Excerpt – 537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 Paperback 

Posted on by Opher

I greatly enjoyed putting this together. I tried making a list of what I considered to be one hundred essential rock album. I arrived at 600 and pared it down. I couldn’t get it below 537. Even then I probably missed out some that definitely should have been included.

This was the first slice. I always intended to write the second half but have been far too busy with other projects and the response to this one was disappointing. One day.

Anyway, this is another slice. If you want to know what I consider to be the best 50 albums in rock music you’ll have to buy the book. It is only £6,89. I make 54p a book! But it’s not about the money is it? I enjoyed writing it. Great fun!

225. White Stripes – De Stilj

The White Stripes were a duo of guitar and drums who came out of Detroit with their great Garage sound of Rock, Country and Blues. There was a lot of controversy concerning their exact relationship. Meg was the female drummer and Jack was the guitarist/vocalist. They called themselves White. Were they brother and sister? – Or husband and wife? They kept dumb. All that mattered was that they were creating some amazing music.

Jack’s guitar sound was loud and raw and Meg could certainly pound the hell out of those drums. They were like a breath of fresh air on a moribund music scene. The major labels had been stifling the life out of bands with their over-production and safety-first policy of the lowest common denominator. It was clear that they put profit over music. Then the White Stripes burst upon the scene with a new vital sound and blew everyone out of the water. It was so refreshing.

I kick myself daily. I had the chance to go and see them perform at a small club in Leeds before they released De Stilj and became famous. They had brought out their first album ‘White Stripes’ and it had caused a stir. This was getting further enhanced by their live reputation. A friend rang me up and wanted me to go and see them but it was mid-week and I was knackered and couldn’t be bothered to make the trip. Well we all make mistakes. I did get to see them in Bridlington though a few years later and they were amazing.

Der Stilj was deliberately recorded with old technology to recreate that feel you used to get on those old fifties recordings. It worked. There was the same mixture of styles as on the first album, ranging from Blues to Pop and Country. It certainly worked for me. The production was so clear and the guitar sound right in your face. There was a Punk feel to the whole album.

The Blues tracks were a brilliant version of the Son House ‘Death Letter Blues’ and Blind Willie McTell’s ‘Your Southern can is mine’.

The whole album buzzed without a weak track. ‘You’re pretty good looking (for a girl)’ started it off pretty good but it was eclipsed by ‘Hello Operator’ and then ‘Little Bird’. The guitar seared. Jack took those rhythms, chords and notes and drove them right through your head. Slide guitar, acoustic, chords, single notes, it mattered little; it was all equally exhilarating. Jack could certainly put original riffs together in a nice way. I’d never heard anything so sharp. Awesome.


226. Linton Kwesi Johnson – Forces of Victory

Linton became the Poet Laureate of Brixton and archivist for the black community of Brixton. For generations they had felt victimised and persecuted. It appears that there is a tipping point. The SUS laws along with Thatcher’s discriminatory socially unjust policies were that tipping point. Linton documented and reflected the emotions of black youth in his poetry at this time as feelings boiled over. This was summed up in his poem/dub song ‘Time come’ with its chilling sentiments that ‘I did warn you’.

Forces of Victory contained the brilliant ‘Sonny’s Lettah (Anti-SUS poem)’ recited in Linton’s rich timbre it never fails to send chills through you. There was a cause to unite everyone. ‘Fite dem back’ displayed the determination to take the fascist forces on and fight whether that be Combat 18, the National Front, British Movement or the Police. This was a rallying call to fight on the streets.

This was reggae music at its very best and the politics made Bob Marley sound tame. This was the music of the people.

The voice was assured. There was no doubt over the outcome. ‘Forces of victory’ made that quite clear. Black consciousness, equality and anti-racist sentiments were going to win. If it could not be achieved through argument it was going to be achieved through strength.

Linton was the voice of the new assertive youth who had taken a leaf out of the Black Panthers, lost hope in organisations, and were prepared to fight it out in the streets. The confidence and fury was evident in Linton’s words and music.


227. Beatles – A Hard Day’s Night

This was the Beatles third album and also the soundtrack to the film of the same name. Beatle-mania showed no sign of diminishing and, as with Colonel Parker and Elvis, Brian Epstein had looked to capitalise on their popularity by getting them into films.

This was a departure from the previous albums in that they had moved away from the R&B and Rock of their early act. All the songs were written by the Beatles, the bulk by John, with George getting credited with one, and they had a Pop quality.

They were good catchy numbers with that great Beatle sound but they lacked that raw edge. These sounded a bit more polished and smooth. It gave the album a mellow feel but was strong enough to maintain the Beatles forward progress. It appealed to the young market who eagerly lapped it up. It might have been more Pop orientated but it was not a reduction in quality. Seemingly the Beatles, despite the pressures imposed on them, could churn out a string of quality songs without effort. They were touring, doing lots of radio and filming and still they were coming out with creative material. These songs were not run-of-the mill Pop songs.

The stand out tracks were the two singles ‘A Hard Day’s  Night’ and ‘Can’t buy me love’. But there were also a lot of other good songs that are still pleasant to listen to. Numbers like ‘If I fell’ were beautifully arranged as were ‘I should have known better’ and ‘And I love her’. This was the sound that influenced bands like the Byrds and even Dylan.


228. Nick Drake – Bryter Layter

Well Nick Drake and Joe Boyd certainly had pulling power. On the basis of one album they were able to get musicians of the quality of Richard Thompson, John Cale and Dave Pegg to provide the backing.

The production was greater and the strings were sympathetic. In many ways it had a more commercial feel to it and yet retained the Nick Drake  feel.

The words were poetic and painted pictures but, with hindsight, you can see the pressures reflected in the words. ‘Hazey Jane’ was still alluding to the cannabis use.

There were some delightful songs sung with Nick’s mellow voice that really set a mood for late-night listening. There was a sadness in the delivery. ‘One of these things first’ seemed to catalogue the regrets at roads not taken and love lost. Despite the optimism in ‘Northern song’ and the almost jaunty ‘Bryter Layter’ it was not going to be brighter later for Nick. His depression got worse and he became more reclusive and moved back to his parent’s house where he died of his overdose. It was brighter much later for record sales and reputation when, years after his death, he was finally recognised for the huge talent he was.

His last offerings were the great melancholy album ‘Pink Moon’ recorded in two late night sessions – just a sparse guitar, piano and Nick.

‘Family Tree’ was an album of his early home recording which showed him developing his craft and the influences of Jackson C Frank, Bert Jansch and Bob Dylan.

If only he hadn’t fallen so far down. All he needed was a second grace.


229. Byrds – 5th Dimension

This was the Byrds third album and a bit of a milestone. It was 1966 and the world was changing. The old Beat and Pop music of the 1964/5 British Invasion was transmuting into the start of the Underground. LSD was in the air and music was beginning to change. The Byrds were starting to expand and experiment while at the same time had lost the principal song-writing force of Gene Clark who had been having increasing problems with flying. The experimental side is clearly heard on tracks like ‘2-4-2 Fox trot (The Lear Jet Song)’ and ‘Eight miles high’. Yet they still kept their previous jangly style on songs like ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ and ‘John Riley’ both adaptations of traditional songs. The version of ‘Hey Joe’ seemed extremely tame when compared to Jimi Hendrix’s scintillating slowed down heavy version.

The supposedly druggie songs got the Byrds into trouble with radio stations and both ‘Eight miles high’ and ‘5th Dimension’ were both banned despite the bands protestations that the first was about being high up in an aeroplane and the latter was about Einstein’s theory of relativity. No. It didn’t quite wash with me either.

It was a bit of a strange mish-mash of an album with the rather Poppy ‘My Spaceman’ (with the Byrds jumping on the psychedelic Sci-fi theme), the instrumental ‘Captain Soul’ and a rather typical Byrds’ song with all its close harmonies in ‘I see you’, but I loved it.


230. Devo – Q: Are we not men? A: We are Devo!

Straight out of Akron Ohio came the strangest New Wave band of all, complete with flower-pots on their heads and strange robotic quirkiness, weird rhythms and a staccato delivery and futuristic one-piece costumes. They looked weird, acted weird and sounded weird. But they also sounded interesting and completely different to anything else that had gone before they were good.

Seemingly Devo was short for De-Evolution. The concept was that instead of evolving the human race was de-evolving into mindless cretins who did as they were told and followed each other around without a thought in their heads – hence the disjointed music, jerky music and strange taste in clothing. It was also the basis for tracks like ‘Mongoloid’, ‘Sloppy (I saw my baby getting)’ and ‘Joko Homo’

The band were brilliant at selling themselves with great videos of people in straight-jackets jerking about and throwing themselves about.

Their version of the Stones ‘I can’t get no (Satisfaction)’ with its stilted delivery and complex arrangement captured the attention and they built up a big following.

The most interesting track of all was ‘Jocko Homo’ with its strange repetitive riff, weird organ sound and lyrics. Seemingly they are no longer men. They have reverted back to some strange unintelligent primate now known as Jocko Homo.

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books

A quirky extract from the best Rock Albums of all time – 537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 Kindle/Paperback

Posted on by Opher

What are the best Rock albums of all time?

Well that’s a pretty subjective choice. Tastes vary. I compiled what I considered to be (after a life spent playing music, writing about music and attending gigs) a definitive list of essential albums. This book contains what I believe are the best of the best. These need to be in everybody’s collection!

Of course, your views will differ, but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? This might just entice you to check out a few names you might not have heard of. I have eclectic tastes but am very particular!

Another extract:

238. Esquirita – Believe me when I say Rock ‘n’ Roll is here to stay

Eskew Reeder was a wild piano playing R&B singer from the early fifties. He started off as a gospel singer and moved into R&B where he produced the stage personality of Esquirita which involved heavy make-up, wigs and a huge piled up pompadour. He specialised in pounding piano and whooping vocals to great upbeat numbers.

It was said that Little Richard ripped off his style, looks and act. That is hard to assess because Esquirita was only brought in to record following Little Richard’s conversion and departure. At the time everyone thought that Esquirita’s style was based on Little Richard.

Whatever the truth of that there is no denying that Esquirita created a number of rockin’ tracks in a similar style to Little Richard including ‘I’m getting plenty loving’, ‘Golly Golly, Annie Mae’, ‘Rockin’ the joint’, ‘I’m Battie over Hattie’, ‘Hey Miss Lucy’ and ‘Oh baby’. They had Little Richard’s characteristic whoops, copied by the Beatles, and the gospel tinged raucous vocals, pounding piano and wailing sax.

Unfortunately Esquirita never rose to great recognition and declined into obscurity as a car-park attendant before dying of AIDS in 1986.


239. Joan Baez – Farewell Angelina

Joan Baez always was a bit of an activist even causing a few rebellious moments in High School. She started into Folk Singing in the late 50s and released her first album in 1960.

Her early albums were all traditional folk songs and she rapidly rose to prominence as the first lady of Folk because of her crystal clear vocals. She was political back then but hadn’t yet found a way to express it. That came when she met the ragamuffin Bob Dylan fresh from his adventures ion the streets and in the coffee houses of New York. Joan was knocked out by the quality of his songs and took to promoting him, getting him to come up on stage and introducing him to a wider audience. She also took to doing covers of his songs and extolling their virtues. Joan’s music and level of activism leapt forward.

