.
>>129916313Nuts to you, Bob.
Album of the year calling it right now
Young has violated form so convincingly over the past three years that this return may take a little getting used to. In fact, its relative neatness and control--relative to Y, not C, S, N, etc.--compromises the sprawling blockbuster cuts, "Danger Bird" and "Cortez the Killer." But the less ambitious tunes--"Pardon My Heart," say--are as pretty as the best of After the Gold Rush, yet very rough. Which is a neat trick. A-
>>129916504POST! SOMETHING! THAT! ISN’T! A! REVIEW
>>129916504Neil, Indians weren't peaceful forest hippies. How do I explain this...?
>>129916414One of them is going to be unleashed on our radios before long. Just a little heads up.
>>129916544too bad I didn't know about this one back last Christmas season, I'm sure it's going to be only slightly less obnoxious than Alvin and the Chipmunks.
>>129916571meh country in this time isn't even really an album format
>>129916571POST WORDS! REEEEEEEEE
>>129916544when my dad was a kid he used to fantasize about marrying Debby, getting her to use drugs, and making her into a bad girl
>>129916269don't blame me. i didn't buy into that KISS bullshit.
>>129916313>Jefferson Airplanewhat? they were clearly inspired by Zeppelin and Uriah Heep.
There's these kids up in New York wearing leather jackets, long hair, and playing simple but energetic rock and roll, they got promise
This is a failure. The tunes make (Lennon-McCartney's) "Across the Universe" sound like a melodic highlight, and although the amalgam of English hard rock and Philly soul is so thin it's interesting, it often overwhelms David's voice, which is even thinner. But after the total alienation of Diamond Dogs and the total ripoff of David Live, I'm pleased with Bowie's renewed generosity of spirit--he takes pains to simulate compassion and risks failure simply by moving on. His reward is two successes: the title tune, in which pain stimulates compassion, and (Bowie-Lennon-Alomar's) "Fame," which rhymes with pain and makes you believe it. B-
>>129916765why did critics hate Bowie so much back then?
>>129916765I’m going to rape you
>>129916765>>129916776Newsflash: Bowie was always an aesthetic-chaser who had no actual content to his music
>>129916350Nobody older than 13 listens to these guys.
The songs are a shade weaker, but the real problem--and I'm sure Clive Davis had nothing to do with it--is classier arrangements that give her more room to sing. Suzi just doesn't have the stuff to make like an interpreter, whether torching up "Fever" or doing a Janis on "Strip Me." She lives and dies as a straight-ahead rocker. B-
>>129916797^This.
>>129916884POST SOMETHING THAT ISN'T A REVIEW
The first version of this album struck me as a sellout to the memory of Dylan's pre-electric period; this remix, utilizing unknown Minneapolis studio musicians who impose nothing beyond a certain anonymous brightness on the proceedings, recapitulates the strengths of that period. Dylan's new stance is as disconcerting as all the previous ones, but the quickest and deepest surprise is in the music itself. By second hearing its loveliness is almost literally haunting, an aural déjà vu. There are moments of anger that seem callow, and the prevailing theme of interrupted love recalls adolescent woes, but on the whole this is the man's most mature and assured record. A
I can't believe he is dead
>>129916884>>129916313the self-identified male feminist, people
>>129916900STOP IGNORING ME
>>129916765It was some P4k/Millenial revisionist history that decided Bowie was this cool alternative music icon instead of a gimmick artist like >>129916797 said.
>>129916544so i had a friend who worked with one of the Boones' daughters and he said they were an honestly kind of creepy Duggar-like family
>>129916967They were totally doing incest, weren't they?
>>129916884She was never that talented musically but she was good at deep-throating record executives' dicks.
>>129916884He's right, her voice isn't big or melodic enough for that stuff.
I've been hypersensitive to this group's virtues for years. Now I find their approach neurasthenic and their general muddleheadedness worthy of Yes or the Strawbs. C-
>>129917050ARGH! I'M GOING INSANE!!!!
