ITT: /mu/ in 1970
Alright, here we go.
These three folks are undercover cops, do not buy dope from them.
What? Hippies dum?
going down to the protest at Ohio State next week. we're gonna show Nixon and the MIC who's boss!
>>130724324I am a time traveler from the 21st century. He'll still be doing this 50 years from now, only he won't look so good anymore shirtless.
>>130724426they smell bad
>>130724295DISCOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUCKING SUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK FUCK YOUR LITERAL FAGGOT NIGGER MUSIC HAIL SATAN LONG LIVE HEAVY METALALSO FUCK PEACE LOVING HIPPIES
>>130724543>disco>1970You're at least 4-5 years early for that.
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 blend of energy, youthful 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. C+
>>130724723why did critics have a beef with GFR back then?
IMPEACH NIXON
>>130724723Why are all the versions of this album on Youtube a remaster and not the original vinyl mix?
man, Altamont didn't go nearly as well as Woodstock did. what a disaster.
>>130724516This is a late career masterpiece
>>130724742I think it's because they didn't write catchy enough songs. More just jam sessions they put on tape.
Talk about "montage"--the construction here is all juxtaposition, the composition all interruption. Together with some relatively straightforward instrumentals and "My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama," the album's two finest strokes--a metal remake of Little Richard's "Directly From My Heart to You" and "Oh No" a devastating reply to "All You Need Is Love"--would make for a highly enjoyable album. But if Brecht considered pure enjoyment counterrevolutionary, Zappa considers it dumb--that's why he breaks in constantly with dialogue and vocal or electronic sounds whose musical interest/value is essentially theoretical. I find most of these engaging enough to think I might want to listen again some day. But all that means is that I enjoy it, quite moderately, in spite of itself. B+
The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved
RIP Alan. Gone too soon. What a voice he had too.
>>130724835Forgot pic.
Melodic. B
>>130724829you've been dropping too much Owlesly acid, dude. lay off the stuff already.
>>130724753Calm down there, Hunter Thompson.
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+
>>130724928I don't think it's quite that bad even though ANMHE doesn't need to run over 6 minutes.
>>130724928Was this before or after she molested Michael Jackson?
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+
>>130724975Jimi's new band sound interesting, can't wait for the many years of quality music they give us.
"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-
>>130724928damn it literally all went into her feet and left her with absolutely no up top or out back
>>130724953"Mountain" sounds really ahead of the time for 1970, I would have thought it was mid-decade.
IT'S OVER
>>130725051This is a children's band making children's music and glad to hear they're finally calling it quits.>One After 409Is worthy of the fuckin' Archies, man.
Down in the jungles of 'Nam where everyone swallows acid, burns down villages, and murders and rapes all inhabitants from 8 to 80 and then frags their C/O for suggesting that's not very nice.
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+
>>130725113Abd what “grown up” music are you listening to?>inb4 no reply
>>130725113really, you got CSNY, Zeppelin, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, Allmans, Stooges and that's what you choose to listen to instead?
>>130725113*One after 909, whatever
If Soul '69 didn't convince me she was built for standards, then this lp convinces me she's better suited to lightweight pop novelties such as the title song and "Son of a Preacher Man" than overwrought rock statements such as "Eleanor Rigby" and "The Weight." I admit, when she sings "The Weight" she sounds as if she really knows what all the words mean. But I still don't. B+
>>130725232Well Aretha, I guess you, Jerry, and Ahmet one-upped Jackie DeShannon after all. Too bad that it took two years to get around to it since in between that they had to waste time with some pasty British woman's "soul" album/ego trip.
>>130725150Wow, no response
>>130725232>yeah, standards are dum>yeah, "meaningful" rock songs are dum too>y'know what's best? silly novelty songs you can sing along toThis says less about Aretha's tastes than his.
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+
F
i hear Dylan's coming out with a new album next month. here's to hoping he gets rid of that dumb country schlock from the last two and goes back to writing protest songs.
>>130725314Why did Morrison live rent free in his head?
>>130725314I rather prefer side one too tbqh
They have a great, even a grand audience. But an audience and an album aren't the same thing, not at all. C-
>>130725320Welp. So much for earlier comment about BoG.
