Jul 29 2024
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Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
I remember this album from when it dropped. I listened to it religiously for a short time, after which it slowly receded to the back of my CD collection, where it would remain if I hadn’t traded it in for Dungeon and Dragons supplies at our local second hand everything store. After another listen, I have no regrets.
2
Jul 30 2024
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C'est Chic
CHIC
The groundwork for so much of what was to come, from samples of ‘Le Freak’, to Donovan frankenreiter and the “Happy Feet” soundtrack from ‘Happy Man’, to just about every pop song that we love to hate on but secretly love at some level.
3
Aug 01 2024
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Low
David Bowie
Aptly named. This album is boring on first listen…and on all subsequent listens, I’m sure. Could be the soundtrack to a movie made by third graders, starring their cats, doing nothing. If this is Bowie drug-free, we are now better informed as to why musicians eat pills until they explode.
1
Aug 02 2024
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Hot Rats
Frank Zappa
This is a revelation! The musicianship is incredible; the arrangements wonderfully complex; and the shifting styles disorienting like a carnival ride - it all left me a bit breathless and joyous in a bit of a new way. I could do without the masturbatory 70s guitar solos (he was always ahead of his time!) from the first two songs, but overall an ever-shifting landscape of challenging musical joymanship! Not all at what I expected from the fella who in my childhood memory would’ve otherwise forever have been the “don’t eat yellow snow” guy….
5
Aug 05 2024
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Channel Orange
Frank Ocean
Wow! Frank Ocean seems to fill that beauty-fusion space in between didactic, rhyme driven rap and melody driven pop/rock that so few have been able to populate. Lest I say his name, he’s like a Kayne with something to say.
Lyrics like “Nah, I’m lying…down” from “Thinkin’ About You” (with such impeccable timing) and the entirety of “Crack Rock” and “Sweet Life” are art, allowing an inside view and understanding of another subjective reality.
4
Aug 06 2024
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Hot Buttered Soul
Isaac Hayes
Man, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Really, people literally do not make albums like this now. Storytelling soul is gone.indeed, I think soul music is gone, atomized into R&B, HipHop, Funk, even Singer-Songwriter, molecules-to-the-universe-gone-but-not-forgotten gone. I don’t necessarily love the music, but I long for the time and the sociocultural context that welcomed this music. When I complete my Time Machine, it’s the 70s or bust…
3
Aug 07 2024
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Stankonia
OutKast
Wow, OutKast is more than “Hey Ya”?!
‘Stankonia’ is pretty okay, but it led me down the OutKast rabbit hole, music and videos, and I popped back out with a new group of songs to take along on my journey. The songs are wonderfully variable musically, and thematically and the videos are clearly done by a manic synesthete on acid, and they take the experience that is OutKast to a newer, even better place.
OutKast is a beast that ate Robert Johnson and Grandmaster Flash and the Everly Brothers and nibbled on Isaac Hayes and Spike Jones and (weirdly) Flight of the Conchords (or more likely they nibbled on OutKast).
4
Aug 08 2024
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Red Headed Stranger
Willie Nelson
5
Aug 12 2024
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Superunknown
Soundgarden
2
Aug 13 2024
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Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
It’s crazy that this album, Willie’s “Red Headed Stranger”, Zappa’s “Hot Rats”, and Hayes “Hot Buttered Soul” came from the same era - a testament that this is a wonderful world! Mostly knowing Zeppelin from their hits as singles, this album sounds to me like an album Led Zeppelin took inspiration from to make the real Led Zeppelin albums.
3
Aug 14 2024
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Phaedra
Tangerine Dream
Interstitial style, apparently from the origin. “I could make that” stuff that you really couldn’t.
3
Aug 15 2024
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Fuzzy
Grant Lee Buffalo
I couldn’t get through this album. This used to be my wheelhouse, but I found this, honestly, lyrically, musically and spiritually, empty. I like to believe that I’m always looking forward and waiting for new things to amaze me - this helps me to see that I’ve moved on past vapid, navel gazing, Yawn Rock.
2
Aug 16 2024
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OK
Talvin Singh
Conceptually interesting tapestry of musical styles, with some great drumming, but it left me flat overall. I think I just had the experience my kids have when I have them listen to a piece of seminal music that has been taken further over the intervening time. If they can appreciate the pedigree, it’s usually still a review of “Meh”. Did anyone else have sense that they were listening to the soundtrack album for the Bollywood remake of “Blade Runner”?
3
Aug 19 2024
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Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden
I have a confession to make : despite growing up in a hick town in the 1980s, I have NEVER listened to Iron Maiden! I was too busy with Phil Collins and Bryan Adams and Friday Night videos and didn’t turn my attention to them, as I thought they were heavy metal and I didn’t do heavy metal (that was those guys in the 3/4 sleeve rock T-shirts with that creepy Eddie splashed on the front). Object lesson in staying in your lane and ‘finding’ only those cultural bits that look familiar. Too bad for me - they’re pretty okay, with lots of Van Halen and even Chili Peppers guitar riffs and lyrics and stage antics tame by subsequent standards. I probably won’t seek them out too often, but I won’t turn away from them so quickly next time either.
3
Aug 20 2024
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Siamese Dream
The Smashing Pumpkins
Lush and heavy (some of the guitar work is ‘heavier’ in its way than the guitar on the recent Iron Maiden album, again showing the shifting landscape of style and also likely pointing out some of Corgans influences). I came to The Pumpkins with the next album, so this one has no emotional resonance for me. It’s good musically but not really my thing. But it did lead me back to Fugazi and some other “if you like this, then you’ll like this” bands that Henry then walked in on and we had a 90s awakening for him, so once again every melancholy cloud has a silver Offspring/Fugazi/ Everclear lining.
3
Aug 21 2024
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It's Too Late to Stop Now
Van Morrison
Ahhh, the master of blue-eyed soul.
I do love me some Van the Man, that love child of James Brown and James Taylor.
I was on a mountain biking trip in the summer of 1989 in Alberta with my uncle and a couple of family friends. We had covered a lot of altitude and miles before making camp for the night in the middle of nowhere under the big western sky, like four Spandex cowboys. The campfire was on the go when the fellas realized that they’d lost their hash somewhere along the way! Off they went, eventually finding it against the odds. They were in a celebratory mood (and high as f#&k) and put on some music to play one-legged “Pick up the Bag”, leading me to ask “Who’s this?”. They were aghast that I’d never heard - of course - Van Morrison. They were actually mad at my father for never having showed me the Way of the Van. And he’s been along for my ride ever since, in and out, on and off, but always there somewhere. Not sure I dig his live stuff as much as his studio work, but pulling out a Van album off the shelf now and then is always welcome.
3
Aug 22 2024
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Frank
Amy Winehouse
3
Aug 23 2024
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#1 Record
Big Star
Never heard of them. Sounds like 1970s guitar rock without a lot to distinguish it.
2
Aug 26 2024
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The Velvet Underground & Nico
The Velvet Underground
Apparently a classic, but I found this a hard listen. While I did appreciate the spirit of experimentation that Cage and Reed brought to the songs, they often fell flat beyond that. “Heroin” did portray what I would imagine doing horse in the 60s felt like, which is an artistic triumph. And “Sunday Morning” is a straight up 60s classic. But Nico’s vocals are nothing but jarring and the music is often flat as is the mood it brings. I give it two bananas
2
Aug 27 2024
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Illinois
Sufjan Stevens
Fantastic! Musically and lyrically and atmospherically a revelation, again. Yet another album from an artist who I’ve heard of but haven’t listened to previously and now will make my way through their oeuvre. Listenable yet affecting from start to finish, Stephens manages to do that thing that true artists do, making the whole more than the seeming sum of the parts.
5
Aug 28 2024
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Justified
Justin Timberlake
This album met all of my expectations. Enough said.
Oh…and my imagination was wandering around (perhaps trying to escape?!) whilst sort of listening to JT (he asked me to call him that somewhere in there) and I thought: Art. Really. Hopefully there’s a reason why we make this sort of music. Maybe we’ll one day see the ships filling the skies over our cities and our nukes will be useless and we’ll face annihilation from our alien overlords. Failing force, we attempt to soothe them with our humanity, in efforts to have them spare us at least that.
Beethoven. Makes their ears bleed. Picasso. Screaming for hours after. Fellini. Anger after befuddlement (even them).
Shakespeare. Intrigued, but let down after discovering he ghost wrote.
Then, jogs by a 40 something New Yorker who doesn’t give a fuck that the aliens have come for us, she needs to get her run in, as she has for everyday since 2002. Intrigued, one of the ships beams her up to probe just what’s up with her, self-betterment in the face of certain death and all. And what’s on her Walkman but her favorite album, JTs “Justified”. They are soothed. The album perfectly syncs with their harmonic centres, releasing waves of endocannibinoids and dopamine, easing them into a state a bliss they’ve never before known. All thoughts of domination and war evaporate in this “Timberlake state”. Prime directives rewired, they now heed only one thought: find this Tim-ber-lake. Once they figure out Facebook, it’s not a problem and soon they’re whisking JT away beyond the edge of the known universe. Who knew that inside every alien is a latent teenage girl, silently screaming for constant hits of misogynist-lite boy band confection. In the end, we all win.