>>129917050>finally catches onto the fact that the Dead in fact actually suck and are just a drug trafficking venture disguised as music
>>129916195Classic. Damn they were so good back then.
I'm converted. Because it's possible to believe that their sincerity is neither feigned nor foolish, it's good in theory for children to sing romantic ballads. The reason it doesn't work is that the sincerity is so transparently manipulated from above. At 16, however, Michael's voice combines autonomy and helpless innocence in effective proportions. He also gets production help from Brian Holland (who begins one side like Barry White and the other like the Ohio Players) and a few romantic ballads (sure hit: "One Day in Your Life") that are as credible on their own terms as the rockers. A-
>>129917186too bad all his love ballads were actually directed at 10 year old boys
>>129917186POST! SOMETHING! THAT! ISN'T! REVIEWS! FUCK SAKES HOW HARD IS IT TO FOLLOW DIRECTIONS?
>>129917203a lot of people have too low of an IQ to post anything of substance on their own.
>>129917050it's not that bad even though >Dead studio album
I feel schizy about this record. It rocks with a brutal, uncompromising force that's very impressive--sort of a slicked-down, tightened-up, heavied-out MC5--and the songwriting is much improved from albums one and two. But the lyrics recall the liberal fantasy of rock concert as Nuremberg rally, equating sex with victimization in a display of male supremacism that glints with humor only at its cruelest--song titles like "Room Service" and "Ladies in Waiting." In this context, the band's refusal to bare the faces that lie beneath the clown makeup becomes ominous, which may be just what they intend, though for the worst of reasons. You know damn well that if they didn't have both eyes on maximum commerciality they'd call themselves Blow Job. B
>>129917294>You know damn well that if they didn't have both eyes on maximum commerciality they'd call themselves Blow JobAnd he was right.
>>129917294you gotta admit, "She" is a great song for a warm sticky summer night
>>129917186Big ass nose, kek>>129917199>>129917218What a prodigious little kid, being an anti-semitic pederast at 17 must be tough
>>129917294they were still somewhat cool at this point and hadn't become a kiddie band yet
>>129917365They needed Ace to work, without him they were just a couple of Jewish dorks who liked comic books.
>>129917013I believe it.
>>129917294FUCK YOU
Just a reminder that:>She mogs John BonhamMan, if only Zeppelin had stolen some good musicians to play the rehashed blues tunes they stole from the negroes
>>129915939well, it's ought to be this slow-burn, bone-chilling, spine-tingling, genre-redefining masterpiece right here
When your jazz-entrepreneur husband buys you Nashville's finest for your 44th birthday, you might be tempted to think unliberation paid yourself. C-
I was hoping I wouldn't have to mention this, but the single has made the push to the top. So . . . what you figured, too bland to be offensive yet, more Partridge Family than Osmonds. Noormal geeze just like yew. C
>>129917476DIE
>>12991748670s One Direction, a worthy successor to that 60s One Direction group.
>>129917486BLEED OUT
>We had joy we had fun>We had seasons in the sunWhy THE FUCK are people still bumping this shit?
>>129917556Wait, didn’t that Belgian Jacques Brel write this?
>>129917564Yeah, but the yankees made it gayer (as in penetration in the bum, not happy)
>>129917476This is as bad as you'd imagine and just like every other attempt she made at country crossovers it sounds like someone whose idea of country music was gotten from watching Westerns. Also there's a "disco" attempt here that...well, I won't.
>>129917572Should’ve gotten Scott Walker to do it
>>129917589Yer right, even the Beach Boys would've done a better job with it
>Google image search "1975">get tons of pics of the band and have to type "1975 year" instead
Put on your neckboots and wade through the slickshit and you may get a kick from the lyrics--these boys like lotsa malaise with their mayonnaise. But in rock and roll the difference between tragedy and soap opera is usually the acting, here so completely immersed in stringing sings that even the aptest phrases are reduced to the clichés they restate. C+
>>129917645I fucking hate the Eagles, man.