>>130724856who even knows what this means?
"Just Seventeen", a song Zeppelin would never cover. (^:
>>130725459Pedophilia bad?
The worst of the counterculture on a plastic platter--drug-impaired reaction times, lengthy solos, bullshit necromancy, everything. They claim to oppose war but if I don't believe in loving my enemies then I don't believe in loving my allies and I've been worried something like this would happen ever since I first saw a numerology column in an underground newspaper. C-
>>130725546and with that, Iommi never picked up a music review column again. good for him.
(for anyone wondering why some people are lining up spit on Clive Davis's grave, this is why)
>>130725232As always, her fast songs > her slow ones.
>>130725641His delivery is pretty funny, you can tell how he's so not buying into this bullshit.
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-
>>130725409Gotta hand it to them for putting out a live album completely raw with no editing or studio polish, but consequently it sounds like ass.
>>130725752>Sometimes the wordplay is still laughably high schoolIt takes one to know one, Bob.
>>130725641Okay cover of "Something" but not as good as Peggy Lee's.
The first UFO album was released in Europe in '70 but it didn't come to the US until the following year so we'll skip that one here.
>>130725802Like hell we are, Yank
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-
>>130725879now we're talking
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-
>>130725879Since the debut album was a little flat, Iggy was encouraged to record his lines while standing up and gyrating around like he would onstage (he recorded the S/T seated on a stool, there are pictures of this)
>>130725972That's the kindest thing he's ever said about a California music act.
>>130726023i just remembered we never posted the first 2 Purple albums in the 1968 thread. can't believe we forgot those, and they actually sold some in the US while only Euros bought this one.
>>130725972This crap puts me to sleep. I don't know how Brian Wilson even gets out of bed each morning.
(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 corn flakes. You get high marks for your questions, guys. C
>>130726111Their UK label didn't promote them at all and the critics just brushed them off as an inferior Vanilla Fudge clone. That kind of American-style heavy psych was not popular over there.
>>130726158that's ok, nobody (in the US anyway) is still listening to them in 1970. maybe some German or Dutch guy will tell you Sunflower is AOTY.
>>130726164In Rock was #4 in the UK, #1 Australia, Austria, Germany, Netherlands #9 Finland, #5 Sweden, but placed just #162 on the US Billboard.
>>130726162>>130725232>>130724928not enough of these and a little too much white boy rockslop in here
>>130726186DP were too ahead of their time in Europe. By 1970 there was Zeppelin and Sabbath and Uriah Heep and others, and there was much more of an audience for heavy rock.
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+
>>130726239at the same time the market for hard rock in the US was too overcrowded for them to compete
>>130725972>Sunflower made #10 in the Netherlands and #151 on the US BillboardFigures.
>>130726265oh no, not Cuckgau's Randy Newman homo crush
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
>>130726265>OH GOD YES RANDY, FUCK MY TIGHT LITTLE ASS. THAT'S IT, RANDY. FASTER...FASTER...FASTER!!!
At first this may sound unnaturally even--jazzy in its pleasantness, pleasant in its jazziness--but that's just because no Aretha album has ever generated such a consistent groove. Four different bands, notably the Dixie Flyers and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, keep things rocking at a medium-fast tempo, and what's lost in soul intensity is more than made up for in a kind of dusky barroom aura--if you can imagine walking into some funky cocktail lounge and finding the greatest singer in the world at the piano. Infinitely playable. Powerful song for song. Classic in its casualness. A
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 isn't available in better form elsewhere. B
>>130726438>and what's lost in soul intensity isBecause they didn't put any rock covers on this one? I think?
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, that depends on what you mean by seriously. Me, I always suspected horror movies catharsized things I was far too rational to care about in the first place. C-
>>130726509Ok, Bob, you done gone too far. Someone get the vaudeville cane and pull him off the stage.
>>130726509ha ha what if 24 years from now Pantera covers "Planet Caravan" and has to put a disclaimer in the liner notes so their hee-haw product of sister fucking fans don't get the wrong idea?
Hhhhi? Remember me? I was important six years ago.
