ILM's Now For Something Completely Different... 70s Album Poll Results! Top 100 Countdown! (Part 2)

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Other thread ( ILM's Now For Something Completely Different... 70s Album Poll Results! Top 100 Countdown! ) was too unwieldy and many had problems loading it so for the actual proper top 100 we have a nice shiny new thread. And only a sadsack could have a problem with it!

https://i.canvasugc.com/ugc/original/5c85df2a48069765638e9d775f64f064fa9ad829.png
AKA 1970-1979 WTF - The Hard 'n' Heavy 'n' Loud + Krautrock, Arty, Noisy, Weird, Funky, Punky Shit - Albums Poll!
A poll that does sorta cover a multitude of genres and bands in actual fact and not just RAWK before anyone asks. All of ilx was given the chance to nominate and vote. We received over 1000 nominations, 94 ballots (many of whom were the full 100)

The purpose was to have a poll that would have different results to the previous 2 polls. Stay tuned for the ride!
Spotify Playlist - http://open.spotify.com/user/olken2000/playlist/5sdu93N2DjKkDk0NMe6sFH
spotify:user:olken2000:playlist:5sdu93N2DjKkDk0NMe6sFH

― Algerian Goalkeeper, Friday, March 15, 2013 8:33 PM (1 week ago)

Direct Link to poll recap & full results

why does that erlewine hack get mentioned in half the reviews? he regularly shows no understanding. you can find much better reviews on amazon or rateyourmusic - please do so from now on. that you work for a review site shouldn't give you ulterior authority

― delete (imago), Monday, 25 March 2013 18:17 (21 seconds ago)

But the other half are by Ned!

If you want to post better reviews from anywhere LJ please feel free to do so!

ned at least gives the impression he's listened carefully to the whole album

ILX threads are usually fairly good sources of reviews too

100. TANGERINE DREAM Electronic Meditation (2055 Points, 15 Votes)
RYM: #633 for 1970
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/752/MI0001752315.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/7sRREqwBDvblYnTxnev0tY
spotify:album:7sRREqwBDvblYnTxnev0tY

Psychedelic music spawned so many fragmented genres of rock in the late 60s, it's easy to forget that at one point, most of the bands were trying to accomplish the same, basic thing: To change the world with music. Failing that, they might have settled for freaking themselves out, but exploration into the unknown was the key. Peace and love? Sure, sometimes. Surreal visions of the beyond? Check. Crazy backwards guitar solos? Extra nice. This kind of faith in a better tomorrow through experimentation (or at least the aping of experimentation, in the hopes of stumbling over a little second-hand wisdom) is one of the aspects of late-60s music culture that makes it so unique, and consequently why, in many ways, it was the last time rock was free of its own self-conscious ambition.

American and British bands were quick to establish national schools of psychedelia, but continental European bands evolved differently. Countries like Germany and Sweden, far from the epicenters of pop and rock flourish, got their news via weekend radio shows and imported LPs. German guitarist Edgar Froese, playing with a beat combo The Ones, had already formed a long-distance attachment to Jimi Hendrix when he met Salvador Dali, and was inspired to form the earliest version of Tangerine Dream (named after a lyric in The Beatles' "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds") in 1967. Froese met Berlin club owner Conrad Schnitzler, himself a student of avant-garde sculpture and music (via his former teacher Karlheinz Stockhausen), and later, drummer Klaus Schulze. Along with organist Jimmy Jackson, they formed the version of TD that produced their first LP, Electronic Meditation.

TD oozes their way out of the gate with the primordial muck of "Genesis": A short, but telling introduction to a world apart from your mom's wholesome rock and roll. Fuzzy guitar flutter and Schulze's rin-tin-tinny cymbal rattle the stage clear for Schnitzler's basso profundo cello moan. That moan, for better or for worse, is the "melody" here, and I suppose that makes the quivering electro-effects a counterpoint. Flautist Thomas Keyserling (uncredited on the original release) bubbles here and offers a glissando there; at the height of synergetic convergence, Shulze drops a caveman stomp on the toms. If this was hippie music, it was borne of the most sincerely gone magick available.

The two epics (a compositional preference Froese never abandoned) are "Cold Smoke" and "Journey Through A Burning Brain", both of which sound much more in tune with music Shulze and Schnitzler would go on to create than anything TD became famous for. In fact, parts of "Journey" remind me of each of Schnitzler's Kluster LPs, with unidentified sound effects and a hard-line approach to free improvisation: Any melodies are purely coincidental, and should not detract from the generally horrific vibe. The band does lapse into prototypical krautrock beat-mantra midway through, but makes sure to mix in sufficiently atonal flute soloing, and Froese's boundless, rhythmless guitar stylings. "Cold Smoke" begins with a different strategy, one much closer to what most folks think of when TD is mentioned: Keyboard-dominated atmospherics. That strategy lasts for exactly one minute before Shulze's cymbals rip apart the solemn organ chords; the organ tries to come back, and Shulze destroys it again. In the end, things end up fairly similar to the previous tune, though the seeds of a gentler TD have been planted.

"Ashes to Ashes" takes the organ from "Cold Smoke" and adds some Doors-ish cocktail-rock drumming, and of course, more free guitar and flute. On Electronic Meditation, this tune is as close to rock as the group played, and in places is not unlike concurrent Grateful Dead (or more accurately, Amon Duul II). "Resurrection" tidies up the biblical concept with church organ and a backwards sermon (devilish!), and a return of the gooey acid-ballet of the opening song (hereby allowing TD to corner the market on psychedelic, freeform biblical concept albums from Germany). It was a far cry from the mystical impressionism of their mid-70s LPs (with only Froese remaining from this trio), and anyone who thinks the band is good for little more than New Age background moods will be surprised by this music. -- Dominique Leone, Pitchfork

In October 1969, three intensely powerful and Visionary experimental musicians entered the Mixed Media Studio, in West Berlin, a walled city surrounded by miles of grey Eastern European nothingness...J. Cope

review
by Jim Brenholts

Electronic Meditation, Tangerine Dream's debut album, features the lineup of Edgar Froese, Conrad Schnitzler, and Klaus Schulze (his only album with Tangerine Dream). The album is not without its flaws, but it's strong in many ways and shows abundant promise. Wildly experimental timbres, passages, and textures dominate this sound world. Bringing a rock & roll effort to a decidedly avant-garde sound, the album manages to be very accessible and hard to dislike. Of those who were working at the same time, Electronic Meditation is most similar to the music of Pink Floyd and Amon Düül.

I really like Julian Cope's reviewing, seeing as we're on the subject

good start to the top 100 countdown.

Those who don't have Krautrocksampler but want to read some of Cope's entries can Google it -- the PDF is available in many locations.

It's been extremely time consuming to track down reviews, and sometimes even type them in. It's true that RYM often has better reviews than AMG. If you think one is especially good, feel free to post.

was a fan of ^^^your reviews before I even found ILX, no harm in self-publicity dude!

like, you wouldn't believe how hard it was to get a proper review of My Computer's 2nd album. anyway, on with it

Thanks! But I just meant that AG and I are kind of maxed out with our time, but additional quotes/reviews are welcome from whoever cares to post.

99. THROBBING GRISTLE D.O.A. - The Third and Final Report (2075 Points, 15 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #190 for 1978
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0000/046/MI0000046544.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

D.o.A. is brighter in tone and more polished in technique. Less cohesive than the previous album, D.o.A. places greater emphasis on live material, found tapes and individual productions by separate members of the band. The music is aggressively anti-melodic, but the spirit is powerful and the surprises plentiful. Recommended for the strong. -- Trouser Press

review
by Ted Mills

Breaking from the live sound of the previous Second Annual Report, D.O.A. finds the group assembling collages of computer noise (before connecting to the internet sounded almost friendly), cassette tapes on fast forward, looped feedback and tape hiss, surreptitiously recorded conversation, threatening phone calls, and much more, all to a grand alienating effect, the sound of a gray day in a British tower block after all the drugs have run out. Of course, this was the intended effect and the band succeed well enough. "Weeping," Genesis P-Orridge's version of a love ballad, loses itself among delayed strings and drones, a barely enunciated vocal, and a violin like a squeaky door. "Hamburger Lady" (about a burn victim) is even more repellent, but in a good way -- a genuinely scary listen. "AB/7A," on the other hand, approaches the pulsing electronics of Kraftwerk or early Yello.

I noticed a Duttywine on here somewhere, that made me lol!

98. THE WHO Who's Next (2091 Points, 13 Votes)
RYM: #4 for 1971 , #53 overall | Acclaimed: #33 | RS: #28 | Pitchfork: #15
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/537/MI0001537372.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/3ipneUq3vZhmTXOFZMoHkf
spotify:album:3ipneUq3vZhmTXOFZMoHkf

With its acoustic guitars and drumless bits, this triumph of hard rock is no more a pure hard rock album than Tommy. It's got more juice than Live at Leeds. And--are you listening, John Fogerty?--it uses the synthesizer to vary the power trio format, not to art things up. Given Peter Townshend's sharpness and compassion, even his out-front political disengagement--"I don't need to fight"--seems positive. The real theme, I think, is "getting in tune to the straight and narrow," and comes naturally to someone who's devoted a whole LP to the strictures of hit radio. Another sign of growth: the love songs. A -- R. Christgau

Who's Next, regardless of what you may have been led to believe to the contrary, is neither the soundtrack of the realization of Pete Townshend's apparently-aborted Hollywood dream, the greatest live album in the history of the universe, nor a, shudder, rock opera, but rather an old-fashioned long-player containing intelligently-conceived, superbly-performed, brilliantly-produced, and sometimes even exciting rock and roll.

The musicianship is undisputably excellent, with Keith Moon thrashing and bashing more precisely than ever before on record, Entwistle dreaming up all manner of scrumptious melodic and rhythmic flourishes (listen especially to what he plays beneath the chorus of "Won't Get Fooled Again"), and Townshend, be it chunky acoustic rhythm, resounding monster chords of the classic sort, or cogent and lyrical soloes, playing with exemplary efficiency and taste.

As for the album's production, Townshend has, with the able assistance of Glyn Johns in the dual role of engineer and co-producer, come up with one of the most masterfully-recorded rock records in recent memory. Whether so precise a sound as this record's becomes the Who is, at this point, less relevant than the consideration that they've now satisfied their curiosity about whether or not they could be recorded as crisply as, say, Thunderclap Newman.

And with the long LP version of "Won't Get Fooled Again," an ingeniously-constructed panoramic view of methods of attack they've grown fondest of over the years, they've succeeded in committing to vinyl a comprehensive primer of basic Whostyle.

Such dynamics! The beautiful quietly lyrical moments of such selections as "The Song Is Over," "Gettin' In Tune," and "Behind Blue Eyes" are juxtaposed with the thundering rock that is the marrow of those songs so that each is rendered even more poignant.

To further frost the confection, Townshend wrings more than his money's worth out of his £14,000-worth of synthesizers, making, I daresay, shrewder -- at once more adventurous and better-integrated -- use of them than any rock experimenter before him.

In "Baba O'Riley," for instance, he sets the stage for the band's dramatic entrance with a pre-recorded VCS3 part he obtained by programming certain of his vital statistics into a computer hooked up to the synthesizer, then treats the part as a drone while the song's two major chords are transposed over it, and later has the band playing against it (that is, piling a few gigantic chords on it while it keeps going "Meep-meep-meep-meep-meep...") to lead into a solo by guest fiddler Dave Arbus.

Next, on "Bargain," he uses his ARP both as a solo instrument and as a backdrop to his own beautiful guitar solo.

There's just so much to be astonished and delighted by on this album once you get used to its kinda chilly perfection...

There's Roger Daltrey singing, "And I'm gonna 'chune' right in on you," during "Gettin' In Tune," which is so wonderous that it's enough to keep the listener's mind off the possibly unpleasant implications of "the straight and narrow" being what's been gotten in tune to.

There's Daltrey bestowing an excellent dramatic reading (note especially his intonation of the word "vengeance") on interesting lyrics in front of the prettiest Who harmonies in ever so long in "Behind Blue Eyes."

There's Imbecile's stupendously catchy and stupid "My Wife," which deals with the danger of being both married and fond of lazing about in the boozer until all hours. (What a pity that The Ox's pleasantly adenoidal voice is all but lost beneath the instruments -- "Can this be a result of jealousy on Townshend's part?" you'll long to know for sure).

And, ultimately, there is "The Song Is Over," one of a few survivors on Next from the recently-aborted Bobby project, an un-utterably beautiful song in which Townshend sings exquisitely over a gentle piano background before and in between Daltrey charging in exhilaratingly over a hard part while breathtaking chord changes in the manner of the "Listening to you I hear the music..." refrain from Tommy. Definitely up there with "Rael" and "Pinball Wizard" and "I'm The Face" among their very best work is this one.

And, just to make it clear to any cretins out there in Radioland that this is just a plain old-fashioned long-player, there are a couple of throwaways: The faintly pretty but negligible "Love Ain't For Keeping" (which most certainly does not deserve to succeed "Heaven And Hell" as the group's stage-opener, unless they play it live about ten trillion times harder than they do on record), and the faintly inane "Goin' Mobile," which celebrates the joys of, ho hum, being free to roam the highways and byways in one's trailer.

And there you have it, chums, an album that, despite a degree of sober calculatedness that would prove fatal to a lesser group, ranks right up there with David Bowie's and Black Oak Arkansas's and Crazy Horse's and Procol Harum's and Alice Cooper's and Christopher Milk's as among the most wondrous of 1971. In view of the fact that Pete's resumed smashing shit out of his guitar at the end of performances and that they've hopefully now resolved all their anxieties about technique, it's eminently reasonable to assume that subsequent Who albums won't be no shrinking violets either. -- John Mendolsohn, RS

It is The Who's best-selling album -- and, in main man Pete Townshend's view, the finest. But it was born out of a crisis; Lifehouse, the follow-up to The Who's conceptual hit Tommy, had faltered after months of preparation because no one, bar its author, understood it. Ethan A. Russell's cover photo for Who's Nextpoked fun at 2001: A Space Odyssey, but served equally well as a comment on the band's own more grandiose ambitions (a rejected cover idea featured Keith Moon in a corset, with a riding crop).
Humiliated, Townshend was persuaded to put the best songs on an album that told no story. Some were hard, such as "Bargain"; some were singalongs, such as "Getting In Tune"; and one -- bassist John Entwistle's droll "My Wife" -- was nothing to do with Lifehouse at all (the woman in question, said Entwistle, took it well: she did not come after him -- her lawyers did).

Towering above all the rest were a trio of the finest hard rock anthems that ever erupted. "Baba O'Riley" -- its name a conflation of Townshend's guru Meher Baba and avant-garde composer Terry Riley -- is a sublime blend of synthesizer and slashing guitar. "Behind Blue Eyes" is poetry with an attitude. And "Won't Get Fooled Again" is simply a monster.

All three were part of The Who's performance at the post-9/11 gig at Madison Square Garden, The Concert for New York. The night's most rapturously received set, it proved that the passing decades had diminished neither the singers nor the songs. -- Bruno MacDonald, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

review
[-] by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Much of Who's Next derives from Lifehouse, an ambitious sci-fi rock opera Pete Townshend abandoned after suffering a nervous breakdown, caused in part from working on the sequel to Tommy. There's no discernable theme behind these songs, yet this album is stronger than Tommy, falling just behind Who Sell Out as the finest record the Who ever cut. Townshend developed an infatuation with synthesizers during the recording of the album, and they're all over this album, adding texture where needed and amplifying the force, which is already at a fever pitch. Apart from Live at Leeds, the Who have never sounded as LOUD and unhinged as they do here, yet that's balanced by ballads, both lovely ("The Song Is Over") and scathing ("Behind Blue Eyes"). That's the key to Who's Next -- there's anger and sorrow, humor and regret, passion and tumult, all wrapped up in a blistering package where the rage is as affecting as the heartbreak. This is a retreat from the '60s, as Townshend declares the "Song Is Over," scorns the teenage wasteland, and bitterly declares that we "Won't Get Fooled Again." For all the sorrow and heartbreak that runs beneath the surface, this is an invigorating record, not just because Keith Moon runs rampant or because Roger Daltrey has never sung better or because John Entwistle spins out manic basslines that are as captivating as his "My Wife" is funny. This is invigorating because it has all of that, plus Townshend laying his soul bare in ways that are funny, painful, and utterly life-affirming. That is what the Who was about, not the rock operas, and that's why Who's Next is truer than Tommy or the abandoned Lifehouse. Those were art -- this, even with its pretensions, is rock & roll.

No cries of too low?

Next one up is going to get someone REALLY excited I think

97. POPOL VUH Coeur de Verre/Herz aus Glas (2098 Points, 18 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #176 for 1977
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/640/MI0001640298.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Subsequent releases on Brain (and Egg) tended to blend all these aspects, going through a purely instrumental phase, until Djong and Renate returned in 1979. During this era Popol Vuh had scored a number of Herzog films, although the albums billed as HERZ AUS GLAS (aka COEUR DE VERRE - the album I discovered Popol Vuh with) and NOSFERATU were not really soundtrack albums. These were embellished releases featuring the music from the films along with other material, hence the reason why NOSFERATU is also known as ON THE WAY TO A LITTLE WAY. These albums are some of the finest music to emerge from Germany in the mid to late-1970's, full of innovation, and mostly the vehicle of the extremely talented Daniel Fichelscher. -- Cosmic Egg

review
[-] by Thom Jurek

One of several soundtracks Florian Fricke composed for the films of Werner Herzog, Coeur de Verre (Heart from Glass, 1976) is one of the true masterpieces from Popol Vuh. Utilizing East Indian classical music as its starting point, Fricke and Daniel Fichelscher (guitars and percussion), with help from Alois Gromer on sitar and flutist Mattias Tippelskirch, have recorded one of the most blissed-out works in the band's history. Fricke's concentration on nearly painfully slowly developing themes (yes, even slower than usual) is tempered by the sheer reliance on transcendent euphoria in the processional tempos. The purposeful control of dynamics is necessary because of the deep emotional and spiritual connotations in the music. Composed to the images on the screen, the original version of "Sing, for Song Drives Away the Wolves" and the redone "Geimenschaft" appear here and close the album. Indeed they are its highlights, but that is only after a buildup that demands release after 45 minutes. Many would argue for one of the choral vocal works like Hosianna Mantra or Sei Still, Wisse ICH BIN as the band's flat-out masterpiece, but in its purely instrumental incarnation this one is unquestionably Popol Vuh's watermark. There is so much beauty here, it tenderly breaks the heart over and over again, seemingly effortlessly.

http://open.spotify.com/album/772tHE8yr3RImw6rzqfgGQ
spotify:album:772tHE8yr3RImw6rzqfgGQ

spotify links ^ it's the second disc in the set

No cries of too low?

I'm saving my "TOO LOW!" for Live At Leeds.

But it's great to see this in the top 100, at least.

The excitement will be later I suppose

Need to move on..

96. APHRODITE'S CHILD 666 (2115 Points, 19 Votes)
RYM: #112 for 1972 , #3496 overall
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/793/MI0002793641.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/4MB7X1urqItzKWFI73dyhb
spotify:album:4MB7X1urqItzKWFI73dyhb

review
by Steven McDonald

An amazingly bombastic concept album about the Apocalypse of St. John seen as a rock spectacle. Demis Roussos wails the lyrics in a frantically operatic falsetto, while the band pound fiercely through Vangelis' furiously complex music. It certainly has its moments, but the entire set eventually becomes too overwhelming to sit through.

This was an ultimate freakout album in its time -- a weird amalgam of group chants, Moog excursions, obligatory pop and narrations with Vangelis Papathanassiou on keyboards. Despite the moments of absolutely flat pop (one track per side) it barely affects the flow of the rest of this mind-bending and bad trip-inducing potpourri. Recorded under the influence of “SAHLEP”(!), it begins with “The System,” all steam hammer effects over chants until Silver Koulouris’ “Pinball Wizard” guitar introduces “Babylon” and the emergence of Aphrodite’s Child’s inner power trio -- a trip regrettably underrepresented here as ambient instrumentals abound: “The Four Horsemen” is all tinkling chimes and deep echo; “The Lamb” is an instrumental with blaring bouzouki-type keyboards, while “Aegean Sea” is all twinkling stars over a moonless Mediterranean until Lucas Sideras’ huge drum kit cracks open a fissure with Koulouris’ distorto guitar. Chimes appear out of the brief and barely audible “The Waking Beast” as a distant voice wails mournfully in Greek continues over a low synthesizer drone when “The Marching Beast” bursts in at ten times the volume with oscillating keyboard runs and punctuated by a ridiculous Tull-like flute trill. What follows is “The Battle of The Locusts” / “Do It.” A narrator intones the title in double echo, and it’s Ash Ra Tempel meets Santana in a burn out that gets persistently interrupted by the announcer as though he’s giving a play-by-play on the sidelines. But the Apocalypse will not be televised, but only represented by magnificent power trio rocking out to their highest extreme and Silver Koulouris goes for it via an angry mass of wah wah at the end.

Side three begins with a ringmaster ripping down the curtain of reality as percussion and horn play out a persistent beat while Roussos scats his lid off. He continues with his “ba ba/ba baba/ba baba baba” scat until you feel he must be freaking flying into oblivion from all the repetition. Then an out of control moog swirl-out and thundering drums turn everything inside out with the careening “The Wedding of the Lamb.” Narration turns up and with a ridiculously halting manner pronounces, “That...was...the...wedding...of...the...Lamb” as the drums dim. He returns to announce “Now...comes...the...capture...of...the...beast...” and it’s all haunted house clinking chains to prove it. What follows is the unforgettable highlight: “Infinity.” Irene Papas commits to vinyl a terrifying vocal repetition of “I am/ to come/I am to come at once.” It may not seem like much but brother, Papas’ range extends from the here to Pluto, beyond and back again: whispering turns to braying to barking to screaming as she shivers, pants, sighs, cries, with hysterical 2-megaton orgasms, ending in a final operatic rendition that provides all-too-welcome light relief.

Side four is almost totally taken up with the nearly 20-minute instrumental, “All The Seats Were Occupied.” Snippets of songs from the past three sides are scattered all over this sprawling piece and sometimes three or four get superimposed over each other. The quiet “Affenstunde”-type moog against Koulouris’ spindly guitar and randomly hit toms opens the track, but after everything is tied together by an exquisite drum roll it all falls into place. Braying sax and kazoo join the fray, and then the snippets start flying fast and furious. It gets hectic as congas, saxes and raga guitar are added to a West Coast jam, only to rock out like a royal shitstorm. More overdubs appear and even drown out Aphrodite’s Child on occasion, but then Koulouris sets off a perfect descending surf riff, igniting the power trio as chaotic additional instrumentation cloud everything. It gets SUPER bombastic here, and then more overdubs from “Infinity,” “Seven Bowls,” who cares – they’re too many of them until halted in its tracks by a sudden silence to reveal the last narrator breaking in to say: “All the seats were occupied.” Whoa: shrieking sax blares, the band kicks it out and Papas’ moans from “Infinity” break down the last ultimate fuck in the universe as the drums get kicked over. Right on. The Seth Man, April 2000

Coeur de Verre is really great, can't remember my ballot but on current listening this would no.1 with a bullet.

be

I was surprised more Popul Vuh albums were not nominated (especially since Coeur de Verre, good as it is, is less rock-oriented than some of the others).

yay, 666. one of my faves. I didn't do a ranked ballot but it would have been pretty high on my list

95. MARS The Complete Studio Recordings NYC 1977-1978 (2124 Points, 15 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #205 for 2003 , #4486 overall
http://thizzfacedisco.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/mars-the-complete-stud-450101.jpg

Major-label flunky that he was, Eno sold them out--one of their No New York tunes could be "I Wanna Be Your Dog" told by an imbecile, signifying nothing. Arto Lindsay is more steadfast--at this Christmas 1978 session he reveals his eternal CBGB billmates as the skronk nightmare of DNA's dreams. The voices are mixed-back exclamations and yowls. The guitars are all sludge, bang, and buzz--no chords, no timing, no articulation, maybe an upsurge occasionally. The drummer's job is to destroy any rudiment of a beat. Noise won't get much purer than this--I don't think. C+ -- R. Christgau

Your hair on cars/your arms detach/your eyes fly by/your torso in wax." With those immortal words Mars caterwauled into the hearts of noise lovers everywhere, marking the quartet's four-song appearance on No New York with an absolutely total lack of musical ability. (All the other bands on the Eno-produced compilation contained at least one member who could play in the traditional sense.) A bunch of New York art types who formed a band when that was considered a cool New York art type thing to do, Mars was pretty impressive if for nothing else than singleness of purpose. Often sounding like a screeching subway car driven by a jabbering, convulsive castrato, Mars' constantly revulsed stance made the rest ofNo New York's I-hate-sex crowd seem like a bunch of rank sensualists by comparison. Arto Lindsay recorded a 1978 CBGB set that comprises the 1980 12-inch EP; a few years later, Jim (Foetus) Thirlwell compiled and remixed the No New York tracks, all but one of the five EP songs and the group's single. The resultant 78 is all the Mars you need. -- Trouser Press

here's throbbing gristle - DOA: the third and final report

http://youtu.be/H46uvYbaPRg

Anyone playing catch up or who just joined us can post about previous entries at any time. All discussion is welcome!

<6 <6 <6

Jim (Foetus) Thirlwell compiled and remixed the No New York tracks, all but one of the five EP songs and the group's single. The resultant 78 is all the Mars you need. -- Trouser Press

prefer the original mixes tbrr

94. MC5 High Time (2144 Points, 17 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #135 for 1971, #3586 overall
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/445/MI0002445941.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/78DZmvvzz57tWpOMcgVjTN
spotify:album:78DZmvvzz57tWpOMcgVjTN

At its best, this combines the anarchic energy of John Sinclair's album with the pop control of Jon Landau's album. "Sister Anne" is a passionate farewell to a Catholic boyhood, and the jazz climax, however ill-conceived sonically (the horns sound funny after all those guitars), gets where it's going, fast. Mistake: "Miss X," an atrocious fuck-me-babe ballad. Some things they'll never learn. B+ -- R. Christgau

It seems almost too perfectly ironic that now, at a time in their career when most people have written them off as either dead or dying, the MC5 should power back into action with the first record that comes close to telling the tale of their legendary reputation and attendant charisma. This may appear particularly surprising, given the fact that the group's live performances have been none too cosmic of late, but then the old saw is that you can't keep a good band down, and it's never been more forcefully put than here.
Which is not to say that High Time is a perfect album, by any means. Most of side two, with the exception of a lovely little chorus run in Fred Smith's "Over and Over," doesn't hang together exceptionally well. A large part of the songs seem incomplete, written around chord progressions that quickly wear thin and words that display the lower edge of the school of right-on lyrics. Rob Tyner's "Future Now" (despite a knockout bass line) is the greatest offender in this case, and though there are some nice moves toward free-form sound on sound toward the end, nothing ultimately is developed or carried through. Wayne Kramer's "Poison" is a little better, opening with a lightning-like series of guitar exchanges, but when Rob comes in spitting words like "Nature, and Peace," one is reminded of nothing so much as the Chambers Brothers on a particularly V-signed night. Things come to a crashing finale with "Skunk (Somely Speaking)," which moves well for its first half of good ol' kick-em-out rock, and then dies a tragicomic death with the addition of some out-of-place horns.

But if the second side leaves much to be desired, side one is a no-bones classic. "Sister Anne," about a nun who "don't give a damn about re-vo-lu-tion/She's a liberated woman, she got her solution," is a top-flight piece of work in the old tradition. The MC5, whatever you might have felt were their other (sometimes glaring) faults, always knew how to play those I-IV-V progressions like nobody's business, and they're at their finest here. The song is put together like a charm, with a great kicking piano and a long soaring coda that carries you without a hitch into a bizarre Salvation Army instrumental at the end. Good shit, any way you look at it, and if there was ever a suspicion that the MC5 would never learn their way around the recording studio, let it be quietly put to rest now.

"Sister Anne" is only the beginning. "Baby Won't Ya" takes on where the Salvation Army leaves off, all rollicking choruses and guitar breaks. Rob's voice sounds strong and sure throughout, and when he hits the line about how "A lovely senorita took me by the hand. She said 'whoo baby, won't ya be my man'," it's easily worth another notch on the volume dial. From there, it's tossed to Wayne and "Miss X," a ragingly beautiful cut, helped along by a massive organ, incredible vocals, and a superb arrangement.

The capper, though, is saved for Dennis Thompson: his "Gotta Keep Movin'" not only defines the MC5 in the way that all of us would have liked to remember them throughout the past dismal year, but also manages to pull in every trick that literally made them the most exciting band in America for a brief and glorious time. It's all there the precise breaks, the madly screaming dual guitars, the fanatic drive and energy. Make no mistake, they shovel it out as good as it ever gets, and that's pretty damn good indeed.

For this, we can only praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. -- Lenny Kaye, RS

The main factor missing from the MC5's repertoire after their second album was their revolutionary stance. No longer immature troublemakers on the brink of starting a riot, Rob Tyner summed up their new demeanor by saying, "We're still pretty crazy, but not quite like we used to be". Indeed they weren't, for heroin use became a problem within the band. As Kramer stated, "it became an activity that was time consuming, and all of a sudden, it just became easier to get high". With their popularity dwindling, the Five decided to head for Europe, where they had almost legendary status. Even though it ended up being that, "the English were expecting white hot revolutionaries and got refried American hot rod music replete with Led Zeppelin licks", the band did end up finishing their third, and final, album.
Titled High Time,the album was a step back to the days of their first album, capturing the full intensity of the band once again. Still, while the album received much critical acclaim, High Time failed to improve the MC5's muddled sales record, and failed to win a niche in the top 200. Because of poor sales, Atlantic ended up dropping the band, which continued to suffer from drug problems and a lack of the unity which had been present a year before. Also, in late 1970, it was revealed that the band had filed for bankruptcy. To this, Pete Andrews, manager of the SRC band/recording complex responded, "I'm not surprised. The last I heard, they were $80,000 in debt. They weren't dealing fairly with promoters and agents, and I guess nobody would book them. They've kind of declined in popularity in the area anyway".

Scrounging for whatever success or recognition they could muster up, the band again returned to Europe. In the beginning, they were well received, with one critic stating, "the MC5 let loose an hour of sheer goodness" and "the audience was nearly caught with it's trousers down"  -- Ian Fines, Perfect Sound Forever

review
[-] by Mark Deming

MC5 were nearing the end of their long and bumpy trail when they cut High Time in 1971, and it was widely ignored upon initial release. While it lacks the flame-thrower energy and "off the man!" politics of Kick Out the Jams or the frantic pace and "AM Radio of the People" sound of Back in the USA, High Time sounds like MC5's relative equivalent to the Velvet Underground's Loaded, their last and most accessible album, but still highly idiosyncratic and full of well-written, solidly played tunes. Fred Smith's "Sister Anne" and "Skunk (Sonically Speaking)" bookend the album with a pair of smart, solidly performed hard rockers (bolstered by fine horn charts), and Wayne Kramer's "Poison" ranks with the best songs he brought to the band (he later revived it for his solo album The Hard Stuff). For a group that was apparently on the verge of collapse, MC5 approach this material with no small amount of skill and enthusiasm, and Geoffrey Haslam's production gives the band a big, punchy sound that suits them better than the lean, trebly tone of Back in the USA. It's interesting to imagine what MC5's history might have been like if High Time had been their first or second album rather than their last; while less stridently political than their other work, musically it's as uncompromising as anything they ever put to wax and would have given them much greater opportunities to subvert America's youth if the kids had ever had the chance to hear it.

Heart of Glass!! I was the #1 (obvs I guess) . The only other album of theirs I think would have fit is LT-LN, and for some reason this one was considered more rockin'. Seriously this album has the best pacing of any album I can think of. The songs by themselves are amazing, but they're a fragment of the album as a whole. It's seriously some of the most beautiful, evocative, even explosive music I have ever heard. Even though I have listened to it a million times, I'm still not sick of it. Hooray for Popol Vuh, #97!! "Transcendent euphoria" = I agree.

Delayed reaction but we got there!

I flip flop between High Times & Back in the USA, but they're both so great and still criminally underrated imo.

Now YAY HIGH TIME

"babes in arms" is my fave mc5 album.

With their popularity dwindling, the Five decided to head for Europe, where they had almost legendary status

Was reading a bit about this tour a while back. Hearing that the MC5 played a free festival in Worthing (a crumbly old seaside town near here that's mostly full of retired people) almost broke my brain a little.

ashamed to admit I only know Kick Out the Jams, will have to rectify that

That is shameful!

93. GOBLIN Suspiria (2170 Points, 18 Votes)
RYM: #13 for 1977 , #676 overall
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/485/MI0001485143.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/66X1aX8OnQZROjTlxHWYtg
spotify:album:66X1aX8OnQZROjTlxHWYtg

review
[-] by Tim DiGravina

Goblin's score to Dario Argento's Suspiria is a timeless, horrifying ride into crazed vibes and buzzing progressive rock. Billed as The Complete Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, this edition goes a bit overboard in its four redundant extra tracks. Before those final additions, Goblin kicks out the jazz-rock jams with cool aplomb and creates a number of genuinely unnerving compositions. Argento fans will swoon being able to hear Suspiria's terror centerpieces "Suspiria," "Witch," and "Sighs." "Suspiria" might contain some dated keyboard work, but the music rings like a demonic version of the score to The Exorcist. A wicked voice chants and hums along to the melody, before the song takes a prog rock departure nearly three minutes in. The song turns into something that Trans Am or their contemporaries might concoct on a better day; in that sense, Goblin's music is ahead of its time. "Witch" is equally creepy; it's the song that acts as the background to the movie's demented opening sequence. The song is as cinematic in its scope as Argento's brutal visuals. "Sighs" might one of the scariest songs ever recorded. Sounding like a throbbing didgeridoo nightmare, it's a monument to tension and suspense. On the remainder of the album, Goblin mostly strives for a cool jazz-rock hybrid. Suspiria works best for fans of the film, who will appreciate the terror of the songs more than newcomers who haven't experienced Argento's darkest creation. The score is as enjoyable removed from the movie as it is attached. Suspiria is quite an achievement, as a scary soundtrack and as a vibe-heavy rock album.

"babes in arms" is my fave mc5 album.

iirc "Gold" is the only essential thing on there that you can't get elsewhere right?

alright, a real Goblin album!

"Praise the lord and pass the ammunition"! I think I like Lenny Kaye's reviews better than Lester Bangs'.

The MC5 documentary, A True Testimonial was originally completed way back in 2002, and made it to a few festivals and theaters before it was pulled due to legal B.S. with members and filmmaker. So it's still not available on DVD, but it's floating around out there.

theres a few different recordings of tracks. it sounds grungier than the albums too.

Actually, not that anyone cares probably here's the poster from that Worthing festival that the MC5 were at, there's more than a few other names from this poll on there:
http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/phuncity-poster3.jpg

The best thing is the associated SciFi conference though - William Burroughs & JG Ballard on the bill. Far out!

Hey there we go!!!

as much as I love the MC5, my impression of Wayne Kramer has been forever tainted by walking into Rhino Records in 1997 and seeing his band playing a cover of MMMBop to a mostly empty store.

Haha! He was the suavest fucking guy ever though in his prime though right?

iirc "Gold" is the only essential thing on there that you can't get elsewhere right?

― wk, Monday, March 25, 2013 4:01 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's got the 45 version of "Looking at You," which trounces the one on Back in the U.S.A. Also has "I Just Don't Know," another essential early 45. Don't think either of these have been reissued anywhere else. Oh, and and "I Can Only Give You Everything," their first release.

I think those are all on '66 Breakout

maybe some different takes & mixes between these comps though. not sure. I started with babes & arms but never listened to it after I got the albums so it's been a long time

Ah, OK, I don't have that one. Good to know.

xp

92. FELA KUTI Zombie (2178 Points, 18 Votes)
RYM: #14 for 1977 , #399 overall | Acclaimed: #1133 | Pitchfork: #90
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/615/MI0001615390.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/1Gs6iohznUttOXNjQcAqIN
spotify:album:1Gs6iohznUttOXNjQcAqIN

Fela Anikulapo Kuti is a Nigerian pianist-saxophonist who makes real fusion music--if James Brown's stuff is Afro-American, he is Amer-African. No U.S. percussion ensemble would distinguish between first and second conga, but Fela's harmonic, melodic, and improvisational ideas are all adapted from Afro-American (which means part European) models. His sax style recalls the honkers, but it's more staccato, more complex rhythmically. Not only that, there are lyrics, in English, with crib sheet--very political, very associative, explicitly antibook. A- -- R. Christgau

Zombie, Fela Anikualapo Kuti's first stateside release, embodies the qualities that make him Nigeria's most popular musician and most notorious dissident folk hero. While the two roles are, of course, intertwined, the former is probably the one most accessible to Americans. Fela's mixture of jazz-rock instrumentation and West African percussion (a combination he terms "Afro-beat") is less a fusion than a rough and tenuous cohesion, but what results is original and exciting.

The story behind the title cut provides a context for understanding Fela's latter role. The lyrics to "Zombie" satirize, through call-and-response chanting, the robot-like obedience of the Nigerian military. When a group of soldiers heard the song, they burned down Fela's communal estate, beating many of his small army of bodyguards and raping the women with whom he lived. Fela was subsequently jailed, martyrized in a sensational trial and released. He now claims to be running for president in Nigeria's first national elections next year.

"Everything Scatter" is an after-the fact account of the clash at Fela's estate once again mocking the government. (Fela has since been barred from performing in Nigeria.) Unfortunately, some of the lyrics are incomprehensible because of the regional dialect ("wuru-wuro for dem back"?), and much of the subtlety and humor is lost. "Monkey Banana" pokes fun at the upwardly mobile aspirations of many black Nigerians, but once again the nuances of meaning are obscured.

As with reggae, one must accept the political overtones of this music to fully enjoy it, though Fela's are secular and considerably more sardonic than most reggae compositions. Like many reggae musicians, Fela and Afrika 70 smoke inordinate amounts of marijuana, which may partially be responsible for the music's pleasant temporal laxity. Thus, Zombie is a real challenge to listeners of American pop. -- Michael Duffey, RS

review
[-] by Sam Samuelson

Zombie was the most popular and impacting record that Fela Anikulopo Kuti and Africa 70 would record -- it ignited the nation to follow Fela's lead and antagonize the military zombies that had the population by the throat. Fela is direct and humorous in his attack as he barks out commands to the soldiers like: "Attention! Double up! Fall In! Fall out! Fall down! Get ready!" Meanwhile, his choir responds with "Zombie!" in between each statement. Since the groove was so absolutely contagious, it took the nation by storm: People in the street would put on a blank stare and walk with hands affront proclaiming "Zombie!" whenever they would see soldiers. If "Zombie" caught the attention of the populous it also cought the attention of the authority figures -- this would cause devastating personal and professional effects as the Nigerian government came down on him with absolute brute force not long after the release of this record. Also included are "Monkey Banana," a laid-back groove that showcases drummer Tony Allen's mastery of the Afro-beat, and "Everything Scatter," a standard mid-tempo romp. Both songs are forgetful in relation to "Zombie," but this is still an essential disc to own for the title track alone.