>>129917645FUCK YOU FAGGOT
>>129917645>>129917660they got their rep for a reason, mostly because they were an experiment in lab-generated rock product made by all the best talent LA could muster up and the ultimate symbol of how rock had been commodified.>have John David Souther and Jackson Browne writing them songs>they can just buy talent like Joe Walsh the way the Yankees would buy a pitcher
>>129917476talk about a classic example of a singer whose schtick only worked when she was young and cute, and after that it was just facepalm-inducing
It's kino I don't care what you sayhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvChjHcABPA
>>129915582Is this the real life?Is this just fantasy?
Their most--in fact only listenable album in five years is marred by the sneaking suspicion that they're not doing it because they need to tell me this stuff, but because it's the only way they can sell albums in 1975. And I'm not sure I buy into it, either. Best song: "All This Makin' Love", a frantic, Baroque simulation of compulsive sex. C+
>>129917707Case and point:>>129917186Little man will be flipping burgers by the time 1983 rolls around, I'll tell ya that much
>>129917760>Baroque simulation of compulsive sexWhy are industry jews such degenerates all the time?
>>129917760>Bob Stigwood tells them to get out of gray, rainy England and come to Miami>they do coke with KC & The Sunshine band>the rest is history as they say
New York's dangerous these days. This junkie came at my car with a knife when I was waiting for the light on 4th Avenue the other day. Luckily I stepped on the gas and got out of there.
No dumb tribulations-of-a-rock-star epic here--the dedication to long-departed crazy Syd Barrett gives it an emotional resolve that mitigates what little self-pity lyricist Roger Waters allows himself. Even more remarkable, the music is not only simple and attractive, with the synthesizer used mostly for texture and the guitar breaks for comment, but it actually achieves some of the symphonic dignity (and cross-referencing) that The Dark Side of the Moon simulated so ponderously. And the cover/liner art is worthy of all the stoned raps it has no doubt already inspired. A-
>>129917752MAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA OOOO-OOO-OOO-OOOOH!
Other than the Commodores and Herbie Hancock albums, everything posted in here is nothing but a bunch of rockslop. Damn, I get it, you guys are white.
>>129917878opening with an anti-alcohol song is...different anyway
Does the curiously unfocused effect of this album reflect Aretha's inability to direct her own career? Or is it just the way the bass is mixed? Or are the two the same? B-
>>129917954this album is sick when you're stoned
When this band went pro--and electric--my initial reaction was annoyance. I figured that at least when they were going country blues the material justified their deliberate pace. But that soon passed, and for years now I've been shelving their records without comment not out of anger or even dislike but in the simple absence of anything interesting to say. When a group maintains such a level for five years, however, its uninterestingness becomes noteworthy in itself. Think of it--kozmic blooze and negative vocals boogieing on into a countercultural time that knows no past or future, outracing the Starship on automatic pilot. Quite impressive, actually. B-
"You know what this is?" my wife exclaimed when this record came on. "This is easy listening versions of 'Pick Up The Pieces' and 'Lady Marmalade.'" If the Red Chinese hordes somehow managed to get control of this country, Herbie would have an album called "Quotations From Chairman Mao" on shelves in a week, and it would sell. C-
First time I read the lyrics I got angry, but not at he lyrics, which are Bernie's best; I thought the new band's machine-tooled hard rock and Elton's automatic good cheer was negating their toughness and clarity and complexity. But I was wrong. Intentionally or not, the marimba accents of "Grow Some Funk of Your Own" and the faked-up Caribbean inflections of "Island Girl" elaborate the songs racial ironies, while the band's fiery temper on "Street Kids" and "Hard Luck Story" cuts through John's arbitrary ebullience. Now if only Bernie furnished every song with a perfect out like this one, from "I Feel Like a Bullet": "You know I can't think straight no more." A-
