1001 Albums Summary

Funkier than I expected. Would probably rate higher of it was more my taste.

These fellas have a lot of trouble in their relationships.

What a debut. A total vibe. Utterly transportative. The music is kinda secondary to the lyrical narrative and that is a-ok to me....(And it heavily influenced Andrew Eldritch's The Sisters of Mercy, so....)

I have had this record on vinyl since I was a kid. Almost every song on this record is a certified banger. It's one of the most 80s things to ever 80s, especially with that Patrick Nagel cover art. I remember vividly their View To A Kill theme song and when I saw Grace Jones seduce James Bond I experienced an overwhelming pre-adolescent sexual awakening. Then, when we were teenagers, my friend told me she lost her virginity to The Chauffeur. So, basically Duran Duran has been soundtracking boners since forever and I am here for it.

I was more into real British anarcho-punk like CRASS when I was a kid, so the Sex Pistols always seemed like they might as well been a pop band like the Bee Gees or Michael Jackson. More a packaged product and image: only in this case shock for shock's sake, rebellion for sale, fashion over form. I did listen to them a little, but never really sought them out. Nevertheless, as the years have progressed, I can't help but acknowledge the impact they had on practically everyone at the time. Some of my lifelong favorite bands formed after seeing the Pistols live, (Joy Division and Siouxsie immediately spring to mind). I'll give 'em that. This is actually the first time I've listened to this record in its entirety from start to finish, and I still know practically every single song on it. It is without-a-doubt a solid rock record, and yeah, it probably scared the shit out of the establishment rank and file when it first dropped. And that is kinda my problem with it. I imagine there was a lot of pearl-clutching over the Sex Pistols in the mainstream culture and in the press, but we all know that freaking out the normals is not very difficult, (especially back then). In fact, Malcom McLaren and Jamie King are as much a part of their aesthetic legacy as the band itself. So, there is nothing really authentically revolutionary about the music or lyrics to me. Their influence and impact is undeniable, but it also sounds kinda commercial, then and now. Victims of their own popularity, perhaps. And if I check in with my 15 y.o. self, this record still sounds significantly less dangerous, sincere, and genuine to me as Feeding of the 5000, which I had on repeat all the time back when.

Coldplay have a couple standout tracks, but otherwise 99% of their work sounds like background muzak piped into a Starbucks to me. Adult contemporary listening that you just kinda hear more than listen to. This is the first time I've heard this album in its entirety and my thoughts above remain the same. That said, when I was in college and they first hit, my gf at the time, M, had a soft spot for "Yellow" because it reminded her of her sister's new marriage. I remember she thought it was such a dumb song, but it hit her in the feels regardless because she loved her sister so. Because she was the first girl I ever loved, and due to her overwhelming interest in astronomy, I could not help but associate the track with M, myself. So I put the song on a mix for her, downloaded illegally from Napster and burned onto a CD-R, early 2000s-style. And now I'm forever among the ranks of dudes who put Coldplay on a mix for a girl he loves.

First-time listen. This is a good Sunday record, even though the songs all fade out way too soon. The psychedelic elements in this record are great, even though stuff from the 1970s that have sing-songy arrangements with lots of flutes typically give me hives. I'm surprised at how short the songs are given the style; I'd expect them to stretch out a little more. With each successive track, this record really grew on me. The Romani elements heard in the track Dos Cruces were particularly outstanding: sprawling with a great buildup. Gave me epic Brazilian flamenco gunslinger Morricone vibes (but again, cut too short with a unnecessary fade-out).

I typically ignore pop music almost completely coz I detest most of it, but I distinctly remember when this dropped. I recall giving it a shot and being impressed at how experimental and unique this album was as a whole statement and concept. It is anything but boring. It's not something I have spun up again since my first few listens in 2010, but revisiting now it reaffirms that it's a super well-crafted, creative, and considered album. Although it's not typically my preferred style or genre, it's notwithstanding impossible to ignore. Like I said, I mostly hate and consequently write off most pop music due to its banal sameness, but this is such a singular voice of overwhelming creativity, I gotta give Monáe big props for such a unique debut. And "Cold War" is still a fucking total banger, 15 years later; a sort of spiritual sibling to Outkast's "Bombs Over Baghdad". This is an example of a record that I cannot help but recognize has 5-star quality, even though it's not totally my thing.

Seldom has any band in the history of music been so prolific as The Cure, all the while swinging so wildly between mood and genre. Their preceding debut was an energetic post-punk pop record; but this definitive follow-up would determine a feel and a sound the three imaginary boys from Crawley would explore and be known for through much of the rest of their storied career. They have been one of my favorite bands since I was 12, a constant soundtrack to almost my entire life. (Totally not a goth, btw - ha). Seventeen Seconds contains within it such a compelling mood through its compositions and production, that as a listener, I feel transported to the gloomy English landscape in 1980 as soon as the needle drops. Diaphanous mystery and murky allure made audible. They've been encoring live with "A Forest" for almost 50 years and it still sounds fresh and amazing. This isn't even my favorite record by The Cure, but it is still near goddamn perfect.

Totally wild that a 2-Tone-associated band would have a dude in actual blackface on their album cover, but here we are. My girlfriend when I was in high school, (also the first girl I'd ever kissed), curiously mentioned that I looked like Suggs to her. I don't see it now, nor then, so I dunno what she was on about, but cheers all the same I guess, Hot Lips Jenny. My best friend also gave me the domestic US release Madness on CD—which includes most of the tracks on this record—for my 18th birthday. Too bad "Night Boat to Cairo" isn't on this coz it's arguably their best original song. Madness was always a little too sing-songy and poppy for my taste. If I'm gonna listen to 2nd-Wave British Ska (or anything remotely adjacent), I'm going straight to The Specials, The Selecter, or The English Beat. In all honesty, though, I'm probably skipping them altogether and just listening to Prince Buster or Toots and the Maytals, who these cats, especially Madness, were pretty much ripping off. I'm kinda surprised this record, and band in general, are on the 1001 list to begin with. Despite all of the above, I must say the arrangements and time signatures on this record are actually pretty fun for a pop record. There's a lot of creativity and carnivalesque energy here, and I definitely remember hearing "Our House" when I was a kid on KROQ in Los Angeles, so it takes me back a little. But that is about the extent of the charm here. Nevertheless, I haven't spun up Madness in decades, and revisiting it here reaffirms that is probably just fine. By track 11 I just kinda want it to be over, in all honesty. Not bad, but not really for me anymore; and definitely lacking the staying power some of their contemporaries.

I remember hearing "Desire Lines" and "He Would Have Laughed" somewhere, so that was my point of entry for this band. A fantastic introduction, I must say. However, my memory is a piece of mouldering cheese, so it's very possible I have listened to this record before and just forgot. Funny that some of the themes of this record deal with how we remember things. Anyhow, in this release, I'm hearing a big Pet Sounds influence, but with strong lonely, misunderstood, twee, wearing-a-cardigan-in-the-summer-with-a-messed-up-haircut vibes. Also a lot of 60s rock/soul, Phil Spector-style production projected through a modern, angular, shimmering indie rock prism. And I am totally here for it. I like the buzzy, narcotic, lo-fi spacey feel of it; all young and free and drenched in reverb. It reminds me a bit of the sense of discovery I felt when I first heard Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti. Although the compositions are quite varied, they still feel unified presented here as a whole. I seldom pay attention to lyrics, but I bet the words are kinda brooding and sad. I can totally see this becoming a classic of the era. I have mistakenly overlooked these guys. Since I'm not that familiar with the rest of their stuff, I will be dedicating the rest of the day to catching up on their entire discography. Di đi mau!

This album is a wacky freakin' ride. Super experimental and strange for a pop record. If i had little crumb-snatching kids I'd probably play this for them all the time and let them get weird with it. This feels like a work you have to treat like watching a movie in the theatre - it demands a fully dedicated listen. Put on some decent cans and just sit there in a chair with your eyes closed, immersed in the production value and compositions. Listening to it while doing practically anything else, however, it's hard to imagine a setting or moment that I would want to soundtrack this with. Perhaps a room with oil lamp projections and wigs and pillows and hallucinogenic substances... (Though, by the time you get to Mrs. O'Leary's Cow the walls and your face would start melting for sure). I think of Pet Sounds as the first emo record and a remarkable time capsule that captured a cultural moment and holds up to just putting on whenever. All of the lore and controversy surrounding SMiLE resulted in a sort of hype that is pretty impossible to ignore; or live up to. That said, this doesn't really do it for me. It feels like a lot of unfinished, half-baked ideas sandwiched and smashed and shoehorned in between two recognizable bookend songs that provide some sort of grounding to anchor the whole exercise. That said, I can nevertheless appreciate that this might be an important piece of work. The experimental, fragmentary deconstruction and reconstruction of Wilson's creative legacy evident here is kinda fascinating. Sure, it's art. But like some some important painting I would never wanna hang on the wall, it's also kinda just a widely-celebrated cultural artifact to me: I really have no idea where it would fit into my listening habits or personal aesthetics.

Despite my best intentions to investigate the work of this zany genius over the years, all I can recall on the spot about Zappa are his novelty tracks "Bobby Brown (Goes Down)" and "Valley Girl"; the latter I no doubt heard on Dr. Demento's show when I was a kid. So here I am finally listening to this funky as hell record I've been seeing in used vinyl bins my whole life, (and just as long loving the cover art with its rad juicy weirdo photo and perfectly kerned Helvetica typeface). And what can I say? I AM GROOVIN' ON THE FREAK SCENE, MANNNN. It's not hard to be transported to the mindset of peak far-out, wig-flipping, hairy jam-out weirdness from when this dropped in '69. But what is also remarkable is to hear the 1:1 influence this has had on modern stuff like Animal Collective, Ween, and King Gizzard. The musicianship is stellar and the compositions are engaging. Definitely of a time and of a place. (It's probably also had an influence on 90s hippie jam bands I can't stand, but you can't win 'em all.) The album ends on a great free jazz skronk-fest, which is fun and chaotic and reminiscent of the stuff I used to do with a band I was in. I probably should have gotten into this more when I was younger and a little more adventurous, but hell , I'll take it at any age. After all, "when the going gets weird, the weird go pro." - Frank Zappa

Adult oriented blues-rock is not really my thing. But I'll tell you whose it is: my mom's. And mom was a big fan of Bonnie Raitt. I grew up begrudgingly listening to a lot of this in the car when I was a kid. Although this record was familiar, I didn't really personally nor aesthetically connect with anything but "The Road's My Middle Name." I wish the album with the cut "I Can't Make You Love Me" was suggested instead because that song is some seriously solid work. All the same, what I did connect with is this: driving around in my mom's car that I recently inherited from her, listening to one of her favorite artists, her photo on the dashboard, remembering her. I might have rolled my eyes at a lot of her mom-rock etc. when I was a kid, but I would give anything to have been in that car listening to Bonnie Raitt with her in the other seat today.

I inherited a very early pressing of this record on vinyl from my grandpa. I don't know what he was doing with it, as he was more of a Marty Robbins and Glen Miller kinda guy. I like to fantasize that maybe he bought it on a lark when it dropped in the 60s as a way to perhaps understand my mom's hippie phase or something, coz I cannot imagine him listening to this and digging it. Either way, it was in very good condition and a crown jewel of my collection. Every track on this release is essential. As great as they all are, it is a bit frustrating now to contend with the shorter lengths for the tracks that were obviously meant for radio play at just under 3:30. You can hear that those songs were intended or even yearning to go longer, but the record company fades them out so they'll fit on one side of a promo 45. I'm looking at you, Purple Haze and Foxy Lady. Speaking of, I remember when I was a young dumb record store clerk once stating that I could sometimes hear the opening riff from Foxy Lady in my head whenever I saw a hot chick walk by. How he captured that in sound I will never fully understand, but it still kinda fits. Thanks grandpa, and thanks, Jimi.

I remember clearly when this record dropped. The first song I heard by this band was "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)," and I can still remember being lit up at the overwhelming energy of it, driving around in my car in LA with Indie 103.1 on the radio. It kinda reminded me of a rootsier PiL. There are only a few times in my life where my ears have pricked up quite like this. Upon hearing the whole thing, I was struck at the balance between lyrical and musical themes of twee, innocent adolescent energy and a sort of hardened, melancholy adult nostalgia evident in the record as a whole. The progression of the track listing is also masterfully considered. It reminds me of when albums were presented as a start-to-finish listening experience rather than to be parsed out and shuffled, which is significant given that this came out during the peak of the iPod era. What an absolutely stunning and epic debut. Extra points for titling your first big record "Funeral."

I know the intention here was to try and make twangy honky-tonk seem hip to the 60s kids, but if I wanted to listen to The Louvin Brothers, I'd just listen to The Louvin Brothers. This all sounds pretty hokey to me, practically to the point of parody. There is, all the same, some pretty stellar musicianship here, but I definitely think these fellas ought to have stuck with the psychedelic sounds they were known for. There are a couple standout tracks for me: Hickory Wind and Lazy Day. Both feature and were written by Gram Parsons, whose compositions and delivery feel more authentic, like he wasn't "trying on" the sound. All in all, I think this release holds up to the record company tagline to promote this when it came out: "This Country's for the Byrds." Uhhhh, yup.

I came into this ready to hate it: I do not like pop music, and I do not like modern country music... at all. 95% of it is just pop and rock music sang with a southern accent. And this is definitely that, if not perhaps just a little elevated. There's a young girl in the midwest or the south, however, wearing a sundress and cowboy boots and a flower crown for whom this is soundtracking her whole life, and for that, I reckon I'm stoked she has this record to lean on. Although I didn't totally hate it, I'm also relieved it's over now. Being into a lot of shoegaze bands, I did appreciate the choice to use an airy, ethereal production quality in a lot of the compositions, but this simply isn't for me. I totally could have died without ever hearing this.