Ian Anderson conducts himself with a principled arrogance that has very little if anything to do with concrete artistic achievements. 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 a couple of listens you'll have practically the whole thing memorized. But I defy you to recall any lyrics. For all his careful en-un-ci-at-ion and wordcraft, 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 a satirical exegesis on the generation gap, though. C+
>>130726622>Ian Anderson conducts himself with a principled arrogance that has very little if anything to do with concrete artistic achievementsso much projection
>>130725766you realize how much "live" albums are usually heavily edited and not live at all
>>130726551culture was moving so fast that 1964, when "Oh Pretty Woman" was #1, might as well have been 30 years ago.
For over-fifties and Ringomaniacs only--the reports that he recorded this set of standards for his mums appears to be true. C-
>>130726670oh damn that sucks. another talent we lost. and we lost Paul McCartney a couple years ago and it's just a guy impersonating him since.
Hi, remember me? I was important 18 years ago.
omigod did you hear the Beatles are breaking up? all us girls are so totally heartbroken. Paul is so cuuuutteee!
>>130726551>>130726646Orbison's a weird case where he had his biggest hit and then disappeared from the charts for over 20 years
>>130726708yes but that was back when saber toothed tigers still roamed the earth. also that version of "Something" is at least passably ok.
Who's ready for another four albums this year?
Hi.
As a slave of the very "MAYA" (pidgin Hindi for the concrete world) Harrison warns against, I am obliged to point out that playing headsie with the Universal Mind is not introspection and that the International Pop Music Community is not a group. Presumably, the featurelessness of these three discs--right down to the anonymity of the multitracked vocals--reflects Harrison's notion of Truth, and he's welcome to it. But he's never been good for more than two songs per album, and after "My Sweet Lord" I start to get stuck. C
>>130726708>>130726551Someone get the vaudeville cane and pull the both of them off the stage already. As the gentleman above said, all things must pass.
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+
I believe I've solved the Taylor perplex, which revolves around whether he was a verier godsend as he was discovering the Beatles at Apple, gracing MacDougall Street with the Flying Machine, 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
>>130726823Delete track 4 and we have a deal.
>>130726856why did critics hate James Taylor so much?
>>130726876He got laid more than them I guess.
>>130726889Talk about _really_ triggering critics with this one.
>>130726894And this triggers Karen.
>>130726935bit mean tbqh
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
>>130726987his producer (i think that's who it was) suggested putting that toy giraffe in the photo so it wouldn't just be a boring postcard photo of him with a guitar sitting in the snow. the giraffe was a gift Rita Coolidge got for him.
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-
>>130727042in an alternate universe he dies in a plane crash in 1973 and we're spared everything that comes after.
>>130727057this is the munchkin's last album for a couple of years as she attempts to transition from pop to country
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+
>>130727120tf is this? where's all the protest songs, man? you've let us down, Bob. you let the whole country down. all we asked for was one Nixon bad song and we didn't get it.
Initially I distrusted these putatively middlebrow guides to black pride--"Miss Black America" indeed. But a lot of black people found them estimable, so I listened some more, and I'm glad. Since Mayfield is a more trustworthy talent than Isaac Hayes, I wasn't too surprised at the durability of the two long cuts--the percussion jam is as natural an extension of soul music (those Sunday handclaps) as the jazzish solo. What did surprise me was that the whole project seemed less and less middlebrow as I got to know it. Forget the harps--"Move On Up" is Mayfield's most explicit political song, "If There's a Hell Below We're All Gonna Go" revises the usual gospel pieties, and "Miss Black America" has its charms, too. B+
>>130727187>Initially I distrusted Curtis>But then black people decided for me that he is in fact tasteful
Going on 15 years of these competently bland professionals. The upside to blandness is that it can keep you in the game a long, long time as Patti Page and the Mills Brothers demonstrated. Acts with more personality burn out quicker.
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-
This was back before he'd learned to take everything he learned from David Allan Coe too far.
>>130727256someday we may as yet see a comp of Pa that is not overdubbed with shitty strings or vocal choruses. screw you, MGM.
