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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