I remember when big beat hit and I was working at Tower Records. It didn't really grab me the way it seemed to grab everyone else. I tended to seek out more adventurous sounds created by Future Sound of London, Ninja Tune artists, Aphex Twin, and Orbital to get my electronica fix. I know this is their debut so it broke ground, etc., however I emphatically regard Dig Your Own Hole as a way more textural, exciting, and less repetitive record over this one. Some of these tracks seem to only work at 110 dB while you're on MDMA and it shows. That said, Chico's Groove and Alive Alone do indeed seem to capture that pre-millennium sense of hope, wonder, and anticipation, (if only meant as comedown tracks as the sun came up and you were trying to find your car at a desert rave in 1995).

The Thin White Duke persona debuts and, with that, decides to get superfunky. One of the things I appreciate the most about Bowie is his chameleonic nature, though in truth this isn't my favorite sounding incarnation.

I used to listen to thrash and metal a lot when I was like 13-14. I remember my younger brother digging these guys maybe coz he was a drummer, but I never could get into them. The landscape back then was too saturated with much better bands, and Megadeth just never rose to the top. I didn't like the compositions and I always thought Dave Mustaine's vocals were cheesy as hell. Nothing's changed. I thought this sucked when it came out, and I think it sucks even more now.

If we could give half stars, this record would earn the middling, average 2.5 it deserves. I like the feel of western and equatorial African melodies, though I tend to lean more towards smooth classic Ethiopian jazz and more aggressive afrobeat stuff like Fela Kuti. The stuff on this record all sounds upbeat and happy, though I have no idea what the lyrics are. Not typically my go-to, but I always find this stuff pretty inoffensively listenable, if only in a "browsing candles and scarves in some white hippie store or cruise ship soundtrack" kinda way. That said, there are better examples of this style that I prefer. The weird breaking glass samples on "Desespoir" following the 80s cheese-synth intro was unexpected and pretty rad, the only other place I've heard that was on "Der Kuss" by Neubauten. "Dit Jeannot" is a standout track and a pretty good closer. My listening partner just hears "pussy" in the French "poussez" lyrics, and I ain't mad at it.

Generally I just find most 70s album rock to be kinda annoying and I dunno, dirty sounding, but not in a good way. More in like that dog-eared bargain-bin vinyl smell of mold and dust in an old record shop dirty where you have to wash your hands after browsing the crates. Just kinda tired, grimy, and played out. Or dirty like cruising in a Chevy El Camino with the windows down when it's 98 degrees out and your dad is wearing a tanktop while smoking Marlboro Reds, hot wind blowing armpit sweat and tobacco ash everywhere. 70s album rock on the shitty car stereo is the soundtrack of that. Maybe that vibe is some kinda heaven to someone else, but to me it's an aesthetic that I think I probably grew up with a little and find totally repellent now. Despite thinking Quadrophenia is a damn-near perfect film, I've never been a big fan of The Who, probably on account of my aforementioned overall distaste for the genre. Given that, I have to admit Baba O'Riley is a fucken epic track. Bold choice to open the record with it, because it gives such end-credits vibes. That said, many of the tracks on this record feel like they would be a good last song to close out an album, (The Song Is Over, Behind Blue Eyes, etc). It seems clear that these songs were part of a larger concept, as they seem to fit together as a whole pretty well. I am surprised to discover that I don't mind this record at all, even though I don't anticipate having a yen to listen to it much after this. A couple tracks are familiar already, and represent rock solid performances and songwriting. I would definitely give this five stars if it aligned with my personal tastes more. I especially appreciate the record cover art concept that is a literal piss-take.

John Prine makes the kind of country/folk music I like. Authentic, honest, simple, and great storytelling. Everything on this record is delivered real easy-like, and some of it with a wink, all of which might belie the depth in the themes he explores. Playing around with language that toes the line between playful and profound seems to be his schtick; but he's so damn good at it, I have to respect it as so much more than simple wordplay. A stunning lyrical classic like "Sam Stone" is the stuff of legends. "Paradise" and "Angel From Montgomery" are also big standouts here, but "Pretty Good" is unimpeachably my favorite. The lyrics are kinda silly, but Prine finds a way to make them work and sound so earnest. It's a like a honky-tonk version of "Is That All There Is?" Finally, "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore" is still relevant, 55 years later; only instead of referring to Vietnam, I dedicate it to all the Christofascist conservatives and spineless neoliberals play-fighting while the world burns. Fucking motherfuckers.

This dropped when I worked at Tower Records and I totally slept on it. It's funny to listen to it now because I can totally hear the 90s in it. Is it in the production? Is it in the arrangements? Is it in the drums? Chord progressions maybe? I think what I'm hearing is the sort of DGAF indie freedom that permeated a lot of stuff of that era, when labels were more willing to take chances on artists and release records that challenged conventionality and took a bunch of genres and frapped them in a blender. Jon Spencer was a collaborator with Beck in the mid 90s and it really shows here. Several songs on this release seem a little short, kinda like sketches more than fully realized pieces. "Chicken Dog" is pretty great, especially since it features R.L. Burnside for a hot minute. The energy of "Dynamite Lover" and "Can't Stop" are fantastic. This really grew on me with each successive track. I'll probably be coming back to this again, at least to put a track or two on my 90s Alt Parking Lot playlist.

I was immediately filled with dread when I saw Little in the name. What distinguishes rappers that have "Little" as their first name from "Lil'"? Well exemplified here, this "Little" is British and demonstrates a vastly superior skill with their production, arrangements, beats, verse, musicality, and delivery; (as opposed to the Lil's, who are mostly American, boring, thematically irrelevant, overwhelmingly same, and just mumble and suck ass in the hardest way possible). My dread was unwarranted. Although not totally my taste, I always appreciate music that takes risks. I bookmarked a couple of these, specifically "Venom" and "Offence," which are totally outstanding. She has a real gift for that rapid-fire rhythmic verse delivery that totally sets this apart from what passes for rap and hip-hop in this era. The screaming chick in "Boss" comedically reminds me of comedian Leslie Jones wildly hollerin'. Dude at the end of "101 FM" needs to STFU tho. Surprisingly hyped to hear this while I wait to go see Wu-Tang Clan live for the first and last time tonight.

I started with Go and Everything Is Wrong, so when Play came out, Moby became a certified commercial success—literally—and I'd already kinda moved on. I didn't get into this too much then because so many songs could be heard practically EVERYWHERE anyhow. Every track was prostituted out to sell beer, shoes, candy, cars, jeans, and was in dozens of movies and TV shows. So you might say I avoided the album because it felt more like a compilation of songs I just heard in commercials. (As an artist you gotta make a decent living to live and work in Manhattan, I get it). Later on, when I finally listened to the Alan Lomax WPA recordings that provide the backbone of pretty much this entire record, I was struck at how much a sense of authenticity and, I dunno, "classic-ness" can be injected into a newer work simply by sampling an older one. Kinda in the same vein of the piano figure from 1967 is looped and used in "C.R.E.A.M" by Wu-Tang. Using these old sounds gives a new piece a sort of soul, gravity, and sense of place: like it's been around longer than it really has. That sense of a venerable soul created by this has been borrowed, however; it ain't the genuine article. That said, and notwithstanding, Play is kinda comfort record now. It reminds me of that specific sense of optimism and anticipation preceding the turn of the millennium, and the halcyon days that seemed to follow it. It might have sounded like a soulful classic when it came out because of the aforementioned use of samples, but 26 years on, its classic quality now also resides in how Moby put those samples to work within his own sweeping synth-orchestral pop-electronica compositions. This record is a musical palimpsest in that way. And it's still pretty listenable. I gotta say, though, "The Sky Is Broken" sounds like something off of that ridiculous cheese-fest Fabio After Dark album from 1993. Ultimately, the heart of this exercise does lives within the samples Moby used. They are cultural artifacts of profound significance. So, if you haven't delved into the Alan Lomax material that this record owes its entire existence (and inclusion in this list) to, you simply must listen to it. Like, today. If it's not on the 1001 list it damn well should be: Sounds of the South. Go. Do it. Right now.

I hear a lot of Perrey and Kingsley, Wendy Carlos, and Ennio Morricone influences I like going on here, which was apropos of the era. It's wild to consider what a variety of subgenres those same 60s sample sources all contributed to at the time; be it trip-hop, house, techno, ambient, or in this case big beat. That said, I always found big beat to be fucking boring. This album is no exception. Most of it sounds like generic stock placement library music to be used in a middling heist film directed by Guy Ritchie or a sneaker commercial. Yawn. Sure, it's listenable, in that nothing about it is particularly annoying (perhaps other than the needless hammering repetition), but none of it really excites the senses either. There are some fun samples and sounds effects throughout, but probably all a lot more engaging to hear while hopped up on goofballs in a warehouse or out in the desert under the starts at 100 dB where the bass is pumping your heart for you. I've always maintained that if one must have one's senses altered to appreciate a piece of creative work, it's not all that creative.

I DJed in an all industrial club from like 1995-1997, so I've heard "Guber Einer Nation" dozens and dozens of times at loud volumes*. I never spun it up myself, however. Back then I thought the music and vocal delivery on "Opus Dei" and every other track was all so silly—parodistic even. So, yeah, I didn't really care for Laibach then, and I still don't. What a hilarious undertaking for this group to make quasi-anti-fascist music that sounds so... fascist. What has changed, however, is that I have come to really appreciate and respect them as an art project and creative collective now, especially with offering NSK citizenship, doing weird cover versions, etc. That appreciation, nevertheless, does not inspire me to listen to their albums. Today, sure, it's fun in a sort of nostalgic way that takes me back to my early DJ days, but the distant past seems to be the time and place Laibach fits best. These days, I'm actively trying to escape all the fascist discourse in our daily lives; so I certainly am not trying to invite that aesthetic into the art I look at or listen to as well. Then again, perhaps we all need to get used to this. *I always heard the lyric "Gebt mir ein Leitbild" as "GIVE ME A LIGHT BEER" and it made me laugh every time. If anything, I'm grateful for this listening session to remind me of a dumb joke I hadn't remembered in decades.

Cocaine is so fucking annoying. Anyone who's ever been cornered at a party between the hours of 12 and 3AM by someone totally lit up on the stuff knows what I'm talking about. That said, this is the one exception I'll make. This record is arguably the best thing that 4 bandmates doing heart-stopping quantities of the devil's dandruff ever produced (... and Fleetwood Mac's Rumours is the absolute fucking worst). I said what I said. Tommi Iommi has always had such a penchant for writing riffs just soaked with foreboding heaviness. Imagine having the terrifying and dark reputation for making some of the most anti-establishment occult rock and roll ever recorded to date and then what? Oh, yeah, go and break everyone's hearts from out of nowhere by writing and recording the incredible "Changes." It's a tall order to make a 70s hesher cry into his 5th can of Strohs but they did it. The rhythm section showed up every damn day to WORK. Osbourne's vocal melodies are sometimes repetitive and follow the guitar rhythms rather than have their own cadence, but when he breaks out of it, some real genius phrasing emerges. Well played, boys. Nearly every song on this album is great, if not incredible. "Supernaut" sounds as fresh, energetic, and vital in 2025 as ever. I wish it didn't fade out though, ugh. I listen to Sabbath pretty regularly, but usually as single selected tracks within playlists. It's another thing entirely to immerse oneself in the record front to back and get taken for a ride the way the band intended it. I would have changed the track order and probably nixed "FX", myself, but it is what it is. I blame the cocaine for this record being almost, but not quite, perfect.

I was a huge fan of gangsta rap originator Eazy E when I was a kid. The themes and stories put forth by these rappers seemed like cautionary tales, journal entries, and descriptions of autobiographical trauma. But that's also a pretty generous reading. It was also misogynistic, violent, and deeply anti-social. And it was 100% designed to shock in that way. I dunno how it didn't leave more of a negative impact on me when I was 12, but so it goes. What started as a gritty, raw, and anti-social genre with 80s gangsta rap by the 90s had also become a commercialized cash cow. There was lots of stacks to be made off music about murder and pimping. Despite Dre's pedigree as a genuine originator of the genre, this shit—at least lyrically—felt problematic to me back then, and remains problematic to me now. My issue with it is this: aside from finding a lot of themes explored in gangsta rap as repellant in all its violence and misogyny; it was also broadly received by a lot of the fandom as a thing to laud and aspire toward. ThIs resulted in an entire generation of kids who wanted to live that urban struggle experience sometimes more than vicariously. Realness politics abounded. Aside from fans who wanted to live the G life for real, it also spawned an entire generation of poser "studio gangster" performers and poser fuckhead fans, who glorified the thug life resulting from redlined urban destitution, senseless criminal violence, sexism, and murder as somehow cool. I had to sell a lot of these posers cassettes and CDs of this stuff working at Tower Records in Sacramento in the 90s. And they were annoying as hell. (This whole critique also applies to Scandinavian black metal and goregrind dorks). Anyhow, if I step back and just relax, yes, at the end of the day it was all entertainment. Not to be taken all that seriously. I don't need to feel like I've suddenly turned into my parents about all this. But I also lived in a place and time that was so heavily influenced by the aggressive machismo and the thug-life wannabe idolatry in gangsta rap that I found myself walking into dangerous situations pretty regularly in public spaces without any provocation. I was chased, saw friends get beat, and had friends actually die. I don't blame the art for this, necessarily, but rather the way it was interpreted and glorified and cosplayed by the idiot fandom. So, The Chronic....Undeniably an important record and cultural artifact. Lots of bangers throughout. The production slaps and some of the bars are quite impressive. For me, however, it's all too loaded and I can't look away form the negativity and toxicity this all seems to celebrate. And Dre made millions off it. If you give it a deep listen the music is compelling, yes, but the lyrics are incredibly off-putting. Despite being a classic it's really aged like milk. PS: I dunno if this was one of the first records with a lot of skits, but I know this: skits on hip-hop records were an exceedingly tiresome trend that I absolutely hated from the first one. So dumb. You weren't Rudy Ray Moore, so i dunno why you even tried.

