#0058: Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited [**]

Okay strap in folks, this is the money shot.

This is the highest ranked of all Bob Dylan's 35 studio albums.  Critics seem to agree it is the most important of his works with one author even claiming the Sixties "started" with this album.

So I'm gonna set the counters to zero.  I'm gonna pretend I've never heard of him.  I'm gonna _try_ as hard as I can to see something positive in it.  The odds are not good, but I'm still willing to put my money down.

1. Like a Rolling Stone

I know this song well and I have always loved it.  It's the one song that completely suits his ill equipped vocal style and the harmonica is used sparsely, which is a blessing to us all.  Cuz even in short bursts, it's fucking horrible.  Still, it says in the Bible that even a fool when he keepeth his silence is considered to be wise and keeping the lid on that mouth organ was a very wise move indeed.  

It's a wonderful starting point for the album too.  It's a driving rhythm with rich layers of simple parts supporting his voice at its weakest points.  

It's always been unusual for a longer song to be a hit and at 6:13, this was the one of the first aberrations of running time for a US top ten hit.  The really surprising thing is that I looked up at the display when I was starting to lose interest to find that there was less than a minute left.  So I feel good after the first track and having cracked the 5 minute barrier, hopes are high in spite of the overriding concern that it will be short lived.

2. Tombstone Blues

2:08.  I managed two minutes and eight seconds before my heart sank.  It's a quick song, snare on the up beat, rockabilly style.  His words are for the most part indecipherable and his voice has returned to that persistent whine created by a child unable to form words so urgently making whatever noise it can to get its point across.  It gnaws at my nerve endings like a razor to the spine but I was hanging in there.  

After the second chorus loop, I thought the instrumental section would deliver the reprieve I needed but my hopes were dashed.  The guitar "solo" we are treated to is as monotonous as his caterwauling as he drives on like a drowning comedian who has gone over time but is flailing in the water, gasping for a big laugh that will never come so he can leave the stage with some dignity.

This is the pattern of my torture.  Three times round the keel is my body drawn, my skin reattached and flayed once more.  Until finally I hear the words of the chorus reprise and blessed rescue from my horror is promised as it must mean now that this corrosive cocksweat will cease.

3. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry

Now why can't he play harp like that all the time?  It's like every mistake he made in track 2 has now been addressed.  The progression has a nice turnaround.  The rhythm has a rolling, easy feel to it that carries you along.  When the third verse comes in after the harp break, he shortens the vocal before the next repeat.  Has he done a Bill and Ted and popped off in a time machine to do a course?  Even his voice is bearable.

It's totally surreal how he can swing between these stark extremes of the most utterly abhorrent noise and...quite acceptable.  

Okay, 2-1 to Bob and everything to play for.

4. From A Buick 6

Well at least now I know where Stephen King got the idea for his book From A Buick 8.  That and the layers are the only positive notes I have on this though.

I found myself reaching out to the organ sound that is used throughout this piece to satisfy my need for notes but was disappointed.  It was too high in the mix for the simple padding it provided.  If they'd dropped that down and got somebody else to sing it would've been passable but #4 on the Rolling Stone list?  

At 3:19 it's the shortest track so far though so...there's that, at least.

5. Ballad Of A Thin Man

Something is happening here and I don't know what it is.  I've got a pretty good idea though.  A perfectly decent descending minor progression, given character by a wild-west-saloon of a honky tonk piano and a squealing but properly placed organ line is being crucified with each nail his pitifully inadequate vocal drives into the pleading hands of what could've been a great song.  

It really could have been a great song as demonstrated by the Grateful Dead, Golden Earring and Kula Shaker to name but three of the twenty artists who have made a better job of this.

6. Queen Jane Approximately

Once upon a time, in an effort to placate the Dylan fans who attended the pub quiz I used to run, I used this song in a music round themed on "Queens" for QE2's diamond jubilee.  

Good words in this and while the title is pretentious beyond the pale, the wise decision to recapture the sound of track 1 for the beginning of side 2 means that faith is restored.  Until the vocals come in that is.  

In fairness, they're not as piercing on this track and it is also one of the shorter tracks meaning a minimum 20% reduction in harmonica and weasel strangulation.

7. Highway 61 Revisited 

Entrance Of The Gladiators, you may already be aware is the title of that piece of music inextricably associated with the clowns at a circus.  You have only to hear that chromatically disjointed melody and the image of 12 middle aged men piled into a very small car becomes so vivid in your mind you can smell the greasepaint and the shaving foam.  

A comedian, possibly Eddie Izzard pointed out the ludicrous incongruity of the title with its application but in the case of this track, the tables are turned.  Surely the siren whistle was associated with the circus long before it was used on this recording?  It does make a mockery of the song somewhat.  

Some background reading reveals that somebody brought the whistle into the studio for other purposes but that it was suggested Dylan use it instead of his harmonica.  I can only assume that was some kind of practical joke made at his expense.  In the absence of confirmation it remains a lamentable low point in what one might reasonably expect to be the flagship song. 

For those who haven't heard it, it begins with a siren whistle, which reappears throughout.  That's what I get for trying to cut the poor guy a break: a clown's sound effect.  There's nothing else of note.  The background music just seems to be a jam the band thought up to try to disguise the fact he was yet again shoehorning syllables hamfistedly into lines on the same repeated note.