Superficially, which counts for a lot with McCartney, his New Orleans venture is his most appealing post-Beatles album--straight rock and roll with a few pop detours and one excursion into "When I'm 64" nostalgia. So clear in its melodies, mix, and basic pulse that his whimsical juxtapositions--robots on Main Street, Rudy Vallee cheek by jowl with Allen Toussaint--sound like they might make some sense. Don't get me wrong--they probably don't, because McCartney's a convinced fool. But when the music is coherent it doesn't matter so much. B+
After checking out the competition--I've given up on Helen Reddy, Anne Murray repeats herself, and Loretta Lynn's latest is a bummer--I began to entertain heathenish thoughts about this MOR nemesis, whose mid-Atlantic accent inspired Tammy Wynette to found a country music association designed to exclude her. At least this woman sounds sexy, says I to meself, but Carola soon set me straight. "A geisha," she scoffed. "She makes her voice smaller than it really is just to please men." At which point I put away my heathenish thoughts and finished the dishes. D+
>>129918183only girls listened to solo McCartney
A/k/a Shoogidy-Boogity and I don't mean to be mean--I genuinely enjoy these guys in limited doses and there's even great slow ones here. What's more, this is their funniest album ever and that's no joke. What I can be thankful for, however, is that they make Earth, Wind, and Fire sound like the Herbie Mann Singers. B
What's this? Heavy metal that isn't hard to take? Why, the first side moves along so smartly you could almost mistake it for rock-and-roll. B
>>129918279Nobody except Steve Harris and Eddie Trunk cares about UFO.
This rocks even more consistently than Bad Co., but to argue that it epitomizes hard rock as a style is not only to overlook its deliberate speed but to believe in one's (usually male) heart that Paul Rodgers is the ideal rock singer. You hear that a lot; what it seems to mean is that he doesn't shriek when he gets to the loud parts. Rodgers's power is no more interesting than Tom Jones's, and Jones is twice as subtle. If hard rock doesn't have more to offer, it's not worth arguing about. B-
>>129917476She somehow managed to turn into a worse Sue Thompson on this album.
>>129915582I’m gay. I like eating cum and having a big cock in my ass
Just how much American myth can be crammed into one song, or a dozen, about asking your girl to come take a ride? A lot, but not as much as romanticists of the doomed outsider believe. Springsteen needs to learn that operettic pomposity insults the Ronettes and that pseudotragic beautiful-loser fatalism insults us all. And around now I'd better add that the man avoids these quibbles at his best and simply runs them over the rest of the time. If "She's the One" fails the memory of Phil Spector's innocent grandeur, well, the title cut is the fulfillment of everything "Be My Baby" was about and lots more. Springsteen may well turn out to be one of those rare self-conscious primitives who gets away with it. In closing, two comments from my friends the Marcuses. Jenny: "Who does he think he is, Howard Keel?" (That's a put-down.) Greil: "That is as good as `I Think We're Alone Now.'" (That's not.) A
This record has a bad rep. Most of it was reportedly cut with arranger Dave Matthews by New York studio musicians and then dubbed over by JB, and the title hit didn't do as well among blacks as David Bowie's "Fame," where its guitar lick first went public. But side one really works. If Brown did cop that lick, he certainly had it coming, and except for the sodden "So Long" everything else is touched with the extraordinary, from the cracked falsetto that climaxes "For Sentimental Reasons" to the stirring male backup on "Try Me" to "The Future Shock of the World," a high-echo rhythm track on which JB does nothing but whisper the word "disco." Unfortunately, the dance vamp and ballads overdisc are nothing new, though "Please, Please, Please" (with more male backup) sounds fine in its umpteenth version. B
No matter what you label them, these otherwise meaningless dance tunes are as bright and distinct as the run of disco mush is dull--when it comes to formula, always opt for top forty, which compels innovation, over Muzak, which forbids it. The horns and vocals are less candidly soulful here than on their debut, and the result is an album that's poppier, lighter--almost airy. And though the songs do all sound alike, that doesn't mean they are. Far from it. A-
DJ DISCO TEXGET TRUCKIN' WITH THE SEX-O-LETTESGET DANCIN', DANCIN'