For this era and genre I'm more an Animals kinda fella. What can I say? I just like it a little more raw and a little darker. The Kinks stuff is all very cheerful and hence a lot of the songs usually end up sounding kinda juvenile and silly to me. Jaunty, even. I probably need to lighten up. Sorry, Ray. I'm sure when this record dropped it was an exciting time and I am willing to bet cash money that The Kinks were a riot to see live in their heyday. Today, a few of these tracks seem like good options to include on a mixtape for a friend for when they drive around in the summertime in their Chevy Impala. Standouts include "Party Line"; a fun and kinda goofy throwaway novelty track at best, but still worthwhile. The more psychedelic tracks on this album tend to be stronger. "Rainy Day In June" is solid, aside from the overwrought sound effects. "Fancy" is great, though it does end too soon. It would have benefitted from vamping it out for like 8 minutes for full-on psychedelic effect. And of course "Sunny Afternoon" has that inherent staying power that the more popular hits The Kinks wrote are totally known for. Totally inoffensive and listenable, but aside from "Sunny Afternoon" not particularly memorable either.

Tim Buckley's voice—especially when he goes all alto/soprano—does nothing but irritate me, but he is inarguably a tremendously gifted songwriter. I must ask: what tf was it with sound effects in songs released in the 1960s? Opening with bombs exploding is a statement, sure, but it also kinda cheapens the track by a lot and sounds like someone rattling aluminum siding more than anything. "Pleasant Street" has a real sense of urgency in it that I can hear probably had an influence on the The Mars Volta. I'm curious about all the Renaissance influences abounding in this release, (as well as many others from the 60s). With all the sex and drugs and rock 'n roll happening then, it seems strange that the harpsichord, (an instrument that evokes images of aristocratic formality, still ruffle collars, and huge bustle skirts if ever there was one), would be soundtracking all this transgressive psychedelic hippie social behavior. I guess SoCal Ren Faire was in full swing by '67 so I'll blame that for this nonsense. This record is at its most impactful when it's leaning more heavily into experimental psych territory, but overall I just can't get into Buckley's voice and vocal phrasing. No option for a middling 2 1/2 stars, so I'll give it a 3 since he went on to write the masterpiece "Song to the Siren", (but I can't stand his voice on that one either, it's more about giving Liz Fraser a opportunity to elevate it for all humankind for me).

I lived in the Fairfax during a lot of the Odd Future hype. And in some part, it transformed the neighborhood in irrevocable and kinda bad ways, (including running out decades-old businesses because the leases got so damn high on account of the trendiness brought in part by that hype). So I hold the output that came from all that desolation of the Fairfax I loved for two decades against really bright light. I mean, if it means that because of some label hype and new fad storefronts I can't enjoy the best Sicilian slice in LA at Damiano's anymore it better be worth it. RIP Mr. Pizza. So yeah, you got me: I'm a little jaded. I first head Frank Ocean on Jay-Z and Fuckhead's "No Church in the Wild" and I was really impressed by the verses he sang on that piece: the phrasing and especially the lyrics were provocative, heretical, and pretty punk rock. That said, this was made for someone, but it was not me. It was likely 100% eaten up by some of those kids wearing $95 t-shirts posting weird pix up on Tumblr and skateboarding up the street from where I lived though. There are a couple standout tracks, and I can definitely appreciate breaking with the conventions inherent in popular R&B here. It's coloring outside the lines and that part of it is great. However, being it's not my preferred genre at all, I was never gonna really like this. Or at least put it into any kind of regular rotation. However, it did last the exact time—to the second—it took me to edge, blow, and mow the front lawn, so I'm grateful no other free time was taken up with the assignment. Even still, I would almost say I could have died without hearing this, but I did genuinely enjoy the lyric "If it brings me to my knees, It's a bad religion" as much as the aforementioned verses on "No Church In The Wild." "Crack Rock" hit me as kinda funny, even though it's not probably supposed to. PS perhaps I'm being pedantic, but although "Pyramids" was pretty fun lyricplay and sounds like a certified club banger, it's super misinformed to equate the image of a dark-skinned African queen with a Macedonian/Greek descendent of Ptolemy who was probably her darkest when her olive ass got a sunburn. (Okay, not pedantic - no apologies, I was an anthropology major in college. Deal with it Frank. [And get your facts straight]).

There's a quality to the production of 60s rock 'n roll, and especially r&b and soul, that has this thick, slightly hollow, bassy sound that's like a warm blanket. It's the audio equivalent of looking at a black and white photo that places it in—and of—a time and place that I really connect with. It's transportative. Dusty has a really powerful and yet understated vocal quality that transcends the simplistic and reductive association with vanilla soul. The core of soul music is in the vocal expression, and she's got it all the way to her bones. You can tell she's feeling it, and that's really what matters, isn't it? This is soul music through and through, even if she's a white girl from the UK. Some of the compositions are a little sing-songy, and there are perhaps one or two too many cover versions, but what are you gonna do? They just did this a lot back then. I gotta say Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me" belongs with its originator; Dusty didn't bring enough to it to really justify a cover. However, she really adds an urgency and honesty to the Bacharach penned "Anyone Who Had a Heart" that might surpass the original. And of course "Wishin' and Hopin'" is a certified classic. I mean the little "yeeeeah" she delivers at the beginning of Ray Charles' "Don't You Know" is absolutely sample-worthy. Essential.

Despite my college girlfriend being pretty into Elliot Smith, I never much listened to him. What I did hear kinda irked me due to constant overuse of this annoying chorus effect on his vocals. Nevertheless, I'm familiar with his work and impact just being a music fan who often drove by the Sound Solutions mural featured on the cover of this record regularly as a resident of LA. In a city that adopted him (and he it), he is broadly considered a music scene legend and regarded as a genius; evidenced in the aforementioned wall mural that has become a (semi) permanent tribute to him. I have at times wondered: would he still be so heralded had he not died so young? So this is probably the second or third time I've sit down to give this guy a listen all the way through a record, and not just hearing  "Say Yes" in a coffee shop, or else some echo in a memory of my days at university hearing his Kill Rock Stars stuff on my girlfriend's stereo in the other room. When this record picks up the pace, it really has a somewhat understated propulsive energy to it. Nevertheless, this record also often sounds so haunted. I can hear the ripple effect this must have had on chamber pop work made by artists like Sufjan Stevens. It pushes and pulls with tremendous extremes, swinging from the sunny joy of "LA" to the anachronistic and jaunty "In The Lost And Found" and then veers right into Pet Sounds territory with "Stupidity Tries." "Better Be Quiet Now" might as well be the non-diagetic music cue from an early 00s indie rom-com no one has ever seen. Closing out with "Bye" could be what you hear in the Overlook Hotel while talking with ghosts. Standouts: "Junk Bond Trader", "Everything Means Nothing To Me", "Can't Make A Sound." These are all super solid pieces that made it onto an annual faves list I keep. I guess better late than never. A lot of folks talk about Smith's music being super sad. I'm not hearing it in this record. That might be because the sad music I like is probably utterly devastating compared to the subtlety inherent in these recordings. And, after giving this a dedicated listen, I must say I think all that heralding was very well-earned. 

I tend to go for more daring, moody, and less commercial mid-century jazz stylings like Mingus and Coleman. I gotta say this hits though, even if it did eventually age into elevator music or Starbucks playlist muzak at some point. At the very least, given the huge chart success of Time Out in 1959, this record gave a wider listenership an opportunity to delve deeper and perhaps get into some more challenging jazz. I wanna hope that Time Out served as a gateway album that hepped the kids into more challenging stuff released the same year like Ah Um and The Shape of Jazz To Come. But even if they didn't explore further, I'm still encouraged that audiences of popular music were vibing with odd time signatures and syncopated instrumentals at all. Either way, this is a totally easy and decent listen. A totally classic, unlabored, and pretty worthwhile way to decorate 40 something minutes of your waking hours. Maybe even a chance to access some of the mood my grandfather probably got into with this after a glass of scotch and a long day.

Joy Division has been showing throughout my life since I was about 12. From the first time I saw the cool goth/punk kid at my junior high wearing the iconic shirt with pulsar CP 1919 on it, to my best friend putting "Isolation" on a mixtape for me a few years later, to learning how to play "Shadowplay" on the guitar well into my 40s. In all that time, Unknown Pleasures has always been my favorite Joy Division album. It has a rawness and an edge that I utterly connect with. Closer, by contrast, comes across as a much more polished and aesthetically sophisticated collection of songs demonstrating a development and growth that would serve as a model to inspire hundreds of other bands to follow. From "Passover," laying down a mood of morose desolation, to the cold, complex angularity of "Colony", the production and musical quality of the whole record created a template that countless imitators would use as their defining aesthetic. The structures, rhythms, and melodic figures also foreshadow what would come with New Order, especially the way some of the note clusters on "A Means To An End" show up in "Ceremony" later on. This is a haunted record, not just because it was their last. It is at once a journal of the psychological fractures and despair evidenced in the words Curtis sings, and a eulogy to the potential these four boys from Manchester could have reached in the future had Curtis survived his self-destruction. Each note the band plays here carves out a gloomy and morose epitaph in cold marble. It's a great listen, but also a very hard one, once we know the whole story. What else could we expect, however, from a band that named themselves after the title given to a group of concentration camp women that were routinely raped by soldiers of the Third Reich?

1960s flute and violin macrame Renaissance Faire folk doesn't really do it for me, and this record is pretty full of it. That said, I'm more a fan of the raw, garage rock work of Them. I think Morrison's voice is more suited for howling over some fuzzed out guitars than literally anything else, (and that is a stretch itself since I find his vocals pretty grating). I worked at Tower Records when his 23rd record came out, "Days Like This." It was on the in-store play and I found it irritating as fuck having to listen to almost daily over the PA. Torture. This was never gonna land for me. This is the first record in the list I actively skipped though a couple songs. If zero stars were a thing....

I think there is a magic when you get certain people together to play music. The Pixies are evidence of this. There is a gestalt quality to the ingredients of Francis/Deal/Santiago/Lovering that I don't think really happens in any other configuration. I've mostly disregarded Frank Black's solo work. I remember seeing a video for "Hold Onto Your Ego" on 120 Minutes in the 90s and being pretty underwhelmed. Chalk it up to a boring first impression. I have listened to enough of his solo work since to gain an a more complete impression, but then again, nothing I've heard has really left that impression or felt iconic enough to stick. That said, Black Francis is clearly an extremely integral part of the Pixies. Listening to this you can really hear how much he shapes the Pixies sound. But this is a Frank Black record and it's supposed to be distinct: I get it.  This album is fun, but it would benefit from some trimming. A lot of these songs feel super short and half-complete, and others are clearly b-sides. I think it could be so much punchier if it were a little shorter.  Highlights: "Thalassocracy", "Calistan", and "Two Reelers" (which feels like two different songs). Perhaps everyone knows "Headache" as the big single, but it doesn't really hit me the same way. I do love how he pronounces "Los Angeles" with a hard g in the bridge on "Olé Mulholland" the way my grandfather used to. Like a lot of the alternative rock from the 90s, I hear a lot of Lou Reed influence going on here in the vocal phrasings. Overall, this sounds so much like an artifact of its 1994 time and place, especially "Freedom Rock", which I immediately put on my 90s Alt Parking Lot playlist.

I have a funny history with running into Billy Corgan. First I was at a Lycia show somewhere in SF in like 1996 where he was standing next to me, I overheard him jerkily slagging off the band as "a Cocteau Twins rip-off". A couple years later, staying the dorms at UCLA over the summer for a tutoring job I had, he brushed by me in the lobby of Hedrick Hall while they were there filming the video for "Perfect." Then, almost two decades later, when my starfucker girlfriend at the time called him over to our table at Swingers on Beverly to talk to him about their mutual friend and muse Mosh and a brief conversation ensued. Our paths have intersected more often than any other stranger I am aware of; and we've still never ourselves had a conversation. And that is probably for the best because any person who describes himself as a "free-market libertarian capitalist" seems utterly insufferable.  But, if I couldn't separate the art from the artist I wouldn't like anything. That said, I was really never a huge fan of Smashing Pumpkins in their heyday. It largely had to do with Billy Corgan's nasal, whiny vocals. The man cannot sing. He sounds like Eric Cartman 90% of the time. It's still a baffling aesthetic choice to me even now. I think I heard the breathy "Today" and thought it was alright. I did like the sadboy ballad "Disarm" when it came out, (probably coz of that girl at school I had a secret crush on - you know how it goes). Sometime soon after in the mid 90s, however, I saw them play "Cherub Rock" one night on SNL and despite my annoyance at his high-pitched squeak-singing, my interest was nevertheless piqued based on the energy of the music on its own. I started paying attention. I've since come to tolerate the Corgan Caterwaul because most of the band's music and songwriting is solid enough to compensate. (I also feel this way about Placebo). I worked at the flagship Tower Records store when this album dropped, like so many others on this list,  and I remember it feeling like an event. I bought the singles box set The Aeroplane Flies High for this release because it was a such a cool package and concept. There were a fuckton of decent b-sides, outtakes, and cover versions on that release as well that made it quite worthwhile. That said, I don't think I've ever done a proper sitdown with this whole record.  I must say, the sheer volume of songs on this record (and the singles b-sides, my god) represent a totally overwhelming and impressive amount of creative output. I would expect in that situation to discover a lot of filler and throwaway stuff, but I can't really. Of course the singles are the bangers here—and there are a lot on this record. "Tonight, Tonight" feels like the walkup cue when you're winning some major award or getting married, with the ascending strings and propulsive drum crescendos. "Zero," in all of its godless depression fuck-you energy is arguably The Gen X/Millennial Theme Song for the 90s. "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" as a hopeless sibling to "Zero" and continues on in this same vein. "Thirty-Three" sings of hope through a diaphanous haze of swirling psychedelia. The melting popsicle sweetness of "1979" evokes a compelling near-anemoia for the carefree feral summers of a youth some of us remember and others have only dreamed of.  Aside from the singles, there is a lot of sameness in the sound and structure of many of the tracks on this record, which I guess is fine since those tracks either rock or are sweet ballads. Flood's and Alan Moulder's production on this really comes front and center. It feels cohesive and chunky, bassy, and big. It brings together the more disparate sounding tracks to feel a part of the whole. Other standout tracks include: "Muzzle", "Bodies", "We Only Come Out At Night". As a total concept and presentation, the flow of song to song is really impressively considered and shines as an example of a time when an album is released that is clearly intended to be experienced start to finish and not chopped up into bits on shuffle. Mellon Collie feels so much like the time in which it was made. It is incredibly ambitious, and succeeds pretty admirably. It's a rare thing to not have something this big fall short of its promise but even the filler doesn't really sound like filler. I have to admit this is quite a special record, if not primarily due to nostalgic associations at this point in the game. But fuck it, I'll take it.