Joan performed with Bob at the great civil rights march on Washington when Martin Luther King gave his wondrous speech. She went on numerous other civil rights marches and meetings and became involved in the anti-war movement and environmental issues and human rights. She always wore her heart on her sleeve and incorporated the politics into her songs and stage act. There was no doubting where Joan stood on all those issues. She was a voice of humanity, liberty, freedom and the voice of reason and intelligence. Where-ever there is injustice in the world Joan has been willing to put her time, money and voice to opposing it. If only we had a million more Joan’s we would not have such a selfish, greedy, cruel, warmongering world!

It’s hard choosing a best Joan Baez album. Her early albums were a little lightweight, her success, like ‘The Night they drove old Dixie down’ are not her best and some of her albums are a bit patchy. My favourite songs are ‘Diamonds and Rust’ and the Phil Ochs cover ‘There but for fortune’ but in the end I plumped for the album ‘Farewell Angelina’.

I think Joan was always brilliant at interpreting Bob Dylan numbers and this was one of her early albums which featured a lot of Dylan, with a Guthrie, Donovan and Seeger as well as some traditional songs. Not only that but two of the Dylan songs ‘Farewell Angelina’ and ‘Daddy you been on my mind’ had not been released by Dylan. They really shone.

The album was well produced with Joan’s guitar and voice prominent and the lyrics shining through. The passion is there and the versions of ‘A Hard Rain’s a gonna fall’ and ‘It’s all over now baby blue’ are great. It was wonderful to hear the Woody Guthrie classic ‘Ranger’s command’ and the Pete Seeger anti-war song ‘Where have all the flowers gone’ (in German).

Oh how we need that voice of sanity now as the environment is being eaten by the machine, the animals murdered, the forests cut down and the wind and waters tainted! 56% of all our wild mammals destroyed in forty years! Sing up Joan!


240. Don & Dewey – Jungle hop

Still in the wake of Little Richard the Specialty label were hunting around for an act to fill the gap and Don & Dewey flew in from nowhere. They were a versatile powerhouse of a Rock/R&B duo who created a dynamic sound and yet were also capable of more delicate numbers like ‘Pink Champagne’ and ‘I’m leaving it all up to you’.

Their act was reminiscent of the later Soul combo Sam and Dave. I’m sure Sam & Dave were more than a little influenced by the sound and act created by Don and Dewey. It is certain that Don and Dewey were certainly Soul precursors. The idea of a dual vocal attack was quite revolutionary.

Specialty gave them a hard hitting Rock backing on numbers like ‘Justine’, ‘Jungle hop’, ‘Koko Jo’, ‘Mammer Jammer’, ‘Little Sally Walker’, ‘Just a little loving’ and ‘Miss Sue’. My one concern of the numbers they chose to produce was this emphasis on jungles and monkeys. It came over to me as a slightly racist stereotype and I wondered where that had come from.

They were never very successful despite the quality and originality of their act but a few of their numbers were successfully covered. The most notable of these was ‘Farmer John’ which was a big hit for the Premiers and was covered by the Searchers and Neil Young.


241. Ronettes – Da Doo Ron Ron

Back in the late fifties and early sixties black R&B groups were all the rage. They were mainly male and had basically come out of the Doo-Wop scene. The sound was dominated by the Coasters, Drifters, Miracles, Contours, Isley Brothers and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. In the early sixties it was the turn of the female vocal groups to make themselves heard.

The Ronettes were really a family group with the two sisters Veronica and Estelle joining up with their cousin Nedra. They started singing together as little girls round at their grandmother’s house. They went on to dance and sing at the famous Peppermint lounge’ and then signed to the Colpix label.

They developed a cool appearance with high heels, slinky dressed and hair piled up a mile high. They oozed class.

Phil Spector was developing his Philles Label Sound in New York and stole them from Colpix. Their first few numbers were actually ascribed to the Crystals.

The first single ‘Be my Baby’ was recorded with Sonny Bono and Cher (who later became Sonny & Cher) helping out on backing vocals. It went huge and not only established the group but also that special production sound that Phil Spector had been working on.

This was the time that the Beatles were breaking and they were greatly impressed with girl bands and had covered both the Marvellettes and Cookies on their first album. Other Mersey bands, such as the Searchers with Da-Doo Ron Ron’, were also successfully covering these female R&B groups. I can remember the success of a number of these groups breaking into the charts such as the Crystals, Supremes, Shirelles and Shangri-Las. While Merseybeat had blown away all the old guard it seemed to have created a space where new acts could slip in and the female vocal groups fitted the bill.

The Ronettes second single ‘Baby I love you’ was almost as successful.

Ronnie and the girls came over to do a tour of Britain and were introduced to the Beatles and Stones. Estelle dated George Harrison and Ronnie had a romantic fling with Keith Richards.

Ronnie later married Phil Spector and he kept her secluded in his mansion.


242. Crystals – Best of

The Crystals were another of Phil Spector’s Philles Label signings. For some reason Phil Spector seemed to have the view that all the girl bands were interchangeable and, much to the annoyance of his artists, brought recordings of one group out under another groups name. The Crystals had minor hits with songs like ‘Uptown’ and ‘He hit me (and it felt like a kiss)’ and then had a bigger hit with ‘He’s a rebel’ except it hadn’t been recorded by the Crystals. Phil had got Darlene Love and the Blossoms to record it and then released it under the Crystals name! – As was their follow up single ‘He’s sure the boy I love’. That was all very weird and unethical!

However it was the real Crystals who recorded ‘Da-Doo Ron Ron’ and set the ball rolling in England. I remember the B-side was an instrumental call ‘Git-it!’ The rumour was that the girls had played the instruments and that set everyone talking in my school. The idea of these girls actually playing instruments seemed strange. How times change! – It’s not so strange now! In hindsight I’m sure that they had nothing to do with that B-side at all.

‘Da-Doo Ron Ron’ was not only a big hit but also the start of that famous Phil Spector ‘Big Wall of Sound’ production technique that created such a stir.

They released another great song with ‘Then he kissed me’. After that it all went downhill. It was obvious that Phil was besotted with Ronnie and the Ronettes and they eventually split company.


243. Sun Rockabilly – Billy Lee Riley/Sonny Burgess

There are not many compilation albums in my essential album collection but this one is a must.

Sam Philips started as a scout searching for R&BN and Blues talent for the big Chicago labels like Chess and Vee-jay. After a while he thought he could do the job himself and set up his own studio to record the local R&B and Country & Western artists. He figured that there was no point discovering them and allowing someone else to get the benefit. The result was Sun Studios in Memphis.

I visited Sun Studio a couple of times to soak in the aura that stills hangs in the air and emanates out of those walls and that wavy ceiling. When I went they had the old microphones that Elvis used to record on, a pink Cadillac parked outside and an X on the floor marking where Elvis stood when he recorded ‘That’s alright Mama’ all those years before. We all had to pretend we were Elvis! You couldn’t help yourself!

Those studios recorded some of the greatest names in the music business – Howlin’ Wolf, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Rufus Thomas and Carl Perkins. It was awesome to stand in their and breathe their molecules.

Sun Rockabilly, which came out in two volumes, did not focus so much on the major stars so much as the plethora of other relatively unsung heroes. These included Sonny Burgess, Billy Lee Riley, Malcolm Yelvington, Warren Smith, Johnny Carroll, Ray Harris, and Hayden Thompson.

Many of my favourite Rockabilly tracks were from some of the unknowns such as Billy Lee Riley’s ‘Flying Saucer Rock ‘n’ Roll’ and ‘Red hot’ and Sonny Bugess’s ‘Itchy’ or Warren Smith’s ‘Uranium Rock’ and ‘Ubangi Stomp’ or Malcolm Yelvington’s ‘Rockin’ with my baby’ or Ray Harris’s ‘Come on little Mama’. They were wild and uninhibited.

A lot of these tracks are on the Sun Compilation.

A lot of these guys ended up with a bit of a chip on their shoulder because they reckoned Sam put all his energies and best material into Elvis, Jerry Lee and Carl and neglected their careers. He probably did. But at least we have these raw rockabilly recordings. They sure as hell knock the legs off all that Pop stuff Elvis did in his latter career.


244. Little Walter – Little Walter

Little Walter Jacobs was a master Harp player. His exploits with the harmonica have been compared to what Jimi Hendrix did for the guitar. He was the harp player with the Muddy Waters band and appears on most of his big numbers for Chess.

He recorded in his own right for Checker and had some huge hits with numbers like ‘My Babe’ and the instrumental ‘Juke’. Other great tracks include ‘Mean old world’, ‘Boom boom, out go the lights’ and ‘Tell me mama’. He had a very smooth singing voice that proved very popular. His songs were covered by lots of Blues bands from the Yardbirds to Dr Feelgood.

Those were violent times in Chicago and Little Walter was an alcoholic on a short fuse; he was always getting in fights and was supposedly extremely mean and ornery. One such altercation in 1967 led to him dying later that night of a thrombosis. He did tour Europe but he was one of the guys that I regrettably never got to see perform. I loved his records though.


245. Billy Boy Arnold – I wish you would

The first Billy Boy Arnold numbers I heard were recorded by the Yardbirds on their early singles with Eric Clapton ‘I Wish you would’ and ‘I ain’t got you’. I loved those singles and it wasn’t til later when I heard Billy Boy’s versions that I found anything better. Billy Boy’s versions were richer.

He started off playing with Bo Diddley before signing to Vee-jay and doing his own stuff. He recorded some great songs including ‘She fooled me’, ‘Rockinitis’ and ‘You got me wrong’.

When the Blues dropped out of popularity in the States Billy Boy went into driving buses and then as a parole officer

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 eBook : Goodwin, Opher: Amazon.co.uk: Books

PS – I got slagged off for putting a few ‘best of’ in amongst them. I remain defiant. Sometimes a ‘best of’ contains all the tracks you need and the album works!

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 – Paperback/Kindle

Posted on by Opher


537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 eBook : Goodwin, Opher: Amazon.co.uk: Books

246. Arthur Alexander – Greatest hits

There were lots of great R&B singers in the States. They mainly recorded for the Race labels for black audiences and white kids rarely got to hear them until Alan Freed and the other Rock ‘n’ Roll Jocks opened up the market and promoted multiracial audiences and desegregation.

In Britain the good old BBC refused to play most of the Rock & Roll and R&B under the delusion that they were saving the British public from such terrible things. They considered it primitive.

Consequently the British Beat groups of the sixties had a whole seam of rich pickings to mine. They set about buying obscure singles off the merchant seamen and copying them. Nobody here had heard any of this stuff and it sounded exciting. They lapped it up.

Arthur Alexander was one of those hugely talented unheard exponents of the dark arts of R&B. His songs were mercilessly plundered.

The Beatles sang ‘Soldier of Love’ and recorded ‘Anna, (go to him)’ on their first album, Gerry & the Pacemakers did ‘You’re the reason’ and ‘A shot of rhythm and Blues’, the Rolling Stones did ‘You’d better move on’. Their versions were good but none of them had Arthur’s great rich voice and brilliant arrangements – to hear that you had to go to the real thing.


247. Miracles – cookin’ with the Miracles

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles were one of those R&B groups that started up in the late fifties. Smokey had this amazing smooth voice in a high register that made them very distinctive. The Miracles were the very first act to sign up to Berry Gordy’s Tamla Motown label in 1959.

They were an instantaneous success with their hit ‘Shop around’ in 1960. They went on to record a string of hits all with that smooth Tamla backing and Smokey’s eloquent expressive voice. These included ‘The tracks of my tears’, ‘I second that emotion’, ‘You really got a hold on me’, ‘Mickey’s Monkey’ and ‘Tears of a clown.

They were one of Motown’s biggest acts. The Beatles did a great cover version of ‘You really got a hold on me’ on their first album.