1
Aug 29 2024
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Vento De Maio
Elis Regina
Thanks to Jon’s generous text analysis of two weeks ago, I didn’t just discount this album right away - I considered why, then discounted it. At the risk of sounding xenophobic, I believe that I have different expectations of non-English artists. I press ‘play’ on albums from non-Western climes and of different languages with an excited expectation of discovery of a new-to-me ‘otherness’. I’m looking for expansion, even just a little. This album was 70s soft pop with lyrics, while sonorous in a Romance language, I couldn’t appreciate beyond feeling like Captain & Tennille had learned Spanish in a futile attempt to seem less bland.
3
Aug 30 2024
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En-Tact
The Shamen
Unexpectedly cool proto electronica from what would’ve likely been another Simple Minds or Big Country if one of their dads didn’t own a TV repair shop or the like. 8-bit drum machines and an easy hand on the rest of it and somehow it’s transporting like Trainspotting. Huh
3
Sep 02 2024
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Back To Black
Amy Winehouse
I think I’m a prude. I don’t really admire Winehouse’s bad person (woke man that I am) style (and substance). The musicianship is top-rate, as per her last album, and she’s undeniably one of the finest of her generation, but her message is medium-rate (even though it’s true, hence me being a prude and not wanting to look straight at the burning sun of her talent and addiction and self-destruction). This music reflecting self stuff is a hard business!
3
Sep 03 2024
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Disintegration
The Cure
I can’t…I just can’t…anything but The Cure.
1
Sep 04 2024
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Live At The Star Club, Hamburg
Jerry Lee Lewis
Proto-rock’n’roll by an alcoholic pedophile and yet one of the best live albums of all! Talk about separating then artist from the art. Crazy world.
The rawness and energy and the German crowd unironically chanting “Jerry” is dizzying, even 60 years later. With every nuance examined and every commodity, including music, overanalyzed and pre-judged upon its presentation to us, can we still have experiences like this? I hope so.
4
Sep 05 2024
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Oracular Spectacular
MGMT
Some highlights and bright bits musically but overall I found this tepid. Cognitively I can see this may be important in the transition through the 90s-today, but it leaves my soul asking me to get back to music with feeling, please (my soul has good manners). I’ll post this in my conversational brain under “music to pull out so that my decade(s) younger friends think I’m still relevant”. And how the fu k do these guys have 80x more listeners than Ozomatli?! If there was a “2.5” rating, but 3 it is
3
Sep 06 2024
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Street Signs
Ozomatli
(Dancing Face Emoji) Where did they come from?! And why have I never heard them before now?! And how did they mash up those musics and those messages and make it work?! And what have they done to my need to categorize musical styles?! And how can I see them live?! And am I the first person to ever have their mind blown by Ozomatli while making bread and butter pickles?! They’ve raised so many questions…
4
Sep 09 2024
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Bossanova
Pixies
I also thought I liked the Pixies, but I really felt this album was best left to my 90s self. My 2020s self has moved on from what now seems like noise music gone to hell in the hands of musician wannabes.
1
Sep 10 2024
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Brilliant Corners
Thelonious Monk
Brilliant. Now this challenged my listening in the right ways : modal style, rhythmic inconsistency, un-landing melodies, not a lyric in sight but saying a lot, unpredictable interplay of instruments. I could only aspire to get to the point of playing that you can throw away the rules and make up your own as you go! I suppose this is the music that Jerry Lee Lewis was saying “fu k that shit” to, but I’ve made a place for them both…I’ll just make sure they don’t get seated side by side or they might get into it….
4
Sep 11 2024
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Exile On Main Street
The Rolling Stones
Once again proving that albums are a creature apart from our current culture of songs as singles, not part of a whole (maybe this reflects the general trend towards individuality that we presently live with?). I do love me some Stones, and ‘Sweet Virginia’ marries up my country leanings with crunchy blues guitar as well as any song out there, but it was the ‘other songs’ that grabbed me here, especially “Shine a Light” and “I Just Want to See His Face”. Maybe Mick and Keef felt they needed some saving - and they were probably right.
4
Sep 12 2024
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Heavy Weather
Weather Report
This endeavour keeps pushing me beyond my listening history. Weather Report is to Miles Davis what Any Winehouse is to Aretha Franklin : solid music without the same emotional depth. This did grow on me through the listen, but I’m sticking with my first impression : maybe jazz doesn’t need that 80s synth sound.
3
Sep 13 2024
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Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)
Eurythmics
I was there for this music at the start, but, despite Annie Lennox’s luscious vocal tone, I’m not sure I’m there for it now.
3
Sep 16 2024
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I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
Aretha Franklin
Classic, rock solid foundational soul from THAT VOICE! This is ‘comfort music’ (even though I have no particular personal emotional history with it).
4
Sep 17 2024
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Tidal
Fiona Apple
Green eggs and ham.
I do like Fiona Apple, Sam I am.
Always took her for the cut rate Alanis, but what a voice, great musicians and strong songwriting and performance. Damn.
4
Sep 18 2024
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Raw Power
The Stooges
I guess now we know the answer to that age old question : “If you give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of electric guitars, what do they make?” A Stooges album.
2
Sep 19 2024
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Younger Than Yesterday
The Byrds
Interesting, as I’d never listened to this band other than incidentally. I read that they were meant to be as influential on subsequent music, particularly Alt Country, as another band of their era, the Beatles. I just didn’t hear it here. I think some of the issue was production, as the mix often sound wrong to my ears. But mostly I just don’t connect with their style nor with their songwriting. ‘My Back Pages’ is nice and my favorite (at least before it devolved into a meander on the sitar), wasn’t even on the main album, ‘Old John Robertson’.
2
Sep 23 2024
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More Songs About Buildings And Food
Talking Heads
I’ve never listened to an entire Talking Heads album up to now. The music was more intriguing than I expected, but David Byrne sounds like Max Headroom after a few too many rum and Cokes for most of the album. I think I’ll never listen to another entire Talking Heads album again.
2
Sep 24 2024
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On The Beach
Neil Young
I’m always surprised when I listen to an Al um by an artist whose oeuvre I think I know top to bottom, only to realize that I really just know their big songs and an album or two that I’ve put the time into. Not surprisingly, I felt that with “On the Beach”. “For the Turnstiles” and “Walk On” are great songs all day, every day, but I was pleased to ‘discover’ “See the Sky About to Rain”, which is been completely without prior.
Aside - did anyone else notice that Wikipedia lists Neil as a “Canadian-American” musician. You know you’ve made it to the top when America lies to call you their own! I’d say 3.5, but gave 4 so Neil remembers where he’s from…
4
Sep 25 2024
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Made In Japan
Deep Purple
Deep Purple remain a mystery to me, from the name, to the fandom, to why the music should impress, to asking whether they would maintain relevance at all were it not for “the riff” (amazing how one piece of one song can ‘make’ a music career…)
2
Sep 26 2024
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Bone Machine
Tom Waits
Man, as much as I love Tom Waits, he can be challenging. Bone Machine seems to be (literally) shouting “wake up!!” to the collective pop music imbibing masses. This entire exercise for me has been about getting outside known musical lanes, even with artists I think I ‘know’. Bone Machine has no lane, as it careens through the aural wilderness, daring us to hang on as long as we can. I probably won’t go back to it often, but I know it’s there when I need a musical slap in the face.
3
Sep 27 2024
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Get Rich Or Die Tryin'
50 Cent
Reminds me so much that I’m in my mid-50s. And that I’m not gangster (yes, I said ‘gangst-ER’, because my spellcheck won’t let me write ‘gangsta’, because even my phone knows that i can’t like 50 Cent, even if I give it the old college (see!) try).
2
Sep 30 2024
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Ágætis Byrjun
Sigur Rós
Fucking awesome. I thought these guys were just Bjorkers-on for that other Icelandic music sensation, but they’re expansively talented, wide ranging musical silkworms, ingesting other musical forms and spinning them out into something…better. I love the ambient soundscapes, the haunting vocals and the journey of the album as a map to their musical interworld. Consider Sigur Ros ‘found’ by this guy.
5
Oct 01 2024
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Kind Of Blue
Miles Davis
I’m sure, as he tooted his tooter, Miles Davis was self-actualizing (his mind leaving his body behind to do its thing) himself as a craftsman, turning simple ingredients into so much more than the sum of their parts, ‘cause Miles Davis is a near-perfect woodworking soundtrack.
4
Oct 02 2024
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Medúlla
Björk
Bjork defies words, so just - Fantastic!