Iconic and singular. From when I heard the first strums of "Off Your Face" from the Glider EP, on a mixtape made for me by my best friend in high school, I was hooked on MBV—and most of the shoegaze genre in general—for the rest of my life. This band had no aesthetic predecessors, so the idiosyncratic, unpredictable, and flat-out messy way they made their music in large part accounts for its uniqueness. I've read Shields has a reputation for being unbelievably difficult to work with due to his perfectionism and methods. When I consider that the man is practically inventing an entire genre of music, however, I'll say it could be justified (maybe). I know, the "price of genius" narratives are yawn-inducing for sure, but tell me they don't apply here. Maybe I'm wrong, but the legacy of this collection of songs does speak for itself. Also, I don't have to like a person to like their art. "Only Shallow" is an absolute avalanche of a way to open an album. What a statement. A couple of of the tracks here feel like sketches more than songs, but it's alright coz this is another example of a record best listened front to back as an immersive experience. "When You Sleep" and "I Only Said" are modern classics. The delicious crunchy noise of "Sometimes" reminds me of the time I never actually laid in bed watching the smoke rise to the ceiling while smoking cigarettes laying next to a girl I liked at a party in college. Overall, this record swirls and it pulses. "Soon" is a perfect closer and a total anthem that befits its time and yet also feels fresh today. That goes for most of the tracks on this collection. I'm disappointed I've never gotten to see this band play live, but from what I've heard it might be for the better lest my tinnitus become full-blown deafness on account of the legendarily insane decibel levels at their shows. Loveless almost bankrupted their label, gave the same label executives anxiety attacks for years, and was not particularly commercially successful. But was it all worth it? I mean, nobody died, so... sure.

You are correct, Leonard, I do want it darker. That because I deeply appreciate when an artist just really leans into their aesthetic. And Cohen has always sung from and about the shadows. On his final living release, here we have it all stripped pretty bare, the gravel of his voice laying the foundation for the path he leads us on. The notes a flickering candle that lights our way forward. Cohen's songs are both prayers and confessions. He often sings of faith, but in this way that feels at once grounded and human, and also rather gritty and soiled. I've also heard this approach in a few other of my favorite artists, notably Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, and Low. Several of the tracks on this release also drip with a captivating, murky noir so reminiscent of radio legend Joe Frank. This record is gorgeous and it is captivating. Appropriate that Cohen would collaborate with a choir on this release. These songs are holy. Every track on this thing is essential. There is not a minute wasted. What a stunning way to close out a career and say goodbye.

My introduction to The The was via "Slow Emotion Replay" hit single on alternative radio in the 90s, featuring those iconic Johnny Marr guitar lines. Then, the girl who popped my cherry put "Sodium Light Baby" on a mixtape for me sometime shortly thereafter. I've never been a huge fan, but Dusk was a solid record and has played a bit of a role in my life's story. They have one of the most meta band names ever, and for that they get mucho respect. I can hear the collaborations here, especially some of the JG Thirlwell rhythms and synth lines. There are some decent highlights. "This Is The Day" is a classic 80s track that surprises with its use of accordion and harmonica (the latter becoming a go-to motif used in subsequent hits as well). "Uncertain Smile" another iconic track of the era gives a sort of cabaret synth-pop vibe reminiscent of Marc Almond's stuff. It's theatrical and dramatic. Matt seems to consistently explore themes of not knowing himself, and perhaps these offerings are efforts to work that out. "Perfect", aside from the accordion, sounds like a lost New Order track. Speaking of, I imagine this is a record folks who were cool enough to dig just a little deeper beyond dancing to "Blue Monday" or "Everything Counts" in some disco in 1983 were probably hep to. Personally, however, I would probably have been listening to Kill 'Em All by Metallica if I hadn't been 8 years old.

True story: I worked at Tower Records with an artist actually named Chuck Berry. His silhouette looked like Basquiat and he was a really cool cat. One time he told me a story about how he hooked up with his next-door neighbor. Sometime later, he came to work one day with two black eyes. I asked what happened and he said he didn't know. He just woke up on his stoop outside his apartment with a bad headache and double shiners. Best he could surmise, his neighbor brained him with a frying pan the night before when he was drunkenly trying to find his keys to the front door. He thinks she might have been angry because he was kinda ghosting her after the hookup, and this was her revenge. Years later, at a house party, I was shooting video and interviewing everyone. I saw Chuck and asked him how he was doing and he said that the coming year was gonna be "all about Chuckonia... like Stankonia, but FOR ME." Chuck was a total original, and so is this record.

My dad and his wife live in a Jimmy Buffet-themed retirement community in Florida called Margaritaville. Dire Straights sounds like the band playing in the poolside bar/lounge in Maragaritaville every Thursday at happy hour. There is not enough reefer or beer on planet Earth to convince me that this record isn't boring as hell. Nope.

If I'm listening to college rock from the 80s, I'm listening to the Replacements and early Pulp. Otherwise, I feel like there was a rash of stuff like this pouring out the UK in the early and mid 80s that to me is just utterly forgettable. There are moments here that remind me of The Jazz Butcher, who I am also not too fond of. There's not one thing unpalatable nor annoying going on here, but I did feel anxious to just get it over with so I could move on to something a little more compelling. The whole thing just feels kinda soulless and unsalted, like a boiled plain chicken breast. Perhaps the most interesting thing going on here might just be that he's British. I could have totally died without ever hearing this record. Oh, and speaking of dying, if I'm ever listening to anything called "Sophisti-pop" again it's coz I'm tied to a chair and being tortured and I need you to call the fucking cops.

There are originators, and there are translators. The Cramps are both. They took their obsessions with oldies rock 'n' roll, soul, blues, rockabilly, and garage rock, horror/monster movies, grindhouse culture, and mid-century Americana and shot them through a shattered prism of modern punk, goth, bdsm, retro-camp, and late 70s/early 80s urban culture; making something entirely their own. Produced by the legendary Alex Chilton, this debut record is a subculture classic. The title itself ridicules the Christo-fascist moral majority that was gaining ground in American society when it was released. They were here to freak out the normals and wanted you to fucking know it. Every track is a good time and is just dripping with reverbed atmosphere. The fuzzed out guitars mixed with that hollowbody jangle laid over absolutely primitive drum rhythms and no basslines is rock 'n' roll at its most bare and depraved. It's a hot rod stripped down to only the parts that will keep it running. Here the Cramps tell you where they are coming from: it's simple and it's raw and it sounds like trouble. And it's trouble I never mind getting into: The Cramps are one of those bands I can put on at any time and it's the right time.  There is only one Cramps. Most of the so-called psychobilly bands that followed suit are utterly uninspiring (Deadbolt being a lone exception). The Cramps themselves rejected being associated with the emergent genre anyhow, which is about as punk as it gets. Perhaps because The Cramps' cult aesthetic wasn't a put-on; it was their whole lifestyle. There is a sense of authenticity they carry through all their work that although theatrical and campy, also feels at once genuine and lived-in. I was lucky enough to see The Cramps live on New Years' Eve in Hollywood once and they were magnificent. Completely feral. The beating heart of the group has always been the union of Lux Interior and Ivy Rorschach. I once put in a dating profile bio: "If the love isn't like Lux and Ivy I don't want it." That not only goes for how much they loved and fit each other, but also how much ardor they had for their inspirations. They dug through the grimy, overlooked, and cast-off pieces of mid-century American weirdo culture and shone a luminous blacklight on them. As custodians, curators, and translators of these ephemeral pieces of forgotten and ignored culture, The Cramps are national treasures.

Lou Reed's vocal style has inspired so many alternative and indie rock singers it's ridiculous. From Thurston Moore to Steven Malkmus, Beck to Ira Kaplan, Gordon Gano to Julian Casablancas, Tom Verlaine to Alan Vega, Jonathan Richman to Jim Reid, the list goes on... This fact is hilarious though, because he's often got probably the most awkward, unsophisticated, sing-songy-talky vocal phrasing imaginable. But it's unmistakably Lou Reed and somehow he makes it work. The playful rocker "Vicious" is such a solid way to start this album. I wish more of this record followed in this vein, coz a few of the other songs are just silly. It's kind of a tease because the rest of the record doesn't really live up to what we're promised with this track. It does better when it's just rocking and swinging like in "I'm So Free," "Wagon Wheel" etc.; but tracks like "New York Telephone Conversation" feel woefully out of place here. It is better suited for a children's record. Perhaps that is intentional but, mannnnn, is that track a mood killer. For someone who explored such darkly fringe themes in his music, both solo and with The VU, there's a real wholesome sweetness to "Perfect Day". But that sweetness belies a real darkness just underneath the surface here. (The way it's used as a dissonance cue to that effect in that Trainspotting scene also deserves a fucking award).  There are some classic outstanders here, in addition to the aforementioned, we have "Take a Walk on the Wild Side," which although not musically super out there, has lyrics that for the time were subversive as hell. "Hangin' Round" and "Satellite of Love" are also highlights. Overall, however, the album as a whole feels rather uneven. That is, when a song is good here, it's stellar, and when it's not, it's pretty fucking not. I do appreciate risk-taking, and that is sometimes what ya get though. Deserving of 4 stars really, but any album where i have to skip a track or two gets 3. Thems the breaks.

I think besides "Mama We're All Crazee Now" being covered by Quiet Riot when I was a kid, I have never heard any music by Slade. (Today I learned that apparently their hit "Cum On Feel The Noize" was also a Slade single). Nevertheless, the gated reverb production on this sounds immediately familiar and so much of a time. My familiarity with glam begins and ends with the more well-known early 70s hits from Bowie, T.Rex, and Sweet, (who specifically sound like nearly interchangeable sonic siblings of this band). I gotta say that the shirtless dude camera right on the cover has one of the worst haircuts I've ever seen. Sorry Dave Hill, maybe that hideous fringe was your signature look, but man it sucks. (It did transition fairly well into your laters years' combover though, so there's that). I'm glad I didn't judge this by the cover art, however, because these tracks all hold up quite well: this record rocks pretty freakin' hard for a bunch of yobs in silver lameé bell-bottoms who can't spell. I imagine when this dropped, though, it was a totally fucking riot for the kids wearing makeup, platform shoes, and weird pants. These guys were probably great live. I can almost hear this filtered through some super echo-drenched beer hall in Wolverhampton erupting in androgynous screaming and smelling of Guinness and slightly of piss.  That said, I dig this way more than I thought I would. There's definitely some space in my life for fun, dumb, unserious, good-time retro party rock and this checks all the boxes (and then some). There are no standouts really because I pretty much like 'em all. I will 100% be coming back to this record and checking out their other stuff as well. I almost wonder if Joy Division's Peter Hook got his bassline inspo for "Isolation" from Slade's cover of "Let the Good Times Roll" on this record. The mind reels. Anyhow, when the mood for early 70s rock strikes, I'd much rather listen to this than to put up with all the interstitial Middle Earth faerie mandolins of Led Zeppelin that were happening at the time. Then again, I'd really just be listening to The Stooges and the MC5 than any of it, who am I kidding?

R.E.M has kinda always been there, occupying the margins of my awareness by virtue of some hit alternative radio singles or iconic music videos in the late 80s and most of the 90s. Although they had origins in popular 80s college rock, by the 90s they began to sound like a distinctly American band; an Americana band even. There's a rootsy folkiness to their arrangements, themes, and instrumentation that somehow had them occupying a more alternative category despite the constant gold certifications. They have always been a little too dark and artful for straight pop music charting, although their alt-pop crossover appeal was clear based on their broader commercial success and accolades. I think I owned Out of Time on CD at one point a few years prior to this release, (because of a girl, without a doubt), but by the time this album came out I had moved on. This record seems to represent a maturation of their sound they began with Out Of Time. (I always think any time a rock band brings in orchestral strings to an arrangement, this is the point when they are getting way more serious about shit). Michael Stipe's vocals have often felt just a little too nasally falsetto—and Mike Mills' backups a little too wholesomely Beach Boys sweet—for my taste. But when R.E.M. does it right they really tap into something. I tend to connect more with their songs that are shot through with a measure of angst or melancholy. "Sweetness Follows," in all its cinematic wideness is a perfect example of this. "Drive" as well, invites us into an experience that is gonna probably be a little fraught. As sincere and sweet as "Everybody Hurts" may have come across at the time, the years have not been kind. It sounds treacly now; almost parodistically so. Right up there with Wilson-Phillips' "Hold On." What desperate shit was going on in the 90s, y'all? We were about to hit the millennium, ffs. "Man on The Moon" earns all the radio play it got. I remember hearing "Nightswimming"—maybe a live version—incessantly on the in-store play at Tower Records when I worked there and finding it irritating as hell, probably due to the constant repetition and inability to skip it. I had completely forgotten that "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight", with its catchy earworm chorus refrain, even existed until this listen. I haven't voluntarily listened to R.E.M. in decades. Overall, I can listen to them pretty easily if they're on somewhere, as long as it's not "Shiny Happy People." Probably deserving of 3.5 stars, but since there's no 1/2 star option, I'm rounding down. As soon as "Ignoreland" came on, though, it triggered some sort of memory. My super goth friend in high school had a punk chick visiting her, who was into all the most edgy dark punk AF stuff. She had an out-of-towner cool factor that kinda captivated us in the suburbs as exotic and somehow more, I dunno "real". One of her favorite bands was R.E.M., however, despite being covered in spiked leather and patches coding her as this outsider underground firebrand. I remember being puzzled at the contrast between the aesthetic she presented, and this particular favorite band of hers, (although I think some part of me recognized it too, as I had kinda the same thing going on in different ways). In those teenage days it wasn't cool to like popular stuff. Sigh. Anyway, one of my other memories of that chick is she was the first girl to ever have just ripped a full-port fart in front me with zero shame. She just laughed. She may have also been on drugs. I think this record was playing when that happened.