He just never learned how to fit his poetry into tunes did he?  Not being able to sing you can understand why but surely he could not have been so arrogant as to not recognise his limitations?  

Art is art.  Somebody, somewhere will like it.  Whether I can understand that or not is immaterial.  I think the reason this baleful racket irritates me so much is because it is so highly praised so I am obligated to listen to it and expected to agree.  

Heat a rapier until it's white hot and then shove it up a goose's butthole and you don't even get close to the hideous claxon of his voice.  It defies the definition of singing in the most fundamental of ways.  And the worst thing is that people have been emulating it because it has been so lauded they think it's okay to make these noises themselves.  It's truly heartbreaking.

8. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

A pattern is emerging.  The slower songs have more chord changes and this seems to guide him to attempt different notes.  On quicker songs, the chord endures, supported by a riff of some kind but he is unable to negotiate the scale and produce a melody.

The harmonica is not atrocious on this one.

9. Desolation Row

He's pronouncing row the wrong way.

The longest track on the album by some 4 minutes begins with the vocal delicately disguised by a solo acoustic guitar line.  

Then 2, 3 maybe 48 verses later something interesting happens.  The song ends.  Eleven minutes.  Occasionally the acoustic just drops out, presumably because the soloist has fallen asleep and needs a poke.

At one point my girlfriend held a knife to her eye and begged me to turn it off.

If you're a fan of Bob Dylan I hope you feel equally tortured by the length of this review.  Fair exchange is no robbery.

Final score 6-3 in my favour and there was chalk dust on Queen Jane Approximately.  So I'm converting that to a percentage and rounding down to yield the star rating shown.

What a waste of my time.  I actually feel sick with bitterness.

#0057: The Byrds - Mr Tambourine Man [**]

It's not because it's a Bob Dylan song.  The version of Mr Tambourine Man found here is marvellous.  It's the hit version I was referring to in Bringing It All Back Home.  Lovely harmonies and doesn't go on so long you skip the land of Boredom completely and arrive instantaneously in the Vale of Pass-Me-A-Scissors-That-I-May-Gouge-Out-Mine-Eyes.  That's what you need from a chilled out 60s pop hit.  Job's a good'un.

The mistake The Byrds made is to collect 11 songs of almost identical rhythm and key and put them on the same album, which, it turns out is aptly named because that's what we've got here: twelve versions of Mr Tambourine Man.

Just to show there's no bad blood I'll put the title track on a compilation but this soporific, directionless drone couldn't hold my attention if you had my balls in a lion's gob while I was listening to it. 

#0056: Bert Jansch - Bert Jansch [****]

This is one man and an acoustic guitar recorded in what sounds like the same take.  In the opening track Strolling Down The Highway there are moments where it feels like he could've benefited from recording the vocal separately. 

The guitar accompaniment is quite complex being a sort of country blues vamp and on occasion the vocal seems to buckle under the strain of coordination.  When it first started, my redneck radar kicked in but I think it was a false alarm.  His voice is slightly southern but not to the point of irritation.  It's calm.  The guitar too is more sophisticated than the picking patterns I've heard before in this style. 

Smokey River, the second track is instrumental and shows off his guitar technique but it's a very short piece and that speaks volumes about how this guy is serving the music rather his need to show off.  This is followed by a song much more toward the folk end of the spectrum.  Again, his voice is just present and comfortable.  There are no vocal gymnastics here and no over-stylised quirks and licks.  It's simple, which compliments his quite busy guitar accompaniment.

He has command of more than a few patterns tho so each song sounds a little different from the last even though they are in closely related if not the same keys.

I've never heard of Jansch before so I had no expectations but I have to say I'm very pleasantly surprised by this most mellow of recordings.  The first time I heard Mellow Morning by Spirit or Going To California by Led Zeppelin or Solid Air by John Martyn, I had this wave of happy calm come over me.  My first joint was still years away but I already knew what it was to be nicely crusted.   

Yeah.  We like this one.

I was just about to leave it there and then the last track started.  It's called Angie and it's a minor descending progression with a hook made out of a turn.  I've heard I don't know how many acoustic guitarists play this at various nights and never knew it was Burt Jansch.  I love it when that happens.

#0055: The Beatles - Rubber Soul [*****]

There has to be a list of Best or Most Iconic opening bars of an album somewhere.  If there isn't, we should start one and this should be on it.  Not at number one.  A Hard Day's Night would obviously be ahead of this but I do listen to those first few notes of Drive My Car and think, "Yeah, I'm alright for the next 35 minutes."  There are other albums that produce the same thought albeit with different running times.  You've got yours too.  You feel alright cuz you know there won't be a single track you feel like skipping over.  

In the old days, we'd just zone out if one of the songs was a bit shit.  We'd become more involved in the conversation or go and make a cup of tea, have a piss, smoke a fag - something to take up the time while the crap song finished cuz the album was on tape and you knew better than to try to fast forward.  You don't wanna break the continuity.  

I first discovered Rubber Soul in...I wanna say 1987.  It was the same year Sgt Pepper Knew My Father came out.  Remember that?  The 20th Anniversary of Sgt Pepper saw the collaboration of artists to recreate the album.  The original album I think was remastered on CD at the same time.  My brother bought it.  But when he got it home, even though the CD was printed with the Sgt Pepper title and the Sgt Pepper track list, the album on that CD was Rubber Soul.