4
Oct 03 2024
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A Little Deeper
Ms. Dynamite
Going into this listen with low expectations, I was blown away. What a powerful, take-no-bullshit approach to musical protest and empowerment.
Why have I never heard this? Why haven’t we progressed much at all, keeping her women-forward message still oh so relevant, 20+ years later? What do I do every day to help evolve our society to make it unneeded? Do I like reggaeton? Tune in next week for more existential angst brought on by powerful music…
4
Oct 04 2024
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Tuesday Night Music Club
Sheryl Crow
To quote my favorite Mel Brooks movie :
“Piss boy, bring the bucket!”.
2
Oct 07 2024
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Fever To Tell
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Meh Meh Meh. I was excited at the last song I heard, but then I realized it was Beck, spun off the end of the album by the Spotify algorithm.
2
Oct 08 2024
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Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Ahhh, comfortable rock’n’roll of my youth. This is as stereotypical of the 70s Springsteen/Jackson Browne/Tom Petty trifecta as it gets. “American Girl” is my standout here, and I must admit not much else other than the driving-down-the-highway vibe stays with me after the first listen. But I know how much good stuff is on the way from TP, so I’ll give him a 3 for his out-the-gate effort…
3
Oct 09 2024
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Exodus
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Man, is this a gospel album or what? If anyone else, even Dylan, mentioned the Creator as often as Marley does here, I’d be tuning out in no time. But…somehow he mixes the reggae guitar chunk that I don’t really like; religious overtones that I don’t really share; and lyrics that I can’t always understand…and he makes it awesome! And how many albums finish so strong on the back half? Marley could write cereal jingles and they’d be profound hits, I expect.
4
Oct 10 2024
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Ray Of Light
Madonna
I don’t know. Seems Madonna’s for dancing, not for listening. I don’t dance anymore. So, for me, the time of Madonna has passed.
2
Oct 11 2024
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Back In Black
AC/DC
There was a time when I would drive around in my buddy’s 5.0 mustang with AC/DC shouting to the world out the windows for us. I had a 3/4 sleeve Tshirt and knew the words to more of the songs than I took the time to hear the words of. Fuck, these guys are assholes! What a pack of misogynist jerks I see them as now. I’m embarrassed that I suggested my kids listen to them, though I guess they are now an object lesson in how not to be, the “before” in a cultural shitt that has caused a chasm that their music would do well to disappear deepen into (sorry, Jon, ended that sentence with a preposition). Ahh, but to have put that guitar playing to work for good not for evil…
2
Oct 14 2024
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Diamond Life
Sade
Man, I really want to love Sade, but all I can muster is to like Sade. Her sultry voice, her jazz-tinged arrangements, her solid musicians, her good songwriting is impressive, it just doesn’t speak to my musical soul.
3
Oct 15 2024
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Catch A Fire
Bob Marley & The Wailers
This is a nice album, I especially enjoyed “High tide or low tide”, which was new to me (i think because it doesn’t have the staccato reggae guitar that I just can’t learn to love), but it’s not one that I’d head back to anytime soon.
3
Oct 16 2024
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The Joshua Tree
U2
Didn’t even have to listen to this one to say that it’s seminal in my understanding of music and the feeling that it brings. It was sort of my “British Invasion”. Not a big fan anymore either, but this album stands shoulders above most from any era.
4
Oct 17 2024
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The Stooges
The Stooges
I’m still a ‘no’, maybe even a ‘no,no,no’ to the Stooges. It might be a bridge across musical eras, it might be the start of something beautiful to some, it might be lightning in a jar, but not to my ears. Sorry Iggy (but I suspect you’re a nihilist, so surely you don’t care either way…)
2
Oct 18 2024
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No Other
Gene Clark
Hmmm. This alt-country stuff is supposed to be my wheelhouse, but I find this pretty ‘blah’. Maybe the roots of the music I still love is in there, and thanks to gene clark for that, but I’m going to keep looking ahead and not behind on this one.
2
Oct 21 2024
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Imagine
John Lennon
After the title track, which is an undeniable classic, I found this album a weird mashup of non-Beatles songs. Maybe that was the point, but Lennon doesn’t so barrelhouse or blues or anything else so well. Interest g to watch icons find (lose?) their way after jumping off their pinnacles.
2
Oct 22 2024
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Remain In Light
Talking Heads
I didn’t much by like our last TH album but this one had something better about it. The musicianship is so stellar, David Byrnes singing is less rigid and willfully staccato, and the songs are interesting.
4
Oct 23 2024
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Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
OutKast
More love for OutKast. This album is a crazy mess of talent, momentum and vanity, but its highlights (for me, mostly in the middle of the second half) are high enough that I’ll keep going back, albeit for curated listens. I’d do 3.5 but momentum takes them to a 4
4
Oct 24 2024
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Heartattack And Vine
Tom Waits
I can only imagine that this album was shockingly unlike anything else that dropped in 1980, so much so that it didn’t register the way it ought’ve. I always say, and this album only serves to put bricks in this wall, that Tom waits is the musical auter of his era and that his is the music that will escape the orbit of the current, spinning off to be what reps his time. I mean… “There’s no such thing as the Devil, that’s just God when he’s drunk”, “I shot the morning in the back with my Red Wings on, told the sun it better go back down”…From the first notes this album is gritty America of any age. Fucking fantastic!
5
Oct 25 2024
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Another Green World
Brian Eno
I also thought Brian Eno was on my no-fly list, but his was pretty okay. His melodic sense is sound and he certainly got rhythm and his boundary-pushing is near-constant and interesting. Breaking down preconceptions, I give you…Eno.
3
Oct 28 2024
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Is This It
The Strokes
Hard to beat “Last Night” and “Someday” as classics in the jangle punk genre. When I think ‘I do like the Strokes’, I now believe myself to be saying hat I like those songs. The rest of the album, to quote Osama, let me drift off, disinterested. But in the rock world, 2 out of 11 will get you 3 out of 5
3
Oct 29 2024
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Innervisions
Stevie Wonder
I agree. Stevie is the man! I love Stevie and would put him at the pinnacle of my musical heroes, so I’m biased, but this is a solid album in all ways, even more impressive as the start of his ‘genius period’ after his start as child prodigy (which so many never successfully escape from). I must say I prefer Funky Stevie to maudlin Stevie, but Funky Stevie carries so much weight that maudlin Stevie can get a pass.
5
Oct 30 2024
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Survivor
Destiny's Child
Hmmm. How do you say anything bad about Beyoncé? And her crew? Catchy stuff, no doubt, but empty of anything interesting for my ears.
2
Oct 31 2024
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So Much For The City
The Thrills
Never heard of the guys before, despite their ‘Beach Boys-meet-Wilco’ sound and vibe. I love the lead singers voice and tone, but everything else is pretty pedestrian. The Thrills is gone for me.
2
Nov 01 2024
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The Man Machine
Kraftwerk
First listen : interesting and quirky.
Second listen (with Henry, who has some experience listening to them): what the hell?! I’ve heard these guys described as the forerunners of all electronic music, as the ‘next Beatles’ (really!), compared to the Beach Boys, as the cutting edge of the future of pop. To me, they sound like the AV squad at a 1970s high school got their hands on a Vic 20 and programmed the soundtrack to the drama club production of “I Love my Calculator!” while everyone else was drinking before the Friday night school dance.
2
Nov 04 2024
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Chirping Crickets
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
I love these old raw recordings! You can hear all the growls and flaws and it’s somehow better for that. I was really hoping to find a new favourite, but I guess the best stuff does pass through the filter of time for a reason. I’m going to do the classic Price is Right move on Osama and bid 1 higher : 4
4
Nov 05 2024
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In Utero
Nirvana
I sort of lost track of Nirvana between ‘Nevermind’ and the Unplugged album, so ‘In Utero’ isn’t in my nostalgia wheelhouse. And, apparently I’m an old fuddy-dud who just likes the hits, because, to me last night in my kitchen making supper, a lot of this album sounded like people yelling in their garage. Lots of good songs here, but I think I like them more as they’ve been covered over the years or as nirvana did them on the Unplugged album, which is where I know the ones I know.
3
Nov 06 2024
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Meat Is Murder
The Smiths
God, make it stop! Morriseys maudlin lyrics and droning voice over the pedestrian backing music was too much…I couldn’t make it through…Morrisey is musical murder.
2
Nov 07 2024
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Sea Change
Beck
I started out waving my hand at in front of my eyes whilst saying “This is not the Beck you’re looking for”.
“Where’s the upbeat, funky Beck I know and love?’l shouted to myself.
Then I bade myself to “Slow down, listen, don’t be hasty, lay your expectations aside, be open, stop eating chocolate chips from the bag”.
And I slowed down, settled into a ‘Morning Phase’ state of mind and got along with it all.