248. Deep Purple – Machine Head

Frank Zappa was playing in the Montreux Casino that Deep Purple were supposed to be recording this album. It was burnt down when a fan ignited a flare in the building. Ian Gillan wrote the lyrics to the song ‘Smoke on the water’ describing looking across the lake as the smoke from the fire lay on the water and flames shot up into the sky. ‘Smoke on the water’, with its highly memorable riff played by every aspiring Heavy Metal would-be guitarist, proved to be one of their most popular songs Deep purple ever played.

Frank Zappa took a slightly different view of the event. Everyone got out alive but he had to watch the fire consume the building and all his equipment.

Other highlights of the album are ‘Space Truckin’’, which told the story of playing concerts on different planets, and ‘Highway Star’ with its highly regarded guitar solo.

The album formed part of that genre that was going to be described as Heavy Metal. It was one of the seminal albums and along with bands like Black Sabbath started a whole genre of music typified by the heavy riff and driving bass. The style was loud, aggressive and basic. It proved to be one of the most popular and commercial forms of Rock.


249. Black Sabbath – We sold our souls for Rock ‘n’ Roll

I first saw Black Sabbath when they were at the height of their occult act in which they carried out a black art ceremony on stage. It was all very theatrical and gimmicky to me but it certainly was a spectacle in the fashion of Screaming Jay Hawkins and Alice Cooper. The horror and occult theme certainly made them stand out from the multicoloured hippies peace and love fashion. But the band were producing that heavy riffing style that was to put them, along with bands like Deep Purple, in the vanguard as pioneers of the Heavy Metal genre. The genre itself is a very loose one featuring bands as diverse as Led Zeppelin, Status Quo, Budgie and Nazareth. But what’s in a name?

The track Black Sabbath, with its bell, and heavy riff was the track that epitomised their occult phase. It suited Ozzy Osbourne to a tee.

The band originated from Birmingham England and had a lot about them. They were a lot more than just a few heavy chords. Tony Iommi, even without his finger-tips was a brilliant inventive guitarist; Geezer Butler was not only a great bassist but could write interesting lyrics, Ozzy provided the vocal power and Bill Ward drove it with his solid drum beats. Geezer’s lyrics delved into those recessive that Heavy Metal rarely dared to tread, such as anti-war, social disorder and the environment. They rapidly moved out of their horror and occult phase to extend into other areas. Unfortunately, like many of the other bands, as soon as they became successful they were inundated with huge quantities or drugs and alcohol and that, as we have so often seen, took its toll.

This album is packed with classic tracks and they all stand out and are highly memorable. ‘Paranoid’ is one of those tracks that is now considered one of the top Heavy Metal epics. ‘War pigs’ with its great sonorous crashing doomy chords the best Heavy Metal anti-war song ever.


250. Al Stewart – Love chronicles

Al Stewart used to play the same Folk and student club scene as Roy Harper in the late sixties in London so I came across him quite a lot. He was a Scottish singer who wrote intelligently about life in Bedsit land, the scene on the streets, historical themes and relationships. His songs were populated with various inadequate characters from all walks of life who were so well described that you felt you knew them. Al was portrayed in Melody Maker as a rival to Roy as they tried to manifest some sort of rivalry. They love that stuff and do it regularly – Beatles/Stones and Oasis/Blur – except on a different level.

His first album ‘Bedsitter images’ was overproduced as an attempt to break through commercially but none-the-less it went down quite well. It did not establish Al as a Pop Star.

‘Love Chronicles’ was an altogether different kettle of songs. The guitar and vocals were much more to the fore with a much more sympathetic production. There were only six songs as the title track ‘Love Chronicles’ was a twenty minute epic that was a journey through Al’s love life. It was made famous because it was the first recorded song to feature the word ‘fucking’. It was an interesting song that held your attention.

‘Life and life only’ tells the story of a public schoolmaster and his drab life, it relates the misery of a joyless marriage and sexual repression. ‘In Brooklyn’ is the story of a girl in New York and an affair with a young hippie girl. ‘Old Compton Street’ is the story of a sad Soho prostitute. ‘The Ballad of Mary Foster’ is another story this time of poor Mary who marries into a life of comfort and misery.

There is a theme to this album; it one of sexual repression and the entrapment of women marriage and by social mores.

It was an album I play a lot. Al has a good way with words and writes great songs. I much prefer this and the follow-up album ‘Zero she flies’ to the much more successful ‘Year of the cat’.

251. JJ Cale – Okie

This was JJ’s third album released in 1974. In one sense it was the same languid style of laid-back rock that characterised his previous two. It had all the same ingredients with the hypnotic repeating guitar line and JJ’s soft semi-spoken words. If it wasn’t so good it would almost be easy listening. It chugs along effortlessly yet it works.

A JJ Cale song is instantly recognisable. Nobody else does anything quite like it yet Cale seems to be able to come up with variation after variation. Seemingly there are an endless number of these guitar lines to build on and once he has got this repetitive jag he can churn it out and work round it. In many ways it works on the same principle as with the North Country Blues though the outcome is totally different.

In one sense JJ Cale would be at home as supermarket music but the quality of the music sets it apart.

I love this album because you can get lost in it. Every track is distinctive yet they all have the JJ magic. The tracks that stand out for me are ‘I Got the Same old Blues again’, ‘Cajun Moon’, ‘Ever lovin’ woman’, ‘I’ll be there (if you want me)’ and ‘Rock And Roll Records’.

252. PJ Harvey – Rid of me

The album ‘Rid of me’ crashed out of the ether into my ears in 1993. The opening track ‘Rid of me’ opened with a nice simple bass line and PJ singing delicately with a great pent-up emotion that suddenly explodes as the anguish of a jilted lover turns into fury and revenge. It felt like you were suddenly lifting the lid off that pot on the stove to find the pet bunny boiling away. It was so emotionally charged.

One thing that was obvious was that we were not dealing with any demure young genteel English rose. Polly might be English but there was no reserve. Polly let it all out in one great burst. Nothing was repressed here.

This should have been obvious after the electrifying dynamics of the explicit ‘Sheena-na-gig’ off her previous album ‘Dry’. Polly was quite willing to explore any topic with honesty and candour. Not only that but the music was raw, experimental and screaming with energy as if the electrons were being ripped off in some storm of cosmic intensity. This was raw emotion. It was quite obvious that she had thoroughly absorbed Captain Beefheart’s experimental stridency and coupled it to a Punk attitude.  ‘Legs’ picked up the theme of emotional confusion as the emotions of the jilted raged and poured out in every possible direction – ‘I might as well be dead but I could kill you instead’ – you certainly got the impression that she was capable of it. There was strength about Polly Jean.

‘Rub it til it bleeds’ was quite a provocative title. The song once again built slowly with a perverse erotic intensity.

‘Man-Size’ was again delivered with that pent-up fury. It was as if Polly was putting herself into the psyche of a chauvinistic male. There was nothing weaker about this sex. You felt that Polly was perfectly capable of covering the sexist yobs with petrol and setting them on fire.

This was one angry album. Each track had its own passion and emotional angle from ‘you leave me dry’ to ‘50Ft Queenie’.

Rarely have I been so moved by an album. The strength and intensity of the music, lyrics and emotional anguish were so raw and direct that they seared into you.

This was well beyond anything Punk had produced.

253. David Gray – A century ends

This was David’s first album. The album was delivered in a sparsely produced folk-rock style with David and acoustic guitar on some tracks and a fuller backing on others.

This was David Gray as an indie singer-songwriter doing what he wanted. It wasn’t a Simon Cowell production for the plastic ‘Britain’s got Talent’ or a studio manufactured product tailored to not upset and appeal to the lowest common denominator. Yet these songs were interesting, different and eminently accessible.

I remember despairing of music in the early 2000s and asking Roy Harper if he’d heard anything worth listening to that he thought might become big. He thought for a minute and recommended David Gray.

It was only after the huge success of ‘White Ladder’ that his past work was re-evaluated and rediscovered.

These are great songs with good lyrics. ‘Shine’ and ‘I’ll lead you upstairs’ are two of the best.

Extract – 537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 (Paperback/Kindle)

Posted on by Opher

I have selected 537 essential albums. They are diverse and brilliant. These are what everybody should have in their collection.

In this book I tell you something about each one of them. This is volume one. The second volume will follow at some time! See if you agree!

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 eBook : Goodwin, Opher: Amazon.co.uk: Books

254. Gang of Four – Entertainment

Gang of Four are a post punk band. Entertainment was their first album and was released in 1979.

They are one of my three favourite Punk bands. Their lyrics are extremely intelligent and an expose of the social and political scenario with all the outrageous greed that runs the world.

They are not just about lyrics though. This was a highly developed style. The guitar sounds great with its strident sound and riffs; there is a lot of experimentation in song structure and dynamics, use of feed-back and talk over; there is a great call and answer interchange between n the vocals and all this is coupled with a great bass which is very prominent in the mix and a great pounding bass.

As a debut album this is very well constructed.

They have it all.

There is not a weak track on this album but the most striking for me are ‘Anthrax’, ‘Ether’, ‘Return the gift’ and ‘At home he’s a tourist’. I love the rawness of the music and the sound they generated but I loved the sentiments even more. If only music could change the world just like we dreamed long ago that it would do.

255. Ry Cooder – Paradise & Lunch

This was Ry’s fourth solo album. He came out from playing his session work to produce his own material. The sound on this album was centred on Ry’s crystal clear guitar.

It was a nice smooth album with Ry producing a nice mix of Gospel, Blues, R&B and Rock. The musicianship and production made it sound so soft that it appeared effortless. All the instruments melded together so perfectly.

Apart from one song the album was made up of traditional, blues, Gospel and R&B covers. These included the Blind Willie McTell ‘Married Man’s a Fool’, Bobby Womack’s ‘It’s all over now’, JB Lenoir’s ‘Fool for a cigarette’ the old work-song ‘Tamp them up solid’ and the gospel track ‘Jesus on the mainline’.

They were subjugated to Ry’s special treatment complete with chorus and call and response. It all worked fine.

The album ended with ‘Ditty Wah Ditty’. This was done as a nice light acoustic number. This is  a bit like coming back full circle because ‘Diddy Wah Diddy’ was the first single that Captain Beefheart released, except this was done as a R&B number, and Ry Cooder was the guitarist on the Captain’s first album.

256. Jimi Hendrix – Concerts

Well one thing is sure and that is that you can’t have too much Hendrix especially the live stuff. Jimi was a supernatural wonder, a man for whom new superlatives need to be invented. He only released 4 albums in his life-time and yet there are now countless CDs of unreleased material, studio outtakes, studio jams and live material. I just did a count up and I have a staggering 725 CDs of Jimi.

I love all the material. To hear Jimi noodling away, jamming to a groove in the studio, is quite incredible. Then there are the raucous early concerts and the finished article. There were many faces to Jimi Hendrix, some soft and lyrical and others loud, harsh and raw. Whatever mood or style the one thing that was consistent was the quality of the musicianship. Jimi did not stop. His whole short life was music. His guitar was part of him and he was so technically proficient that the only limitations in the sounds he could produce were those of his own imagination.

These tracks are the early Jimi between 1968 and 1970 when he was fronting the Experience with his dare-devil guitar histrionics and showmanship. They capture the excitement but I can tell you that no matter how loud you play them, how good your sound system is or powerful your imagination they don’t come near to the excitement of actually being there.

These tracks were all recorded in the States at San Francisco, San Diego, New York and Los Angeles. So, unfortunately I was not at any of these concerts; but I did see him three times and I can picture him there when I play these.