>>130725802i mean technically the Patti Page album earlier was also a '69 release, just not in the US until '70
>>130727256>Junior was recording since 1964whaaat? i could swear he only materialized in the 70s somewhere.
This is slightly better than the lps 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
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
>>130727319this was back when they were still Beatles imitators and since the Beatles were no more at this point, they spent several years totally lost and directionless
In case you were wondering how definitive that self-portrait was, here comes its mirror image four months later. Call it love on the rebound. This time he's writing the pop (and folk) genre experiments himself, and thus saying more about true romance than is the pop (or folk) norm. Two side-closing throw-ins--a sillyditty about a gal named "Winterlude" and the scatting beatnik send-up "If Dogs Run Free"--almost steal the show. And the two other side-closers, which make religion seem dumber than it already is, damn near give it back. A-
the Possum begins his third decade as a recording artist
>>130727392>track 2That kind of honesty never won over any women, George. They generally expect a little more than that.
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
>>130726700how'd you miss Brian Jones? he was soul of the Stones. the new guy's cute but I don't see him adding as much as Brian did.
>>130727336The general feeling at the time was "Paul broke up the Beatles for THIS?"
KPOP GENERAL
>>130727643he died in '69 not '70
I delayed judgment on the weedy harmonies and genteel virtuosity of their debut, mostly because they covered the Byrds and the Beatles, who flirted with weeds and gentility themselves. This time they cover Richie Havens, synopsize Kahlil Gibran, and insert orchestrations that cry out of the fine hand of Dmitri Tiomkin. Answer to title quiz: "now" and "love." C
>>130729789>>130729830Prog fucking sucks, dude.
>>130727430the unfortunate truth. once King was treated as a living legend fawned over by white rock stars, he lost all his hunger and drive since he was rich and no longer had to play in seedy black juke joints where you had to be damn good if you wanted the owners to keep booking you for shows.
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
This being 1970, DeShannon makes like the minor pop aristocrat she is with vague stabs at meaningfulness--in addition to a thickheaded "Bird on the Wire" and a cute peaceable-kingdom double-fold, there are lots of songs about her minor, aristocratic life. "What Was Your Day Like" is a sweet, factual, painfully ambiguous account of geographically unrequited love that would put me on the next plane--too late, probably. All I get from the rest is that she's been spending a lot of time in Europe. C
best recording of the year. prove me wrong
>>130730050you won't find me disputing that her teenage rock-and-roll past 8-10 years ago was better than this meandering adult pop
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
>>130730176Like Trout Mask Replica, this music is so jumpy and disjoint it's ominous. But after some acclimatization you can play it while doing the dishes, and good. Beefheart's famous five-octave range and covert totalitarian structures have taken on a playful undertone, repulsive and engrossing and slapstick funny. N.b.: us new dinosaurs had better kick off our "old dinosaur shoes." Or was that "Dinah Shore shoes"? Both. A-
>>130730485i forgot just how high critics were on Lennon fumes back then
I swear to God, Steve, you and your honey must have the luck of the freaking Devil. How can you last this long?(condensed into one image because I'm not making separate posts for all of these)
>>130730642how long were they a major label act anyway?
>>130730642>top rightFirst time I guess they forgot to airbrush his face so he looks forever 23.
Some doubt the claim that this was recorded in concert in Augusta, Georgia, but everyone believes in the music. On "Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine" he creates a dance track even more compelling than the single out of the same five elements: light funk-four on the traps, syncopated bass figure, guitar scratched six beats to the bar, and two voices for call and response. When he modulates to the bridge it's like the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters. After that he could describe his cars for three sides and get away with it (hope this doesn't give him any bright ideas), but in fact all of what remains is prime JB except for the organ version of "Spinning Wheel" (horn bands will out) and the cover of "If I Ruled the World" (thought he already did). Side four, with its powerful "Man's World," is especially fine, closing with a soul-wrenching scream that says it all. A
Herrohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8pknIgRFm0
>>130730659All the way up to the mid-70s. After that they only put out low budget releases on small labels. To be honest most of their albums never really sold anything other than the ones that had a hit single like "Blame It On The Bossa Nova" (and those still never sold that much) and in general seem to have mostly been advertisements for their live shows in Vegas.
