I like makling lists. I decided to list and explain my favourite Rock Albums – the ones I couldn’t do without!! Here they are in no particular order:
131. Doors – Morrison Hotel
This was the doors fifth album and a harder sounding affair than the previous. Right from the opening number ‘Roadhouse Blues’ it creates a driving force with the band motoring. ‘Even ‘Waiting for the Sun’ which features a lot of Robbie Krieger’s signature slide-guitar work and almost could have fitted in on the ‘Strange days’ album is beefed up.
‘Peace frog’ picks up the theme of the conflict between the counter-culture and police, focussing on the Chicago riots, Jim’s arrest in New Haven and the accident involving the Indians that he witnessed as a child.
The Doors may have had their Acid Rocks side but they were no peace and love band; they were always much harder and darker than that. This album was no exception.
My favourite tracks are ‘Peace Frog’, ‘The spy’, ‘Maggie McGill’ and ‘Waiting for the sun’.
The Doors confirmed they were one of the great bands.
132. Neil Young – Comes a time
Most things Neil does are great but every now and then he seems to veer off into something you wonder at. I mean Trans you can justify as an experiment but Hawks and Doves? Where’s that from? Occasionally he seems to get his wires crossed and come over as an old right-wing reactionary. Fortunately there are so many great Neil Young albums out there to keep you believing and this is one of them.
‘Comes a time’ is one of those albums that is really satisfying. Neil has always been one for trying out different styles and most of them work brilliantly. I love his folky acoustic style as much as his hard Rock with Crazy Horse, his Grunge style, Americana and even his Rock ‘n’ Roll is fine with me. The only real problem I have is that electronic. This album was really quite country with some great violin. I loved it.
My favourite tracks are ‘Field of opportunity’, ‘Comes a time’ and ‘Four strong winds’ though when it comes to it I can’t really find a track that’s not so good. The album has a bit of variety but there is a nice mellow feel to it. I think the duets with Nicolette add a dimension.
This is another one of Neil’s best.
133. Rolling Stones – Get yer Ya-Yas out
By the end of the sixties the Stones were really kicking arse. They hit that purple patch of hard hitting songs. The loss of Brian Jones did not stop their progress. In fact the addition of Mick Taylor on guitar seemed to spark them into their best period of creativity ever and harden up their sound. This was most evident in their live performances where they really murdered those songs. The guitars had that hard bluesy edge.
This was an ideal time to bring out a live album and they obliged. Admittedly this might be in response to the proliferation of bootlegs that might have been depriving them of revenue. Whatever. Mick and the boys decided there was a market for it and as the band were flying it seemed an ideal opportunity.
The album did not disappoint. Its collection of great tracks revealed how great the Stones catalogue was. Apart from two Chuck Berry covers and one Robert Johnson they were all original. And those numbers really rocked – no other band, with maybe the exception of the Who, came close at the time. They were loud, tight and rocked. ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, ‘Stray cat blues’, ‘Honky Tonk Women’ ‘Street fighting man’, ‘Sympathy for the devil’ and ‘Midnight rambler’ set the place on fire.
I wonder what, in this day of celebrity witch-hunts what would be made of the lyrics of ‘Stray cat blues’ with its theme of thirteen year old girls?
As live albums go this one was a gem. As any album goes it was exceptional. The Stones were basking in the peak of their creativity and live sound.
Well you can’t always get what you want but this should have been a double!
134. Mimi & Richard Farina – The best of
Unfortunately Richard Farina got killed before he even got going. He’d only recorded a couple of albums with Joan Baez’s sister Mimi and one novel. He was holding a party to celebrate the release of his novel ‘Been down so long it looks like up to me’ when he drove off on his motorbike and crashed. He would have been a major player.
Richard played dulcimer and teamed up with Mimi to record a bunch of songs. Their first album ‘Celebrations for a grey day’ was great but was only the tip of the ice-berg that was their talent.
Richard was that kind of hard-edged guy who knew what he wanted and Mimi had a great voice and was wild enough to hang with him. Together the duo created a different type of sound. There was a hard political edge tempered with a great sense of humour.
I just loved ‘Hard headed loser’, ‘House un-American Blues Activity Dream’, ‘Reflections in a crystal wind’, ‘Sell-out Agitation waltz’, ‘Pack up your sorrows’, ‘Celebrations for a grey day’ and ‘Mainline prosperity Blues’. Their voices worked so well together.
This was another tale of what might have been. They are all gathered together on this Best of collection.
