Ten is an album that I am never going to listen to again thank you very much alternative rock radio, but Pearl Jam's next offering Vs has always been superior anyway. Dave Abbruzzese coming on board behind the kit improves things immediately as his flashy and ridiculously tight playing has been much drooled upon by every drum magazine since, really based only on this record. Whereas the following Vitalogy saw Pearl Jam trying and succeeding in making the most noncommercial music possibly, they were still trying to actually be good here. "Daughter", "Animal", and "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" are the most recognizable moments, but the whole album shows a wide range of tones, killer production and performances, and of course Eddie Vedder's impassioned yowl.
Creedence Clearwater Revival kicked off each side of their third album from 1969 alone with the A-side/B-side single's "Down on the Corner" and "Fortunate Son". To say that these remain the most famous of their songs would not be an understatement. Then to realize that one backed the other as a single, two albums full of singles proceeded this one in less than twelve months, and that they still had Cosmos Factory coming right up is to say that John Forgerty was easily one of the most consistent hit-makers near the end of the decade. Fogerty was calling all the shots at this point, and you would be a fool to not let him. "Son" is played out, but the whole album is filler-less, plus the Leadbelly cover "Cotton Fields" easily stands as the best reinterpretation that CCR ever did.
With "Friday I'm In Love" being on here, Wish was a big poppy success for the gloomy, make-up wearing goth kings The Cure. As happy fun ball as that song indeed is, Wish has always endured for me for its more somber moments. "To Wish Impossible Things", "Trust", and "Apart" still stand as my all time favorite Cure songs, depressing ballads one and all. So yeah, Robert Smith was still good at his bread-winning trade. The magic chord progression work-out "A Letter to Elise" and the other single "High" show off even more pop sensibilities, but these gel better with the downtrodden material than ever before in the band's catalog. Disintegration is indeed worthy of some of South Park's praise, but I still prefer Wish for its shorter and more individually good songs that do not paddle on for six, seven, eight, or nine minutes at a time.
Teaming up with Ric Ocasek and sent to Electric Lady Studios in New York, (even though an LA band), Weezer's brand new label seemed to have some faith in them. These guys came out when I was in Jr. High, and I remember thinking how cool it was for such a clearly uncool band to have a song that name-dropped Ace Frehley, Peter Criss, AND Dungeons & Dragons. Weezer were a well oiled machine when they cut their self-titled debut, having played the fuck out of it in LA clubs to the point where main writer Rivers Cuomo apparently burned through his guitar tracks in one take each. The eight-minute, one bass-line-only closer "Only in Dreams" has always been my favorite here, as nostalgic and wonderful as "Say It Ain't So", "Undone - The Sweater Song", "My Name Is Jonas", and "In the Garage" all are.
Canada's Rush went for broke on their fourth album 2112. With label pressure baring down on them, they needed to produce a hit or get dropped from their contract, presumably going back to working for their dad's businesses in Toronto. Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee, and new guy Neil Peart all collectively said "fuck it" and made the album which they figured they would likely never have the chance to make again. Dedicating the entire first side of 2112 to its iconic title track thankfully met with much audience approval. The sick riff/weed-laced "A Passage to Bangkok", ballad "Tears", and closer "Something for Nothing" all balance the second and conventional song length side nearly as good as the epic as balls first.
Listening to Midnight Oil keeps me in check as to how great this band could be and also reminds me time and again how I really have no idea what politically is going on Down Under. Diesel and Dust was Oil's sixth album and their first to break into the U.S. with the single "Beds Are Burning", which deals with injustices towards Indigenous Australians and environmental issues exclusive mostly to the country. While Peter Garrett's lyrics are as admirable as any other protest singer in any age, at their best, Midnight Oil can deliver a fantastic pop-rock album to layer underneath it all. "Sometimes" comes awful close to matching the musical immediacy of "Beds Are Burning", which here and throughout have Diesel following the band's progression from their punk roots into a polished, post-new wave outfit.
