BIG STAR
Recorded 1974/Released 1978
-Until about a week ago, I only ever owned this album on cassette, so when I wanted to hear it again after viewing the documentary "Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me," my friends at B-Side records hooked me up! Unlike the glistening first album and the ragged power pop glory of the second album, "Third/Sister Lovers" is nearly a Big Star album in name only as Alex Chilton is fully operating within deconstructive tendencies, making stunningly beautiful, heart aching songs while also re-contextualizing what exactly could possibly make a beautiful, heart aching song in the first place. .
UTOPIA
Released October 1975
-I tend to listen to this album in the Summer, and while that season has not officially arrived, there have been a few days around these parts that have suggested those languid days.
I originally purchased this album in the Summer of 1988, when I was working in a phone office center for Ticketmaster during my break from college. From the moment I began college and for about a year or two afterwards, I slowly began collecting every single Todd Rundgren release as they were all being re-issued on compact disc at that time. This particular album, the second from Rundgren's band Utopia is an entirely live effort that truly has it ALL!! You will hear prog rock/fusion on "Another Life," "Mister Triscuits," and the gloriously vibrant "The Seven Rays." You'll hear blistering hard rock on a cover of The Move's "Do Ya" as well as Rundgren's own "Heavy Metal Kids." Elements of folk, jazz and gospel all arrive of the splendid acoustic track "The Wheel" (complete with horribly off-time audience clapping) and you'll even hear a bit of Broadway with an incorporation of "Something's Coming" from "West Side Story." And to cap it all off is the song known to Rundgren fans worldwide as the Utopia National Anthem, "Just One Victory."
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FUNKADELIC
Released May 22, 1972
-While listening to the latest album from The Roots, I was compelled to return to an album that I feel truly set the stage for what The Roots have accomplished with their most recent works as well as what Erykah Badu achieved with "New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)" (released February 26, 2008).
This album, the band's fourth, was the first to attain a bit of the studio polish the earlier releases did nto have, but believe me, it is no less freaky, funky and nasty. George Clinton and his collective of singers and musicians, including the mind melting guitar work of Eddie Hazel and the iconic keyboard flourishes of Bernie Worrell, created a double album treatise reflecting on the status of Black America, as well as America at large, in the early 1970's.
THIEVERY CORPORATION
Released August 22, 2000
-In my classroom, this album possesses a constant presence, especially on those cloudy, rainy days. It really sets a more tranquil mood, most necessary for those excitable little ones.
FUNKADELIC
Released July 1970
-For a group that has almost nothing but GREAT albums, their second album is possibly my most favorite release. While George Clinton and his arsenal of singers and musicians had not quite mastered obtaining a certain studio polish quite yet, the ragged nature of the album's six songs contributes masterfully to the music's dark, acid rock/funk palate. The 10 minute title track, with all manner of spoken voices increasing in paranoid existential frenzy combined with Eddie Hazel's mind melting guitar work, firmly sets the stage for the full throttle audio experience we will hear. From tracks like "Friday Night, August 14th," "Funky Dollar Bill," the incredible "I Want To Know If It's Good To You," "Some More" and the album's downright bizarre final track, "Eulogy And Light," the brilliantly disturbing re-working of "The Lord's Prayer," complete with backwards female vocals, delivers a grim journey that will also essentially give you a contact high. Never has such a bad trip sounded so amazing.
R.E.M.
Released November 8, 1988
-When this album was first released, I was a Freshman in college and believe me, I was just trying my best to get away from this band as their presence just permeated the landscape. You really couldn't get away from them (much like U2 during the same time period) and therefore, my opinion sof the actual music contain within this album were clouded. It wasn't until many years later, when I had fully embraced the band that I began to re-evaluate the very albums that I had previously dismissed.
For a band that is/was as idiosyncratic and enigmatic as R.E.M., I do think that this album, their major label debut release, is a strange, weird and pretty album that defies classification. I loved the louder, more politically motivated songs ("Get Up," "Turn You Inside Out," "Orange Crush"), and the beauty of "You Are The Everything" has begun to reveal its power to me. But "Stand" remains just as irritating as it ever did for me but on the other hand, I have to say that the earnest and dark "The Wrong Child" is the one that I find deeply haunting.
Also, I happen to have been listening to the album's 25th anniversary deluxe edition's second disc which features a complete live set, which further proves tome what a thunderous band R.E.M. was, packing a ferocious wallop through the excellence of their performance plus the arrangements of their song selections.
ERIC MATTHEWS
Released September 26, 1995
-Now how did I not know about this????
As with the terrific music of Papas Fritas, which I somehow only discovered just last month courtesy of the fine young DJs at student radio WSUM-FM, this very album came to me as a gift from my friend Steve Manley, the proprietor of the legendary B-Side Records, my record store of choice in Madison.
Don't let the resemblance to a certain Rick Astley deter you as Steve knows precisely what he is talking about. Eric Matthews, singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist (he even plays all of the wonderfully lush brass sections on the album) brings you glorious, symphonic pop songs, the very kind that feel born from the world of The Beatles but somehow blaze their own creative path through Matthews' terrific performance and expert songwriting which indeed grabbed me from the very first listen.
In fact, Steve played the first two songs for me while I was in the store making a new purchase and seeing my pleasure, he handed me this copy from the cut-out bin for free, as a gesture of musical solidarity feeling that I would appreciate it most. As he so often is, he was absolutely right!
Thank you!!!