And now, a sure sign of positive personal growth and resilience, I like both Becks
4
Nov 08 2024
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Sunday At The Village Vanguard
Bill Evans Trio
Solid background music, but not sure I’d take it on a road trip or to the gym or to the bedroom or to the wood shop or most anywhere else with much intention. Great musicianship with nothing to really pull me in.
3
Nov 11 2024
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Paul Simon
Paul Simon
Throw in the hits and stuff some solid songwriting around them and you have yourself a Paul Simon album. I really do like ‘Duncan’ and enjoyed the demo version of ‘Paranoid Blues’. Nicely heard.
4
Nov 12 2024
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Either Or
Elliott Smith
Right. I’ve heard that everyone is supposed to revere Elliott Smith and that he’s a musical genius, but this all just sounds like a bunch of emo shit to me. He has an interesting voice and some nicely elegiac arrangements, but I mean, Jesus, would it…wait…what’s that grandma…”if you can’t say something nice, just say they have nice teeth?”…Elliott Smith has nice teeth.
2
Nov 13 2024
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Skylarking
XTC
Yeah…no.
2
Nov 18 2024
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Vol. 4
Black Sabbath
This was kind of a…nice Sabbath album (?!). I quite liked ‘Supernaut’ and ‘Under the Sun/…’ (the original “Killing in the Name”) as classic BS songs, while the others variously sounded classical to, dare I say, tinged with the alt-country vibe of a lot of the rock’n’roll of the time (I’m trying to incite Jon into reviewing just to rebut me). An oddly anomalous (yet enjoyable) collection of songs for a band better known for pooping onstage than for these sorts of stylings.
3
Nov 19 2024
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Moondance
Van Morrison
There are those few albums that are masterworks, full of solid songs start to finish, albums that only seem to get better as they move along with us through time. This isn’t a trick, where I now say “…but this isn’t one of those albums”, because this IS one of those albums, at least for me.
5
Nov 20 2024
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Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Red Hot Chili Peppers
I wasn’t into this album when it came out and I’m not sure I’ve ever identified as a RHCP fan, so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this album. Sure it’s derivative and sometimes immature sexual overtness can distract, but it’s mostly a funky, riff heavy, bass-and-drum driven masterclass in West Coast rock!
4
Nov 21 2024
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Let It Be
The Replacements
Shinola!
4
Nov 22 2024
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Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus
Spirit
Shite!
2
Nov 25 2024
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A Love Supreme
John Coltrane
My first time hearing this album. Words fail me. This album is one a select few that I can say has ever moved me. It evokes emotion without any overt attempt to do so, without the words we usually need to tell us how to feel. I agree with Osama, this is a fully realized piece of true art that I’ve been sending to everyone I know in an effort to have more people to talk to about this music.
5
Nov 26 2024
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Odelay
Beck
I remember my friend Peter bringing “Loser” around in our medical school study area (maybe there was subtext?), and it blowing up everyone’s well-coifed Pet Shop Boys-like heads. How do you follow up being so original? Then this messy, groundbreaking, nonsensical masterpiece arrived and cemented him forever as the best poet of slide guitar. And he’s still doing it oh so well. Foundational for him and for all of us listening.
5
Nov 27 2024
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Stardust
Willie Nelson
Okay. We all know I have a Willie bias, but, c’mon, this album is great! Willie got a bum rap for his singing, but he acquits himself nicely and throws in some solid guitar playing to accompany. He really can do most anything he wants musically. Just because it’s not all original material…
4
Nov 28 2024
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Actually
Pet Shop Boys
I listened to the first two songs and thought, “I do like New Wave, Wham I Am”, but then the rest of the album came along, my teen years faded back to where they belong and I realized that maybe my Overton Window for synth rock had moved ever so slightly towards “It’s okay…”
3
Nov 29 2024
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Beach Samba
Astrud Gilberto
Pedestrian jazz interpretation from the era of jazz transitioning to pop. Middling at best.
2
Dec 02 2024
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good kid, m.A.A.d city
Kendrick Lamar
Henry has had me appreciating Kendrick for a few years. Though this album lacks any ‘hits’ for me, it’s solid and sets him up for his imminent genius period.
4
Dec 03 2024
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The Slim Shady LP
Eminem
Rhymes fast, rise fast, fade fast. Never been a fan, even though my he can run it faster than anyone else. Gotta say I lean towards HipHop for the melody and remixes, while this style of rap leaves me wanting some joy
2
Dec 04 2024
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Talking Timbuktu
Ali Farka Touré
I remember this when it came out. Ty coder had done his Cuban album, then shifted to Northern Africa for this collab. I do like the playing here, but it gets repetitive quickly. I like later, more orchestrated AfroPop that integrates elements of this guitar style into a bigger soundscape.
3
Dec 05 2024
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Grace
Jeff Buckley
I’m having hard time to trust myself on this album, since everyone loves it so much. I hear the raw emotion, the elegiac vocals, the earnest songwriting, the wide variety of styles he gathered together/ set in motion, the all-time great cover, the solid musicianship, the great production. I mean, this guy was the real thing. But I just don’t enjoy listening to it. I think it’s the lack of joy that turns me away. Maybe I need a therapist, but I’m not sure I can steer into material without joy.
3
Dec 06 2024
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Live At The Regal
B.B. King
BBKing had legendary status in my house growing up…but it seems like a time capsule now. Certainly my time for this sort of blues has passed (I think when I was 15 or so). Interestingly this is the basis for most of our modern guitar sound and so homage to BB, but it’s not my jam for listening.
3
Dec 09 2024
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All Directions
The Temptations
This was a funk-soul surprise for me. I really had no preconceived notions but this far exceeded my original passing thought of ‘Meh, I’ve heard these guys’. This lead me down a funk/R&B rabbit hole that now stretches from the 60s up to yesterday and is my current go-to playlist.
4
Dec 10 2024
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Getz/Gilberto
Stan Getz
I’ve said it before, I’m not a big ga bid the sax. Having said that, Getz is the sax virtuoso we’ve always been looking for and have had all along. Having said that,
this some bland stuff. If it was fruit, this album would be a banana - a perfectly ripe banana, tuned perfection, but a banana. 2.5 slides to 3 for “The Girl from Ipanema” solo into the higher octaves - that was breathtaking.
3
Dec 11 2024
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Very
Pet Shop Boys
Dear Mr 1001,
Let’s be honest, homeopathic doses of the Pet Shop Boys are all anyone should be asked to take in. This is too much PSB; surely they only rank 1 in 1000 all time. And this isn’t even their best.
Yours truly
Synthed out
2
Dec 12 2024
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Selected Ambient Works 85-92
Aphex Twin
I’ve heard of Aphex twin, but never listened. I expect this was revolutionary in 1992, but I had my heard buried in textbooks and my musical eye on Ben Harper, Wilco, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the like. Even as a dedicated dancer, I don’t think this album needs to be listened to in this future, other than having infiltrated and being present in nearly everything we listen to. Interesting for its inheritance more than its ambiance. 2.5 -> 3 for having been so influential.
3
Dec 13 2024
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Gorillaz
Gorillaz
I do remember this album when it came out. I dismissed it as gimmicky and never really listened. Maybe it’s years later and now that it’s influenced pretty nearly everything that’s come since (pop, lo-fi, folk, HipHop (is that too far?) I can see Aug I’ve missed. My kids embraced this without bias and turned me around. Damon Albarn as visionary.
4
Dec 16 2024
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Unknown Pleasures
Joy Division
The name ‘Joy Division’ has rolled around for years and I never listened. I agree, especially the last song has a Downie/Hip sound. It’s amazing to me that these guys have 3m monthly Spotifiers and The Hip only 1m, when the Hip are so much more interesting and melodic. I do like the album cover, as it reminds me of another band I’d should take more time to listen to instead, Vulfpeck.
2
Dec 17 2024
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All Things Must Pass
George Harrison
From the cover in, this album is a delight. It’s as though a genius was oppressed by two other geniuses, abetted by a fool, and, with the other geniuses flaming out, that oppressed genius ran straight to the front with a collection of wonder that the others had somehow held back, presenting the best of all of them to the rest of us.
5
Dec 18 2024
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The Only Ones
The Only Ones
Middling at best. Seemingly uncertain whether they are punk, pop, rock or emo (which hadn’t been invented yet), the sum of their uncertainty is blandness.
2
Dec 19 2024
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So
Peter Gabriel
At the risk of offending Eduardo, I just can’t get into Gabriel, beyond the cool stop motion, food-based video for ‘Sledgehammer’ when I was 16 and video was king.
3
Dec 20 2024
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If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears
The Mamas & The Papas
This exceeded my expectations. I thought the harmonies were often beautiful and the melodies solid. I won’t seek it out, but new respect to them M&Ps
3
Dec 23 2024
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The Gershwin Songbook
Ella Fitzgerald
I listened to 3 or 4 of the 6 albums and I’m not sure there’s one song that I remember or found myself humming after listening. In fact, I turned it off multiple times as it was difficult to listen to, not for any reason other than its sameness. In fact, though these two are American musical titans, this is probably the most bland collection of songs I’ve ever subjected myself to.