135. Kokomo Arnold – bottleneck guitar
Kokomo Arnold was a 1930s blues singer. He played explosive bottle-neck guitar that was extremely influential. His voice was very expressive and extremely clear with good annunciation. Those 1930s recordings were very clear. It was hard to believe that they’d been recorded in such a primitive manner. A lot of recording from this time are very poor and crackly. Others, such as Blind Lemon Jefferson and Texas Alexander, suffer from this.
‘Busy booting’ is interesting because it is a very bawdy blues that is the early version of Little Richard’s cleaned up ‘Keep a knockin’ but you can’t come in’.
I discovered this album long ago and was impressed with the great songs and guitar sound. The album was an exemplary example of that 1930s style. It was great to listen and very accessible. A lot of the lyrics were explicit and it felt that Kokomo had recorded it without the usual censorship that many of the singers applied themselves to their recorded material. This was salty.
136. Donovan – Fairy Tale
Donovan’s second album was a big step forward from his first. I greatly enjoyed his first album but this was even better. It was more varied with Donovan displaying a better standard of song-writing. There was the anti-war the song ‘Ballad of a crystal man’ but most of this album was taken up with songs about his bohemian rambling life with Gipsy Davey on songs like ‘To try for the sun’, ‘Jersey Thursday’ and ‘Belated forgiveness plea’. There were also the songs with a greater Jazz influence like ‘Circus of sour’, ‘Sunny Goodge Street’ and the ‘Summer Day reflection Song’. There were also a number of love songs and his hit ‘Colours’. I used to know Geraldine the girl who was the subject of ‘The ballad of Geraldine’. She lived upstairs from me in Ilford with her boyfriend Tony Meredith.
Altogether it was a more varied album than his first. I would have liked the inclusion of the songs on his EP from that time; particularly ‘Universal Soldier’ which I thought was an exceptional version of Buffy St Marie’s anti-war song. As you can see I like songs that have some social importance and meaning. It’s good if there is an intellectual element.
137. Neil Young – Rust never sleeps
After the softer country tones of the album ‘Comes a time’ Neil veered off yet again into a much harder direction. It was almost as if he stood back and shook himself to make sure he’d got rid of any cobwebs. He was well aware that artists had a tendency to burn out and fade away. Invigorated by the new energy of punk he did not want to fade away into mediocrity like Elvis. His answer was to launch himself into a new album venture with Crazy Horse. He wanted to burn; after all it is better to burn out than it is to rust. Who wants all those mediocre songs from when someone has lost it. Elvis must have been embarrassed by what he became. He knew he’d sacrificed the genius of those early years on the altar of commerciality. Neil obviously felt that and did not want the same fate. He’d seen the drug damage and the corruption of money.
This album was varied and Neil was writing great songs. ‘Pocahontas’, ‘Sedan Delivery’ and the wonderful ‘Powderfinger’ were examples of great writing. ‘Pocahontas’ focussed on the massacre of the American Indian and ‘Powderfinger’ seemed to have something to do with the civil war though that wasn’t clear. Even if it was a little ambiguous the sentiment comes across fine. The futility of violence.
On top of that there was ‘Sail Away’ and ‘Welfare mothers’. The album opened with the acoustic ‘My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)’ and closes with electric ‘Hey Hey, My My (Into the black)’.
There was no sign of rust; this was another classic Neil Young album.
138. Aretha Franklin – Respect
Aretha was the greatest female Soul singer. She is best known for her recording of ‘Respect’ with its great vocal delivery. She got that huge voice from her early days of gospel singing in the Baptist church of her father. She put it to good use blasting out a series of Soul hits unparalleled by any other female Soul singer.
These included ‘You make me feel (like a natural woman)’, ‘Think’, ‘I never loved a man the way I love you’, ‘I say a little prayer’ and ‘Son of a preacher man’.
This is real Soul – blasted out with passion and gusto from the heart with a voice that was capable of stripping trees of leaves. Yet Aretha could also be gentle and sweet.
Aretha was a great supporter of the Civil Rights movement and if Otis was the King of Soul she was rightfully the Queen.
This double album has all the hits. She deserves that respect.
139. Tom Waits – Swordfishtrombones
Tom’s sensibilities stream right out of the 1950s Beat Generation. He was a landed whale out of his medium yet he took all those anachronistic feelings and married them to something incredibly modern and quirky to create his own idiosyncratic persona and music.
He used his raspy voice in a growl of a low register to sing about the strange denizens who haunt the back-streets and dives of the squalid parts of town. He seemed to know them well. His music was jazz influenced and as seedy as his voice. He played the piano and rasped as if a drunken bar pianist in a brothel.