YES
Released February 19, 1971
-A personal favorite from one of my favorite bands that somehow popped into my head one day, inspiring me to listen to it once again, after having not heard it for many years. I could travel through the wormhole of "Starship Trooper" forever.
R.E.M.
-Out of their lengthy catalog, this album remains one of my favorites as R.E.M. fully embraced their glam rock passions and delivered a loud, brash, more sexually driven album fueled by Peter Buck's rainbow colored guitar heroics.
B.B. KING
Released June 27, 2006
-On the morning that I went to my classroom to begin preparing for the summer session, I felt the need to hear the blues!!! Just song for song, I was blown away all over again wit the gift that has been given to us all courtesy of B.B. King and Lucille.
THE CLASH
Released February 29, 1988
-I needed some extra special energy to motivate myself to clean the classroom in preparation for summer school. Yes, I listened to The Clash while I cleaned my preschool classroom. WHAT!
"TUG OF WAR" PAUL McCARTNEY Released April 26, 1982
"FLAMING PIE" PAUL McCARTNEY Released May 5, 1997
-To celebrate Sir McCartney's 72nd birthday on June 18th, I listened to both of these absolutely wonderful albums.
TODD RUNDGREN
Released February 1974
-For a musical odyssey that has possessed more than its share of hairpin curves, this 1974 double album is one of Rundgren's most experimental and diverse releases...and it remains one of my absolute favorites.
Yes, there are the lush pop songs and heart-on-sleeve, yet decidedly left of center ballads ("Izzat Love," "I Think You Know," "Useless Begging"), but this is an album that proudly makes considerable room and space for volcanic guitar driven prog rock epics ("Heavy Metal Kids," "Everybody's Going To Heaven/King Kong Reggae," and the mind blowing "Number One Lowest Common Denominator"), utopian hymns and anthems (the classic "A Dream Goes On Forever," "The Last Ride" and "Sons Of 1984"), plus tributes to Gilbert and Sullivan ("Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song"), and indescribable synthesizer wormholes (the impossibly titled "In And Out The Chakras We Go (Formerly: 'Shaft Goes To Outer Space'"). You will truly never hear anything quite like this album and once you do, it is one of those releases that once the music fishes, you realize that you have truly been somewhere.
And yes, I should also say that I listened to it on June 22nd, Todd Rundgren's 66th birthday.
BILLY COBHAM
Released October 1, 1973
I owe it all to Crockett and Tubbs.
Back when I was a teenager in the mid 1980's, I, like so many of my friends, was obsessed with television's "Miami Vice." While so many were taken in with the cars and the clothes I paid close attention to the cinematography, which appeared to be more like a feature film than television, and most notably, the musical score, which was composed and performed by keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Jan Hammer. I proceeded to do some investigative digging and soon discovered that Hammer had been a member of Mahavishnu Orchestra. I then asked my Father if he knew of this fusion band, and not only had he heard of them, he owned the "Birds Of Fire" album (released March 1973).
Well, that album led me to the album featured just above these digitally printed words as Hammer was bandmates with drummer extraordinaire Billy Cobham and with all due respect to Miles Davis' groundbreaking , pioneering work, "Spectrum," Cobham's debut solo release, which he composed and produced the entire recording (and on which Jan Hammer appears throughout), is without question my favorite fusion album.
Recorded over only three days (!), "Spectrum" is an album of ferocious velocity, versatility, precision and jaw dropping forcefulness. From the very first seconds, I guarantee that you will be holding on for dear life as Cobham, Hammer, the late Deep Purple guitarist Tommy Bolin and bassist Lee Sklar take the listener upon a blistering musical joy ride. Tracks like "Quadrant 4" and "Anxiety/Taurian Matador" will leave you breathless while the propulsive, nearly 10 minute "Stratus" and the funky "Snoopy's Search/Red Baron" provide the moody, slow burns that build beautifully in intensity.
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THE TIME
Released July 29, 1981
-The debut release from the only band Prince has claimed to have ever been afraid of. He truly created his own monster as this album, on which he wrote and produced every track (under the pseudonym of Jamie Starr), in actuality features only himself and Morris Day in the studio. Just six songs (including "Cool" and "The Stick," all of them masterful and it is really great to hear how the mythology of The Time all began.
THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
Released July 6, 2007
-As Billy Corgan is currently hard at work on the first of two new albums by The Smashing Pumpkins, as well as shouldering more band lineup changes (drummer Mike Byrne is sadly no longer part of the Pumpkins' patch, bassist/vocalist Nicole Fiorentino's presence is limited at best and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee is bashing the skins on one of the new albums), I wanted to return to the punishing art-metal of this 2007 album, the first music released after the band's resurrection. With tracks like "Doomsday Clock," the cymbal destroying "Starz" and the nearly ten minute, Fela Kuti inspired juggernaut "United States" (which features former drummer Jimmy Chamberlin's astonishing drumming all recorded live to tape and all in one take), this album finds Corgan's songwriting more overtly political and even paranoid as he examines what it means to live in America in the 21st century.
MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO
Released June 4, 2002
-As I have been saying more and more recently, uplift the art, uplift the race. Just imagine if an album like this received the level of airplay as what typically finds itself upon the radio or is placed in the front row seat of our public consciousness. We deserve better and Meshell Ndegeocello provides copiously.
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"LED ZEPPELIN II" LED ZEPPELIN Released October 22, 1969
"LED ZEPPELIN III" LED ZEPPELIN Released October 5, 1970
-The Zeppelin remasters. Supervised and produced by Jimmy Page. 'Nuff said.
Stay tuned to this station to see where the music takes me next month.
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