Immediate props to any band that names themselves after a dildo from a William Burroughs novel. That said, 70s classic album rock is just not my bag, and here's where I double down. These guys can write a hook, sure, but something about that white guy with a big hairy beard in cut-off jean shorts and a stripey tank top at the lake groovin' to some soft rock blasting out of the Chevy LUV pickup truck on 8-track just grates on me. It's weird, because I really like Man Man, and the influence of Steely Dan on those guys is clearly evident. Nothin' I can do but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Nevertheless, if I gotta hear some dusty 70s pop/rock, I reckon there could be worse things than listening to the slightly-weirder-than-the-status-quo dildo band. At least it's not The Eagles or Fuckwood Mac. But I'm not letting these fellas off the hook so easy - there were so many more appealing options available in '72, and had I not been but a twinkle in my parents' eye at that point, I would have likely been listening to a bunch of other, better, weirder stuff. Aesthetically, this is absolutely a one-star experience for me, but again, because of the Burroughs dildo reference, I'll give these fellas extra credit. Finally, the kerning and baseline on the goddamn Mistral typeface for the album title on the cover art is way, way off, and I can't unsee that shit. Fucking ugh. Zero stars for that shit.

When my kid brother got into Radiohead with the release of "Creep" in high school, I recall thinking they were just another grunge-adjacent alternative rock act with a memorable single. Fast forward 30+ years and Radiohead continue to be one of the most forward-thinking and relevant artists of a generation, and I continue to look back on my bad takes with a small measure of embarrassment. I remember getting this on vinyl hot on the heels of Kid A coming out the year I graduated university. My college girlfriend was literally and figuratively horny for Kid A, so my impetus was obvious. This record continues to support my theory that when a band starts using strings in their compositions, it demonstrates that they are getting pretty serious about shit. This is another record that sounds haunted. This theme keeps popping up in the 1001 recommendations, but I'm here for it. I haven't always loved everything Radiohead has done, but when I like something they put out, I don't just like it, it becomes an anthem. This is one of those listening experiences that takes you on a trip. There are some serious highlights here. I don't know how one would improve upon the utterly haunting "Pyramid Song," (unless 20 years later you either, [a] slow it down 800%, or [b] have a men's chorus do a cover of it that sounds like you're in church). "You and Whose Army" sounds like the besotted follow-up song to the also limply threatening "Talk Show Host," from the Romeo and Juliet OST. I like to imagine that Thom Yorke got his ass kicked in "Talk Show Host" and this is him still making empty threats, facedown on a pub table. "Knives Out" is a masterpiece, plain and simple. "Like Spinning Plates" sounds like an inverted soundtrack to a the scientific work of Athanasius Kircher. "Life In a Glasshouse" closes us out with a broken and drunken New Orleans second-line deconstruction, appropriately heralding of the arrival of the new millennium. I don't really pay that much attention to mainstream music, but Radiohead is a special exception. I was fortunate enough to see them play at a large outdoor festival one year and they were electrifying live. My friend describes them as "always tasteful," and I must say I agree. This whole album sounds decades ahead of its time.

Gunter, glieben, glauchen, globen... What do the editors of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die and that girl Denise from my 8th grade middle school class have in common? They both clearly think Pyromania is THE SHIT. Only Denise merely demonstrated her abundant love by putting "Rock, Rock, Rock Till You Drop" as a quote under her photo in the yearbook). You go, Denise... (or Jenny, or Rachel, or Tiffany, whatever your name was). Before I got full-on into metal and punk, I dabbled in what I called "Butt Rock Summer" in 1988. I was like 12 or 13 and went to see Warrant live coz my best friend won free tix on Pirate Radio 100.3 in LA (RIP). So that summer, I built a small collection of cassettes of these pop/hair metal bands. (In those days, being an isolated suburban kid with no money, you just kinda tried to like whatever came your way). Also, my first girlfriend when I was 12 years old put "Animal" from Hysteria on a mixtape for me. Cherchez la femme. Anyhow, Def Leppard featured prominently in this small seasonal collection—but it was the aforementioned Hysteria, not Pyromania. Of all the shitty music I listened to that summer, Def Leppard is still one band I come back to every once in a while as an adult. Although, as a kid I was so excited to hear anything with distorted guitars after growing up with a lot of radio pop and early hip-hop; in hindsight it's pretty clear Def Leppard plays the metal equivalent of easy listening. It's nostalgic, safe, fun, and fairly accessible. Listening to Def Leppard is a lot like playing with sparklers on July 4th while the cool kids wearing black jeans and sleeveless t-shirts are down the street setting off M-1000s and exploding aerials. They are metal for teenage white girls wearing scrunchees, chewing bubblegum in white Jeep Wranglers with beige ragtops, on their way to buy acid-washed jeans at ESPIRIT in the mall. Okay, so if you didn't grow up in LA as I did (specifically The Valley), Def Leppard are also primarily for white girls with Aquanetted frosted-tipped hair ratted out 6 inches high, wearing bandanas around their necks and cut off jean shorts, running around the midway and drinking Boone's Farm getting fingerblasted at the county fair. (Both of these kinda girls have a TON of shit on their keychains, by the way). And all of that is just fine. It totally has its rightful place. It's clear this band have never taken themselves super seriously (see the very first sentence above). They have always seemed to have a lot of fun just being a pretty boy hard rock band with pop sensibilities. Pyromania is alright, but I maintain that it is not worth including in this list, the only real standouts being "Photograph," "Stagefright," and "Rock of Ages." The latter being a track that still holds up as a total fucking banger and was apparently worthy to title a major Broadway rock musical. Plus, you're gonna want that COWBELL. Hysteria is still an objectively superior record, and that's not just because it sold 20M copies and had like 7 hit singles (but that helps, yeah). I actually listen to it annually to remind myself of that mythical summer in the LA suburban foothills chasing ice cream trucks, crushing on girls way out of my league, riding skateboards, and being a total fucking pre-teen poser. One star for each iconic track, and minus one for some other more important album this one egregiously kicked off the list, like Band of Gypsies by Taraf de Haidouks.

No doubt Cream was freakin huge in the Summer of Love. They've never landed on my radar as super relevant, however, aside from a few of their bigger hits. For instance, "Sunshine of Your Love" features a pretty iconic riff and holds up as a classic. But then, just as it gets exciting it WHAT? It fades out. You motherfucker producers in the 60s and your untimely, early fadeouts. I would hope playing this track live the band vamped it out and got freaky and distorted with it.  The super tube-y and hollow production kinda adds a cool atmosphere to this record. "Strange Brew" is pretty spooky, and would make a great addition to my retro Halloween playlist. It's stronger when it's either a little heavier or a little more psychedelic. "Tales of Brave Ulysses" is a great example of this. Just get weird with it, Cream, it's okay. Everyone's taking acid, just lean into it. Then we get hit with "SWLABR", a pure nonsense psych jam. Now we're talking. Cream is weakest here, however, when it's LARPing as a blues band. Just stop. And wait, the lyrics "There is a world of pain...In the falling rain" are absolutely ridiculous. How old are you - fourteen? I don't usually pay much attention to the words (unless they are bad, apparently. And these jumped right out at me). Fucking HA. A few tracks on this record drag too, making the whole album pretty uneven. They are just lazy sounding or throwaway; I'm talking about "Blue Condition" and "Mother's Lament". What a dumb way to close out. So, a few strong tracks, and several more middling-to-bad ones do not "One of the Greatest Albums of All Time" make. Take that, rock critics. The cover art is freakin awesome though. And that is actually part of the let-down: it promises something significantly weirder than we actually get. I would reckon that with all the LSD tabs floating around in those days these lads would be a little more adventurous. Listening to this record made me just wanna put on The Crazy World of Arthur Brown instead. There's a band that isn't afraid to absolutely go bananas. I originally gave this a 3 (rounding up from a 2.5), but after listening to Axis:Bold As Love right afterward, (which dropped the same year), I downgraded Disraeli Gears to a 2-star in light of what was possible and this record simply fails to deliver.

In my graphic design career, I have met and worked with other designers that made me want to hang up my hat and just go home. They are just too fucking good it makes me wonder why I am even trying. Likewise, It must have been such a bummer to be a rock band in the time of Jimi Hendrix. I imagine Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Pete Townsend, Carlos Santana, and more must have felt pretty chilly standing in Jimi's shadow. And Jimi earned it—he was a dedicated musician who played for hours and hours and hours every single day. What's more though, you can hear clear as day that this dude was born to do it. Aside from being a virtuoso guitarist at such a young age, he also had such a talent for songwriting and composition. Jimi was apparently also very open when it came to collaboration and taking notes from producers and engineers. On this record he slips effortlessly from these glassy fluid figures into arpeggiated rhythms soaked in blues so often it sounds like his guitar has an actual voice and isn't something simply laying the foundation for the vocals. Even in slower tracks, there is an energy to his music that just feels vital... I mean, it bleeds. This masterpiece opens with straight up UFO references kinda suggesting War of the Worlds and moves into wild-ass panning distorted guitar noise. It gave me chills. All over this thing the band plays with rhythm and time signatures in really compelling ways. "Castles Made of Sand" grooves in smooth liquid textures and yet has this incredibly propulsive rhythmic foundation that hits and complements the swirly reversing guitar notes. It's in 4/4 but somehow sounds almost like 5/8. I think a lot about how he wrote his watery melodies. Although they seem scale-based, they are also super complex and the playing of them comes across as effortless. Ultimately, however, this is a very drum-forward record. Although everyone pulls their weight, Mitch Mitchell is an absolute monster on practically every track. Axis: Bold as Love is psychedelic rock at its absolute peak. This album is totally overflowing with imagination. You can tell Eddie Kramer had a blast in the studio after the session applying phaser effects and taking it to another level. Like the other songs about castles, "Spanish Castle Magic" absolutely rocks and grooves at the same time. "Little Wing" is gorgeous, and I cannot believe they got away with using a freakin' glockenspiel on a 60s rock ballad, but here we are. Where the melodic figures come from in "If 6 Were 9" boggles the mind. The completely random recorder freakout at the end is fabulous. Apparently Jimi just found the weird flute we all played in grade school laying around the studio and decided to use it. The cover art, although iconic, is a pretty hefty slice of mid-century American Orientalism, so that part kinda sucks. But the colors are juicy and the typography sends a very clear message about what you're getting into (even though you don't hear a single fucking sitar). Finally, the girl who popped my cherry put the song "Bold As Love" on a mixtape for me in the 90s and that will forever canonize this record as a holy relic of my life's story. We never fell in love, but we had a pretty good time. Maybe it was a commentary on my performance, after all, "Orange is young, full of daring, But very unsteady for the first go 'round..."

So, I have never ever heard of this guy before, but he kinda sounds like Beck meets John Denver meets ELO for mid-2000s indie fans, only way darker, sadder, embittered, and sarcastic. There are a couple standout tracks on this, but nothing I would likely venture to listen to again. "Marz" is one of those highlights, and that is saying a lot since I simply do not fuck with flutes. Overall, I don't dig the 70s soft rock vibes of most of the music, but the lyrics seem to be what's really driving the bus here. "Where Dreams Go To Die" stands as an emblematic example here. Many of the tracks on this record remind me of the Tom Waits quote "I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things." Speaking of which, I was really not ready for "Jesus Hates Faggots". This one is my favorite track musically but even as a statement of protest, holy smokes the words and sentiment are hard to sit through. "Chicken Bones" is a fun and fucking weird funky jam. The eponymous track "Queen of Denmark" is well performed and dysfunctionally hilarious. Let's call it this generation's foul-mouthed and pissed-off version of "I Can't Live" by Harry Nilsson perhaps. I mean, after all, if Sinéad O'Connor records a cover of your shit, you must be doing something right.  I think the juxtaposition of this kinda 70s album pop singer-songwriter delivery with words that rival Jacques Brel in their dismalness is compelling as an idea, but is likely not something I would crave hearing on the regular. I think the concept starts to veer into novelty record territory for me a bit with his particular mix of light and dark. It's hard to pull off. That said, John Grant could have just as easily written the same sounding songs with really banal lyrics about love and walking through the mountains next to a stream with birds in the sky and sunshine everywhere. But instead, he leans into the angrier, stranger side of things and I appreciate that kind of honesty, even if his overall aesthetic doesn't really land with me. As a piece of art amplifying a queer voice, I can see its value, even if it's not gonna be in my regular rotation down the road. The album cover art is mysterious and definitely piqued my interest going in blind. I didn't really know what to expect here given the creepy void of his eyes shrouded in closed-lid eyeshadow, and although the rewards were not superlative, they were not exactly lacking either.

​Growing up in LA, one could not escape intimately knowing the eponymous "Groovin​'" ​​as a ​storied and iconic lowrider classic, and to be honest, until today, I had no idea this was sung ​by white boys. I reckon the joke's on me, coz although these guys could have been written off as vanilla soul one-hit-wonders, their work really holds up. ​They seem to really embrace their inescapable Smokey Robinson influences​ and also inject this release with some experiments into psychedelia. I guess maybe they tried acid? On this release I'm not too into the more sing-songy happy songs​ that sound like the Monkees over the more psych and soul sounds. ​T​he riffs on "Find Somebody" ​really take ​things to ​H​ipsville, USA.​ ​"How ​Can I ​Be ​Sure​" is ​another familiar​ track, and I do appreciate the ​playfulness of it, especially the chanson accordion​. The footage of them lip-syncing this track on Ed Sullivan conjures swirly soft focus fantasies that I imagine led to some baby-making across the country once horny couples on the couch rolled over onto the remote control for their Zenith and the lights went low. ​"You Better Run​" is a total jam. The drums carry the whole thing forward while ​the Hammond ​B-3 and its incredible interplay with the buzzed​-out guitar punctuate it with ​swelling ​e​nergy, paying off and releasing the rhythmic tension created by ​the drums. No wonder ​pat Benet​ar covered it to ​pretty wide acclaim in the 80s​. (After the Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star", Bentar's cover was the second music video to air on MTV). Closing out with ​"It​'s Love​" is a​ surprisingly strong finish​. Surprising because a slightly discordant piano opening and some overblown flute would usually spell disaster for my ears. But this thing fucking grooves and gets a little weird with the atonal background ladies' vocal harmonies. The slight rasp in the singer's voice gives it an earnestness that really sells it. Overall this album doesn't thrill, but it definitely has a few important singles on it that have endured the crushing weight of time. Finally, not sorry to say the cover art design is dorky as fuck. It looks like my kid nephew colored it with magic markers and the poses and arrangement of the band members look strangely violent. I guess the concept was one of the band members' ideas. I reckon that perhaps that acid they tried was some of the bad stuff?