There has never been anything like Jimi Hendrix.

257. Elvis Costello – Spike

The early punky Costello was great and it is normal for an artist to mellow and mature as they get older, wiser and more adept. I am pleased to say that while Elvis certainly did develop his music, broaden it and bring in different styles, the power and ferocity of his lyrics and delivery were only intensified. This album was exceptionally spiky in places.

This was released in 1989 and was his twelfth studio album. It also contains one of my favourite tracks.

At this time Elvis moved labels and was also co-writing with Paul McCartney. Who knows? Perhaps the Beatles could have reformed with Elvis taking the John Lennon role? He certainly had the venom and bite to do justice to it. He could have pulled off the acerbic part quite well.

The two tracks he wrote with Paul are very good. ‘Veronica’ was very commercial but ‘Pads paws and claws’ was more experimental but still very accessible and catchy. It was a collaboration that showed promise.

‘Baby plays around’ was a beautiful song, sung very delightfully with a great deal of melancholy concerning a break-up of a relationship in which one’s partner is openly unfaithful. ‘…This Town’ was the opening track and was much more like the Elvis of his first few albums. This was the Punk Elvis lamenting the fact that in order to get on you had to be a complete bastard. ‘God’s comic’ is a great song and send-up of religion, a priest who had not been too religious has an audience with God who is listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber and wondering if he should have given the world to the monkeys. ‘Deep Dark Truthful Mirror’ is a song about confronting your own failings.

This was an album with a number of different styles, moods, instrumentation and types of songs. If that was all it would be an excellent album but that wasn’t all. There were two songs that had an exceptional impact on me. The first was the snarling diatribe against hanging ‘Let him dangle’. It told the story of a couple of young thieves who were cornered by the police. Young Bentley was already under arrest and Craig had a gun pointing at the police officer. ‘Let him have it,’ Bentley told Craig. Craig shot the officer dead. Craig was underage got life and Bentley was hung. Elvis turned it into a passionate expose of the viciousness of State murder and the hatred and primitive revenge involved. It was a thought-provoking tale delivered with real anger.

But the stand out track for me was ‘Tramp the dirt down’. It still sends chills running through me when I play it. The melodic beauty of the song only serves to accentuate the hatred in the lyrics as Elvis contemplates the cold, calculated duplicity of Margaret Thatcher. I still have a vivid memory of her standing on the steps at number ten delivering her election speech at the start of her term of office saying how she would bring harmony to the country while already plotting to break the unions and create havoc. Elvis pours out his vitriol as he goes through the trail of Tory deceit over the treatment of public services, the health service and the glorification of the Falklands war. It’s probably not too late to get there and tramp that dirt down so she never gets out, perhaps a good sharp stake should be deployed first though!

258. The Fall – Slates

The Fall were one of John Peel’s favourite bands. It is easy to see why. They have consistently gone about doing their own thing throughout the whole of their long career without the slightest nod to fashion, commerciality or anybody’s views.

Mark E Smith is the Fall. Despite all the personnel changes he is the guvnor! He directs the music, bosses the band around and dictates what goes on. He once said that even if it was him with his moth-in-law on bongos it would be the Fall.

They go about producing their raw output of post-punk without regard to taste, political correctness or the media and often with seeming contempt for their own audience.

I have been to live performances with strange film intros that went on and on, Mark seemingly so intoxicated he could not function, and virtual fights on stage. I’ve also been to concerts where they have motored along completely in tune with the audience with everyone bouncing about and singing along with Mark.

This is the usual type of Fall album. The driving riffs with Mark reciting and shouting his lyrics over it. The result is great. I can’t say he has a great voice but the effect is more interesting than all the plastic bands put together. From ‘Hip Priest’ to ‘Slates, slags etc.’ it drives along. There is that repetitive coda and variation that makes it interesting. You can feel the Captain Beefheart influence.

259. Randy Newman – Lonely at the top

This has all Randy’s great songs all gathered together. It gives you a great view of Randy’s genius. There is so much of Randy’s quirky humour and idiosyncratic observation. He is able to hone a lyric to its bare bones, deliver it with perfect phrasing to a simple but perfectly effective backing. This album has many of my favourites.

‘Political Science’ is a sardonic view of the rest of the world in which Randy suggests that America should just nuke everybody, except Australia – don’t want to hurt no kangaroo – boom goes London! Boom Paris!

‘God’s song (That’s why I love mankind)’ is a send up of religion in which God is a character who is a capricious individual who doesn’t care a jot about people yet is amazed by the antics of humans in the face of his vindictiveness.

There’s the full spectrum here with ‘Short people’, ‘Rednecks’, ‘Jolly Coppers on parade’, ‘I love L.A.’ ‘Germany before the war’, ‘Birmingham’ etc etc. The album ends with his own send up of himself with ‘Lonely at the top’.

What a song-writer! What humour!

260. Sam Cooke – Portrait of a legend

Sam was the guy with the smooth silken voice who was capable of big soulful ballads, Pop songs and more rocking numbers. That voice came straight out of Gospel. He started singing at an early age and became the lead vocalist with the leading Gospel group ‘The Soul Stirrers’.

He left Gospel to move into secular R&B focussing on producing singles and immediately hit with ‘You send me’. This crossed over into the Pop charts and was followed by a string of other hits ‘Only sixteen’, ‘Cupid’, ‘Chain gang’, ‘Little Red Rooster’, ‘What a wonderful world’, ‘Bring it on home to me’, ‘Twistin’ the night away’ and ‘Shake’.

There was a great deal of variation in his work. A comparison between the Pop of ‘Cupid’ and the Blues of ‘Little Red Rooster’ (recorded before the Stones did their version). He also tackled issues like the Civil Rights fight for justice which was an incendiary thing to do at the time; his song ‘A change is going to come’ was a brave thing to do.

Sam’s soulful voice was one of the precursors of Soul music. Unfortunately Sam was not there to participate. He was shot dead at a motel in very dubious circumstances. Seemingly he was drunk and took a girl back to his room. She stole his clothes and ran off claiming he was going to rape her and the distraught Sam was shot dead by the white motel owner. We shall never know by there seemed to be a racial element involved in this.

The Rock Classics

Posted on by Opher

So far I have published two books in the Rock Classics section with SonicBond publishing: The Beatles White Album and Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home. Both pivotal, iconic albums that altered the landscape of Rock Music.

The Beatles: White Album – Rock Classics Paperback

Arguably the greatest album by the best rock band ever, The Beatles – also known as The White Album – proved to be a watershed recording. Coming as it did, after manager Brian Epstein’s death; after the disillusionment with the Maharishi; in the middle of the break-up of long-term relationships, and following on from the psychedelic masterpiece Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, it heralded changes of style and the marked the start of the falling apart of the previously tight-knit group. The album’s diversity and creation are analysed and its background and dynamics revealed. This extraordinary double album reflects a remarkable time and period. As the sixties came to an end, so too did the band. They mirrored the times they lived in. The album also followed on from their first highly criticised TV flop Magical Mystery Tour, the success of the first global satellite triumph of ‘All You Need Is Love’, and the highly ambitious Apple business venture. George Martin ducked out and ructions broke out between band members. But, among all the pressures and stress they found time to write and record an incredible array of songs; songs that synergised into a spectacularly successful album with a fascinating story. This is the tale of every track and every facet of this remarkable record.

Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home: Rock Classics Paperback

One of the most pivotal albums in the evolution of rock music, few other recordings have had more impact than the 1965 Bob Dylan classic, Bringing It All Back Home. In the mid-sixties, rock music was about to explode into psychedelia, prog and jazz fusion. Meanwhile, Bob Dylan had made an enormous impact on songwriting with his first four all-acoustic albums. He had created a different way of writing songs, by embracing themes such as civil rights, anti-war protests and social issues, which lifted the subject matter from teenage love songs to serious poetic works of art, rife with symbolism. But with Bringing It All Back Home, Dylan shot his lyrics through with surreal hard-edged beat poetry while the music contained both acoustic songs and blues-based loud electric rock. It alienated him from many of his peers in the folk community but nonetheless contains classic cuts like ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ ‘Maggie’s Farm’ and ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’. Dylan had opened the door to experimentation. The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, The Doors, Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Cream all listened and responded. In its wake, Songwriting rose to new heights with few boundaries. After Bringing It All Back Home, music was forever changed.

I’m hoping to do a few more. There are some stonkers out there! I have a lot of favourites.

Once again – thanks for all the brilliant reviews and ratings. Fills me with joy!!

‘537 Essential Rock albums’ – More bits

Posted on by Opher

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books

163. Booker T & the MGs – Green Onions

Booker T & the MGs were the house band for Atlantic Stax and not only played on all the Great Soul tracks that came out of there but wrote a lot of them too. They were one of the first racially integrated groups in the States. They were well ahead of their time. Their sound was created out of the seventeen year old Booker T Jones’s keyboard sound with Steve Croppers sparse but clear amplified guitar sound.

Incredibly ‘Green Onions’ came out in 1962 and still sounds as compelling as it did back then. The rest of the album is nowhere near as good as the title track though ‘Mo’ Onions’ is close. It was all very listenable though and creates a totally different sound and mellow mood with instrumental covers of R&B tracks such as ‘I got a woman’, ‘Twist & Shout’ and ‘You can’t sit down’


164. Ry Cooder – Borderline

Ry is an exemplary guitarist and has the reputation for absorbing musical styles ranging from Tex-Mex to Gospel and Reggae.

This was his ninth album and has a bit of a range of influences with a number of memorable tracks delivered with great musicianship and a lot of humour. These include ‘Crazy about an automobile’, ‘That’s the way the girls are in Texas’, ‘Why don’t you try me’, ‘Johnny Porter’, ‘Borderline’ and ‘634-5789’.

Ry went in to producing soundtracks and came up with a number of great ones. He also created a lot of collaborations with top world music artists such as Ali Farka and Mohan Bhatt.

When you have a Ry Cooder album in your hands you can be assured of quality.


165. Shadows – Greatest hits

The Shadows were Cliff Richard’s backing band and went on to have a series of hits with their own instrumentals. This was the first new album I bought in 1963. So I suppose it is to blame for putting me on the road to ruin.

Hank B Marvin’s guitar style was unique and was highly influential to a number of guitarists including Neil Young.

That initial band started out as a good Rock ‘n’ Roll unit and that was evident on their early hits such as ‘Apache’, ‘Man of Mystery’, ‘FBI’, ‘The frightened City’, ‘The stranger’, ‘The savage’, ’36.24.36’ and ‘Geronimo’.

While they were never hard Rock they, like Cliff, veered off into the softer Pop sounds and novelty side and became very middle of the road.

I love those early tracks and the sound of Hank’s guitar over the top of that rhythm section with Jet Harris, Bruce Welch and Brian Bennett. ‘Apache’ is a fabulous sound.


166. Everly Brothers –  The Fabulous style of the Everly Brothers

The Everly Brothers came into Rock ‘n’ Roll from the Country side – hence all those close-knit harmonies. They were already seasoned performers with their parents on many radio shows before they made the move into Rock ‘n’ Roll.

They originally signed to the Cadence label where they recorded a couple of albums and a string of hit singles. They then split and signed for Warner Brothers where they rerecorded a number of their songs and continued producing hits. Warner Brothers produced a richer sound that was more Pop orientated and commercial. Some of this stuff was excellent but they could also get a bit too saccharin sweet and sentimental. I prefer their Cadence material.