I had no idea of course, I'd never heard either one.  My intention was to listen to the original album so that I would know whether Billy Bragg's version of She's Leaving Home was worth all the fuss they were making over it.  So I did.  Got right into it too.  My brother came into my room one day while I was singing along to Drive My Car and instead of berating me for nicking his CDs he went "yeah, great album Rubber Soul".  

"No, no", I corrected him loftily, "this is Sgt Pepper.  I can't believe you've got two copies of this CD and you don't know how it goes?"

My brother chose that moment to reveal his ruse.  

"Yeah.  I had to buy another copy cuz the first one had Rubber Soul on it."  

"Wha'?", I intelligently enquired.

I can't recount what he actually said next.  It was over 25 years ago and he does have a tendency to over egg the pudding with his yarns does my brother.

Apparently, he'd got the CD home, played it, realised the mistake and thought, "Fuck it", and then simply bought another one.  His thinking was, "I like Rubber Soul and you never know, it might be worth something in a few years."  

And indeed today, that CD is worth approximately fuck all.

I've no idea what a mis-burnt copy of Sgt Pepper is worth in mint condition but the one I found down the back of my brother's sofa in 1998 was barely passable as the thing that stopped all the loose change going down inside the frame.

Nowhere Man I think was the first song I ever knew off this album.  It was included in that Stars On 45 medley I mentioned on Hard Day's Night.  I wouldn't say that I was a loner through school but I certainly felt alone a lot of the time.  But I didn't realise that until I heard this song and I figured they were singing about me.  

Really?  You sure you weren't just an adolescent narcissist who thought _every_ song was about you?

I dunno.  Maybe.  Who cares - it was 30 odd years ago.  What matters is that I'm now a middle aged narcissist who _knows_ every song is about me.

Clearly, I can't write a bit about every song or we'd be here all day so I'll just mention two more and if I skipped your particular favourite then please be assured that I love it only marginally less than you do.

Girl - who would've thought of recording a man taking a breath in harshly over his teeth?  It expresses the mixed feelings of the song with unbeatable brevity.  

And then there's Michelle.

Michelle captures the story of a man falling in love across a language barrier and has so much character.  Its simplicity elegantly camouflages its musical complexity.  The word genius is often used with regards the Beatles but in my view this tune is one of the cases it is truly warranted.

I wouldn't put it at #5 of my all time list as Rolling Stone did but still a wonderful album that I love very much.

#0054: BB King - Live At The Regal [***]

I heard a story about a guitarist I know, though I haven't seen him for a few years.  This guy was (and as far as I know still is) a fuckoff guitarist.  Satriani, Vai, Page, Slash, Blackmore and Howe - he could play it all.  

Let's call him Jeff.  

Some fellow muso (Dave) was having a piss and a moan about Jeff having said in a rehearsal at some point in the past that during his solo, the rest of the band should sit back and come down in volume so that his notes could be heard.  

"You're the backing band", he said.  

Dave was extremely put out at the arrogance of this statement.   If Jeff had been talking about the whole song then Dave would have had a point.  As it was, Jeff was just talking sense to a band that weren't listening to each other; a band that weren't serving the song.  You need to be able to hear the solo prominently over the rest of the instruments in the same way you need to hear the words.  If the rest of the band are playing too freely it gets messy fast.  

From the top of this album you can hear that what the producers most want you listening to is the lead guitar.  It stands head and shoulders above all other voices - and with good reason.  It's full, rich and rounded.  That may be just a matter of hardware.  Why is such a fuss made of the player?  Maybe he came up with the combination of whatever it is - amp, pickups, compression and what-have-you.  

Either way, you listen to his choice of notes and the tiny little details of expression intently poured into them and you know you're in the presence of greatness.

That said, these are all 12 bar blues songs and I couldn't tell you which was which.  It's great.  The arrangements are tight and that vibrant audience noise captures the atmosphere in its tried and tested way, giving us a taste of the zeitgeist.  But I get bored after a few tracks.   

There's a flourish of 4 songs at the end of the album that gave me the variety I had been craving but it was too little too late.  Worry Worry is a slower blues number with a storming instrumental middle section and if I was doing a mix tape...

That's an idea.  I might do a ".pd.'s 1001 - best of the xxxties" series of playlists.  Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in.

But yeah, Worry Worry would go on that compilation for sure.  Outstanding track.

#0053: John Coltrane - A Love Supreme [****]

This is a post-bop, modal jazz album.  You either get it or you don't.  There will be many among you who would be tortured by this 33 minutes of saxophone, piano, bass and drums.  If it transpires that those people are the same ones that find Bob Dylan soothing and insightful then I will not be surprised.  This is about as far in the other direction as it gets.  

There are 10s of notes jockeying for position at the forefront of your attention at every instant.  It spirals and darts and weaves and interweaves.  It drops away suddenly into a drum or a bass solo and returns thrashing like a crocodile in a vat of acid.  

