Arctic Monkeys with their first album brought yorkshire into the UK rock scene and were unapologetic in their no nonsense lyrics and love/hate relationship with Britain. Amazing album front to back and I would say could be the album of our generation, they could be the band of our generation. Personal faves are, of course, When The Sun Goes Down, Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured (but that might be because I have a real soft spot for Rock Lobster) and Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But... Ending the album with A Certain Romance is bittersweet and a perfect ending and the riff is quintessential circa 2006 UK indie. I can imagine every indie kid in their skinny jeans and skinny scarf, horrible trilby, potentially trouser braces if they were committed, fag out of mouth and glens in the other hand walking down the canal in the sun. Even though the lyrics I feel are talking about a different sub culture - I wonder if they loved the Monkeys too?

Arctic Monkeys with their first album brought yorkshire into the UK rock scene and were unapologetic in their no nonsense lyrics and love/hate relationship with Britain. Amazing album front to back and I would say could be the album of our generation, they could be the band of our generation. Personal faves are, of course, When The Sun Goes Down, Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured (but that might be because I have a real soft spot for Rock Lobster) and Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But... Ending the album with A Certain Romance is bittersweet and a perfect ending and the riff is quintessential circa 2006 UK indie. I can imagine every indie kid in their skinny jeans and skinny scarf, horrible trilby, potentially trouser braces if they were committed, fag out of mouth and glens in the other hand walking down the canal in the sun. Even though the lyrics I feel are talking about a different sub culture - I wonder if they loved the Monkeys too?

I meannnnn fine. Just fine. A few boos happened. I was a fan of The Night They Drove Dixie Down but calling yourself The Band is extremely annoying and I might never get over that.

There is so much to unpack in this album, WHERE TO START. The blues highway, Route 61 that goes from Minnesota (where Bob is from) then carries on down south by the Mississippi. The first album where Bob has no songs on it where it is just him and his guitar but now we have the new Bob where he is electric, he sings the blues, he has a band and he honestly doesn't care. So much of this album is about changes, what they mean to him, what they mean to where he's come from and then, most interestingly, how he views the changes he is seeing around him in the land of the free; and his opinions are not glowing reviews. Musically, there is not much to talk about from this record. There are some great moments; the slightly off beat organ of Like A Rolling Stone, the limping piano of Ballad of a Thin Man and why not some nice Spanish guitar in Desolation Row. This album, though, is not for the music it is for the lyrics and it is why Dylan is thought of as one of the best songwriters of the 20th century, maybe the best. 1965 - the clean cut 50s are now firmly in the past. Revolution and unrest is a feeling that is growing, sex liberation, anger towards racial inequality and a yearn to break out of the confines that people had before is coming. Bob had his own confines he has broken away from, a few weeks before the album came out he was at the Newport Folk Festival where he played electric and got booed, he is no longer the folk messiah and a lot of people are very angry with him (go read An Open Letter To Bob Dylan published in Sing Out! 1964, written by the editor Irwin Silber.) So Ballad of a Thin Man - who is Mr. Jones? Is this the america of the 50s? The suburban, white, entitled middle class man who only knows one way of life and Dylan mocks this man who has been too cowardly and comfy to ever question it. But not only does this man not know how to change, he judges the change and angry at the loss as his grasp is not strong enough to keep hold of it whilst it slips away, only vexing Dylan more. 'You raise up your head and you ask, \"Is this where it is?\" And somebody points to you and says, \"It's his\" And you say, \"What's mine?\" and somebody else says, \"Well, what is?\" And you say, \"Oh my God, am I here all alone?\" But something is happening and you don't know what it is Do you, Mr. Jones?' The judgement of this out dated quaint judgemental America carries on in 'Queen Jane Approximately' but now we're looking at the women and class is now being brought into it. Old fashioned, bourgeoisie, Queen Jane. Dylan is the town maverick, the one with the wacky new ideas who is being snubbed by the elite, by his own Marie Antoinette but he is coming to her to again almost warn her of the change that is coming and that this life she has been living is no longer sustainable and for her to join him. 'Now when all the clowns that you have commissioned Have died in battle or in vain And you're sick of all this repetition Won't you come see me, Queen Jane? Won't you come and see me, Queen Jane?' Bob is laughing, mocking and can't quite believe the stupidity he is seeing in his fellow men around him and none of this is as clear as how he puts it in his masterpiece, and without it this album would not matter, 'Like A Rolling Stone'. To these 'people' that he sees from the past, who snubs him, who can't and won't change, who don't want to change, who want to bury their head in the sand he has just had enough. Without even delving deep into a lyrical analysis the chorus says it beautifully enough: 'How does it feel, how does it feel? To be without a home Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone' From the first verse, the narrator goes straight in talking of our first character who 'once upon a time...dressed so fine' but now he 'don't talk so loud' or 'seem so proud' because he now has nothing, and because of who he was before he has no one to help him, he is alone. After the first chorus we then meet Miss Lonely (is this another Queen Jane?), another aristocrat who's life has changed and she is alone. However, he isn't as scathing to Miss Lonely as he is to the other characters but more just is showing the pointlessness of it all. This woman who went to the best schools and now she is on the streets, insinuating working the streets where she meets 'mystery tramps' and now she is selling the only thing she has looking into his gaunt eyes asking if he wants to make a deal? Miss Lonely is alone, with no home, but she came from somewhere very different. So what is the point of it all?? Power thirsty, class rivalry, callously thrown judgements, no love, no kindness when you are at the top and now you have nothing. And how does it truly feel. And Bob has no sympathy, you should have seen and you should have done something but you didn't. When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose. You're invisible now, you've got no secrets to conceal. His frustration bleeds out of these songs with such force. Dylan is shouting out, wanting to shake these people and yell at them WHAT ARE YOU DOING??? YOU ARE IDIOTS. The album title song even has comedic whizz circus noises just thrown in there, to drive home the point IF YOU HAVEN'T NOTICED I AM LAUGHING AT YOU. The power of Bob's words are not in his anger, but in his pure nonchalance now to these he is writing about, he got it all out (apparently Like A Rolling Stone started out as just that, him just writing his thoughts down on everything in one session on 30 pages), he takes them down a fair few pegs, and then walks away to never think of them again as their importance is so small they are meaningless now.