‘The Fabulous Style of the Everly Brothers’ features most of their big numbers recorded with Cadence. These include: ‘Bird Dog’, ‘Like Strangers’, ‘Til I kissed you’, ‘All I have to do is dream’, ‘When will I be loved?’, ‘Take a message to Mary’ and ‘Poor Jenny’.


167. Bob Dylan – Planet waves

I thought we’d lost Bob forever. We’d been taken to the mountain tops with six out of seven of his first releases and then it was all down to mundane stuff like Nashville Skyline and Self-portrait. It looked as if the poetic muse had fled. He was bereft of originality or meaning. It was all banal.

Then there was a slight hint of hope with New Morning but ‘Dylan’ was even worse. It was really scraping the barrel.

We’d been through the sixties and our expectations had been raised. We’d been subjected to real works of art with powerful lyrics and Dylan, supposedly the master of the words, was presenting us with garbage that was trite boring and unimaginative. It was distressing. You can see why that garbologist A J Weberman had come out with the theory that he was a junkie or an impostor.

In reality he was most probably opting out from all the pressure and expectation, all the phoney music biz, and taking some time to get his head together. He did not want to play that role anymore. He wanted out.

Then, finally in 1974, along came ‘Planet Waves’.

I can’t say it was right up there with the genius of those early six wondrous, innovative, passionate masterpieces, but it was a good album at last. There were signs that the monster was rousing itself and starting to stretch and get the circulation going again.

The sound was a lot tougher. It sounded alive. ‘Going, Going, Gone’, was good. ‘Tough Mama’ and ‘Hazel’ sounded good. I was beginning to feel hopeful. Then ‘Something there is about you’ was even better and finally there was the first brilliant song from Dylan for a long, long time – ‘Forever Young’. It would not have been out of place on those early albums. Dylan obviously knew that. He put two versions on the album!

The second side continued the same. I loved ‘Dirge’ and ‘You angel you’.

At last we have a decent Dylan album to get excited about. Did that mean he was back? There were even decent lyrics even if they weren’t dealing with the big issues.


168. Roy Harper – Come out Fighting Ghenghis Smith

This was the first Roy Harper album I bought. I got it the day it came out and shortly after having borrowed Roy’s first album off Roy.

Roy does not rate ‘Come out fighting Ghenghis Smith’ very much but I do. Admittedly the production by CBS is a bit muddy and there is a bit of flawed philosophy in ‘Circle’ but to me it is a beautiful album crammed with great love songs like ‘Moccy my dear’ and ‘In a beautiful rambling mess’. It had its humour with ‘You don’t need money’ and a song about women’s equality with ‘All you need is’ and the busking scene with ‘Aging raver’ and ‘Freak Street’. They were all brilliant songs but it was the second side that really grabbed me. ‘Circle’ was one of those Harper epics in which he looked at his upbringing with all it’s expectations and put it in perspective with the society we were being groomed for. It certainly resonated with me. My parents had great hopes for me and I too had disappointed by taking a more rebellious path. I listened to those words and they all rang true.

I have never tired of it. As it says in the last track on the album ‘The social game we’re playing is based on possession.’ That is what success was measured by.

Both Roy and I wanted something more.

That album was seminal for me. It summed up my life at the time. I think that is what a truly great album or poem should do.


169. Nick Harper – Seed

Nick is Roy’s son. He has obviously inherited both the poetic and musical genes. He is probably the best guitarist I have ever seen and the creator and performer of exceptional songs.

He is different to Roy. His songs and music are different. The only similarity is that they share a perspective on the society we live in.

This is Nick’s second album. It is unadorned with production. The sound is nice and simple so that Nick, his incredible guitar and beautiful songs shine through.

There are so many brilliant songs expertly performed with emotion and passion. The stand out tracks are ‘Kilty Stone’ – the ode to his friends he used to hang out with in Ireland at the Kiltystone pub – ‘Radio Silence’

A song that is almost about narcolepsy or that strange state of consciousness when not fully awake – ‘Three Magpies’ a story on a bus crossing Canada and America with a sense of loss – ‘Thanks for the miracle’ a political comment on the Maggie lied and cheated her way through power – ‘Building our own Temple’ a song about having our spirituality inside us – ‘Peace love and happiness’ another social song with the plea that maybe it not too late; we are opposed to the money grabbing slime of gun-runners and warmongers and will do our best to find a better way.

The complex chords, bent notes and intricate runs flow effortlessly flow through the crafted songs.

What an incredible album.


170. Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin 2

By the second album Led Zep had really got their act together. The sound was distinct. There were all the heavy elements – the power chords and guitar solos with the thumping bass and heavy drums. Robert’s voice rose confidently over it all. Yet there was complexity and variation. There was no chance of this being run of the mill.

The album was packed with stand out tracks: ‘Whole lotta love’ set the album off and is a classic. That riff is burned into everyone’s head and the searing phased notes that come with the chorus. They were using the full spectrum of technology to create something else.

‘Living loving maid’ is equally as good with an equally memorable riff. ‘Heartbreaker’ has incredible guitar and grooves along at a slower pace.  ‘Ramble on’ starts with an acoustic guitar and gradually builds in intensity. ‘Moby Dick’ is a big song that relies heavily on John Bonham’s drum solo. ‘Bring it on home’ starts with the Sonny Boy Williamson riff and takes it somewhere else.

There were plenty of Blues elements, words and songs and fewer of the Folk elements. Altogether it was a much heavier album.


171. AC/DC – Let there be rock

AC/DC came out of Australia with their brand of High Powered Heavy Metal. The loud heavy riffs and driving music guaranteed them an enthusiastic audience of young males.

Their stage act was really wild with Angus Young dressed up as a school kid in shorts, blazer, tie and cap. He was not quite the type of school kid you’d want your son to be. It was all very macho stuff with a strong sexist attitude expressed on some of the tracks.

Their first albums ‘High Voltage’ and ‘TNT’ set the pace. ‘Let there be Rock’ was their fourth album and developed the themes even more. The title track ‘Let there be Rock’ summarised the history of Rock ‘n’ Roll into an almost biblical setting – let there be drums, let there be guitar – let there be Rock – The heavy power chords of numbers like ‘Hell ain’t a bad place to be’ and ‘Dog eat dog’ were conclusive; there was not going to be anything subtle about them. They were short of nuance. AC/DC went for high energy Rock ‘n’ Roll.

This was epitomised by the track ‘Whole lotta Rosie’. The distinctive riff was infectious and it was no wonder the concert halls were packed with wild kids surging and bouncing around. This had all the energy of Punk. ‘Whole lotta Rosie’ is probable the best heavy metal track ever.


172. Fred McDowell – Shake ’em on down

Mississippi Fred McDowell was born in the North of Mississippi and was the first artist to create the Hill Country Blues style that was later popularised by RL Burnside, Junior Kimbrough and Fat possum label. It had that repetitive driving beat.

Fred was keen on saying that he didn’t play Rock ‘n’ Roll – it just sounded like it. What he did was a loud, hard-driving, heavy-chorded blues with a strong beat.

This style is epitomised on the ‘Shake ‘em on down’ album with its electrified blues. You can imagine him playing in those small blues clubs in Mississippi life the Blue Café. The audience would be up dancing and shimming. This was a live album that featured ‘Shake ‘em on down’ and ‘You gotta move’ as well as other classics like ‘John Henry’ and ‘Baby please don’t go’. The Rolling Stones covered ‘You gotta move’ note for note.

If you like that hypnotic Hill Country Blues and good driving guitar with some slide work you’ll love this.


173. Tinariwen – Aman Iman – Water is life

Tinariwen come out of Algeria and Mali. They are a Tuareg dessert band playing a type of guitar based music straight out of West Africa.

The incredible guitar weaves its way over a complex driving beat complex with a strong vocal and female chorus.

It is like going back to visit the force behind the Blues in America yet this is thoroughly modern. Despite all the cultural layers and language the music talks and communicates directly to the heart.

These guys are real rebels who have seen it all and it shows in the music. Where they come from has seen too much war and death.

This album has a variety of styles all with that quality musicianship and slightly different rhythm to the ones we are familiar with yet it is instantly accessible. I particularly like the opening track ‘Cler Achel’ and the slow infectious ‘Soixante Trois’

An amazing album


174. Mississippi Allstars – Shake hands with Shorty

Just when you thought that the major labels had consumed all that was good in music and spat it out as sanitised, homogenised shit you get something new that comes along with all its raw energy intact. The Mississippi Allstars come out of the North Mississippi Country Blues area and follow in the tradition. They were set up by Luther and Cody Dickinson and featured RL Burnside’s son on guitar in the early days. ‘Shake hands with Shorty’ was their first album and from the moment you put it on you can feel the vitality and enjoyment come right through. This is a band that is enjoying what they are doing and that is conveyed to the audience.

They are not only brilliant musicians but they believe in keeping it real and having fun doing it. You can tell they love it. I have seen them play a couple of times and their shows are a non-stop storm of infectious blues.

This album starts of with the Mississippi Fred McDowell number ‘Shake ‘em on down’ and proceeds through other North Country gems such as ‘Drop Down Mama’, ‘Going down South’, ‘Someday baby’, and ‘Poor Black Betty’.

They have taken the blues style of RL Burnside and Junior Kimbrough and given it an extra shove!

A Further slab of ‘537 Essential Rock Albums’ the best Rock Albums ever recorded! My view!

Posted on by Opher

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.

A hunk of my ‘537 essential Rock Albums’ – I wrote the first part but haven’t got around to the second yet!!

Posted on by Opher

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books

These are 537 of my all-time favourites – not in any particular order – that would change day to day.

Why not buy the book and check them all out?

Please leave likes and a review on Amazon – Means a lot!!

110. Bo Diddley – Bo’s big 20

Where would the British Beat groups be without Bo Diddley. Bo was short for Bad Boy and Bo certainly lived up to his name. He started as a boxer and street busker in McComb Mississippi before becoming discovered, moving to Chicago, encountering Muddy Waters and becoming a Blues Rocker. No one ever has quite that swagger that Bo Diddley had. He was one for the garish clothes and outrageous home-made guitars with weird tuning, weird effects, weird fur, weird shapes and incredible rhythms.

All these top 20 Bo Diddley compositions, plus a lot more, were the staple diet of British Beat Bands back in the 1960s. Along with his maraca man Jerome Green and the Beautiful Duchess in slinky dresses on bass he took the place over like a hurricane coming through. There was never a more boastful set of songs with ‘Bo Diddley’, ‘Hey Bo Diddle’, ‘Bo’s a lumberjack’, ‘Run run Diddley daddy’ and ‘I’m the greatest lover in the world’. Yet nobody deserved to be shouting out loud about their talents. This was the man who had written and performed all those great Rock songs that will go down in history – ‘I’m a man’, ‘500% more man’, ‘Cops and Robbers’, ‘Pretty Thing’, ‘Say man’, ‘Pills’, ‘Roadrunner’, ‘You can’t judge a book by the cover, ‘I can tell’, ‘Who do you love?’ and a load more.

A lot of them are on here and they sound as good as ever!


111. Bob Dylan – Another side of

In this, Bob’s fourth album, there was another departure. There was a more poetic approach with less overt politics. It brought a lot of criticism at the time from people who thought he was getting out of touch with the Civil Rights and anti-war movement. Yet this album was suffused with social concern. Even the humorous ‘Motorpsycho nitemare’ was painting a picture of the narrow-minded conservative anticommunist farmer.