Ah, OK, I don't have that one. Good to know.

wait, never mind. Looking at You on '66 Breakout is a live version

Anyone know the best version of their 10+ minute "Black To Comm"? The one I have is from Motor City Is Burning which sounds like absolute ass. I keep hoping they performed it when they recorded Kick Out The Jams, and a pristine version is just waiting in the vaults for that deluxe reissue.

alright, a real Goblin album!

― wk, Monday, March 25, 2013 3:01 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

Anyone know the best version of their 10+ minute "Black To Comm"?

Best one I've heard is on Power Trip. Not the greatest sound quality, but when the rest of the band comes in after the opening chord vamp, you'll want to duck.

Kimono My House, Real Life and Superfly all should have been top hundred at least. I thought they would all easily make it.

Last one for the night coming up. Are you ready for another moronic review by Robert Christgau?

Kimono My House, Real Life and Superfly all should have been top hundred at least. I thought they would all easily make it.

Propaganda still coming up?

Propaganda wasn't nommed

damn. TOO LOW then

Too true. Sparks was my #1

91. OHIO PLAYERS Fire (2195 Points, 16 Votes)
RYM: #283 for 1974
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/177/MI0002177711.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/6jqy46bCaO2Ifosm1SFZDI
spotify:album:6jqy46bCaO2Ifosm1SFZDI

The makers of Shoogity-Boogity bring you: More Shoogity-Boogity. B -- R. Christgau

The author of some really shitty reviews brought you: More Shitty obnoxious reviewing.
----

review
by Alex Henderson

After greatly increasing their visibility with Skin Tight, the Ohio Players became even more visible with Fire -- an unpredictable masterpiece that boasted such explosive horn-driven funk jewels as "Smoke" and the wildly addictive title song. The Players were always best known for their hard-edged funk, but in fact, there was much more to their legacy. "I Want to Be Free," the almost innocent "Together," and the remorseful "It's All Over" demonstrate that their ballads and slower material could be first-rate soul treasures. The influence of gospel imagery and the black church experience had asserted itself on Skin Tight's "Is Anybody Gonna Be Saved," and does so once again on the intense "What the Hell" and the hit "Runnin' From the Devil." Without question, Fire was one of the Ohio Players' greatest triumphs -- both commercially and artistically.

lol

Will never understand why people revere Xgau.

me neither. I was loling at yet another Ohio Players record though.

Don't see why as they had a terrific output in the early to mid 70s

A run as good as anybodys

It's kind of funny though! He had to have gotten a lot of shit for it the first time, then he did it again! However if you recall, by Honey he must have felt guilty and wrote, "A/k/a Boogity-Shoogity, and I don't mean to be mean--I quite like these guys in limited doses..." and upped the grade to a B+.

I have most of the Ohio Players stuff and it does the job when good solid funk is needed. But I really don't see how it merits top 100 of the decade status. Only in ILM-land!

glad it's not just me

It does amongst funk fans.

plus you could say the same about albums from every genre in a poll.

I like how itt we draw lines in the sand as to who are or aren't true funk fans

Props to AG's unwavering love of funk! Beyond P-Funk, the funky force is just not as strong with me. I had a good time seeing Kool & the Gang last year, and hearing some Ohio Players again, but I've about hit my limit already and will probably be sick of it for another year or five.

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.spinner.com/media/2011/04/bootsy-collins.jpg
Mmmh. The funk is strong with this one.

Direct Link to poll recap & full results

Quality list I think and I hope everyone enjoys the Spotify playlist moodles set up.

As always you can post about any album or band that's already placed. Thoughts by those catching up or latecomers are always welcome as are comments about any of todays results and even the reviews posted with the results.

I guess it's dumb to make any comparisons at this point because presumably that's the last Ohio Players album that's going to place and there are several bands who are going to place a bunch in the top 100. But at this point I think combined Parliament and Funkadelic are leading with 8 albums having placed, and the Ohio Players are tied with Fela and Miles Davis with 6 albums. unless there's somebody I'm overlooking.

not complaining or anything, it's just been the biggest surprise of the poll so far for me, and makes me wonder if I should reassess the Ohio Players.

I threw together a playlist that's just the funk stuff

http://open.spotify.com/user/edward_iii/playlist/041HnhUG5v2j7ZnwK4FGbv

Propaganda wasn't nommed

― Non-Stop Erotic Calculus (bmus)

This is a real shame, It would have been in my top five as it's my favourite Sparks album and one of my thirty favourite albums of all time.

Ron&Russ signed mine..

Added today's albums to the big playlist.

http://open.spotify.com/user/olken2000/playlist/5sdu93N2DjKkDk0NMe6sFH
spotify:user:olken2000:playlist:5sdu93N2DjKkDk0NMe6sFH (put into Spotify search bar)

yeah kimono isn't in my top 5 sparks albums but wtf @ being outside the 100.

Another glam placing that hurts is electric warrior. I've always liked tyrannosaurus rex, abbreviated or otherwise, but it's only in the last year or so that I've fallen for electric warrior in a big way. Not even sure I mean that metaphorically, it feels like a real infatuation. I just melt. Was there ever a more exquisitely orchidaceous rock frontman?

Ron&Russ signed mine..

― Mark G

Nice!

I wish I'd been involved in the nominations thread now.

yeah kimono isn't in my top 5 sparks albums but wtf @ being outside the 100.

― beau 'daedaly (wins)

Which are your top five Sparks albums by the way?

yeah electric warrior placing hurts but the run of t rex -> misfits -> clash -> damned is pretty sweet

The original 70 poll - ILX 70s album poll - results

200 Brian Eno - Before and After Science 84
199 Bob Dylan And The Band - Before The Flood 84
198 Keith Jarrett - Koln Concert 85
197 Yes - Fragile 86
196 Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon 87
195 John Martyn - Solid Air 88
194 Jimi Hendrix - Band of Gypsys 89
193 Roxy Music - Stranded 89
192 Joni Mitchell - Hejira 90
191 Queen - A Night At The Opera 90
190 Cheap Trick - Heaven Tonight 90
189 Nilsson - Nilsson Sings Newman 90
188 Alvin Lucier - I Am Sitting In A Room 90
187 Swell Maps - A Trip To Marineville 91
186 Who - Quadrophenia 91
185 Neil Young- Zuma 91
184 Pere Ubu - Dub Housing 92
183Ivor Cutler - Life In A Scotch Sitting Room Vol. 2 93
182 Genesis - Selling England By The Pound 94
181 Saints - I'm Stranded 95
180 Gram Parsons - GP 95
179 Specials - s/t 95
178 Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water 97
177 Bauhaus - In The Flat Field 98
176 cerrone - cerrone 3: supernature 99
175 Carole King - Really Rosie [soundtrack] 103
174 Kiss - Destroyer 104
173 Randy Newman - Good Ol Boys 104
172 cecil taylor 'silent tongues' 105
171 Faust - Tapes 107
170 Mott The Hoople - Mott 107
169 Gong - Camembert Electrique 108
168 Jorge Ben - Africa Brasil 109
167 Jerry Goldsmith - Alien 109
166 This Heat - This Heat 110
165 Capt. Beefheart & the Magic Band - Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) 110
164 Brian Eno - Music For Airports 113
163Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak 113
162 Townes Van Zandt - Live At The Old Quarter 114
161 Donna Summer - Bad Girls 116
160 Black Devil -- Disco Club 118
159 Charlemagne Palestine - Four Manifestations On Six Elements 119
158 T. Rex - The Slider 120
157 Culture - Two Sevens Clash 121
156 Milton Nascimento & Lo Borges - Clube Da Esquina 121
155 Willie Nelson "Redheaded Stranger" 121
154 Undertones - The Undertones 122
153 Carole King - Tapestry 122
152 Joni Mitchell- Court And Spark 123
151 lou reed 'metal machine music' 124
150 David Bowie - Aladdin Sane 124
149 Devo - Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! 127
148 Dr. Alimantado - The Best Dressed Chicken In Town 128
147 Police - Regatta de Blanc 129
146 Aretha Franklin - 'Spirit In The Dark' 130
145 CCR - Cosmo's Factory 131
144 Neu! - Neu! 2 136
143 Buzzcocks - Another Music In A Different Kitchen 136
142 Ramones - Rocket To Russia 136
141 Fela Kuti - Zombie 137
140 Patti Smith - Horses 137
139 Fall - Live At The Witch Trials 143
138 Dr Buzzard's Original Savannah Band - 'Dr Buzzard's Original Savannah Band' 144
137 ABBA - Voulez-Vous 146
136 Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story 147
135 Who - Who's Next 148
134 Velvet Underground - 1969 Velvet Underground Live 149
133 Talking Heads - Fear Of Music 150
132 Van Morrison - Moondance 152
131 Led Zeppelin - Physical Grafitti 152
130 Boston - Boston 154
129 Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road 155
128 Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance 158
127 Pink Floyd - The Wall 158
126 Human League - Reproduction 159
125 Faust - Faust IV 160
124 James 'Blood' Ulmer - Tales Of Captain Black 162
123 Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove 163
122 T. Rex - Electric Warrior 164
121 Fripp/Eno - Evening Star 166
120 ABBA - Arrival 167
119 Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom 169
118 James Brown - Sex Machine 170
117 Joao Gilberto - Joao Gilberto 172
116 Bruce Sprinsteen - Born To Run 172
115 Herbie Hancock - Sextant 172
114 Steely Dan - Katy Lied 179
113 Pop Group - Y 180
112 Curtis Mayfield - Curtis 181
111 Cars - s/t 182
110 Todd Rundgren - Something/Anything 182
109 Fleetwood Mac - Tusk 184
108 Various - No New York 187
107 Elvis Costello and the Attractions - Armed Forces 188
106 Captain Beefheart And The Magic Band - Lick My Decals Off, Baby 190
105 Magazine - Real Life 190
104 George Harrison - All Things Must Pass 191
103 Yes - Close To The Edge 193
102 Giorgio Moroder - From Here To Eternity 196
101 Richard Hell And The Voidoids - Blank Generation 197
100. VA - Nuggets
99. New York Dolls - s/t
98. David Bowie - Heroes
97. Kate Bush - The Kick Inside
96. Bruce Springsteen - Darkness On the Edge of Town
95. The Cure - Three Imaginary Boys
94. Augustus Pablo - King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown
93. Philip Glass - Einstein on the Beach
92. Sparks - Kimono My House
91. Cheap Trick - Live at Budokan
90. Steely Dan - Countdown to Ecstacy
89. Sparks - No. 1 in Heaven
88. Can - Future Days
87. The B52s - The B52s
86. Parliament - Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome
85. Leonard Cohen - Songs of Love and Hate
84. Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power
83. The Slits - Cut
82. Nick Drake - Bryter Layter
81. The Beach Boys - Surf's Up
80. Neu! - Neu!
79. The Beatles - Let It Be
78. John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band
77. Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
76. Big Star - Third
75. John Cale - Paris 1919
74. Donna Summer - On the Radio
73. Miles Davis - A Tribute to Jack Johnson
72. Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It On
71. Parliament - The Mothership Connection
70. Brian Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
69. VA - Saturday Night Fever
68. Wire - 154
67. Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
66. Led Zeppelin - IV
65. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
64. Big Star - #1 Record
63. Black Sabbath - Paranoid
62. David Bowie - Station to Station
61. Neil Young - Rust Never Sleeps
60. Elvis Costello - My Aim Is True
59. Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
58. Bob Dylan - The Basement Tapes
57. The Congos - Heart of the Congos
56. Fleetwood Mac - Rumors
55. Ornette Coleman - Dancing in Your Head
54. Richard and Linda Thompson - I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight
53. David Bowie - Hunky Dory
52. The Fall - Dragnet
51. Neil Young - Tonight's the Night
50. Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic
49. Roxy Music - Roxy Music
48. Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
47. Stevie Wonder - Talking Book
46. Suicide - First Album
45. Miles Davis - On the Corner
44. Curtis Mayfield - Superfly
43. Steve Reich - Music For 18 Musicians
42. Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food
41. Neil Young - On the Beach
40. Gram Parsons - Grievous Angel
39. Wire - Chairs Missing
38. Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life
37. Can - Ege Bamyesi
36. Brian Eno - Another Green World
35. Serge Gainbourg - Histoire De Melody Nelson
34. Nick Drake - Pink Moon
33. Elvis Costello - This Year's Model
32. Neil Young - After the Goldrush
31. Big Star - Radio City
30. The Clash - The Clash
29. The Velvet Underground - Loaded
28. The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
27. Wire - Pink Flag
26. Can - Tago Mago
25. David Bowie - Low
24. Joni Mitchell - Blue
23. Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets
22. Ramones - Ramones
21. Al Green - Call Me
20. Kraftwerk - The Man Machine
19. The Stooges - Fun House
18. Michael Jackson - Off the Wall
17. VA - The Harder They Come
16. The Sex Pistols - Nevermind the Bollocks
15. The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers
14. David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust
13. Gang of Four - Entertainment
12. Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
11. The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street
10. Marvin Gaye - What's Goin' On
9. Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady
8. PiL - Metal Box
7. Blondie - Parallel Lines
6. Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
5. Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express
4. Television - Marquee Moon
3. Bob Dylan - Blood On the Tracks
2. The Clash - London Calling
1. Sly & the Family Stone - There's a Riot Goin' On

yeah ohio players were fairly second tier so these results are pretty laughable from a strictly funk standpoint, nevermind the entire 70s. that's its not even one of the westbound ones making the top 100 makes it even more hilarious.

Results of the other poll where anything from the top 100 of the last poll was barred

100. Milton Nascimento & Lô Borges - Clube de Esquina (1972) [80 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
99. Chic - C'est Chic (1978) [80 points, 14 votes]
98. John Lennon - Imagine (1971) [80 points, 15 votes]
97. Patti Smith - Horses (1975) [80 points, 17 votes]
96. Van Halen - Van Halen (1978) [81 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote]
95. Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac (1975) [81 points, 8 votes]
94. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo's Factory (1970) [81 points, 11 votes]
93. Blondie - Eat to the Beat (1979) [82 points, 9 votes]
92. Miles Davis - Agharta (1976) [82 points, 10 votes]
91. Ian Dury - New Boots and Panties!! (1977) [83 points, 6 votes]
90. Neu! - Neu! 2 (1973) [83 points, 10 votes]
89. Tom Waits - Closing Time (1973) [84 points, 6 votes]
88. Black Sabbath - Vol. 4 (1972) [85 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
87. Hawkwind - Space Ritual (1973) [85 points, 11 votes]
86. Aerosmith - Rocks (1976) [86 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
85. Tubeway Army - Replicas (1979) [86 points, 9 votes]
84. Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak (1976) [86 points, 11 votes]
83. The Who - Live at Leeds (1970) [87 points, 6 votes]
82. Comus - First Utterance (1971) [87 points, 9 votes]
81. Van Morrison - Veedon Fleece (1974) [88 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
80. Electric Light Orchestra - Out of the Blue (1977) [90 points, 10 votes]
79. Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle (1973) [92 points, 9 votes]
78. Flamin' Groovies - Shake Some Action (1976) [92 points, 10 votes]
77. Pere Ubu - Datapanik in the Year Zero EP (1978) [93 points, 6 votes]
76. ABBA - Arrival (1976) [93 points, 8 votes]
75. David Bowie - Lodger (1979) [93 points, 12 votes]
74. Cluster - Zuckerzeit (1974) [93 points, 14 votes]
73. Pere Ubu - Dub Housing (1978) [94 points, 12 votes]
72. The Rolling Stones - Some Girls (1978) [95 points, 13 votes]
71. Neil Young - Harvest (1972) [96 points, 9 votes]
70. Herbie Hancock - Sextant (1973) [96 points, 12 votes]
69. Stevie Wonder - Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974) [97 points, 10 votes]
68. Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979) [98 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
(Tie) 66. Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) [99 points, 9 votes]
(Tie) 66. Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark (1974) [99 points, 9 votes]
65. The Pop Group - Y (1979) [99 points, 10 votes]
64. Al Green - The Belle Album (1977) [100 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
63. Steely Dan - Katy Lied (1975) [100 points, 9 votes]
62. Black Sabbath - Master of Reality (1971) [100 points, 11 votes]
61. Various Artists - No New York (1978) [101 points, 10 votes]
60. The Specials - The Specials (1979) [102 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
59. John Cale - Fear (1974) [104 points, 11 votes]
58. Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson (1971) [106 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
57. King Crimson - Red (1974) [109 points, 12 votes]
56. Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978) [110 points, 12 votes]
55. Funkadelic - One Nation Under a Groove (1978) [110 points, 13 votes]
54. Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) [111 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
53. Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger (1975) [111 points, 12 votes]
52. Van Morrison - Moondance (1970) [111 points, 13 votes]
51. Yellow Magic Orchestra - Solid State Survivor (1979) [112 points, 6 votes, 2 first place votes]
(Tie) 49. The Who - Who's Next (1971) [112 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
(Tie) 49. Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Armed Forces (1979) [112 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
48. David Bowie - Aladdin Sane (1973) [113 points, 11 votes]
47. Harmonia - Musik von Harmonia (1974) [113 points, 13 votes]
46. Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick (1977) [116 points, 9 votes]
(Tie) 44. Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Zuma (1975) [116 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
(Tie) 44. James Brown - The Payback (1973) [116 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
43. Grateful Dead - American Beauty (1970) [119 points, 9 votes]
42. Amon Düül II - Yeti (1970) [120 points, 12 votes]
41. New York Dolls - Too Much Too Soon (1974) [121 points, 4 votes, 2 first place votes]
40. Syd Barrett - The Madcap Laughs (1970) [121 points, 9 votes]
39. Funkadelic - Free Your Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow (1970) [124 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
38. Miles Davis - Get Up With It (1974) [124 points, 12 votes]
37. This Heat - This Heat (1979) [125 points, 10 votes]
36. T.Rex - The Slider (1972) [127 points, 13 votes]
35. Tim Buckley - Starsailor (1970) [127 points, 13 votes, 1 first place vote]
34. Funkadelic - Standing on the Verge of Getting it On (1974) [128 points, 9 votes, 1 first place vote]
33. Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run (1975) [128 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote]
32. Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970) [128 points, 14 votes]
31. The Cars - The Cars (1978) [131 points, 13 votes]
30. Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story (1971) [140 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
29. Fela Kuti & Afrika 70 - Zombie (1977) [141 points, 13 votes, 1 first place vote]
28. Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti (1975) [146 points, 14 votes]
27. Talking Heads - 77 (1977) [147 points, 15 votes]
26. Led Zeppelin - III (1970) [149 points, 11 votes]
(Tie) 24. T.Rex - Electric Warrior (1971) [151 points, 17 votes]
(Tie) 24. Faust - IV (1973) [151 points, 17 votes]
23. Ramones - Rocket to Russia (1977) [152 points, 13 votes]
22. Can - Soon Over Babaluma (1974) [152 points, 16 votes]
21. Harmonia - Deluxe (1975) [155 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote]
20. Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band - Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band (1976) [161 points, 10 votes]
19. Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star (1973) [162 points, 12 votes]
18. Lou Reed - Transformer (1972) [164 points, 16 votes]
17. Joni Mitchell - Hejira (1976) [165 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
16. The Raincoats - The Raincoats (1979) [168 points, 12 votes, 1 first place vote]
15. Steely Dan - The Royal Scam (1976) [176 points, 11 votes, 2 first place votes]
14. Steely Dan - Aja (1977) [177 points, 16 votes]
13. Neu! - Neu! 75 (1975) [187 points, 17 votes]
12. Brian Eno - Before and After Science (1977) [187 points, 18 votes]
11. XTC - Drums and Wires (1979) [188 points, 15 votes, 2 first place votes]
10. Yes - Close to the Edge (1972) [189 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote]
9. Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance (1978) [205 points, 20 votes]
8. Kraftwerk - Autobahn (1974) [230 points, 25 votes]
7. Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda (1970) [248 points, 19 votes]
6. X Ray Spex - Germ Free Adolescents (1978) [263 points, 20 votes, 3 first place votes]
5. Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom (1974) [307 points, 19 votes, 5 first place votes]
4. Devo - Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo (1978) [310 points, 27 votes, 1 first place vote]
3. Curtis Mayfield - Curtis (1970) [310 points, 28 votes, 3 first place votes]
2. Talking Heads - Fear of Music (1979) [405 points, 28 votes]
1. Fleetwood Mac - Tusk (1979) [527 points, 30 votes, 4 first place votes]

[b]100. Milton Nascimento & Lô Borges - Clube de Esquina (1972) [80 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
99. Chic - C'est Chic (1978) [80 points, 14 votes]
98. John Lennon - Imagine (1971) [80 points, 15 votes]
97. Patti Smith - Horses (1975) [80 points, 17 votes]
96. Van Halen - Van Halen (1978) [81 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote]
95. Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac (1975) [81 points, 8 votes]
94. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo's Factory (1970) [81 points, 11 votes]
93. Blondie - Eat to the Beat (1979) [82 points, 9 votes]
92. Miles Davis - Agharta (1976) [82 points, 10 votes]
91. Ian Dury - New Boots and Panties!! (1977) [83 points, 6 votes]
90. Neu! - Neu! 2 (1973) [83 points, 10 votes]
89. Tom Waits - Closing Time (1973) [84 points, 6 votes]
88. Black Sabbath - Vol. 4 (1972) [85 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
87. Hawkwind - Space Ritual (1973) [85 points, 11 votes]
86. Aerosmith - Rocks (1976) [86 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
85. Tubeway Army - Replicas (1979) [86 points, 9 votes]
84. Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak (1976) [86 points, 11 votes]
83. The Who - Live at Leeds (1970) [87 points, 6 votes]
82. Comus - First Utterance (1971) [87 points, 9 votes]
81. Van Morrison - Veedon Fleece (1974) [88 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
80. Electric Light Orchestra - Out of the Blue (1977) [90 points, 10 votes]
79. Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle (1973) [92 points, 9 votes]
78. Flamin' Groovies - Shake Some Action (1976) [92 points, 10 votes]
77. Pere Ubu - Datapanik in the Year Zero EP (1978) [93 points, 6 votes]
76. ABBA - Arrival (1976) [93 points, 8 votes]
75. David Bowie - Lodger (1979) [93 points, 12 votes]
74. Cluster - Zuckerzeit (1974) [93 points, 14 votes]
73. Pere Ubu - Dub Housing (1978) [94 points, 12 votes]
72. The Rolling Stones - Some Girls (1978) [95 points, 13 votes]
71. Neil Young - Harvest (1972) [96 points, 9 votes]
70. Herbie Hancock - Sextant (1973) [96 points, 12 votes]
69. Stevie Wonder - Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974) [97 points, 10 votes]
68. Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979) [98 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
(Tie) 66. Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) [99 points, 9 votes]
(Tie) 66. Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark (1974) [99 points, 9 votes]
65. The Pop Group - Y (1979) [99 points, 10 votes]
64. Al Green - The Belle Album (1977) [100 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
63. Steely Dan - Katy Lied (1975) [100 points, 9 votes]
62. Black Sabbath - Master of Reality (1971) [100 points, 11 votes]
61. Various Artists - No New York (1978) [101 points, 10 votes]
60. The Specials - The Specials (1979) [102 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
59. John Cale - Fear (1974) [104 points, 11 votes]
58. Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson (1971) [106 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
57. King Crimson - Red (1974) [109 points, 12 votes]
56. Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978) [110 points, 12 votes]
55. Funkadelic - One Nation Under a Groove (1978) [110 points, 13 votes]
54. Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) [111 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
53. Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger (1975) [111 points, 12 votes]
52. Van Morrison - Moondance (1970) [111 points, 13 votes]
51. Yellow Magic Orchestra - Solid State Survivor (1979) [112 points, 6 votes, 2 first place votes]
(Tie) 49. The Who - Who's Next (1971) [112 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
(Tie) 49. Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Armed Forces (1979) [112 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
48. David Bowie - Aladdin Sane (1973) [113 points, 11 votes]
47. Harmonia - Musik von Harmonia (1974) [113 points, 13 votes]
46. Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick (1977) [116 points, 9 votes]
(Tie) 44. Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Zuma (1975) [116 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
(Tie) 44. James Brown - The Payback (1973) [116 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
43. Grateful Dead - American Beauty (1970) [119 points, 9 votes]
42. Amon Düül II - Yeti (1970) [120 points, 12 votes]
41. New York Dolls - Too Much Too Soon (1974) [121 points, 4 votes, 2 first place votes]
40. Syd Barrett - The Madcap Laughs (1970) [121 points, 9 votes]
39. Funkadelic - Free Your Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow (1970) [124 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
38. Miles Davis - Get Up With It (1974) [124 points, 12 votes]
37. This Heat - This Heat (1979) [125 points, 10 votes]
36. T.Rex - The Slider (1972) [127 points, 13 votes]
35. Tim Buckley - Starsailor (1970) [127 points, 13 votes, 1 first place vote]
34. Funkadelic - Standing on the Verge of Getting it On (1974) [128 points, 9 votes, 1 first place vote]
33. Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run (1975) [128 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote]
32. Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970) [128 points, 14 votes]
31. The Cars - The Cars (1978) [131 points, 13 votes]
30. Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story (1971) [140 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
29. Fela Kuti & Afrika 70 - Zombie (1977) [141 points, 13 votes, 1 first place vote]
28. Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti (1975) [146 points, 14 votes]
27. Talking Heads - 77 (1977) [147 points, 15 votes]
26. Led Zeppelin - III (1970) [149 points, 11 votes]
(Tie) 24. T.Rex - Electric Warrior (1971) [151 points, 17 votes]
(Tie) 24. Faust - IV (1973) [151 points, 17 votes]
23. Ramones - Rocket to Russia (1977) [152 points, 13 votes]
22. Can - Soon Over Babaluma (1974) [152 points, 16 votes]
21. Harmonia - Deluxe (1975) [155 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote]
20. Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band - Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band (1976) [161 points, 10 votes]
19. Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star (1973) [162 points, 12 votes]
18. Lou Reed - Transformer (1972) [164 points, 16 votes]
17. Joni Mitchell - Hejira (1976) [165 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
16. The Raincoats - The Raincoats (1979) [168 points, 12 votes, 1 first place vote]
15. Steely Dan - The Royal Scam (1976) [176 points, 11 votes, 2 first place votes]
14. Steely Dan - Aja (1977) [177 points, 16 votes]
13. Neu! - Neu! 75 (1975) [187 points, 17 votes]
12. Brian Eno - Before and After Science (1977) [187 points, 18 votes]
11. XTC - Drums and Wires (1979) [188 points, 15 votes, 2 first place votes]
10. Yes - Close to the Edge (1972) [189 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote]
9. Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance (1978) [205 points, 20 votes]
8. Kraftwerk - Autobahn (1974) [230 points, 25 votes]
7. Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda (1970) [248 points, 19 votes]
6. X Ray Spex - Germ Free Adolescents (1978) [263 points, 20 votes, 3 first place votes]
5. Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom (1974) [307 points, 19 votes, 5 first place votes]
4. Devo - Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo (1978) [310 points, 27 votes, 1 first place vote]
3. Curtis Mayfield - Curtis (1970) [310 points, 28 votes, 3 first place votes]
2. Talking Heads - Fear of Music (1979) [405 points, 28 votes]
1. Fleetwood Mac - Tusk (1979) [527 points, 30 votes, 4 first place votes]

ahh damn double posted that

yeah ohio players were fairly second tier

Wrong.

It's sad, but I think I've completely shed any affection I once held for No Wave stuff.

I used to get off on its attitude, but it strikes me these days as emotional numbness masquerading as destructive vitality.

old man yells at mars

x-post: hahaha

It's funny; I've listened to a lot of these records for roughly the same amount of time--having discovered them in college and listened to them off and on for the past ten years since I graduated. The No Wave stuff and the more deconstructionist-minded stuff (Residents, etc.) has really faded in appeal, but there's stuff I used to not really "get" that just kills me today: Popul Vuh, Hawkwind, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Van der Graaf Generator... So the rollout's been a cool way for me to examine the evolution of my own tastes.

I'm hoping we'll see this rank pretty highly, but I pulled out King Crimson's Red the other day for the first time in years, and man did that ever floor me. I always enjoyed listening to it before and kind of admired it at a distance, but it was like I actually *felt* it for the first time--all of its just utter bleakness and cathartic nastiness. The playing on that record is almost unbearable in its intensity.

Rolling Stone review of No New York, 4/5/79, by Tom Carson

A great deal of punk rock is basically art rock in a primitive guise, and in the hands of the avant-gardists who've turned to punk in the wake of New York's underground renaissance, both the artiness and the primitivism have been pushed to their logical extremes. You do it first, and then somebody else does it pretty - or, as in the case on this four-band anthology produced by Brian Eno, deliberately unpretty. Despite its intellectual top-heaviness, the music on No New York is all surface: militantly antimelodic, inaccessible and antihumanist. The fact that nihilism is here reduced to an aesthetic pose only makes the message even more willfully repellent.

Within these borders, No New York ranges from the fairly compelling (James Chance and the Contortions' shrieking, Pere Ubu-like collages of sound built from a metronomic, Velvet Underground beat) to the utterly unendurable (the inept caterwauling of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks' Lydia Lunch). In between the extremes are a competent but not particularly intriguing white-noise group (Mars) and an interesting but not particularly original punk band with just enough conceptual icing to squeak by as avant-garde (D.N.A.).

But even the Contortions, good as they are, arent quite convincing enough to prove that No Wave will ever be more than a fringe movement. While Eno initiated the current project, he doesn't seem to have put much energy into it: his production is unusually restrained. On the whole, he appears more taken with the basic idea rather than the actual substance of the music, and such priorities seem perfectly appropriate. Though I don't dislike No New York, and I'd like to hear more from at least one of the groups on it, this record sends me back to Pere Ubu's The Modern Dance and Eno's own Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy) - which is probably where you should go as well.

Tom Carson 1979

Xps to kitchen person, the sparks holy trinity for me is indiscreet/no 1 in heaven/lil Beethoven. After that, I'd put exotic creatures/gratuitous sax/kimono/propaganda on about equal footing, placings vary depending on mood. I also have tons of love for ones nobody likes such as whomp that sucker, plagiarism & music that you can dance to. I am an unrepentant stan :-D

Seconding whoever said they were hoping for red to do well, love that album.

90. VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR Pawn Hearts (2271 Points, 16 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #23 for 1971 , #332 overall | Acclaimed: #1383
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/860/MI0001860306.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/7CVoSNQO9BoYVj7f4qsNeE
spotify:album:7CVoSNQO9BoYVj7f4qsNeE

In January 1971, on the heels of H to He Who Am the Only One, Van der Graaf Generator boarded a bus with labelmates Genesis and Lindisfarne for the Six Bob Tour of England and Wales. Another Charisma package excursion with Audience and Jackson Heights (in a pink bus) took them across the Channel, where they played to largely bemused Germans and Swiss. By July, sessions had begun for Pawn Hearts. (As Guy Evans famously observed, "I liked the way things were going. We'd actually gone mad by then.") The image on the album's original inner sleeve is a hideous Technicolor nightmare of four weirdos in an English country garden offering Nazi salutes. Whatever madness was afoot, it definitely made its creative presence felt on Pawn Hearts, which proved to be the group's most fully realized work thus far. Each of its three tracks embodied the Van der Graaf Generator dialectical world view, embracing extremes, working through cycles of thesis-antithesis-synthesis and, ultimately, pulling off impossibly grand statements. These numbers do crease slightly under the weight of pretension and are almost consumed by their own inner-destructive energies; however, they emerge whole and triumphant. While so much prog was purely cerebral, Van der Graaf Generator combined braininess with an intense and sometimes exhausting viscerality. With the sense that the wheels were often close to coming off, that is what made the band so absorbing. Comprising ten separately named sections, the side-long "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" encapsulates this feeling. The parts (some of which border on free-jazz freak-out) threaten to overwhelm the whole, but by the end, the whole wins out by a hair. This counterpart to Genesis' "Supper's Ready" is a nautically themed existential meditation on man hopelessly adrift on the sea of meaning — the lighthouse keeper as the universal embodiment of alienated man. Hammill goes to the edge, as usual: "The maelstrom of my memory / Is a vampire and it feeds on me / Now, staggering madly, over the brink I fall." Nevertheless, the track concludes on a note of reasonably optimistic acquiescence and knowledge: "It doesn't feel so very bad now, I think the end is the start," muses Hammill, recalling T.S. Eliot's conclusion of "Little Gidding." (Hammill seems to draw also on Eliot's "The Waste Land" here.) The two other, comparatively more compact, tracks here offer equally vexed visions of the human condition. Speeding up and slowing down and punctuated with harsh-soft passages, "Lemmings (Including Cog)" rehashes the idea of human beings as members of the Arvicolinae subfamily in a world of soulless mechanization, culminating in a Beckettian "I-can't-go-on-I'll-go-on" moment of resignation: "What choice is there left but to try?" Progressing from an almost hymnal intro, with Hammill's voice accompanied by piano, to a manic climax and back, "Man-Erg" reflects on the human capacity for evil: "I'm just a man, and killers, angels, all are these / Dictators, saviours, refugees." Pawn Hearts topped the album chart in Italy and was more or less ignored everywhere else. The group split up, again. -- Trouser Press

A Kelt in a Krautrock Style

First time I ever heard PAWN HEARTS was in a shitty Torquay hotel where I was working in summer 1972. I was drunk on QC sherry and freaking out an 18-year-old girl called Karen, who was acid tripping and convinced that I was bringing her down. I was 15 and didn’t know what that meant, but the music was such a cack-off cacophony that I had to inform her “It ain’t me, babe!” It was the first time I’d thought what a racket progressive rock could be. Yet I already knew Faust and early Magma, so this lot (British too, so they shoulda known better) were surely just trying to be cantankerous. How I adored this record. However, thirty-one years and a coupla hundred spins later, I’m still genuinely disorientated by this extremely everything LP, and even more in Shock’n’awe of Peter Hammill than I was all those ye-hars ago. For one thing, I now know the technology he had at his group’s disposal and STILL it sound fucking well weird. Dear me, Pete, you were on the famous Charisma label with good old Lindisfarne and Genesis and the Nice and Audience - couldn’t you have tried a bit harder to fit in? 

PAWN HEARTS is progressive rock the way the East Germans played it. Not even the West Germans really managed such truly minging combinations of Brecht and primal scream therapy. This was rock’n’roll only because no other category would fit, and rock’n’roll was slack enough to accommodate this mongrel gang of weaners whose only common ground was that everyone hated them all. Peter Hammill sounds so posh you almost think he’s a council kid putting it on to wind up everybody. He played the same funky Hohner Clavinet that Sly Stone wa’d into Stonkerville, but Hammill reduces it to a damp and tortured Scando-Germanic post-folk harpsichord reminiscent of one of P.V. Glob’s strangled Iron Age bog victims. David Jackson doesn’t play sax for Van Der Graaf Generator, he plays saxophone and two of them simultaneously and extremely well. His melodies play the Mainman riffs usually reserved for fuzz guitars and contained no blues notes whatsoever. Jakson – as he was occasionally known - was like Chris Wood on JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE as played by Derek Guyler. Unfunkeh! Hugh Banton looked like and WAS an ex-choir boy, but his Godspell backing band attire and pouty gob belied his total immersion in undermining everything achieved by the sum total of all other prog keyboard players. Guy Evans had been in the later (and shit) version of the Misunderstood, but he was the best bassless drummer this side of John Densmore and played with the freedom of one who knows that the bass – what there is – will have to be added later in the session, and always around him. Ain’t no bass sucker gonna follow this rollathon, says Guy, coming in on the 7th beat. Indeed, half the time, the bass was supplied either by Hugh Banton’s low organ notes, or the occasional plucked Fender bass. In many ways, Van Der Graaf Generator bore the same relationship to other prog groups of the early 1970s as the Doors did to contemporary garage and psychedelic bands of the mid-1960s. In other words, not a lot.

My Prog/Gnosis

Van Der Graaf Generator were punks in a prog-rock style1. They had a visionary leader who wrote umpteen songs per week and released new LPs without even telling his record company. But Hammill had no idea when he was good or bad, and the first few releases were patchy dry runs for this remarkable statement called PAWN HEARTS. Indeed, the big surprise about Van Der Graaf is not that they were shit when they failed to come up with the goods. No no, more suprisingly they were just bland and a bit dismissable. Their first LP AEROSOL GREY MACHINE looks great and makes all the right moves, then you take it off and never listen ever again. Their second LP THE LEAST WE CAN DO IS WAVE TO EACH OTHER again looks great and contains one great song called ‘White Hammer’, which is portentous psycho-drama of the first order. However, the rest is self-immersed drywank with only the occasional deeply embarrassingly twee moment thrown in for listeners to gnash their teeth over (“West is Mike and Suzie”, anyone?). Their third LP was the mysteriously-titled H TO HE WHO AM THE ONLY ONE, which looks just fabberoo and even opens with the ‘struthly mossive “Killer”, which is the kind of bedsit prog Marc Almond shoulda covered instead of that obvious stuff by Sydney Barrett. But the rest is contemptible window dressing that comes and goes without ever coming at all. Dammit, they even managed to release a 45 called “Theme One” written for them by George Martin, the Beatles Guy. Shite Attack? U-Betcha! Not a hit? Rather! Nowadays available only on some rare US edition LP? Correctamundo! Y?

Becozz they woz shitty shit shit until PAWN HEARTS and then they became great. Great? They become mega-nificent on this LP. Reet youth, so it were plain sailing from here? Nope, then they split up… Hammill goes on to make reems and reems of deeply weird solo LPs and they get back together in 1975 and… they’z even better! Yup, they are probably the only band to re-form and be better than when they went away. However, as they’d only got a 25% score from the first 4LPs that’s not too hard. 