For the most part, however, it is not my bag.  It's too vague and repetitive for my taste and the so-called 'Trane is not inspirational to me, an aspirational saxophonist.  Well, that's not strictly true.  The opening of part 2 of this 4 part concept (Resolution) has a lovely main melody (or "head" as the jazzers call it) and as he plays it, I can hear purity, texture and intonation that I would sell a kidney to have.  It is only when he goes into one that he loses me with that esoteric squawking and the seemingly random interval jumping bringing me to picture a pissed vampire going round a crazy golf course.  At noon.

Haven't mentioned the piano player yet though have I?  Holy Mother Of Fuck.  His name is McCoy Tyner and I have never heard anybody as fast or as precise.  That's not much of a yardstick, I realise but these 4 stars are given mainly because I will be returning to this album mostly just to listen to his playing.  It is very rare that I listen to a piano player and with jaw already dropped have to shout at the stereo to fuck off.  

I used to have a running joke with my friends that when I was really impressed with somebody I would say, "if I ever meet him I'm gonna smack him in the face".

McCoy Tyner is still alive, y'know.  He might still have time to make .pd.'s shiner list.

#0052: The Beach Boys - Today! [***]

Remember how flinging flanging ridonculous the Bee Gees looked and sounded in 1978?  I poured scorn on that disco crap from the ivory tower I'd painstakingly built over my 9 year lifespan.  Today, Night Fever and Stayin Alive are among my favourites.  Things change us and in turn change the way we see things.  

The Bee Gees weren't doing anything new though it seems.  They were just copying the Beach Boys and the Beach Boys may well have nicked their falsetto style from the soul singers.  I'm not in this for the history.  All I'm saying is that I thought they both sounded stupid when I first heard them.

I've never been a big fan of the Beach Boys but over the years I've come to want to listen more closely to what Brian Wilson achieved having heard about him through friends who were a lot more interested.

This album kinda reminds me of the Phil Spector Christmas album a while back.  Its fat production and reverb-drenched drums put me particularly in mind of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.  The other Christmas connection I get is that feeling I described before; of hearing what is peaceful and/or happy music but being nevertheless over-swept by some underlying melancholy.  

If you listen to the words, these tales are dripping with sadness.  From the vexatious uncertainty of When I Grow Up To Be A Man to the repentant self-castigation of She Knows Me So Well these songs ooze regret, jealousy, confusion and despair - the main food groups of rock and roll.

Now, you can't listen to a Beach Boys album without talking about the harmonies.  This is apparently their 8th album and I don't know what the previous 7 sounded like but the chords the 3 and 4 voice parts form throughout are nothing like anything I've heard from the sample group to date.  Daringly dissonant on occasion, I can only marvel at what was either a profoundly able inner ear or an insatiable appetite for trial and error.

In other news, directly before making this album Brian Wilson took up smoking pot.

Towards the end of the album, the levee of levity breaks and the waters of that thinly shrouded sadness pour through.  Even the harmonies drop away by the very last track, written by Brian Wilson's brother Dennis.  Interestingly, all the tracks on side 2 were written by Brian Wilson except In The Back Of My Mind (Dennis), whereas the first side was all collaborative.  Can it then be assumed that the influence of Mike Love on side 1 is what stopped this from being a giant, wallowing miseryfest?    

I vowed I would not give half stars but I really think - for the harmonies alone - this is worth more than 3.  But I don't think it's good enough for 4.  I don't think I'll come back to it that often.  I've gone back and forth on this and here's why I've stuck with 3.  

The very last track isn't a song.  It's a recording of them sitting around chatting and eating.  It's...self indulgent wank.  Maybe some fans would be entertained by hearing the band talking about being on tour, how many mistakes they made, blah blah.  It does lighten the mood so that shows some self awareness that the order of these songs is taking the listener on a downer.  

But I expected more.  

This is a band that released FOUR albums the previous year, a band that after this offering would release two more albums in the same year.  I think that's a prolific enough output that if they needed filler material they could just have written another song instead of leaving the tape running while they jerk each other off over french fries.  Is that asking too much?

#0051: Otis Redding - Otis Blue (Otis Redding Sings Soul) [*****]

I can't tell you what a relief it is to be starting the new year with an album I not only enjoyed but actually struck home to me very deeply.  That happens less frequently the older you get.  Each experience desensitises you to the next until finally you die, bored shitless, having seen it all before.  Maybe that's what ultimately kills us; there's nothing good on telly.

I've been aware of Otis Redding for many, many years but have never gone looking for more than the one song I knew.

When I was a teenager, I loved a girl.  You'll read that more and more as we approach the music of my adolescence and beyond.  But I did.  As I loved many girls.  Well, inasmuch as I became sufficiently fixated on them to write a song of desperate longing, hope and ultimately rejection and vilification.  Ah the pubescence of an infatuation junky.  I used to fall in and out of love so quickly you could hear a faint humming as I passed.  Sad perhaps, but at least I never got chlamydia.

In spite of my affliction, I did manage to build up genuine, honourable feelings for this girl and we were very close.  One night, she put on I've Been Loving You a Little Too Long, and we danced to it in her living room.  Then we had a cup of tea and I went home.  

Yeah, maybe I should have kissed her.  

But looking back at who I was, I don't think it would've ended well.  So I'm content to have the memory of a beautiful evening rather than the memory of a beautiful evening that I ruined by trying to start a relationship I wasn't capable of having.