>>130730693He didn't review any of Brown's five studio LPs this year, just two live albums. Not until '71 does he start reviewing the studio stuff.
Took too much 'cid, i couldn't bear it.
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-
>>130730805>>130730776>>130727392blues and country songs about cheating or being cheated on are more funny and cathartic than Steve & Eydie's Tiny Tim "Tiptoeing Through The Tulips" we're so in love schtick.
Full Tilt Boogie prove themselves the most musicianly of her three backup bands--there's not a track where they don't help her grab the moment by the seat of the pants. Nevertheless, they and their soul/blues do her a disservice. I miss Big Brother, whose bizarre lumpenhippie "acid rock," when combined with her too frequently ignored country roots and her blues allegiances, made for an underclass triple-header altogether too threatening and unkempt to suit the kind of professional advisors who help singers assemble backup bands. No accident that the only transcendent tracks here are "Me and Bobby McGee," an country song, and "Mercedes Benz," an impromptu (or simulated impromptu) hippie goof. A-
>>130730961>I miss Big Brother, whose bizarre lumpenhippie "acid rock," when combined with her too frequently ignored country roots and her blues allegiances, made for an underclass triple-header altogether too threatening and unkempt to suit the kind of professional advisors who help singers assemble backup bands.and there you have it. the 70s are beginning and the record labels are sanding the rough edges off the counterculture and fashioning a safe, boring country rock format for NPCs.
This closet pedophile is far from done yet, he'll have a top 10 album as late as 1973.
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
>>130731194that's a man, baby
>>130731205What about Walter Carlos now calling himself "Wendy"?
>>130731235I have no idea why it posted a picture of some maths teacher from Newcastle there
Her and Norm Granz must have decided on the album title after taking a look at their nieces' and nephews' record shelves and letting out a long sigh.
>>130731194this album is something of an infamous meme. literally nothing else is known about this Kay Huntington person, she has no Wikipedia page and there's no photos of her anywhere. also when Cuckgau said she seems reluctant to celebrate birthdays, he means she was probably a lot older than she claimed to be, judging from her hands i'd say about 45.
Laying back hasn't been good for them, and neither has getting heavy. Their way lies somewhere in between--which come to think of it is also how it is for the rest of us. C-
Uggh...why?
>>130731120ah what do you know about anything, Bob?
>>130730961>No accident that the only transcendent tracks here are "Me and Bobby McGee," an country songthat song broke my sister's brain mostly because of a certain high school gym teacher who really really loved playing it during workouts
>>130725641also because he killed Janis Joplin
>>130730050>"Bird on the Wire"Recorded by lots of people, hers doesn't even get in Youtube's rec list.
>>130731421seven albums in three years will do that to you
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-
>>130731507Fowley was this huckster who pretended to be a badass god of rock so he could then convince teenage girls to sleep with him.
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
>>130731641i forgot pre-Buckingham/Nicks FM and their penchant for pedo b8-ing album covers
However much sense Alan Wilson's death meant in his life, which was never happy, it was inappropriate to his art, which until the end continued to thrive in that strange, mildly affectless, ruefully blissed-out dreamscape he discovered in country blues. On this record his creative force, never imposing but always there to be enjoyed, is at a peak, and the rest of the band finally coheres--Bob Hite sounds like himself, and Harvey Mandel sounds like he and the rhythm section were made for each other. The first side, which runs through Wilson's "Shake It and Break It" and the painful "My Time Ain't Long" before climaxing with Wilbert Harrison's "Let's Work Together," is the prize. I'm very sorry there won't be more like it. A-
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
>>130727243IDK why critics kept sucking off CSNY. Young always screwed up the balance of their sound compared to when it was just the other three guys and he never put any good songs on them as he always saved those for his own albums.
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
>>130731914The band that invented buttrock. Put on F&W and "All Right Now" and there they are, classic buttrock guitar licks. A disturbing prediction of what's to come.
>>130731641Also this well-known early FM tune (partially due to later well-known cover versions) was a standalone single and not on an album.