Dude. Reintepreting all this sad boy​, whitebread mid​-century country and western twang ​material as a big​, swinging jazz ​numbers and r&b ​ballads right in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement is ​such a fucking boss move I can see why this record is on the list. The ripple effect in America from this record cannot be understated. ​Primarily, this album represents an astounding act of creative jiu-jitsu. Country music has its origins in American Black Culture, but many of the originators were left behind​ when it was branded and commercialized as a white thing after WWI. ​In this record, Charles takes songs that owe their existence to African-American creativity and reclaims them through yet another act of African-American creativity. Genius. This also in turn brought a lot of mainstream white listeners along to appreciate Charles and other R&B artists.​ Not to mention that Willie Nelson himself stated the album "did more for country music than any one artist has ever done."​ "Bye Bye Love"​ is a fantastic and bombastic way to let you know you aren't getting slide geetars on this record. ​"You Don't Know Me​,"​ also a heavy standout, telegraphing that there are definitely gonna be some tears, too. T​he 1960s string orchestras, women's chorus background harmonies*, and that hollow lead vocal reverb will always remind me of hanging out in my grandpa's house when I was a kid. I am pretty sure my grandpa listened to this record ​a lot, in fact. ​He was one of the white dudes who got hip to Ray Charles through this album. (Th​is memory was triggered with the classic. "I Can't Stop Loving You."​)​ Ray Charles has a​ real ache in his vocals that lend such gravity to these interpretations. "Careless Love" is a cool blues take, but since the lyrics mention mourning doves a lot I simply cannot like it on principle. I have hated the call of the mourning dove ever since I was a little kid. It is one of the​ most annoying sounds on Earth, and this song references it. I hate ​the sound of mourning doves so much, I plan to move somewhere where they don't exist so I don't have to listen to their ​vacant fucking cooing ever again. Stupid, repetitive ass birds. ​Anyways, "Hey Good Lookin'​" is an ​m​arvelous jazz take on the Hank Williams Sr classic. The punctuating horn lines give tha​t original hayseed twang some incredible ​swingin' life. ​P​laying with the ​rhythms within the time signature and syncopation applied to ​"You Are My Sunshine" takes it to an almost unrecognizable place. It injects the​ heartbreaking melancholy of the original with a​ surprising joy. The cover art seems designed primarily to catch maximum attention at the record store in all its red glory so everyone just picks it up immediately. Nice typography, but I would expect nothing less from a layout done in the 1960s when design was really peaking. * Try and convince me these chorus backups repeating the last phrase aren't a more ethereal equivalent of a hype man like Flava-Flav or Sen Dog repeating the last 4 words of the main verse in rap and hip-hop.

There's no denying that Stevie Wonder is an important artist, and immensely, monumentally talented. I mean, he played every single instrument on some of these recordings. Believe it. Despite the rich textures, soulful songwriting, and intimidating musicianship, silky smooth 70s easy listening doesn't do it for me. At all.  "You Are The Sunshine of My Life" makes me think of wearing deck shoes at a wine mixer at the marina in the 70s. Lots of sideburns and sunsets and seagulls on the horizon while holding hands at the shoreline. Nope. I like this best when it's funky. "Maybe Your Baby" has a freaky fun groove. Old Gregg would be proud. I can really hear clear as day how hard Ween ripped this song off on several of their hits. "Superstition" probably ranks as my (and probably everyone else on Earth's) favorite. The horns really bring something extra special, and it holds up despite my obvious biases. "I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)" is also not bad, but dude repeats the chorus on several of these tracks to excess. Write some other words, Stevie. Dang. The album art definitely evokes the whole vibe that is happening here: all black-Jesused out and placing his hands and his gaze on Mother Earth. I bet he's wearing leather sandals, although we can't see it. The use of Solemnis uncial typeface gives this an extra biblical vibe that really brings me back to parochial school in the 70s—and to be clear, that is not a place I wanna revisit, so these aesthetics are really working against the record here for me. Nevertheless I can't find fault with the design. It shows what is inside, so it works.  This deserves more stars than I'm giving it, for sure, but they're MY RATINGS AND THEY FREAK ME OUT.

These fellas pop up in some important memories of my Gen X life. The first time I heard Simon and Garfunkel was when I was a pre-adolescent kid hanging out in my grandpa's garage. It had that rich warm gasoline smell of old cars and machine grease that only garages of a certain era smelled like. I seek to recreate that aroma in my garage today; sometimes running my vintage Triumph motorcycle a little rich so that that smell soaks into the bare studs somehow. Anyhow, gramps was listening to The Sounds of Silence. I remember thinking how haunting all the songs sounded, especially the eponymous track and "Scarborough Fair".  Another time, many years later, I watched The Graduate for the first time with my mom during the pandemic, (some 20-odd years after it was recommended to me when I myself graduated). I've never sat down to actually listen to Paul and Art, but they've been on the hi-fi in a room I've been in several times throughout my life; and when they have been, they are moments I remember. Today it's soundtracking my day while I scan photos of my grandfather and my mom, who are gone now. I'll remember today, too. In an era of singles, it was quite the move for this duo to release a concept album. The material here is definitely a measure more upbeat and rockin' and rollin' than the haunting sounds I grew up with. There are a few that stuck out to me. "Save the Life of My Child" has evocative, Dylanesque lyrics and vocal phrasing; well at least until we get to the chorus. "America" has tones and words that lend to it being a classic anthem of a time. These guys were writing music for what seemed to be everyone. When we get to "Old Friends" I was struck at how much it sounds like the closing music on a Wes Anderson film. Of course, "Mrs Robinson" and "A Hazy Shade of Winter" are essential tracks here, nothing more needs to really be said. They have become a permanent part of the American book of popular song of the last 100 years. What struck me by the record's end is how much "At the Zoo" sounds like any indie rock single from the mid 2000s. I never put that together but I can see a connection now that I didn't before. These boys are hugely influential. Huh. The album cover art is seriously tasteful. So clean. I can see how Apple's whole design aesthetic might be inspired by this album art alone. The cover photo looks like a professional silver-gelatin portrait of two Eurotrash lesbians with an electro-clash project, and I love it. Then we have a modern, simple, small, typographic element in the ever so slightly Art Deco typeface Venus tucked neatly at the bottom (where it would likely be invisible as a masthead in record bins - what a total flex). Put all together, we see an example of a layout that proves the theory that oftentimes, less is more. 

In an era when there was all kinds of East-West coast conflict posturing and beefing between hip-hop artists, groups like Tribe distinguished themselves by name-checking other artists they admired and staying out (and above) the fray. These guys were in it for the love of the form. There was no childish diss track drama so prevalent in a lot of commercial hip-hop. Tribe opted instead to elevate their peers, highlight their friends, and build community as part of the Native Tongues collective. Although 2 Live Crew were considered hip-hop's premiere party record producers, every house party I went to where hip-hop was played in the 90s I heard A Tribe Called Quest. I owned every other Tribe record on vinyl besides this one. We open with "Excursions", featuring the organic sounds of an upright bass, no doubt a nod to their admiration for the work of jazz pioneer Charles Mingus. Tribe's aesthetics always leaned more towards jazz than the funk inspirations of many of their contemporaries, and if you ask me, it was definitely one of their strengths. Other highlights include: "Show Business", which gives a classic production style evoking Eric B and Rakim. Any track that talks shit about the music business and bites the hand that feeds is an automatic banger in my book. "Butter" drops a buzzy synth bassline and lyrics flipping the macho-bravado where the player gets played for a change. In "Vibes and Stuff", despite the beats being great, giving props to the Zulu Nation—and Afrika Bambaataa specifically—has unfortunately aged like milk, given what an unredeemable p.o.s we would later discover Bambaataa to be. Wah Wahhh. "Scenario", a hyped up fast-paced multi-lyricist word salad jam, has been rocking good-time house parties since forever and needs no further explanation. A total hammer drop to close us out. The influence of this record is undeniable, aside from it being included in the 1001 Albums book. The eponymous and legendary experimental hip-hop and electronic DJ night at the Airliner in LA in the mid aughts was named directly after this record. If you liked waiting in lines, you could hear The Gaslamp Killer, Tyer The Creator, Flying Lotus, and occasional drop-ins by Thom Yorke on the 1s and 2s at that spot. Nicki Minaj references "dungeon dragons" in "Roman's Revenge" with lines and delivery lifted directly from Busta Rhymes' verses in "Scenario." Being repeatedly verse-checked by a superstar rapper 35 years later holds some weight for sure, even if it is a Harajuku Barbie. Before we put these dudes on a pedestal as bastions of so-called "conscious" hip-hop, however, we would do well to look at the whole picture. These guys were not exactly heroes. The Low End Theory had the song "Georgie Porgie" cut from the album by Jive Records due to its unbelievably homophobic lyrics. And this was no garden variety narrow-minded heteronormative quip nor a random homophobic slur, either; I've read the lyrics and they are totally repugnant. I can separate the art from the artist, but not when the art itself is horrible. Here's hoping these fellas evolved, as the years wore on, because there was never any indication in later career work or interviews addressing the disgusting sentiments they expressed in this unreleased song. Two-thirds of the group's association with 5% and Nation of Islam organizations, however, give cold comfort that their attitudes in this regard changed. Deserving of a 4.5, but knocked down to 3 because this story of the hate track they tried to hide does tarnish the fuck out of an otherwise decent album. The cover art is fantastic, incorporating the band's fixation with the ladies with an Afrocentric color scheme that would make Marcus Garvey proud. The organic painterly textures suggest African body paint, but punctuated with a bright juicy blacklight effect that feels at once tribal and futuristic. The hand painted typography gives the whole thing an earthy feel that matches the music's aesthetics that favor live instrumentation over relying too heavy on samples and synthetic sounds.

When I was 12, my mom's best friend gave us kids all her original press Beatles records to listen to. So I really got into them because it was the 80s, physical media was scarce, and you liked whatever you got your hands on. I remember being especially fond of The White Album.  Some artists become so prevalent and ingrained into the popular consciousness that it becomes almost impossible to have an objective point of view about the actual quality of their work. It's like so many people love a thing, that love becomes consensus reality, and then the object of that love transcends itself to become more an immutable truth—like the law of gravity—than, say, some jangle pop some blokes from the UK recorded. Maybe it's coz I grew up being into punk, but I have seldom ever gotten on the hype train with this particular phenomenon. (Take that, Michael Jackson). That is also to say, although contexts cannot be ignored, I strive to evaluate cultural artifacts like this on their own merits despite so much of it living rent-free in my brain for my entire natural life. We know all the melodies and all the words because if you're of a certain generation, they've always been there.  Nevertheless, it is difficult to form an uninfluenced impression. It's like having an opinion of the sun. It's just... there. There's really nothing I can say here that tens of thousands of reviewers haven't said before. I don't know if it's important because it is, actually, or because Beatlemania forced that importance upon everyone with ears and eyeballs and all that hype became some inarguable truth. Anyhow, all that said, this record is fine. The (blue version) album art is maybe a little more interesting than the music itself. We get a slice of the random personalities of each member in the Brady Bunch-style layout: John engaging with the camera directly, George smoking a cig and turning his back in one frame, Paul being a bit of a goof, and Ringo looking over it and mopey as fuck as he also puffs away. The red on blue serif typography makes it hard to read and vibratey as hell, but it probably got peoples' attention in the bins. It suggests a photobooth reel but has a stark graphic look that gives it a little edge, which is a little strange given the music is all so accessible and sweet.

We're about 60+ albums into this project and finally we get served some Krautrock. Some of my favorite bands of all time have been clearly and heavily influenced by this movement, so I am eager to dig into some of their inspirations here. It's wild to consider this band specifically would influence subsequent artists as varied in their aesthetics as Throbbing Gristle, Radiohead, Swans, Madlib, and Simple Minds. What a swathe of styles. This album opens with a searing burst of synth noise on "Krautrock" that immediately demands the listener sit up and pay attention. And I do. This piece seems less about writing an iconoclastic song than instead shaping a space or an environment with sound, and it's discordantly rapturous. There are a lot of highlights here. "The Sad Skinhead" in all its bouncy ska-syncopated cartoon goofiness, also sounds like the template from which "Mongoloid" by Devo was crafted. "Just a Second" also bursts forward with a propulsive and engaging bass and rhythm guitar line that then takes a hard left and deconstructs itself into an experimental electronic foray that both bewilders the listener and psychedelically subverts the mood established in the first section; only to fall away and decay suddenly.  The lengthy repetition of the synth lines on "Giggy Smile" get really old really fast, which doubles my appreciation for its abrupt halt. I rayther appreciate the boldness of these guys to inject some stoney chill song closing out like "It's a Bit of A Pain" with an insane punctuation of buzzing alarm noise. I've been a fan of Neu!, Sand, and Can over the years, but this was my first sit-down with Faust, and I'm definitely going to be exploring some more. Most of my favorite music is that which takes big risks and transports you as a listener, and these weirdos deliver all of the above in shimmering multitudes. As for the the album cover, it is fucking brilliant. It's such a statement to just put rows and rows of empty staff lines for music that relies so heavily on improvisation and experimentation. The contrast of minimalist cover design with the abstract kitchen-sink maximalism of the contents also does not escape notice and appreciation. It says everything we need to know: these guys aren't playing notes so much as crafting a soundspace for the listener to explore. The page is blank; inviting the listener to inhabit that space and fill in the empty monochromatic space with whatever images the music conjures up. And those images are fucking COLORFUL.