But Van Der Graaf Generator returned with a dry new sound that took that long drawn out LOW SPARK OF HIGH HEEL BOYS meets SHOOT OUT AT THE FANTASY FACTORY-period Traffic stuff (the 14-minutes of “Rollright Stones”, the 7-minutes of “Sometimes I Feel So Uninspired”, and the 12-minute title song “Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys”), and Hammill trotted it out on to the Western Iranian plain and played Zarathustra with it. Suddenly, that morbid self-absorption that Stevie’s hollering becomes, in Hammill’s gonzo’d brain, the lone voice of the deserted shaman taking on the Bronze Age chariot-boys from Hell. It’s so damned magnificent I’m convinced Peter Hammill got close to THE TRUTH sometime around that period. Like a Neolithic ridgeway walker who grasps the sky and discovers that it’s actually a false-ceiling just 18 inches above his head, Hammill pushed through the soft barely-coagulated 3-minute egg that separates us from Heaven, and managed to (at least temporarily) live in both places at the same time. The comeback LP was GODBLUFF and it was faultless. Even nowadays, it exists on an entirely different plain to other music. STILL LIFE followed and was just as ruddy out there and unjudgeable. By WORLD RECORD, even I was getting wall-eyed by such 20-minute long titles as “Murglys 3 The Songwriter’s Guild”. But listening now it was me who never got it and Hammill who was just getting going.

The Stone Things are Broken!

But enough, let’s get back to the Album of the Month action. After all, the decision was made to shine the spotlight on this sucker. So just what is it that makes PAWN HEARTS so amazing? Well listen and see what you think. For a start, it’s the beginning of Peter Hammill’s bizarre but successful artistic co-habitation with himself. He’s not singing about anyone else but himself, yet the duets he does with himself actually sound like there’s a bunch of other singers in there too. When Hammill talks about waiting for his saviour, he seems to mean the castrated Attis as much as Jesus the Pastor. His Goddess seems to be both Cybele AND the Virgin. He’s like a newly Christianised Saxon: still willing to invoke Woden when he has to make the journey but content with the shiny guy for 90% of the daytime. Hammill’s a river traveller and a pastoralist, a bringer and a revealer, a giant and a flea AND the most misunderstood man in rock’n’roll – a Kim Fowleyan Loki bound by his accent and an inability rather than a refusal to change it. Look at the gatefold sleeve and that about sums it up. Four make-shift fascistic footballers in black shirts and white ties, in a post-psychedelic super-realist Narnia (Give C.S. a kick from me while you’re there, Pete, will ya?)

“Lemmings” opens the LP drifting in on sweet-voiced acoustics and Mellotron 400 flutes, before a sarcastic Utnapishtim saxophone tells you it’s the fucking Epic of Gilgamesh, and those fucking stone things are BROKEN!!! Ararat is submerged and the last temples of Urartu will never see another fire ritual. The difference between this LP and their previous ‘effort’ is the difference between THE WORLD OF DAVID BOWIE and ZIGGY STARDUST, without any of the graduations in between. In one fell swoop, Hammill has leap-frogged several stages of humanity and clawed, nay bestrode his way up on to Jahve’s own volcano and dumped his own hand-scribed tablets of demands down the God’s own smoke stack. 

Also remember when you hear this stuff that Peter Hammill is, on this recording, only about 24 years old though getting decades older by the hour. “Man-erg” was probably the first example of Hammill’s soon-coming tendency to appropriate religious themes to his own ends, paganise them, and send them back-at-ya with such Victorian mawkishness that U-Cannot-fail to blart your head off. Then, the Hammill formula deems thou must cop as un-R&B a saxophone lick as never did roam this planet and play it strident and bavarian with a small ‘b’. Soon, Hammill’s clanking his clavinet as VDGG summon up some o’ that old thyme Brechtian soul from the Nederland Plain. Now, he’s John Hurt as John Merrick screaming “I’m just a man”. I think not, Peter. Where’s the evidence, even amongst your contemporaries, for your being ‘Just A Man’? Yooz a hooligan cleric, a tonsured Viking, a Daft Vader with the voice of Todd Rundgren, David Bowie, Hall & Oates, John Inman, Quatermass and Pet Shop Boy all rolled into one. 

Remember the first time you heard “The Soft Parade” title track and wondered when it was all gonna kick in, only it never did? Well, here, instead of berating your earhole sergeant-major-like all the way through (as Hammill is well wont to do), “A Plague of Lighthouse keepers” drifts in and out of control for 23-minutes of standing-on-the-verge-of-getting-it-on-ness, occasionally unleashing ridiculous stentorian extremes, then backing right off into passages of near meditational drift. It should also be noted that this lot use Mellotrons 400 and Mark 2 like they SHOULD be used. Sound FX, train choogles, stampeding elephants, bain’t nowt too gimmicky for our boys. If it was guaranteed to invoke the ancient Gods, then they’d even steep the ARP synthesizer in tea.

PAWN HEARTS is a masterpiece in the old-fashioned sense of the word, that is: it is a musical blueprint on which to build in the future and has as sensibly structured an anti-structure as you could wish for. It is in turns beautiful, ridiculous, foul, overwhelming, irritating, mutating and magnificent. So don’t use this LP to irritate the wanker neighbours when you go out or you may return to find them clad in saffron robes, on a mission both to befriend you and to help you co-host evenings of Mellotron 400-based Pan-Eurasian re-constituted fire festivities. Be forewarned! -- J. Cope

Van der Graaf Generator was an enigma from the start, and remain just as mysterious over 40 years later. From the beginning they defied easy categorization. They didn’t fit easily into the niches of psychedelic rock, folk, jazz fusion or progressive rock, yet there were all of those elements and more. At the peak of the punk era, when the bloated circus road shows of Pink Floyd, Yes and Genesis were dismissed by punkers as irrelevant, Johnny Rotten famously gave props to Van der Graaf singer Peter Hammill during a radio show. Mark E. Smith of The Fall was also a fan. It’s easy to hear why. When many prog bands were polishing their schtick into static performances, Van der Graaf Generator embodied that restless, questing spirit that led to constant change. They never played the same songs the same way, often pushing themselves to the point failure, alienating half their audiences. This of course sabotaged their commercial viability, but generated awe and respect mostly among fellow musicians. The early albums showed Hammill’s talents as a worldly lyricist as he tackled mysticism, numerology, religion, science fiction and even the Spanish Inquisition. Pawn Hearts brought the madness to a peak as one of the most uncompromising albums of the early 70s. Experimentation with electronics gave their sound an edge that sounded even more evil than before, creating a truly monumental clash of beauty, chaos and horror. After several exhausting tours of Italy and Europe, the band took a hiatus as Hammill tried his hand at some solo work. -- Fastnbulbous

review
[-] by Bruce Eder

Van Der Graaf Generator's third album, Pawn Hearts was also its second most popular; at one time this record was a major King Crimson cult item due to the presence of Robert Fripp on guitar, but Pawn Hearts has more to offer than that. The opening track, "Lemmings," calls to mind early Gentle Giant, with its eerie vocal passages (including harmonies) set up against extended sax, keyboard, and guitar-driven instrumental passages, and also with its weird keyboard and percussion interlude, though this band is also much more contemporary in its focus than Gentle Giant. Peter Hammill vocalizes in a more traditional way on "Man-Erg," against shimmering organ swells and Guy Evans' very expressive drumming, before the song goes off on a tangent by way of David Jackson's saxes and some really weird time signatures -- plus some very pretty acoustic and electric guitar work by Hammill himself and Fripp. The monumental "Plague of Lighthouse Keepers," taking up an entire side of the LP, shows the same kind of innovation that characterized Crimson's first two albums, but without the discipline and restraint needed to make the music manageable. The punning titles of the individual sections of this piece (which may have been done for the same reason that Crimson gave those little subtitles to its early extended tracks, to protect the full royalties for the composer) only add to the confusion. As for the piece itself, it features enough virtuoso posturing by everyone (especially drummer Guy Evans) to fill an Emerson, Lake & Palmer album of the same era, with a little more subtlety and some time wasted between the interludes. The 23-minute conceptual work could easily have been trimmed to, say, 18 or 19 minutes without any major sacrifices, which doesn't mean that what's here is bad, just not as concise as it might've been. But the almost operatic intensity of the singing and the overall performance also carries you past the stretches that don't absolutely need to be here. The band was trying for something midway between King Crimson and Genesis, and came out closer to the former, at least instrumentally. Hammill's vocals are impassioned and involving, almost like an acting performance, similar to Peter Gabriel's singing with Genesis, but the lack of any obviously cohesive ideas in the lyrics makes this more obscure and obtuse than any Genesis release.

Ah, my #1

How could it be anything but?

this album is a more convincingly-rendered and genuine clusterfuck than almost anything else i've ever heard

― This is the day when fisticuffs happened everywhere (country matters), Thursday, 12 March 2009 17:04 (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Awesome Julian Cope review: http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/albumofthemonth/766

― This is the day when fisticuffs happened everywhere (country matters), Thursday, 12 March 2009 17:28 (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...ah, the Cope review's in the blurb. Good.

I just got this book yesterday:

Pawn Hearts is the final statement of VDGG's first generation and they certainly end it with a masterpiece. The album's first side contains "Lemmings" and "Man-Erg," the latter having been the only number previously road tested before recording. Both are full of VDGG mechanics -- the relative calm of "Man-Erg" pierced by Hugh Banton's hammering organ, while "Lemmings" reaches down to even darker imagery, both lyrically and sonically. Initial plans for the album called for a double, with a live side and solo numbers written each by Banton, David Jackson, and Guy Evans (recorded and in the vaults!) to offset Peter Hammill's "Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers," which encompasses the entire second side. Written primarily "on the back of the tour bus," it is Hammill's epic life-struggle saga. Dense and thematic, the composition cruises along like a shipwreck: one moment peaceful, the next a sonic maelstrom. The band is in top form throughout, with Banton adding ARP and Mellotron to his armory: VDGG never sounded better on record; it's also a veritable example of what could be achieved in a recording studio at the time. The spry "Theme One"," title music written by George Martin for the BBC, was included on the US release... -- Charles Snider, The Strawberry Bricks Guide To Progressive Rock

89. COMUS First Utterance (2304 Points, 17 Votes)
RYM: #19 for 1971 , #259 overall
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If you dig: Prog Folk, Acid Folk, Canterbury, Truly twisted ideas. The starting point might be British Folk, but the music of First Utterance creeps and crawls, interlaces beautiful melodies, magnificent sadistic singing that only the psychotic playing can be equaled to and cruel disturbing lyrics. This must be the music playing inside the head of a Pagan schizo while he was torturing his victims in the deep of the British woods of medieval times. Rape, Brutal murder ("Drip Drip"), witchcraft and madness ("The Prisoner") are the themes occupying Comus, as Milton's poem serves as a framing device. Even the most sincere attempt to describe this music would do a terrible injustice to it. First Utterance is an acquired taste and it would be extremely difficult to sit and listen through it all without feeling a slight tingling of discomfort, but eventually it will pay off as this is one of the very few Folk albums which truly creates a new and unique atmosphere. A genuine classic which should not be missed! Loved it? Try: Forest, Spirogyra, Dando Shaft. -- R. Chelled

A true gem of British underground music from the period, Comus were neither prog nor psych, but more dark folk. Listening to First Utterance is like entering a different and strange world. The lyrics of Roger Wootton are very visual in a nightmarish, almost medieval way. Timeless anthems such as Drip Drip, The Bite and Diana only get better with age. Totally unique and excellent musicianship. This is surely the heaviest album ever recorded with acoustic guitars. -- Lee Dorrian, Classic Rock

review
[-] by Richie Unterberger

Comus' first album contains an imaginative if elusive brand of experimental folk-rock, with a tense and sometimes distressed vibe. Although there are elements of traditional British folk music, there's an edginess to the songwriting and arrangements that would be entirely alien in a Fairport Convention or Pentangle disc. At times, this straddles the border between folk-rock and the kind of songs you'd expect to be sung at a witches' brew fest, the haunting supernatural atmosphere enhanced by bursts of what sound like a theramin-like violin, hand drums, flute, oboe, ghostly female backup vocals, and detours into almost tribal rhythms. All of this might be making the album sound more attractive than it is; the songs are extremely elongated and fragmented, and the male vocals often have a grating munchkin-like quality, sometimes sounding like a wizened Marc Bolan. The lyrics are impenetrable musings, mixing pastoral scenes of nature with images of gore, torture, madness, and even rape, like particularly disturbing myths being set to music. It's been reissued on CD, but here's one case where you might want to get the LP reissue (on Get Back) instead, as it comes with a bonus 12" of three songs in a similar vein as their rare 1971 EP.

I have mixed feelings about Comus.
the male vocals often have a grating munchkin-like quality but also songs you'd expect to be sung at a witches' brew fest, the haunting supernatural atmosphere enhanced by bursts of what sound like a theramin-like violin, hand drums, flute, oboe...and detours into almost tribal rhythms

88. BIG STAR Radio City (2311 Points, 15 Votes, 2 #1s)
RYM: #22 for 1974 , #819 overall | Acclaimed: #343 | RS: #403
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http://open.spotify.com/album/1E63LPwdoS3yqfB35cUXdp
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Brilliant, addictive, definitively semipopular, and all Alex Chilton--Chris Bell, his folkie counterpart, just couldn't take it any more. Boosters claim this is just what the AM has been waiting for, but the only pop coup I hear is a reminder of how spare, skew, and sprung the Beatles '65 were, which is a coup because they weren't. The harmonies sound like the lead sheets are upside down and backwards, the guitar solos sound like screwball readymade pastiches, and the lyrics sound like love is strange, though maybe that's just the context. Can an album be catchy and twisted at the same time? A -- R. Christgau

Big Star proved themselves one of the leading new American bands working in the mid-Sixties pop and rock vein with the release of their debut LP in 1972. Despite the loss of key composer and guitarist Chris Bell, and a few other disturbing musical developments, their second album, Radio City, proves they were no mere flash in the pantheon of one-shot burned-out artists. Radio City features plenty of shimmering pop delights such as "Way Out West" and "Back of a Car." Sometimes they sound like the Byrds, sometimes like the early Who, but usually like their own indescribable selves. "September Gurls" is a virtually perfect pop number. They may not be as tight or as immediately mesmerizing this time out (the opening tune, "O My Soul," is a foreboding, sprawling funk affair), but Radio City is one of the most high-spirited, thoroughly enjoyable recent releases.-- Ken Barnes, RS

Raspberries and Blue Ash better be ready to be brilliant quick or drop by the wayside, because Big Star are the greatest thing to happen to American rock since The Buffalo Springfield. Alex Chilton is the American rock 'n' roll singer incarnate, and not only that, he can write superbly, play guitar like Jimmy Page did in 1966, and has charming poise onstage. The rest of the band doesn't slouch for one minute, and on their second album they've surpassed their roots, kicking imitation out the door. Big Star are the innovative American band of the Seventies. So rejoice and don't worry about not liking The Dolls. Buy Big Star and keep ahead of your neighbors! -- Jon Tiven, Circus Raves

review
by William Ruhlmann

Largely lacking co-leader Chris Bell, Big Star's second album also lacked something of the pop sweetness (especially the harmonies) of #1 Record. What it possessed was Alex Chilton's urgency (sometimes desperation) on songs that made his case as a genuine rock & roll eccentric. If #1 Record had a certain pop perfection that brought everything together, Radio City was the sound of everything falling apart, which proved at least as compelling.

I remember when those Big Star albums were lost treasures that no one else I knew had ever heard before, despite the positive reviews they got at the time. Now it's hard to imagine anyone not having heard them, and easy to take for granted. "O My Soul" and "She's A Mover" still grab me attention with their stumbling rhythms. "Back Of A Car" and "Daisy Glaze" still send me.

It's appropriate to have mixed feelings about that Comus album! It's definitely unsettling.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cCPEWPxNrVU/UHdH88BfU0I/AAAAAAAACS4/yy31etBcFKI/s1600/Outside.jpg

Comus are awesome. That cover is ridiculously freaky, though.

Holy shit! How have I never seen or heard of Comus? I'd by that unheard just upon seeing the cover.

87. CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL Cosmo's Factory (2324 Points, 17 Votes)
RYM: #6 for 1970 , #97 overall | Acclaimed: #195 | RS: #265 | Pitchfork: #54
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http://open.spotify.com/album/6vuApmTBQPuqB31Kg8hIao
spotify:album:6vuApmTBQPuqB31Kg8hIao

A lover of rock and roll, not rock, John Fogerty serves up his progress in modest and reliable doses. The songwriting's not as inspired as on Willy and the Poorboys--no hidden treasures like "Don't Look Now" or "It Came Out of the Sky." But the sound is fuller, the band more coherent, Fogerty's singing more subtle and assured, so that a straightforward choogle like "Ramble Tamble" holds up simply as music for seven minutes. The same goes for the most ordinary three-minute job here--finally, none of them areordinary. The triumphs are "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," which consummates "Suzie Q"'s artless concept of rock improvisation, and "Lookin' Out My Back Door," in which Fogerty abandons his gritty timbre--so obviously an affectation, yet so natural-seeming--for a near-tenor that sweetly synthesizes spirituality and whimsy. A -- R. Christgau

It should be obvious by now that Creedence Clearwater Revival is one great rock and roll band. Cosmo's Factory, the group's fifth album, is another good reason why.

Four of the eleven cuts have been on previous hit singles; John Fogerty wrote three of the remaining seven, only one of which, "Ramble Tamble," is unsatisfying. Apart from prolific writing, Fogerty's ability to consistently churn out good stuff is largely due to his penchant for rehearsing the band five days a week in a converted warehouse in Berkeley's industrial section. It's doubtless because of this that drummer drummer Doug "Cosmo" Clifford refers to the group's studio as the factory.

The emphasis is not on modern derivatives but on authentic reproduction of, for example, Roy Orbison's vintage "Ooby Dooby," On "My Baby Left Me" the early-Elvis echo-chamber effect and the old Scotty Moore riffs on lead guitar reveal a considerable amount of careful study of the original. Both cuts hold up very well as straight rockabilly.
"Travelin' Band" qualifies for historical authenticity, even though Fogerty grafts new lyrics onto a modified "Reddy Teddy" melody. He lays down a very credible Little Richard vocal and arrangement, substituting a good tenor shriek for a trademark upper register vibrato. In the absence of machinegun triads on keyboard, he dubs in saxophone -- which he now plays.

Besides saxophone, Fogerty is now learning all the other instruments he's always wanted to play. In addition to lead guitar and vocal on Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me" he drops in some fine blues piano riffs but apparently out of modesty keeps them pretty well buried in an easy-going, traditional statement. Elsewhere he picks dobro on "Lookin' Out My Back Door." Though not geared for a gut-level Creedence treatment, the song is good car music, great for summer and will probably be commercially successful.

"Who'll Stop the Rain" has the same commercial feel, and amounts to Fogerty's version of a sizeable production number with a somber message delivered at a ballad's pace.

Fogerty shows equal facility on "Long As I Can See the Light," a fine composition with more saxophone work and a strong Otis Redding flavor. Released as a single, it could easily end up on soul station play lists, as did "Run Through the Jungle" before it.

It's another damn good album by a group which is going to be around for a long time. -- John Grissom, RS

Creedence Clearwater Revival released six essential albums in just two and a half years, all bashed out quick, nothing fancy, just pure and catchy, pop-styled rock 'n' roll. This was their fifth, and it topped the U.S. album charts for nine consecutive weeks.

It is quintessential Creedence. A glorious distillation of their distinctive, Southern-styled mix of choogling swamp boogie and prime, blistering pop. Eschewing the druggy psychedelic excesses of many of their San Francisco peers, the album includes both sides of their three recent hit singles, to which they added covers of songs made famous by Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and Bo Diddley -- plus a stubbornly groovesome, extended jam of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine." Elsewhere, "Travelin' Band" tips its hat to Little Richard, while Vietnam was the darker source of inspiration for "Who'll Stop The Rain" and "Run Through The Jungle."

John Fogerty, the man with the grittiest, growliest voice in rock 'n' roll, once again dominates: he writes, he produces, and he sings, as well as playing guitar, saxophone, and keyboards. But within the rest of the band, simmering resentments were beginning to boil. This was to be their last major success. The cover shot was taken in their warehouse/office/rehearsal room (at 1230 Fifth Street, Berkeley), a place they had dubbed "Cosmo's Factory." John's brother Tom (who later quit, foreshadowing the end for the band) lies back, resting his feet on a sign that reads, "Lean, clean, and bluesy." A simple recipe for enduring greatness. -- Ross Fortune, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

review
[-] by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Throughout 1969 and into 1970, CCR toured incessantly and recorded nearly as much. Appropriately, Cosmo's Factory's first single was the working band's anthem "Travelin' Band," a funny, piledriving rocker with a blaring horn section -- the first indication their sonic palette was broadening. Two more singles appeared prior to the album's release, backed by John Fogerty originals that rivaled the A-side or paled just slightly. When it came time to assemble a full album, Fogerty had only one original left, the claustrophobic, paranoid rocker "Ramble Tamble." Unlike some extended instrumentals, this was dramatic and had a direction -- a distinction made clear by the meandering jam that brings CCR's version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" to 11 minutes. Even if it wanders, their take on the Marvin Gaye classic isn't unpleasant, and their faithful, exuberant takes on the Sun classics "Ooby Dooby" and "My Baby Left Me" are joyous tributes. Still, the heart of the album lays in those six fantastic songs released on singles. "Up Around the Bend" is a searing rocker, one of their best, balanced by the menacing murkiness of "Run Through the Jungle." "Who'll Stop the Rain"'s poignant melody and melancholy undertow has a counterpart in Fogerty's dope song, "Lookin' out My Back Door," a charming, bright shuffle, filled with dancing animals and domestic bliss - he had never been as sweet and silly as he is here. On "Long as I Can See the Light," the record's final song, he again finds solace in home, anchored by a soulful, laid-back groove. It hits a comforting, elegiac note, the perfect way to draw Cosmo's Factory -- an album made during stress and chaos, filled with raging rockers, covers, and intense jams -- to a close.

Oh man, you need them in your life. I still need to hear more of the stuff that was released in the last few years, what I have heard (on crüt's radio show) was amazing.

xp

bit strange to see original reviews dissing Ramble Tamble

a straightforward choogle like "Ramble Tamble"

Cloth-eared hippy

i remember when big star was the theme song for that 70s show

Cheap Trick did that Big Star cover on that 70's show, and I kinda hate it. They shoulda used the original.

Guess that critic didn't like the jam. I'd been happy with the two Chronicle discs, but when a friend got the box set of all their stuff I listened to it all at once. Oof, too much chooglin' old-timey R&R at once! Cosmo's Factory is a perfect dose, though.

86. JOHNNY THUNDERS & THE HEARTBREAKERS L.A.M.F. (2339 Points, 18 Votes)
RYM: #24 for 1977 , #715 overall | Acclaimed: #1188
http://rgcred.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/heartbreakers-lamf-big.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/4CLnHCjgBVBEoCU6e4kts1
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The New York club circuit's first supergroup, the Heartbreakers originally (circa 1975) consisted of ex-NY Dolls Johnny Thunders (Genzale) and Jerry Nolan, ex-Television bassist Richard Hell and ex-nothing guitarist Walter Lure. After butting heads with Johnny over leadership of the band, Hell quit to go solo and was replaced (in only the most technical sense) by Billy Rath; the Heartbreakers moved to England and recorded a musically significant but technically disappointing debut LP, L.A.M.F., for the Who's Track Records. (Who associate Speedy Keen produced.) The irony of the label's name was not lost on fans, who guessed (correctly) that the group's move to Britain was motivated primarily by the legal heroin-maintenance program available there. So feeble was the album's mix that drummer Jerry Nolan actually quit over it, though the material itself shows the band to be masters of the stripped-down, souped-up arrangement later copied by many punk groups (generally minus the '50s rock 'n'roll/R&B essence at the root of Johnny's songwriting). Through Thunders' solo work and countless covers, "One Track Mind," "Chinese Rocks" (co-written by Dee Dee Ramone) and "Born Too Loose" have become standards of the genre, but the performances here are surprisingly tame, like Dolls outtakes with Thunders (never as great a singer as David Jo) at the mic. The rest of the album ranges from really good ("Get Off the Phone," the Lure/Nolan composition "All by Myself") to really weak ("It's Not Enough," "I Love You"). A mixed blessing, to be sure, and one argument against heroin addiction. -- Trouser Press

This is a great collection of raucous, bubblegum rock. There have always been complaints about this album, about its "Muddy," "lackluster" sound, there must be something wrong with me because I prefer my crap vinyl original to the 1994 Jungle records "cleaned up" version. It just sounds closer, more compact and raunchier. -- Woebot

review
[-] by Andy Claps

Despite now being hailed as one of punk rock's most important and enduring statements, Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers' banshee wail of a debut, L.A.M.F., screamed in silence upon its 1977 release, doing a commercial nosedive worthy of an FAA investigation. Admittedly, the record didn't stand much of a chance in the soft rock quagmire of the late '70s, but its odds certainly weren't helped by abysmal distribution (the group's label, Track Records, went belly up soon after the record's release), the band's increasing drug-induced lethargy, and a mix that buried the group's roar deeper than Jimmy Hoffa. It's this mix that's often blamed for the record's quick demise -- rightly or wrongly -- with the result that L.A.M.F. has been re-released three different times with three different mixes. The most prominent of these re-releases -- 1984's L.A.M.F. Revisited and 1994's L.A.M.F.: The Lost '77 Mixes -- took very different approaches to unearthing the musical firestorm smoldering under the sonic sludge. In the case of Revisited, Thunders himself remixed the original tapes; he also rearranged the track order, dropping one song ("All by Myself") and adding two others ("Do You Love Me" and "Can't Keep My Eyes on You"). Sonically, the result was a welcome improvement over the original L.A.M.F., bringing the Heartbreakers' melodic sense into much clearer focus. Yet, strangely, Thunders' remix also added a layer of gloss to the recording that seemed totally at odds with the Lower East Side dirt-and-blood aesthetic of the band, sacrificing power and dynamics for clarity. The approach taken by The Lost '77 Mixes, however, is a much more comfortable fit. Taking the best of the 250 original mixes that the band and producer Speedy Keene made of all the tracks, The Lost '77 Mixes proves that the spit and punch were there all along. The versions here rock with a greasy, maniacal raunch missing on the curiously antiseptic Revisited. The production sheen is gone, giving the music a chance to hit harder and deeper. And hit it does. The guitars of Thunders and Walter Lure buzz and screech louder than ever before; Billy Rath's bass twists and pounds; and Jerry Nolan's drums swing and crash with a newfound violence. Two songs recorded at the original sessions but not used on the original album are also added here: "Can't Keep My Eyes on You," with Nolan on lead vocals, and "Do You Love Me." Thoughtful liner notes by Thunders biographer Nina Antonia round out a pretty cool package. L.A.M.F.: The Lost '77 Mixes may well be the definitive version of this long-neglected classic. It captures Johnny and the boys as they were meant to be recorded: rude, crude, and loud.

if i knew how cool this poll would be, i would've participated more in the nominations segment and pushed lijadu sisters' danger album hard. such an amazing/rocking lp.

The story goes that the Cassette edition has the definitive unspoiled mix.

(naturally, that cassette is probably one of the most highly valued cassette editions of anything ever)

85. HELDON Stand By (2349 Points, 16 Votes)
RYM: #134 for 1979
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/658/MI0001658835.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Richard Pinhas has been at the forefront of new rock music in France since the early 1970's, when he founded the band Heldon, and founded Disjuncta Records at the same time to release their music. Heldon was the first band in France to meld rock music and electronics, releasing a number of 'classic' albums during the 1970's. This is a reissue of the seventh and final album by this quintessential progressive French electronic rock band. Originally released on Egg in 1979, this features the classic Heldon line-up of Richard Pinhas-guitar and electronics, Patric Gauthier-Moog synthesizer and electronics, Didier Batard-bass, FranÕois Auger-drums and guests, including Klaus Blasquiz of Magma! This was one of Heldon's heaviest rock albums. "Heldon's last was album was also their best. Stand By stood on an imaginary crossroad between Robert Fripp, Magma and Tangerine Dream." -- Scented Gardens of the Mind

review
[-] by William Tilland

This was Heldon's last studio release, although the reissued Rhizosphere CD includes a 1982 Heldon concert recording with slightly different personnel. Stand By features the classic trio lineup of the brilliant Francois Auger on percussion, Patrick Gauthier on keyboards and Pinhas on guitars, keyboards and electronics, with some additional assistance from Didier Batard on bass, Didier Badez on sequencers and Klaus Blasquiz doing voices. The two long pieces on the CD are an interesting contrast. The title piece starts with some nasty distorted fuzz guitar from Pinhas over ponderous, menacing bass and drums. King Crimson at its most aggressive could be considered a model, but this track is also very close to the so-called "zheul" sound of Magma, another French prog-rock band of the period, which shared Pinhas' interest in science fiction motifs, among other things. Later in the piece, the band switches gears somewhat with a slightly quicker tempo, but then after a minutes settles back into a grinding, heavy metal sound. After a short and much jauntier electronic interlude comes the second long piece, "Bolero," which uses the well-known Spanish rhythm in an opening section, but then moves into a long space jam which is anchored by a strong sequencer pulse. The result is some very effective "kosmiche" space music, much in the vein of early Klaus Schulze. From a later vantage point, the musical style here is quite familiar, but what makes Heldon's piece a superior thing of its kind is Auger's imaginative percussion, Pinhas' loose, soaring guitar improvisation on top of the precise electronics, and the general interplay among musicians and between acoustic, electric and electronic instruments. Not cookie-cutter stuff by any means, this piece gives the German audionauts such as Schulze and Tangerine Dream some worthy competition.

yes!! I'm glad everyone following this poll HELDON cause it just got amazing!!

oh i need to hear that one

Prawn Farts is also an amazing album!

Prawn Farts has one of the coolest covers ever.

I need more Heldon. I've only heard a couple of them, but I bet all of the '70s ones are good huh?

I'm gonna repost some RYM and Amazon quotes as I like their enthusiasm!

"Proto-Om? Probably. At least the title track is. Absolutely glorious sludgy/stoner-metal monster we have here. The rest is a pretty straight combination of prog rock and Tangerine Dream-style arpeggio-heavy synthscapes. Stand By is definitely the stand-out though. Seriously, glory in musical form."
"As good a rock/electronic fusion as any I've heard to date. Don't be surprised if the title track reminds you of stoner metal."

"A complex and intense form of space-electronic frippian (lark`s/starless/red) prog rock."

"Far and away the best Heldon album, Stand By takes Interface's intoxicating mixture of proto-Industrial, Krautrock, mid-1970s King Crimson and a little bit of Zeuhl and melds all the influences on that album into a singular and unique sound. Synthesisers and guitars blare forth and it's hard to tell which of the two are more aggressive, particularly on the standout title track, a dizzying rapid-fire tour through everything that made the band great. Simply put, this is Richard Pinhas' masterpiece, a seamless fusion of the most violent outgrowths of hard rock and electronic music into a nightmarish, unstoppable killing machine. Handle with care, because this one is explosive."

"If you've looked at my other reviews of Heldon's CDs, you'll notice that it's too easy to point out the musical references contained in their work. That's certainly the case here, however, it is with Stand By that I realized why Heldon truly stands out as a stalwart of musical experimentalism in the 1970s. Heldon so successfully blends and incorporates the influential, innovative and original music of its time that it single-handedly expresses the musical freedom and boundary-pushing that thrived during this much maligned time. You'll hear elements of "Berlin school" electronics (ala Michael Hoenig and Tangerine Dream), jazz fusion (ala Patrick Moraz during his Yes period), hard rock chord changes straight out of Atomic Rooster and blistering guitar solos that reference everything from Jimi Hendrix to Robert Fripp in his King Crimson days. But you'll also hear something no one else ever gave you; and that is Heldon's own sound. No matter how much, "this part sounds like you-know-who" is going on in your mind, there is also always a part of you saying, "yeah, but it sounds like no one else" at the same time.

And so, Stand By (recorded in 1978) has to be hailed as Heldon's signature work. It contains everything that is good about Heldon, all of its musical references and all of its originality. It is Heldon in its mature glory and no other band I can think of so convincingly toed the line between electronic and progressive rock. Progressive rock drums, bass and guitar blend and merge with bass synthesizer pulses and arpeggios; jazz keyboard solos ride overtop jittery electronic sequences; compositions move from dark moody electronic soundscapes to frantic, pulsing rhythms and then transform into improvisational jams or spacey laid-back passages embellished with slithering, smoking guitar solos. If Un Reve Sans Consequence is Heldon at its most experimental and aggressively original, this is Heldon at their most focused and purely stated.

Stand By is outstanding document of all that happened in the 1970s. It is compelling and oh, so satisfying. This is Heldon at its very best and you owe it to yourself to hear it."

"This album is entirely without peer. "Bolero" is hands-down one of the two or three best pieces of electronic music ever released. Heldon is the most underrated pioneer band of all time; it's a travesty that tinky-tinky noodlers like Kraftwerk are universally known while Heldon languishes in obscurity. "Interface" and "Stand By," the last two releases under the name Heldon (Richard Pinhas' solo releases are only non-Heldon in name) are stunningly, boldly, unapologetically and aggressively *electronic music*; not ordinary music with obtrusively analog waveforms, but genuine explorations of a new and powerful medium. "Stand By" sounds no more dated than Bach. While other synth acts were doing gee-whiz material and even ELP would use sounds that sounded merely weird, Heldon was composing within the new potentials.

Play this! Listen! If you're not moved and stunned you should stick to mainstream music, which this emphatically is not."

The story goes that the Cassette edition has the definitive unspoiled mix.

(naturally, that cassette is probably one of the most highly valued cassette editions of anything ever)

― Mark G, Tuesday, March 26, 2013 11:53 AM (20 minutes ago)

actually jungle recently reissued the original track records mix, sounds fantastic

http://open.spotify.com/user/edward_iii/playlist/20msOrGfGsc4IUDiFdpFyh

^ definitive version imo

Jungle have re-issued it so often, who knows?

I have the tracks taken from someone's cassette, that's OK by me...

84. ROXY MUSIC For Your Pleasure (2359 Points, 17 Votes)
RYM: #12 for 1973 , #372 overall | Acclaimed: #107 | RS: #394 | Pitchfork: #87
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/097/MI0002097967.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/6gKMWnGptVs6yT2MgCxw29
spotify:album:6gKMWnGptVs6yT2MgCxw29

These guys make no secret of having a strange idea of a good time, but this isn't decadent, it's ridiculous. Side one surrounds two pained, strained torch jobs with two classic neo-rockers and finishes with a song about an inflatable sex doll that's almost not stupid (title: "In Every Dream Home a Heartache"). Side two surrounds a fast fast one with two long mostly instrumental slow ones that are almost not boring. Verdict: almost not not bad. B -- R. Christgau

For Your Pleasure, another enduring classic (with the second of Roxy's many bassists), refines and magnifies Roxy's style with equally amazing material: "Do the Strand," "Editions of You" (the album's punchy rock single), "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" and the obsessive nine-minutes-plus "Bogus Man." -- Trouser Press

Stop doing the stroll, mouse, limbo, eighty-one and peppermint twist. Give the Strand four minutes of your time and you won't think of doing another dance for at least two weeks.

In an album that is remarkably inaccessible, "Do The Strand" strikes with immediate impact. This lead-off number, written by lead singer Bryan Ferry, is the cleverest use of language and rhyme since "I Am the Walrus." "Tired of the tango? Fed up with fandango?... Bored of the beguine? The sambo wasn't your scene?... Wary of the waltz? And mashed potato schmaltz?" By the time the band has taken off on its mid-flight solo, the listener desperately wants to do the Strand, whatever it is. Turns out it isn't anything, which enhances the magic of what is a total performance. Andrew Mackay's wailing saxophone punctuates Ferry's questions, the rest of the band produces a high-powered backing track, and Ferry sounds perfectly nasty when he says, "We like the Strand."

You'll like it, too, and you can be excused for putting the needle back at the beginning, especially if you hear what comes afterwards. Sadly, the British Top Ten hit "Pyjamarama" is not included, and the seven tracks that are here are hard to bite into. There are some worthwhile moments, to be sure. Changing rhythms, Eno's use of synthesizer and tapes, instrumental passages, Ferry's odd vocal styling and the group's sudden endings are all worth hearing, but mainly because they are interesting, not entertaining. The only true highlights are the eerie "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" and the "boys will be boys will be boyoyoyoys" line and Mackay's solo on "Editions Of You."

Side two drones on with a nine-minute instrumental that sounds like a rip-off of the Doors' "Alabama Song." The title tune ends the album, but is it a tune? It sounds like dogs barking repetitively for minutes on end. Maybe it is Eno's genius at work, but if so you've gotta be Mensa level to understand him or be so stoned you still think the drum solo on "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida" is a tour de force.

A great deal of the group's appeal is visual, and even staring at the interior gatefold won't communicate that excitement. If "Do The Strand," "Pyjamarama" and "Virginia Plain" were all on a maxi-single it would be one of the buys of the year. But the bulk of For Your Pleasure is either above us, beneath us, or on another plane altogether. You can find out where they register on your individual scale. As for me, I shall continue doing the Strand. -- Paul Gambaccini, RS

RS eventually came around on Roxy Music after Eno's departure, but it continued to dismiss this first incarnation of the band for another two decades. John Milward wrote this in the first edition of the album guide: "Roxy's first two albums are groping for a style. While Ferry's songs were generally strong, there was a disparity between Eno's attraction to eccentric instrumentation and Ferry's relatively straightforward tunes." I would argue that it is precisely this creative tension that makes these first two records so interesting. Milward rated Roxy Music two stars and gave three to For Your Pleasure. This rating and review were repeated in the 1983 record guide. 

For Your Pleasure was #394 on RS's 500 greatest albums list. -- schmidtt, Rolling Stone's 500 Worst Reviews of All Time.

Bryan Ferry wanted to be beautiful. Brian Eno wanted to be wild. And, for two albums in the early 1970s, Roxy Music managed to be both. However, it was not without cost. Enraged by Ferry's reluctance to record his songs, Eno called it quits after 1973's For Your Pleasure and the band was never the same again.

However, it was exactly that artistic tug-of-war that fueled their great eponymous debut and pushed ...Pleasure to even greater heights. When a compromise between the two giants was reached, such as on the decadently avant-garde pop single "Do The Strand," the results were glorious. By stark contrast, a track like "In Every Dream Home A Heartache," apparently an ode to an inflatable sex doll, was just plain ponderous. Fortunately, ...Pleasure features far more of the former.

"Do The Strand" is one of the most uproarious rock numbers Roxy Music ever recorded. Ferry takes over for the haunting goodbye "Beauty Queen" and showcases his raising falsetto on "Strictly Confidential." Eno's robotic keyboards are the perfect counterpoint to Phil Manzanera's soaring guitar in "Editions Of You."