The Deep Purple album that changed their course and saw them admittingly jumping on the curtails of fellow English blokes Led Zeppelin was the first studio effort of the mark II line-up, In Rock. Blues covers were out and Ian Gillan's barely contained banshee wail was in, all propelling the Purple with a sense of urgency to become the best hard rock band on earth, come hell or high water. "Speed King" immediately makes this apparent just on its title alone, and by "Into the Fire", yes, Deep Purple certainly were rocking on all conceivable cylinders. The best song they have is the ten minute side-closer "Child in Time", which besides featuring the Ritchie Blackmore solo to murder all others, (OK, "Highway Star" is at least on par with it), it also has the best scorching vocal performance arguably in all of rock music from Gillan.
One of the worst album titles and covers notwithstanding, Coldplay took their increasingly grandiose form of dream pop to its logical next level with X&Y. This was the sound of Coldplay trying to be the best rock band in the world and whether or not that necessarily came true, an incredibly solid batch of songs were still offered up. Whereas "The Scientist" was and has stayed my favorite of this band's work since the first time that I heard it, "Fix You" comes damn close and has endured as one of their signatures. This was an album that grew on me, as both A Rush of Blood to the Head and Parachutes I found amazing straight-away The songs here work their magic all the same, most of which take their time in building like "A Message" and opener "Square One".
Jumping top-notch producers again after Bob Ezrin and Robert Fripp, Peter Gabriel teamed up with Steve Lillywhite on his third eponymous solo album yet still kept Fripp's bizarre guitar work around. He also invited ole Genesis chum Phil Collins, (as well as Jerry Marotta), to get behind the kit, and it was here that the former's famous "gated drum sound" was birthed. Gabriel's debut had the hit "Solsbury Hill" and his second effort saw him experimenting with more sounds at the sacrifice of memorable songs. Shit came together for the face-melting record though, with sonic innovation still in place yet each and every track being a glowing success. Gabriel's two best and most political songs "Games Without Frontiers" and "Biko" became hits, and track for track, this is as good as the songwriter would ever be outside of So.
A few older songs plus some from the Over-Nite Sensation sessions, (with a side of Jack Bruce), Apostrophe has gone down as Frank Zappa's biggest album in America. Most people with only the most rudimentary knowledge of Zappa's music can share their admiration for "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow", the only song about husky piss to ever enter the Billboard charts. Apostrophe's entire side-long opening medley with its warning against deceitful K9 urine, the tale of Nanook trudging across the tundra, and then everybody's favorite rest stop for flapjacks at "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast" is collectively the most commercial, quotable, off-the-wall goofy, and musically impressive "hit" worthy material in Zappa's gargantuan catalog. Thankfully the rest of the record is great too.
In the Court of the Crimson King, (with one of the all time greatest album covers), is considered the most prominent seed in birthing progressive rock. For 1969, rock bands by law had to get some blues down on record before ever evolving if at all, but King Crimson changed up the rules on their debut with a hybrid of jazz, classical, and "your guess is as good as mine" styles. The bulk of "Moonchild" features that time-honored tradition of Crimson picking up instruments and seeing what sounds they make with them for ten minutes at a time, and it is the only part of this album that is skippable. Elsewhere though, the opener "21st Century Schizoid Man" remains one of the finest riffs there is, while "Epitaph" is choice uno to play anyone who does not know how awesome a mellotron is.
Darkness on the Edge of Town was painstakingly recorded over six months, (spending weeks on just the snare sound alone), but the Boss never stopped writing material since Born to Run came out and had amassed a ridiculous amount of songs during the management troubles in between. Most would eventually be released on the compilations Tracks and The Promise, but the mere ten that he chose here have his finest ballad "Racing in the Streets", best guitar playing in "Adam Raised a Cain", and some of his most impassioned vocals in "Something in the Night". Production wise, Darkness is more stripped back from the grandness of Born, but it fits Springsteen's characters where the summer of romance was over and life was moving on.
I could bounce between this and Willy and the Poor Boys as the best CCR album depending on my mood, but I am giving the trophy to Cosmo's Factory simply because after proving himself unstoppable at penning hits with five albums in two years, John Fogerty astonishingly saved the biggest number of them for here. Seven out of eleven Cosmo's cuts were as big as any of them, the cover "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and opener "Ramble Tamble" showing off the best of their jamming skills, while "Before You Accuse Me" shows their affinity for the blues, just as "Ooby Dooby" and "My Baby Left Me" likewise do for their love of good ole' rock 'n roll. "Long As I Can See the Light" is the best hit, trailed closely by "Run Through the Jungle".