>career-ending salt tablet
Just when you thought there was no such thing as eternal life, I decided to acknowledge this--one of the King's thrice yearly collections of three (almost) classics and seven (not bad) fillers. Sloppy as usual--you want he should be neat? B-
>>129918395>>129918410>>129918421>>129918489These all read like they were written by a fella who likes it when other guys ball his old lady
>Wilson collapsed of a stroke onstage while performing at Dick Clark's Old Time Rock 'n Roll Revue in Atlantic City on September 19, 1975. He was in the habit of taking sodium capsules and drinking a large quantity of water prior to shows to make himself sweat profusely. "The ladies love it," Wilson told his friend Elvis Presley. Audiences at the Dick Clark show initially cheered when he collapsed as they thought it was part of the act. Wilson was left an invalid, unable to speak or care for himself until his death nine years later at age 49.[9]
>>129918453i recall later on that Elvis Costello had a rant song about the radio where he cites "Get Dancin'" as one of the worst songs ever
Trailing Parliament-Funkadelic in my personal post-Sly sweepstakes, but ahead of War (bombastic), Kool & the Gang (culturally deprived), and hosts of others, this unit can do so many things it qualifies as the one-man band of black music even though it has nine members. Here ethnomusicology and colloquial homiletics are tacked onto the funk and soul and doowop and jazz, which makes for an instructive contrast--the taped-in-Africa Matepe Ensemble, whose spontaneous laughter closes out the coda, versus Maurice White, whose humorless platitudes prove there's more to roots than turning a mbira into an ersatz vibraphone. B+
Why is this Fleetwood Mac album different from all other Fleetwood Mac albums? The answer is supergroup fragmentation in reverse: the addition of two singer-songwriters who as Buckingham Nicks were good enough--or so somebody thought--to do their own LP for Polydor a while back. And so, after five years of struggling for a consistency that became their hobgoblin, they make it sound easy. In fact, they come up with this year's easy listening classic. Roll on. A-
Tom Smucker, who should know, says the difference between the departed Brian Ahern and Tom Catalano, the producer Murray has inherited from Helen Reddy, is the difference between Revisionist Anti Schlock and Assumed Schlock. If Schlock is "materialism in a Dionysian mode"--innocent, like Las Vegas as Tom Wolfe explains it--then Assumed Schlock "takes consumption for granted as consumption turns into smug middle-class accumulation." In other words, all the Canadian songwriters in the world can't overcome the extravagant dullness of these arrangements: the rock 'n' roll cut could be Giselle MacKenzie in 1956. Say it ain't so, Annie. C
Recently, one of her lilting legions accused us non-lilters of being emotionally deaf. The other possibility is that she's emotionally dumb. C
I suppose a group whose specialty is excess should be proud to emerge from a double-LP in one piece. But except on side two--comprising three-only-three Zep classics: "Houses of the Holy," "Trampled Under Foot," and the exotic "Kashmir"--they do disperse quite a bit, not into filler and throwaway ("Boogie with Stu" and "Black Country Woman" on side four are fab prefabs) but into wide tracks, misconceived opi, and so forth. Jimmy Page cuts it throughout, but after a while Robert Plant begins to grate--and I like him. B+
In this time of dearth, it's probably improvident to laugh at someone so talented--good melodies abound here, and I can't think of a rock singer who has made more unaffected and pleasurable use of her or his voice lessons. But this woman's humorlessness demands snickers. It was one thing for society's teenager to pity herself because she didn't have the integrity to stick with her black boyfriend. It's another thing for a grown-up to pity her teenaged self because she was always picked last in basketball. I mean, face it, Ms. Ian--you're short. B-
This record is more depressing than my dispassionate grade would indicate, not just because from the Who we expect better--do we, really?--but because its runaway fatalism invites dispassion. Peter Townshend has more to say about star-doubt than David Crosby or even John Lennon--he's not only honest but exceptionally inquisitive, and he's got a knack for condensing complex ideas. But despite their aperçus songs like "However Much I Booze" and "Dreaming From the Waist" circle around so obsessively that they end up going nowhere; I don't expect answers from the seeker, but I do expect him to enjoy the questions. No surprise that the two songs that break out of the bind are "Blue Red and Gray" (which means satori) and "Slip Kid" (about one more imagined teenager). B+