2
Dec 24 2024
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Deja Vu
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Better than I expected. ‘Helpless’ and ‘Woodstock’ are great songs, “Teach your children” a classic. It’s interesting how the Neil songs are instantly recognizable as his and on the others,
where tight harmonies rule, he’s nowhere to be found. Curious a supergroup as there ever was. 3.5
3
Dec 25 2024
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Music for the Masses
Depeche Mode
No thank you, dark night of the musical
soul.
2
Dec 26 2024
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A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector
Various Artists
Like Christmas music, only better. It’s almost like these songs were written for drum and bass driven 3-part harmonies, it’s just that they were stuck in the organ and 33-part chorus world or in the keyboard and 23-elementary student concert world or the orchestra and 23-biggest pop stars in the world for all
Time before and after this album. My only regret is not listening tomorrows before this Christmas season, ‘cause as good as it is, it’s only gone two weeks of the year.
4
Dec 27 2024
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Live And Dangerous
Thin Lizzy
Now, maybe it’s just that I got my fill of this type of screeching guitar-driven, anthemic, stadium rock (like I got my fill of shooting guns and drinking in gravel pits) in my youthful years. Maybe I’m not the nostalgic type. Maybe I’m not a fan of guitar played mostly above the 7th fret by people who ply the guitar like everyone else. Maybe Kiss is enough of all this for me. Meh Rock…
2
Dec 30 2024
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Aftermath
The Rolling Stones
Interesting album in the way of charting the evolution of the Stones. Proto-stuff, with one foot playing beginner blues and the future-Stones, breaking through into their own with Mothers Little Helper and Under my Thumb.
3
Dec 31 2024
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War
U2
On the short list of bands with consistently great and innovative guitar riffs (These guys, Muse, the Stones, Hendrix (of course)…other thoughts?). The Edge earns his name and, I think, totally floats this band and makes them something more than the other(wise) straight-ahead rock bands of the last 40 years. Put me in as a middling member of the U2 movement.
3
Jan 01 2025
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1989
Taylor Swift
Admission- I’m okay with Taylor Swift. I expect it’s an ouroboros kind of thing, where she’s gone so far around the love-hater cycle that we’re back to (something less than, but something like) love. It’s confection, but I like me sweets, so ‘why not’ is my play here. 3.5 turns to 4
4
Jan 02 2025
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Penance Soiree
The Icarus Line
Never heard of these guys. I actually likes this, not a lot, but liked it. It led me back to Muse, who are superior in every way
3
Jan 03 2025
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Brown Sugar
D'Angelo
Caught in the middle between original R&B and all of its titans and future trap and HipHop/rap, to me DAngelo is neither and the worse for it. Pretty bland stuff here.
2
Jan 06 2025
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Birth Of The Cool
Miles Davis
This album left me feeling that listening to it would be a great way to spend an afternoon in an elevator with Miles Davis
3
Jan 07 2025
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Green Onions
Booker T. & The MG's
I hear this album came out of a tight studio band who were messing around before their recording session with Jerry Lee Lewis (who was late for reasons we won’t discuss here) when someone sat on the soundboard, inadvertently recording the prolonged warm up set. Again, seminal stuff, but kinda boring. I really can’t think of where/when I would listen to this - except that it’s DNA is in everything since.
3
Jan 08 2025
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The Next Day
David Bowie
Hadn’t heard this (didn’t know it existed). His voice has changed into something deeply smoky and even more beautiful than before - I could see his age as I listened. Having said that, his songwriting doesn’t seem inspired, a far cry from his ‘cant miss’ 60-70s genius period. If it wasn’t Bowie, I expect this is an album no one would listen to.
2
Jan 09 2025
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Darkness on the Edge of Town
Bruce Springsteen
Man, this is so familiar, like (insert worn simile here). It’s so easy and well worn and…predictable and…kinda boring. Other than Clemmon’s sax playing, this could be anyone from 1970-2025. Maybe Springsteen been so influential that there’s too much of his progeny between here and there but the effect of his success is also his downfall - we’ve all heard all of this too many times to find it anything more than nostalgia. And, while I love me a good sniff around the 70s, I’m looking onwards and upwards for new sounds so…it’s out to the dark edge of town with 70s Bruce.
3
Jan 10 2025
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21
Adele
I was going to deride this as joyless, but, in this exercises ongoing efforts to make me a better person, I’m only going to say that I don’t find my joy in Adele’s music.
I think my dislike is mostly for this sort of voice-forward anthemic style of ballideering that seems empty if one isn’t in for wallowing or wants some instrumental joy stimulus beyond ‘very competent’. Big voice, but I don’t feel it. While that’s maybe on me, it’s a three
3
Jan 13 2025
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Moving Pictures
Rush
I was really hoping that Rush was going to ‘Wow!’ me. In the search for ‘new’ music, my prog rock blind spot held hope for an undiscovered vein of old gold. But…I agree that, while technically pretty great, their music doesn’t get all the way from my ears to my soul.
3
Jan 14 2025
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Boston
Boston
Classic classic rock. I wouldn't change the station if it came on the radio but I don’t see pulling it off the shelf either. Comfy sweater, out of fashion.
3
Jan 15 2025
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Aladdin Sane
David Bowie
Classic Bowie in all the right ways, though I guess there’s a reason why it’s not an album I know - it doesn’t quite hit the Bowie heights of the era, when he could do no wrong. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just not the e Bowie album I’d reach for or be a ‘must have’ on my album shelf.
3
Jan 16 2025
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Germfree Adolescents
X-Ray Spex
This is pretty great. It’s raw and honest and unpretentious and out of tune and out of time and in the pocket and (almost) on the nose and not-quite-what-you’d expect and just-what-I-needed and fresh as fuck even 30 odd years later. Thanks 1001
4
Jan 17 2025
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D
White Denim
I usually rate these albums as soon as I listen to them, so as to capture how they make me feel. It’s been a few days since listening to this one. I recall feeling…
2
Jan 21 2025
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Amnesiac
Radiohead
Like so many of the bands on this journey, Radiohead's isn’t what I thought Radiohead was. I really got into the deep electronica groove, then the (more subtle than usual?) overlaid guitar, drifting along on the slipstream they laid down, then…bam!…Thom Yorke sang! His vocals are more instrument than melody, I figure, an odd, dissonant instrument that sometimes soothes, sometimes jars, sometimes makes me think “Really?!”. It’s more Portished and less Coldplay, and I like it all the more for that.
4
Jan 22 2025
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Lazer Guided Melodies
Spiritualized
A pleasant surprise. Cool electronic rock from a band I’d never heard of. Not so different from all the Radiohead-ed bands of the era, but something about his beep-boops pulled me in. 3.5
3
Jan 23 2025
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Strangeways, Here We Come
The Smiths
Like bad teeth and vinegar on your fries, probably it’ve been better for us all if this album had just stayed home in jolly old.
2
Jan 24 2025
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Nevermind
Nirvana
I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that this is one of the great albums. It’s like “Love Supreme” with fuzz and yelling; it’s like “Songs in the Key of Life” with punk drumming and long hair; it’s like “Blue” with bad attitude and dirty fingernails (I’d imagine Kurt had messy cuticles); it’s like “Revolver”…yeah, it’s like “Revolver”. Burnout > fade away…
5
Jan 27 2025
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Pretenders
Pretenders
Surprising. I liked their punkness and the guitar playing a lot, more than I expected to. And Chrissy Hynes sings like Lou Reed dressed in drag - wait, Lou Reed sings like Lou Reed dressed in drag…you know what I’m trying to say.
4
Jan 28 2025
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There's No Place Like America Today
Curtis Mayfield
Curtis Mayfield is one of those names synonymous with soul music. I’m
sure he and Stevie spent nights backstage planning to make the world a better place - and, in the end, they probably had a role to play in doing just that. I’m not sure I like his voice on these songs and the playing seems workmanlike. His vibe is not as joyous as on his other albums and I think that’s what gets me here. I appreciate him, but this is a one-and-done album listening experience for me.
3
Jan 29 2025
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Steve McQueen
Prefab Sprout
Huh. Interesting music for the times. It sounds far more modern than 1985. Cool mix of British guitar rock, jazz, showtune and new wave-y styles and vibes. Having said that, I don’t think I’d go back to it, mostly because I don’t really like his voice, his lyrics or ultimately his playing.
2
Jan 30 2025
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Take Me Apart
Kelela
I will admit to not being an R&B guy at heart, but this is not my music. And this is not the best of R&B, Mr1001. It’s full on dragging and down tempo in the worst way. It’s boring. It’s boring like Gershwin wrote songs about my cat, eating yogurt
1
Jan 31 2025
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xx
The xx
Never heard of them, but I quite liked this album. Interesting how one band can go moody guitar rock that catches you, where ten others didn’t. They have the magic sauce.