>>130724516Poor Frank. That was once your label where you thought your jazz/standards friends would have a home. You never meant for this >>130731982 to be on it, no, not at all.
>>130727319bit unfair. RR didn't sell anything except a little bit in Germany, but it did achieve some cult status.
If this historic set is about any one thing it's electric-meets-acoustic: the theme of the twenty-seven-minute title side, in which Miles's horn combines with an electric instrument for a two-note motif that's suddenly resolved after a dozen repetitions in a single echoed trumpet blat, says it all. But it's not about any one thing--it's a brilliant wash of ideas, so many ideas that it leaves an unfocused impression. That's probably why I don't return to it as I do to the quieter electric-meets-acoustic of In a Silent Way, although maybe it's just that this one rocks less--three different percussionists replace Tony Williams, whose steady pulse is put aside for the subtle shades of Latin and funk polyrhythm that never gather the requisite fervor. Enormously suggestive, and never less than enjoyable, but not quite compelling. Which is what rock is supposed to be. A-
Any of you guys familiar with this young cat Todd Rundgren?
just got back from my shift at Napa Valley State Hospital. man, Rosemary Clooney is a hard case. the other day she bit three nurses and sang the chorus of "Dominique" six times in a row before we got her back in her padded room and gave her her Thorazine shot to cool her off.
>>130732133Yes? No? Maybe? I dunno.
>>130732144Ha ha wouldn't it be funny if Bwian ended up in there too someday?
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
Seger has a brain--you'll learn more about revolutionary youth from "Leanin on My Dream" than from John Sinclair, who has a walk-on in "Highway Child"--but you'd never guess it from his singing. He's one of these heavy guys who equates fake agony with real soul--wrote "Song for Rufus" to himself. C+
>>130732275Seger disowned all his early albums anyway (he didn't make any money from them?)
>>130730004it's the band members offering their asses up to an A&R guy to get a record deal
>>130732275>Seger has a brain--you'll learn more about revolutionary youth from "Leanin on My Dream" than>Initially I didn't care about politics>But hen I received my draft notice for Nam so I went down to the antiwar demonstrationLet's not get carried away here, the song isn't that profound.
"I love it here on the range," the Smart Monkee yodels, but then he adds that he'd "love it more if it changed," which sums up _his_ country-rock synthesis quite nicely. I don't know if he's serious about this "free from euphemisms and alive with their own emotions" stuff he writes about in the notes, but one reason I like his songs is that they never seem to mean exactly what they say--even "Joanne," which could be covered by Paul Butterfield or Linda Ronstadt or somebody, partakes of the bemused natural distance that saves his more aimless experiments from getting lost. B
>>130732383
Finally he gets to impersonate Buck Owens for an entire record. I admit that over the distance he doesn't merely sing flat--sometimes the voice threatens to fade away altogether. But both the songs and Pete Drake's production bespeak a high-quality obsession--the music sticks. And Ringo is still Ringo, which means he's good at making himself felt. B
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
>>130732464Dressing like a truck driver and posing in front of a barn with a cigarette still doesn't make you not 60s Taylor Hanson, you realize.
Remember in the 50s and early 60s when things made sense? Then the CIA shot JFK and hooked American youths on LSD.
>>130732507it wasn't funny the last 30 or 40 times you posted 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
>>130732564man, oh man, AM programmers absolutely loved TGW back then
>>130732532I see you Pat Boone.
One accidental if inevitable hit reveals this English jug band as the best novelty group since the Coasters, though the Royal Guardsmen and the Chipmunks aren't what I'd call heavy competition. Great hostling noises, an echo-chamber parody that could make Stan Freberg turn to commercials, and a fair share of dirty talk. But just as Alvin's falsetto used to wear thin after a while, so does Mungo's drawl--and kazoo. B
As satisfying as Charles's first c&w records were conceptually and vocally, I was always a little turned off by his countrypolitan taste for strings and choruses, and they're still with us--more muted, but also more prosaically arranged, except on the godawful "Good Morning Dear." Still, the first side is pure Charles country--eccentric and sexy, which real country rarely is, and funny as only Charles can be. I wonder what Johnny Cash will make of the almost inaudible lowdown whisper that closes "Ring of Fire." Love it, probably. B
>>130732642nuts to that hit. booo...