So now that I've told you that story, you can understand there is a certain bias toward this particular singer for me and perhaps unconsciously my earlier attachment to Sam Cooke is partly explained by the similarities between their two voices.  Indeed, two of Cooke's songs are present on this collection.  

A Change Is Gonna Come isn't indistinguishable from Cooke's version.  If I remember rightly, the original is mostly accompanied by piano but their voices are very similar and I don't believe it would've been appropriate at the time to have made changes that would have detracted from the central message of the song.  It is a rare circumstance when the political objectives of the song are more important than how it is played but this is certainly one instance.  

Wonderful World is very different from the version that perhaps most people associate with Cooke's easy, laid back rendition.  This is much more in the soul vein with stabbing horns and harder corners.

My Girl,  a song made famous by the Temptations and dosed up on saccharin even further by the schmaltzy film of the same name is given a treatment here that actually lets you enjoy the simple contentment of the song, rather than spending the whole time looking for somebody to hold your hair.  

Up until I heard this album I had not realised Respect was originally a song for a man.  From the lyrics in this version, it seems to be a song about an unreasonable woman, who isn't doing her part in a time when the man worked and the woman stayed home.   Must've been wonderful for the hardcore feminist lobby when Aretha turned it round on the chauvinist phalanx and made it an anthem for women ever since.  

I think it would've have tasted sweeter if a woman had written it from scratch, mind you.  There is a part of me that tends to think of this as Adam being stabbed with a knife made from his own rib.  But that in itself is a cautionary tale to the established axiom, "Don't shit where you eat."

I could bang on about this album for hours (and I may already have) and talk about the addictive party feel of Shake, the exhausted, noble misery of Old Man Trouble and the version of Satisfaction so good that Ronnie Wood says the Stones now emulate it themselves. 

It's just superb and I'm gonna listen to it again.  Right now.

#0050: Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home [*]

I thought I told you to fuck off.

Okay.  Fair's fair.  If Hitler showed up with a new plan to eliminate poverty, you'd give him a chance to speak, right?  Yes, his solution would be kill the poor but you'd wait for him to say it, right?  Oh you wouldn't?  I suppose he is Hitler after all and you know what you're in for.

You see where I'm going with this?  I know this wasp-eyed whingocrat well enough to predict a bleak sojourn in a wilderness of monotonous nasal straining.

But I'm gonna let my Hitler speak.  And once I've listened to what he has to say, then I'm gonna cut his legs off and feed him to the pigs.

Ah bollocks.  The first track is Subterranean Homesick Blues; one of those songs I've always loved when other people have played it and never knew it was Bob Dylan's work.  This is enjoyable because I know the song but it does just sound like he's doing a shit cover version.  Much nicer production on this album though.  The next track's okay too.  If I concentrate really hard, I can just about make out enough variation in the note he's singing[1] to make what in his terms constitutes a melody.

Bob Dylan's 115th Dream is everything I hate about this torpid, rat-faced sore on the penis of rock n roll.  After a false start, which they left in the take like the self-satisfied arrogant cunts they are, he proceeds to tell a story that goes nowhere and does nothing for too long.  Desperate rhymes on meaningless lines that could've been cut, leaving the track half as long and twice as bearable.

Mr Tambourine Man.  Well fuck me, it's a song.  An actual song, with words that actually mean something.  And a tune!  Oh, wait a third verse straight after the second chorus with no discernible change at all.  Aaand here comes the fucking harmonica a day late and a dollar short.  Oh for god's sake boy, put it down.  Thank you.  No, no, no not another fucking verse!  Jesus.  Why does this song need to be 5 and half minutes long?  Bohemian Rhapsody was only 5:55 and that was 10 years later and even then they were told they'd never have a hit with a 6 minute song.   But you know what?  It had seven harmonically distinct sections and even in the operatic bit when the words made no fucking sense, all those beautiful harmonies provided a more than adequate distraction.  This is just a tautologous mess.  The Byrds made this a hit; a number one hit.  Running time: 2 minutes 16 seconds.   Booyah Bob you self indulgent prick.

I've had a tit full of this cunt now. 

People say, "oh if you only had a time machine, you could go back and see what was happening and experience the impact of his music in context".  No.  If I had a time machine I'd go back and pay for his mum to have an abortion.

[1] and by singing I mean I'd be unable to distinguish that sound from a Yorkshire terrier chewing on a scorpion. 

#0049: The Sonics - Here Are the Sonics [***]

In terms of originality, this is ground breaking stuff and I'd go so far as to say this was the real beginning of punk.  It's brash, rough and thrashes about in your lugholes like an electrocuted octopus.

It is still basically rock and roll though.  The same progressions, the same words and as is irritatingly common for this period, the same actual songs.  Money, for example has appeared on 4 of these albums so far if my count is correct.

The vocal comes in the form of two singers in what I assume is supposed to be unison but who are separated by a quarter tone and 0.0125 of a semi-quaver at every turn.  Punk isn't really my bag and neither is this.  The quality of their voices is not sufficient to be recorded this primitively.

That said, they do some interesting stuff before slouching back into the 12 bar pattern.  Dirty Robber, I liked a lot for example.  Have Love Will Travel, one of the few deviations from the familiar 1-4-5 pattern has a very addictive hook and the distorted guitar and vocal is just the right side of dirty.  The sax that bursts through after the first couple of rounds is a stabbing, spluttering joyride of grungy ecstasy.

