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The Return Of The Son Of 1001 Albums etc.

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Now where was I? Oh yes… “The Blueprint” by Jay-Z. For the first couple of tracks I was wondering “When’s it going to start?”. Somewhere in the next one it did start, eventually. The tempo of the entire album seems to be a sort of slow shuffle. Some nice musical ideas throughout, but basically it’s this geezer going on and on about how f***ing great he is despite the hardships and troubles of his life. A too-long (well over an hour) borefest in my opinion. I nodded off for a while about 2/3 of the way in and don’t think I missed very much. “Blunderbuss” by Jack White shows his versatility in that just about every song is different from the others. All original compositions apart from one cover, too. The playing is exemplary, the material not quite there I feel, and I’m not sure I like his voice much when he’s singing in the higher registers. A good but not great one. I don’t feel a need to own this. “Bone Machine” by Tom Waits. I was surprised to discover I didn’t have this and was unfamiliar with nearly all of it. Some pretty extreme examples of what has » Continue Reading.

The 1001: The Exploration Continues

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“Black Monk Time” by The Monks is an interesting aural artefact. It’s very hard to believe this was recorded in 1966. Full of the “punk” attitude that oozed out again 10 years later, it shows antecedents of both The Ramones and The Modern Lovers and some of the weirder elements of the post-hippie “freak” scene. I could hear the drone-rock experiments of early Soft Machine (We Did It Again”) and Kevin Ayers & The Whole World (“Shooting At The Moon”) and also Can etc. in Germany. Haphazard and sloppy in both playing and composition, it’s not really a keeper but certainly a must-hear slice of history.

“Black Sabbath” by Black Sabbath is a landmark album in that it was the starter of a musical style that has persisted to this day. The compositions aren’t that great, and neither is the playing really. It has it’s moments and despite the sludgy sound it has moments of beauty. Not one for repeated listening but not objectionable by any means.

“Black Sabbath Vol. 4” by Black Sabbath is more of the same, for the most part, albeit with improved playing and production. The writing isn’t much better, with a few exceptions, being mostly » Continue Reading.

1001 Albums – the story so far

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I trawled through my previously-unheard “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die” Facebook posts, copied and pasted and edited them into this synopsis:

So I got this book “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die” for Chrimbo from my nephew and his missus. They really should have removed the “Half Price” sticker before wrapping it but never mind that. Although I have no plans to die in the immediate future, I’ve decided to give all the ones I’ve never heard a listen, just in case I’ve missed something amazing (and, of course, to confirm my prejudices when these prove correct).

Taking the unheard listed albums in alphabetical order by title, my first was “Ace Of Spades” by Motorhead. I’d heard most of it over the years but never the complete thing in album order. The otherwise loathsome Gary Bushell was probably correct in saying “Motorhead are Heavy Metal in the only meaningful sense of the term – everyone else is just pretending” in his 5-star review of this album in Sounds, all those years ago. I shall be buying this for playing loud in the car.

The next in my list was U2’s “Achtung Baby”. I was not » Continue Reading.