Dido Armstrong's first two albums were similar enough. Both were primarily written by herself and her Faithless member brother Rollo, feature the same electro-pop musical ingredients, and had at least one impressive hit, (the most excellent "White Flag" is the culprit for this round). Yet Dido peaked the second time with Life for Rent. The hidden track "Closer" is my favorite of her songs, with only "See You When You're 40" giving it proper competition. Lyrically, Miss Angel-Voiced-Armstrong is in fine form, essentially offering up a string of uplifting, ("See the Sun"), anti-drug, ("Don't Leave Home"), and nod-and-a-wink funny, ("Mary's in India"), tales along with her common, female perspective empowerment.
Seattle's finest hard-prog-rock collective Queensrÿche open-faced-club-sandwiched their best album in between their other bests, Operation: Mindcrime and Promised Land respectively. Empire was the one that boasted their biggest hit "Silent Lucidity" and as much as that song is Queensrÿch's "Free Bird", I still have to concur that it is their finest. The title-track, "Jet City Woman", "Another Rainy Night (Without You)", and the closing epic "Anybody Listening?"all have comparatively more conventional subject matter than the concept theme of Mindcrime, as could be expected since this is not a concept album and all. What it is is a superb hard rock album, everything here finding the band at their pinnacle.
The first attempt to record the Foo Fighters sophomore record found David Grohl unhappy with drummer William Goldsmith's performance, so they regrouped in Washington D.C. to cut it with Grohl ghosting/bashing away himself. So any listen here will prove that it is the same guy on Nevermind behind the kit. Whereas Foo Fighters was more of an accidental hit record that was made up of Grohl's post-Nirvana demos which were written through the years, Colour finds the songwriter focusing more on his recent present having just gone through a divorce. Less freewheeling and humorous then, it easily still stands as their best. "Walking After You" is their most lovely ballad and I do not care how many times I hear "My Hero", it is still goddamn fantastic.
After Swordfishtrombones officially threw the rules out far as what a singer-songwriter record could sound like, Tom Waits delved even deeper into his eccentricities with the second chapter Rain Dogs. It crafs an extra thirteen-odd minutes of his impossible-to-describe music, seemingly out of all the other instruments, production techniques, and certainly a voice that no one else had contemplated singing in. Sweat and rain soaked poetry rants, banging-on-anything-lying-around-percussion, and trombones are scattered about on "ballads" like "Blind Love" and scary, WTF blues numbers like "Big Black Mariah". This all makes the almost Bruce Springsteen-esque "Downtown Train" sound like it belongs on a different album, where in fact it only complements the experimentation going on here.
In an attempt to kick cocaine, David Bowie re-located from Los Angeles to France for the recording of Low, only moving to Berlin during the mixing stage, at which point the rest of the capital's trilogy continued on its way. Inspired by his previous Station to Station as well as the krautrock of Kraftwerk, Bowie recruited Brian Eno who brought his AKS synthesizer with and helped lay the groundwork for Low's second, mostly instrumental side. Producer Tony Visconti was on hand and famously achieved the unique drum sound here by using an Eventide Harmonizer. Besides how brilliant Low SOUNDS, every song ranks high on the Bowie chart, with "Be My Wife", "Speed of Light", "Breaking Glass", "A New Career in a New Town ", and then "Sound of Vision" most of all.
If there was doubt as to Tool being a prog band, all bets were off with their Ænima follow-up Lateralus. This took the King Crimson worship and fused it with astrology, mathematical sequences, occultism, spirituality, and enough humor left over for a creepy UFO prank call accompanying a drum solo. The tracks can also be listened to in two different configurations, no accident on the band's part. The years it took to settle the legal disputes between this and Ænima gave Tool much time to craft a complex-as-shit masterwork. Lateralus is exploding with tricky rhythms, time signatures, and Danny Carey grooves, plus lyrics about mankind's search for knowledge and our true potential to evolve. "The Grunge" says everything about the album and doubles as the greatest thing that Tool will probably ever do.