This was the third acoustic album of note and contains one of my favourite Dylan tracks in the sensitive ‘To Ramona’. I always saw this as a poem to a young black girl who was feeling defeated by the institutionalised racism of sixties Northern America.  Bob was telling her she would be OK she was better than all of them. It was a deceptive song that sounded soft and gentle yet disguised a real bite. The same was true in a different way for ‘Chimes of freedom’. This was an extraordinary poem that was based on a thunder storm in which the sounds of the church bells melted into the flashes of lightnin’ and crash of thunder. It was one of those mystical moments where Bob was imagining the wondrous spectacle being put on for all the unfortunates and socially deprived. Bob summed up his stance of moving away from preaching at people with both the songs ‘All I really want to do’ and the humorous ‘I shall be free No. 10’ in which he states that it wasn’t any use talking to him that it was the same as talking to yourself; in other words he did not know anything more than anyone else; he had no answers.

Though nothing was overt the album’s heart was still firmly based on fairness, justice and freedom. This was coupled with a number of great personal songs about the break-up of his relationship with Suzie Rotollo.

Altogether it was another incredible album.


112. Roy Harper – Folkjokeopus

Folkjokeopus should have been the album that launched Roy into orbit but it failed. That failure was due to the lack of understanding displayed by the Liberty label. They had seen Roy’s potential, wanted to realise it and create a commercial proposition and brought in the seasoned hit-maker Mickie Most to produce the album. The trouble was that this was not the direction Roy wanted to go off in and the two of them rapidly ended up at loggerheads. The album was largely made in a series of rushed first takes and the potential of Roy and the songs was not fully realised.

So why is it in here among the best albums of all time? Well it is here simply because of the immense quality of the songs. ‘McGoohan’s Blues’ in particular is one of the most important songs of the whole sixties. Very few songs even attempt to tackle the vast spectrum of society and its ills that Roy sets off to do and even fewer manage to pull it off.

When I first heard Roy do it live I was transfixed. The poetic lines hit straight into the centre of my cortex like cobra venom. I’d never heard anything as acidic. This was biting vitriol of the first order. It still is.


113. Pink Floyd – Saucer full of secrets

This was the first album of Pink Floyd’s after Syd Barrett left. There was much conjecture regarding the future of the band as Syd was seen as the creative element. It was widely regarded that the band would flounder in his wake. Even management sided with Syd and backed him rather than the rest of the band. The band were dropped.

The sceptics were confounded. The album picked up the threads from the first album and developed them. The band went on from strength to strength after that and established themselves as one of the top bands in the world. Syd produced two excellent albums and faded off into seclusion and the life of a hermit. Management had let it slip through their hands.

Syd’s only writing contribution to the album was ‘Jugband Blues’ with lyrics that were very apt. The rest of the album ran with the spacey theme of ‘Astronomy Domine’ from the first album. It seems that the acid experience of psychedelia’s voyage into inner space was to be expressed as an exploration of outer space. Other bands, such as Hawkwind, would head down the same direction. Psychedelia was melded to Fantasy, Sci-fi, Space and Madness. It made for interesting explorations.

The stand out tracks on the album were ‘Saucer full of secrets’, ‘Let there me more light’ and ‘Set the controls for the heart of the sun’ all of which featured heavily in their live performances.

Far from being finished the creative reins had been taken up by the other members and the band was really just beginning. Syd’s ghost was to haunt them forever but they had found a way forward and it was good.


114. Jefferson Airplane – After bathing at Baxter’s

This was Jefferson’s third album and was released in 1967 at the height of the San Francisco hippie dream. It was more of a concept and not so commercially rocky as the previous album. The sound was more developed into an Acid drenched feel which reflected the bands adventures with LSD. There were not particular stand-out tracks so much as a general feel to the album that reflected the philosophy of the hippie generation. The five suites were: ‘Streetmasse’ ‘The War is over’ ‘Hymn to an older generation’ ‘How suite it is’ and ‘Shizoforest love suite’. They related to the hippie themes of love and peace. This album summed up the rejection of the commercial society with its exploitation, money-driven aggression, violence and war.

The album reflected the communities dream of creating a new order with different values; where everything was not all about grabbing what you could whatever the cost.

Jefferson Airplane were the standard bearers for the San Franciscan hippie movement and this album was a statement of that; they were the band of the people. This was a new world and the old one was yesterday.

The album was full of experimentation, acid guitar, harmonies and lyrics that reflected the changes the band were part of. This was music from the new generation to the new generation.

1967 was a good year for great albums.


115. Love – Love

This was the first 1966 debut by Love. It was punkier and more unpolished than later albums and was replete with brilliant songs. It started off with a rocked up version of David & Bacharach ‘Little Red book’ and went on from there.

The stand-out tracks were ‘A message to Pretty’, ‘My flash on you’, ‘No matter what you do’, ‘Coloured balls falling’, ‘Mushroom clouds’, ‘And more’ and the sombre ‘Signed DC’ with its theme of heroin addiction. The themes were nuclear war, hard drugs and relationships. It immediately established the band as a major Los Angeles band and put them right up there in the forefront of the new counter culture.

Ironically the stark theme of the anti-drug song ‘Signed DC’ was to bounce back at them as hard drugs were principally to blame for the band falling apart a little while later.


116. Beatles – Revolver

Rubber Soul was the album that first showed evidence of the band reaching out towards songs that were a bit more substantial to what had preceded them with songs like ‘In my life’ and ‘Nowhere man’ but it was Revolver that really made the break.

This was 1966 and the Beatles once more asserted themselves as a creative force that was right on the apex of what was happening in youth culture. This was a departure from everything that went before with its over-amplified guitar and experimentation. They were not merely creating one new sound but a whole pile of them. There was the incredible electronic experiment of ‘Tomorrow never knows’ with its LSD soaked sound and lyrics, ‘She said, she said’ with its trippy sound, ‘I’m only sleeping’ with that new floating sound and backward guitar, that guitar sound on ‘Taxman’, strings on ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and on and on. This was an album where every track was an experiment, a new sound a departure from what had gone before.

The Beatles were loose in London and London was raging. The Beatles were soaking up art, beat poetry, electronic music, LSD and anything that came up. It was the greatest creative phase of their career. All the themes that were to surface in the rest of their output were nascent here. Revolver was a melting pot of experiments and all of them were successful. There wasn’t a dud track and few of them sounded similar.

While this might not be the best Beatles album it was the most ambitious and creative. It set the scene for their development and fed into the melting pot for all the other bands. This album helped spark the flame that was going to create the incandescence of the late sixties Underground Psychedelic, Progressive and Acid Rock scenes in England and America. The bands were all listening to what each other were putting out and trying to go one better. This sparked a period of great experimentation all fuelled on the new youth counter-culture. It was a great time to be alive. It was a can-do culture. Anything was possible. You just had to try. We were about to change the world.

Heady days.


117. Captain Beefheart – Clear spot

This was the Captain’s seventh album and continued the more commercial style of the previous Spotlight Kid without diluting the quality of the songs. It was quite apparent that Don Van Vliet was unhappy with the reception the band had received and the lack of sales. He desired greater recognition. This was all to explode in his face when after this the band up and split and he produced, in an attempt to become commercial, the dire Bluejeans and Moonbeams album. Fortunately that was in the future and this album continued the string of brilliant albums the Captain had produced using a large number of different musicians. John French, AKA Drumbo, was the only constant, having the task of interpreting Don’s strange musical requests and organising the other members of the band to put his ideas into practice, and he was absent on this one.

The result was great though. The album featured some of the Captain’s greatest numbers such as ‘Crazy little thing’, ‘Sun zoom spark’, ‘Clear spot’, ‘Low yo-yo stuff’ and the wondrous show-stopper ‘Big eyed beans from Venus’ along with a number of other brilliant tracks. The album should have been enormous but failed to ignite apart from the substantial group of cognoscenti who marvelled at just about everything the Captain produced. They thought it was superb.


118. Rolling Stones – No.2

This seems to slip through the net when we think of the Stones. The first album gets all the plaudits for that early Blues debut and rightly so; it was a great debut. But this album is its partner and almost equal. Once again it was made up of mainly R&B covers from the likes of Chuck Berry, Drifters, Solomon Burke, Muddy Waters and Dale Hawkins but there were three numbers attributed to Keith and Mick ‘Off the hook’, ‘What a shame’ and ‘Grown up all wrong’, which did not stand out as being out of place.

The album had a slightly mellower feel than their first album which was probably down to the production. It was not quite as sharp. But none the less it continued the reputations of the band. They were a good blues group who were putting their own very English interpretation on the blues songs and R&B they were covering.


119. Jimmy Reed – Bright lights, big city

Jimmy was one of the stalwarts of the British Beat groups. He, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley provided the majority of the material that was covered by those British Beat bands. Jimmy was also the most commercially successful of the Blues singers. His languid, laid-back style with it’s distinctive beat proved very popular. It was copied by a number of the Rockers, such as Elvis, and also gave Jimmy a lot of personal chart success. Part of that fluid style was due to fluid. Seemingly Jimmy liked a nip or two and they used to ply him with booze before recordings because they reckoned they got the best out of him that way. It seemed to work. I had a couple of Jimmy reed albums when I was fifteen and I used to play them to death.

I was fortunate enough to catch Jimmy in London in 1971. He was pissed out of his head and had his son on bass and was brilliant.

That rhythm and beat that Jimmy invented had found its way everywhere and permeates music. It was the basis of all those swamp-blues artists in the 1960s such as Slim Harpo.

I could have chosen any of the Jimmy Reed albums. They are all great but ‘Bright lights, big city’ has all the big numbers on and there are a whole load of these: ‘Bright lights, big city’, ‘Big boss man’, ‘Shame shame shame’, ‘Take out some insurance on me baby’, ‘Baby what you want me to do’, ‘Ain’t that loving you baby’, ‘Hush hush’, ‘Honest I do’  and a whole lot more.


120. Billy Bragg/Wilco – Mermaid Ave

Billy had proved himself a great songwriter and someone who espoused a social conscience. It was in this capacity that he was asked, along with the band Wilco, to put music to a number of Woody Guthrie lyrics that were discovered in his estate. Woody’s legacy was immense. He had always been scribbling songs, poems and bits of prose on scraps of paper.

Woody’s daughter Nora had been sorting these lyrics and come up with the idea of them being put to music by someone sympathetic to Woody’s music. Billy was ideal.

It proved to be a magic choice because, although Wilco and Billy seemingly did not get along, the combination was electrifying. The album brought those lyrics to life and the music lived and breathed Guthrie.

The result was nothing like either Billy or Wilco had done before or since. It had a mystical nature of its own. The essence of Woody’s hand was in them all and the album was greater than the sum of its parts.

This is an album that I come back to time after time. I find it haunting. The songs are full of Woody’s wit and detailed observation. His tales of childhood and sexual awakening, the McCarthy witch-hunt, lust and social justice are all moving and stirring.

I saw Billy doing these songs with his own band and the stirring ‘You fascists bound to lose’ was a fitting finale to the show and great summary of Woody himself.

Another slice of ‘537 Essential Rock Albums’ – my views on what are the best rock albums ever.

Posted on by Opher

I’m not too fussed about the order, that changes from day to day. In my opinion ehese are just albums that everybody should own and listen to constantly! My favourites!

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books

93. Bruce Springsteen – Darkness at the edge of town

This album was made before Bruce had made that breakthrough into becoming a megastar. His song-writing was near its peak and he’d had a big lay-off due to legal battles with his management. The previous album ‘Born to Run’ had broken him into the mainstream and the two year gap enabled him to get his song-writing and recording together for the next one. It also fired him up with anger and frustration that spilled out onto the tracks. You can hear it on ‘Badlands’, ‘Adam made a Cain’, ‘Factory’, ‘Prove it all night’, and ‘Promised land’.