You definitely have to be in the right frame of mind to listen to this album and be able to try your hardest to put yourself back in 1978 where this was genuinely the first of its time. An album made with no instruments whatsoever, electronic music came from Kraftwerk and laid the path for everything that came after it. I know 'The Model' is the famous track but actually probably is my least favourite on the album, but I can see how it would be the most commercially successful. 'Spacelab' to me is the one that sounds most like it came from robots/aliens and for that it is quite eerie, I would not like it blasting in my home at night when I was alone. 'Neon lights' has quite a driving quality to it and it's minimalist nature adds to its attraction. My favourite though is title track 'The Man Machine', I love the opening of this track and the solo beat to begin with and then more and more layers are added. Later it gets stripped down again to the beat which I am a big fan of and is definitely a bop. Second listen I was definitely a bigger fan than I was from the first!

I listened to this twice and actually liked it so much more the first time than the second but oh well haha. Great great start, and honestly I did enjoy the whole album really. Very much the end of brit pop and obviously very influenced by The Stone Roses, which I like. The production is amazing and is has been engineered amazingly, the lyrics... I mean sure. Will I listen again? Actually quite possibly.

a bore

I've always respected Black Sabbath, loved Ozzy, and put on Paranoid a fair few times but never given them a proper listen, and now I wish I had done so sooner. What a great debut album, I love the operatic, show off sounds of here literally the birth of metal. Opening an album with the sound of rain and then it then going into an eerie slow, funeral march with Ozzy crying out to you - what more could you want?? Then you go into The Wizard and we have the harmonica! Obviously a band who started out loving the Blues and this is heavily present in this album, with what sounds like it could easily be a forgotten Led Zep album in places. What I noticed most when listening to this album was how I found myself being impressed by every instrument at different times which I don't always do. The drumming is out of this world (I don't often find myself impressed by drumming but it stood out to me so so much in this album, just wow) and I love how often the rhythm changes in a number of songs, obviously the guitar riffs are wonderfully metal (I did I'm afraid get a bit tired of the guitar solos by then end of the album but love the ambition) and Ozzy who I always thought was a rubbish singer, I take it back completely and am embarrassed I ever said such things. He is a great metal singer and can actually sing a great melody that doesn't sound easy with a lot of accidentals thrown in. I'm not sure how much you're meant to listen to the lyrics, if they are just a filler or have a deeper meaning that has passed me by but having Lucifer thrown in is always fun.

It is atmospheric, ambient, sometime ethereal music that sounds like it's that moment 3/4 of a way through a romantic comedy film when something has gone wrong and a character needs a scene to be seen thinking very hard about what they have done wrong and then probably go run towards the love of their life they obviously nearly let slip through their fingers (actually I could genuinely here this moment of them getting up and started to run through the christmassy streets looking for their love at about 4:30 of Staralfur.) I guess that's quite a good thing if this music can provoke an image in my head but also by me conjuring that image is not one that is emotional to me but sadly just makes me think, generic. I don't know if this is because Sigur Ros were the first to do it in 1999 and therefore, congrats, as that means a lot of others have followed suit or if this kind of music has just been around us all in various ways and so inevitably blurs into eachother. At times it reminds me of Moby, but I think I prefer Moby.

WELL what an absolutely fun and entertaining album - loved it. I've never actually listened to the Wings so this was a welcome surprise. I think I realised from watching the hours long documentary Get Back that although Lenon is a huge part of the genius of The Beatles, McCartney was the musical genius and was worlds apart from the rest of them in his capabilities. I think that is why this not so serious album is so great, it is so unpretentious but still manages to be an album you take seriously as a really really impressive collective of work. I wonder if that was part of it from Paul's point of view, to be the opposite of John at this time and just make a fun but amazing album where he is just not taking himself too seriously. Love so much that it is with Linda and love even more that on the cover there is both Parky and Christopher Lee. Lyrically there seems to be a lot of escapism as a theme - wonder if that is to do with The Beatles? Even the tracks that when they first came on I was unsure of, by the end I was bopping a long and then loved (this mostly happened with Bluebird, the love came with the cowbells, and Mrs. Vandebilt, where again the love came from the music rather than lyrics with the beat hitting on both the half and full beat.) This is an album I would happily buy on vinyl and have it on in the background and find myself dancing in my seat to whilst trying to listen to whomever is there but being distracted instead by this fun fun album.