Birthed solely to piss off the elite and uppity suburbanites on both coasts of the Atlantic, it is a laugh that The Sex Pistols' debut Never Mind the Bollocks is not only a listenable album, but one that endures as punk's textbook. Despite manager Malcolm McLaren simply encouraging the Pistols to be the most hated act in England if not everywhere, they were actually a real band and apparently a great one. At least until Sid Vicious showed up. On "God Save the Queen", "Pretty Vacant", "Anarchy in the U.K.", "E.M.I.", the Pistols are taking shots at everyone, all with some punchy production, Steve Jones' balls-tight guitar playing, and Mr. Rotten trying and succeeding at sounding like your worst, sneering, disrespectful brat nightmare.
Another album that doubles as a greatest hits for the band who made it is Songs from the Big Chair. The four songs which Tears for Fears are known for are all here; "Shout", The Denis Miller Show theme "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", "Mothers Talk", and one of the decade's most perfect singles "Head Over Heels". The slow lounge ballad "I Believe", sexy sax fueled "The Working Hour", up-tempo "Broken", and the stunning, world music-tinged "Listen" flesh Big Chair out. Everything from Ronald Orzabal's vocals, the programmed percussion and electronic drum beats, and a dominance of floaty keyboards scream the 1980s to the heavens, but it is all done too expertly here to deny, with massive hooks just coming at you from everywhere.
Chicago's premier indie-robo-babe singer-songwriter Liz Phair dropped a tribute to her favorite album by the Stones with the startling debut Exile in Guyville. A record that defines lo-fi indie rock and confrontational songwriting, Phair turned heads with tunes about going down on guys, ("Flower"), the frustration and self-loathing of being on the opposite end of a one-night stand, ("Fuck and Run"), and getting what she wants from men, ("Girls! Girls! Girls!"). The eyebrow raising disappears though when taking in Guyville as a whole and considering that Phair was not writing so much about personal experiences as she was about personal observations. That and her own desire to make one hell of a musical statement, which she certainly did.
After a few albums, Foxtrot was where Genesis turned into a prog-rock band that looked like they were going to gloriously represent the genre. On Nursery Crime, Phil Collins and Steve Hackett joined, and the solidified line-up simply did a superior version of that album with this one. I have changed my opinion on just which of the last three Peter Gabriel fronted Genesis records are my favorite, but Foxtrot has been the one which I have been spinning more and more in recent yeas, and I now think is the high-water mark. Their heaviest song "Watcher of the Skies" opens the proceedings, with a the brief acoustic piece "Horizons" leading right into their monster epic and one of prog-rock's most mandatory songs, the twenty-two minute "Super's Ready".
Maybe in time Bruce Springsteen's debut Greetings from Asbury Park will suit me better, but The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle I must say I loved immediately. This is the Boss at his most epic, throwing everything in and coming up with classic song after classic song. The second side would be any other songwriter's absolute masterpiece, but coming from Springsteen, it is just one of his many. For awhile I considered "New York Serenade" to be his best song, which is an opinion that I could easily fall back on again. This earlier incarnation of the E Street Band plays their asses off, and the cinematic lyrics chronicle the youthful, romantic boardwalk kids living for the moment like they are going to die the next day. This is arguably Springsteen at his most exuberant.
It made sense that Coldplay would eventually work with Brian Eno. The fact that it did not happen sooner and has not happened since is the daft part. Four great if not outstanding albums in a row, this ended up being the last Coldplay record thus far to be remarkable. The big sounding pop ballad style that they had done all they could with was stripped away on Viva La Vida, and the result went ambitiously further still. Eno encouraged them to make each track as different as possible, with several songs-within-a-song turning Viva La Vida into a continuous medley. It all worked, not solely for it being their most diverse offering, but because the music and melodies were still exceptional. Just see "Life in Technicolor", "Lovers in Japan", and "Strawberry Swing" for proof.