I love this album because you can feel the intensity of the emotion coming straight through. The production was crystal clear and Bruce’s guitar seared with fury. The lyrics were among his best. He had distilled this out of a huge number of songs that he’d spilled out during his enforced rest. Some of those had gone out to other people and loads stayed in the can for a long time. What finally came out made all the waiting worthwhile. This was a landmark album and took Bruce forward a big step. That sound was now crisp and the songs finely honed.

If only a number of other bands, like Cream, had had that same forced period of rest to recover their creative zest they probably would have gone on to make further masterpieces.


94. Roy Harper – Flat Baroque & Berserk

Roy’s expertise had finally come to the attention of the powers that be. EMI had woken up to the fact that there was a burgeoning Underground scene in England and wanted to get in on the act. They wanted to sign up the best psychedelic and progressive bands and Roy was among the first to benefit. They created this new label – ‘Harvest’ and began to harvest the talent.

For the first time Roy was able to record his material in a sympathetic manner, with a produced and engineers who appreciated his songs and a studio, in Abbey Road previously used by the Beatles, which allowed him to give the material the production it deserved. It was a marriage made in heaven.

I was fortunate enough to get invited to the party and watch it all take shape. The control room was often packed with the elite of Rock Music with Jimmy Page, Keith Moon, Dave Gilmour and John Bonham popping in to see how things were going and add their contributions. They were heady days.

Roy usually had at least one epic to add to the mix and there were a couple of weighty pieces on this effort. The major song was ‘I hate the Whiteman’ which was a vitriolic blast at European culture and the great edifice of a society that it had created. This was a song in the same vein as that other masterpiece ‘McGoohan’s Blues’ and Roy did not want to see it go the same way. He wanted to ensure it was properly recorded and he wanted it to be live so that all the passion would come across. He recorded it at Les Cousins as the centre-piece of the album.

This album was a real gem with a range of superb songs. The studio and production really did justice to them and superb compositions like ‘Another day’, ‘How does it feel’, ‘East of the Sun’, ‘Tom Tiddler’s Ground’ and ‘Davey’ all came to life.

Strangely, despite its excellence, it failed to become enormous. For all that it is a triumph.


95. Bob Dylan – Blonde on Blonde

This was the third of Bob’s brilliant string of mid-sixties electric albums. It was a bit different to the two previous in that the song-writing had changed again, the production was different, and Bob had hit upon this new sound that permeated the whole album. It was really created around Al Kooper’s organ and Robbie Robertson’s guitar. This was a double album of superb brilliance and there wasn’t a filler to be found anywhere. The scope was also enormous from the fun and exuberance of ‘Rainy day women #12 and 35’ (a term for a doobie) and the epic slow and melancholy ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’.

This was Dylan motoring at his very best with poetry leaping from his tongue in one long cavorting stream. Nearly all these songs have gone on to become classics and there were so many of them – ‘Stuck inside of mobile with the Memphis Blues again’, ‘Visions of Johanna’, ‘Pledging my time’, ‘One of us must know, (sooner or later)’, ‘Temporarily like Achilles’, ‘Most likely you go your way, I’ll go mine’, ‘Absolutely sweet Marie’, ‘4th time around’, ‘Obviously 5 believers’ and ‘Just like a woman’.

It had raised the bar again.

Sadly it was also the end of an era. Just as the whole sixties thing, that had been inspired by Bob, began to gain momentum and get underway its architect dropped out. It had all got too much and a motorbike accident allowed him the excuse to get out, clean himself up, get rid of his whole unwanted persona as ‘the spokesperson for a generation,’ dump all the expectations, get over his strung-out nerves, and put things in perspective. He decided he didn’t want the shit.

What came after had some great moments but never reached the heights of his two purple patches in the sixties.


96. Beatles – Let it be

The Beatles were also suffering from careeritis. They had got sick of being with each other. There were personality clashes, jealousies over the inclusion of songs, managerial problems and financial concerns. It was all going pear-shaped. They were baling out and putting their solo careers into gear.

There was some dispute over whether this or Abbey Road was the last album by the fab four. It was all to do with recording dates and the shelving of the album ‘Get Back’. It matters little.

The album was brilliant despite the problems between the various members and their spouses. If this is what discord produces then there should be a lot more of it. The album was certainly a great way to go out. The shame of it is that they never got back together again. They were so much better together as we could see from the various solo careers. Both George and John started brilliantly and faded badly and Paul was all middle of the road. It was tragic that by the time they began to put their personal issues behind them we were robbed of any further reunion by a deranged madman who murdered John.

The highlight of the album for me was John’s ‘Across the universe’ which is my favourite Beatle track. But it was packed with other delights such as ‘Get back’, ‘I Me Mine’, ‘One after 909’, ‘Dig it’, ‘Let it be’, ‘Dig a pony’ and ‘The two of us’.

It was immaculate. Thanks guys.


97. Captain Beefheart – Spotlight Kid

The Spotlight Kid is another tour de force of Beefheart and one of my firm favourites. Don went on and on producing the greatest and most innovative Rock sound ever and using a number of different musicians in the process.

This album was a lot more blues based with slightly less discordant structures to the songs that a lot of people find more accessible. It still had all the Beefheart hallmarks though. His voice, lyrics and the sound of the band were all top-notch.

From the opening guitar riffs of ‘I’m going to booglarize you baby’ you get the feeling that this is something special. The second guitar comes in and then the bass. Beefheart growls into he mic and sends a shudder through you. First hearing and I was fully booglarized. ‘White Jam’ started very differently with its absence of guitar and keyboard emphasis but the lyrics were still as good. We won’t go into what this white jam might be. We’re back to guitars on ‘Blabber ‘n’ Smoke’. We’ve all been there. ‘When it blows its stacks’ is back to that ominous riff and growling. I know I wouldn’t want to be around when that blows!

The album goes on and on in the same vein with track after track of outstanding sound. By the time I’d been down the line with ‘Click Clack’ and got myself ready for a sub-aqua existence with ‘Grow fins’, my friend Paul’s favourite, I was certainly ready to believe that there was certainly ‘No Santa Claus on the Midnight train’. We were on our own!

I soared off into the sky in my slightly dirge-like glider.

What a superb album and it wasn’t even one of his best!


98. Family – Family Entertainment

Family were one of those highly talented Progressive Rock groups who emerged on the British Undergound scene in the sixties. They were one of those bands who were better live than on record. Their live performances were scintillating.

Roger Chapman’s voice was extremely distinctive with its great warbling quality. The band were very Tight. Charlie Whitney played most instruments and Rick Grech’s bass was excellent. He was later snaffled by Blind Faith and drunk himself to death in his forties.

This is my favourite album of theirs because it has the epic ‘Weaver of life’, classic ‘Observations from a hill’ and great ‘Hung up down’.

They should have gone on to greater things.


99. Beatles – Please Please Me

If you are looking for the album that made the biggest impact then this is it. You probably have to go back to Elvis Presley and his ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ album in 1957 to get close.

The Beatles exploded upon the scene and sent napalm cascading over the planet. It was the rebirth of Rock Music. Just when the American Establishment began to relax thinking they’d removed the scourge of Rock ‘n’ Roll the Beatles came and kicked everything into space. They released a swell like a burst damn. There was no way it was going to be put back in that bottle.

This album changed the world and paved the way for everything that came after. What poured through the hole they’d blasted transformed society, sparked off the sixties era of social reform and ushered in a whole new wave of liberalisation. All that from a set of songs on a chunk of waste material made from oil.

My friend Tony played me ‘I saw her standing there’ and I was completely blown away. As soon as you heard it you recognised the significance. This was new, different and modern. Not only that but it was also British!

They blew the past away. None of the Underground, psychedelia or Rock Music would have happened without them. This album was transformative. We’d all be wearing short back and sides without it.

Apart from the sound, and the appearance of the performers, the other incredible thing about this debut album was that seven of the fourteen tracks were written by the Beatles. That was unheard of. In general singers sung other people’s songs. Elvis did write songs. Of course there were exceptions such as Buddy Holly but in general the song-writers of the Brill Building in Tin Pan Alley provided the material or it was stolen from black R&B. This was a departure that gave the Beatles a big boost and enhanced their chances of longevity. Not only that but it was instantly obvious that the quality of even their early material – ‘I saw her standing there’, ‘Please please me’ and ‘PS I love you,’ – were every bit as good as the R&B classics that made up the rest of the album. Even their choice of the R&B material was unusual. It was not the usual songs that other Liverpool bands were covering. The Beatles had selected things like ‘Chains’, ‘Anna (go with him)’, ‘Boys’, ‘A taste of honey’ and ‘Twist and Shout’.

It blew the cobwebs out of the social machine!


100. Jimi Hendrix – Are you Experienced?

Talking of brilliant earth-shattering debut albums then this was another. I can still remember hearing ‘Hey Joe’ for the first time on an old portable tinny, plastic radio and sitting bolt upright to concentrate. My ears had never heard a sound like it. Jimmy exploded on us ready-formed.

That first album blew my young innocent mind. In early 1967 I was seventeen and clearly not at all experienced. When ‘Hey Joe’ came out in 1966 my American pen-friend (we are talking archaic social media here) wrote to me telling me that she and her friends liked getting high on grass and listening to Jimi. I imagined them out in a meadow on top of a hill with a portable radio. It did not take too long for me to catch up though.

Everything Jimi produced was mind-blowing. He shifted the whole music scene into another gear and propelled us into Progressive, Heavy and Psychedelic all at the same time.

The first album may have been all short tracks overseen by Chas Chandler but they spoke in Martian. That was lucky because we were all yearning to speak Martian and lapped it up. From ‘Foxy Lady’ to ‘Are you experienced?’ it was non-stop aural explosive delight. Jimi wrenched new sounds out of the guitar, new chords, new feedback and weaved it round his songs to create something from outer space. We loved it.

There are no stand-out tracks because they were all stand-out – ‘Fire’, ‘Love or Confusion?’ ‘Can you see me?’ ‘Manic depression’ ‘Third stone from the sun’ – it went on and on with one crazy new thing after another. The sound was so new, dynamic and loud. This debut was the start of something outrageously special. There’ll never be another Jimi.

101. Screaming Jay Hawkins – Cow fingers & mosquito pie

There’ll never be another Screaming Jay either! This is the man who back in the early 1950s started Shock-Rock. He developed an act that was so shocking that it must have scared the life out of that staid old world of ice-cream and apple-pie. He started off on stage springing out of a coffin complete with long cape, voodoo amulets, shrunken skulls, snakes, wide eyes and grimaces. Alan Freed put him on his Rock ‘n’ Roll shows as ‘the Wildman of Rock’ and I can’t imagine what effect having a huge Blackman leaping out of a coffin and gurning at the audience had on all those young teenage white girls.

The songs were in the same vein and his classic ‘I put a spell on you’ which came out in the mid fifties was considered so primitive with its grunting and groaning that it was banned from radio play. That song was covered by everyone on the Beat scene back in the sixties. He put his operatic voice to good use creating some outrageous songs and strange parodies of classics like ‘I love Paris’ which were so weird they were wonderful.

This album collects together most of those classic tracks with ‘I put a spell on you’, ‘Alligator wine’, ‘Frenzy’, ‘There’s something wrong with you’ and ‘Orange coloured sky’ though it does miss off the wonderful ‘Constipation Blues’ (for that you have to go to ‘Feast of the Mau-Mau’) and his much later cover of Tom Wait’s ‘Heart attack and Vine’ that was used in a commercial on TV.