More James.
You mean you kids have never heard of the band Grand Funk? The wild, shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner? The bong-rattling bass of Mel Schacher? The competent drum work of Don Brewer? Oh, man.
>>130732787Guess MGM needs a new cash cow to be done to death since they don't have Connie Francis anymore.
This band has never even tried to simulate stage power in the studio except on its raw debut, which makes side one, with its first-ever recordings of two key live covers and the first version of the classic "Substitute" available here on LP, doubly valuable. But side two extrapolates the uncool-at-any-length "Magic Bus" and the bish-bash climax of "My Generation," which has to be seen to be believed. I much prefer the raw debut. 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
It's no accident that the best cut here begins "Ain't no words to this song." For all the hyperactivity of his horn charts, Norman Whitfield is a lot better equipped to get funky than to lead Motown's belated raid on "relevance," and many of these lyrics are dreadful. Several of them are quite all right, though, and "War" does help mitigate the climactic wishy-wash of "Friendship Train." More to the point, the singing and playing really do fuse the production styles of Smokey and Sly, a major achievement. Why do white people challenge these songs so much quicker than they did "Lucy in the Sky" or "Happiness Is a Warm Gun"? Are friendship trains any dumber than bed-ins? 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. B+
>>130732953Smokey upboated that cover and said he knew Michael was going places that early.
Despite some slack performances, this album--recorded live during Haggard's first appearance in the city he made famous and vice versa, and the only LP to date to include any version of the title song--is a passable sampler. The wild crowd and predictable fooforaw--he gets an official Okie pin and the key to the city--give it documentary value. But The Best of Merle Haggard is a lot more representative of a great iconoclast who's keeping it under wraps these days. Tell us, Merle, just which college dean do _you_ respect? B
I was a teen idol back about 12 years ago, now a C-tier country singer.
>>130733083So was I, although I was always a little bit bigger deal than you, dude.
At first this seems disgracefully skimpy--six romantic ballads totalling 27:36, including a slow "My Cherie Amour," a cover of Herb Alpert's vocal debut, and one count-it one (old Mary Wells) tune by Smokey himself, for title and "concept." Then you notice a gliss, a chuckle, a soulful paragraph or two, and realize that he's singing even more exquisitely than usual. Then, if you're me, you get annoyed at the Mo-on-the-town arrangements, with their full string sections and muted trumpets. And then, if you're me, you find yourself transformed by the urge to act as nice as Smokey himself. B+
Who wants a chicken running around with its head cut off? Apparently a lot of people since this made #25 on the US Billboard and #4 on the R&B charts.
What the Gamble-Huff band does for Pickett, Pickett does for the Gamble-Huff songwriters. The way the horns mix Southern drawl and Northern speed-rap makes me nervous, and I wish side two slowed down with the oblique "Help the Needy" instead of the all-over-the-place "Days Go By," but overall the musicians make the singer go and the singer makes the songs go. B+
Somebody asked the band how they knew the Indian on the cover and they answered central casting. That must also be where they found guitarist Kurt Winter and Greg Leskiw, both of whom play ringing heavy clichés in all the proper places. Randy Bachman's clichés were altogether subtler. C+
One great r&b instrumental ("Slunky"), two tracks that deserve classic status ("After Midnight" and "Let It Rain"), two that don't ("Bottle of Red Wine" and "Blues Power"), and well-played filler. I blame a conceptual error, rather than Clapton's uncertain singing, for the overall thinness. As a sideman, Clapton slipped into producer Delaney Bramlett's downhome bliss as easily as he did into Cream's blues dreamscape, but as a solo artist he can't simulate Delaney's optimism. I mean, a party song called "Blues Power" from a man with a hellhound on his trail? B