I picked up Magic Potion after YouTube skimming and hearing "Your Touch" for the first time, straight-away deciding that yes, I did in fact need this. The Black Keys had their electric two-man indie blues down so well at this point that it makes sense that they started adding more instruments immediately following Potion. It also makes sense that the peak of their early powers had come with their last record at this writing with just guitar and drums on every track. The one-two punch of "Just Got to Be" and the aforementioned "Your Touch" are two of the finest opening moments that I can think of, and "Just a Little Heat" and "Modern Times" barely trail behind with riffs of pure swamp blues fury. Auerbach's hollow-body guitar tone was perfected here and never were his vocals better, which is saying a lot.
The Doors made one final go at it with L.A. Woman before Jim Morrison traded in music for more beer and died in Paris three months later. With constant producer Paul Rothchild fed up and gone, they now hammered down with engineer Bruce Botnick and set up their own makeshift recording studio where they jammed out and wrote most of the songs in-house, recording them live like in the ole days. This is The Doors bluesiest record by a mile, continuing from what Morrison Hotel was doing, only topping it. "The Changeling", "Been Down So Long", and the John Lee Hooker revamp "Crawling King Snake" join forces with some of Morrison's best poetry in "L'America" and "The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)", along with of course the legendary title track and "Riders on the Storm".
His primal scream therapy out of the way, John Lennon mellowed out a bit for his Plastic Ono Band follow-up, crafting a more user-friendly pop record on Imagine. He was still writing exclusively personal material and was still angry at the Vietnam War, ("I Don't Want to Be a Solider"), Paul McCartney, ("How Do You Sleep?"), and himself, ("Jealous Guy"), but he also let producer Phil Spector bring in his "wall of sound" this time and filled Imagine with more optimism than before. The title track alone is the best plea for peace ever committed to song; Lennon's simple piano playing and to-the-point lyrics combined to sell its immediacy. Also in "Oh Yoko!" we have what could be the catchiest love ditty that any of us have ever heard, further proving that Lennon could really do it all from a songwriting perspective.
Morphine was onto something, well, good on their debut album Good, but Cure for Pain is far gooder. Lumped in the alternative rock scene of the early 90s since where the hell else could you put them, Morphine were and remain unique. Mainman Mark Sandman played a two-string bass tuned to octaves, Dana Colley played baritone and tenor sax at the same time, and they had a drummer. Self-dubbed "low rock" since Sandman's great vocals were on the same wavelength as the music, Morphine dropped five albums in their brief lifespan that sound like no other five albums anywhere. That said, their best and most atypical song "In Spite of Me" is here, which just makes it pop-out more from "Sheila", "Thursday", "Buena" and all the other smooth and smokey Sandman yarns.
There was a time when I logically assumed that The Wall was the best Pink Floyd album. The Queen Mother of all concept records with Bob Ezrin producing and a film made of it that is all kinds of pretentious, weird, and great, it does in fact seem that the peak of Roger Waters the songwriter is on display here. It stands as his most autobiographical work, (along with the outtakes album The Final Cut), and so many moments here rank then and now as classic. "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)", "Goodbye Blue Sky", "Is There Anybody Out There?", "Thin Ice", "In the Flesh?", "Mother", and you could put the guitar solo in "Comfortably Numb" on the short list of the finest on earth. In fact all of David Gilmour's playing on The Wall may be his best, and that man sure always played at his best everywhere else in his career.
R.E.M. intentionally did not want to make another mostly acoustic venture as Out of Time had been. The three-fourths of the band that did not include Michael Stipe began working on new material for several months while switching instruments and ignoring drums entirely. Then they recorded thirty demos and sent them to Stipe, twelve of which found their home on Automatic for the People. Still a mellow record, it also boasted more punchy production and less folk elements, with the hits "Drive", "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight", "Everybody Hurts", and "Man On the Moon" ranking as the best such hits that R.E.M. ever had on an album. Then there is "Nightswimming" and "Find the River", which close things out on as high of a note as possible.
Pretzel Logic begat Donald Fagen and Walter Becker's use of session musicians, (at this stage just used on overdubs), but guitarists Denny Dias and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter were still on board. The hit "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" kicks off Logic, followed by some funk in the form of "Night By Night", and then the folk-rock tinged "Any Major Dude Will Tell You", all with even more funk showing up later in "Monkey In Your Soul", some blues with the title track, and a rare instrumental and cover, Duke Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo". Throwing these labels on these jams though is misleading as everything is distinctly Dan here. The band's blend of smooth jazz is at their poppy best, with only Aja defeating it.