...Pleasure was another Top Ten hit for Roxy Music in the UK and the follow-up, Stranded, released at the tail end of 1973, became the band's first No. 1 in its homeland, though Americans did not latch on to Roxy Music until Ferry replaced the artsy experimentation with an equally appealing soul-pop sound, perhaps to best effect on 1982's Avalon, the group's lone gold record Stateside. -- Jim Harrington, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

review
[-] by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

On Roxy Music's debut, the tensions between Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry propelled their music to great, unexpected heights, and for most of the group's second album, For Your Pleasure, the band equals, if not surpasses, those expectations. However, there are a handful of moments where those tensions become unbearable, as when Eno wants to move toward texture and Ferry wants to stay in more conventional rock territory; the nine-minute "The Bogus Man" captures such creative tensions perfectly, and it's easy to see why Eno left the group after the album was completed. Still, those differences result in yet another extraordinary record from Roxy Music, one that demonstrates even more clearly than the debut how avant-garde ideas can flourish in a pop setting. This is especially evident in the driving singles "Do the Strand" and "Editions of You," which pulsate with raw energy and jarring melodic structures. Roxy also illuminate the slower numbers, such as the eerie "In Every Dream Home a Heartache," with atonal, shimmering synthesizers, textures that were unexpected and innovative at the time of its release. Similarly, all of For Your Pleasure walks the tightrope between the experimental and the accessible, creating a new vocabulary for rock bands, and one that was exploited heavily in the ensuing decade.

ugh Xgau is really stupid.

never even heard of Heldon until this moment. A totally new discovery!

it's a travesty that tinky-tinky noodlers like Kraftwerk are universally known while Heldon languishes in obscurity

Happy to see Radio City place, that was my #1, best power pop record ever.

the inside gatefold of that Roxy album, where costumes rival some of the funk albums we've already seen:

http://jonmwessel.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/roxy-music-for-your-pleasure-gatefold.jpg

83. ROLLING STONES Exile On Main St. (2360 Points, 16 Votes)
RYM: #5 for 1972 , #84 overall | Acclaimed: #8 | RS: #7 | Pitchfork: #11
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/525/MI0001525019.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/5dBQ20ppdPxo5bqkoeTKnN
spotify:album:5dBQ20ppdPxo5bqkoeTKnN

More than anything else this fagged-out masterpiece is difficult--how else describe music that takes weeks to understand? Weary and complicated, barely afloat in its own drudgery, it rocks with extra power and concentration as a result. More indecipherable than ever, submerging Mick's voice under layers of studio murk, it piles all the old themes--sex as power, sex as love, sex as pleasure, distance, craziness, release--on top of an obsession with time more than appropriate in over-thirties committed to what was once considered a youth music. Honking around sweet Virginia country and hipping through Slim Harpo, singing their ambiguous praises of Angela Davis, Jesus Christ, and the Butter Queen, they're just war babies with the bell bottom blues. A+ -- R. Christgau

There are songs that are better, there are songs that are worse, there are songs that'll become your favorites and others you'll probably lift the needle for when their time is due. But in the end, Exile on Main Street spends its four sides shading the same song in as many variations as there are Rolling Stone readymades to fill them, and if on the one hand they prove the group's eternal constancy and appeal, it's on the other that you can leave the album and still feel vaguely unsatisfied, not quite brought to the peaks that this band of bands has always held out as a special prize in the past.

The Stones have never set themselves in the forefront of any musical revolution, instead preferring to take what's already been laid down and then gear it to its highest most slashing level. Along this road they've displayed a succession of sneeringly believable poses, in a tradition so grand that in lesser hands they could have become predictable, coupled with an acute sense of social perception and the kind of dynamism that often made everything else seem beside the point.

Through a spectral community alchemy, we've chosen the Stones to bring our darkness into light, in each case via a construct that fits the time and prevailing mood perfectly. And, as a result, they alone have become the last of the great hopes. If you can't bleed on the Stones, who can you bleed on?

In that light, Exile on Main Street is not just another album, a two-month binge for the rack-jobbers and then onto whoever's up next. Backed by an impending tour and a monumental picture-book, its mere presence in record stores makes a statement. And as a result, the group has been given a responsibility to their audience which can't be dropped by the wayside, nor should be, given the two-way street on which music always has to function. Performers should not let their public make career decisions for them, but the best artisans of any era have worked closely within their audience's expectations, either totally transcending them (the Beatles in their up-to-and-including Sgt. Pepper period) or manipulating them (Dylan, continually).

The Stones have prospered by making the classic assertion whenever it was demanded of them. Coming out of Satanic Majesties Request, the unholy trio of "Jumpin' Jack Flash," "Street Fighting Man" and "Sympathy for the Devil" were the blockbusters that brought them back in the running. After, through "Midnight Rambler," "Honky Tonk Women," "Brown Sugar," "Bitch" and those jagged-edge opening bars of "Can't You Hear Me Knocking," they've never failed to make that affirmation of their superiority when it was most needed, of the fact that others may come and go but the Rolling Stones will always be.

This continual topping of one's self can only go on for so long, after which one must sit back and sustain what has already been built. And with Exile on Main Street, the Stones have chosen to sustain for the moment, stabilizing their pasts and presenting few directions for their future. The fact that they do it so well is testament to one of the finest bands in the world. The fact that they take a minimum of chances, even given the room of their first double album set, tends to dull that finish a bit.

Exile on Main Street is the Rolling Stones at their most dense and impenetrable. In the tradition of Phil Spector, they've constructed a wash of sound in which to frame their songs, yet where Spector always aimed to create an impression of space and airiness, the Stones group everything together in one solid mass, providing a tangled jungle through which you have to move toward the meat of the material. Only occasionally does an instrument or voice break through to the surface, and even then it seems subordinate to the ongoing mix, and without the impact that a break in the sound should logically have.

One consequence of this style is that most of the hard-core action on the record revolves around Charlie Watts' snare drum. The sound gives him room not only to set the pace rhythmically but to also provide the bulk of the drive and magnetism. Another is that because Jagger's voice has been dropped to the level of just another instrument, burying him even more than usual, he has been freed from any restrictions the lyrics might have once imposed. The ulterior motives of mumbling aside, with much of the record completely unintelligible — though the words I could make out generally whetted my appetite to hear more — he's been left with something akin to pure singing, utilizing only his uncanny sense of style to carry him home from there. His performances here are among the finest he's graced us with in a long time, a virtual drama which amply proves to me that there's no other vocalist who can touch him, note for garbled note.

As for Keith, Bill and Mick T., their presence comes off as subdued, never overly apparent until you put your head between the speakers. In the case of the last two, this is perfectly understandable. Wyman has never been a front man, and his bass has never been recorded with an eye to clarity. He's the bottom, and he fulfills his support role with a grace that is unfailingly admirable. Mick Taylor falls about the same, chosen to take Brian's place as much because he could be counted on to stay in the background as for his perfect counterpoint guitar skills. With Keith, however, except for a couple of spectacular chording exhibitions and some lethal openings, his instrumental wizardry is practically nowhere to be seen, unless you happen to look particularly hard behind Nicky Hopkins' piano or the dual horns of Price/Keys. It hurts the album, as the bone earring has often provided the marker on which the Stones rise or fall.

Happily, though, Exile on Main Street has the Rolling Stones sounding like a full-fledged five-into-one band. Much of the self-consciousness that marred Sticky Fingers has apparently vanished, as well as that album's tendency to touch every marker on the Hot 100. It's been replaced by a tight focus on basic components of the Stones' sound as we've always known it, knock-down rock and roll stemming from blues, backed with a pervading feeling of blackness that the Stones have seldom failed to handle well.

The album begins with "Rocks Off," a proto-typical Stones' opener whose impact is greatest in its first 15 seconds. Kicked off by one of Richards' patented guitar scratchings, a Jagger aside and Charlie's sharp crack, it moves into the kind of song the Stones have built a reputation on, great choruses and well-judged horn bursts, painlessly running you through the motions until you're out of the track and into the album. But if that's one of its assets, it also stands for one of its deficiencies — there's nothing distinctive about the tune. Stones' openers of the past have generally served to set the mood for the mayhem to follow; this one tells you that we're in for nothing new.

"Rip This Joint" is a stunner, getting down to the business at hand with the kind of music the Rolling Stones were born to play. It starts at a pace that yanks you into its locomotion full tilt, and never lets up from there; the sax solo is the purest of rock and roll. Slim Harpo's "Shake Your Hips" mounts up as another plus, with a mild boogie tempo and a fine mannered vocal from Jagger. The guitars are the focal point here, and they work with each other like a pair of Corsican twins. "Casino Boogie" sounds at times as if it were a Seventies remake from the chord progression of "Spider and the Fly," and for what it's worth, I suppose I'd rather listen to "jump right ahead in my web" any day.
But it's left to "Tumbling Dice" to not just place a cherry on the first side, but to also provide one of the album's only real moves towards a classic. As the guitar figure slowly falls into Charlie's inevitable smack, the song builds to the kind of majesty the Stones at their best have always provided. Nothing is out of place here, Keith's simple guitar figure providing the nicest of bridges, the chorus touching the upper levels of heaven and spurring on Jagger, set up by an arrangement that is both unique and imaginative. It's definitely the cut that deserved the single, and the fact that it's not likely to touch Number One shows we've perhaps come a little further than we originally intended.

Side Two is the only side on Exile without a barrelhouse rocker, and drags as a result. I wish for once the Stones could do a country song in the way they've apparently always wanted, without feeling the need to hoke it up in some fashion. "Sweet Virginia" is a perfectly friendly lazy shuffle that gets hung on an overemphasized "shit" in the chorus. "Torn and Frayed" has trouble getting started, but as it inexorably rolls to its coda the Stones find their flow and relax back, allowing the tune to lovingly expand. "Sweet Black Angel," with its vaguely West Indian rhythm and Jagger playing Desmond Dekker, comes off as a pleasant experiment that works, while "Loving Cup" is curiously faceless, though it must be admitted the group works enough out-of-the-ordinary breaks and bridges to give it at least a fighting chance; the semi-soul fade on the end is rhythmically satisfying but basically undeveloped, adding to the cut's lack of impression.

The third side is perhaps the best organized of any on Exile. Beginning with the closest thing to a pop number Mick and Keith have written on the album, "Happy" lives up to its title from start to finish. It's a natural-born single, and its position as a side opener seems to suggest the group thinks so too. "Turd on the Run," even belying its gimmicky title, is a superb little hustler; if Keith can be said to have a showpiece on this album, this is it. Taking off from a jangly "Maybellene" rhythm guitar, he misses not a flick of the wrist, sitting behind the force of the instrumental and shoveling it along. "Ventilator Blues" is all Mick, spreading the guts of his voice all over the microphone, providing an entrance into the gumbo ya-ya of "I Just Want to See His Face," Jagger and the chorus sinuously wavering around a grand collection of jungle drums. "Let It Loose" closes out the side, and as befits the album's second claim to classic, is one beautiful song, both lyrically and melodically. Like on "Tumbling Dice," everything seems to work as a body here, the gospel chorus providing tension, the leslie'd guitar rounding the mysterious nature of the track, a great performance from Mick and just the right touch of backing instruments. Whoever that voice belongs to hanging off the fade in the end, I'd like to kiss her right now: she's that lovely.

Coming off "Let It Loose," you might expect Side Four to be the one to really put the album on the target. Not so. With the exception of an energy-ridden "All Down The Line" and about half of "Shine a Light," Exile starts a slide downward which happens so rapidly that you might be left a little dazed as to what exactly happened. "Stop Breaking Down" is such an overdone blues cliché that I'm surprised it wasn't placed on Jamming With Edward. "Shine a Light" starts with perhaps the best potential of any song on the album, a slow, moody piece with Mick singing in a way calculated to send chills up your spine. Then, out of nowhere, the band segues into the kind of shlock gospel song that Tommy James has already done better. Then they move you back into the slow piece. Then back into shlock gospel again. It's enough to drive you crazy.

After four sides you begin to want some conclusion to the matters at hand, to let you off the hook so you can start all over fresh. "Soul Survivor," though a pretty decent and upright song in itself, can't provide the kind of kicker that is needed at this point. It's typicality, within the oeuvre of the Rolling Stones, means it could've been placed anywhere, and with "Let It Loose" just begging to seal the bottle, there's no reason why it should be the last thing left you by the album.

Still, talking about the pieces of Exile on Main Street is somewhat off the mark here, since individually the cuts seem to stand quite well. Only when they're taken together, as a lump sum of four sides, is their impact blunted. This would be all right if we were talking about any other group but the Stones. Yet when you've been given the best, it becomes hard to accept anything less, and if there are few moments that can be faulted on this album, it also must be said that the magic high spots don't come as rapidly.

Exile on Main Street appears to take up where Sticky Fingers left off, with the Stones attempting to deal with their problems and once again slightly missing the mark. They've progressed to the other side of the extreme, wiping out one set of solutions only to be confronted with another. With few exceptions, this has meant that they've stuck close to home, doing the sort of things that come naturally, not stepping out of the realm in which they feel most comfortable. Undeniably it makes for some fine music, and it surely is a good sign to see them recording so prolifically again; but I still think that the great Stones album of their mature period is yet to come. Hopefully, Exile on Main Street will give them the solid footing they need to open up, and with a little horizon-expanding (perhaps honed by two months on the road), they might even deliver it to us the next time around. -- Lenny Kaye, RS

Lenny Kaye was one of the most thoughtful, engaging critics that ever wrote for Rolling Stone. In some ways, I like him even more than Lester Bangs, whose provocative, confrontational style occasionally came at the expense of lucid, clear-headed analysis. As often as not, I find myself disagreeing with Bangs, but I rarely disagree with Kaye, who on the whole was remarkably prescient and insightful. Kaye may not be as funny or entertaining as Bangs (or, admittedly, as critical), but his writing always conveys intelligence, knowledge, and an honest, genuine passion for the music. 

I include this review not to demonstrate that Kaye is an idiot because he was disappointed with Exile when it came out - frankly, I myself had a similar reaction to this album the first time I heard it, twenty years after its release. Of course, in retrospect his assertion that the album takes a "minimum of chances" does not really seem fair - few Stones records were more ballsy than this one - but this review comes from the perspective of a fan with admittedly sky-high expectations that, at least initially, could probably never be fulfilled. 

Today, Exile is now generally regarded as "the great Stones album" that Kaye thought was still to come. Exile On Main St. was #7 on RS's 500 greatest albums list - higher than any other Stones LP. -- schmiddt, Rolling Stone's 500 Worst Reviews of All Time 

Listen to the Rolling Stones. Hear them play. Hear them play all the rock chords they know...all nine of them. Hear Mick sing de blooz. ("Owah bayuhbee, bee miyuh giruh!.") He's paid his dues, you bet. It must hurt like hell to sing through pouting lips. Listen to the horns; sometimes they sound like kazoos, sometimes like cheezy violins. What? Those are violins? Well, anyhow, the chick singers moaning "ooh" and "aah" sound authentic, don't they. Listen to them all swing on "Tumbling Dice..." or was that "Hip Shake"? Hmmmm. Maybe it was "Turd On the Run"? Oh well, it doesn't matter. They all sound the same.

From the sound of things, the Stones weren't exiled on Main Street...they were deported. -- Ed Naha, Circus

At various times during the long run of the Rolling Stones,the band's rhythmic direction has been dictated primarly by singer Mick Jagger (Some Girls), or drummer Charlie Watts (12 x 5, Voodoo Lounge), or the songwriting tandem of Jagger and guitarist Kieth Richards (Let It Bleed). One record, however, is primarily Richards's vision -- the constantly surprising Exile on Main St. Throughout its four gloriously ragged LP sides, the Stones appear not as rock stars but as scrappers, tearing through mean old blues tunes and throwaway two-chord riffs in search of a less restrictive rock and roll language. The result: one of the most intense studio albums in rock history.

Exile is Richards's record almost by accident. The Stones left England several months before work began on the album, fleeing tax laws. Richards's French villa was available, and the group set up a mobile recording studio in the basement. Jagger wasn't around for the early sessions: His wife Bianca was about to give birth. Richards grumbled loudly about Jagger's absence, but it turned out to be a hidden blessing: It allowed the guitarist to work on his own terms, which at the time meant copious amounts of alcohol and illicit drugs. As the guitarist Mick Taylor recalled later, the setting was perfect for Richards. "Al he had to do was fall out of his bed, roll downstairs and violá he was at work."

Faced with having to start the train by himself, Richards came up with the loose, spectacularly disheveled roar that infects the originals (notably "Happy," "Torn and Frayed," and the "living room version" of "Tumbling Dice") and the covers of storied blues ("Shake Your Hips," "Stop Breaking Down"). He sets up the mean groove that prevails throughout, a rhythm attack that's dark and dense and raw. The sense of new possibility no doubt helped inspire Jagger: It's possible to imagine the singer and lyricist turning up at the sessions, hearing the band ripping with merciless intensity, and realizing that the ante has been upped. His response: lyrics bristling with attitude (if not outright hostility), sung in a surly, visceral mood that equals and frequently exceeds that of the bloodthirsty music Richards and company are throwing down. Though Exile does contain a few "singles," it is much more a wall-to-wall album experience, a debauched marathon in which every track transfers a different jolt. If you haven't heard it straight through, you can't fully appreciate the extremes to which rock and roll can be pushed. -- Tom Moon, 1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die

review
[-] by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Greeted with decidedly mixed reviews upon its original release, Exile on Main St. has become generally regarded as the Rolling Stones' finest album. Part of the reason why the record was initially greeted with hesitant reviews is that it takes a while to assimilate. A sprawling, weary double album encompassing rock & roll, blues, soul, and country, Exile doesn't try anything new on the surface, but the substance is new. Taking the bleakness that underpinned Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers to an extreme, Exile is a weary record, and not just lyrically. Jagger's vocals are buried in the mix, and the music is a series of dark, dense jams, with Keith Richards and Mick Taylor spinning off incredible riffs and solos. And the songs continue the breakthroughs of their three previous albums. No longer does their country sound forced or kitschy -- it's lived-in and complex, just like the group's forays into soul and gospel. While the songs, including the masterpieces "Rocks Off," "Tumbling Dice," "Torn and Frayed," "Happy," "Let It Loose," and "Shine a Light," are all terrific, they blend together, with only certain lyrics and guitar lines emerging from the murk. It's the kind of record that's gripping on the very first listen, but each subsequent listen reveals something new. Few other albums, let alone double albums, have been so rich and masterful as Exile on Main St., and it stands not only as one of the Stones' best records, but sets a remarkably high standard for all of hard rock.

The first time I heard it was when I was woken up late at night by a party across the hall from my freshman dorm room. It was winding down, but the door was open and I heard the music and guessed it was probably Exile, so I got up, stepped over passed out bodies in the hall, poured myself a shitty beer and sat on the floor to hear the rest of it. An appropriate setting!

Charlie's inevitable smack

Prescient indeed.

Wow uh for some reason I didnt think Exile was eligible or else I wdve def thrown it some points

but this review comes from the perspective of a fan with admittedly sky-high expectations that, at least initially, could probably never be fulfilled.

Kaye's review of Quadrophenia was another example of this ("straining to break out of its enclosed boundaries and faltering badly").

82. JIMI HENDRIX Band Of Gypsys (2365 Points, 17 Votes)
RYM: #18 for 1970 , #363 overall | Acclaimed: #664 | Pitchfork: #93
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http://open.spotify.com/album/0B0Zwfcy4pAY2JAoxIEkR5
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Because Billy Cox and Buddy Miles are committed (not to say limited) to a straight 4/4 with a slight funk bump, Hendrix has never sounded more earthbound. "Who Knows," based on a blues elemental, and "Machine Gun," a peacemonger's long-overdue declaration of war, are as powerful if not as complex as anything he's ever put on record. But except on the rapid-fire "Message to Love" he just plays simple wah-wah patterns for a lot of side two. Not bad for a live rock album, because Hendrix is the music's nonpareil improvisor. But for a Hendrix album, not great. B+ -- R. Christgau

This is the album that Hendrix "owed" Capitol for releasing him over to Reprise Records and significantly, it isn't a studio effort, as his Reprise effort's have been. Which is not to imply that it is any better than those Experience albums. The context of the album is vital -- Band of Gypsys was one of Hendrix' 1969 amalgamations consisting of Buddy Miles on drums and Billy Cox on bass, among others. They hadn't been together very long when this session was recorded live at the Fillmore East, New Year's Eve 1969/70, and the music shows it.

Both sides are basically extended jams with lots of powerful, together guitar by Hendrix, able bass by Cox, at times overbearing drums by Miles and rather lame, buried vocals by both Hendrix and Miles. The group sound is surprisingly similar to Hendrix' old "Foxy Lady" and "Purple Haze" days, with the significant difference that here Hendrix really gets into his guitar playing. No more the flashy, crotch-oriented gimmickry and extended wah-wahs -- here he just stands still and shows us how adept he is with the ax. The support from Cox is always inventive, but Miles' drumming is definitely disturbing and exceedingly pedestrian at times. Hendrix overcomes on pure tension alone, as both "Message To Love" and "Who Knows" aptly demonstrate.

The problem is the vocals -- all the tunes are new ones and with Hendrix' weird poetic sensibility (akin to LeRoi Jones in effect at times: catch the poem on the inside cover), it would have been a large improvement had we been presented with a little less drumming and a lot more vocal. The excitement and hypnotic compression so apparent in the music would have been pressed home even more forcefully behind Hendrix' drawling, heavenly inflected voice, because Hendrix is not just a run-of-the-mill R&B singer -- his voice is just as much an instrument as his guitar. But, it's all just potential this time out, with the one exception of the twelve-minute "Machine Gun," dedicated to "all the soldiers that are fighting in Chicago, Milwaukee and New York and... oh, yes...all the soldiers fighting in Viet Nam." Here the Hendrix vocal is in the forefront and perfectly matched to his most desperate, driving guitar solo ever. You can hear the sirens wailing and the entire mood, even down to Miles' drumming, is one of confrontation and freneticism mixed in equal parts.

This album is Hendrix the musician. With just bass and drum support he is able to transfuse and transfix on the strength of his guitar-work alone. -- Gary Von Tersch, RS

Jimi is back, refurbished with Billy Cox (who used to play third base for the Brooklyn Dodgers) and Buddy Miles whose drumming is worth the price of your admission. Hendrix, the heavy of all time, is refining his music and the result is a tighter more evenly spaced out recording, full of power and a more technically proficient set. I never believed that he played up to his popularity, his image, but give me time, I'll come around. He's about the only black musician playing for a white audience a peculiar blend of black records and white traditional acid rock. Hendrix is into black liberation in a heavy way, though his music has always been liberating, driving an intensely pitched energy level that has often been overshadowed by his act. I don't think he's acting anymore but getting into his playing, which is a relief. -- Jonathan Eisen, Circus

Recorded at the Fillmore East in New York on New Year's Eve -- the last night of the 1960s -- this is Jimi Hendrix tearing out toward a bold new kind of mind-warp. He'd exhausted the possibilities of the conventional verse-chorus song context on such enduring albums as 1967's Are You Experienced, and as the new decade dawned, the former paratrooper and his newly assembled "black" band -- the drummer Buddy Miles and bassist Billy Cox -- sought different horizons. This trio was not tiptoeing to get there: It was into the hard and the harsh. The group's wide-open vamps were often built on static single chords, some leaning toward the shadowy landscapes of Miles Davis's Bitches Brew, some with the kinetic thump of Sly Stone funk.

With Hendrix, the starting point doesn't matter much -- a few minutes into any of these pieces, he's off in the ether, giving guitar clinics for contortionists. Band of Gypsys just might be the heaviest explosion of electric guitar ever caught on tape -- these writhing, screaming, bent-over-backward solos are works of herculean imagination. At the same time, the album is one of the most thrilling glimpses of a new sound being born. Hendrix wasn't exactly sure where he was going, and neither were his cohorts. They knew the general terrain, and knew how to support Hendrix when he stepped into the spotlight, but the "form" was mostly free. Hendrix being Hendrix, there were no raod maps, and the group hadn't been playing together long enough to have developed protocol. That created its own blank-slate energy: Listen as the stuttering funk of "Machine Gun" progresses, and you'll hear the band follow Hendrix first at close range, then with less-note-by-note attention. As he builds up steam, the pulse behind him becomes brutally physical, a whomp that registers in the gut.

Band of Gypsys contains material that Hendrix was just working up at the time -- these are the definitive recordings of "Who Knows," "Message to Love," and "Machine Gun," among others. It's the only live album Hendrix authorized, and though the Band itself was short-lived (Hendrix dissolved it several weeks after this show), Band of Gypsys remains a once-in-a-lifetime explosion of cosmic guitar. -- Tom Moon, 1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die

review
[-] by Sean Westergaard

Band of Gypsys was the only live recording authorized by Jimi Hendrix before his death. It was recorded and released in order to get Hendrix out from under a contractual obligation that had been hanging over his head for a couple years. Helping him out were longtime friends Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on the drums because the Experience had broken up in June of 1969, following a show in Denver. This rhythm section was vastly different from the Experience. Buddy Miles was an earthy, funky drummer in direct contrast to the busy, jazzy leanings of Mitch Mitchell. Noel Redding was not really a bass player at all but a converted guitar player who was hired in large part because Hendrix liked his hair! These new surroundings pushed Hendrix to new creative heights. Along with this new rhythm section, Hendrix took these shows as an opportunity to showcase much of the new material he had been working on. The music was a seamless melding of rock, funk, and R&B, and tunes like "Message to Love" and "Power to Love" showed a new lyrical direction as well. Although he could be an erratic live performer, for these shows, Hendrix was on -- perhaps his finest performances. His playing was focused and precise. In fact, for most of the set, Hendrix stood motionless, a far cry from the stage antics that helped establish his reputation as a performer. Equipment problems had plagued him in past live shows as well, but everything was perfect for the Fillmore shows. His absolute mastery of his guitar and effects is even more amazing considering that this was the first time he used the Fuzz Face, wah-wah pedal, Univibe, and Octavia pedals on-stage together. The guitar tones he gets on "Who Knows" and "Power to Love" are powerful and intense, but nowhere is his absolute control more evident than on "Machine Gun," where Hendrix conjures bombs, guns, and other sounds of war from his guitar, all within the context of a coherent musical statement. The solo on "Machine Gun" totally rewrote the book on what a man could do with an electric guitar and is arguably the most groundbreaking and devastating guitar solo ever. These live versions of "Message to Love" and "Power to Love" are far better than the jigsaw puzzle studio versions that were released posthumously. Two Buddy Miles compositions are also included, but the show belongs to Jimi all the way. Band of Gypsys is not only an important part of the Hendrix legacy, but one of the greatest live albums ever.

TOO LOW

The best Hendrix album

81. THE ADVERTS Crossing the Red Sea with the Adverts (2378 Points, 18 Votes)
RYM: #75 for 1978 , #3345 overall | Acclaimed: #1819
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http://open.spotify.com/album/5Wmr7UWbQr7XuBb1wbKbXg
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In its own way, Red Sea is the equal of the first Sex Pistols or Clash LP, a hasty statement that captures an exciting time. Smith's tunes almost all offer a new wrinkle on issues of the day; when they fall into a rut, as in "Bored Teenagers," his breathy, urgent vocals compensate. It's too bad the original album didn't include the ghoulishly funny "Gary Gilmore's Eyes," a wicked single about a blind person who receives a transplant from you-know-(but-may-not-remember)-who. (That omission was rectified on the 1982 reissue but then repeated when a pressing boo-boo left it off the vinyl version of the '90 reissue. The CD, however, does contain that tricky little item.) -- Trouser Press

review
[-] by Dave Thompson

A devastating debut, one of the finest albums not only of the punk era, but of the 1970s as a whole, Crossing the Red Sea With the Adverts was the summation of a year's worth of gigging, honing a repertoire that -- jagged, jarring, and frequently underplayed though it was -- nevertheless bristled with hits, both commercial and cultural. "No Time to Be 21," "One Chord Wonders," and "Bored Teenagers" were already established among the most potent rallying cries of the entire new wave, catch phrases for a generation that had no time for anthems; "Bombsite Boy," "Safety in Numbers," and "Great British Mistake" offered salvation to the movement's disaffected hordes; and the whole thing was cut with such numbingly widescreen energy that, even with the volume down, it still shakes the foundations. The band's original vision saw a rerecording of "Gary Gilmore's Eyes," a Top 20 hit during summer 1977, included on the album -- it was dropped (for space considerations) at the last minute. Several early '80s reissues of the album attempted to rectify the omission by appending the single version to side two of the LP, but it was 1983 before the rerecording itself made it out, as a minor U.K. hit single, and 1998 before Smith himself was finally able to restore Red Sea to its original glory, with "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" slotted in immediately before "Bombsite Boy," and another absentee, "New Day Dawning," following "Safety in Numbers."

80. VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR Godbluff (2386 Points, 16 Votes)
RYM: #13 for 1975 , #420 overall
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http://open.spotify.com/album/4irlewoGTUPndEinKcavLF
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With the band out of commission, Hammill forged ahead with his increasingly prolific solo career. Banton, Evans and Jackson were less active, joining forces to record The Long Hello. In October 1974, the four came back together to play on Hammill's proto-punk record,Nadir's Big Chance, and agreed to reform Van der Graaf Generator. Following a spring 1975 comeback tour, the band started work on Godbluff. The opportunity to road-test and rehearse the majority of the new material before entering the studio helped to head off the problems that had dogged Pawn Hearts — the seat-of-the-pants writing and recording of "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" had been a major factor contributing to the group's burnout. Echoing the mood of "Lemmings," on Godbluff's opener, "The Undercover Man," Hammill adopts an attitude of resigned persistence ("You ask, in uncertain voice, what you should do / As if there were a choice but to carry on"), and while his delivery is comparatively restrained here, it's no less compelling. That dynamic extends to the overall sound of Godbluff, which marks a departure from the preceding album: the record's four tracks are familiarly lengthy, and baroque, but they're focused, rather than sprawling and overwhelming; while reining in its more unhinged inclinations, the band never forfeits intensity or urgency. In contrast with the prosaic contemplation of the misery of the human condition that characterizes "The Undercover Man," the two strongest tracks find Hammill staging his perennial existential struggles as life-versus-death psychodramas, set in forbidding pseudo-medieval environments. The weighty "Scorched Earth" taps back into the band's menacing, cacophonic tendencies and gallops to a feedback-addled conclusion as the song's protagonist flees for his life. "Arrow" starts out like something from the dark, brooding depths, but Banton's bass, Jackson's electrified squall and Evans' nodding beat together shape a funky groove that gradually coalesces into the song itself, with Hammill's stentorian voice leading another epic charge. The song's atmospheric rendering of a medieval warrior fleeing for his life doesn't end well for its hero who, after a desperate chase and a failed attempt at gaining sanctuary, reflects, "How strange my body feels, impaled upon the arrow." For all the churning turmoil, Godbluff isn't without levity: witness the completely random, supremely cheesy Latin cocktail interlude during "The Sleepwalkers." -- Trouser Press

---
From the opening bars of “Undercover Man,” the new aspects of VDGG are immediate; the music is more open and uniform and the band sound re-energized and (more or less) modern. Whether or not VDGG Mark II could have made it into the “big league” was always debatable; their idiosyncrasies were perhaps too profound. But here, VDGG’s purpose is clear – performance; the chaos has found control, and the band’s execution is impeccable. “Undercover Man” gently fades into the epic “Scorched Earth.” Driving and foreboding, it’s a heavy as one could ask for. Hammill’s lyrical intensity is matched only by his delivery; he sounds as assured and convicted as ever. Evan’s tempo is quick and controlled throughout, while Jackson’s brass arrangements are a perfect foil to Banton’s organ. “Arrow” finds Banton playing bass opposite Hammill on electric piano. After a loose start, Hammill pulls things forward, revealing one of their most enduring songs. “Sleepwalkers” doesn’t even blink after digressing into a circus-like cha-cha, then erupting with a quick double-kick from Evan’s bass drum. The album remains the band’s most consistent record. -- C. Snider, The Strawberry Bricks Guide To Progressive Rock

---
Two and a half years later, they triumphantly re-emerged with Godbluff, which trimmed some of the more dense, show-off instrumentation into sharp, laser focus. Introducing some space to breathe gave the music that much more impact on “The Undercover Man” and “Arrow” with a spare, sinewy rhythm in the opening statement, Hammill’s vocals adding sweeping drama that suggests he may have even been an influence on Ronnie James Dio.  At a time when prog was falling out of commercial favor or moving in a pop direction like Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator became even more heavy and uncompromising, with perhaps only King Crimson as comparable peers. -- Fastnbulbous

review
by Steven McDonald

Following the release of Pawn Hearts, bandleader Peter Hammill took time out to develop a solo career, choosing to focus his energy on darkly introspective works that seemed to be intended to examine the personal consequences of his life. When it came time for reuniting the members of Van Der Graaf, this change in direction had its effect on the band's post-1975 music. While the musical structures continued to be complex and dense, there seemed to be far less accent on the demonstration of musical skill than had formerly been the case. Indeed, the album opened with daring quietness, with David Jackson's flute echoing across the stereo space, joined by Hammill's voice as he whispered the opening lines. There was sturm und drang to come, but the music had been opened up and the lyrics had developed more focus, often abandoning metaphor in favor of statement. Godbluff was a bravura comeback -- only four cuts, but all were classics.

paging imago

79. HELDON Interface (2391 Points, 17 Votes)
RYM: #174 for 1978
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We take it for granted today, but not too long ago, integrating electronics into a rock setting was something exotic and strange. Before Kraftwerk, and certainly ages before all manner of modern digitally powered pop, hip-hop and experimental music, the only people interested enough in electronics to apply them in anything approaching rock were mad-scientists like Raymond Scott, Bruce Haack and David Vorhaus. These people were as much engineers as they were musicians, and history has granted them more technological props than musical ones. However, as the futuristic daydreams of the 50s and 60s graduated into the wide-eyed discovery by thousands of young, fearless kids in the 70s, the ideal of electronic interaction with guitars and drums seemed less an abstract, distant concept than a viable alternate reality.

One of the earliest bands to exploit this marriage to its fullest potential was the French outfit Heldon, led by guitarist Richard Pinhas. Pinhas was heavily influenced by King Crimson leader Robert Fripp-- particularly his searing, sustained tone, coming on like an intensely focused acid-rock laser beam-- and a love of epic-length compositions. Pinhas was also very much enthralled by the idea of using programmed synthesizers in his work. His first records with Heldon are direct precursors to the industrial clang of bands like Throbbing Gristle, and later, Einstürzende Neubauten and Ministry, in their uses of menacing synth clusters performing seemingly endless patterns of perpetually churning, lysergic fuzz. However, his major impact wasn't felt until he combined his love of King Crimson's avant-progressive dynamics with his fetish for doom-filled, minimalist tech-core. The apexes of this fusion were represented on 1976's Un Reve Sans Consequence Speciale and this album, 1977's Interface.

Pinhas worked with two of the finest musicians of his country on Interface: keyboardist Patrick Gauthier (later of Magma), and powerhouse drummer Francois Auger. With this pair, Pinhas was able to construct massive specimens of metronomic terror while still being able to constantly shift the focus of the sound. In concert, they might stretch five-minute patterns into half-hour death races, never deviating from the pre-ordained settings of an army of sequenced synthesizers. The classic Heldon lineup was like an inhuman mix of Tangerine Dream's otherworldly journeys into space and time and the finely tuned brawn of The Mahavishnu Orchestra, not to mention featuring practically orgasmic guitar solos that would make Makoto Kawabata blush. It was excessive to a fault, but then, any music designed to draw out the darkest demons of an acid trip should've been.

The first side of the original LP consists of several relatively short pieces, each nonetheless in the immediately identifiable Heldon style. Auger's "Les Soucoupes Volantes Vertes" and "Bal-A-Fou" both feature synth-ostinatos under which he pounds like Jaki Leibezeit on triple-dosage steroids. The thick rumble of the latter tune almost makes you forget there was no bassist in the band. Pinhas' "Jet Girl" is fairly similar to his earlier Heldon efforts in that it forsakes typical rock aggression for bleak, apocalyptic soundscapes more often identified with the industrial music that was inspired, in part, by this band. Nevertheless, Pinhas' distant, raging guitar serves fair warning that this music originates from the same psychedelic heart as many other concurrent night-trippers like Ash Ra Tempel and Hawkwind, even if the execution was completely different.

The meat of Interface is its 18-minute title track (also featured in two truncated live versions on this Cuneiform reissue). Beginning with phased, metallic hammering, morphing into a percussive pattern and eventually traveling through a truly intimidating labyrinth of synthesizers, howling guitars and all-around horrific, swirling thunder, "Interface" is the definitive avant-prog nightmare. With each passing minute, it seems more detail is layered into the piece, so that before too long, there's so much going on, I can only really make out a single, lurching beast. Rattlesnake electric drums going off on the right, bass-heavy synthlines threatening to throw me off balance, Auger's constantly mutating drum patterns-- but most of all, Pinhas' absolutely unhinged soloing. He starts out merely deranged, bending lines all over the place, like a strung-out Hendrix taking his wrath upon Silicon Valley. His lines eventually transform into almost pure noise, jumping up just long enough for you to notice that your speakers are about to blow from all the commotion below. It really is an obscene mess, but still a gorgeous one.
This CD is the same issue that Cuneiform released a few years back, but which had gone out of print almost as soon. Anyone with even a passing interest in electronic/rock hybrid music should check it out, as well as those wanting to hear one of the chief precedents for bands ranging from Lightning Bolt to Neurosis to Squarepusher. To many (including me), Heldon and Richard Pinhas are considered building blocks for whole schools of experimental rock music, and one of the few who rarely fail to deliver on the hype. -- Dominique Leone, Pitchfork

review
[-] by William Tilland

Heldon's real excellence as a band is dramatically demonstrated with this fine recording. A dashing young left-wing intellectual, Pinhas was something of a cult figure in his native France, or at least had the potential to be one, but he wisely rejected the role of rock & roll guitar hero with backing band, in favor of something much more interesting and radical. Patrick Gauthier on moog and Francois Auger on percussion had played with Pinhas on and off for the previous several years, and at this point they had developed into a solid sympathetic unit with a strongly rhythmic orientation. The intricate interlocking rhythms, created by percussion and several synthesizers, have a proto-techno quality at times, and suggest both the German group Can and, on at least one piece, early Ash Ra Tempel. Some of the Grateful Dead's long, free-form jams might also serve as a touchstone, and tracks like "Bal-a-fou" even begin with loose, vaguely psychedelic fragments which gradually coalesce into a very trippy and propulsive collective improvisation. On several pieces, Pinhas' Fripp-inspired guitar lines provide still another layer of intensity. The tour de force is the long title piece which ends the CD. At close to 20 minutes, it builds slowly, gradually adding layers of rhythmic complexity with drums, synthesized percussion, sequencers and Pinhas' electric guitar, which doesn't even show up until nine minutes into the piece.