Says B.T. as E.J.: "I once wrote such childish words for you." Do they feel guilty about it? Have they put away childish things? What's happening to our children when a concept album about the hard times of a songwriting team hits number one on all charts the week it's released? Does it matter that the five good songs on this one aren't as catchy as the five good songs on the last one? Probably not. B
>>129918421>>129918395>>129918314>>129918279>the press's busiest music nerd
>>129918613>Bob? Remember me? LOVE ME!!!!
>most of the thread is Christagu spamI get it’s on topic, but god damn
The Angel logo is the best band logo in history because it's the same if you turn it upside down
>>129917691>they got their rep for a reasonthe rep of being one of the most loved and enduring groups of all time?
>>129920038t. Don
from what i gathered from Steve Hoffman Forum Eagles fans were mostly girls and they were not respected by serious music fans who knew their corporate rock background
The Iron Butterfly of überrock--Mike Oldfield for unmitigated simpletons, sort of, and yet in my mitigated way I don't entirely disapprove. A melody or two worth hearing twice emanates from a machine determined to rule all music with a steel hand and some mylar, and the title track is longer than "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida" sans drum solo, with a lyric (trot provided) that could become the "What's Life? A magazine" of high school German classes all over America. B-
This is no better than Sweet Baby James (several good songs if you care about James's agonies) or Mudslide Slim (several interesting experiments if you care about James's ideas) and while it is better than Walking Man, so is The Best of the Cowsills. So why then do Taylor's devotees regard this one as a heartwarming comeback? Because his desecration of Marvin Gaye has propelled him into the top ten? Or because they never really cared about his agonies and ideas in the first place. C
>>129916414and that wasn't even the good Cash prison album
>>129921785It has its contrarian fans
Abetted by Brian Ahern, who would have been wise to add some Anne Murray schlock, Harris conducts herself with a pristine earnestness that has nothing to do with what is likeable about country music and everything to do with what is most suspect in "folk." Presumably Graham Parsons was clever enough to play off this tendency or ignore it altogether but as a solo mannerism it doesn't even ensure clear enunciation. I swear, the chorus of the best song on here sounds like: "I will rub my asshole/In the bosom of Abraham." C
>>129918602she looks like R63 Roger Daltrey
>>129916765Trvst the plavn, BQwie patriots are in control. The storm is coming on the next album...
>>129918395The world's most overrated album.
>>129916414Pat made some of the first gospel albums advertised on CBN. He was totally a grifter who was one of the first to take advantage of the postwar commoditization of Christianity/exploiting it for culture wars stuff. And you wonder why people hated evangelical culture so much.
I resented the patina of cheerfulness on There Goes Rhymin' Simon (1973) because I thought it sold out the terse, evocative candor of Paul Simon (1972). Now I miss its intimations of universality. I hope in 1977 I'm not moved to praise unduly the small, self-involved ironies that define this record at its best ("50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," "You're Kind") without alleviating its lugubriousness ("Night Game," "Silent Eyes"). P.S. As you probably know, Art Garfunkel is back for one number. As you may not have noticed, Simon takes this as a cue to revert to the sophomoricism of "Richard Cory" and "The Sound of Silence"--"a finger on the trigger of a gun" indeed. B
His style has always been undeniable, but not irresistible--cf. Bio. Here at least its entertainment value is reconfirmed, whether he's remaking "Hi Heel Sneakers" or "You Are My Sunshine," adding blue (notes and lyrics) to "South of the Border," duetting with his daughter, or writin' and rollin' his own. B-
>>129922424Paul Simon sucks ass, bro.