4
Feb 03 2025
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Talking Heads 77
Talking Heads
This is a great album! I wasn’t crazy about the last TH album we reviewed, but something about this one caught with me. I think mostly it’s that this is a less avant garde album, but still with great musicianship and more melody. “Psycho killer” and “Love->Building on Fire” stood out, as did, capturing the zeitgeist decades later, “Don’t worry about the government”
4
Feb 04 2025
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Songs Of Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
I know the songs, but, man, this whole album is pretty great! Hard to believe this was his first effort, it’s so mature and emotionally and melodically intelligent and unapologetically sex-informed. This has me going back through his cannon and putting together my Cohen playlist - now I’d only I could go back to 3rd year university armed with that…
5
Feb 05 2025
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The Atomic Mr Basie
Count Basie & His Orchestra
Wait…just a second…pardon me…let me just…okay - got my white socks on, rolled up the legs of my blue jeans, white t shirt sleeves once turned, hair just so, slipped in to my black loafers…but…I think this foo bird has flown, something feels splanky about this music in this time.
2
Feb 06 2025
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Happy Sad
Tim Buckley
Sad. Definitely sad.
1
Feb 07 2025
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What's That Noise?
Coldcut
I couldn’t get this album on Spotify, so listened to some of their other work. Pleasant surprise - books and covers, I thought this would be Linkin Park-adjacent meathead rock, so didn’t expect to like it so much. Nice grooves and interesting collaborations.
3
Feb 10 2025
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White Blood Cells
The White Stripes
The white stripes did their northern Canadian tour in 2005, stopping in Whitehorse and doing an afternoon show downtown under blue skies. It made me realize the amount of organized noise two people can make if they really try. They grow on me a little more every time I hear them. I do like their later stuff more, but I do like the rawness of these tracks. 3.5
4
Feb 11 2025
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Synchronicity
The Police
This was a pillar of that mid-80s golden age of albums, one of the truly great collections of genius songwriting. Somehow they walked the line that so many 80s British bands couldn’t - big hair, slashing style, feigned blitheness, New Wave-y style, tangential lyrics - and made it work. In the wasteland of Duran Duran, Big Country, New Order, the Smiths, the Cure, the Police remain. Long live the Police - Jesus, sounds like America of 2025, not MuchMusic of 1984…
4
Feb 12 2025
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Mott
Mott The Hoople
3rd rate proggishness with all the self-importance and little of the talent to back it up. Couldn’t make it through the entire album before my dog started howling, my cat left thextomm and my wife made me turn it off (“either the music goes or I do!”)
2
Feb 13 2025
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The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
Genesis
Curious stuff, this. Some of the first album was actually pretty good, sounding fairly modern in style and vocal effects. But crazy imagery and allusion that didn’t hold together for me. Then the second album just came undone in most respects - again, wife vs music.
2
Feb 14 2025
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Bubble And Scrape
Sebadoh
Jesus, these guys have 9 albums!
I couldn’t get all the way through 3 songs before tapping out - aural arm bar for the submission. The pain…
1
Feb 17 2025
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Led Zeppelin II
Led Zeppelin
It’d be hard to argue that this isn’t one of the most rock’n’roll Rock’n’ Roll albums of all (and it’s not even their best!). 1/2/3 were really just building up to LZ4, but man, what a best supporting album candidate
5
Feb 18 2025
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Tommy
The Who
I really quite enjoyed this. Heard about it so many times, but this was listen #1. Unexpectedly orchestral and cohesive. The Who seem to have been lost to the mainstream of oldies, but they had something gear for awhile and ‘Tommy’ was in their pocket.
4
Feb 19 2025
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...The Dandy Warhols Come Down
The Dandy Warhols
These guys actually seem talented and modestly original inside whatever genre Spotify says this fits into. I liked a few songs, but it’s all a beige blur a couple of days on…
2
Feb 20 2025
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A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Coldplay
I read they started out as ‘Samey Same and the Same Things”, then Gwenyth said “I’m cold, play that song you play so well” and they did, over and over again and again…
3
Feb 21 2025
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Searching For The Young Soul Rebels
Dexys Midnight Runners
Some cool songs (“Thankfully not living in Yorkshire”, “Sevrn Days”), but mostly it sounds like a high school marching band got stranded in the auditorium with a junior high punk band and they put on their own version of The Breakfast Club to pass the time until the salty old janitor found the keys to let them out…
2
Feb 24 2025
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Dusty In Memphis
Dusty Springfield
Sure, “Son of a preacher man” is a classic, but without that this is the music elevator repair men listen to on the way to repair elevators.
2
Feb 25 2025
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Come Away With Me
Norah Jones
I remember this fondly when she debuted with it. Sultry voice, jazz-country piano, solid backup band, cool dad, beautiful. And it holds up - nothing groundbreaking, but worth a listen now and then. 3.5 -> 4.
4
Feb 26 2025
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Blonde On Blonde
Bob Dylan
Out of the way at the start : 5/5.
Incredible songwriting.
Stellar musicianship (though sometimes I wish someone would slap that harmonica out of his mouth!).
This was truly a golden age for music (Pet Sounds, something or more by the Beatles, A Love Supreme (!), even Garibaldi’s “Charlie Brown Christmas” all also coming out in 1965 and either setting bars or presaging even greater things to come in the next few years.
To me, this is THE Dylan album
5
Feb 27 2025
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...Baby One More Time
Britney Spears
Oh man, I wanted to like this, for her as the ‘underog’, but this was bad, bad like the ice cream dropping of your cone, bad
1
Feb 28 2025
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Too Rye Ay
Dexys Midnight Runners
I want to like these guys, I really do, because C’mon Eileen as the 80s…but I guess ‘One Hit Wonder’ is a category for a reason.
2
Mar 03 2025
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The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground
Crazy - this album is pretty great. Not sure what happened between 1967 and 1969, but VU made me…happy…with this album. Clever, melodic songwriting without the avant garde focus of the banana album.
4
Mar 04 2025
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Back At The Chicken Shack
Jimmy Smith
Never heard of Jimmy Smith, but he’s tight. Great musicianship (I initially thought he must be the sax player, as the sax is the shit on most of these songs!). Laser-like rhythm section, cool organ, nice arrangements. Nothing groundbreaking, but in great listen when you just need to listen.
4
Mar 05 2025
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Imperial Bedroom
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
I do like some of his other work, but this album left me flat - some good songwriting, but mostly fumbling to find his rhythm without the obvious vocal or musical talent to make up for anything but fantastic songwriting…
2
Mar 06 2025
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First Band On The Moon
The Cardigans
Meh.
2
Mar 07 2025
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Snivilisation
Orbital
The Fall of Snivilisation…1.5
2
Mar 10 2025
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The Number Of The Beast
Iron Maiden
Crazy what time does. This music is the stuff I spent my teenage years trying not to listen to even though there were more 3/4 sleeve Eddie T-shirts per capita in my rural hometown than anywhere else on the planet. I expect I secretly sang Bryan Adam’s lyrics to myself as this played in a van in the way to a hockey game or at a camp party, as some sort of mantra to calm myself and assure myself that the world was still okay). Turns out it s just hair metal, but better. And that it’s generally better than Dexys Midnight Runners or whatever tripe I was putting in my ears instead of this. Turns out this has way more staying power and is pretty okay. Check out Tanya Taqak’s cover of “Run for the Hills”…
3
Mar 17 2025
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James Brown Live At The Apollo
James Brown
Before there was Eddie Murphy singing James Brown, there was James Brown. Before there was that James brown, there was this James Brown - early rock’n’roll with screaming girls in the appreciative crowd, singing songs so ahead of their time they could be released today. I’m loving these early live albums, with their honest recordings and fantastic energy - I don’t think this exists anymore and it’s a shame.
4
Mar 18 2025
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Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
This was a pretty great rediscovery. I’d put Crazy Horse in a different pocket of his music, forgetting about this seminal contributor to “Decade”, the album on which I first heard Neil young’s music and the one that stays with me to this day, often to exclusion of his other works. Solid ‘hits’ here, but the other songs are strong and beautifully round out the album.
4
Mar 19 2025
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Parklife
Blur
I just don’t know. I want to like Blur, even if just to have them win against their foil, Oasis. But I found this album inconsistent and even forgettable for the lost part. Not exactly the stuff with which to battle for the title of “the next Beatles”. I do like some of their stiff, maybe just not this stuff.
2
Mar 20 2025
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Seventeen Seconds
The Cure
Once again…nope.
1
Mar 21 2025
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The Low End Theory
A Tribe Called Quest
Seminal stuff. Although there’s a bit too much business rap on here, I suppose it was vital to speak up at the time this was made. The last two songs saved it for me, like they were building towards the best they offered on this album.