Queen entered the 1980s with their eighth straight masterpiece and biggest selling album in the U.S., The Game. This is the one that brought the most crossover success with the soul charting "Another One Bites the Dust", which also topped the Billboard 100. Their ode to Elvis "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", (featuring Brian May's only documented use of a Telecaster instead of his trusty ole Red Special), is on here too, rounding out the Queen songs that you hear most on the radio that are not about bohemians, best friends, champions, or rocking people. As dancy as they sounded for the first time on The Game, May's "Dragon Attack" and Roger Taylor's "Rock It (Prime Jive)" still rock out the funk, plus May's other "Sail Away Sweet Sister" is easily one of his best piano ballads.
Since record sales are a thing that do not exist anymore, it is safe to assume that no album will ever sell more units, (huh, huh, "units"), than the sixty-five million that MJ pushed with Thriller. Jackson was pissed that his previous Off the Wall did not break all the records, so in constructing the sequel, he and Quincy Jones went for the jugular. This is THEE MTV era album; a record whose success and pop culture significance is impossible to separate between visual and musical. The title track/John Landis directed short film is still the greatest music video ever made, probably since it is a horror joint with a Vincent Price cameo. A-list ringers Paul McCartney and Eddie Van Halen also show up here, as is the perfectly constructed pop gem "Billy Jean", but well shit, I can stop right there. You all have this album.
Instrumental hip-hop may seem like an oxymoron, but you will see DJ Shadow's debut Entroducing... hailed every which-a-way as the be all end all album to be labeled as such. Entirely made up of samples from Shadow's massive record collection, the resulting Entroducing... is the best testament there is as to the art of sampling along with Paul's Boutique. Individual moments can be singled out like the spellbinding "Building Steam with a Grain of Salt" and "Stem/Long Stem"/"Transmission 2", but this record truly plays as a complete extended piece where the occasionally familiar sounds morph into a fully-formed and unique new beast. Entroducing... is like the sound of a dream where every genre of music is happening all at once.
The Police were short on new material when they began work on their sophomore effort Reggatta de Blanc, but they were also ahead financially, their debut Outlandos d/Amour selling enough to allow them longer studio time. Some of Blanc was made up of older songs, (both Sting and Steward Copeland dug into their back catalogs), and this made it their most collaborative. "Message In a Bottle" is one of their finest hits, "Bring on the Night" has an outstanding guitar hook from Andy Summers as well as a wicked, snare-less drum groove, and "Walking on the Moon" and "The Bed's Too Big Without You" prove that Sting was still the guy with the best songs. Yet he and Copeland's "It's Alright for You", the latter's two "On Any Other Day" and "Does Everyone Stare?" make what is technically filler do nothing to bog the whole down.
Another colossally charting pop album from the 1980s, every single on Lionel Richie's sophomore effort Can't Slow Down reached the top ten, the album stayed in the top ten for over a year, and it peaked at number one. Though this amazingly is not even his best album, all of the ingredients are necessary to make it so. A full fledged pop artist now, (with all traces of The Commodores evaporated), the ballads to rule the decade "Penny Lover" and "Hello" join the adult contemporary country "Stuck on You", with the Caribbean-flavored "All Night Long (All Night)" remaining his most famous jam. Richie teamed with a number of producers and session musicians, (including Richard Marx and Toto's Jeff Porcaro), and was hardly fucking around with making as commercial of a record as possible.
The Dynasty Tour was dubbed "The Return of Kiss", but musically this album was hardly returning to anything in the band's past. Peter Criss appears on but one track, (his own excellent "Dirty Livin'"), with all the other drums being ghosted by Ace Frehley's solo album and future bandmate Anton Fig. Ironic then that they chose to work with Vini Poncia who produced Peter's solo album. Kiss' answer to disco, the opening "I Was Made for Lovin' You" was the first of many glorious collaborations with Desmond Child and it ranks as one of my ten favorites, "Sure Know Something" nearly as great. Gene is thankfully reduced to only two songs, (the least that he would ever have on a Kiss album), but Ace makes the Stones "2,000 Man" his own, as well as delivering "Hard Times" and "Save Your Love", both standouts with terrible lyrics, as was the Spaceman's stock and trade.