WOW! Didn't think this stuff would place so high!

me neither! But Pinhas has his ilx fans and I think a lot of us discovered him thanks to the poll too (i had already voted when I heard it but I'm sure I would have given it some points)

I think Elvis Telecom had given me some of the earlier albums before as I had them on my HD but not these 2 that made it in the 100.

Wonder if nakh knows these albums

Next album up is far too fucking low.

78. CURTIS MAYFIELD Curtis (2392 Points, 18 Votes)
RYM: #13 for 1970 , #180 overall | Acclaimed: #471
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Initially I distrusted these putatively middlebrow guides to black pride--"Miss Black America" indeed. But a lot of black people found them estimable, so I listened some more, and I'm glad. Since Mayfield is a more trustworthy talent than Isaac Hayes, I wasn't too surprised at the durability of the two long cuts--the percussion jam is as natural an extension of soul music (those Sunday handclaps) as the jazzish solo. What did surprise me was that the whole project seemed less and less middlebrow as I got to know it. Forget the harps--"Move On Up" is Mayfield's most explicit political song, "If There's a Hell Below We're All Gonna Go" revises the usual gospel pieties, and "Miss Black America" has its charms, too. B+ -- R. Christgau

Here's a Curtis Mayfield (of the Impressions) solo album; so far as I know, the first. Most of the eight cuts are distinctly Impressionistic, and one, "Miss Black America," includes Sam and Fred singing choruses. There are really no surprises in this album. It's just eight more Mayfield tunes, sweet music to Mayfield maybe, but not what I'd call the best demonstration of the man's talents.

For the past year or so, a lot of Mayfield's tunes have seemed die-cast and lacking in character. He appears to be unable to develop either a musical or lyrical theme to fullness these days, and many of his songs are fragmentary, garbled and frustrating to listen to. Lyrically, his songs are a whole lot more rhyme than reason; which isn't so uncommon, except that he tries to deal with some pretty serious and complex subjects by stringing together phrases that end with the same sound — whether they make sense together or not. Sure, it's all subjective, but I can't myself see that what we need is "Respect for the steeple/power to the people."

The arrangements are all pretty uninspired, a little bit halfhearted — maybe largely because there's so little melodic meat to most of the tunes. A few of the songs move well, mainly on the backs of the conga, bass and guitar men; but the long tracks (six to eight minutes) are a mighty long way for three men to try and carry all that weight.

Five of these cuts may get some airplay and popularity, for one or more of three reasons: because they were written by Curtis Mayfield of Impressions' fame; because they have a good dance beat; or because they deal with "social issues" in a nice, bland, inoffensive, inconclusive way. "(Don't Worry) If there's a Hell Below We're All Going to Go" is a pretty good example. It's jumpy, it's got words like "nigger" and "cracker," "hell" and "Nixon," and it says no more than the title. "The Other Side of Town" presents a grim view of a black man's life and feelings in the ghetto. "We the People Who Are Darker than Blue" is the only song on the album that does some gear-shifting, rhythm-wise; but it doesn't go anywhere, messagewise. "Move On Up" has some life to it, but not eight minutes and 50 seconds' worth. "Miss Black America" strikes me as a good musical commemorative stamp, complete with an authentic black girlchild saying she wants to be a sex-object when she grows up.

Mayfield has written good material in the past. I'm hoping that he's just in a slump, and that he'll soon be writing tunes with real life in them again. This album, though, is pretty much just disjointed skeletons. -- Wendell John, RS

I'll give you some melodic meat. 

Seriously, though...garbled? Curtis Mayfield's first solo record is about as eloquent and direct a political statement as would be made by a major artist in the 70s. And the arrangements are sublime. 

RS abhorred Curtis Mayfield when he was in his prime. Jon Landau panned Curtis/Live! in the 6/24/71 issue: "Since leaving the Impressions Mayfield has ignored his melodic gifts while turning out a series of Sly Stone-Norman Whitfield influenced tunes that have been singularly undistinguished. He concentrates on lyrics these days and those have become increasingly political and pretentious...There are frequent moments of embarrassment..." Russell Gersten characterized Mayfield's third solo album, Roots, as "a confused and confusing record" that had "undoubtedly been influenced, both conceptually and technically, by Marvin Gaye's What's Going On." The charge that Mayfield is ripping off Marvin Gaye is bizarre - Mayfield's lyrics, both with the Impressions and on Curtis, had a political bent long before Gaye was speaking out. I have to think it was Mayfield that primarily inspired Gaye, not the other way around. "One of the main problems with [Roots] is that you can feel a lack of conviction" Gersten wrote in the 2/17/72 issue. "The past few years have been rather painful transitional years for soul music, and this is only one of many sort of schizoid attempts." 

Because he was never as commercially successful as many of his contemporaries, Curtis Mayfield's legacy continues to be dwarfed by people like Marvin Gaye, Smoky Robinson, and any number of Motown artists. But, for my money, Mayfield was the premier soul artist of the 60s and 70s. -- schmidtt, Rolling Stone's 500 Worst Reviews of All Time

Listening to Curtis/Live! reminded me how much I love Curtis Mayfield. On a cold winter night in January 1971, Mayfield performed an intimate show at the Bitter End, a small New York City jazz club to an adoring audience. In between songs he’d rap about the songs, or whatever was on his mind. His soft spoken voice exuded a loving gentleness and humor, but just under the surface was a righteous anger and a little sorrow. His extensive history of socially conscious songs always seemed to hit hard with such authority that eclipsed anything by Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. And his spirituality is so natural and subtle that he would have made more sense as a reverend than Al Green, the conflicted, tortured hedonist who eventually gave up secular music, but never seemed to have as deep a grasp of spiritual matters as Mayfield. Which is why even though some of Green’s exquisitely produced and performed albums rate higher than some of Mayfield’s, Mayfield is my main soul man.

I honestly can’t find any fault with Curtis Mayfield. His work with the Impressions is impeccible. By 1968, in his second attempt (his first attempt was Windy C Records in 1966), he had established the first truly successful black artist-owned record label, Curtom with partner Eddie Thomas. After recording the Impressions’ strongest albums, This Is My Country (1968) and The Young Mods’ Forgotten Story(1969), Mayfield felt he needed to drop out from touring to work on his label and spend some time in his home town of Chicago with family. The respite was short lived. His creativity was burning bright, and without the restraints of writing for a harmony group and someone else’s label, he was able to let his muse run wild. And wild it was.

His brilliant concoction of psychedelic soul and bongo/conga-driven funk sparkle and bubble with a vivacious lust for life. Even his righteous indignation glows with his love for humanity. His no-bullshit, clear falsetto vocals may not be as accomplished as Al’s, but the plaintive sweet tones are always spot-on, complementing the music that is often gritty, dark, and even menacing (hear “(Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below We’re All Going To Go,” where his processed vocals at first sound like howls from the firey pits before reverting to his more laidback falsetto). “The Makings Of You,” “We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue,” “Move On Up,” it was all killer, no filler.  -- Fastnbulbous

review
[-] by Bruce Eder

The first solo album by the former leader of the Impressions, Curtis represented a musical apotheosis for Curtis Mayfield -- indeed, it was practically the "Sgt. Pepper's" album of '70s soul, helping with its content and its success to open the whole genre to much bigger, richer musical canvases than artists had previously worked with. All of Mayfield's years of experience of life, music, and people were pulled together into a rich, powerful, topical musical statement that reflected not only the most up-to-date soul sounds of its period, finely produced by Mayfield himself, and the immediacy of the times and their political and social concerns, but also embraced the most elegant R&B sounds out of the past. As a producer, Mayfield embraced the most progressive soul sounds of the era, stretching them out compellingly on numbers like "Move on Up," but also drew on orchestral sounds (especially harps), to achieve some striking musical timbres (check out "Wild and Free"), and wove all of these influences, plus the topical nature of the songs, into a neat, amazingly lean whole. There was only one hit single off of this record, "(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Down Below We're All Going to Go," which made number three, but the album as a whole was a single entity and really had to be heard that way. In the fall of 2000, Rhino Records reissued Curtis with upgraded sound and nine bonus tracks that extended its running time to over 70 minutes. All but one are demos, including "Miss Black America" and "The Making of You," but mostly consist of tracks that he completed for subsequent albums; they're fascinating to hear, representing very different, much more jagged and stripped-down sounds. The upgraded CD concludes with the single version of "(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below We're All Going to Go."

Rolling Stone can go get fucked for that original review btw

reading further it seems RS didn't like his solo stuff at all at the time.

It blows my mind how patronizing critics were to Mayfield at the time. WTF! It makes me wonder if they were a factor in him being passed over in the canon in favor of Gaye and Wonder. How many people think Superfly is his only worthwhile album?

I need to check out those albums. I only know Superfly and a greatest hits that has all of the stuff like Move on Up, Hell Below, etc.

77. AGITATION FREE Malesch (2406 Points, 18 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #165 for 1972
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http://open.spotify.com/album/6WIwXAoEyc8OOhaaXP1ty9
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Not willing to compromise, and heavily into the avant-garde (many members studied with the influential Thomas Kessler) it took a long while until Agitation Free got an album out. By that time they had developed a cosmic styled rock with a strong ethnic element. Although in the spirit of Ash Ra Tempel and Pink Floyd, they had their own individual identity, with a largely improvised music that was predominantly instrumental, featuring lots of electronics, keyboards, dual guitars, and a great flair for invention.
MALESCH documents their trip to North Africa and the Middle East, blending location recordings together with their own compositions and improvisations, and is still quite a unique experience even today, combining cosmic, avant-garde and ethnic musics with great invention. -- CosmicEgg

review
[-] by Brian Olewnick

The debut album by Agitation Free followed a somewhat different path than your average Krautrock band, veering unexpectedly toward the Middle East, specifically Egypt, in search of atmosphere and material. Underneath the dueling guitars and spacy synth work, desert rhythms and taped sounds of dusky cities percolate, adding depth and spice to the otherwise smooth, Teutonic grooves. It's a tribute to the apparent sincerity of the band that the use of these motifs does not sound at all contrived, instead integrating quite well. The delicate, intricate percussion that concludes "Ala Tul," for instance, sounds as lively as anything by Steve Reich from around the same period. Tapes of street songs emerge surprisingly and effectively toward the end of the otherwise stately march "Khan El Khalili," providing a bridge to the Terry Riley-ish organ trills that begin the title track. "Malesch," like many of the tracks, spins off into a leisurely stroll, sounding unexpectedly close to some Grateful Dead jams. Even when it picks up pace, there's an unhurried quality that fits in nicely with the Saharan undertones of the album. Malesch is a solid, even inspired recording that stands somewhat apart from the usual clichés of the genre. Fans of German progressive rock from this period will certainly want to hear and enjoy it.

I hear that a lot of black people find Curtis Mayfield estimable.

That's painful!

I hear that a lot of Krautrock fans find Agitation Free estimable.

paging Mordy...

I wonder about xgau with his comments towards the likes of ohio players (his repeated shoogity-boogity comments) and that curtis review.

Miss Black America indeed! I don't have any idea what he looks or sounds like but I'm picturing him saying this with that kind of William F Buckley accent as he looks down over a pince nez.

Yeah, Xgau's comments on black music can definitely be kinda "huh? Really?!" And HELL YES, Malesch...

76. NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE Zuma (2410 Points, 16 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #12 for 1975 , #404 overall | Acclaimed: #858
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Young has violated form so convincingly over the past three years that this return may take a little getting used to. In fact, its relative neatness and control--relative to Y, not C, S, N, etc.--compromises the sprawling blockbuster cuts, "Danger Bird" and "Cortez the Killer." But the less ambitious tunes--"Pardon My Heart," say--are as pretty as the best of After the Gold Rush, yet very rough. Which is a neat trick. A- -- R. Christgau

"It's another rock & roll album. A lot of long instrumental things... It's about the Incas and the Aztecs. It takes on another personality. IT's like being in another civilization. It's a lost sort of form, sort of a soul-form that switches from history scene to history scene trying to find itself, man, in this maze. I've got it all written and all the songs learned. Tomorrow we start cutting them...We're gonna just do it in the morning. Early in the morning when the sun's out..." -- a typically ironic Neil Young describing Zuma

Neil Young's ninth solo album, Zuma, is by far the best album he's made; it's the most cohesive (but not the most obvious) concept album I've ever encountered; and despite its depth, Zuma is so listenable that it should becomes Young's first hit album since Harvest.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Young's masterwork is the context in which it appears. In recent months, rock & roll has become terribly vital again, not just because of the emergence of major new figures, but also because of the rebirth of old heroes. Despite their dark scenarios, Dylan's Blood on the Tracks; The Who by Numbers and Young's awesome combination punch, Tonight's the Night and Zuma, crack with naked, desperate energy in a partly familiar, partly novel form of rock & roll (a "soul-form" as Young describes it) invented simultaneously by these three great artists out of emotional as well as aesthetic necessity. And as serious as their albums are, all but Young's self-proclaimed "horror album" are thoroughly accessible.

If Tonight's the Night was bleakly, spookily black, Zuma - Young's "morning" album - is hardy suffused with sunlight and flowers. Apparently, tempered gloom is the brightest this love- and death-haunted epileptic genius can manage these days. But if, as a stubbornly solitary Young proclaims in "Drive Back," he wants to "wake up with no one around," in "Lookin' for a Love" he's still holding on to some hope of finding that magical life-and self-affirming lover who can make him "live and make the best of what I see." Young doesn't shrink from the paradox, he embraces it like the lover he imagines.

There are real lovers pictured throughout Zuma too, but all have been lost. Like the love-scarred Dylan of Blood on the Tracks and the new "Sara," Young is struggling to get a grip on himself, to "burn off the fog" and see what went wrong with his loves and his dreams. Out of these agonized, bitter and painfully frank confessions he manages to reach both a new, honest lovingness and - even more importantly - the revelation (first glimpsed years ago in "The Loner") that neither his wings nor his woman can carry him away. For Young this insight holds both terror and liberation.

For this struggle, Young wheels out all his familiar heavy artillery: prominent are his recurring metaphors of birds in flight and boats on the water, his compulsive truthfulness, his eccentrically brilliant (and seemingly intuitive) narrative style, his effortlessly lovely melodies and his cat-in-heat singing. Components of every one of Young's earlier album (especially Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and After The Gold Rush) jostle their way into the agitated synchrony of Zuma.

But what finally causes the album to burst into greatness is the presence of Crazy Horse, which has finally found in rhythm guitarist Frank Sampedro an adequate replacement for Danny Whitten. Sampedro's majestic rhythm work urges Young to what is clearly the most powerful guitar playing he's ever recorded. His guitar lines snake through Sampedro's chordings with the dangerous snap of exposed wires crossing. Young's solos throughout more than match the eloquence of his lyrics, transmitting anguish, violence, joy and longing.

With Crazy Horse providing both firepower and stability, Young is at his best: boundlessly inventive and determinedly multileveled. As he attacks, Young manages to work in oddly playful references to other songs ("...with little reason to believe..." in "Pardon My Heart"; "Whatever gets you through the night / That's all right with me" in "Drive Back"), cryptic comments ("...I don't believe this song..." in "Pardon My Heart"; "...I might live a thousand years / Before I know what that means" in "Barstool Blues"), dramatically forceful incongruities (the cheery "la la" backing vocals in Young's loss-wracked "Stupid Girl"), novel structural devices (two simultaneously sung but completely different verses vying for attention in "Danger Bird"; the unresolving verses and chords of "Pardon My Heart") and brilliantly, uniquely ironic expressions (the whole of "Lookin' for a Love" and "Barstool Blues").

Of the nine songs on Zuma, five are hot, stormy rockers, three are gorgeous, hazy ballads and the last, "Cortez the Killer," is an extended narrative tale that packs equal wallop as a classic retelling of an American legend, a Lawrencian erotic dreamscape and Young's ultimate personal metaphor. This song, perhaps Young's crowning achievement, builds with gathering intensity through several minutes of tense, deliberate playing before Young's voice strikes the first verse:

He came dancing across the water
With his galleons and guns
Looking for the new world
And that palace in the sun.
On the shore lay Montezuma
With his coca leaves and pearls
In his halls he often wandered
With the secrets of the worlds.

The secret of the album, indeed of Young's work in its entirety, is encapsulated in this confrontation: force and wisdom, innocence and aggression, love and death are the issues and the stakes. And the climax is inevitable, but not before Young succumbs for a single verse to a direct comment on the classic struggle:

And I know she's living there
And she loves me to this day
I still can't remember when
Or how I lost my way.

In the brief final ballad, "Through My Sails," Young (joined by Crosby, Stills and Nash), soaring on wings that have "turned to stone," lands finally on a shoreline where he transforms his wings into sails and sings, "Know me / Show me / New things I'm knowin'." Then off he sails.

Perhaps some sunlight does break through on this one. -- Bud Scoppa, RS

review
[-] by William Ruhlmann

Having apparently exorcised his demons by releasing the cathartic Tonight's the Night, Neil Young returned to his commercial strengths with Zuma (named after Zuma Beach in Los Angeles, where he now owned a house). Seven of the album's nine songs were recorded with the reunited Crazy Horse, in which rhythm guitarist Frank Sampedro had replaced the late Danny Whitten, but there were also nods to other popular Young styles in "Pardon My Heart," an acoustic song that would have fit on Harvest, his most popular album, and "Through My Sails," retrieved from one of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's abortive recording sessions. Young had abandoned the ragged, first-take approach of his previous three albums, but Crazy Horse would never be a polished act, and the music had a lively sound well-suited to the songs, which were some of the most melodic, pop-oriented tunes Young had crafted in years, though they were played with an electric-guitar-drenched rock intensity. The overall theme concerned romantic conflict, with lyrics that lamented lost love and sometimes longed for a return ("Pardon My Heart" even found Young singing, "I don't believe this song"), though the overall conclusion, notably in such catchy songs as "Don't Cry No Tears" and "Lookin' for a Love," was to move on to the next relationship. But the album's standout track (apparently the only holdover from an early intention to present songs with historical subjects) was the seven-and-a-half-minute epic "Cortez the Killer," a commentary on the Spanish conqueror of Latin America that served as a platform for Young's most extensive guitar soloing since his work on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.

Come On and Zoom
Come On and Zoom
Come On and Zuma
Zuma Zumaaa
ZOOM!

Didn't for this and I'm not sure why. Definitely my favorite Neil Young album. "Don't Cry No Tears" is a fucking jam.

Whoops.

"Didn't vote for this..."

Gortex the Killer, man... think about it.

I voted for this I think... it was either this or After the Gold Rush, can't really remember right now.

"It's about the Incas and the Aztecs. It takes on another personality. It's like being in another civilization. It's a lost sort of form, sort of a soul-form that switches from history scene to history scene trying to find itself, man, in this maze."

Love that Neil quote.

More likely to save your life than kill you surely?

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BTW just hit the last part of the second track of Malesch and its pretty incredible.

Its a heavy plastic -- it can smother!

75. FAUST Faust IV (2426 Points, 17 Votes)
RYM: #16 for 1973 , #456 overall | Acclaimed: #2131
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http://open.spotify.com/album/2yFbw2SIBZ7ExIBRVoFkJJ
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Faust IV isn't as consistently innovative as the band's earlier albums, though it still arrived five years ahead of its time. "Krautrock," a parody of longwinded German bands of the era that were heavy on atmosphere and light on content, goes on so long that it winds up indistinguishable from its target. -- Trouser Press

Recorded at Virgin's The Manor, FAUST IV was quite different in sound to the earlier albums, still with much dynamic and radical invention, not least the Can cum early Kraftwerk styled riffing on the relentless "Krautrock", yet there was a lighter edge at play too contrasting with the passages of electronics and weird guitars. For a couple of tours following this, Rudolf Sosna had left the band and Jean-Hervé Peron worked with Henry Cow for a while, and in their shoes stepped in Peter Blegvad and Uli Trepte. -- Cosmic Egg

'Faust IV' is the album where Faust consolidate all of the myriad soundworlds of their previous three records into one. The abstraction of 'Faust', the rhythmic cohesion of 'So Far' and the cut-and-paste heroics of 'The Faust Tapes' are here combined into a diverse collection of pieces and songs that encapsulate all that is special and unique about this most distinctive and innovative band. Easy listening it isn't, yet there is a strange and compelling accessibility and inevitability about this album that will attract the attention of even the most conservative listener, at least in part. Like it's budget-priced predecessor, 'Faust IV' was and is a key record in my realisation and appreciation of pop music beyond its commercialised forebears. But it's taken its time, a long, long time, to hit me.

I wonder how many early owners of 'Faust IV' did as I did and 'The Sad Skinhead' aside, ignored the well-weird (or so it seemed at the time) first side in favour of the comparatively conventional second side. I've now come to love side one to distraction, but still prefer to listen to the album in reverse order. Side two begins with Faust as hard rock behemoths: 'Just A Second' being a short, heavy-as-sin instrumental that sounds like Sabbath, Ash Ra Tempel and the Grateful Dead all melted into one and with treble set to eleven. But any hopes of winning over prospective buyers from the Ozzy fanbase are soon allayed by the free-form 'Picnic On A Frozen River, Deuxieme Tableau' that follows: a short but attention-grabbing piece that helps prevent any impression of a straight-ahead rock band. 'Giggy Smile' is a nearest Faust get to just that: a two-stage rock epic with manic rising and falling vocal scales over Bolanesque tinny axework in the first part, and the best Yazoo keyboard lick that Vince Clarke never wrote in the second. 'Lauft...Heist das es lauft Oder es Kommt Bald...Lauft' is, in total contrast, basically a delightful vignette in the same mode as that consolidatory French-language acoustic piece that ends 'The Faust Tapes', only this time jauntier, more rhythmic and utterly irresistable, falling into a still, droning synth and harmonium phase that sounds like a cosmic collaboration between Klaus Schulze and Ivor Cutler. The side's final track, 'It's A Bit Of A Pain', is an endearing ditty (in the manner of 'Unhalfbricking'-era Fairports) whose release as a 45 seems a sound enough choice until the most jarring and dischordant sustained note, mixed at a higher volume than the rest of the song, wails over the "...But it's alright babe" chorus. The effect is unwelcome, disturbing, and in the last resort incredible. Play this as the background for seduction and see how far you get. A song for loners!

Which brings us (in my own perverse order) to side one, track one, and the twelve demanding minutes of 'Krautrock', the album's apex. It's taken me best part of three decades to get it, but now that I have, it's the first Faust track I'd play to anyone. It's a racket almost beyond words, but totally compelling. I'm convinced that Lou Reed must have heard this before he set to work on 'Metal Machine Music'. The same high frequency guitar tone, in-your-face feedback, and rhythms that are so mixed down in the mellee that they have to be imagined (at least until the drums come in two-thirds through - and what a moment THAT is) permeate the piece. Play this at full volume through headphones and you simply become at one with it. You'll have one hell of a headache but one hell of a high. Sheer, unadulterated power with no tune and no compromise - perfect.

The song that follows is simply not on the same planet, and I don't know of any successive tracks on any album that differ as much as 'Krautrock' and this one. Nearer to 'The Pushbike Song' than cosmic music, 'The Sad Skinhead' is the single that never was. It would have been a wow at school discos in 1973, especially the raucous fight scenes that accompany the vibe-driven middle section. It's as crass as The Pipkins and as catchy as mumps and I love it.

'Jennifer' is dirge-like, hypnotic and spacey with Donovan-like vocals over an incongruous and repetative bass rhythm that sounds like the lick at the beginning of Floyd's 'One Of These Days'. It's a beautiful song that builds slowly until the sheer glass guitar noise that began 'Krautrock' twenty minutes earlier takes over, only to end with an amusingly out-of-place stride piano. Diverse, distracting and delectable.

With this album, Faust took their leave of us for two decades, although Virgin reportedly rejected a fifth album by the band. I think I can see why. 'Faust IV' is, in all aspects, everything that Faust can offer in 45 minutes. I have heard some of the reformed band's projects but nothing comes close to the variety, originality and excitement of the first four albums and 'Faust IV' in particular. It's still available as a cheap Virgin reissue and is worth £6 of any head's money. If you don't believe me, read Keith's Aching Bowels' review of last year and Julian's 'Krautrocksampler'. Then just buy it, cherish it, and play it every week.  -- Fitter Stoke, Head Heritage

review
[-] by Steve Huey

Coming on the heels of the cut-and-paste sound-collage schizophrenia of The Faust Tapes, Faust IV seems relatively subdued and conventional, though it's still a far cry from what anyone outside the German avant-garde rock scene was doing. The album's disparate threads don't quite jell into something larger (as in the past), but there's still much to recommend it. The nearly 12-minute electro-acoustic opener "Krautrock" is sometimes viewed as a comment on Faust's droning, long-winded contemporaries, albeit one that would lose its point by following the same conventions. There are a couple of oddball pop numbers that capture the group's surreal sense of whimsy: one, "The Sad Skinhead," through its reggae-ish beat, and another, "It's a Bit of a Pain," by interrupting a pastoral acoustic guitar number with the most obnoxious synth noises the band can conjure. Aside from "Krautrock," there is a trend toward shorter track lengths and more vocals, but there are still some unpredictably sudden shifts in the instrumental pieces, even though it only occasionally feels like an idea is being interrupted at random (quite unlike The Faust Tapes). There are several beat-less, mostly electronic soundscapes full of fluttering, blooping synth effects, as well as plenty of the group's trademark Velvet Underground-inspired guitar primitivism, and even a Frank Zappa-esque jazz-rock passage. Overall, Faust IV comes off as more a series of not-always-related experiments, but there are more than enough intriguing moments to make it worthwhile. Unfortunately, it would be the last album the group recorded (at least in its first go-round).

Surprised at no comments for that

74. THIS HEAT This Heat (2440 Points, 19 Votes)
RYM: #32 for 1979 , #1680 overall | Acclaimed: #2476
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This Heat covers two years of the band's history, with both live and studio cuts. They use guitar, clarinet, drums and keyboards, permuted with loops, phasing and overdubs, breaking down patterns into only faintly connected musical moments that include artificial skips and looped end-grooves. Though insolent and withdrawn, the music is adventurous and, in its own peculiar way, engrossing.  -- Trouser Press

review
[-] by Dean McFarlane

This British group could neither be called post-punk nor progressive rock, yet This Heat was one of the most influential groups of the late '70s. They created uncanny experimental rock music that has many similarities in approach to German pioneers such as Can and Faust. Other groundbreaking independent groups such as Henry Cow and Wire may be their only peers, and much later This Heat also became profoundly influential on the '90s genre known as post-rock. Their angular juxtapositions of abrasive guitar, driving rhythms, and noise loops on the opening cut, "Horizontal Hold," preempt much later activity in the electronica and drum'n'bass scenes. The outstanding "24 Track Loop" is based around a circular drum pattern that could have been a late-'90s jungle cut were it not recorded in late-'70s London, long before such strategies were even dreamed of in breakbeat music. This album is a great example of ahead-of-time genius, work that draws on elements of progressive rock, notably "Larks Tongues in Aspic"-era King Crimson for all its abrasive, warped rhythm, as well as Can, Neu!, and Faust's pioneering work -- though there is little else that comes close to the unique and distinctive avant rock sound, an entirely new take on the rock format. Their self-titled debut is a radical conglomeration of progressive rock, musique concrète, free improvisation, and even -- in a bizarre distillation -- aspects of British folk can be heard in Charles Hayward's singing. There are very few records that can be considered truly important, landmark works of art that produce blueprints for an entire genre. In the case of this album, it's clear that this seminal work was integral in shaping the genres of post-punk, avant rock, and post-rock and like all great influential albums it seemed it had to wait two decades before its contents could truly be fathomed. In short, This Heat is essential.

Curtis should definitely be higher. I think I only discovered it from the last '70s poll, but 'If There's a Hell Below' totally blew my mind.

And, uh, wtf is Faust IV doing at #75? You people are idiots.

xp - really this should be higher too, though I'm not surprised at its placing.

Pla.y nic.e!

Yeah, Faust IV definitely deserves to be higher than this...but I've always preferred So Far and I haven't seen that yet, so hopefully that one is still to come. "Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" is such a fantastic thumping mantra jam.

73. AMON DUUL II Tanz der Lemminge (2464 Points, 16 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #166 for 1971 , #4689 overall
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http://open.spotify.com/album/2zAGDXvAXbttYb7lpW5w6u
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...the curious cosmic space-out "The Chasmin Soundtrack" (on TANZ DER LEMMINGE) which pre-empted The Cosmic Jokers. There's lots of other classic material on these doubles (naturally!) And, let's not forget the weirdly twisted songs that were as surreal as the music they were contained in! There's so much weird invention in these records that eludes some, especially in the use of electronics and collage, all woven into forays of guitars, violin, drums and magnificent keyboards. These records sizzle and astound as much today as they ever did. -- Cosmic Egg

This was the first Amon Düül II record I ever bought and I loved it, so I was surprised to read Julian describing it as a piece of ‘pedestrian shit’ several years later in Krautrocksampler. If you like the other Amon Düül II records and have been avoiding this one because of Julian’s comments I’d just like to say it’s worth checking out. As far as I’m concerned this record is far superior to its muddily produced follow-up ‘Carnival In Babylon’.

Chris Karrer gets side one and titles it ‘Syntelman's March Of The Roaring Seventies’. It’s supposedly subdivided into four parts but sounds much more fractured than that to me. The whole thing works as an apocalyptic glam suite. Many of the stylings here are 'The Man Who Sold The World' Bowie, right down to the vocal warblings and high-camp melodrama. Song structure is fractured, with sudden asides crashing in for a few seconds to be replaced by a differently arranged piece of music. Acoustic and electric guitars are given equal prominence here, when on some other Amon Düül II records it sounds like they’re fighting it out. 

John Weinzierl’s side two has a track listing I can’t get to grips with as it’s so hopelessly divided and subdivided that following which track is which is nigh on impossible. The music here lurches from Led Zep heavy guitar riffing to eastern European-sounding cross-legged weepy pastorals with no warning. And it works! Oh yes it DOES! Instrumentation is expanded to include sitar, all manner of electronic keyboards and even the odd bit of Liberace piano bashing! Renate sings her heart out in the most heart-wrenching way and some of the guitar picking is exquisite. 

‘The Marilyn Monroe-Memorial-Church’ is undoubtedly the highlight of this set in which Amon Düül II play some of their spaciest kosmische Musik. It sounds like some of the Cosmic Jokers’ quieter and less effects-laden moments or Ash Ra Tempel in drift mode with a dash of 'Affenstunde' bash-freakout. But as it’s Amon Düül II playing it can’t help coming out all autumnal and strangely ritualistic and, well goddamn creepy. The organ is funereal but poignant rather than maudlin. A bass carries us along, occasionally reverbing out so much it sounds like Lothar Meid has suddenly been dropped down a well. A mournful piano suddenly starts to collapse into keyboard abuse, now and then falling into that same well only to be hoisted up and thrown back in. But when the drums kick in your head is taken on a frantic ride. It feels like someone’s put a metal bin on your head and started laying into it with all the fury they can muster. Then it all seems to go down the same plughole that ‘A Day In The Life’ does only to resurface briefly in the same way as Can’s ‘Bel Air’

Side four sounds like out-takes from demo sessions rather than inspired improvisation. ‘Chewing Gum Telegram’ breaks the mood of uneasy calm inspired by ‘The Marilyn Monroe-Memorial-Church’ with its incessant riffing, falling apart like the rehearsal it sounds like all the way through. ‘Stumbling Over Melted Moonlight’ starts off as Pink Floyd’s ‘Sysiphus’, falling into a load of head swaying wibbly guitar onanism to be followed by Floydy organ and metallic tremolo drums. It goes nowhere, then can’t even decide to stay away as it resurfaces for no apparent reason. ‘Toxicological Whispering’ lurches along. Each instrument does its own thing and it really sounds like one of the few things Amon Düül II did where they weren’t listening to each other. There is beauty in the chaos here, though. Although, placed after the first two tracks on this side it’s bound to sound more special than it truly is.

In the notes to his Krautrock Top 50 Julian says: “Of course, this list is not exhaustive and is based on the records that I personally know and love.(…) And if I missed your favourite one out, well excuse me.” Fair enough, but I thought a case should be made for this record as it’s my favourite Amon Düül II release after 'Phallus Dei' and I’m sure there are others out there who have a fond connection to this album too. I personally think side four isn’t even worthy of curiosity value but that still leaves three sides of pretty good Krautrock.  -- Lord Lucan, Head Heritage

review
[-] by Ned Raggett

There aren't many double art-rock albums from the early '70s that have stood the test of time, but then again, there aren't many albums like Tanz, and there certainly aren't many groups like Amon Düül II. While exact agreement over which of their classic albums is the absolute standout may never be reached, in terms of ambition combined with good musicianship and good humor, the group's third album, is probably the best candidate still. The musical emphasis is more on expansive arrangements and a generally gentler, acoustic or soft electric vibe; the brain-melting guitar from Yeti isn't as prominent on Tanz, for example, aside from the odd freakout here and there. You will find lengthy songs divided up into various movements, but with titles like "Dehypnotized Toothpaste" and "Overheated Tiara," po-faced seriousness is left at the door. The music isn't always wacky per se, but knowing that the group can laugh at itself is a great benefit. The first three tracks each take up a side of vinyl on the original release, and all are quite marvelous. "Syntelman's March of the Roaring Seventies" works through a variety of acoustic parts, steering away from folksiness for a more abstract, almost playfully classical sense of space and arrangement, before concluding with a brief jam. "Restless Skylight-Transistor Child" is more fragmented, switching between aggressive (and aggressively weird) and subtle passages. One part features Meid and Knaup singing over an arrangement of guitars, synths and mock choirs that's particularly fine, and quite trippy to boot. "Chamsin Soundtrack" exchanges variety for a slow sense of mystery and menace, with instruments weaving in and out of the mix while never losing the central feel of the song. Three briefer songs close out the record, a nice way to get in some quick grooves at the end.

Such a good album too

oooh

72. THE GROUNDHOGS Thank Christ For The Bomb (2495 Points, 19 Votes)
RYM: #117 for 1970 , #3542 overall
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http://open.spotify.com/album/5AnSUP7g2xmTzamSux1F7K
spotify:album:5AnSUP7g2xmTzamSux1F7K

If you dig: Blues Rock, Hard Rock, Prog. Released in 1970 and entered the UK Top 10, marked a further progression in the direction of heavier Rock when the band also added politically and socially charged lyrics.

"Strange Town" starts things off brilliantly as McPhee's wailing guitar bursts into one of the best solos I've yet to hear. The long and half instrumental "Garden" again makes a great use of McPhee's axe while the title track, characterized by acoustic guitar and ambiguous pro/anti-war lyrics, shows that an electric guitar is not a necessity in order to play "heavy," although later on the song does turn into a thunderous jam. Other tracks worth mentioning are "Eccentric Man" and the sophisticated "Soldier." A highly recommended album which is second to none in its intelligence within the Blues Rock genre. -- R. Chelled

Tony McPhee stepped up to the plate with a bunch of powerful, original tunes. As a guitar album it is nonpareil, up there with Television's Marquee Moon and it's raw plangent sonics, uncluttered by effects sound bang up-to-date. -- Woebot

review
[-] by Dave Thompson

Thank Christ for the Bomb was the first Groundhogs album to indicate that the group had a lifespan longer than the already-fading British blues boom suggested. It was also the first in the sequence of semi-conceptual masterpieces that the group cut following their decision to abandon the mellow blues of their earlier works and pursue the socially aware, prog-inflected bent that culminated with 1972's seminal Who Will Save the World? album. They were rewarded with their first ever Top Ten hit and purchasers were rewarded with an album that still packs a visceral punch in and around Tony McPhee's dark, doom-laden lyrics. With the exception of the truly magisterial title track, the nine tracks err on the side of brevity. Only one song, the semi-acoustic "Garden," strays over the five-minute mark, while four more barely touch three-and-one-half minutes. Yet the overall sense of the album is almost bulldozing, and it is surely no coincidence that, engineering alongside McPhee's self-production, Martin Birch came to the Groundhogs fresh from Deep Purple in Rock and wore that experience firmly on his sleeve. Volume and dynamics aside, there are few points of comparison between the two albums -- if the Groundhogs have any direct kin, it would have to be either the similarly three-piece Budgie or a better-organized Edgar Broughton Band. But, just as Deep Purple was advancing the cause of heavy rock by proving that you didn't need to be heavy all the time, so Thank Christ for the Bomb shifts between light and dark, introspection and outspokenness, loud and, well, louder. Even the acoustic guitars can make your ears bleed when they feel like it and, although the anti-war sentiments of "Thank Christ for the Bomb" seem an over-wordy echo of Purple's similarly themed "Child in Time," it is no less effective for it. Elements of Thank Christ for the Bomb do seem overdone today, not the least of which is the title track's opening recitation (a history of 20th century war, would you believe?). But it still has the ability to chill, thrill, and kill any doubts that such long-windiness might evoke, while the truths that were evident to McPhee in 1970 aren't too far from reality today. [Originally issued in 1970, the LP was reissued on CD in 2007 and features bonus tracks.]

wow the great stuff coming thick and heavy now...

as it has been doing for a good while now tbf

So many great albums, so many new things to keep up with.
Betty Davis - Nasty Gal turned out to be great. AG is there any particular Ohio Players album that you would suggest to start with?

Going to give the Popul Vuh album a try too.

Ohio Players are split up into Westbound era (with Junie) I'd say try Pleasure

As for the later stuff any of them in this poll but maybe try Honey

Nice one, thanks.

71. VAN HALEN Van Halen (2506 Points, 18 Votes)
RYM: #16 for 1978 , #711 overall | Acclaimed: #255 | RS: #415 | Pitchfork: #73
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http://open.spotify.com/album/7G2PY8yve3Db0PeGsosb4x
spotify:album:7G2PY8yve3Db0PeGsosb4x

For some reason Warners wants us to know that this is the biggest bar band in the San Fernando Valley. This doesn't mean much--all new bands are bar bands, unless they're Boston. The term becomes honorific when the music belongs in a bar. This music belongs on an aircraft carrier. C -- R. Christgau

Mark my words: in three years, Van Halen is going to be fat and self-indulgent and disgusting, and they'll follow Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin right into the toilet. In the meantime, they are likely to be a big deal. Their cover of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" does everything right, and they have three or four other cuts capable of jumping out of the radio the same way "Feels like the First Time" and "More than a Feeling" did amid all the candyass singer/songwriters and Shaun Cassidy-ass twits.