3
Mar 24 2025
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Marquee Moon
Television
Lots of reviews here about the excellence of this album, but I didn’t hear it. Some of the guitar work was pretty cool, but in the way that Moon Mist ice cream is so different but it’s also not ge me. There’s lots of 70s NYC rock that lights me up far more than this.
2
Mar 25 2025
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My Generation
The Who
This is crazy! You actually chart the evolution of one of the greatest bands of all time through the tracks on this album.
For a first album to be so diverse is wild:
Crooners, almost lounge-y (‘Anytime you want me’), to blues (‘l’m a Man’), to barrelhouse rock (‘Shout and Shimmy’), to the punk influenced rockers they would become (‘My Geneeation’). There are even in between stages, like fish with little feet (punk-swing ‘Leaving Here’ and lounge-rock ‘Instant Party Mixture’). The title even hints at the Darwinian nature of what’s within.
4
Mar 26 2025
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New Forms
Roni Size
To be fair, I expect the proper way to listen to this album would be to be dressed in a full on teddy bear furry outfit, pockets full of mDMA, soother firmly in place in a warehouse full of writhing bodies. Given that I listened at the gym, pockets of my shorts full of nothing, sweating for altogether different reasons, I suppose it doesn’t have the desired effect.
2
Mar 27 2025
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Paul's Boutique
Beastie Boys
There’s never was before and never will be another band quite the the Beasties! We don’t get many true originals anymore, but these guys were the real deal. I love HipHop with actual instruments and lush samples and…fun!
5
Mar 28 2025
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Bookends
Simon & Garfunkel
Beautiful album. I haven’t albums so
much with simon and Garfunkel, I’ve more songed with Simon with these in the mix. Fantastic album with such a feeling of the time and place and evolving style and harmonies (if that was Garfunkel doing harmonies on the last bit of ‘America’ I can more fully understand why Simon kept him around for as long as he did). People, including me, often refer to duos as the ‘current/next S&G’ (presently I’ve used that for the Milk Carton Kids’) but there Will never be another S&G.
4
Mar 31 2025
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The Yes Album
Yes
I remember when “Owners of a Lonely Heart” came out and it was huge!! I went back to find out where it had come from and found a prog rock mess that hasn’t changed since then. Some interesting instrumentation but…
2
Apr 01 2025
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Songs From The Big Chair
Tears For Fears
I had the hair, the sweaters, the music video habit to feed, and this was a big thing in the time of The Police, Michael, Born in the USA, and all the great music of the mid decade in the 80s. I recalled slow dancing to “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”, but it seems to have a different connotation 40 years on.
3
Apr 02 2025
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Duck Stab/Buster & Glen
The Residents
Really?!
I’d ask “Where have ‘The Residents’ been all my life?” but I think I know the answer - they’ve been travelling the metaverse, aided by a series of psychedelics (starting with pot, through mushrooms, MDMA, GHB and back to mushrooms), experiencing life differently than the rest of us, chronicling it through their soundscapes, which make lost people say either “What the hell are you listening to!?” Or “Jesus, turn that noise off?!” but which i can’t wait to play at my next sit down dinner as the background music, to see just who’s who around the table.
5
Apr 03 2025
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Coat Of Many Colors
Dolly Parton
I do love me some Dolly. I expect she gets her ass-kicked by feminists for her “please don’t take my man/please your man” oeuvre, but she does mountain country more beautifully than anyone ever has or ever will. What it must’ve been like to hear her early on, that voice filling little churches and halls.
4
Apr 04 2025
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Dirty
Sonic Youth
Crazy that they came out of the late 70s New York scene along with The Pretenders, The Talking Heads, Lou Reed, and the like. And kept going through grunge, which it seems they did first. Unfortunately, they did it first but they don’t do music very well, so I just can’t listen with a historical ear enough to like them.
2
Apr 07 2025
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Bad
Michael Jackson
Great album! “Man in the Mirror’ is, I think, my favorite Michael song; “Smooth Criminal” is genius (and maybe confessional?); “Bad” is…well, bad. This was huge when it landed and is still pretty great.
4
Apr 08 2025
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Highway to Hell
AC/DC
If I was to be spread supine on a boulder while birds endlessly picked away my flesh, this would be the soundtrack.
2
Apr 09 2025
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25
Adele
I dont eat at McDonalds and I don’t listen to Adele
2
Apr 10 2025
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Here, My Dear
Marvin Gaye
Marvin is the man, but even the man’s miss sometimes. Sure it’s smooth, sure it’s well-played, but it’s sure forgettable.
2
Apr 11 2025
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Face to Face
The Kinks
So good. If the worst thing you can say about a band is that, while they tried mightily, they never quite got to be as good as the Beatles, well, that’s high praise indeed. I like the Kinks more every time I hear them.
4
Apr 14 2025
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I Should Coco
Supergrass
I kind of missed these guys in the 90s - everyone was talking Oasis and Blur when I think they ought’ve been talking Supergrass. Imaginative, energetic, clever, harkening back to the 60s British vibe yet running along with Nirvana and the like. Thanks Mr 1001
4
Apr 15 2025
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Crosby, Stills & Nash
Crosby, Stills & Nash
No Young, no edge to CSN. This is the music I think of when I think of 60s music that I’d rather not have to think of again.
2
Apr 16 2025
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Close To You
Carpenters
Jesus, what the actual fuck was that! I really only enjoyed the last song, and because it tried to be something more than the tepid gravy rock on the rest of the album.
1
Apr 17 2025
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Rock Bottom
Robert Wyatt
I love finding these marginal musical figures who never had and never would’ve come into ears but for the oddly catholic-like guilt I seem to owe to these daily listens. Wyatt is melancholy beauty and fiercely purposeful difference that I really enjoyed and that contains multitudes more than most pap pop or billion listen new country. Give me more…
4
Apr 18 2025
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Forever Changes
Love
Never heard of these guys, so my lack of expectations were completely fulfilled by this listen.
2
Apr 21 2025
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The Chronic
Dr. Dre
Ehhh. If HipHop can’t be traced back to those dudes dancing in their high-waisted pants in the video for “Apache” then it’s not for me. I didn’t enjoy this (I know it’s not meant to be enjoyed, but…) and gotta say I just can’t find it in me to listen to this gangster rap stuff
2
Apr 22 2025
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Fear Of A Black Planet
Public Enemy
Fantastic. If any HipHop can be traced back to those dudes dancing in their high-waisted pants in the video for “Apache” then I can dig it. I enjoyed this from start to finish. Great samples, groovy grooves and strong songwriting.
4
Apr 23 2025
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Clandestino
Manu Chao
“Bongo Bong” makes me say ‘Sure, I know Manu Chao’ but I don’t, I see now. Not being a fan of the syncopated rhythm of reggae style guitar work, I found most of the rest of this album repetitive and hard to like.
3
Apr 24 2025
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Penthouse And Pavement
Heaven 17
Ahhh, there’s something about the deep throated singing of British 80sNew Wave that irritates me on a deep level. There’s something neat mixing of disco and synth here and some nice bass work on the second last track, but overall an effort that leaves me asking : “Someone took up precious studio time for that?!”
2
Apr 25 2025
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The Bones Of What You Believe
CHVRCHES
Walter Mitty (the actual one, not the Hollywood Walter) puts on a beige suit and drives his Corolla to the Olive Garden whilst listening to CHVRCHeS on AM radio.
2
Apr 28 2025
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Smash
The Offspring
This one has an emotional attachment for me, as I bought it when it first came out and felt rather the rebel with my punk album in hand. Turns out this is West Coast wannabe punk that sounds a lot like my past self had a significant Dunning-Kruger gap in my punk knowledge (and probably still do, bit less so with my ongoing 1001 self-knowledge thru music course.
2
Apr 29 2025
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Doolittle
Pixies
Better than the last Pixies, but I think the key to me not liking them is there lack of joy and general ‘downness’
2
Apr 30 2025
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Cee-Lo Green... Is The Soul Machine
Cee Lo Green
Not my soul
2
May 01 2025
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Country Life
Roxy Music
Funny, I’ve always flipped past Roxy Music albums in used vinyl shoppes, thinking them too available to be any good (like chuck Mangione or the Carpenters or Peter Frampton)…but they’re pretty alright. Just on this side of Brit Rock, just on that side of New Wave, just a step from C&W, like/not like NYC punk stuff - they cooked it all up into a stew I could eat now and then. 3.5
3
May 02 2025
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Now I Got Worry
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Out the gate : I have a soft spot for Jon Spencer BE as I bought ‘Orange’ on what I consider the best day of my music FfS discovery life : back in the early 90s, when you had to make an actual cash transaction with money you could t really afford to spend, I was at Sam the Record Man on Barrington and picked up ‘Orange’, Ben Harper’s “Fight for your Mind” and Don Volt’s “Trace”! No disappointments in the lot.