>>129918651Pete did admit he was a spent creative force after Quadrophenia.
>>129918183>LOL Paul sucks XD
This flows better than the first, but it also makes clear that Emmylou is just another pretty voice, a country singer by accident. I mean, Linda Ronstadt has the best female voice in country music, and even she doesn't satisfy the way an original like Dolly Parton or Loretta Lynn does. And since there's not a cover version here that equals its prototype, all she accomplishes with her good taste in material is to send you scurrying for the sources. I prefer Donna Fargo. Not Lynn Anderson, though. C+
I wonder when the Beatles are ever gonna reunite?
Did you come yet? Huh, huh, did you come yet? B-
>zoomers are trying to meme *deep cringe*
>>129916313Magic Man is just about some good dick she got anyway.
All I know about this predominantly black group is that its home town is Munich, in Germany, and that its current single, "Fly, Robin, Fly," is currently, well, taking off. The style is very bare and pure, sort of minimal disco, with lyrics so simple-minded they couldn't have been devised by anyone who knows English as a native language. Like so much good disco, it's funny, and not intentionally, one of those aberrations that could be turned into a major annoyance by major popularity. For the time being, however, it's catchy yocks. B+
>>129922832>and that its current single, "Fly, Robin, Fly," is currently, well, taking offthis was a fall '75 hit although to be fair the song feels more like springtime to me
>>129922769Bill Aucoin started Casablanca as his own label when none of the existing ones would have KISS or Donna Summer.
>>129916884Just sounds like a Led Zeppelin rip to me.
In which the daughter of the first king of crossover pop aspires to the grandeur of Lady Soul, with results that are more Chaka than Aretha and betray a soupçon and a half of Nancy Wilson. So where's Natalie? Serving her masters, ex-Independents Chuck Jackson and Marvin Yancy. B
I guess bongs loved Suzi Quatro more than America did
>>129923059Turns out nepobabbies have always existed.
Good album--a lot of fast ones and a great hook. Of course, Roxy Music albums have always had hooks, but "Street Life" and "Virginia Plain" never told us as much about Roxy's less accessible music as "Love Is the Drug," an equation which represents not liberation from artificial stimulants but the breakdown of both sexual and emotional abandon into "just another high." Very appropriate to situate the song in a singles bar, for that '70s reality is the exemplary environment for Bryan Ferry's romantic pessimism. Much of what his music has to say about such environments is fascinating, even perversely attractive--but ultimately a little off-putting, which I guess is the point. A-
This is the J.J. Cale record we were afraid Eric was going to make (ho-hum) when he signed up those Leon Russell sidemen (yawn) for 461 Ocean Boulevard. Only for J.J. (think I'll turn in) the nice tunes come naturally. C+
I don't feel much intelligent sympathy for Smith's apocalyptic romanticism. Her ideas are as irrelevant to any social apocalypse I can envision as they are to my present as a well-adjusted, well-rewarded media professional. But Smith (in this manifestation) is a musician, not a philosopher. Music is different. The fact that I'm fairly obsessive about rock and roll indicates that on some sub-intellectual level I need a little apocalypse, just to keep my superego honest. That, of course, is exactly what she's trying to tell us. However questionable her apprehension of the surreal, the way she connects it with the youth cult/rock and roll nexus is revelation enough for now. This record loses her humor, but it gets the minimalist fury of her band and the revolutionary dimension of her singing just fine, and I haven't turned off any of the long arty cuts yet. A
>>129923708>as they are to my present as a well-adjusted, well-rewarded media professionalI wouldn't go that far, Bob.