Van Halen's secret is not doing anything that's original while having the hormones to do it better than all those bands who have become fat and self-indulgent and disgusting. Edward Van Halen has mastered the art of lead/rhythm guitar in the tradition of Jimmy Page and Joe Walsh; several riffs on this record beat anything Aerosmith has come up with in years. Vocalist Dave Lee Roth manages the rare hard-rock feat of infusing the largely forgettable lyrics with energy and not sounding like a castrato at the same time. Drummer Alex Van Halen and bassist Michael Anthony are competent and properly unobtrusive.

These guys also have the good sense not to cut their hair or sing about destroying a hopelessly corrupt society on their first album. That way, hopelessly corrupt radio programmers will play their music. -- Charles M. Young, RS

review
[-] by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Among revolutionary rock albums, Van Halen's debut often gets short shrift. Although it altered perceptions of what the guitar could do, it is not spoken of in the same reverential tones as Are You Experienced? and although it set the template for how rock & roll sounded for the next decade or more, it isn't seen as an epochal generational shift, like Led Zeppelin, The Ramones, The Rolling Stones, or Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols, which was released just the year before. But make no mistake, Van Halen is as monumental, as seismic as those records, but part of the reason it's never given the same due is that there's no pretension, nothing self-conscious about it. In the best sense, it is an artless record, in the sense that it doesn't seem contrived, but it's also a great work of art because it's an effortless, guileless expression of what the band is all about, and what it would continue to be over the years. The band did get better, tighter, over the years -- peaking with their sleek masterpiece 1984, where there was no fat, nothing untidy -- but everything was in place here, from the robotic pulse of Michael Anthony and Alex Van Halen, to the gonzo shtick of David Lee Roth to the astonishing guitar of Eddie Van Halen. There may have been antecedents to this sound -- perhaps you could trace Diamond Dave's shuck-n-jive to Black Oak Arkansas' Jim Dandy, the slippery blues-less riffs hearken back to Aerosmith -- but Van Halen, to this day, sounds utterly unprecedented, as if it was a dispatch from a distant star. Some of the history behind the record has become rock lore: Eddie may have slowed down Cream records to a crawl to learn how Clapton played "Crossroads" -- the very stuff legends are made of -- but it's hard to hear Clapton here. It's hard to hear anybody else really, even with the traces of their influences, or the cover of "You Really Got Me," which doesn't seem as if it were chosen because of any great love of the Kinks, but rather because that riff got the crowd going. And that's true of all 11 songs here: they're songs designed to get a rise out of the audience, designed to get them to have a good time, and the album still crackles with energy because of it.

Sheer visceral force is one thing, but originality is another, and the still-amazing thing about Van Halen is how it sounds like it has no fathers. Plenty other bands followed this template in the '80s, but like all great originals Van Halen doesn't seem to belong to the past and it still sounds like little else, despite generations of copycats. Listen to how "Runnin' with the Devil" opens the record with its mammoth, confident riff and realize that there was no other band that sounded this way -- maybe Montrose or Kiss were this far removed from the blues, but they didn't have the down-and-dirty hedonistic vibe that Van Halen did; Aerosmith certainly had that, but they were fueled by blooze and boogie, concepts that seem alien here. Everything about Van Halen is oversized: the rhythms are primal, often simple, but that gives Dave and Eddie room to run wild, and they do. They are larger than life, whether it's Dave strutting, slyly spinning dirty jokes and come-ons, or Eddie throwing out mind-melting guitar riffs with a smile. And of course, this record belongs to Eddie, just like the band's very name does. There was nothing, nothing like his furious flurry of notes on his solos, showcased on "Eruption," a startling fanfare for his gifts. He makes sounds that were unimagined before this album, and they still sound nearly inconceivable. But, at least at this point, these songs were never vehicles for Van Halen's playing; they were true blue, bone-crunching rockers, not just great riffs but full-fledged anthems, like "Jamie's Cryin'," "Atomic Punk," and "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love," songs that changed rock & roll and still are monolithic slabs of rock to this day. They still sound vital, surprising, and ultimately fun -- and really revolutionary, because no other band rocked like this before Van Halen, and it's still a giddy thrill to hear them discover a new way to rock on this stellar, seminal debut.

Fact: I have never heard an entire Van Halen album afaik.

well that's the only one you need to hear all the way through tbf. Even if the kinks cover is inferior to the original.

I never had either until I checked that one out on the nominations thread. better than I expected but still not something I'll probably listen to very often. I think I like the idea of Van Halen better than the reality.

xp I think II is p great as well.

Like the movie Over The Edge really makes me want to listen to Van Halen but the actual music doesn't quite live up to my image of what it should be like

what about the theme song to Twister?!

http://youtu.be/b9e5fT8migI

II is alright yeah but not as great

I was more talking about how s/t is the one LL would be most likely to get to the end of the album

70. BLACK FLAG The First Four Years (2514 Points, 18 Votes)
RYM: #3 for 1983 , #525 overall
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he First Four Years is an extensive compilation of early releases, including the 1981 Six Pack maxi-single, Jealous Again and two tracks from a New Alliance compilation. -- Trouser Press

review
by John Dougan

The best collection of pre-Henry Rollins-era Black Flag. Much of The First Four Years finds the band in developmental mode, but the sonic anarchy and political vituperation met head-on more than once, creating a ferociously good time. Not simply for completists, this is an important recording of the then-burgeoning L.A. hardcore scene.

that's more like it

I think either you like VH or you don't. If you do, can't really go wrong with any of their first four. Those who are turned off by that kind of stadium rock or David Lee Roth, have probably heard most of the first album on the radio over the past 30 years anyway. I was on a hunt for footage of one of their early small club or yard party shows from '75-'76 but found nothing. There's plenty of live bootlegs from '77 but by them they sounded pretty much how they did on their debut. Which is great, I just wanted to see what it was like when they were still developing.

I thought it would have placed higher tbh (VH)

there are some big VH fans on ILM I think, maybe not voters though.

Then again it was only #96 in the alternate poll with 100 ineligible so maybe its not as popular on ILM as it is in North America

I can think of at least 3 big fans of VH that didn't vote

69. AMON DUUL II Wolf City (2532 Points, 17 Votes)
RYM: #134 for 1972 , #4288 overall
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/426/MI0001426510.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/5d9SN94pxIJlu1dZNBJUvp
spotify:album:5d9SN94pxIJlu1dZNBJUvp

But, hereon, with the onset of international recognition and tours abroad, Amon Düül II became an even much more unstable entity, with a steady flow of musicians passing through the band (amongst the more obscure were Reinhold Spiegelfeld and Reiner Schnelle of Weed). As evidence of this, on WOLF CITY (and its sister alter-ego album by Utopia which took the Amon Düül II sound to jazzier realms), no two tracks featured the same musicians yet, despite this, WOLF CITY was a surprisingly varied, fresh and highly inventive album extensively featuring Daniel Fichelscher, the percussionist/multi-instrumentalist who was to become the main musician ofPopol Vuh, and much more of Renate Knaup's uniquely styled vocals. -- Cosmic Egg

One of the very best Krautrock albums, this has been a favorite of mine since 1972. I don't remember what drew me to this album, except that the cover looked pretty spacey!

On side 1, the album leads off with "Wolf City" which seems to be about a social condition in Germany. It features "bubbly" effects and repeated vocals. The next song "Wie Der Wind Am Ende Einer Strasse" has echo'd bells which lead to a fugue-like repeated pattern and is wholly instrumental. Next is "Deutsch Nepal" which tells the story of a colonial mistake, where a people took over a land where they didn't belong. This is a very heavy song with a gutteral vocal. Side 1 ends with "Sleepwalker's Timeless Bridge" which is an uptempo instrumental with good guitar and synths.

Side 2 opens with "Surrounded By The Stars" which is as mysterious as it sounds, like those stars are the ones that play with "Laughing Sam's Dice". "You knock at the gates of life, no answer" Next is "Green-Bubble-Raincoated-Man" which is a story of compassion for a hippie-type individual, similar to the Grateful Deads' "St.Stephen". The album ends with "Jailhouse Frog" which lets it all out with wild guitars and a accusing vocal, dissolving into the bubbles and space noises, which sound like birds on an exotic planet. It finally ends with a Jethro Tull-ish soprano sax dissolve.

The vocals throughout are split between male and female and sound appropiately Teutonic. This album is a real trip if your head's in the right place, as mine was those 32 years ago. -- Oitmer51, Head Heritage

review
[-] by Ned Raggett

Amon Düül II's fifth studio album is a more conventional recording than most, though there's still a lot of the involved experimenting and dark undercurrent which sets the band apart from the mainstream, along with the off-kilter hooks and odd humor which saved them from being lumped alongside more serious (and less easy to take seriously) prog rock outfits. After the lengthy explorations of Tanz der Lemminge, Wolf City seems targeted to an extent at a commercial English-speaking audience, perhaps reflective of their increased status in the United Kingdom, if not in America. Regardless, opening song "Surrounded by the Stars," the longest track on the album at just under eight minutes, is also one of the band's best, with strong vocals from Renate Knaup-Kroetenschwanz, a dramatic building verse (complete with mock choir), an equally dramatic violin-accompanied instrumental break, and a catchy chorus leading to a fun little freakout. Knaup actually takes the lead vocals more often this time out and turns in some lovely performances, as on the beautiful, perhaps slightly precious "Green-Bubble-Raincoated-Man," with a great full-band performance that grows from a nice restraint to a slam-bang, epic rockout. Lothar Meid gets his moments in as well, his sometimes straightforward, sometimes not-so-much vocals adding to the overall effect as before. The one full instrumental, "Wie der Wind am Ende Einer Strasse," is excellent, with guest Indian musicians adding extra instrumentation to an intoxicating, spacious performance. While Wolf City generally sounds like a tight band playing things live or near-live, there are some equally gripping moments clearly resulting from studio work, like the strange loop opening the title track (percussion, guitar?). Concluding with the groovy good-time "Sleepwalker's Timeless Bridge," including some fantastic E-Bow guitar work, Wolf City works the balance between art and accessibility and does so with resounding success.

Another excellent album this

But the next one is going to surprise a LOT of people. It might excite a few people though who voted for it.

Voted for this one! Daniel and Renate groovy good times! I haven't listened to it in a while, going to remedy that soon.
Not sure I'm ever going to hear a full VH album when I can hear the singles on the radio all the time. They're alright.

68. SELDA Selda  (2534 Points, 17 Votes)
RYM: #107 for 1976
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http://open.spotify.com/album/1FASO8cb9WRj1ZqI02ReBU
spotify:album:1FASO8cb9WRj1ZqI02ReBU

Remember when you were a younger person with a smaller vocabulary? Remember how you filled in the lyrics to songs you didn’t fully comprehend? I rediscovered that odd pleasure while listening to this, a reissue of Selda Bagcam’s Turkish psychedelic protest record from 1976. I don’t understand a word of Turkish, so I extrapolated my own meanings involving people I saw on the bus, or things I wanted to remember. Perhaps this isn’t the most appropriate way to appreciate Selda, but this music makes me so damned giddy and receptive and alive, it just happens.

Much as American psych sprang from acid-eaten variations on the blues, Selda and her contemporaries (such as they were) built on their own common musical and cultural input. The deep, hypnotic strains of Anadolu folk lent themselves generously to the lush, distorted, disorienting pop aesthetic of the day. The saz, in particular, proved itself as cozy in the heavy psychedelic haze as the Mellotron.

Not that Selda tries to sound weird or cosmic; it just happens. It may bleed a thick syrup of oddness, but at its heart, this stuff is grounded in the feel and ideology of pop. In their native tongue, the lyrics are as sincere and agonized as anything from the ‘60s Greenwich canon. Selda’s voice is powerful, passionate, and carefully focused. The jubilant accompaniment buoys the populist sentiments. Like any good protest music, it carries its own dramatic weight and invites its politics along for the ride.

But, musically, this stuff is so absurdly advanced, it lands somewhere far from the utilitarian here-and-now of most political pop. In tune with the far-fetched bricolage of prog-rock, it shifts from ardent balladry (“Nasirli Eller”) to blistering fuzz (“Ince Ince”) to snaky spy jazz (“Yaylalar”) within a few tracks without compromising its urgent mood. The newly amended bonus tracks even venture into what sounds like reggae. Clearly, the erstwhile Turkish underground never considered stunning virtuosity, full-tilt artistic ambition or unbounded appropriation tools of establishmentarian oppression. It got better agit-prop for its aesthetic broad-mindedness. Even now, it’s rare to behold such an extensive range of concepts mixed with such catholic glee. Few other psych records, regardless of national origin, come close to having this much fun with this much conviction or this much emotion.

As it circulated, this album became retroactive samizdat by virtue of its popularity, and got Selda thrown in jail. Although I don’t know exactly what she’s talking about, the authority of her charming, haunting spell dismantles the language barrier with no problem. If I were the thought police, I’d be spooked, too. -- Emerson Dameron, Dusted

Terrific album and well chuffed it placed so high

LL I assume you know it but if not go get it!

I don't, but I will! This really was the best decade, eh? I feel bad for not nominating some of the groovier/harder edged stuff released on Discos Fuentes/rereleased by Soundway in the last few years. I think a lot of it would have been at home here, but oh well. There are a few other comps and stuff, a lot of it's on spotify if anyone cares.

I'm glad the results aren't boring.

67. THE SLITS Cut (2615 Points, 21 Votes)
RYM: #103 for 1979 | Acclaimed: #665
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http://open.spotify.com/album/4iNtNt45SY3Ieb5FR8qt3Q
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For once a white reggae style that rivals its models for weirdness and formal imagination. The choppy lyrics and playful, quavering, chantlike vocals are a tribute to reggae's inspired amateurism rather than a facsimile, and the spacey rhythms and recording techniques are exploited to solve the great problem of female rock bands, which is how to make yourself heard over all that noise. Arri Up's answer is to sing around it, which is lucky, because she'd be screeching for sure on top of the usual wall of chords. Some of this is thinner and more halting than it's meant to be, but I sure hope they keep it up. B+ -- R. Christgau

Lurching into existence during the original 1977 explosion of pre-commercial London punk, the all-female Slits wrested the anyone-can-make-a-band-so-why-not-do-it-yourself ethos away from the traditionally no-women-allowed punk-rock brotherhood and unselfconsciously paraded their stunningly amateur rock noise with the enthusiastic support of the Clash and other sensible compatriots. While on the road as part of a punk package tour, the Slits were immortalized in all their primitive glory in The Punk Rock Movie. Looking back at the group's tentative beginnings now, it's clear that while the Slits may have been truly awful, they weren't much worse than many of their male contemporaries, and undoubtedly a damn sight better and smarter than some.

It was probably fortunate, however, that several years elapsed before the Slits got around to recording a debut album; by the time they reached the studio, Viv Albertine guitar), Ari Upp (vocals) and Tessa (bass), joined by drummer Budgie (later of Siouxsie and the Banshees), had become reasonably competent players. Spare and rudimentary but bursting with novel ideas and rampant originality, Cut — brilliantly produced by reggae powerhouse Dennis Bovell — forges a powerful white-reggae hybrid that serves as a solid underpinning for Ari Upp's wobbly, semi-melodic vocals. -- Trouser Press

From their album cover (which depicts them fresh from frolicking naked in the mud) to their stage show (which ends with them inviting the audience up to play their instruments while they wander off to the bar or dressing room), the Slits are tribal. Vocalist Arri Up, bassist Tessa and guitarist Viv Albertine (assisted on Cut by male drummer Budgie) were the first British all-female punk group. They began their career by opening for–and borrowing the equipment of–people like the Clash, and for a couple of years, the news from such magazines as England's New Musical Express was that they hadn't quite, ah, jelled yet, though they certainly were trying. I don't know what those limey critics' ears are made of! Because both live and on their debut LP, the Slits prove that they're not only charming but can hold their own as a band.

Much of the charm derives from their lyrics, in which they treat "relevant" topics with a wry humor that's truly refreshing: the Slits aren't funny feminists, but feminists with wit. "So Tough" takes the piss out of one poor fool's macho swagger ("Don't take it serious"), while "Typical Girls" lists various qualities of the genus ("... buy magazines ... are sensitive ... emotional") and concludes: "Typical girl gets the typical boy." This group doesn't reject sex or even love, and I like the blase way that Up tells one ex-flame, "While you were sulking, I could've been raped/In Lad-broke Grove." The same sort of humor is embodied in the equanimous view of the boy in "Instant Hit," whom I'd swear was Sid Vicious: "He is set to self-destruct/He is too good to be true."

Producer Dennis Bovell has gotten a truly unique sound from the Slits: like Public Image Ltd., they're a white band influenced heavily by reggae rhythms and guitar-chop stylings, but they don't play straight reggae. The result is an almost ticktock sound, overlaid with occasional flurries of keyboards, a recorder, and Albertine and Tessa singing in and out of unison with Arri Up, who makes the most of her middle register while indulging a penchant for the occasional birdlike falsetto trill.

Musically as well as personally, the Slits embody the individualism at the heart of the original British punk ethic, perhaps best summed up in Cut's final number: "I'll choose my own fate/I'll follow love, I'll follow hate. -- Lester Bangs, RS

Here are some things you might already know about Cut, even if you haven't heard one note of the Slits' music: This is the first time the album's been released domestically in the U.S. on CD (with the obligatory bonus tracks). The album cover features three members of the group wearing nothing but mud and loincloths. When the group first formed, they couldn't play their instruments for shit. The songs on the album offer an amalgam of punk's abrasive DIY WTF-ness and the spacious relaxed rhythms of dub reggae. This album is a keystone for any and all punk-based grrrl movements. And-- though it goes without saying, it's often said anyway-- this album is terribly, terribly important in the history of the rock music and the grand scheme of canonical flippity floo flap.

Funny thing is, for all its import, Cut is actually a lot of fun. Fun in the way Ari Up trills and coos and yelps across the songs like a precocious schoolgirl taunting all the boys and teachers. Fun in the way Viv Albertine scratches and waxes her guitar. Fun in the way Tessa's bass and Budgie's drums slip in and out of grooves like lovers test-driving the Kama Sutra. Fun in the way the group turns every subject it touches into a giddy playground sing-a-long, whether it be a diatribe against pre-set gender roles ("Typical Girls"), a story about Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten butting heads ("So Tough"), a cautionary tale about PiL's Keith Levene's drug use ("Instant Hit"), or songs tackling other didactic topics like invasive media propaganda, shoplifting and the idealized love of a new purchase. Fun in the way producer Dennis Bovell employees spoons and matchboxes as beat accents (in "Newtown"), centers the group's meanderings with a little piano or more traditional percussion, and allows the band to occupy both punk and dub at the same time. The Slits don't destroy passerby: They stop them, dance around them, sing songs to and about them, playfully taunt and tease them, and then pass them the dutchie.

The bonus tracks are OK add-ons-- the group's version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" was slated to be the record's first single way back in the day, and would have served fine as another respectfully disrespectful punk cover, but appropriately ended up as the B-side to the actual first single, "Typical Girls". "Liebe and Romanze (Slow Version)" is an instrumental version of "Love Und Romance" bathing in the hot and welcome tropical sun outside of Lee Perry's studio, and serves as a pleasant cool down after the frenetic shenanigans that preceded. But, of course, if you're giving this album a spin, it's for the first 10 tracks, and if you're coming to them for the very first time, then I envy you. Yes, this is an important document, and part of any balanced popular musical diet, but this isn't a multi-vitamin-- this is skipping school as spring turns to summer to spend an extra-long lunch with friends driving to the not-so-local Jamaican bakery for a few beef patties and some much-needed fresh air. Take a long, deep breath, and enjoy the moment while it lasts. -- David Raposa, Pitchfork

review
by John Dougan

Almost as well-known for its cover (the three Slits are half-naked and covered in mud) as for its music, Cut is an ebullient piece of post-punk mastery that finds the Slits' interest in Caribbean and African rhythms smoothly incorporated into their harsher punk rock stylings. Ari Up's wandering voice (a touch like Yoko Ono) might be initially off-putting, but not so much so that it makes listening to the record difficult. Six tracks are revamped from earlier Peel Sessions and sound better for the extra effort (especially "New Town" and "Love und Romance"). With its goofy charm, gleeful swing and sway, and subtle yet compelling libertarian feminism, this is one of the best records of the era.

Selda- another album I've never heard of, another to check out

Selda was definitely an interesting new discovery for me. I hunted it down back during the voting period, and found a 17 track flac version that's with wildly varied fidelity. It sounds like a rip from a scratchy record, some more distorted than others. Is that what the 2006 CD reissue sounds like?

It was next to impossible to find official reviews of it. Those who knew about this album before the poll, how did you get turned on to it?

I have a few friends BIG into psychedelic music and in particular turkish psych. Lots of psych comps around where I heard the likes of Selda,Baris manco, erkin koray and more. Got a lot of psych comps on mp3. finders keepers reissue a lot of it. great label.

finders keepers reissue. available on spotify.
xp

66. RAMONES Ramones (2641 Points, 19 Votes)
RYM: #3 for 1976 , #199 overall | Acclaimed: #37 | RS: #33 | Pitchfork: #23
http://www.superseventies.com/oaaa/oaaa_ramones.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/4X44NrhroDDaWXheAhcvYY
spotify:album:4X44NrhroDDaWXheAhcvYY

I love this record--love it--even though I know these boys flirt with images of brutality (Nazi especially) in much the same way "Midnight Rambler" flirts with rape. You couldn't say they condone any nasties, natch--they merely suggest that the power of their music has some fairly ominous sources and tap those sources even as they offer the suggestion. This makes me uneasy. But my theory has always been that good rock and roll should damn well make you uneasy, and the sheer pleasure of this stuff--which of course elicits howls of pain from the good old rock and roll crowd--is undeniable. For me, it blows everything else off the radio: it's clean the way the Dolls never were, sprightly the way the Velvets never were, and just plain listenable the way Black Sabbath never was. And I hear it cost $6400 to put on plastic. A -- R. Christgau

Ramones almost defies critical comment. The fourteen songs, averaging barely over two minutes each, start and stop like a lurching assembly line. Joey Ramone's monotone is the perfect complement to Johnny and Dee Dee's precise guitar/bass pulse. Since the no-frills production sacrifices clarity for impact, printed lyrics on the inner sleeve help even as they mock another pretentious convention — although the four-or-five-line texts of "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue," "I Don't Wanna Walk Around with You" and "Loudmouth" are an anti-art of their own. Like all cultural watersheds, Ramones was embraced by a discerning few and slagged off as a bad joke by the uncomprehending majority. It is now inarguably a classic. -- Trouser Press

If today's Rolling Stone were the Cahiers du Cinema of the late Fifties, a band of outsiders as deliberately crude and basic as the Ramones would be granted instant auteur status as fast as one could say "Edgar G. Ulmer." Their musique maudite -- 14 rock & roll songs exploding like time bombs in the space of 29 breathless minutes and produced on a Republic-Monogram budget of $6400 -- would be compared with the mise en scene of, say, Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly or, better yet, Samuel Fuller's delirious Underworld U.S.A.

And such comparisons would not be specious. The next paragraph is almost literal transcription of something the American auteurist, Andrew Sarris, wrote about Fuller in The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968. I've just changed the names and a few terms.

The Ramones are authentic American primitives whose work has to be heard to be understood. Heard, not read about or synopsized. Their first album,Ramones, is constructed almost entirely of rhythm tracks of an exhilarating intensity rock & roll has not experienced since its earliest days. The Ramones' lyrics are so compressed that there is no room for even one establishing atmosphere verse or one dramatically irrelevant guitar solo in which the musicians could suggest an everyday existence... The Ramones' ideas are undoubtedly too broad and oversimplified for any serious analysis, but it is the artistic force with which their ideas are expressed that makes their music so fascinating to critics who can rise above their aesthetic prejudices... The Ramones' perversity and peculiarly Old Testament view of retribution carry the day... It is time popular music followed the other arts in honoring its primitives. The Ramones belong to rock & roll, and not to rock and avant-garde musical trends.

How the present will treat the Ramones, proponents of the same Manhattan musical minimalism as the New York Dolls who preceded them, remains to be seen. Thus far, punk rock's archetypal concept of an idealized Top 40 music -- the songs stripped down like old Fords, then souped up for speed -- has unintentionally provoked more primal anger from than precipitant access to the nation's teenagers, and the godheads of AM radio don't seem to be listening at all. Why? Do you have to be over 21 to like this stuff? Doesn't "Blitzkrieg Bop" or the absolutely wonderful "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" mean anything to anyone but an analytical intellectual? Until now, apparently not.

Where's your sense of humor and adventure, America? In rock & roll and matters of the heart, we should all hang on to a little amateurism. Let's hope these guys sell more records than Elton John has pennies. If not, shoot the piano player. And throw in Paul McCartney to boot. -- Paul Nelson, RS
From its simple black-and-white cover photo to its quick-fire sonic assaults, the Ramones' debut album is the ultimate punk statement.

Recorded in two days for a meagre $6,000, Ramones stripped rock back to its basic elements. There are no guitar solos and no lengthy fantasy epics, in itself a revolutionary declaration in a time of Zeppelin-inspired hard-rock excess. Pushed along by Johnny Ramone's furious four-chord guitar and Tommy's thumping surf drums, all of the tracks clock in under three minutes. And while the songs are short and sharp, the group's love of 1950s drive-through rock and girl-group pop means they are also melodically sweet.

The album's lyrics are very simple, boiled-down declarations of teen lust and need. Joey Ramone yelps about what he wants ("I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend," "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue") and what he does not ("I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You'). Only "53rd And 3rd" -- a dark narrative based on Dee Dee's experiences as a rent boy -- hints at the expression of something more meaningful and deeply felt.

Praised on its release by a small circle of music journalists (Creem declared, "If their successors are one-third as good as the Ramones, we'll be fixed for life"), Ramones failed to enter either the U.S. Top 100 or the UK Top 40. But the few kids who bought the album took its hyped-up, melodic minimalism as a call to arms. The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and the Buzzcocks all used The Ramones' four-chord blueprint to express their frustration at rock's stale and self-indulgent state. Revolution would never sound so simple again. -- Theunis Bates, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

review
[-] by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

With the three-chord assault of "Blitzkrieg Bop," The Ramones begins at a blinding speed and never once over the course of its 14 songs does it let up. The Ramones is all about speed, hooks, stupidity, and simplicity. The songs are imaginative reductions of early rock & roll, girl group pop, and surf rock. Not only is the music boiled down to its essentials, but the Ramones offer a twisted, comical take on pop culture with their lyrics, whether it's the horror schlock of "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement," the gleeful violence of "Beat on the Brat," or the maniacal stupidity of "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue." And the cover of Chris Montez's "Let's Dance" isn't a throwaway -- with its single-minded beat and lyrics, it encapsulates everything the group loves about pre-Beatles rock & roll. They don't alter the structure, or the intent, of the song, they simply make it louder and faster. And that's the key to all of the Ramones' music -- it's simple rock & roll, played simply, loud, and very, very fast. None of the songs clock in at any longer than two and half minutes, and most are considerably shorter. In comparison to some of the music the album inspired, The Ramones sounds a little tame -- it's a little too clean, and compared to their insanely fast live albums, it even sounds a little slow -- but there's no denying that it still sounds brilliantly fresh and intoxicatingly fun.

xp thanks guys, also on emusic. Downloading now!

yay Ramones!

I know a lot of american metal fans who hate bands like the ramones because "they cant play". Usually van halen fans funnily enough. I bet it was even worse back in the 70s.

65. SLAPP HAPPY Acnalbasac Noom (2642 Points, 16 Votes, 2 #1s)
RYM: #2968 overall
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcm59cbipy1rc22qso1_1280.jpg

At its best, though, the band was refreshing, diverting and sometimes moving. Nearly a decade after the release of Slapp Happy's eponymous second album — which contains the song "Casablanca Moon" but does not bear that title — the band issued its original demos as Acnalbasac Noom. It's a gem from start to finish. Blegvad crafts some wonderful, offhandedly literary lyrics while Moore provides sophisticated tunes to match. (As the group didn't contain a drummer or bassist, the group employed the rhythm section from Faust, not that you'd ever guess.) Although there are some songs in common, this is an entirely different album from Slapp Happy, which was recorded using anonymous studio musicians and features some ambitious (but odd) string arrangements.  -- Trouser Press

review
[-] by Richie Unterberger

The history of this album is a bit complicated. Originally titled Casablanca Moon, it was recorded for Polydor in 1973, but scrapped when the group signed with Virgin; their first Virgin release was an entirely re-recorded version of the same material, although it was entitled Slapp Happy when released. To compound the confusion, the Virgin version was retitled Casablanca Moon when it was reissued on CD in 1993 (on a single-disc release that also included their 1974 Virgin album Desperate Straights). Acnalbasac Noom is the original, 1973 recording of the Casablanca Moon material, and not a mere archival curiosity; it's quite worthy on its own merits. The group's songwriting had improved since their debut, and Krause's German chanteuse-influenced vocals found catchier, more rock-oriented settings. The lyrics are witty and oddball without being pretentious. Tracks like "Mr. Rainbow" recall Yoko Ono's early-'70s song-oriented material, with an important difference: Krause's vocals are much better than Ono's, while just as distinctive. "The Secret," with its almost girl-group-worthy catchiness, and "Charlie 'n Charlie," with its nifty surfish guitar riff, even sound like potential commercial singles. The four bonus tracks include the delightful 1982 single "Everybody's Slimmin'," with its immortal opening line, "Listen my children and you will hear/You can shed weight and still drink beer."

Someone's campaigning worked for sure

speaking of Finder's Keepers, if I had thought of it (and knew that people would go for the weird stuff in this poll) I would have nominated Jacky Chalard - Je Suis Vivant, Mais J'Ai Peur. awesome sci-fi spoken word space prog, soundtracky stuff. and also speaking of french stuff and since Heldon did well, I also should have nominated Patrick Vian - Bruits et Temps Analogues. Those are two of my favorite '70s french records apart from the obvious stuff like gainsbourg, magma, gong, fontaine, etc.

Albums that were a bit unknown but were campaigned for did well (see all the funk and krautrock in the 101-501 range for example)

If other albums had been campaigned for (or nominated them campaigned for) then perhaps the same could have happened.

btw the 501-550 range is pretty strong and some really good stuff missed out

64. PERE UBU The Modern Dance (2644 Points, 24 Votes)
RYM: #7 for 1978 , #405 overall | Acclaimed: #226
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0000/032/MI0000032902.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Ubu's music is nowhere near as willful as it sounds at first. Riffs emerge from the cacophony, David Thomas's shrieking suits the heterodox passion of the lyrics, and the synthesizer noise begins to cohere after a while. So even though there's too much Radio Ethiopia and not enough Redondo Beach, I'll be listening through the failed stuff--the highs are worth it, and the failed stuff ain't bad. A- -- R. Christgau

With its debut album, The Modern Dance, Pere Ubu engineered a dauntingly seamless coupling of arty introspection and old-school garage-rock squall. Frontman David Thomas uses his bizarro-world warble to yelp out fusillades of angst ("Life Stinks") and spin dreamworld visions ("Sentimental Journey") that ultimately proved far darker and more challenging than any three-chord ranters operating at the time. It includes two songs remade from early 45s that Pere Ubu had released on its Hearthan label (when Thomas was calling himself Crocus Behemoth and the late Peter Laughner was one of the sextet's guitarists and main songwriters). -- Trouser Press
These two records are vivid, exhilarating examples of how Americans can use New Wave punk music for their own purposes. Both Pere Ubu and the Suicide Commandos are from the Midwest (Cleveland and Minneapolis, respectively), and The Modern Dance and Make a Record are the first two releases on Blank, an intelligently subversive subsidiary of Mercury.

Pere Ubu's The Modern Dance is harsh and willfully ugly, yet always mindful of certain rock & roll imperatives: a solid beat, snappy lyrics and engaging themes. Ubu tends to break these imperatives apart: if the lyrics are funny, the melody will be excruciatingly abstract; if the melody is catchy, the lyrics will be intentionally dull or indecipherable. But David Thomas' smooth, adenoidal vocals and Tom Herman's staccato guitar playing provide the musical glue to hold everything together.

The band's name, derived from a character in turn-of-the-century avant-gardist Alfred Jarry's famous plays, has some significance. As in the work of Jarry and other Dadaists, there is, beneath Pere Ubu's shouted cynicism, a painfully hopeful romanticism, a feeling that if you wallow in ugliness with a sufficiently noble and artistic intent, the ugliness will become attractive. It did for Jarry, and it does for Pere Ubu, especially on the title song--a swirling, complex collage--and on the sardonic but hearty "Humor Me." -- Ken Tucker, RS

Without too much thought involved either. If there's one record which would make sense of the entire selection here, it'd be "The Modern Dance". Cue long essay waxing rhapsodic. Nah. I got this in 1987 and it's stuck with me ever since. I reckon it's as pungent as it has ever been. I wish I had the original pressing, the one with the black and white linocut, rather than my shitty silver limited edition reissue. When I was 18 I hung around backstage at a Sonic Youth gig (when Ubu were supporting them) and met David Thomas. He was cool. -- Woebot, #1

review
by John Dougan

There isn't a Pere Ubu recording you can imagine living without. The Modern Dance remains the essential Ubu purchase (as does the follow-up, Dub Housing). For sure, Mercury had no idea what they had on their hands when they released this as part of their punk rock offshoot label Blank, but it remains a classic slice of art-punk. It announces itself quite boldly: the first sound you hear is a painfully high-pitched whine of feedback, but then Tom Herman's postmodern Chuck Berry riffing kicks off the brilliant "Non-Alignment Pact," and you soon realize that this is punk rock unlike any you've ever heard. David Thomas' caterwauling is funny and moving, Scott Krauss (drums) and Tony Maimone (bass) are one of the great unheralded rhythm sections in all of rock, and the "difficult" tracks like "Street Waves," "Chinese Radiation," and the terrifying "Humor Me" are revelatory, and way ahead of their time. The Modern Dance is the signature sound of the avant-garage: art rock, punk rock, and garage rock mixing together joyously and fearlessly.

63. FAUST So Far (2654 Points, 20 Votes)
RYM: #71 for 1972 , #2122 overall | Acclaimed: #1761
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/405/MI0002405431.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/62dqL9uBwUqz6TwhQ3QFFh
spotify:album:62dqL9uBwUqz6TwhQ3QFFh

Faust So Far is far more tightly structured, boasting actual songs like "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" and "Mamie Is Blue," which makes something out of abrasive electronic bursts, wah-wah guitar and minimal vocals. As the album was recorded in 1972, some tracks include twangy distorted guitar/plucky bass jams. Bizarre little experiments pop up between songs: overlays of effects-treated guitars and the like, sort of a German analogue to the Mothers of Invention's early sound adventures. -- Trouser Press

The second album SO FAR (again a novelty package, this time virtually all-black, with a set of 10 picture inserts depicting each track) acted more on parody, with shorter tracks and a wider range of styles, metronomic rock anthems (with nonsensical lyrics), guitars fuzzed with intense electronic effects, pseudo psychedelia onto trippy folk, dadaism and even a closing Pasadena Roof Orchestra styled jazz number! The lyrics are extraordinary, and every track is a surprise - invention upon invention - a bounty of delights. The "So Far" single was a very different version of the album title-track given a weird brassy edge and a very strange mix. A version of the B side later appeared on FAUST IV. -- Cosmic Egg

review
by Ted Mills

Faust's second album moves closer to actual song structure than their debut, but it still remains experimental. Songs progress and evolve instead of abruptly stopping or cutting into other tracks. The opening song "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" begins as a repetitive 4/4 beat played on toms and piano with the title sung over the top. But for seven minutes the song adds instruments, including a lush analog synth line, and ends in a memorable sax riff. Faust's lyrical side appears on the acoustic "Picnic on a Frozen River" and "On the Way to Adamäe," whereas its abrasive side pops up on "Me Lack Space." "So Far," a jam shared by guitar, horns, and tweedy keyboard, rolls along with a funky hypnotic beat and wailing processed synths. And on "No Harm," the crazed delivery of such lines as "Daddy, take the banana, tomorrow Sunday" makes one want to believe something profound is going down. In terms of scope and the wealth of ideas, this is probably the most balanced of their first four albums.

2 more tonight..

62. BRAINTICKET Cottonwoodhill (2666 Points, 20 Votes)
RYM: #380 for 1970
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/089/MI0002089659.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/7h2AERd0CxTtK0xWrUtlDE
spotify:album:7h2AERd0CxTtK0xWrUtlDE

Next time you feel like getting fried, listen to this! But never mind the first two songs on Cottonwoodhill; they are both a rather ho-hum affair. The real brillance on this disc is to be found throughout their 26 minute acid-fueled masterpiece, "Brainticket", the basis of which is a slightly varrying guitar/keyboard lock groove, kinda like Can at their most repetitive. Over this groove pulses all sorts of sound effects, such as machine guns, screams, gargeling, etc. Mostly, though, the overriding sound is their synthesizer, who, although not in the league of Klaus Sculze, nonetheless provides some very entertaining squawks, squeeks, beeps and drones, resulting is a very high-powered burst of aphetimene driven psychosis, dancable and meditative (but meditative in a disturbing, scary way)
But Brainticket the band doesn't stop there, and what really makes "brainticket" the song transcend ordinary greatness in pursuit of nutty brilliance is the voice of Dawn Muir. Sounding very Engish, she freaks out over the whole thing, recounting a very bad acid trip, doubting her exsistence, screaming her LSD-fueled insights, and just generally making a complete mess of herself.

...Suddenly you realize that the insanity is contageous, as the song stops, revealing a weird computer voice going "Brainticket Brainticket Brainticket" and you are left wondering just what the fuck is going on,just what is this I'm listening to? But then the song fades back in, and it's back to where we started... 