It is very much a counter culture album I think.  From the mood and the anti-establishment tone, you can tell these chaps are going for something different and that's great.  I'll come back to a few of these - Psycho I enjoyed and indeed their version of Money benefits greatly from the cheeky little chromatic kink they shove in the first change.  And a song with a title like Strychnine is gonna have to work very hard for me to dislike it.

But those 5 that I really liked don't even make 50% of the content so it's an album to cherry pick, rather than consume whole.

#0048: Jerry Lee Lewis - Live At The Star Club Hamburg [***]

I don't know enough about this guy to comment on whether he was considered a virtuoso piano player.  Certainly from this recording, any competent player would not be daunted to replicate his trademark key smashes and hand-heeled glissando.  The range of roles a piano can play in a band extends from the almost toneless attack that earned it its place in the percussion section of the orchestra all the way to the furthest reaches of harmonic complexity and in this band, the piano is definitely closer to a drum kit than a voice.

As with the other live recordings from this time, the acoustics of the room have been captured and the ambient audience noises provide the subtle details in an aural picture that makes you feel like you were present.

It's a big sound and full of energy, unrelenting and driven.  His presence as a performer is tangible as he stamps, hammers and swoops thru these rock n roll showstoppers.  In the 47 albums preceding this, I have heard nothing like it before and I have to assume that when he emerged in 1954 (according to wikipedia) that nobody else had either.  Of course, my perception is polluted by the more than 50 years of musical influences that followed this so I can't truly imagine what it must've been like for people to be hearing this for the first time.  But I can well understand why its urgent power would be arresting.

I don't think it's something I'm going to come back to that often.  Perhaps a couple of tracks might make it onto an oldy-worldy mix tape but it does all rather blend into one.  It's the sort of music I'd dance to rather than listen to intently.  But it does sound great and is enjoyable for as long as it remains interesting.

#0047: Buck Owens - I've Got A Tiger By The Tail [*]

The title does not bode well.  Sure enough, that ol' country bleating kicks in right on cue.  I shouldn't complain.  It's kinda like the Video Nasty outcry of the 80s.  Before VHS certification, people were taking home movies with titles like "Full Frontal Footage Of People Being Murdered With Power Tools" and then complain that they were violent and gory and unsuitable for their children.

Buck Owens is a Country name and I've Got A Tiger By The Tail is a very typical Country title.  It's meant to be dramatic, to express danger or some other intense situation but the image is...pants.  I could find a fancier word but pants does the job.  It's just pants.

The guitar work on Trouble And Me is pretty good and I like how the guitar solo switched from 335 to lap steel (or at least I think that's what they were) and his voice is a lot better than the nasal, hoovering-up-kittens vocal I've been subjected to previously.  

The production is glossier too with a much more rounded sound coming out.  So it's not void of merit even if it's not your preferred genre.  But to me these are songs based on the same two riffs over the same two rhythms telling stories with all the engrossing appeal of one of those over-confident, friendly and exuberant nerds going into intimate detail about the number of error codes defined in the hypertext willy fudge interface version 3.8 specification.

Your level of enthusiasm does not change the content or stop it being so fuck boring that you didn't even notice me use the phrase "willy fudge".  

Oh I dunno.  It's just pants. 

#0046: The Rolling Stones - England's Newest Hit Makers [**]

Okay, look, this isn't a Bob Dylan situation.  I don't hate the Rolling Stones.  I'm just a Beatles guy is all.  It's not like you have to choose.  I know a few people who don't have a preference.  I just genuinely, in general, prefer The Beatles.

That said, we're not really assessing even the Rolling Stones here.  This album is a set of other people's tunes that were possibly already well known before selected for this, the Stones first outing.  Can I Get A Witness was on the Dusty Springfield album I just listened to - and I have to say it was a better version.

It's difficult to separate the band whose original work includes some of the best songs of all time from the covers band on this recording.  The Stones sound is there and these versions are distinctive but it's still very much of a muchness.

I was gonna go with three stars but in all honesty, I don't think I'm ever going to listen to this again.

#0045: Dusty Springfield - A Girl Called Dusty [*****]

I wonder if the Simpsons ever did a gag with her name.  Like if there was a sandstorm or something.   Whatever.  This album blew my mind.

It is replete with real songs.  Each melody is disparate and recognisable.  Each fat, spacious arrangement is unique.  Okay, there has to be a full orchestra involved here.  The piano, for example, makes quite few appearances but when it does its presence is appropriate, necessary.  The backing singers have variety in what they're doing and they do it sparingly.  The strings are rich even when playing in high registers and it all serves to support Springfield's jaw dropping voice and piercing delivery.

There are so many classics on this record too.  I Only Wanna Be With You, You Don't Own Me, Can I Get A Witness, to name but 3.  New ones on me that have become instant favourites are I Wish I'd Never Loved You and He's Got Something.   Each of them with distinct character, both lyrically and melodically.  

Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa made me laugh.  In the Commitments - wow, I really should move that film into my top 5.  I seem to refer to it a lot.  In the beginning at the wedding reception, the band And And And* are playing but we only hear the first few bars and I never knew what it was.  I had assumed it was a hackneyed, worn out load of tits from some crooner like Andy Williams or Perry Como.  Turns out it's an excellent song being hacked to death with a blunt shovel by the gobshite in question. 