The 1001 Project seems a bit too Anglocentric in its featuring of artists hailing from the UK or else UK-adjacent (read: results of British colonialism). This album as a concept of the history of England viewed through the frame of armed conflict over the years really drills down on that unfortunate bias. It's really a shame because there is a whole world of music this book seems to be missing out on while it puts the spotlight on a lot of stuff that seems comparatively less deserving. I'm pleased to have heard this record, yes, but perhaps not at the expense of say, "Selda" by Selda Bağcan. Jeez, guys. Anyhow, "Sheela-Na-Gig" was my introduction to PJ Harvey in high school, and although it wasn't totally my thing at the time, I enjoyed the sort of ferocity she exhibited in that track. Later, stuff like "Rid of Me" took that ferocity and loaded it into a gun pointed right at the listener's ear. A girlfriend in the early 00s put "One Time Too Many" on a mixtape for me. Independently, I've kept up with some of her work via collaborations and singles over the years, and it's always been quite compelling. I can't say I've ever listened to one of her records front to back until today though. This album starts off pretty jaunty and upbeat for such dark, violent source material, and pretty much stays that way throughout, strangely. Polly Jean has always had this ache in her voice that I really like. However on this record she's inhabiting a constricted falsetto that I haven't heard her perform in any previous work, and I cannot say I'm a fan of it. There's some great musicality and harmonies going on throughout, but for some reason overall most of the songs feel unfinished, more like ideas/sketches than fully realized, finished pieces. There are some highlights though. "All & Everyone" is a strong track in all its theatrical texture and mournful cadences. "On Battleship Hill" is a haunting piece with a driving rhythm and elegiac vocal melodies. "Written on the Forehead" is interesting in its use of Niney's 1971 ska classic "Blood and Fire" as a repeated sample motif (but here we are again with the colonialism thing). Other than these, the rest of it all seems parenthetical and uninspiring. It's all listenable, but for a concept record, it lacks cohesion. I always respect when an artist moves off the beaten path, but here it doesn't really work for me. The album art design is simple and cool. It certainly catches the eye and has a lot of movement, even if it promises something that the music itself doesn't exactly deliver. Anyway, I'm gonna go listen to Selda now.

I prefer the Brian Jones-period Stones when they were a bit more psychedelic and weird, like Her Satanic Majesty's Request, before they became full-fledged dad rock. Jones is present for the last time on this record throughout, but was apparently a nightmare to work with in the recording process. Nevertheless, this record stands as a symbol of a departure the Stones were making into a more blues-rock sound and far away from the psych aesthetics I like them for. Throughout the listen, I kept asking myself—almost out loud—do these guys just sound like a well-produced bar band, or did every bar band that followed them just try to sound like this? A real chicken or egg question for the hippies of the time, (and perhaps now even for the grandads who currently live in Margaritaville in Florida). Granted, here the band was experimenting with instrumentation and rhythms that go well beyond a 4-piece rock band setup, but that is only on a few standout tracks. The bulk of it is roots rock that all kinda blends together for me.  There are a couple of iconic tracks on this record. I might even go as far as to call them era-defining. "Sympathy for the Devil" is such an anthem of an era it's ridiculous. Sure it was also a huge chart success, but in this case I would argue for good reason. "No Expectations" has a lilting, lazy flow to it that kinda feels like a Sunday afternoon. "Street Fighting Man" has a rhythm that pricks up my ears immediately. Jagger's vocals punctuate the beat like a snare hit in his phrasing. Also a huge radio hit of the time, but again, it eclipses the other songs on the record almost totally. These guys are doing their best work when they're not aping their influences and experimenting a bit more.  Stepping back to look at the bigger picture, I have always considered it strange that a bunch of young English dudes of the time were so inspired by Delta Blues that they practically formed cover bands. This goes for so many combos besides the Stones (Cream, The Beatles, Zeppelin, The Yardbirds, The Animals, Them... the list goes on and on). Some showed their inspiration less obviously, and others were pretty flagrant about it. But very few, if any, would credit their influences - and that's the weird part for me. I mean, Brian Jones named the band after a 1950 Muddy Waters cut. On Beggars Banquet, it's clear The Stones fall squarely into the flagrant camp. Sure, overall the music is good, but it's also challenging for me to listen to knowing that context.  Given the uncredited cultural appropriation and actual domination of non-white folks meted out at the hands of white British dudes since forever, the seizure and commercialization of a Black American art form still has an inescapable feeling of colonialism. I cannot shake it. When a track like "Prodigal Son" comes up and Jagger is practically singing in a highly-affected blaccent, I cannot help but cringe at it. It reminds me of how awkward I felt when I first heard CW Stoneking. Anyhow, given the songs on Beggars Banquet were recorded during the American Civil Rights Movement, and the boys in the band initially negelcted to give credit where credit was due, the trespassing here feels especially egregious and ultimately makes them into white boy posers in my book. And that unfortunately takes would could have just been a good time listening to some bluesy rock and roll and turns it into something else - something pretty flawed. I must say, the album art—which originally the record company refused to print—is great. It has a real fuck-you attitude and perhaps even pokes fun at themselves a little, what with the filthy toilet mere inches from their byline. It's a brave and arrogant choice that the old punk in me quite appreciates. The vibe of it definitely confirms that these guys knew they were a well-produced bar band.

This record opens with a pretty sweet Doppler effect horn sound that evokes a sort of crash landing of a car or spaceship. As a creative production choice, it's a real statement that something is about to happen. It's clear that this band is mostly a vehicle to feature the insane virtuosity of Eddie's face-melting guitar shreddage. This band has such a funny blend of influences. Diamond Dave Roth's vocals are often delivered like he's singing a show tune with a top hat and a cane and jazz hands. It's almost like cabaret hard rock. They are really out to give you the old RAZZLE DAZZLE, aren't they? The backup vocals and melodies all hearken back to their 50s and 60s rock and roll precursors, but definitely updated for the time. This album showcases a wide range of influences. It's at once swinging, doo-woppy, jump bluesy, hard rockin', soulful, folksy, garagey, and groovy. It has both razzle and dazzle. There's a real classical aesthetic to Eddie's guitar licks, with occasional hard chords. He uses a lot of little interstitial melodic licks here and there that are ornamental and almost act as a backup singer. The rhythm section is what tends to deliver any sense of heaviness. Otherwise, the compositions are often playful and basically just good time party music that doesn't take itself too seriously. They're basically a Muppet Show version of a hard rock band. Highlight tracks include "Running With The Devil" (a freakin penny whistle? are you kidding?); "Atomic Punk" - just a fun no frills rocker; "Ain't Talkin About Love" - probably the most serious song on the record, and the most horny and in need of a pee test; "Ice Cream Man" - a perfect example of the aforementioned cabaret show tune style pushed through a late 70s hard rock frame; and the 40s-50s inspired sing songy closer "Jamie's Cryin'". The more filler sounding tracks are still pretty unskippable. Simply put: despite its excesses and occasional wankery this record rules.  The album art is great. The multi-color gel lit photos of the band convey an energy and vibe that matches the contents, and although predates it by many years, suggests that they are kinda like Voltron: more powerful together than on their own. (This was pretty much proven in later years during the Great Band Schism that gave us Van Hagar). The iconic logomark really takes center stage here, however, with a design that suggests a hot rod hood ornament or a medal given to fighter pilots. It's like they knew we're gonna be seeing that on everyone's Pee-Chee folder for the next 25 years. Would give it 4.5 if this dang contraption would let me.

This record smells like musty bongwater. Although I can certainly hear how this band has influenced bands I really like such as Ween, Beck, Man Man, etc, this kinda late 60s dirt fairy elf worship stuff is really not my jam. I am also not a big fan of the flute, especially how it is used outside of classical music contexts. (Really it only works overblown in Love and Rockets' cover of "No New Tale to Tell" and I think should not be allowed anywhere else, ever). Given that Tull features this instrument so prominently in almost all the songs here, and the above-mentioned aversion to any audio equivalent of dirty Birkenstocks, patchouli, and beaded headbands, the deck is stacked pretty squarely against me getting into this at all from the get-go. All I can see is grubby hairy white people in buckskin tassled leather vests grooving out in a field somewhere on mescaline when I hear this. Just, no. Overall, this is clearly proggy and stoney and conceptual. This is not a record for a sober mind. I like how it is kinda weird, but it's just not weird enough for me. Dude's vocals are also pretty annoying. I like when things rock out, and "Hymn 43" kinda gets there, but if I wanna hear aggressive stoney guitar riffs, I'm putting on Master of Reality instead of this. Overall, it feels like the soundtrack to a rock and roll musical and I'm way the fuck in the next county for it. Perhaps it would be super at home blasting out of a hi-fi in a wood paneled room in Laurel Canyon in the 70s or at a Renaissance Faire in any decade. One highlight is "Wond'ring Aloud", which has a good folksy Sunday afternoon vibe somewhat evocative of Nick Drake, but that's all I got here. Nothing else connects. Totally could have died without hearing this. The album art reminds me of digging through dusty bargain record bins. I've rifled past it a hundred times. It looks so much more vibrant than I recall ever seeing it. I like a good Black Letter type treatment, although there is some serious tangent action happening on the art. I mean, the graphic looks woodsy and psychedelic enough, which I reckon is the point, so it does receive passing marks for conveying exactly what is contained therein. Adequate but not exciting.

I first heard Beth Orton when she provided vocals for The Chemical Brothers' "Where Do I Begin?" She has a singular phrasing and tone that does have echoes of Sinéad O'Connor, which is no small compliment. Beth Orton has a great voice, yes, but on too many tracks here the music sounds like what you'd hear inside a Starbucks at the turn of the century. This record is mostly a venti cup full of medium-roasted generic singer/songwriter boredom.  We open with a sprawling and evocative road song, but the road kinda just stretches out without a lot of scenery. We're on I-5 south of Buttonwillow suddenly. There are some highlights, however: I remember "Stars All Seem To Weep", which is the total standout track here. The thermin-esque keyboard tag that runs throughout the trip-hoppy rhythms gives this a massive sense of what the last days of the millenium sounded like. "So Much More" offers an opportunity for Orton to wail out and stretch her vocal chords a bit in more instrumental ways, and the arrangement is less formulaic and little looser and more experimental than most of the other pieces. "Blood Red River" contains a gravitas and structure that sounds very compelling, rooted, and real. (Of course I gravitate towards the melancholy stuff as the strongest). Same goes for "Devil Song", which lends a sort of cinematic denouement feeling.  Otherwise this is just background folksy/corporate barista-core. There are pieces that almost get there, but then just fall short. "Pass In Time" has a little more energy and picks it up a little, but still comes across as kinda stale. Overall, there are a few really good songs here, which is less a classic album and more a single or EP. Orton's unique voice grates on the tracks that don't work and soars on the tracks that do. It's an exercise in taking it or leaving it, and I'm pretty indifferent to doing either, really.   The album art is pretty standard minimalist late 90s early 00s lo-fi design fare that kinda calls out to a cinematic presentation with the black bars suited for a digipak and jewel case release, but doesn't really do anything special. Feels rushed and unconsidered. Yawn. Where's the coffee?

Nope. There is no context in which I will ever voluntarily listen to any record by Fleetwood Mac. Any familiarity with this band or their music I may have has been accidentally added to my consciousess against my will. Negative 3 stars on everything this band and their subsequent offshoots ever wrote forever. Fuck Fleetwood Mac.

Initial impression: Here we are again with the vapid "sophisti-pop" genre this book seems to fancy so much. Fucking ugh. I started writing this review before I put the record on, and even if it is Paul Weller's post-Jam band, I'm ready to hate this. Let's see how it goes... Perhaps I'll just be indifferent to it? A couple tracks in and so far this is clearly an artist branching out and trying new things. And we are totally worse for it. This ridiculous genre mostly reminds me of what Patrick Bateman in American Psycho would consider "cultured" because it was from the UK, sort of left of the dial, and exotic compared to Huey Lewis and The News. To me, most of this sounds like elevator lounge music for dudes in pastel suites with too much mousse in their hair. Gross. Looking over the list on Wikipedia of bands that fit in the genre confirms that I have apparently hated this stuff since I was a kid. No indifference here—I came by my vitriol honestly and early, at least.  The songs on this record are totally unremarkable. The levels of cringe attained with the cracker-ass rap pantomime on "A Gospel" deserve a fucking award. So embarrassing. This thing is as bad as I thought it might be, but I am surprised there aren't as many trumpets. I expected way more bad brass lines. "Here's the One That Got Away" sounds like the only decent attempt at a folksy strummer that has traces of the Jam's greatness in it. "Council Meetin'" might be the best song on here, a sort of Northern Soul instrumental, but this thing is not even 3 minutes long. What a slog.  When I think of artists that branched off from a cool band to launch into a solo career or other project, there are those who made it a lot more interesting and fun, like Terry Hall from the Specials doing Mushtaq; and Nick Cave from The Birthday Party doing anything; David Johansen from The New York Dolls becoming a campy lounge singer; and even insufferable supercunt John Lydon from The Sex Pistols graduating to the amazing Public Image Ltd...the list goes on. Suffice to say, it can work, gentlemen.  Then there's the flipside: like Mick Jones from the Clash ear-beating the world with his truly awful Big Audio Dynamite project; Tim Booth from James doing boring, bad collabs with Angelo Badalamenti; Dee Dee Ramone from The Ramones rapping as Dee Dee King, aaaaaand now we have Paul Weller from The Jam doing whatever this watered-down cocktail bar whitebread pop nonsense is. Sigh. Word is he wanted to break free from the constraints of The Jam to do what? Write treacly soft rock for me to furiously skip through, evidently. This doesn't work. At all. Initial impression confirmed. This sucks. That said, the album art design is pretty decent. The use of the classic Antique Olive typography and overall layout give it a bit of throwback 60s design feel that I like. The monochromatic blue wash is a bit on the nose given the album title, but this is obviously trying to appeal to a mainstream market, so I reckon you gotta dumb it down a bit, sure. The typography is hard to read on the white on white parts, so that's a bit of a failure. Even though the album art works, I would have either (a) been duped by the Paul Weller thing and bought it on that alone and been outraged, or (b) not bought it at all because The Style Council is also a dumb fucking band name. If only I could give this zero stars....