Poor Dawn Muir, she sounds like a girl being dragged off towards a mental institution, and I wouldn't be surprised if she was still there. Because after this album, everyone in Brainticket freaked out, and only their keyboard player remained. While other Brainticket albums are interesting, none have the sheer grab you by the balls lunancy as witnessed all over Cottonwoodhill, the cover of which carries the helpful warning, "Don't listen to this record more than once a day or your brain will be destroyed!"  -- John, Head Heritage

review
[-] by Rolf Semprebon

Cottonwoodhill is one of the trippiest records ever made, capturing the intensity of the peak LSD experience far more successfully than any Timothy Leary recording, and even today, when many such documents from that era can sound silly and dated, Brainticket's fascinating debut still holds hallucinogenic potency. The record has only two proper songs, "Black Sand" and "Places of Light," with a side and a half of the album taken up by the three-part "Brainticket." "Black Sand" opens the disc with a driving funk beat and powerful organ and guitar interplay, adding in vocals distorted beyond coherency. "Places of Light" begins in a slightly lighter vein as a flute leads the proceedings, a looser jazzier piece that throws in some of Dawn Muir's odd spoken word vocals. Before one realizes what has happened, the piece has faded out and there is suddenly a crashing sound, car horns, and engines starting up. "Brainticket" is a bizarre roller coaster ride through weird sound effects and electronics, an endless organ riff, and Muir's acid-rush ramblings from hushed whisper to urgent screams, as any coherency she had earlier becomes lost to mind-expanding visions. Rather than the laid-back mellow groove of some psychedelic music from this era, Cottonwoodhill has a hyper energy in the frenetic organ riff and Muir's voice, like an acid trip out of control, while at times the various sound effects take over completely.

Acnalbalsac Noom + The Modern Dance. In the walkman days I had them either side of tape until it got chewed up.

Surprised nobody is commenting on these albums

That Pere Ubu's a gnarly beast. Sorry wrapping up worky work.

61. MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA The Inner Mounting Flame (2685 Points, 20 Votes)
RYM: #28 for 1971 , #497 overall | Acclaimed: #598
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/629/MI0001629825.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/0chWLemqlI6G1GOEr1q1bz
spotify:album:0chWLemqlI6G1GOEr1q1bz

This excellent album bears absolutely no resemblance to the record that British guitarist John McLaughlin released around four months ago, except in the intensity of spirit in which the music was made. That album, My Goal's Beyond, reflected the serenity which McLaughlin was seeking under the guidance of the Indian teacher, Sri Chinmoy, who also counts as a disciple of McLaughlin's fellow guitarist Larry Coryell. On the earlier album, the Mahavishnu Orchestra used droning techniques, both traditional and innovative, to create a feeling of completion, the end of a long musical and soulful search. But The Inner Mounting Flame is a throwback in its own way, a retreat to more basic jazz and instrumental rock and roll. It's very similar to the first album that McLaughlin made after leaving Miles Davis' band, Devotion, on which McLaughlin and Buddy Miles (who sounded like a man drumming for his life) made it clear that heavy rock music wasn't necessarily like having an anvil dropped on your skull.

In the incarnation in which it presents itself on this new record, the Mahavishnu Orchestra is one of the tightest assemblages of musicians playing today. Gone (unfortunately) is Dave Liebman on soprano and McLaughlin's wife Eve, who performed beautifully on oud. The great Charlie Haden has been replaced on bass by Rick Laird, a fine Czech pianist named Jan Hammer has been added, and three of the original members remain: Violinist Jerry Goodman, formerly of the defunct Flock; Billy Cobham, one of the most proficient and creative session drummers working out of New York, and McLaughlin himself, who is one of the few electric guitarists in the world who has the complete facility of dexterous skill to bring his instrument fully into the world of fast, improvisatory jazz music.

There are eight songs on Flame, each one having something different to say about the real connection between music and spirit. "Meetings of the Spirit" is psychic and religious torch music, a hard rocker that lets each musician cook a little, each adding his own dash to the swirling stew. "Dan" is built at first slowly, and then frantically with weird, shifting cadences, around McLaughlin's beautiful but elusive melodic line.

"The Noonwind Race" is hard rock/jazz, fast almost beyond comprehension, stretching and reaching for something that only the musicians themselves know anything about. McLaughlin solos first in a blaze of 8ths and 16ths, then Goodman on electric, hopped-up violin draws a picture of complex, skirling luminescence, then Hammer's econonmical break on electric piano, then McLaughlin takes the final lap of this astounding, exhausting race. The rhythm section of Cobham and Laird is laid back, and very, very tight.

The side ends with "A Lotus on Irish Streams'," which is not a bar ditty you might have heard in your local tavern but a soft, acoustic instrumental, a kind of breather after the intensity of the sturm und drang. As it will in almost any acoustic ensemble, the violin dominates, and Goodman shows that he possesses a soulful, soft touch. As the title suggests, it's a lovely song.

Side two features Cobham strutting his stuff on "Vital Transformation," another fast, hard number reminiscent of Devotion, as is "The Dance of Maya," which also has a nice, slow blues line that's a treat to hear. "You Know You Know" is more subdued and presents pianist Hammer on electric keyboard, and he too is tremendously skilled, with beautiful phrasing and a smart ear for tart improvisation.

The last number, "Awakening," is just that: the band is up and moving fast again, as if it's getting ready for the next step on that good old Sri Chinmoy calls the "sky-kissing ladder." It's a short, almost curt song, but one that somehow says to us that there's more in store. As Sri would say, "Aspiration is the first rung; Realization is the last." -- Stephen Davis, RS

review
[-] by Richard S. Ginell

This is the album that made John McLaughlin a semi-household name, a furious, high-energy, yet rigorously conceived meeting of virtuosos that, for all intents and purposes, defined the fusion of jazz and rock a year after Miles Davis' Bitches Brew breakthrough. It also inadvertently led to the derogatory connotation of the word fusion, for it paved the way for an army of imitators, many of whose excesses and commercial panderings devalued the entire movement. Though much was made of the influence of jazz-influenced improvisation in the Mahavishnu band, it is the rock element that predominates, stemming directly from the electronic innovations of Jimi Hendrix. The improvisations, particularly McLaughlin's post-Hendrix machine-gun assaults on double-necked electric guitar and Jerry Goodman's flights on electric violin, owe more to the freakouts that had been circulating in progressive rock circles than to jazz, based as they often are on ostinatos on one chord. These still sound genuinely thrilling today on CD, as McLaughlin and Goodman battle Jan Hammer's keyboards, Rick Laird's bass, and especially Billy Cobham's hard-charging drums, whose jazz-trained technique pushed the envelope for all rock drummers. What doesn't date so well are the composed medium- and high-velocity unison passages that are played in such tight lockstep that they can't breathe. There is also time out for quieter, reflective numbers that are drenched in studied spirituality ("A Lotus on Irish Streams") or irony ("You Know You Know"); McLaughlin was to do better in that department with less-driven colleagues elsewhere in his career. Aimed with absolute precision at young rock fans, this record was wildly popular in its day, and it may have been the cause of more blown-out home amplifiers than any other record this side of Deep Purple.

That Brainticket album is such a bizarre beast. So surprised and very pleased it ended up this high.

Somebody already mentioned it once but it bears repeating:

Brrraaaainticket, Brrraaaainticket. Brrraaaainticket...

I voted for Birds of Fire over the Inner Mounting Flame, but I do have to admit "Vital Transformation" is one of my favorite songs of any jazz-related genre.

Only the 1 funk album today

The Lost Trident Sessions by Mahavishnu is really good too.

Does anyone know if the Cooking Vinyl reissues of the Pere Ubu (both the albums and Datapink In Year Zero box) from 2008 was a remaster?

Direct Link to poll recap & full results

Tomorrow we will enter the top 50! but first all latecomers and lurkers can discuss todays/previous days results if they want to..

Spotify f/ Black Flag's The First Four Years: http://open.spotify.com/album/78WwCynnhbncgNobigrXpq

Ohio Players - Pleasure has some biiiig grooves, I like it.
Even this high up the list there's plenty of stuff that's new to me - Heldon, Agitation Free & Selda were all artists that I'd never heard of before.

I'm loving that part of the rollout... The almost stress-inducing vastness of riches that I haven't even HEARD OF, much less listened to. I need to hear Heldon, Comus, Atomic Rooster, A.R. & Machines...

best poll i've ever read anywhere. Such an absurd amount of stuff I cannot wait to hear.

OH OF COURSE I'm out when half my ballot places. Hurrah for Selda, Slits, Pere Ubu, Faust. Double super hurrah for Cottonwoodhill. EXTRA MILLION TIMES HURRAH for Acnalbasac Noom. Seriously, when it didn't place in the 200s I really thought it wouldn't place in the top 500 at all. It was a pretty emotional struggle for me to not make it my #1, so I'm very very glad it's here.

Sorry I havent been following. Cut and Tanz were both top 5 for me. Also stoked to see Cottonwoodhill in the top 100

Who was the #1 for Tanz? Out yrself for kudos!

wow @ this Malesch album

Curtis at 78 is really disappointing, it's one of the most perfect albums ever made.

Very happy to see that the first Roxy Music album will be their highest, I have my fingers crossed it'll make the top ten.

I thought The Modern Dance would be a lot higher going on how well it did in the last 70's albums list.

Would have liked to see Radio City a bit higher, yet another perfect album.

There seems to be lots of albums showing up now that I have just never heard of.

Yeah I had Modern Dance pegged for top 20

best poll i've ever read anywhere. Such an absurd amount of stuff I cannot wait to hear.

― the Shearer of simulated snowsex etc. (Dwight Yorke),

Thanks!

It really makes it all worthwhile to see comments like that. Glad lots of ilxors are checking out lots of new-to-them albums and getting into them. The whole point of doing the poll for me!

I hope everyone is enjoying the reviews that fastnbulbous is doing a LOT of work in tracking down just for everyone?

It's been a treat.

Also I'm pleased that emil.y's campaigning for Slapp Happy paid off for her!

It's great that we're still getting surprise entries this high up in the list - I'd never heard of those Heldon records before, will have to check them out (I've got a twofer CD of their first and third albums which I do like). Curtis, Zuma, The Modern Dance and Inner Mounting Flame all got points from me.

I gave that Brainticket album a listen after enjoying the one that placed earlier, erm... yeah, it was a bit much.

Surprised Tanz and Wolf City placed so high - they're both good albums but I'd never rank them over Yeti.

Listened to that Selda album this morning. Really nice, not partic rocking IMO. Will definitely go back to it though. When looking at that I also picked up Jean-Claude Vannier's "L' Enfant Assassin des Mouches", also on Finders Keepers, which is some crazy freakiness and might have fitted well with this poll.

I think that was nominated, I agree that it'd fit right in here (I wouldn't be at all surprised if it made the top 60).

2 #1 votes for slapp happy! I haven't spent much time with them, probably should as I love in praise of learning, babble & all the art bears stuff.

I thought for your pleasure & cut would be top 20 for sure. Can't wait to see what bonkers stuff makes it to the upper reaches.

The amazing thing is emil.y wasn't even one of the #1 voters.

But it shows the power of campaigning.

Any hopes or predictions for the top 60?

Still hoping to see A Wizard, A True Star make it.

Along with Roxy Music I'd like to see Here Come The Warm Jets, Are We Not Men and The Modern Lovers very in the top ten/twenty.

I've been hoping that Motor Booty Affair would make it but just realised it wasn't nominated so I guess I'm now looking to see Mothership Connection high up. I would really love to see Standing on The Verge of Getting on beat Maggot Brain as I think it's a much better album, don't see that happening though. I'm sure Maggot Brain stands a good chance of being number one.

It seems like Marquee Moon is another obvious contender for number one but this list has been so unpredicatable so far I just can't be sure.

Entertainment! should do well I think. Everyone likes that record, right?

Simply Saucer ftw

will lol if maggot brain tops this one as well

Did I miss Yeti?

I am hoping Fun House is #1, but it v well cd be Maggot Brain or Tago Mago. Theres actually a lot of possibilities now that O think about it...

er, "now that I think about it..."

I read that like one of those screaming goats interrupted ..

Idk what you're talking about

Theres a real possibility that Riot will beat out Maggot Brain

I gave that Brainticket album a listen after enjoying the one that placed earlier, erm... yeah, it was a bit much.

Hahaha, it does have warning labels on the sleeve.

"After listening to this record, your friends won't know you anymore" and "Listen only once a day to this record, your brain might be destroyed".

Listened to that Selda album this morning. Really nice, not partic rocking IMO. Will definitely go back to it though.

OTM.

Hahaha, it does have warning labels on the sleeve.

"After listening to this record, your friends won't know you anymore" and "Listen only once a day to this record, your brain might be destroyed".

Well that's what I get for using Spotify, no warnings there, you'd think they could have a pop-up or something.

Soft Machine's Third hasn't appeared yet, would like to see that place high.

60. BLACK SABBATH Paranoid (2726 Points, 17 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #1 for 1970, #18 overall | Acclaimed: #135 | RS: #130
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/780/MI0002780001.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/714ndVxSx8lIWhQxdbcXIs
spotify:album:714ndVxSx8lIWhQxdbcXIs

They do take heavy to undreamt-of extremes, and I suppose I could enjoy them as camp, like a horror movie--the title cut is definitely screamworthy. After all, their audience can't take that Lucifer bit seriously, right? Well, depends on what you mean by serious. Personally, I've always suspected that horror movies catharsized stuff I was too rational to care about in the first place. C- -- R. Christgau

A young girl's voice. She is dressed in a nun's habit. The boy turns and faces her. She proffers a chalice of cervical exudate and he drinks from it. She gets down on her knees and elbows, como peros, and tosses the nun's hem above her posterior. On each naked buttock is the scrawled sign of Ashirikas; "Fuck me, Rolf." The boy whips out a 10" personal vibrator, adorned in waterproof acrylics with the image of the Nazarene. He intones the words "nuk Khensu tenten nebu" and approaches her intendant fundament...impletion...across the room the fresh corpse of an illegitimate hippie baby is dis-impaled from the ceremonial sword of Baph-omet. The myrrh is extinguished with the collected saliva of priests listening to tales of carnal abuse in warm, dark confessionals. The Shadaic numinae are chalked over with the mirrored sign of Ariael, the eleven rubies returned to the vessel of Dione.

A dark, handsome youth with the physique of a Dionysos — eyes, though, glazed and cold — grasps the two-foot stem of an imported El-Douhab hookah by its hilt and shoves its tip, sans mouthpiece, into the dry, collapsed rectum of the dead hippie baby, pushes until thin rivulets of blood ooze from the nostrils and lips of the infant. The hookah's stem-tip surfaces and the suck-piece is restored. Those in the room gather about. One youth wears a mosaic-inlaid Aztec skull mask, ornamented with the symbols of Gnostic adoration. He fills the hookah bowl with black opium tars and a dash of Asthmador powders...in the corner of the room, clutching a smuggled police photo of Sharon Tate with her hacked-off tit crammed up her snatch, a lone boy masturbates slowly, moaning "tempora mutantur et nos muta-mur in illis."

No "flower children" they, the sinister emanation of a generation who only yesterday, it seems, were set on changing a world in the shadow of nuclear holocaust and overpopulation into a utopia of peace and love. They drop the knee of fealty before the Antichrist. They shoot "M" and they engage in group sex. No act is too depraved, no thought too bizarre as they plunge deeper and deeper into the realm of perversion, into the ultimate "trip" of their own self-fashioned Hell. Orgies, incest, drugs, homosexuality, necrophilia, public nose-picking, Satanism, even living sacrifice.

And this is their music. Although you may not enjoy its "message," although you may not enjoy a lead singer (Kip Treavor), who sounds like Keith Relf whining about the tampons stuck up his nostrils, you owe it to yourself as a person concerned with contemporary society or merely with the artistic underground of the youth movement in general to be aware of the "heavy" sounds of bubble-gum Satanism and if you see them live sometimes they undress a hippie girl. -- Nick Tosches, RS

Most heavy metal thrives on uptempos; Black Sabbath prefers sludge and slow-motion fuzz. Ozzy Osborne's shrill vocals contribute to a mix of rudimentary riffs and obsessive lyrics, creating an angst-ridden punk poetry
of the semi-conscious. Despite an impressive list of potential rivals, Black Sabbath may play the ultimate downer metal. -- Jim Miller, "The Heavy Metal Hall of Fame", RS

Black Sabbath had already raised eyebrows in their native England with their self-titled debut: a seismic re-routing of the blues that, along with the first two Led Zeppelin classics, helped give birth to a new form of rock 'n' roll: heavy metal.

In terms of songwriting, the Birmingham quartet's second LP was a quantum leap. Leviathan protest number "War Pigs" is one of the all-time great intros, capturing the embittered mood of Western youth as the U.S. government fought its bloody campaign in Vietnam. All the Sabbath trademarks are here: Ozzy Osbourne's eerie, ominous wail; supple, tempo-shifting dynamics from drummer Bill Ward and bassist/lyricist Geezer Butler; and, most recognizably, the hulking presence of guitar hero and lord of the riff, Tony Iommi.

The iconic title track comes next, a proto-punk blast of alienation that remains Black Sabbath's signature anthem -- Ozzy and Iommi even performed it at Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee celebrations in London in 2002. Ghostly ballad "Planet Caravan" displays an oft-overlooked tender side, while lumbering sci-fi drama "Iron Man" seems to anticipate the entire grunge movement. The final four tracks are less well known, but just as imposing. Heroin nightmare "Hand Of Doom" is especially apt, helping consolidate Sabbath's position as the darkest force in Seventies music.

Paranoid broke them in America, reaching No. 12 on the U.S. chart. Its songs have been covered by acts as diverse as Pantera and The Cardigans; its influence on the heavier end of the rock spectrum, from Nirvana to Queens Of The Stone Age, is incalculable. -- Manish Agarwal, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

review
[-] by Steve Huey

Paranoid was not only Black Sabbath's most popular record (it was a number one smash in the U.K., and "Paranoid" and "Iron Man" both scraped the U.S. charts despite virtually nonexistent radio play), it also stands as one of the greatest and most influential heavy metal albums of all time. Paranoid refined Black Sabbath's signature sound -- crushingly loud, minor-key dirges loosely based on heavy blues-rock -- and applied it to a newly consistent set of songs with utterly memorable riffs, most of which now rank as all-time metal classics. Where the extended, multi-sectioned songs on the debut sometimes felt like aimless jams, their counterparts on Paranoid have been given focus and direction, lending an epic drama to now-standards like "War Pigs" and "Iron Man" (which sports one of the most immediately identifiable riffs in metal history). The subject matter is unrelentingly, obsessively dark, covering both supernatural/sci-fi horrors and the real-life traumas of death, war, nuclear annihilation, mental illness, drug hallucinations, and narcotic abuse. Yet Sabbath makes it totally convincing, thanks to the crawling, muddled bleakness and bad-trip depression evoked so frighteningly well by their music. Even the qualities that made critics deplore the album (and the group) for years increase the overall effect -- the technical simplicity of Ozzy Osbourne's vocals and Tony Iommi's lead guitar vocabulary; the spots when the lyrics sink into melodrama or awkwardness; the lack of subtlety and the infrequent dynamic contrast. Everything adds up to more than the sum of its parts, as though the anxieties behind the music simply demanded that the band achieve catharsis by steamrolling everything in its path, including its own limitations. Monolithic and primally powerful, Paranoid defined the sound and style of heavy metal more than any other record in rock history.

I gave that Brainticket album a listen after enjoying the one that placed earlier, erm... yeah, it was a bit much.

Hahaha, it does have warning labels on the sleeve.

"After listening to this record, your friends won't know you anymore" and "Listen only once a day to this record, your brain might be destroyed".

I could do w/out the bits of musique concrete, but that motorik guitar/keyboard riff-machine at Brainticket's core drives the track w/in spitting distance of proto-techno and pushes it far ahead of the endless space-noodle prog-dribbling that eshews bearing down on the present like a freight train for the illusionary pleasures of vanishing into a quasi-literary fantasy miasma of exponential technocratic tinkering that like one of Zeno's paradoxes only drags the music further from its ostensibly epic affect and closer to the heart of misplaced 70s ambition. (so I'll take an hour of that riff noize, keep yr Van der Graaf Generator).

Paranoid is probably my least favourite of the first six Sabbath albums but that's mainly down to overplaying of 'Iron Man' and the title track, it's still a great album.

I could do w/out the bits of musique concrete

I know I do this myself, but I really hate comments where people are "oh, this would be okay if it weren't for x", where x is something that is totally integral to the whole record.

hellhouse your adjectives are killing me!

59. CHROME Alien Soundtracks (2768 Points, 22 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #76 for 1977 , #3814 overall
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/410/MI0002410177.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/47ZFrrIQykS6sqwelQsvHi
spotify:album:47ZFrrIQykS6sqwelQsvHi

However, as the late-76 punk explosion changed the sonic temples of the rock’n’roll landscape out of all recognition between the release of Chrome’s debut and their follow-up, the trashing of the old ways brought many musicians not only in line with Chrome, but also actually into a position to surpass them. Chrome, however, rose to the occasion, as vocalist Mike Low disappeared over the horizon forever, leaving guitarist John Lambdin at the mercy of Damon Edge, now free to work on his lupine howl unobstructed. And with the release of Chrome’s second sacrificial offering ALIEN SOUNDTRACKS, the band absolutely nailed their muse to the floor. For herein was contained all of the yawp and thunder, all the bark and bitter rage of removal, all the homunculus ennui and editing room floor psychedelia that best represented Damon Edge’s unvented brainium. And, whilst the forms, cut-ups, splices, segue ways and collages of the record are never more extreme and lustfully executed than within the grooves of this LP, ALIEN SOUNDTRACKS still successfully walked that tightrope between horribly more-ish direct hits and the sheerly perverse barfothons which so obviously delighted Edge himself. But the change in sound and honing down of direction appears to have been due specifically to the appearance of new member (the legendary guitarist and mythically-named) Helios Creed, whose arrival tipped the scales so far in Damon Edge’s direction that every song on ALIEN SOUNDTRACKS would be a writing collaboration between the drummer and the newcomer, leaving previous songwriter John Lambdin orphaned in his own band.

ALIEN SOUNDTRACKS commences with the three-part mini-epic “Chromosome Damage”, which kicks off with about 40 seconds of frenetic drumming and lo-fi fuzz guitar over which Edge announces “I wanna fly away” before the whole freight train groove collides with the buffers of an industrial terminal. FX reminiscent of Pere Ubu-meets-Grand Funk’s “Winter & My Soul” (all TV and shortwave radio) breaks in until, fading out of the ether, comes a foul gloopy dual guitar solo announcing the death of the previous LP in final style. Incoming is the careering distorto-monomaniacal riffery of “The Monitors” with a killer punk-a-long chorus. Sucked out of the ether comes the almost Residents-like harmonised vocals of “All Data Lost”, which anticipates Monoshock’s “Leesa” by about a decade and a half, as analogue synthesizer drones and distant Joy Division theme guitars herald the fade. “SS Cygni” is nothing more than a highly catchy but typical Chrome lo-fi funk groove, with intertwining fuzz guitars that hit a plateau and then just motor to a fade. Side one concludes with one of my all time favourite Chrome pieces, the six minute long 6/8 flanged stellar waltz of “Nova Feedback”, in which John Lambdin and Helios Creed create layer upon layer of fuzzy crunching melody over an Edge skank rhythm reminiscent of Moebius & Plank’s RASTAKRAUTPASTA. The six minutes of “Pygmies in Zee Park” opens side two like some weird hybrid of Yello, Tuxedo Moon and DUCK STAB-period Residents, as wild dislocated voices howl and hoedown over frenetic distracted sambas, before the whole schmeer breaks down into a Hawkwind/Neu motorik groove over which Damon Edge croons, shamelessly aping Roy Orbison. Soon, this gives way to an infuriating electronic Prince Buster skank, albeit weighted down under heaped mattresses of distorted and ring modulated electronic brass stabs. Track two is the aforementioned “Slip It To The Android”, a James Brown-catchy on-the-one soul piece complete with George Duke-Herbie Hancock funky ARP 2600 synth soloing, John Lamdbin’s slunky electric violin and a robot MC crowing ‘Sleep eet to thee ann-droid’ over and over and fucking over again, a braying cartoon Mexican mule sneerily cheerily chewing your lobes like there’s zero airspace between performer and audience. “Pharoah Chromium” is Chrome’s take on Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs’ in which a bogus “Casbah Rock” meets “Rock The Casbah” meets the Modern Lovers’ “Egyptian Reggae”, as filtered through Damon Edge’s melted plastic brain. Kinda makes me think Adolph Sax woulda had seconds thoughts had he known such noise addicts were gonna get their mits on his beloved invention. On second thunks, you remember that Mothers of Invention track off FREAK OUT entitled ‘The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny”? Well I’m sure that’s the instrument Edge & Co employed in order to achieve this braying ass of a sound. The three minutes of “ST 37” follows, a pachuco spider-on-roller-skates barn dance with spiky picked electric guitar, clattering snare drums and lowest common denominator lyrics about getting in a Winnebago and going to San Diego. That this song gave its name to one of the ‘90s’ best American space rock bands is certainly evidence that not everyone has forgotten Chrome, though – like Bowie’s “TVC15”, I’ve no idea what the title means. ALIEN SOUNDTRACKS concludes with the “Iron Man” instrumental riffery of “Magnetic Dwarf people”, as the sparks fly upward and the skank of nations drags us with Biblical intensity west across the night sky forever chasing the sunset. Beautiful… fucking beautiful. If anyone asks you about Chrome, tell ‘em ALIEN SOUNDTRACKS nailed it, Dunne’n’Dusted, end of story. – J. Cope

review
[-] by Ned Raggett

With Creed recruited to replace original member Mike Low (though allegedly Edge initially turned Creed down after the latter appeared wearing a pirate outfit or something similar), Chrome started kicking into high gear at last. While Spain and Lambdin weren't out of the picture yet, cowriting half the songs with Edge, Creed's mind-melting guitar swiftly took prominence, turning a wiggy band into a total headtrip. Rather than just aiming at acid-rock styling, Creed stuffed his fretbending into an evil, compressed aggro-sound, at once psychedelic and totally in-your-face. Edge equals the activity by stepping into the vocal role himself, sounding like Iggy on a live wire with occasional attempts at weird, wailed crooning, while his electronics and drumming starts sounding a lot more vicious and totally scuzzed as well. It's not the short sharp shock of punk rock per se -- it just sounds like the title puts it, alien, sounds and TV samples firing out of nowhere and throwing the listener off balance. That many numbers are constructed out of short fragments adds to the weird overlay. Even the quieter numbers like "All Data Lost" play around with echo and drone to create disturbing results. The songs themselves allegedly were recorded as the soundtrack to a live sex show, which probably goes a long way towards explaining the sex and sci-fi combination of much of the lyrics. Not to mention the titles -- to quote some at random: "Nova Feedback," "Magnetic Dwarf Reptile," and the truly hilarious "Pigmies in Zee Dark" (there's some creepy crooning on this one) and "Slip It to the Android." The artwork adds to the weird effect -- a hand-colored late fifties 'cool' living room and busty babe setup with the band's and album name hand-scrawled in usual Chrome fashion over it, plus huge disembodied eyes and lips that make everything really disturbing. Overall, the combination of screwy sound and art on a budget placed Chrome as something like West Coast cousins of early Pere Ubu and Destroy All Monsters -- not a bad place to be.

Caught a Slapp Happy song last night and I want to hear more!

I know I do this myself, but I really hate comments where people are "oh, this would be okay if it weren't for x", where x is something that is totally integral to the whole record.

the rec is v. cool as it is and 90% of the drop-ins add to the vibe, but occasionally I'm jolted out of the groove. still love the track, so it's not a slam.

58. PINK FAIRIES Kings of Oblivion (2775 Points, 20 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #397 for 1973
http://img13.nnm.ru/5/1/4/5/6/51456c84079c5dcb8fff969b912301e7_full.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/7lWUwuIlVrIhnSy7QwfLIt
spotify:album:7lWUwuIlVrIhnSy7QwfLIt

With Wallis singing, playing ingenious guitar and doing nearly all the songwriting (in one case, collaborating with Farren), the resulting Kings of Oblivion is absolutely amazing, a thunderous jolt of electricity with monumental melodies and bizarre sideways lyrics like "I Wish I Was a Girl," the drugged-out "When's the Fun Begin?" and "City Kids." Still brilliant sounding after two decades, Kings is a widely unknown masterpiece that stands on its own but also set the stage for Motörhead, which Wallis and Hawkwind refugee Lemmy initially formed in 1975. – Trouser Press

Proto-punk heavy metal from a trio that was an offshoot of the notorious British hippie-politico band the Deviants. Their first two albums,Never Never Land and What a Bunch of Sweeties, were never released in America, but this third LP adequately captured their neo-psychedelic bashing in spite of flat production and a slim songbook. Guitarist Larry Wallis went on to join the Stiff Records family of eccentrics." -- David Fricke, 1983 RS Record Guide

Of the all the bands that came out of San Francisco's Family Dog community in the late 60s, London expatriates the Pink Fairies were easily the most transgressive. The Pink Fairies' first two albums each have their moments, but it is the Larry Wallis incarnation of the band, which produced Kings of Oblivion, that established the Fairies as one of the wildest, most erratic, and brilliant acts of 70s. 

The Pink Fairies were omitted from the 2004 album guide. -- schmiddt, Rolling Stone's 500 Worst Reviews of All Time.

This was The Pink Fairies’ last stand right before the rot of inactivity from lack of funds set in and cancelled their Polydor contract. An album of soaring Marshall Superfuzz anthems and Ladbroke Grooves, this was their last album while they were still (for a short time, anyway) a cohesive unit. The undertow of Paul Rudolph leaving in 1972, the sacking Mick Wayne after one shite single and a tour cancelled after a few gigs left The Fairies down to just the rhythm section of drummer Russell Hunter and bassist Sandy Sanderson. Their old friend Mick Farren suggested a replacement guitarist he knew from years earlier who had performed at the Phun City festival he had organised. The guitarist was none other than Larry Wallis, who had moved onto later-period Blodwyn Pig and then UFO before Farren’s suggestion. Lazza Wallis: a true Pink Fairy if there ever was one! He brought not only his cranked Stratocaster riffing and a good sense of structured songwriting to hang his flowing reckless guitar style upon, but a gleeful sense of humour and overall wiseacre rock and roll sensibility. “City Kids” (co-written by Wallis and Sanderson) is a street punk anthem of raving, speeding, hanging out and when Wallis sings the line “Park the car/And ruuuuuun” it’s about as “Under My Wheels”-era Alice Cooper as it gets. “I Wish I Was A Girl” begins another musical fray with soaring intro guitar and Russell Hunter spraying all his cymbals like a Merseybeat Ringo on methedrine and if that’s Sanderson on bass it was his most pronounced playing ever on record. An elongated bridge in the middle continues as Wallis’ guitars have now four-folded into an overdubbed, pile driving ecstasy, yet it’s beyond mere boogie as the momentum keeps plateau-ing up and up. Lazza’s guitar is not only melody but rhythm as well, as Hunter and Sanderson keep getting in and out of sync and overcompensate with just thrashing it out. The title gets repeated over and over as a faded mantra to the back of this rough and ready work out. “When’s The Fun Begin?” is a Notting Hill Gate doper weaving down a deserted West London street, the only light his blurred vision can see is the reflection of street lights on the wet tarmac. It’s coiled and tense yet opiate-slackened at the same time, and Hunter’s bashing over Wallis’ foot-controlled police siren solo make the bust inevitable as the vocals are shoved into the back of a police van -- the last words a panned, repeated phrase on the fadeout.

By this time the album has such a weirdly energetic and wasted atmosphere, you wonder how they can JUST keep it from falling apart. Larry Wallis’ structured songwriting and stunningly raw liquid-feel guitar playing keeps the sole surviving rhythm section busy, and the riotous instrumental, “Raceway” is where the three-man Fairies blast-out in a mid-sized hall at full volume with bright white overhead spotlights flicker on and off in an off-beat pattern catching the three longhairs in the act of proceeding to pummel their disbelieving audience. If Russell Hunter had four arms, he still wouldn’t be hitting half as many cymbals as he does here while multiple Wallis solos are bending in the air over the trio. The coda is a flurry of high-pitched “Axe Victim” riffing, but trapped in a mandrax haze at twice the speed. “Chambermaid” and “Street Urchin” round out an album most people weren’t expecting from The Pink Fairies at this point in time: a strong, vibrant testimony to their no-bullshit rock and roll. And live it was even shatteringly LOUDER than before, which is damn near incomprehensible and frightening to even think about. – The Seth Man, Head Heritage

London’s Portobello Road must have been an interesting scene in the early 70s with The Edgar Broughton Band, Hawkwind, Deviants and Pink Fairies playing mostly free shows to hippies, anarchists and biker gangs. Pink Fairies were influenced by both post-beatnik jokesters The Fugs and the MC5. By their third album, Kings Of Oblivion, MC5 was more of a factor with the help of Larry Wallis. Wallis went on to create an early template for Motörhead based on the album, even re-cutting opener “City Kids” on his recordings with Lemmy. It was also considered a key pre-punk influence. One only has to up the tempo of “Raceway” slightly to be reminded of Buzzcocks‘ “Fast Cars.” Or perhaps a slightly less cartoonish precursor to The Dictators Go Girl Crazy. Either way, it’s damn fun. -- Fastnbulbous

review
[-] by Dave Thompson

The third and final Pink Fairies studio album, Kings of Oblivion, welcomed guitarist Larry Wallis to the brew, bringing with him some of the band's most remarkable -- and concise -- material yet. The opening "City Kids," famously recut by Motörhead during Wallis' sojourn with that band, is as dynamic an opener as the Pink Fairies ever had, while the album's two epics, "I Wish I Was a Girl" and "Street Urchin," similarly catch the band as they made a sharp turn away from the rockin' riff jam basics that scarred their second LP, What a Bunch of Sweeties, and moved instead into the affirmative guttercat stance that so effectively predicted the rudiments of punk rock. Indeed, if any album could be said to have been born ahead of its time, Kings of Oblivion, conceived in 1973 but sounding just like 1977, is it. In common with the rest of the remastered Pink Fairies albums, Kings of Oblivion divides its bonus tracks between unfamiliar versions of familiar material (most pressingly, an urgent alternate mix of "City Kids") and non-album material. This includes two versions of the loping "Well Well Well" and the country rock-ish "Hold On" dating from 1972, and a single cut with Wallis' short-lived predecessor, Mick Wayne, and it's gratifying to have them on CD at last. Truly, though, Kings of Oblivion could exist just as happily without the extras; greeted at the time as the Pink Fairies' best album, it remains a tightly coiled, furiously adrenalined beast, the summation of everything that the Pink Fairies promised and all that subsequent reunions have continued to deliver.

need to pop out for an hour hopefully wont be too long

voted for both Alien Soundtracks and Paranoid, so w00t!

hellhouse your adjectives are killing me!

ha, yes, I'm apparently transitioning to str8 word-cloud jpegs.

More on Paranoid:

These would be English Kings of heavy metal are eternally foiled by their stupidity and intractability. In the early 70s their murky drone was all the more appealling for it's cynicism - the philosophy that everything is crap and a flirtation with pre-Exorcist demonic possession. Time has passed them by; their recent stuff is a quaint bore. -- Ken Tucker, 1983 RS Record Guide)

I love it when RS's "criticism" amounts to nothing more than the reviewer's insistence that a band is irrelevant. Especially when it ends up demonstrating Rolling Stone's irrelevance. Ken Tucker initially gave Paranoid two stars in the first edition of the record guide, but downgraded it to one star in the second edition - along with every other Black Sabbath album. That's eleven one star albums in total - apparently, there is no distinguishing between, say, a record like Master of Reality... and Never Say Die!, their ninth (nor does he mention that Ozzy left the band after this album).

In the Ozzy Osbourne entry in the 1983 guide, on the other hand, George Arthur characterizes "his Ozness" somewhat more positively, describing the music as an amusing novelty ("Dispensing bone-headed metaphysics over codified Brit hard-rock guitar, his Ozness ranks with the Addams Family and Creepy Crawlers as product for teen horror/laughs market."). Arthur rated Diary of a Madman three stars - a full two stars above every Black Sabbath album.

Nick Tosches' original 4/15/71 review of Paranoid is just insane, by the way:

"He fills the hookah bowl with black opium tars and a dash of Asthmador powders...in the corner of the room, clutching a smuggled police photo of Sharon Tate with her hacked-off tit crammed up her snatch, a lone boy masturbates slowly, moaning 'tempora mutantur et nos muta-mur in illis.'"

Uhhhhhh...

The Tosches review refers to Kip Trevor as the lead vocalist for Sabbath. Kip was actually the frontman for a band called Black Widow. According to Wikipedia:

"Black Widow were a rock band that formed in Leicester, England in September 1969. The band were mostly known for its early use of satanic and occult imagery in their music and stage act. The band were often compared with the better-known Heavy metal band Black Sabbath, but the bands were only superficially similar."

HA HA HA!!

Paranoid was #130 on RS's 500 greatest albums list. -- schmidtt, Rolling Stone's 500 Worst Reviews of All Time

What's with the all Pink Fairies' albums?

People like them

You mean like one guy voted them #1, #2 and #3?

that one got 20 votes

57. ZZ TOP Tres Hombres (2807 Points, 20 Votes)
RYM: #63 for 1973 , #1709 overall | Acclaimed: #965 | RS: #498
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/492/MI0002492533.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/0Em8m9kRctyH9S3MTXAHvY
spotify:album:0Em8m9kRctyH9S3MTXAHvY

http://www.superseventies.com/oaaa/oaaa_zztop3.jpg

Besides spawning two incredible albino rock & blues brothers and one late first lady of the boogie, Texas is becoming one hell of a place to say you're from. The whole Southern rock & roll sound seems to be catching on as fast as a swig of potato liquor reaching the brain.

ZZ Top makes no bones about being cowboys who used to be in the psychedelic music scene and who have recently discovered the joys of guzzling beer and driving their cars and bikes at 110 miles an hour. Tres Hombres is a definite step back to their white blues roots. Their second album, Rio Grande Mud, had an English feel in the production end with Rolling Stones-type tunes such as "Chevrolet" and the Brown Sugarish "Francene." ZZ Top have shown in all three of their recordings the dynamic rhythms that only the finest of the three-piece bands can cook up. Billy Gibbons plays a tasty Duane Allman lead with Dusty Hill and Frank Beard pounding out the funky bottom.

Tres Hombres was recorded with their live performances in mind. Minimal echo and lots of live-sounding jamming. "Waiting for the Bus" is a mean muddled track reminiscent of early Canned Heat complete with the usual repetitive three-chord lick. Vocally, ZZ have an advantage over most white rockers in that these Southerners sound black anyway with lines like..."You don't have to worry, 'cause takin' care of business is his name" -- sung by Gibbons in a drawl so thick he would do Leadbelly justice.