Neither Van Morrison or his record label seemed interested in the Irish singer-songwriter making his sequel to Astral Weeks a carbon copy. That album selling like shit yet later going on to be regarded as a masterpiece, Van Morrison packed up and headed to A & R Studios to cut Moondance as a rhythm and blues record with some of New York's finest session blokes. The shift worked commercially, but this is hardly much weaker of a record than Astral Weeks. It is just a different, slicker beast. The title track became his most iconic song next to "Brown Eyed Girl" and set the template for the smooth, jazzy sound achieved on the whole record. Moondance remains one of the most romantic albums of all time, "Into the Mystic" specifically being on a whole other plane.
Powerslave begat the World Slavery Tour, (and ergo the ridiculously-awesome album covered Live After Death), and features Steve Harris' best bookending joints "Aces High" and the ultimate epic "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Bruce Dickinson for the only time wrote or co-wrote half of an Iron Maiden album, with "Flash of the Blade" and title track, (the former of which shows up in Dario Argento's Phenomena, naturally during a chase scene), showing that the vocalist was easily able to deliver material on par with his bass player. Powerslave was the second in the band's best era to feature its definitive line-up, and it simply finds their abilities as the heavy metal band to rule them all steadily growing, if not peaking altogether.
Lou Reed once again stripped down his sound and worked to his strengths on his last album of the 1980s and best overall New York. A love letter with piss and vinegar to his adopted favorite city, New York features heavy musicianship and a loud production, (and even ole Velvets "drummer" Moe Tucker on two tracks), which helped slam home his most biting set of lyrics that left less than usual to the imagination. Numerous political figures and celebrities get name dropped, hardly any positively. On the showstopper "Strawman", Reed yells more than talk/sings "Does anyone need a $60,000 car!?!", and this as well as jabs at Jesse Jackson and Jimmy Swaggart amongst many make New York not so much an album of its day, but one that repeatedly hits home the less that things really change.
Every once in a blue moon or two, a band will come out that truly sounds like nothing that came before or after, not to mention daft on paper. Rage was a funky, heavy as shit metal outfit with a guitar player who equally liked classic rock riffs and making his guitar sound like anything but a guitar, and instead of a conventional vocalist, they had an MC with a Mexican Revolutionist family tree history and solely politically fueled lyrics. What came out of these guys was some of the best rock music ever made, and their eponymous debut easily towers over anything else that they have done. Pick any song from "Bombtrack", to "Killing in the Name", to "Bullet in the Head", to "Freedom", to the Maynard James Keenan guest featured "Know Your Enemy", and all of them just kill and by design, also make you wanna just kill any who abuse power and thwart the disenfranchised.
When the folk-rock supergroup Crosby, Still, & Nash came together to cut their self-titled debut, they were tailor made to blow peoples minds man, (direct quote from David Crosby, probably). Buffalo Springfield's Stephen Stills was an excellent guitar player and multi-instrumentalist who could bust out a wicked falsetto, The Hollies' Graham Nash had an ear for infectious pop hooks and melodies, and David Crosby had been fired from The Byrds for being an asshat, yet he was also perpetually pissed-off at the man and had the fire to ignite some protest material. Getting a song a piece for the first three, "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", "Marrakesh Express", and "Guinnevere" spell everything out, all three songwriters peaking in oh so sweat three-part harmony.
Paul Simon was not on many's radar in the early 1980s, and the abysmal album cover for Hearts and Bones probably did not help sales either. Yet his pre-Graceland full-length is indeed as great as Simon ever was without African musicians or Art Garfunkel. Well actually, Mr. Garfunekl and Simon were working together at the time on some songs that ended up here, but a squabble occurred and Simon felt it necessary to remove every note that his ole chum had laid down before release time. There are songs such as "The Late Great Johnny Ace" about John Lennon, the title track about Princess Leia, (whom Simon would soon marry, then quickly divorce, then become a couple again with), and "Train in the Distance" for his first wife Harper Simon. For my money, it is "Think Too Much (b)" that takes the prize though.
