820.
Wire - ambitious
I missed Wire's first act completely, three
albums culminating with 1979's 154 that (in retrospect) went a long way toward
dragging British indie music out of the punk war zones and kicking it into the stratosphere. So it's a damned good thing all
four original members came back again in 1987 to remind us how good they
were. Ideal Copy was the album
with Ambitious the closest thing to a title track, a tough number that did a smart job of touching on all manner of essential topics of the day, from paranoia to
Cold War politics to competing competing intelligence agencies to, of course,
the end of the world.
819.
Negativland - the perfect cut [piece of
meat]
Wherein the tape pirates from the
California suburbs get busy with pretty much every shitty MOR pop song from the
1970s, and the secret tapes that prove the
conspiracy that was at hand. That is, the deliberate reduction of the insurrectionary promise that was 1960s POP music to various pieces of
meat. Stuff your faces,
folks. And shut up! Stop complaining.
817.
Buzzcocks - ever fallen in love
Pure pop with punk in its soul. Or is it the other way around? One thing is clear. The Buzzcocks were pretty much the first
band to have it both ways, and I'll forever love them for that. Just because you're pissed off doesn't
mean you can't be pretty, too.
816.
Doors - not to touch the earth
[randoEDIT]
I didn't really twig to this one until I
saw the Doors movie, which I know, I'm not supposed to like, the whole thing
just being so absurdly over the top, Val Kilmer chewing not just the scenery
but also vast chunks of the Mojave desert. Except it's true.
The psychedelic 60s were that weird, eruptive, explosive, WILD, kicking
into overdrive in 1967, blowing through ozone by the end of 1968, which is
where Not To Touch Earth comes in.
Wherein Mr. Morrison is so high and wasted, he's not sure if he's a worm
or a god, or maybe just some dead Indian shaman who snuck into a little white
boy's fragile eggshell mind a couple of decades earlier.
815.
Procol Harum - rambling on
I came across Procol Harum's second album
sometime in the blur of the early mid-70s. My friend James had it, grabbed from his older sister who'd
lost interest. We'd play it a lot
(not having many albums to chose from), getting off on the "out
there" lyrics and the not too shabby songs that gave them room to
move. The aptly named Rambling On
seems to be about a guy who sees a Batman movie and decides he can fly, which
doesn't make much sense because Batman can't fly. Or maybe that's the whole point.
814.
Julie Driscoll + Brian Auger + The
Trinity - this wheel's on fire
It's an oft-told tale. Bob Dylan, having survived a nasty
motorcycle accident retires for a while to upstate New York where he ends up
hanging out in a basement with his buddies The Band, cranking out all manner
loose, sloppy, sometimes brilliant songs that nobody had any clear plan
for. Nevertheless, bootleg LPs
started to proliferate, and inevitably cover versions. Julie Driscoll + Brian Auger + The
Trinity were one of the first to release something, and they nailed it. So good, the TV show Absolutely Famous
put it to work again thirty odd years later.
813.
Bonzo Dog Band - we are normal
The Bonzos showed up in the Beatles TV
special Magical Mystery Tour and otherwise served as sort of court jesters for
the British pop scene through the psychedelic 60s and beyond. But sometimes the songs were so damned
good you forget they were supposed to be funny. We Are Normal solved this problem by being mostly just
weird. And it rocked.
811.
Rainbow - a light in the black
I'd be lying if I said it wasn't the cover
that hooked me – God's own arm thrusting from the waves of a boiling storm,
grabbing a rainbow straight out of the sky. The cool part is, the music's up to
it pretty much all the way through, assuming you don't mind a little full
throttle metallic wailing. Richie
Blackmore, recently ex of Deep Purple, leads the charge on guitar but Ronny
James Dio's howling is never far behind, or Cozy Powell's drumming.
810.
Jimi Hendrix - hey baby (the new rising
sun)
The rumour I heard when I was maybe fifteen
is that Rainbow Bridge (album and movie) was the reason Jimi Hendrix was
killed. Because it revealed that a
benevolent alien intelligence was connecting with us, steering us in the
direction of the New Rising Sun.
So Richard Nixon got his orders from the evil aliens that ran
things. Stop this man. Use your best agents. Make it look like a typical
overdose. And while you're at it,
get Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison as well. 1970 sucked in that regard.
808.
Linton Kwesi Johnson - bass culture
Skull rattling dub poetry that makes a very
significant point. Reggae music is
all about the bass, the way it makes a body and thus a whole culture MOVE. The drums just keep things rock
steady. The guitars, keyboards,
horns etc are just along for the ride.
It's the bass that's going places.
And sometimes the poetry -- like a frightful form, like a righteous
harm, giving off wild like madness.
807.
Clash - white man in Hammersmith Palais
Speaking of bass culture, White Man in
Hammersmith Palais was The Clash's first reggae song, not to be confused with
its best, though many have made that claim. Of course, they're the ones that never even heard all of
Sandinista, having written off the-only-band-that-mattered for high crimes of
artistry, experimentation, ambition before they'd even made it to side
two. Punk was cool, punk was necessary,
punk probably saved the world, but it also turned reactionary awfully fucking
quick. Which might even be what
Joe Strummer's singing about here.
806.
Queen - seven seas of Rhye
In which Queen (their hair still long)
unleash an astonishing mix of heavy licks and wild mood swings all in service
of some high fantasy concerning a mythical Queendom called Rhye, which, if you
were maybe fifteen, confused about pretty much everything, stuck in the
mid-70s, was exactly the thing the Universe needed you to hear.
804.
Melodic Energy Commission - song of the
deletron revises the scene [randoEDIT]
Local Terminal City hippie-psychedelicists
hook up with an-ex Hawkwind refugee, ignore all the punk rock that's raging
around them, and instead go deep and high, and deliver an essential travelogue
for those keen on exploring the beyond within via the local mushrooms that are
so prevalent every autumn once the big rains start a-falling.
803.
Donovan - roots of oak
I didn't even hear this record until a good
twenty-five years after its release, but man did it work in a solid, mystical
sort of way. Yes, the drugs may
have worn off by 1970, and the incense, and all the pretty flowers may have
mostly wilted and died, but ever hip Donovan Leitch (who never got the credit
or respect he deserved) was still definitely onto something both passing and
eternal.
802.
Renaissance - ashes are burning
There's a lot of so-called progressive rock
from the so-called golden era (1970-74) that is quite stunningly awful –
pretentious, over wrought, dense to the point of ridiculous, the antithesis of
everything the likes of Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones,
Jim Morrison died for. And
thus, over the years, it's earned a lot of well deserved HATE. But not here. Renaissance's Ashes Are Burning fully earns its eleven
minutes plus running time as it explores mystery and beauty, highly, deeply,
ultimately epically. And Annie
Haslam has an amazing voice.