"Twenty Golden Greats".  How many times have you heard that expression on TV adverts for somebody's greatest hits collection?  How many times has it actually meant "two or three famous tunes and seventeen tracks of padding"?   With every song this states with simple confidence, "I am a greatest hits album in my own right and I claim my five stars." 

Take 'em, they're yours.

* - For those that want to reminisce or just want to establish what the fuck I'm on about.

JIMMY

What are you called?

OUTSPAN

And And And

JIMMY

And And fookin And?

OUTSPAN

We're thinking about putting an exclamation mark after the second 'And'.

JIMMY

What?

OUTSPAN

You think it should go at the end?

JIMMY

I think it should go up his arse.

#0044: Solomon Burke - Rock & Soul [***]

I first heard the name Solomon Burke when Phil Collins mentioned him at a Genesis gig in the middle of a big medley they'd been steadily adding to as a finale to their show, which included the Solomon Burke co-penned classic Everybody Needs Somebody To Love made infamous by the Blues Brothers.

Other people may have sought out more Solomon Burke to listen to.  I just thought it was cool that my favourite band were doing something from one of my favourite films.

I wish I'd discovered this guy sooner though.  In general I expected something punchier so it was a surprise to find Goodbye Baby, the unlikely opening track, was a country-gospel fusion with Burke's voice bleeding like a wound through the weave.  Cry To Me picks up the pace then it's my favourite track on the album.  Its seductive, urgent but somehow simultaneously lackadaisical groove just makes me start bumping and grinding right here at my desk.

Won't You Give Him offers another change of pace and features an acoustic guitar line that underlines the variety provided by this collection.  It doesn't hold out for long though as over the next few tracks we slip into a rut where the backing singers become overused,  They sound like gospel singers as opposed to a group of soul backing vocalists and that makes the sound a little square for my liking.  One of them is louder than the rest by some margin and either that internal balance in the group or their presence in the general mix becomes off-putting.

We get a break from all the partial lyric repetition in Hard Ain't It Hard, Can't Nobody Love You.  At least it seems that way as these are stronger songs and break what has become the enduring sound of the album.  Just Out Of Reach is also an exception but not in a good way.  It plods along like an old trail song and Burke's emery board voice is quite incongruous in the setting where all that's missing is a guy with two coconut shells.

The final song is yet another ballad but, like so many of these early albums, it is the one they got right.  He'll Have To Go is a haunting and seditious exposition of the love triangle theme.  I've been on both ends of the two-guys-chasing-the-same-girl situation and take it from me, on either foot the boot kinda pinches.  But there is something about this song that makes you forget about the fact this guy is trying to steal another man's girlfriend*.  You just feel the pain of his longing.

If it had more meat in the sound and the backing singers didn't linger like some cheesy vocal group named after an impossibly square sounding bloke like The Kenneth Braithwait Singers, I'd give this four stars.  But it's gonna be three; and mostly because of Cry To Me and He'll Have To Go.





* - If love triangles are your thing I wrote a song called Stolen Girl once you may be interested to hear.  If I ever record it, I'll post a link.

#0043: Jacques Brel - A L'Olympia []

My French isn't good enough to understand the lyrics.  I have never heard of this man and I have no idea what he is singing about.  It's accordion, piano, bass and drums and what sounds like pennywhistle occasionally.  It sounds like the theme music to Twelve Monkeys, which is great if you're watching Twelve Monkeys.  Firstly, it's a real mood setter for the film.  Secondly, it only goes on for a minute or two at its longest.

Oh!  I just caught the words "dans les jardins".  So, something's happening in the gardens, apparently.  Perhaps the Army of the 12 Monkeys has released a deadly virus.  Yet Monsieur Brel remains unharmed.  Is that justice?

C'est trop facile de guarder un mauvais souvenir.  Donc, je doit oublier ces chansons et abandonner M Brel parce que mon -

[It's too easy to keep bad memories.  So I have to forget these songs and forgive Mr Brel because my - ]

Hang on - he just said "les Anglaises".  Twice.  That's "The English", that is.  I did French in school.   Hmmm: references to the English in a French song in the 1960s.  I think he might be being a bit racist, you know.  So, in the spirit of the album and of unity with my fellow Britons, the English, I'm going to indulge in a bit of racial stereotyping.

C'est la guerre.

The crowd in the theatre this was recorded in are going absolutely mental.  I can only assume they're French.  And that the lyrics are amazing.  After a few tracks it does kinda grow on you, but that may well be Stockholm syndrome.  Whatever it is, I can't say I'm terribly comfortable with this strange urge to bath in garlic and onions, remove my trousers and wee in the street.

#0042: The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night [*****]

I breathed a sigh of relief when I realised this was next.  That's all I really need to say to warrant the five stars.  When the idea of hearing something gives you a sense of relief that you can trust what you're about to hear, then it's a five star album.  I've actually listened to this twice.  It's like the CDs I have in the car.  I let them go round a couple of times before I change them over.

What is so great about AHDN?  The opening track has that incredible chord to start things off and it just blasts you with its energy.  The Beatles product is maturing and while this may not be their Thriller, their Brothers In Arms or their Parallel Lines, there's a ton of hits on this and the other songs ooze melodic genius.

