As dense as the world they seemed to create out of old soul samples, skewed minimalist Casio keyboard lines, cracked concrete beats and Kung-fu film samples, part of the magic of Wu-Tang is there are really entrances and invitations for anybody to come in and experience their unique vision…
Well, well, well, look what turned 50 this year! Half a century ago this deliciously raucous set of blisterin’ howlers was unleashed upon the world and goddamn we are all the better for it!
My older brother was your classic ‘80s tyrannical older sibling and hesher, (who grew up to be my friend and confidante, thankfully,) who, now that I’m older, I can admit, introduced me to many heavier bands that would construct pathways to find my own taste…
An evocative, dream-like, delicate, and almost-too-precious, shadowbox of a record, full of curios of quixotic poetry and sweetly faux-naif narratives by a verbose enchantress who sings in a bird-like warble…
It’s been a while now since the hip-hop duo Run The Jewels, comprised of El-P, short for “El Producto,” and Killer Mike, burst onto the national scene and began their steady climb to what, in this day and age, pretty much amounts to ‘household name’ status…
In the summer of 1967, a relative newcomer to the Los Angeles music scene, a talented songwriter and part-time fashion model named Bobbie Gentry, was hoping to at least score a job writing songs for other artists…
I am exhausted right now for so many reasons, and this album was bound to come up sooner or later, so having fought my whole life for my “right to party,” I need to be easy on myself tonight…
I am woefully untraveled. For one who has so much love for plenty of art and music from around the world, I haven’t been anywhere, never having even traveled farther than Baja, California in Mexico, the only other country I’ve ever been to…
Just look at this album cover. Perhaps your eye first registers the barb wire, cut across horizontally in several lines across the frame of the image or maybe it’s the beautiful black women half-naked with breasts bared. To me, the thing to notice is THEIR SMILES. Those big beaming smiles of transcendence that complement the fists raised in the air…
O, sweet CCR! In the last year of the ’60s these guys were on a roll, under the leadership of commander John Fogerty; this was their third album within a year, a mere three months after the release of “Green River,” so the mood is snakeskin, simultaneously rugged and smooth…
Sure, this was just released recently, but I’ve listened to it over and over, and was so compelled to listen to it LOUD that I ran out the day after and just bought the CD for listening in my car, (which I hardly ever do – I usually only buy CDs used, exclusively for my car – I’m a vinyl junkie, dig?) which is one of the times I can really let heavier music rip…
I once read that the name of this album was a homage to the Beach Boys’ unreleased legendary follow-up to Pet Sounds, “Smile.” While Wilson was working on the record, he’d call the random fragments of child-like dreamy music his “feels.” I can’t imagine a more appropriate title for this atmospheric wonderland of a record…
Had to throw this album on this morning, one of my absolute favorite records of St. Trane’s, his eighth studio album as band leader and his first for Impulse, the fledgling label that he would shepherd out of obscurity, becoming a go-to label for many of the hottest jazz players in the ‘60s era that went from hard bop to experimentation and free…
There once was a famous decadent poet named Verlaine in France. Less than a century after his death, a young punk rocker and aspiring poet named Tom Miller moved to New York City to meet up with a friend, another aspiring punk-poet named Richard Hell, and started a band…
Goddamn weird times. Meme-ology. Folks’ brains turning to mud. Now I need something for my mind, something to puzzle me, provoke me, make me have to think NEW thoughts….Fucking Trout. Mask. Replica.
This morning, I awoke with some darkness in my mind. I’ve had some strange and terrifying dreams lately, realistic because they are simply about people I know, loved ones going through horrors, that I’m relieved and grateful to realize are not reality when morning comes. Yet they resonate.
To hell with it! Who’m I trying to impress?! I just wrote about The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper,” so why not keep it simple and obvious: tectonic movers only for now! That’s right, I’m putting these New Yawk mooks on a tier reserved for only the most impactful game-changing slabs of wax! Ya don’t like it, go squawk to the fuzz or cry to yer mommy cuz I ain’t here to argue: The Ramones changed rock and roll forever.
“Hush little mommy don’t you cry/ I’ve got to see what it’s like on the world outside/ got to get out of this life somehow/ got to be free, got to be free now.” Thus begins this absolutely essential album and an excellent intro for anybody totally unfamiliar with The Kinks, released as the official US ban of the band by the American Musician’s Union (1967-70, seminal rock years) finally expired.
I can’t even imagine how mind blowing this album was in May 1967 when this came out. One of the first concept albums, certainly the first ‘popular’ concept album, it was sophisticated enough to impress the literati and artists of the time and brimming with enough melody and hooks to enchant generation after generation of rock music fans.
I’m not going to be able to really contribute anything substantial to the endless array of fawning verbiage that has accompanied this particular album (my fellow San Diegans, did you know the photo on the album cover was shot at the World Famous San Diego Zoo?!) Hmmm… As far as I’m concerned, “Pet Sounds” can only be understood simply on the merits of its artistic integrity and historical context.
This is one of the albums that inspired this entire list, as it was one of a “10 most influential records, no explanation, only covers” early quarantine challenge. One of the first albums I ever owned, bought on cassette right when it came out.
I was raised Catholic and went to church almost every Sunday for the first 16 years of my life. I was deeply spiritual from an early age, praying quite often, my heart a blossoming rose for Jesus, whose unfettered love for even the lowest of humankind, (lepers and whores, ya know?) conflated with my early understanding of non-violence espoused by my parents…
Comfort food for the ears. If you like jazz, then you probably like this record. I don’t care how often I’ve played it in my life but this is one of those records that gets me every time.
Ah, the days of MTV’s “120 Minutes” BEFORE Nirvana’s “Nevermind” exploded everything, and all that was underground leapt up onto the shiny platters of hungry consumers bibbed and salivating with sharpened knives and forks, ready to take your favorite bands that scared your parents and carve ‘em up into something perhaps a little more palatable…
Writing about Grouper is a pretty drastic pivot after Betty Davis yet something essential about feminism is still in play here, a gesture I don’t take lightly, the assertion and beauty of prismatic discovery, all the colors of the rainbow contribute.
Unjustly flying under the radar for decades, simply because she was Miles Davis’ second wife, Betty Davis is now spoken of with the same reverence as any of the funk greats that emerged in the late 1960s and after, say Sly and the Family Stone, and Parliament-Funkadelic.
“I hope that this album will be a form of meditation and a spiritual awakening for those who listen with their inner ear.” -Alice Coltrane, in album’s liner notes.
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