His act has been copied and built on by lots of others including Screaming Lord Sutch and Alice Cooper.


102. Tommy Tucker – Hi Heeled Sneakers

Tommy produced two absolutely classic singles that were done in that Jimmy Reed/Slim Harpo style with the infectious beat – ‘Long tall Shorty’ and ‘Hi-heeled sneakers’. Those songs have been done to death by Beat groups and I can see why. They have that easy-going, laid-back jauntiness with a hypnotic bass-line.

Tommy unfortunately died early and never built on the success of his two brilliant singles. The manner of his death was really bizarre. He was touring England in the sixties and died of food poisoning from a hamburger. Surprisingly McDonalds did not feature him or his songs in any advertising (It wasn’t a McDonalds – we didn’t have them here back then!)

This album contains all his early stuff.


103. Bo Carter – Banana in your fruit basket

A lot of the Blues we have recorded was sanitised for general output. The Blues came from rural areas in Mississippi and Louisiana and was the music of the hard-working sharecropping families who worked there. It served many functions – as work-songs – to speed up the repetitive labour in the fields – as dance songs at the country barbeques – as busking songs in the streets – as songs for entertainment in the bars and brothels – and as protest and cathartic anger. I think a lot of these never saw the light of day. They were considered too dangerous to risk putting on vinyl. Life was

Bo Carter was performing back in the early 1930s and specialised in risqué acoustic Blues songs with double entendres. His guitar playing is very highly developed rag-time style. This album, as the name suggests, is full of these type of songs. Some of them are very amusing and some highly inventive. It includes such gems as ‘My pencil won’t write no more’, ‘Pussy cat blues’, ‘Don’t mash my digger so deep’, ‘Pin in your cushion’ and ‘What kind of scent is this?’

More of my 537 Essential Rock albums

Posted on by Opher

This is a section from the first part. One day I will get around to writing the second half!

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books

You can’t take the order of thes4e albums too seriously. They would change from day to day according to mood. I love ’em all!

72. Jimi Hendrix Experience – Axis Bold as Love

Axis was the second Hendrix album and not quite as raw as the first. They’d developed their style a bit with beautiful delicate songs such as ‘Little wing’ and ‘One rainy wish’ which showed off Jimi’s incredibly beautiful guitar sound vying with heavier numbers like ‘Spanish Castle Magic’ and ‘You’ve got me floating’.

I obtained this album by swapping it for a mono copy of the Beatles ‘Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band’.

I was fortunate to see him perform a number of times and see that guitar playing up close. There’s never been anyone to get close to him as a guitarist or showman. He was schooled in the old R&B showmen school and learnt his trade on the Southern American chitling circuit with Little Richard and the Isley Brothers. It was all about putting on a show. He was imbued with antics he’d learnt from guitar innovators like T-Bone Walker, Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson and Buddy Guy.

I love everything Hendrix did and have hundreds of hours of his outtakes and live stuff. It is sad that he only released four albums in his short life-time. Of the four this is the second best.


73. Kinks – Kinks

This was the first Kinks album and showed off the R&B style they’d developed as a Mod band. There were only a couple of originals on the album – the great ‘You really got me’ with its groundbreaking guitar riff in that distorted sound and the gentler ‘Stop your sobbing’. The rest of the album was covers of great R&B classics by Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Slim Harpo, Tommy Tucker and Lazy Lester.

I thought it was a brilliant debut.

I really liked a lot of the Ray Davies songs, particularly his satirical send up of English society, such as ‘Well respected man’, and his acerbic songs like ‘I’m not like everybody else,’ which I really took to heart. But I still go back to this first album. I think the slightly nasally drawl and great guitar sound made it special for me.


74. Mothers of Invention – Freak out

I prefer these early Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention albums to what came later when Frank had become a bit of a guitar hero. These albums were full of satire and zaniness and were no respecters of anything let alone the prevailing new hippie youth culture. He was a cynic.

Frank sent up everything. He despised the direction society was heading and the establishment who he believed was into controlling everything, was a libertine who believed that attitudes towards sex were ridiculous and seemed to have disrespect for everything going.

The humour in this album is excellent and the weird approach to song-writing is extraordinary. There are some fairly straightforward songs with doo-wop influence but it all veers off into weirdness, odd instruments and strange noises, interjections and experimental sections. Frank took on the great plastic society. He saw the whole fashion thing as being all part of it. He hated the hypocrisy of it all.

Frank is impossible to put into a category. I guess this album should be placed in a section of its own.

‘Who are the brain police?’ and ‘Help I’m a rock,’ used to really knock me out. But I guess frank summed it up himself in the song ‘You’re probably wondering who I am?’.


75. John Cooper Clarke – Snap Crackle & Bop

It is hard to select a top John Cooper Clarke album. I really love the ‘Very best of’ because it has my favourite track ‘Twat’ but that didn’t seem appropriate.

I finally settled on ‘Snap Crackle and Bop’ because of ‘Beasley Street’. That was the clincher.

When I first saw John it was at the height of Punk and he was snarling and spitting his poetry at the hecklers. When I saw him next he came with these backing tapes and spat the same hilarious vitriol over the tapes. Then he came along with a backing band.

I loved them all. He is certainly a one-off. It was a shame that he got into the heroin. I heard he’s shacked up with Nico for a while but now she’s dead and he’s back on the road.

I’ve got tickets to see him in Hull next month. I can’t wait!


76. Woody Guthrie – Columbia River collection

Now I’ve already been upbraided about putting artists into a Rock list who don’t play Rock. I make no apologies; it’s Rock to me!

 You’ve already had ‘The Dust-bowl Ballads’ and this is his second really important collection of songs.

Woody was an absolute original. He was an individual who spoke his mind and lived his life without limitations. I’m sure that did not make him easy to live with or popular with certain sections of society but that was just the way it was.

His books and lyrics have informed Rock acts from Dylan and Springsteen to the Bragg and the Boomtown Rats. He was been insinuated into everything that has heart and a social conscience. Woody was that social conscience of the world. He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind and never had an eye for success or where the money was. Woody was always just Woody.

I never get tired of listening to him and I never can get enough.

This is a weird set of songs in that they were commissioned by the Colombia River Authority. They had built the Columbia River Dam and great Hydro-electric scheme and wanted a poet/singer-songwriter to give it some attention. Some genius of a bright spark thought it would be good to hire Woody. We are forever grateful.

In one sense the Colombia River Authority represented the establishment that Woody was so often at loggerheads with. Yet I think he thought the scheme was good and socially sound so he put his heart and soul into it. The result was this collection culled from tens of songs that he wrote in a very short time. Woody was never slow on writing songs, hardly a day went by without him scribbling something down.

This contains some of his greatest efforts like ‘Pastures of Plenty’ and ‘The greatest thing that man has ever done’.

I’m not sure what the Colombia River Authority made of it.


77. Love – De Capo

This is the second Love album to feature in the list. I don’t rate it quite as highly as Forever Changes but it comes close. It is less refined and has more of a range of style.

I think there are a number of stand out tracks such as ‘!Que Vida!’ ‘She comes in colours’, the more experimental ‘Revelation’ and ‘Stephanie knows’ and it certainly pushed the boundaries.

This was Los Angeles in the late sixties when the Hippie culture was ruling the roost. The album reflects that hard edge that was present in the sixties in Los Angeles. The Freaks there were not quite so soft and gentle as their San Franciscan counterparts.

This album still has that Punk edge of the first album with some of the softer lyrical songs like in the ‘Forever Changes’ album plus a bit more of the psychedelic sound.

When Arthur was touring in the 2000s with Baby Lemonade he was joined by Johnny Echols who had emerged from his problems. It was good to see them on the same stage and looking good. I had a chat with him but he was really evasive.

If only Arthur hadn’t died so suddenly we might have really got some great new material. Who knows?


78. John Lee Hooker – I’m John Lee Hooker

So where do you start with John Lee Hooker? He recorded a million albums under a hundred different names. I bet he didn’t even remember who he was or what he’d done half the time.

I was tempting to go for some of his great last albums where he did a lot of his important tracks with other artists because the production was so good. But you can’t do that.

John was so influential bat in the early sixties with his Blues Boogie style and idiosyncratic rhythm. His songs like ‘Dimples’ and ‘Boom boom’ were covered by everyone. I had to select something that represented that and pick my way through the mine-field of his range of styles, all of which were good.

‘I’m John Lee Hooker’ seemed to fit the bill. It had most of his good stuff and was an electric Hooker. You can’t really go wrong! This has got ‘Dimples’, ‘Maudie’, ‘Boogie chillun’, ‘I’m in the mood’ and a host more and there’s a bit of a range.

You can’t have enough Hooker can you?


79. Sonny Boy Williamson – Bring in on home

Sonny Boy Williamson the second was another stalwart of the sixties Blues scene. He toured Britain using both the Animals and Yardbirds as backing bands before either of them were famous. So he had great taste in musicians.

Sonny was one of the leading experts on the mouth-harp and I remember him on TV playing it without hands, sucking it in and out of his mouth and still making it sound good. He influenced a lot of bands and produced some great songs. My favourite was always ‘Bring it on home’ but there were loads more. I was tempted to put ‘Down and out blues,’ as my selection because that was the main one I grew up with but this album has most of the tracks I wanted to hear.

I love Sonny’s soft mellow voice and that harp phrasing. He was one of the major Chicago players.

I went to see his grave when we were out in Mississippi. It’s tucked away in the back of a field outside Tuttwiler. It took a bit of finding but I wasn’t the only one who’d made that pilgrimage. There were a number of stones, rusting harmonicas and a big bottle of whisky.

I think he would have liked that! But hey – don’t start me talking!


80. Who – Live at Leeds

This should not have been ‘Live at Leeds’ it should have been ‘Live at Hull’.

The who had a formidable reputation as a live band. You only have to look at their performance at Monterey to see that. The Who, Hendrix and Otis were in a different league and blew everyone else away – and there were some big bands there! They were intent on capturing their live act on record.

They were hot and set out to record some live shows with good recording equipment. There was a general opinion that the recorded albums did not really do them justice.

Hull was to be the gig but in the end there were some technical issues and uit was the Leeds gig that was selected. A shame! Still – the Hull gig has since been released and is just as good. But ‘Live in Leeds’ was the album that showed what a great live band the Who were. It roared. From the opening chords it powers through.

I loved Mose Allison’s ‘Young man Blues’, Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘My generation’ and everything else too!

This is what Rock ‘n’ Roll can sound like. The band was at the peak of their power.


81. Traffic –  Mr Fantasy

There were quite a few little Pop songs that Traffic got involved with and a couple of them are on this album but there were also some exceptional songs like ‘Dear Mr Fantasy’, ‘No Face, No Name, No Number’ and ‘Heaven is in your mind’.

Traffic had created a new and distinctive sound that was very different to the Spencer Davis sound. Stevie Winwood obviously wanted to align himself with the new Progressive Underground Rock scene that was burgeoning in London. This album managed that.

I saw the band quite a bit live during those early years and they were always very musically tight and interesting. They were the sort of band who managed to create a mood.

It was a shame they eventually split up and Stevie went off to form the supposed Supergroup Blind Faith. I never did like them. I saw them, after all the hype, in Hyde Park, and was filled with expectation. All that was shattered. It seemed to me that Blind Faith had ripped the heart out of three good bands and come up with mediocrity in the process.

I did see New Traffic at the Jimi Hendrix Experience Royal Albert Hall farewell concert and found them really disappointing.

This was a good album.