The first album of Tom’s that I heard was Blue Valentine with its classic ‘Romeo is bleeding’. The live album ‘Nighthawk at the diner’ with its humorous spoken intros captures that persona perfectly.
Tom writes memorable songs that stick in your head like cerebral glue.
All Tom’s albums have a great feel and a number of great songs. I selected this album because it has a nice feel to it. I like the interesting sound he has created here. Tomorrow I might well have selected one of his others.
140. Buffy St Marie – Native North American Indian child an odyssey
Buffy is a phenomenon. She is a full-blooded Cree Indian and took her views and perspective into the folk scene. She has represented the view of the American/Canadian Native Indians who were subject to genocide as the white European settlers took over their homelands. Most of those tribes were annihilated when brought into contact with the Europeans and their superior technology and foreign diseases.
I first heard of Buffy when I heard Donovan sing the brilliant ‘Universal soldier’. Unfortunately that is not on this album.
I later heard ‘Soldier Blue’ which featured in the film of the same name. It put forward the Native American view of their love of the land to which they feel connected.
I then heard her heart-rending songs ‘Now that the buffaloes gone’ and the epic vitriolic diatribe ‘My country ‘tis of thy people you’re dying’. To me this song, spat with real venom, summed up the terrible plight of the American Native Indians and the terrible treatment they have received. It also is a indictment of our culture and society. It revisits the calumny, deceit and greed that are still practiced to this day. I rate it as one of the most important songs of all time.
This album is patchy but it gathers together the songs that Buffy has written about the plight of her people. There are enough great songs to make this a vital album. Everyone should sit down and listen intently to ‘My county ‘tis of thy people you’re dying’. We are in the midst of a population explosion and we are destroying the planet.
141. Beatles – Abbey Road
There is conjecture as to whether this of ‘Let it be’ was really the last Beatles album due to the recording dates. Not that it matters. It is the music that is important and this album doesn’t disappoint on that score. Looking back you can see that the Beatles hardly put a foot wrong. They were brilliant as a unit and even when they were not getting along well they still fed off each other to create something special. John needed Paul to curb his excesses and make his sometimes bleak songs more accessible and commercial. Paul needed John to give him some gravitas so that he wasn’t so lightweight. George needed them both to give his songs life and vitality and Ringo needed a band that he could play his drums in and was demanding.
Abbey Road was released in 1969 when the British Underground was still in full swing. Once again the Beatles established their credentials as part of that scene. They were real sixties Freaks and not some mere Pop Group.
In many ways it was not so experimental and avant-garde as previous albums. There were not so many of the electronic sounds or studio techniques apart from the sequencing of songs on the second side.
The quality of songs was as good as ever with gems such as ‘Come together’, ‘Here comes the sun’, ‘Because’, ‘Something’ ‘I want you 9she’s so heavy)’ and ‘Polythene Pam’ leading the bunch. It was good to see George have a fair share and even Ringo got a writing credit.
The Beatles were still up there at the forefront. The quality had not diminished even though the end was in sight.
142. Phil Ochs – In concert
This was a great live album that featured a number of Phil’s best early songs full of passion and social comment.
It starts with the track ‘I’m going to say it now’ which sets the tone for the defiance of Phil’s ethos. Phil believed that he should speak his mind on whatever it was he felt. It was a free country and he did not agree with some of its policies. He set out to say what he thought and criticise the government.
The rest of the album set off in the same vein. Phil took the side of the exploited underdog in ‘Bracero’ – the tale of the plight of the Mexican workers exploited in the agriculture industry in California.
It went on through revolution, the military and war and jingoism, Christianity’s hypocrisy.
‘There but for fortune’ was Phil’s poignant paean about the evils of alcohol which was ironic as Phil was on the way to becoming an alcoholic depressive which would corrode his personality and cause his loss of skills and eventual suicide.
‘Cops of the world’ is one of those perennial songs that is as relevant today as it was when it was written. American imperialism is well documented but rarely as well portrayed as in this indictment of a song. This theme was continued with ‘Santo Domingo’.
‘Changes’ is a change of mood. It is an intensely beautiful poem and song about the changes in life and death.
‘Love me I’m a liberal’ is a humorous poke at liberals who do nothing and are hypocritical about activism.
The album fittingly ends with the song ‘When I’m gone’. If you believe in something you have to stand up and fight for it while you can!
Phil was on top form. The humour and rhetoric flows and it is beautifully recorded. This is a gem of an album.