When they said he had a good sense of humor did they mean he was willing to grin like a Monty Python choirboy over a caption that said "OHNOTHIMAGEN"? C-
So jannies allow spam if it’s on topic?
>>129923861>caring about 60s Justin Bieber
>>129923957Cared enough to post
Is he experienced? He's a retread, and the best thing I can say for him is that he makes me remember the verve, humor, and fluidity of the original. C-
>>129920875I never did like this band for some reason.
>>129915905Sabbath is getting stale, their gonna need to really change things up to regain my interest. Im having more fun listening to Rainbow. Dio, now that's a singer>>129916195Fair review. This record is selling like hot cakes but I liked last years better.>>129918314Fair review>>129918621This is the album of the year
>>129918621some people actually like Plant better at this point because he can't do banshee shrieks anymore
No doubt mysteries of emotional and rhythmic commitment (soul and groove) determine why this runs out of gas after "Be-Bop-a-Lula" and "Stand by Me." But it's also true that covering Gene Vincent and Ben E. King is considerably less perilous than covering Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino, whose songs follow. Which may be why "Ya Ya" (Lee Dorsey) and "Just Because" (Lloyd Price) work. Too bad he didn't go for more esoterica--this could have been another Moondog Matinee. B-
In which King expresses himself by (a) following "Have Faith" with "Everybody Lies a Little" (b) covering Lowell Fulson, Z.Z. Hill, and Ann Peebles (c) conversing with his guitar and (d) producing himself. Personal to Dave Crawford: listen hard to those horns. B+
>>129918661>Americans thought "Philadelphia Freedom" a gay rights anthem was about the Bicentennial
This should end any lingering doubts as to whether the real Neil Young is the desperate recluse who released two albums in the late '60s or the sweet eccentric who became a superstar shortly thereafter. Better carpentered than Time Fades Away and less cranky than On the Beach, it extends their basic weirdness into a howling facedown with heroin and death itself. It's far from metal machine music--just simple, powerful rock and roll. But there's lots of pain with the pleasure, as after all is only "natural." In Boulder, it reportedly gets angry phone calls whenever it's played on the radio. What better recommendation could you ask? A
>>129924906You reviewed American Stars N Bars m8? I just heard it a few days ago and I think it might be my new favourite neil young album...
>>129925488that album's '77 so it won't come out for a while yet. off-topic for this thread.
I agree that this is a letdown after Heart Like a Wheel, but I wish someone could tell me why. Maybe the explanations are vague--she's repeating a formula, she's not putting out, etc.--because a singer like Ronstadt, who specializes in interpreting good songs rather than projecting a strong persona, must achieve an ineffable precision to succeed. But maybe it's simpler than that. People say her versions of "Tracks of My Tears" and "Heat Wave" are weak, but they're not--they simply don't match the too familiar originals. "When Will I Be Loved?" and "You're No Good," on the other hand, were great songs half-remembered, kicking off each side of Heart Like a Wheel with a jolt to the memory. And this album could sure use a jolt of something. B
>>129925546Easy to figure out why. Linda's "Heat Wave" is about 75% of the original's tempo and she can't match Martha Reeves's power.
Maybe if Patti came a little more like the falling rain and a little less like a water main these songs about quasars and amazing birds wouldn't sound so gushy. Exception: "Far As We Felt Like Goin'" which Nona Hendryx didn't write. C
This tale of a murdering preacher wild in his abandonment has inspired much loose talk about violence and Western myth. Ed Ward argues that the Stranger is a fantasy of vengeance rejected on side two, but all I hear is that he's redeemed by another woman there--if she leaves him, he'll kill her too. Some of the individual pieces are quite nice, but the gestalt is the concept album at its most counterproductive--the lyrics render the nostalgic instrumental parts unnecessarily ironic and lose additional charm in narrative context. B-