Now, JSBE is still pretty great - one foot in the old blues, one foot in NYC punk, one for in pop music, one foot in performance art (not sure how he plays guitar with all four feet on the ground…). While the music can veer from grooving’ blues to noise (like a man yelling and banging on your garbage can lids, making you late for work because you’re a little bit scared to go outside with him there…), overall I’m in for the ride.
3
May 09 2025
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Eliminator
ZZ Top
I know this album so well from my teenage years that I can rate it without listening to it again (which I sort of swore I’d never do) : redneck misogyny wrapped up in a tight swamp guitar groove and largely offensive or non-sensical lyrics. Great for driving to a US military base for an air show while your dad drinks beer (while driving) in your 70s inspired Econoline van, kids sitting in the back on bench rows, not a seatbelt in sight. You can’t make this shit up.
2
May 12 2025
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Green River
Creedence Clearwater Revival
John Fogerty apparently thought CCR could be the next Beatles when those four imploded. And I never had a girlfriend who’s dads name is John.
Good music for driving and karaoke.
3
May 13 2025
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Revolver
Beatles
Truly awesome. This must’ve been mind blowing at the time. I do prefer the later, fuzzier Beatles, but I can appreciate this as an integral step to n getting there.
4
May 14 2025
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With The Beatles
Beatles
Even further from the fuzz.
3
May 15 2025
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The Grand Tour
George Jones
Man, when we lived in the Arctic, the older Inuit folks lived and died for George Jones (listening to the Inuit CBC shows it was just a lot of words that couldn’t understand and then fairly reliably “….George Jones…” and the man was in your ears! I do love country, especially old country, but never really loved GJ. He’s too clever by half and too much just like his songs. This old country ‘love’ song trope is well past its best before date. Too bad he didn’t have an updated later phase to his career like Johnny Cash and Willie, ‘cause now he’s just that misogynist drunkard for eternity
2
May 16 2025
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Moby Grape
Moby Grape
Never heard of these guys and likely never will again. Nondescript 60s psychedelic rock. Yawn.
2
May 19 2025
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Cheap Thrills
Big Brother & The Holding Company
One Janis Joplin song at a time, please. Too much pretend blues here for me.
2
May 20 2025
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Blur
Blur
Blur lives up to its name and all their songs kind of run together in my mind. They’re more a sound than a collection of hits. I’m glad that DA used this to go on to make the great Gorillaz albums, and I’d look for a Blur greatest hits album, but record by record they’re not pulling me in
3
May 21 2025
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Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
Bill Callahan
Curious songs about enigmatic things sung in a surprising voice by a languid man and his friends. The musical equivalent of Marmite - good once in a while, fills a hole you didn’t know you had, checks the ‘try new things box’ nicely
3
May 22 2025
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Songs From A Room
Leonard Cohen
Ahhh, thank you 1001. Leonard Cohen has become a musical anchor for me over the past year and is conjecture that this is his most consistent album start to finish. Gotta love listening to and war and loss and the live version of ‘tonight will be fine’.
5
May 23 2025
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Reign In Blood
Slayer
A guess a guy screaming details about the devil and his (her) fellows whilst his buddies talentlessly assault their instruments in the background isn’t my thing. Go figure
1
May 26 2025
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Tusk
Fleetwood Mac
I really liked this album. I remember my dad bringing it home with such anticipation, after declaring “Rumours” the best album of all time. I still recall the look of disappointment on his face as the album unspooled, very non-Rumours like. Despite that, I’ve always thought’ Tusk’ to be one of their best songs and I liked it more this listen than ever before.
4
May 27 2025
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The Village Green Preservation Society
The Kinks
This struck me as having influenced Jon Croce and John Prine, with its character driven story songs. I commented to Henry that the title song reminded me of “Hot Fuzz”, after which he reminded me that it was essentially rhe movies theme song.
4
May 29 2025
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Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge
Mudhoney
Every good boy deserves to not have to listen to this pile of shit!
1
Jun 04 2025
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Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch
Another obscure ‘60s musical soul who I’d like to like (“Angie” was pretty well-played), but who, in the end, seems like a middling guitar player with little singing acumen who would be more at home in a local coffeehouse (which I expect was his selling point in 1965) than in my ears in 2025.
2
Jun 05 2025
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Tonight's The Night
Neil Young
One of Neil’s albums that I don’t own on vinyl and never really listened to as an album before. Gotta say, as much as I like Neil, this is a trainwreck of an album - it’s all over the place, even one barrelhouse piano track (?!). Another testament to the power of greatest hits albums (though I guess they call those playlists now…)
4
Jun 06 2025
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Bitches Brew
Miles Davis
Man, what a change from “Kind of Blue”! This is fantastic piece of work (though I’m not sure all my supper guests on the night of my (shared) listen through would wholeheartedly agree) - lots of perplexed looks around the table at points. Only geniuses can swerve so fast and still stay so high
5
Jun 09 2025
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Music From Big Pink
The Band
Give me the Band on a desert island - live - and I’d never want to leave. I was skeptical after the first three songs, but after the turnaround at ‘The Weight’ it was all aces! A couple of new faves for me (“Chest Fever” and “We Can Talk”) and a bunch of comfy old standbys plus what may be the best folk song ever (I don’t think I need to name it).
5
Jun 10 2025
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Bridge Over Troubled Water
Simon & Garfunkel
Im not sure what Garfunkel brought or didn’t bring to the mix, but it’s hard to deny that this is front-to-back one of the most consistently solid albums of all time. Crazy stylistic swings, but somehow they’re masters of them all.
5
Jun 12 2025
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Entertainment
Gang Of Four
Such great musicianship, interesting and confident, varied and accomplished, sparse but complete (see the melodious in “It’s Her Factory”). Winner of the 1979 Grammy for “Best New York punk band not a punk band from New York”.
4
Jun 13 2025
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Surf's Up
The Beach Boys
RIP Brian Wilson. It’s amazing that he only had a hand in a few of these songs and you can hear it instantly, lush harmonies and layered orchestration clearly outdoing the other tracks. He truly was a genius and it’s clear that his influence made the rest of the band better for having him nearby, if not hands on.
4
Jun 16 2025
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Pornography
The Cure
Why, oh why do you keep sending us ‘The Cure’ Mr 1001? Dante would have something to say about it, I’m certain of that - 3rd circle to date. How many more albums do these guys have?!
1
Jun 17 2025
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Elephant
The White Stripes
‘Seven Nation Army’ I mean, of course, but overall I find the Stripes to get samey fast. Stellar guitar squonk, solid drumming, good vocal work, but I won’t go back often.
3
Jun 18 2025
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Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Elton John
Intersting that he mixes sooo many styles, throwing stuff at the wall. Not much of it sticks anymore, but some true keepers (though I didn’t find that elusive ‘song I didn’t know before’ on here, disappointingly)
3
Jun 19 2025
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Hotel California
Eagles
Man, it must be hard when your biggest, best, most-loved song is a one-off that you forever are chasing down, trying on out lightning into a new bottle. ‘Hotel California’ is a masterpiece and, while the Eagles have lots of other great songs, hangs over every one of their songs that come after it. Solid alt country with a monster to start….
4
Jun 20 2025
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Rattus Norvegicus
The Stranglers
Cut rate late 70s punk, done better by so many others. I couldn’t finish my Rattus…
2
Jun 23 2025
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Disraeli Gears
Cream
Wow, that’s not what I expected. From psychedelic rock, to near-modern blues rock to Monty Python-adjacent, this was a (good) surprise. I especially liked that there was no effort to hide their strong accents and their playful approach.
4
Jun 24 2025
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To Pimp A Butterfly
Kendrick Lamar
The is album made me appreciate rap. Enough said from a country boy.
5
Jun 25 2025
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One Nation Under A Groove
Funkadelic
Great…song?! Maybe Spotify is writing my reviews now and just gave me the best of this album, but I only got one, albeit pretty groovy, song from the link. My supper table dancing got a “1” from the fam, but I give this song a “4” for making me try (and making them laugh)
4
Jun 26 2025
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Oar
Alexander 'Skip' Spence
Oooh, I love this guy! He’s so far off, he’s fresh. It’s like Tom Waits had a stroke - and since Tom Waits, come to think of it, is like Leonard Cohen and Billy Joel had a baby and the baby had a stroke, this guys like Leonard Cohen’s piano baby had two strokes!
4
Jun 30 2025
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People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
A Tribe Called Quest
I’m not a fan. I watched the first Pink Panther movie recently and was put off by the obvious set pieces in about of the gags - Peter sellers would get to his mark and then wait for the gag to happen. This album feels like that to me - the diction is too clear, the rhythm unchanging, even the whole French references too repetitive; it feels too set, without the (I know it’s artifice, but good rap feels too set me like it was just spirit and captured raw) apparent spontaneity.
2