I've gone both ways with this group--if Music from Big Pink didn't tempt me away from my urban fastness, The Band did manage to make me jump around in my apartment. What gets in the way of this follow-up, however, is neither natural alienation nor critical overanticipation--it's the music itself, which simply overmatches the words. The tunes are so bright and doughty, and the musicians pitch in with so much will, that the domestic banalities of side one seem out of place in a way those of Delaney & Bonnie, say, never do. And if the settings are too complex for what Robbie Robertson knows, they're too unfocused for what he doesn't know, as the confused politico-philosophical grapplings on side two make agonizingly clear. Memorable as most of these songs are, they never hook in--never give up the musical-verbal phrase that might encapsulate their every-which-way power. Which perhaps means that they don't have much to say. B+
What looks at first like a slapdash studio double is in fact Eric Clapton's most carefully conceived recording. Not only did he hire Duane Allman for overdubs after basic tracks were done, but he insisted that Duane come up with just the thick, sliding phrase he (Eric) wanted before calling it a take. The resulting counterpoint is the true expression of Clapton's genius, which has always been synthetic rather than innovative, steeped in blues anti-utopianism. With Carl Radle and Jim Gordon at bottom, this album has plenty of relaxed shuffle and simple rock and roll, and Clapton's singing is generally warm rather than hot. But his meaning is realized at those searing peaks when a pained sense of limits--why does love have to be so sad, I got the bell-bottom blues, Lay-la--is posed against the good times in an explosive compression of form. A+
This is weirder than what you'd expect from a man whose Phil Spector savvy and slick gospel piano have helped stabilize both Delaney & Bonnie and Joe Cocker. Russell has all of Mick Jagger's whine and shriek and none of his power, so while the singing is distinctive, and valid, it grates--impressive material from "Dixie Lullaby" and "Shoot Out on the Plantation" would simply be more so with other vocals. If not Delaney, Bonnie, or Joe, how about Marc Benno? B+
Another blast from the past rides again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VdSFafSMRwAnd the last hit for these lame-os.
So are we just okay with the Christagubot spamming this thread?
>>130734738they sucked, yeah. what's impressive is how they were a 100% one sound band that made the same exact song from the beginning to end of their run.
In which a man who was renowned for his Odetta impressions on Jac Holzman's folkie label switches to Frank Zappa's art-rock label, presumably so he can do Nico impressions. C-
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
>>130734890>Nothing new here--bohemian hangers-on always get to publish their work while the less socially adept ("charismatic") are shaftedso much projection
>>130733183Ironically despite losing Bachman I think this is one of their strongest albums.
>>130733083>>130733101Isn't it poetic that the Country Music Association was founded in the 50s explicitly to gatekeep Nashville from the scary rock and roll singers, but then in the 60s and 70s most of those rockabilly guys went country and found themselves accepted by the very institutions that once blackballed them.
>>130733083Ditto Conway Twitty, Wanda Jackson, and Carl Perkins.
>>130735321Wanda was never strictly R&R though, she had as many ballad and country sides as rock ones even though after the early 60s she transitioned to a straight country performer.
>>130735321You could even add Brenda Lee, who recorded mostly in Nashville with Nashville session musicians and was signed to Decca's country division, yet marketed as pop and all of her singles played almost exclusively on pop radio and in the 70s when she decided to go country they were reluctant to accept her.
Did he do anything wrong?
Like the reconstructed "Reelin' and Rockin'" that opens side two, most of Berry's return to the label of his glory days is tasty, real rockin', and inessential. Also included, however, are two of his greatest songs ever: "Tulane," as canny a take on hippiedom (which Chuck has been struggling to comprehend since he first played the Fillmore) as "Sweet Little Sixteen" is on high school, and its sequel, "Have Mercy Judge," the first major blues this supposed bluesman has ever written. History, anyone? B
>>130735592>which Chuck has been struggling to comprehend since he first played the FillmoreNone of the old 'heads "got" the counterculture. Elvis didn't either and neither did BB King or Cash.
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
the falsetto king's final Billboard appearance
I admit that his arrangements can be "interesting"--my my my, a gypsy fiddle on "Something"--but they'd be more so at a less stately pace than four songs per LP. And if his voice is best displayed when he talks, why doesn't he do a whole album of raps like the one preceding "I Stand Accused"? Might be pretty funny. C
>>130731245
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+