The Alice Cooper band saddled-up with Bob Ezrin for the first time on Love It to Death, and one "I'm Eighteen" single later, they were the biggest band that parents loved to hate, (and Vincent Furnier himself loves to point out). Previously more interested in making noise as a psychedelic outfit, only brief glimpses of their future glory were present on their first two albums, but the band's ideas got streamlined on Love It, and now Alice Cooper were set to define shock rock for the 1970s. The album's best moment is the ode to Dracula's bug eating friend in "Second Coming/Ballad of Dwight Fry", and their scariest was the nine minute "Black Juju", but the title track, "Long Way to Go" and cover "Sun Arise" show that memorable songs were now a part of the band's horror shtick as well.
Dethroning Dream Theater as the best prog-metal band in present times was just what North Carolina's Between the Buried and Me did with Colors. Dazzling and complex, Colors is more than just sixty-four minutes of instrument masturbation. Throwing in numerous other genres, (such as bluegrass, jazz, classic rock, and oompa circus music), and spitting them out at random, the riffs are guitar solos, the bass parts are guitar solos, the guitar solos are even more guitar-soloey, and drummer Blake Richardson is as busy as a dike in a hardware store, all while Tommy Giles Rodgers croons, screams, and barks over the whole thing. Then "White Walls" happens and I have to go change my pants.
It certainly says something when The Beatles can be falling apart and technically make their worst album that is STILL a masterpiece. Here they tried to get back to tracking and finalizing their new material live whilst putting the bickering and egos aside that ran rampant on (The White Album) sessions. Yet it was winter, it was cold, the new studio was a warehouse that none of The Beatles felt comfortable in, there were cameras everywhere, George had enough of Paul's shit, and lots of people were crowded around. So yeah, the project did not achieve its goal. Hours upon hours of takes were eventually handed over to Phil Spector after the band's break-up to make something out of, and indeed he did. The title track remains my favorite Beatles song, but the opening "Two of Us" also shows up in my top five.
Ultra was the first Depeche Mode record to follow singer David Gahan's bout in rehab after suffering a heroin-induced heart-attack on stage and then a failed suicide attempt all since the release of their last Songs of Faith and Devotion. It was also the first as a trio since their second A Broken Frame, as Alan Wilder took all of the dysfunction as his cue to depart. All signs would seem to point to Depeche Mode either being done or scarcely being able to make a decent album again. One of those awesome, odds-defying moments occurred though when Ultra proved to almost be their best. "Barrel of a Gun" opens things brilliantly, fitting nearly all of these blokes' trials and tribulations into its context, plus "Insight" and "It's No Good" are as sexy and chilling as anything they ever did.
Creatures of the Night was a glorious return where the still-great-in-my-eyes-tomfoolery of the last three albums were out of their systems. This was a record that would have put Kiss back on the map had the make-up gimmick not been something that had worn out its welcome, as the similarly styled Lick It Up the next year proved. Eric Carr got a bone thrown his way by making his drums the loudest thing in the mix, and he really makes a hell of an impression here, much more so than on his official studio debut with Music from "The Elder". Kiss were short on material, so they were still using many an outside writer to bring in stuff and collaborate with, (including Bryan Adams on "War Machine" and "Rock and Roll Hell"), but Paul naturally still steals it with "Keep Me Comin'", "I Still Love You", and the blazing title track.
Left to his own devices since the Alice Cooper band was no more, Vincent Furnier jumped full into his horror show eccentricities with producer Bob Ezrin still on board and made his first and still best solo record. A loose concept album that gets away with its hazy script by having the main character simply having a nightmare, Welcome to My Nightmare was the most theatrical that Alice had ever been, tailor made for the accompanying stage show and tour. Vincent Price is the curator on "Black Widow", "Cold Ethel" is a song about corpse fucking, "Only Women Bleed" is about domestic abuse, and "Years Ago"/"Steven"/"The Awakening" are about a disturbed little boy with the same name as me who cannot wake up. Just awesome stuff.
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