I Should Have Known Better, with that wonderful braying harmonica hook is sticking two brazen fingers up to Bob Dylan.  Y'see Bob?  This is what can be done when you're not tone fucking deaf.

The simplicity of the sentiment in I Love Her, Things We Said Today and I'll Be Back steers the songs away from the schmaltzy pap they could so easily have been.

The anger in You Can't Do That, even though it's wildly inappropriate in terms of social values, controlling your partner etc, is just so cheekily delivered that you can't help but sympathise with this very jealous guy.

I'll Be Back is the stand out track for me.  I first heard this as a snippet on the very first Stars On 45 record that came out back in...1981 I think.  I was already very late to the Beatles party.  A couple of my friends at school had already discovered them but it's not a race right?

The song cuts right into me and brings me instantly to the verge of tears.  I was 11 or 12 and I'd fallen in love with a girl.  The fuck I had but for the sake of brevity, let's say that I did actually fall in love with her rather than it being a simulacrum I created in order to feel normal among my peer group.

I would listen to this and it spoke to me of the long-suffering nature of true love.  How peaceful love is in its obstinate persistence.  How void of need for reward or validation its selfless understanding.  I'm very fortunate to have been given that quality of love in my life.  Not at the time.  I was openly ridiculed and persecuted for my pathetic little crush and they tore my fat, bespectacled ass to pieces as only a cluster of poisonous cunty pre-teens can.  But the song has stayed with me and remains unpolluted by their prepubescent vitriol.

#0041: Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto - Getz-Gilberto [***]

With a Spanish dude singing over the top it doesn't sound as sickly sweet and cheesy as the previous Stan Getz album on the list.  I think the version of Girl From Ipanema on this is pretty famous.  I've certainly heard it many times.

The latin rhythms in this are soft and understated and Getz sounds like a different player.  Maybe it was the production on the last offering that was the problem.  This is lovely.  I'd shag to it.

#0040: James Brown - Live At The Apollo [**]

Remember Eddie Murphy when he was funny?  "What the fuck is James talking about?"  Listening to this old stuff is like watching the Tony Hancock show clips on comedy nostalgia shows.  It's funny but you wouldn't wanna watch an hour of it.  

Brown attacks his performance with unparalleled exuberance and his vocal prowess is unquestionable.  This recording is kinda choppy and rough though.  The sound of the crowd I have previously praised is too loud in this and overpowers the drums and the bass, which I think aren't being played that hard to be fair.  The horns get a fair shake but without the substance of the rhythm section, it's just a lot of screeching and parping.

I'm gonna give it two stars cuz I believe I would enjoy this if I heard it live or indeed if it was just engineered properly. 

#0039: Charles Mingus - The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady []

Sometimes you just know.  Call it judging a book by the cover if you will but I had a horrible feeling about this album based on the title and the fact it is four very long tracks with very similar names.  It came across like a study in weird for weird's sake.  And guess what?  That's exactly what it is.

Clarinets whining, saxophones suffering in the furthest thing from silence you can imagine with the most harrowing bass and percussion track produce a cacophony unlike anything I've been tortured by since Bitches Brew.

It's like the soundtrack to the worst possible film noir.  

"I should've known something was rotten in the estate of Daneshill when I awoke on a Tuesday with half my face hanging off.  I got out of bed and duct taped it up and then went for a dump.  There were tiny fragments of vinyl all over the bathroom floor.  I leaned down and picked up what looked like a piece of the label at the centre of the record.   It just read 'Ming'.

"Ming".  The only record I own that would have "Ming" on the label is the Flash Gordon soundtrack.  I listen to that occasionally when I'm reminiscing about my school days.  But why would I have smashed up the record?  It had been signed by a Freddie Mercury lookalike at an office party some years ago and would be worth something.

I pondered the clue while I wiped my ass.  After seven dry wipes and even running the toilet paper under the tap to make a sponge, the next wipe still came back with a brown spot but I figured my underwear could take it and decided to call it quits.

I stood up and flushed but the toilet was blocked.  The plunger wasn't helping so I had to bite the bullet and put my hand down there.  I felt around and caught the corner of a piece of cardboard so I grabbed it and pulled it gently out of the pan so as not to spatter myself with my own shit water.  It was pretty badly crumpled and when I straightened it out I could see it was an LP called "The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady" by Charles Mingus.

I tossed it into the bin and put a hand up to my wounded face to sooth the lacerations stinging in the adhesive.  As I did so I noticed little tiny pieces of flesh underneath my nails and everything became clear.  This album must have been so awful I had clawed off my own face.  Then, realising what it had made me do to myself I had smashed the record and tried to flush the sleeve down the toilet.

I got dressed and went into the living room.  My friend Larry was there sitting on the sofa, very matter of factly with his head blown off.  A pump action shotgun was leaning up against the door frame.  Larry couldn't have shot himself and then put the gun there so who had killed my friend Larry?

I walked over to the body.  There was a piece of paper sticking out of his shirt pocket.  I pulled it out and read it.

'1001 albums to choose from and this is the one you bring over?  Fuck you, Larry.'

My handwriting - I guess people should exercise extreme caution when introducing me to new music.

I packed a bag, took all the bills out of Larry's wallet and headed for the emergency room."