The Electric Prunes is a pretty hilarious band name and fits right in with their other fruit and vegetable contemporaries Strawberry Alarm Clock, Moby Grape, and Ultimate Spinach. The LSD in the 60s must have been incredible.  I'm a total sucker for any tube-drenched fuzzed out 60s psych and garage rock. There's a weird and sometimes annoying charm with the hollowed-out mids in the production of these records. You have to adjust your modern hearing to it, but once you settle in, it's like a blanket. The springy reverb put on almost every instrument gives it this ethereal and haunting quality. I wonder with this, and all the monster songs in the 60s, if that was just a particularly haunted moment in the popular culture.  I already know these guys from the classic "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)", which is worthy of all the wild praise for a career-defining track. They have a more pop-inspired and less weirdo take on the 13th Floor Elevators, sans electric jug. I prefer these guys when the tempo is up and they are a little more angsty. "Are You Lovin Me More" has some fun Beach Boys vibes, but with a lot more aggro dysfunctional horniness. Here for it. "Sold to The Highest Bidder" stands out from all the other pieces, and probably any other music of the time, with the wild Greek rebetiko-inspired arpeggios and chants of "Hey!". (I wish they had really leaned in with an "OPA!"). Being the 60s of course they had to have a harpsichord thrown in on a song. (I think it was in the recording contracts of the time). "The Toonerville Trolley" is a total outlier with all its bizarre Gay-90s jauntiness. Not mad at it, but also WTF guys. I have to say that most of these tracks are all really solid, but they are also way too short.  A couple of standout stinkers include the weak-ass ballad "Onie", which really feels out of place here, and "About a Quarter To Nine". Apparently the record label leaned super hard on these boys with the creation of the album, and the band subsequently had misgivings about some of the tracks they had to lay down for it. I would like to think these two might be the ones they weren't so into. But again, what's up with "The Toonerville Trolley"? That track could have really used a penny whistle at the end to really drive the cheese home. There's a bit of an uneven quality to the inclusion of these tracks, contrasted with the more rocking stuff, and that makes the listening experience suffer a little for a time when LPs were intended to be experienced first-song-to-last. Finally, the album art raises a lot of questions. They appear to be photographed in studio portrait style arranged in front of a black and white Cubist rendering of the same portrait, framed on the wall with a similar type layout featuring the hit songs. I have to wonder if the framed photo was the original album art that got rejected by the suits at the record company and this was the band's compromise to still get the wilder art in there somewhere. The studio portrait, drab-ass color palette, and type layout all feel like basic 60s album layout designs for any of their contemporaries like The Animals, etc. and this was probably intentional to try to couch them into a style and sell more records. I would really like to have seen that weird ass line drawing blown up to 12x12, but then again, it doesn't totally fit all that's going on here.  Deserving of 3 overall, but getting 4 because the stronger tracks are just that strong and worth cherry-picking.

I don't even have to listen to this record. I have it memorized. It has shown up at several pivotal moments in my life. I got this on CD when I was a lovesick 14 or 15 year-old who watched Say Anything too much. (I may or may not have blasted "In Your Eyes" to a girl's front door, Lloyd Dobbler-style, in an extremely mortifying and unoriginal grand romantic gesture at one point in my teens). But I also remember it from way before seeing the amazing stop-motion video for "Sledgehammer" on MTV in the 80s. I remember a college party I attended, where I sat on the porch in the dark talking about life with my friend from the theatre program, our cigarette smoke drifting through the air like the haunting rhythms of "Mercy Street" we heard playing inside the house. I put "Don't Give Up" on a playlist for a friend who was struggling very recently, in fact. His founding of the Real World Record label also had a significant impact on broadening my appreciation for international sounds that would later define my DJ career. Peter Gabriel has always been pushing the envelope. Too cool for Genesis, he branched out on his own to bring together all his influences and interests into an impressive and storied solo career. He already had four solid records before this one, but I guess this was his mainstream breakthrough effort. Sure, sometimes he gets a little deep into "sensitive white guy singing passionately about his feelings" territory here, but I'll forgive him that, given his imaginative and wholesale commitment to creativity in all aspects of his output, from songwriting, to filmmaking, to the overwhelming theatricality of his live shows.  This record is almost perfect. Every song is so well-crafted and performed. It is also such a study in contrasts. There are the big show-stopper funky sonic bangers on the instrumentally dense pop songs like "Big Time" and "Sledgehammer", and then the quieter, sparer moments like "We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37" and "Mercy Street, which really allow for an understated yet incredible amount of space in the compositions. I wanna think with the pop bangers that had so much play on the radio and MTV, he was also luring in listeners to buy the record and get their horizons broadened with the more experimental, cerebral, and international offerings throughout. "That Voice Again" is the only weak link here; total throwaway. He brings in some pretty heavy collaborators on the vocals, and Tony Levin's bass does take center stage to memorable effect. The cover art, designed by Peter Saville of Factory Records fame, does have curious similarities to New Order's "Low Life". Nevertheless it's clean and modern and as such feels fresh even decades later. I'm not typically a fan of major label mainstream singer/songwriter stuff, but this guy has also been around too much at important points in my life for me to indulge in my personal biases and I must instead just embrace it. All that said, I listened to it again anyway. Although it doesn't hit me like it used to, it still hits.

As soon as the needle dropped on this it sounded familiar. I cannot say why. If I've ever heard it before I cannot say where nor when. What a surprisingly experimental, sweet, and fun 45 minutes; damn-near perfect Sunday afternoon listen. This is the 74th record I've listened to, and now stands as the first one in which I have made a new discovery that really resonates. Music From the Penguin Café is just charming as all get out. A soundtrack to a cute indie film about romance or something that no one has ever seen and is about two people who are friends who fall for each other by accident. Probably directed by a young Wes Anderson.  I don't tend to go for stuff like this, but here we are, making a discovery I don't have some snarky story about and I just, I dunno, like it. Just a cool drink of water that conjures up peachy sunsets and sharing an ice cream cone with someone you have a crush on. It ventures out with the improvisation and melancholy here and there and I like it even more for that. Of course, after listening and going in mostly blind I learn that Brian Eno produced it. That explains everything. Every track works. Nothing on this record annoyed me. A good way to decorate time. Thanks, 1001. Moments like this is why I started doing this project in the first place.  The album art is fantastic. Can't go wrong with a clean Helvetica typeface. The cheery blue border, something I would ordinarily not be a fan of, actually helps the composition. But of course, the painting of the naked guy with a penguin head delivers just enough WTF that it tells us what we are in for, and it's a puzzle. It's whimsical and there is a palm tree in the middle of an alpine meadow. Is the other penguin a waiter? It raises a shit-ton of questions, but the most important one is how can I travel to this magical place and have a twee AF holiday?

I grew up on this stuff. I was a white kid with a Mexican accent who lived in a semi-urban area, watched Colors when I was too young for it on my parents' cable subscription, and rocked KDAY in Los Angeles all day and all night. By the time this record dropped, however, I had moved on to punk rock.  I remember seeing Ice-T (and Body Count), at the first Lollapalooza. I wasn't a huge fan of Body Count, but looking back, I can appreciate his attempt to branch out. I also remember when he played the show he tried to walk the eponymous song's title back a little. I mean, there was a ton of controversy around him at the time for the "Cop Killer" track, and also a ton of heat about the glorification of violence and misogyny in gangsta rap. But also, being Lollapalooza, I think because he was playing to a bunch of alternative kids who did not have any point of reference of the West Coast gangsta lifestyle, he said the meaning of the song title is that we are all "original" in the sense of having individuality, and that the gangsta part is because, and I quote: "we all gangstas." I called bullshit then. I call bullshit now. It was also because Ice-T was kinda a poser trying to grab some of that mountain of cash piling up for everyone glorifying the thug life on tape at the time.  I think it's hilarious that a dude who wrote the song "Cop Killer" went on to play nothing but cops on TV for the rest of his career. And that one unbelievable line he delivered in New Jack City where he tells Wesley Snipes, "I wanna shoot you so bad, my dick's hard."  As for the record itself, it's decent. "Midnight" is the standout banger, and the rest is pretty serviceable. The skits and faux interviews have aged poorly and seem theatrical and cheesy. "Body Count" distinguishes itself as a very safe hard rock track that, although genre-breaking at the time, feels forced and pretty tame. This has a classic hip-hop production and delivery that brings me back to the 80s and contains echoes of Eric B And Rakim, the Breakin' movies, Schooly D, RUN-DMC, and so on. It's pretty slick and well-performed; almost to a degree that makes it feel a bit inauthentic. It hits the right notes in a way that makes it feel like a soundtrack to a movie. There's a sort of manipulation going on that feels a bit overproduced and polished. That is almost made plain in the some of the skits about "having to do a sex song," which gives it this sort of paint-by-numbers feel.  It's as if Ice-T on the album is a character that Tracy Marrow is playing. It mostly works, but also does feel a bit like a costume. That said, it's an easy listen and I don't hate it.  The album art is a cool concept but an extremely shitty layout. I get what they are going for, but the balance is way off and the sense of symmetry is compromised severely. The powder blue type also makes this thing seem as hard core as a bottle of baby powder. Nope. 

This was the first rock record I remember hearing with a curse word in it, ("I'm fucken innocent" from "Out Ta Get Me" [maybe it was "It's So Easy"?]). Anyhow, I discovered this one on a second-gen cassette dub from my neighbor during the fabled "Butt Rock Summer" of 1987. It was a summer that I was riding my skateboard around the Conejo Valley in Southern California while listening to Def Leppard, Warrant, The Lost Boys OST, and these stupid fucks. The following year I graduated to Metallica and Maiden, leaving hair metal in the dust.   I always thought Axl Rose sounded like someone's grandmother on vocals, (both him and Geddy Lee from Rush, actually, although Lee sounds more like your great aunt). Revisiting this, I gotta say, when it rips it totally rips. And when it doesn't, it is as boring as hell. There is also enough cowbell on this thing to cure Christopher Walken's fever five times over. Opening with "Welcome to the Jungle" and all that reverbed guitar riffage is a strong fucking statement that holds up all these years later. That said, what follows is pretty uneven. The most solid tracks here are the singles: the aforementioned "Welcome to the Jungle"; "Paradise City," which goes into total showstopper zone at the end, "Sweet Child O' Mine", which is about as saccharine sweet a song a bunch of drug-addles sex abuser rockers could ever craft, and that's about it. "Mr. Brownstone" and "Night Train" get close but in the end are just pretty fuckin silly. I never liked "It's so Easy." "Rocker Queen," however, is one of the more solid and underrated tracks, and a decent way to close this thing out. After all the sex, drugs, and degeneracy celebrated on every song leading up to it, they put a coda on this symphony of misogynistic debauchery by just letting you know they're actually real sweethearts who just really care. How nice. As for the album art, it's inarguably and simply iconic. Not as provocative and creative, say, as the original eponymous Robert Williams pop surrealist painting that originally graced the cover, but a decent runner-up. In hindsight, actually, this compromise (read: censored) design solution referencing tattoo flash actually better communicates the vibe of this record in ways the Williams art circumvents. It feels more dangerous and rock 'n' roll. Probably the skulls. Also much easier for legions of dirthead fans to get tattooed forever after.  PS I will forever be confused why Slash and Duff were always photographed wearing cool punk band t-shirts but also played shit like this. So weird. 2.5 stars deserving, rounded up to 3 for legacy I guess.

My parents had this record on vinyl and as a kid I listened to it when I was like 11 years old. Why? Well, because the cover art had a beautiful dark-skinned lady on the cover with her titties out and some crazy tattooed red faerie chick con tetas afuera también with a conga jammed into her choncha dropping some magic psychedelic blessings all over the place. That's why. I remember being frustrated by the white dove placement even then. What I naturally didn't know at the time was that this was such an important album. Huge props to these guys for forging a path ahead bringing in the acid-drenched psychedelic rock of the 60s and melding it with Latin sounds. "Black Magic Woman" is obviously a standout here. But, did you know? It also had a really shitty straight-to-video erotic thriller starring Mark Hammill named after it. It's a little on the nose that this song featured pretty prominently in the soundtrack for this craptastic film. Thanks, 1991 Cinemax. Otherwise, it's a pretty solid track, even if originally penned by the Shittiest Band Whose Name Will Not Even Be Uttered Here. There are covers that eclipse the original, and I will plant my funky flag by Santana's rendition as the standard because again, fuck Fleetwood Mac forever. "Oye Como Va" of course also is another classic, and not just because of it being an integral part of lowrider culture, but that doesn't hurt either. Shit is funky. The whole thing sounds like we're peering through the gaps in a fence, gazing at a colorful and ecstatic Santería ritual on a very humid day. The song structures swell and quiet down with authentic and well-rehearsed collaboration between a very capable band. They are bringing a lot of different influences and styles to bear and throwing them into one big steamy spiritual pot of soup. Even though this kinda stuff isn't totally my bag, I think this recipe really works, primarily due to the complex songwriting and overwhelming virtuosity of the players. These are pretty heavy cats. I can see why this record was included in this book. IT was no fucking doubt flipping people's wigs back when it first dropped. Regarding the cover art: see the first paragraph. But also, from a fundamental design POV, we cannot read the type, at all. The artist and title are swallowed completely by the trippy ass painting of fantastical realms where you can take your shirt off freely. But that's actually fine, it seems like it is really supposed to be that way. I mean, you know it's Santana's "Abraxas" simply by the mystical titties and such all over it. What more do you need?

This a good record, but not a great one. "Watching the Detectives" is the best song. I've realized, 78 albums in, that this list is way too biased towards stuff that I've already heard or didn't need to hear. And it's just so Anglocentric. Yawn. I'm giving up writing these lengthy reviews and just opting for the star rating method, coz to be honest, this list isn't really worth giving up an hour a day to come up with pithy takes on each record. I have my own list anyway. It was fun while it lasted.

Boooooorrrrriiing