ZZ Top seem to be at least one of the most inventive of the three-piece rockers but they are only one of several competent Southern rocking bands. I do wonder when the audiences will get tired of hearing the same..."Poot yawl hans together" patter. -- Steve Apple, RS

Tres Hombres marked ZZ Top's elevation into the megaleague as one of the biggest touring acts in the United States. The jury will probably always be out on which was the better of ZZ's two great eras -- straight-down-the-line blues rock (1970s) or pumpin' blues disco (1980s and '90s). What is indisputable is that their Texas roots were absolutely inseparable from their down 'n' dirty sound.

Tres Hombres is a showcase of everything that is magnificent about the group -- and the inclusion of the huge hit "La Grange" is only part of that story. In fact, "La Grange," based around a riff so simple yet so inspired that you will never forget it, is atypical for its mumbling novelty vocal. "Precious and Grace" -- a song about picking up a couple of hitch-hiking women who turn out to be ex-cons -- mixes a great Led Zep-styled riff in the verse with a ripsnorting near-psychedelic chorus. The two devices come together seamlessly. "Move Me On Down the Line" is a snappy boogie that sounds indebted to post-Cream Jack Bruce. "Jesus Just Left Chicago" is another gem of a track, fluid and apparently effortless. The incredible "Master of Sparks" concerns a fine Texas tradition, the habit of kickin' your buddies off the back of a speeding pickup just for the heck of it.

The cover of the album -- the original vinyl is a gatefold that opens on a garish photograph of the Mexican dish after which the record is named -- says it all, really, though the oblique cover shots of the threesome hide the fact that these guys were only in their mid-twenties. -- David Nichols, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

review
[-] by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Tres Hombres is the record that brought ZZ Top their first Top Ten record, making them stars in the process. It couldn't have happened to a better record. ZZ Top finally got their low-down, cheerfully sleazy blooze-n-boogie right on this, their third album. As their sound gelled, producer Bill Ham discovered how to record the trio so simply that they sound indestructible, and the group brought the best set of songs they'd ever have to the table. On the surface, there's nothing really special about the record, since it's just a driving blues-rock album from a Texas bar band, but that's what's special about it. It has a filthy groove and an infectious feel, thanks to Billy Gibbons' growling guitars and the steady propulsion of Dusty Hill and Frank Beard's rhythm section. They get the blend of bluesy shuffles, gut-bucket rocking, and off-beat humor just right. ZZ Top's very identity comes from this earthy sound and songs as utterly infectious as "Waitin' for the Bus," "Jesus Just Left Chicago," "Move Me on Down the Line," and the John Lee Hooker boogie "La Grange." In a sense, they kept trying to remake this record from this point on -- what is Eliminator if not Tres Hombres with sequencers and synthesizers? -- but they never got it better than they did here.

There was definitely a bit of Pink Fairies campaigning, too.

The Rolling Stone review for Paranoid is breathtakingly stupid and even worse than Christgau's reviews.

I was surprised to enjoy Tres Hombres a lot, despite not really being a rock dude. I do have a beard though, so maybe that helped me connect.

I have come to the conclusion that in general I prefer eulogies to campaigns. Even the thought of having to "campaign" for something fills me with dread.

56. PARLIAMENT Mothership Connection (2824 Points, 23 Votes)
RYM: #16 for 1975 , #486 overall | Acclaimed: #287 | RS: #274
http://www.nova-cinema.org/IMG/jpg/parliament-mothership_connection__2003_-frontal.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/734MC4wQsfNWsg9HLTrUoN
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That DJ from Chocolate City, or maybe it's the Chocolate Milky Way, keeps the beat going with nothing but his rap, some weird keyboard, and cymbals for stretches of side one. And later produces the galactic "Give Up the Funk" and a James Brown tribute that goes "gogga googa, gogga googa"--only believe me, that doesn't capture it. A- -- R. Christgau

With the "Parliafunkadelicament thang," leader George Clinton has succeeded in creating two distinct identities for one band -- the mystical voodoo of the Funkadelics and the stabbing, humorous funk of Parliament. While Funkadelic has no discernible influence, Parliament is more closely attuned to the post-Sly wave. But unlike the Ohio Players or Commodores, the group refuses to play it straight. Instead, Clinton spews his jive, conceived from some cosmic funk vision, under titles like "Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication," "P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)" and "Mothership Connection (Star-Child)."

Mothership Connection is patterned closely after last year's tongue-in-cheek success, Chocolate City. With little regard for theme or lyric development, Clinton weaves a non-stop rap of nonsensical street jargon ("Sombody said, 'Is there funk after death'/I said is seven up") like a freaked out James Brown. And oddly enough, former Brown sidemen, Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley, make up Parliament's horn section, along with Joe Farrell and the Brecker Brothers. But this album refuses to be taken seriously, except as Clinton's parody of modern funk. After all, it was George Clinton who renamed James Brown the "Grandfather of Soul." -- Ken Barnes, RS

Inspired by Motown's production line of sound, George Clinton gradually constructed the funk juggernaut that was Parliament-Funkadelic: two groups, several side projects, and more than 50 musicians, including sax star Maceo Parker and bass deity Bootsy Collins.

Mothership Connection -- Parliament's third and best album -- testifies to the sheer power of their extreme musicianship and innovation. The cover depicts a spreadeagled Clinton in makeup and thigh-length platform boots jumping out of a spaceship, which is as close as a photo can get to describing what is on the album itself. Under Clinton's guidance, Parliament took funk, washed it in acid, dressed it in a camp, sci-fi outfit, and wrapped it in cool. The result is seven tracks of relentlessly perfect R&B, immaculately arranged by Collins, Clinton, trombonist Fred Wesley, and keyboardist Bernie Worrel.

"P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up") heralds what is to come. Clinton speaks smoothly over languid basslines, before kicking into high gear and letting the synths, horns, and harmonies take over. From then on, each track is an explosion of interweaving rhythms and melodies.

Mothership Connection's innovation alone makes it one of the best ever funk albums. A huge success at the time ("Tear The Roof Off That Sucker" was Parliament's biggest hit on the Hot 100), it changed the way people looked at funk and R&B. Decades later, its impact resounded in the work of rappers like Warren G. and Snoop Dogg, and rockers like The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Primus. The P-Funk legacy makes Clinton and Co. one of the most important American acts ever. -- Liam Pieper, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die,

review
[-] by Jason Birchmeier

The definitive Parliament-Funkadelic album, Mothership Connection is where George Clinton's revolving band lineups, differing musical approaches, and increasingly thematic album statements reached an ideal state, one that resulted in enormous commercial success as well as a timeless legacy that would be compounded by hip-hop postmodernists, most memorably Dr. Dre on his landmark album The Chronic (1992). The musical lineup assembled for Mothership Connection is peerless: in addition to keyboard wizard Bernie Worrell; Bootsy Collins, who plays not only bass but also drums and guitar; the guitar trio of Gary Shider, Michael Hampton, and Glen Goins; and the Brecker Brothers (Michael and Randy) on horns; there are former J.B.'s Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker (also on horns), who were the latest additions to the P-Funk stable. Besides the dazzling array of musicians, Mothership Connection boasts a trio of hands-down classics -- "P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)," "Mothership Connection (Star Child)," "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)" -- that are among the best to ever arise from the funk era, each sampled and interpolated time and time again by rap producers; in particular, Dr. Dre pays homage to the former two on The Chronic (on "The Roach" and "Let Me Ride," respectively). The remaining four songs on Mothership Connection are all great also, if less canonical. Lastly, there's the overlapping outer-space theme, which ties the album together into a loose escapist narrative. There's no better starting point in the enormous P-Funk catalog than Mothership Connection, which, like its trio of classic songs, is undoubtedly among the best of the funk era.

I dont even need to say it

Track Listing:

P. Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up)
{G Clinton, W Collins, B Worrell} 7:41 lyrics
Mothership Connection (Star Child)
{G Clinton, W Collins, B Worrell} 6:13 lyrics
Unfunky UFO
{G Clinton, W Collins, Garry Shider} 4:23 lyrics
Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication (The Thumps Bump)
{G Clinton, W Collins, B Worrell, G Shider} 5:03 lyrics
Handcuffs
{G Clinton, McLaughlin, Glen Goins} 3:51 lyrics
Give Up The Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)
{G Clinton, W Collins, B Worrell} 5:46 lyrics
Night Of The Thumpasorous Peoples
{G Clinton, W Collins, G Shider} 5:10 lyrics

Personnel:

Vocals: George Clinton, Calvin Simon, Fuzzy Haskins, Raymond Davis,
Grady Thomas, Garry Shider, Glen Goins, Bootsy Collins
Horns: Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker,
Boom, Joe Farrell
Bass: Bootsy Collins, Cordell Mosson
Guitars: Gary Shider, Michael Hampton, Glen Goins, Bootsy Collins
Drums and Percussion: Tiki Fulwood, Jerome Brailey, Bootsy Collins, Gary Cooper
Keyboards & Synthesizers: Bernie Worrell
Horn Arrangements: Fred Wesley, Bernie Worrell
Rhythm Arrangements: Bootsy Collins, George Clinton
Extraterrestial Voices and Good Time Hand Clappers: Gary Cooper,
Debbie Edwards, Taka Kahn, Archie Ivy, Bryna Chimenti, Rasputin Boutte,
Pam Vincent, Debra Wright and Sidney Barnes

"P.Funk"
Lead Vocal: George Clinton

"Mothership Connection"
Lead Vocals: George Clinton (rap), Glenn Goins

"Unfunky UFO"
Lead Vocals: Glenn Goins, George Clinton

"Handcuffs"
Lead Vocals: George Clinton, Glenn Goins

"Give Up The Funk"
Alternating Lead Vocals: George Clinton, Ray Davis (intro), Glenn Goins,
Garry Shider

Rating: GZ ***** RC ***** MM *****

Comments:

GZ: Highlights include Title track, "P-Funk", "Handcuffs", "Give Up The Funk" -- a classic. Absolutely essential.

TK: The album was originally titled Landing In The Ghetto.

RC: How to describe this one? How about: the most important album of the last 20 years; the culmination of a superb team of musicians, vocalists, and conceptualists, working at their peak; an avant garde funk album that broke all the rules and wrote a few of its own; a concept album free of any restraints associated with that genre; a brilliantly fused assortment of funk, jazz, gospel, Motown, science- fiction, sex, drugs and...; the PhD project of Dr. Woo, Bernie Worrell; the genesis of a freaky universe that sprang full-born from George Clinton's mind; Bootsy Collins' coming-out party: the bass that launched a thousand Motherships; the simultaneous coming-of-age and birth of P.Funk; THE BOMB. It's all that and more. The album indulges every Funk Mob whim without going overboard. There's great singing throughout, particularly from new member Glen Goins. Horns are given a workout without dominating the album, with the introduction of the Horny Horns. All of the mistakes and false starts found on earlier albums were erased, and new ground was struck at every turn. Even the stuff based on old formulas and obvious attempts at commercialism sounded fresh and resonant.

The album starts off similarly to Chocolate City, with a narrator explaining that we are now tuned in to radio station WEFUNK, home of the P.Funk, the Bomb. Clinton's character Sir Lollipop Man ("chocolate coated, freaky, and habit forming") lays on rap after rap about the miraculous qualities of P.Funk. Bootsy lays down some seriously thick grooves, the horns take over the melody, and Bernie provides the flavor with those ethereal keyboards. The comparison between coke and funk is cleverly phrased ("I want my funk uncut"), as something that brings you up and out. The Brecker Brothers come in with brilliant solos in the middle, as the song slows down, creating an aching tension. This is finally resolved in the orgasmic finale, as Clinton signals, "Well, alright!" and the whole band and chorus kicks in. The song structure, the witty lyrics, the rhythm and the improvisations are top-notch the whole way. This leads into "Mothership Connection", as Clinton's next character, Starchild, takes us on a tour of the Chocolate Milky Way galaxy. Another addictive bassline keeps it on the one, with gorgeous descending guitar & keyboard lines following. The horns are out front, filling in the gaps. The Mothership `ain't nothin' but a party`, but it's also a means of salvation, for as Starchild says, `You have overcome, for I am here.` And combining and comparing the Mothership to "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", the old spiritual, is a brilliant device. As Clinton has said, he wanted to put `brothers in outer space, in places people wouldn't normally associate them.` The future is hip, funny, and vibrant. Continuing on the sci-fi theme, we swing into "Unfunky UFO", one of the most underrated gems in the P.Funk universe. It features lead-swapping between Garry, George and Glen, with a engaging story about aliens who want to steal your funk. The guitar riffs drive this song, right along with another solid bassline and superb drumming from Jerome Brailey, who is excellent on the entire album. His rhythms are crisp and precise, and he plays complex parts effortlessly. "Supergroovalistic..." is one of those chant songs that showcases Bernie, as he pulls out all the stops working with weird sounds and effects. "Handcuffs" is an R & B throwback, fully spotlighting the singers. The song is one of those wonderfully, ridiculously sexist creations that features lines like `If I have to keep you barefoot & pregnant, just to keep you in my world/Lay down, girl, and take off your shoes/Cause I'm a gonna do what is I got to do`. One of the best vocal efforts ever from the group. "Give Up The Funk", the biggest hit from the album, is in many ways its weakest track. A pure dance track, it features a clever drum intro with Ray Davis' famous baritone, with the horns and keyboards swelling into the main body of the song. Unfortunately, it tends to get a bit repetitive, although it is still quite entertaining, particularly the `dah dah dah dah-dah` chant. The true star of the song is Jerome Brailey, who propels the song constantly, and finishes it with a flourish. The journey ends with "Night Of The Thumpasorous Peoples", a crazed chant song that is once again dominated by Bootsy & Bernie. Bernie invents a variety of weird sounds that are so funky you can smell 'em, and Bootsy explores a lot of new territory that would propel him into having his own solo act. And the chant of `Ga ga goo ga, ga ga goo ga, ga ga goo ga ga` is their most infectous.

While there are certainly a number of themes explored here, it's never done in any kind of obvious way. The outrageousness of the concepts allows the deeper meaning to sink in slowly, and while there's a loose connection amongst all the songs, each stands out individually, not trapped within the order or framework or an album, something that happens often with concept albums.

MM: Probably the best all around album in the PFunk universe. Every track is strong. I like the mellow groove of "Supergr...." and the bass focus on "Night Of The Thumpasorous" also.

"But this album refuses to be taken seriously, except as Clinton's parody of modern funk." -- Ken Barnes, RS

Mothership Connection went on to become a surprise hit - the album sold more than one million copies (P-Funk's previous albums had barely grazed the top 100), and soon this music that "refuses to be taken seriously" was taken very seriously indeed by Rolling Stone magazine. In a 3/23/78 review of Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome, for example, Ken Tucker wrote that George Clinton seemed to be blessed with "unlimited inspiration," and that "Bop Gun," the record's lead single "puts everything else on the radio to shame." Peter Keepnews, in a positive review of Uncle Jam Wants You that ran in the 11/29/79 issue, called "One Nation Under a Groove" "one of the most irresistible singles of the Seventies."

Nonetheless, Dave Marsh rated Mothership Connection only three stars in the first edition of the RS Record Guide ("Fascinatingly vulgar, like all of Clinton's projects, but also engaging in a rather diffuse way."). Maggot Brain was not rated or mentioned in the book; shockingly, neither was One Nation Under a Groove. In fact, Joe McEwen rated only two Funkadelic albums: Hardcore Jollies, which he gave two stars, and a greatest hits compilation, which mustered a three-star rating. Despite this, McEwen, somewhat amusingly, proclaimed Funkadelic to be "the truest representation of urban life offered in black music."

Mothership Connection was #274 on RS's 500 greatest albums list; One Nation Under A Groove was #177. -- schmidtt, Rolling Stone's 500 Worst Reviews of All Time

k voted for both of those. great great great records!

dave marsh & rolling stone can go get fucked

Like, I dont even like La Grange at all, but Tres Hombres is so stacked with deep cuts like Master of Sparks and Hot Blue & Righteous that it p much instantly transcends that overrated beer commercial nonsense (it helps that LG is shuffled away in the middle of Side 2) xp

Ag you were just extolling the virtues of Marsh's Big Book of Rock Lists, like, 3 weeks ago!

55. JUDAS PRIEST Sad Wings of Destiny (2836 Points, 20 Votes)
RYM: #6 for 1976 , #366 overall | Acclaimed: #4417
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/367/MI0002367511.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/5k3WFIHmmuHrUWSj5McaAe
spotify:album:5k3WFIHmmuHrUWSj5McaAe

Sad Wings Of Destiny carved a new plateau for the fledgling form, marking an intensification of the edifying darkness, the band assembling an invasion of the imagination with abstract but disturbing flurries of hell-fired torment, the only distant relatives to the album's frightful vibe being perhaps Sabotage, Rising, or oddly enough, Vol. 4, Priest however offering a vastly more futuristic, technical type of heavy metal than any warmed-over leftovers from the first wave could even imagine. Sad Wings marks no less than the second of three landmark events in the history of metal. Six years earlier, we have the in-earnest invention of the form, with Uriah Heep, In Rock and Paranoid. Sad Wings (and incredibly Priest's next three in a row), amazingly bereft of challengers from '76 to '80, marked the first spike in an established genre, raising metal to new, mind-expanding, technically impeccable levels, second spike being the intensified, majestic speed metal of Metallica's Ride The Lightning in '84, while in the shadows, Mercyful Fate's Melissa convincingly recreated and reminded us of the advancements Priest had managed. Comprising six visceral metal classics and two extremely delicate funeral dirges, Sad Wings proceeded to rewire hard rock with legendary masterworks such as strident progressive metal opener "Victim Of Changes," seminal slasher tale "Ripper," and rampant mind-grind about mind games "Tyrant," all working a sort of becalmed night, their ministerial levity evoking guarded monks toiling in rapt seclusion, mediums receiving an avalanche of seismic, sobbing and sobering riffery puzzle-pieced into sturdy towers of previously unknown medieval metallics. Lyrics tend towards the darker corners of the brain--religion in conflict, moral and material struggles, death and other concerns above time, concerns never rendered flashing or even colourful, poetry evoking the subdued but rock-solid tones within the monster cathedrals of Britain and the Birmingham band. And the record's bass-bedded production, as well, supports such earthy and ancient engineering with trustworthy strength, all players reverent of the record's pulse, each offering his specific wisdom and restraint and recognition of the massive grooves at work, a restraint that will fly out the window come the blinding fury of Sin After Sin one year hence. Unquestionably, this is the record that established Priest's enviable reputation, even if any degree of commercial success would elude the band for another four years or so, Sad Wings Of Destiny becoming a pioneer of a new and versatile type of gothic riffery, and as history would show, a woodshed record for all sorts of metalizers gaining their sea legs in the late 70s. Grave and serious metal innovation, tragically, unfathomably, unnoticed in its time. 8/10 -- M. Popoff

Chock full of ear-piercing vocals and the thick, sensuous rhythms of a Fender Stratocaster, Sad Wings of Destinyrecalls the intensity of the Deep Purple of Machine Head. This is the second time around, of course, so the effect is less startling. Even the titles -- "Genocide" and "The Ripper," for instance -- parallel Purple's malevolent attitude.

Priest lacks Deep Purple's keyboard emphasis but the real difference is in the vocals. Lead singer Robert Halford is a screamer with powerful projection and little control, although he executes a complete turnaround in "Epitaph," where he proves he can sing fluid tenor on a song suitable for Barry Manilow. If the Yardbirds/Zeppelin legacy has led Aerosmith so far, surely Judas Priest has a fair chance of success through copying Deep Purple, especially since their antecedents are no longer contenders for the throne. -- Kris Nicholson, RS

As the decade progressed the plateau on which Metal was encamped, like the geological oddity of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, broke free of the surrounding geography and thrust upwards, breaking off almost all connection with the outside musical world. This is perfectly signaled by records like Judas Priest's Sad Wings of Destiny, upon which, if you don't mind me extending my metaphor yet further, the roaming dinosaurs began to feast on the corpses of other dinosaurs. Rob Halford's banshee wail is in tonality equal parts Osbourne and Plant, even if his lyrics are disorientating kitchen-sink. The music with its choppy, low-slung riffs and "singing" leads seems to contain nowt but pure metal. This is forbidding stuff but also thoroughly individual music that was instrumental in the birth of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. -- Woebot

review
[-] by Steve Huey

The year 1976 was crucial for the evolution of heavy metal, as landmark albums like Rainbow's Rising and Scorpions' Virgin Killer began to reshape the genre. Perhaps none was quite as important as Judas Priest's sophomore effort, Sad Wings of Destiny, which simultaneously took heavy metal to new depths of darkness and new heights of technical precision. Building on the hard prog of bands like Queen and Wishbone Ash, plus the twin-guitar innovations of the latter and Thin Lizzy, Sad Wings fused these new influences with the gothic doom of Black Sabbath, the classical precision of Deep Purple, and the tight riffery of the more compact Led Zeppelin tunes. Priest's prog roots are still readily apparent here, particularly on the spacy ballad "Dreamer Deceiver," the multi-sectioned "Victim of Changes," and the softer sonic textures that appear from time to time. But if Priest's style was still evolving, the band's trademarks are firmly in place -- the piercing, operatic vocals of Rob Halford and the tightly controlled power riffing of guitarists K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton.

This foundation sounded like little else on the metal scene at the time, and gave Sad Wings of Destiny much of its dramatic impact. Its mystique, though, was something else. No metal band had been this convincingly dark since Black Sabbath, and that band's hallucinatory haze was gone, replaced by a chillingly real cast of serial killers ("The Ripper"), murderous dictators ("Tyrant"), and military atrocities that far outweighed "War Pigs" ("Genocide"). Even the light piano ballad "Epitaph" sounds like a morbidly depressed Queen rewriting Sabbath's "Changes." Three songs rank as all-time metal classics, starting with the epic "Victim of Changes," which is blessed with an indelible main riff, a star-making vocal turn from Halford, explosive guitar work, and a tight focus that belies its nearly eight-minute length. "The Ripper" and "Tyrant," with their driving guitar riffs and concise construction, are the first seeds of what would flower into the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement.

More than any other heavy metal album of its time, Sad Wings of Destiny offered the blueprint for the way forward. What's striking is how deeply this blueprint resonated through the years, from the prog ambitions of Iron Maiden to the thematic echoes in a pair of '80s thrash masterpieces. The horrors of Sad Wings are largely drawn from real life, much like Slayer's Seasons in the Abyss, and its all-consuming anxiety is over powerlessness, just like Metallica's magnum opus, Master of Puppets. (Though this latter preoccupation doubtlessly had more psychosexual roots in Rob Halford's case -- witness the peculiar torture fantasy of "Island of Domination.") Unfortunately, Sad Wings of Destiny didn't have as much impact upon release as it should have, mostly owing to the limitations of the small Gull label. It did, however, earn Judas Priest a shot with Columbia, where they would quickly become the most influential band in heavy metal not named Black Sabbath. (Note: To date, all CD reissues of Sad Wings of Destiny have switched the A and B sides of the original vinyl version.)

LOL just reading the RS review for Paranoid. Who the fuck is Kip Treavor?

Boom here we go! Greatest album ever right above me!

lol Kip Treavor was the lead singer of Black WIDOW... lol Rolling Stone sux.

*bowing my knee in fealty to the antichrist*

not a very good rep of the counter-culture is it

It's becoming obvious why RS never put out that glossy coffee table book of original reviews! Some of these reviews are indeed inexcusable (I particularly hate Dave Marsh, Anthony DeCurtis and others). But the reason I wouldn't always completely write off every critic for the bad reviews they've done is that some, like Christgau, sorted through dozens of albums every week, thousands a year, and wrote hundreds of reviews, many on artists he's hearing for the very first time, most of which had not been reviewed anywhere else. So he was listening to stuff isolated from any cultural or critical context and restricted by massive volumes and limited time, responding with his initial gut reaction. The results were sometimes witty, often stupid, sometimes brilliant. The past 15+ years critics have a much different experience. By the time they hear an album there's usually already a deep knowledge base about the artist available in forums and blogs. Writers now have the option to consider a wide range of other popular and critical opinions while forming theirs. Even if they want to avoid that input, it's hard to avoid. Even back in the 80s there were more sources to draw from, with more magazines and fanzines than ever. And as of the mid-80s, there was already early e-mail based discussion forums.

I dunno most of the lyrics on Paranoid are pretty obvious... War Pigs is pretty obv. antiwar, its hard to miss it... the rest are mostly just horror movie plots turned into songs without any clear moral message, but that's kinda what created Metal with a capital m. No songs about girls and cars, just weird and scary stuff. I think Iron Maiden did this to the extreme with their lyrics, but its clear to me the album is supposed to be scary like a Hammer movie, maybe it was just too good.

unimpeachable run, that last three, and all got votes from me. Think I need to give Pink Fairies another listen as well...

54. ROXY MUSIC Roxy Music (2836 Points, 20 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #37 for 1972 , #835 overall | Acclaimed: #203
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0000/038/MI0000038422.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/4KjUgJn22cmBRQC0AHcjI3
spotify:album:4KjUgJn22cmBRQC0AHcjI3

From the drag queen on the cover to the fop finery in the centerfold to the polished deformity of the music on the record, this celebrates the kind of artifice that could come to seem as unhealthy as the sheen on a piece of rotten meat. Right now, though, it's decorated with enough weird hooks to earn an A for side one. Side two leans a little too heavily on the synthesizer (played by a balding, long-haired eunuch lookalike named Eno) without the saving grace of drums and bassline. B+ -- R. Christgau

With the release of their first LP (produced by King Crimson lyricist Pete Sinfield after the departure of original Roxy guitarist Davy O'List, formerly of the Nice), the fledgling sextet revolutionized rock — trashing concepts of melodic conservatism, ignoring the prevalence of blues-based and otherwise derivative idioms and denying the need for technical virtuosity, either vocally or instrumentally. The flamboyantly bedecked poseurs presaged such low couture iconoclasts as the New York Dolls and all the glamsters who followed; the music mixed all sorts of elements into a newly filtered original sound that set the stylish pace. The tracks — Ferry-penned fantasies like "Re-make/Re-model," "2 H.B.," "If There Is Something" and the group's monumental debut, "Virginia Plain" (a 45 not on the original album, but added to later editions) — are at once amateurish and highly developed, brilliant blunders that took some acclimation to fully appreciate. As much as the music, the album's kitsch graphics were also widely imitated. -- Trouser Press

review
[-] by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Falling halfway between musical primitivism and art rock ambition, Roxy Music's eponymous debut remains a startling redefinition of rock's boundaries. Simultaneously embracing kitschy glamour and avant-pop, Roxy Music shimmers with seductive style and pulsates with disturbing synthetic textures. Although no musician demonstrates much technical skill at this point, they are driven by boundless imagination -- Brian Eno's synthesized "treatments" exploit electronic instruments as electronics, instead of trying to shoehorn them into conventional acoustic patterns. Similarly, Bryan Ferry finds that his vampiric croon is at its most effective when it twists conventional melodies, Phil Manzanera's guitar is terse and unpredictable, while Andy Mackay's saxophone subverts rock & roll clichés by alternating R&B honking with atonal flourishes. But what makes Roxy Music such a confident, astonishing debut is how these primitive avant-garde tendencies are married to full-fledged songs, whether it's the free-form, structure-bending "Remake/Remodel" or the sleek glam of "Virginia Plain," the debut single added to later editions of the album. That was the trick that elevated Roxy Music from an art school project to the most adventurous rock band of the early '70s.

(played by a balding, long-haired eunuch lookalike named Eno)

more Poxy Muzak...

That is right on (about Sabbath). On top of that, while the members weren't exactly good church-going boys at the time, heh, they certainly still held Christian beliefs and actually wore those crosses because they were genuinely freaked out by a Satanic cult they refused to play for, and threatened to curse the band.

Interesting piece, Black Sabbath: The First Christian Rock Band.

A reminder about Martin Popoff's reviews from The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal - Volume 1: The Seventies, the first number is the heaviness number. The second is how good Popoff thinks the album is on a scale of 10.

later lyrical concerns leant more towards cocaine, lawsuits

awww

Roxy Music s/t was top in my top 10, was kinda hoping itd get top 20, even maybe beat out Marquee Moon (lol talk about wishful thinking)

anyone think KISS will make it into the top 50?

ugh hope not

sorry KISS ARMY members

excuse me I was in the KISS NAVY!

Rear Lieutenant Gene Simmons in command!

Ewww

Cocaine and lawsuits, lol, too true! Here's what I posted on an old thread:

It's pretty well known these days that the band are not really into the occult despite their image. Dio once scoffed at the idea of them being satanists and said they're "just a bunch of good Catholic boys."

Good might be a stretch, but in their early days, some satanists and head witch of England Alec Sanders starting taking an interest in Black Sabbath by showing up at gigs and stalking them at hotels. After Sabbath refused to play their satanic mass, they put a hex on the band. Ozzy asked his father make them those large silver (actually aluminum) crosses they've been known to wear thereafter. Iommi and Geezer were both Catholic (Geezer actually almost became a priest!), Ozzy with Church of England, Ward agnostic. They may not have being church-going guys after forming Sabbath, but they certainly had a healthy fear of the satanists and a belief in the power of the cross symbol!

funnily enough...

Ewww

― today's tom soy yum, mean mean thai (Spectrist), Wednesday, 27 March 2013 16:57 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know, v sorry

53. KING CRIMSON Starless and Bible Black (2857 Points, 19 Votes, 2 #1s)
RYM: #50 for 1974 , #1807 overall
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/263/MI0002263031.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

This is as close as this chronically interesting group has ever come to a good album, or maybe it's as close as Robert Fripp has ever come to dominating this chronically interesting group. As usual, things improve markedly when nobody's singing. The lyrics are relatively sharp, but there must be better ways of proving you're not a wimp than casting invective at a "health-food faggot." Unless you are a wimp, that is. B -- R. Christgau

Just as they were about to be classed among the living relics, Robert Fripp and friends have returned from a lengthy creative hiatus with an inventive new album. They've taken the disjointed pieces of Larks' Tongues in Aspic, infused them with some life, and woven them into a package as stunningly powerful as In the Court of the Crimson King, the LP that launched "mellotron rock."

Crimson displays a certain confidence here that hasn't before graced its efforts. William Bruford's multifaceted percussive offerings are particularly impressive in this light -- he's finally mastered his distinctively eclectic style. David Cross's violin and viola are woven into the Crimson tapestry far more effectively than before, adding the counter-soloist that Fripp needed to give variety to the band's sound.

The material relies on instrumental interaction, with Crimson now intent on exploring some of the frontiers charted by Yes. "The Great Deceiver" rocks out almost as maniacally as did "21st Century Schizoid Man," showing that where Yes would marvel at the world, Crimson prefers to grab it by the balls. But with "Trio" Crimson demonstrates that it's capable of maintaining the balace between aggression and introspection, using the juxtaposition of viola and mellotron-flute tape to evoke a hauntingly blissful serenity.

The two lengthy instrumental passages that comprise Side Two of Starless and Bible Black show Crimson at its best, relaxing into lengthy improvisational patterns that spotlight the virtuosity of each member. The ease with which these moves are carried off indicates that Fripp has finally assembled the band of his dreams -- hopefully it'll stay together long enough to continue producing albums as excellent as this one. -- Gordon Fletcher, RS

Bob Fripp and his band know more ways to be intelligent, dead serious, and fairly boring than anybody I know save for the Master of Musical Monotony himself, John McLaughlin. David Cross may well be the outstanding member of this group as he's the least competent on his instrument (violin), but all the others play their instruments with a same degree of technical proficiency. "The Great Deceiver" is the best and most interesting track on the album; in fact it may be the only listenable song produced by this King Crimson to date, but one good apple don't spoil the whole bunch. -- Jon Tiven, Circus Rave

The majority of the record was based on live improvisational recordings from a concert recorded the previous fall in Amsterdam. It's no wonder, as Crimson spent the better part of March through November 1973 on the road with only a few weeks in the summer to rest. The first side contains shorter snippets, as well as a few (more or less) songs. Both "The Great Deceiver" and "We'll Let You Know" rely on fury to get their point across (which they do), while the gentler "The Night Watch" is simply resplendent. ...Again, the key is the rhythm section of John Wetton and Bill Bruford; as Fripp would later comment, they were "terrible to play over." Indeed. With only twelve minutes of studio recordings, the album is a little short on new material, but taken as a live record it's another matter.-- C. Snider, The Strawberry Bricks Guide To Progressive Rock

Fripp and the boys were busy in 1974, later in the year came the storming Red album, but before that came this offering. King Crimson are usually lumped in with the lumbering prog-rock likes of Yes and ELP, but while they share a certain number of starting points (and band members), since their debut in 1969, they have always been that bit more closer to the edge (as well as that more technically proficient!). This can still be seen to this day with recent offerings such as Thrak and The ConstruKction Of Light, both being contemporary masterpieces.

Starless... opens in fine speedridin' form with 'The Great Deceiver', which begins at full pace, slows briefly for a short Zepp-esque riff, then grinds down to a few staccato bass notes for the first verse. As usual with Crimson there are many rhythm, riff and tempo changes. Blistering. 'Lament' begins as a vocal-led ballad, but then unexpectedly dissolves and rebuilds into a freaked-out funk monster of a song - John Wetton's vocals ranging from soulful to fiery.

'We'll Let You Know' takes the form of a studio jam, and is about as loose and bluesy as Crimson get. Bill Bruford's syncopated percussion linking the free wheeling bass and guitar. 'The Night Watch' opens with a wall of cymbals and chorused guitars, to give an almost oriental feel - David Cross' violin picking up on this, while Wetton shares the story of what appears to be an old painting. Fripp, meanwhile, paints his own picture with some beautifully intricate harmonics.

'Trio' is almost complete silence for a whole minute, eventually Cross' violin emerging, accompanied by some gentle bass-stroking from Wetton - before Fripp joins in with his best viola impersonation. Eerie, again quite oriental, and very soothing. 5 minutes 41 seconds just isn't enough - I put this track on repeat play during moments of quiet contemplation. 'The Mincer' is the strangest track on offer, and possesses some excellent unexpected, 'catch you by surprise', snare work from Bruford. The title track begins with some quiet feedback and Bruford beating some kind of heart beat. Tambourines join in, the whole thing builds. The song title is beautifully evoked through the 9-minute soundscape. Challenging, but never unlistenable, the whole thing turns more jazzy toward the end once Wetton and Bruford fall into step.

The closing track 'Fracture', strangely enough sees a return to the more structured Frippery and bizarre chord progressions. The fingerwork is quite mind boggling at times - and a lot of people criticize Fripp for his 'over-complication', but you'll usually find that's just jealous guitarists! - but huge funky islands appear all over the place, and the whole thing rides out on a high.

One of King Crimson's best albums, certainly one of their funkiest, from arguably their strongest line-up. A classic which I heartily recommend - especially as an accompaniment to its sister album, Red (which is reviewed elsewhere here by Squid Tempest).  -- fwump bungle, Head Heritage

review
[-] by Bruce Eder

Starless and Bible Black is even more powerful and daring than its predecessor, Larks' Tongues in Aspic, with jarring tempo shifts, explosive guitar riffs, and soaring, elegant, and delicate violin and Mellotron parts scattered throughout its 41 minutes, often all in the same songs. The album was on the outer fringes of accessible progressive rock, with enough musical ideas explored to make Starless and Bible Black more than background for tripping the way Emerson, Lake & Palmer's albums were used. "The Night Watch," a song about a Rembrandt painting, was, incredibly, a single release, although it was much more representative of the sound that Crimson was abandoning than where it was going in 1973-1974. More to that point were the contents of side two of the original LP, a pair of instrumentals that threw the group's hardest sounds right in the face of the listener, and gained some converts in the process. [Starless and Bible Black was remastered again for CD in the summer of 2000, in significantly improved sound that brought out the details (and surprising lyricism) of much of the material in far greater detail. The booklet included with the remastered version is not as impressive as some of the rest of the series entries in terms of information, but has great photos.]

Then Ozzy found a leaf sweater than the stevia which sweetened the coffee after Anglican mass...

I wonder how many albums Fripp was involved in, no matter how tangentially, that placed in this poll.

Look at the face of 70s rock and you will see the face of Fripp staring back!!

You mean the face of Bob Fripp, International Lover PhD

from Toyah Wilcox University

I can't believe how tight they played during this time period, the live recordings of Fracture for instance are nightmarish

52. AEROSMITH Rocks (2882 Points, 20 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #38 for 1976 , #2097 overall | Acclaimed: #396 | RS: #176
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0000/596/MI0000596839.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/5Uv5LmSKTT9okGkr3l9MjR
spotify:album:5Uv5LmSKTT9okGkr3l9MjR

http://www.superseventies.com/oaaa/oaaa_aerosmith2.jpg

Dave Hickey compares the teen crossover of the year to a Buick Roadmaster, and he's right -- they've retooled Led Zeppelin till the English warhorse is all glitz and flow, beating the shit out of Boston and Ted Nugent and Blue Oyster Cult in the process. Wish there were a lyric sheet -- I'd like to know what that bit about J. Paul Getty's ear is about -- but (as Hickey says) the secret is the music, complex song structures and that don't sacrifice the basic 4/4 and I-IV-V. A warning, though: Zep's fourth represented a songwriting peak, before the band began to outgrow itself, and the same may prove true for this lesser group, so get it while you can. A- -- R. Christgau

Whether or not Rocks is hot depends on your vantage point. If your hard-rock tastes were honed in the Sixties, as this band's obviously were, Aerosmith is a polished echo of Yardbirds' guitar rock liberally spiced with the Stones' sexual swagger. If you're a teen of the Seventies, they are likely to be the flashiest hard-rock band you've ever seen. While the band has achieved phenomenal commercial success, their fourth album fails to prove that they can grow and innovate as their models did.

The most winning aspect of Rocks is that ace metal prducer Jack Douglas and the band (listed as coproducers for the first time) have returned to the ear-boxing sound that made their second album, Get Your Wings, their best. The guitar riffs and Steven Tyler's catlike voice fairly jump out of the speakers. This initially hides the fact that the best performances here -- "Lick and a Promise," "Sick as a Dog" and "Rats in the Cellar" -- are essentially remakes of the highlights of the relatively flat Toys in the Attic. The songs have all the band's trademarks and while they can be accused of neither profundity nor originality, Aerosmith's stylized hard-rock image and sound pack a high-energy punch most other heavy metal bands lack.

Steven Tyler is the band's obvious focal point, a distinction earned primarily by his adaptation of the sexual stance that missed the young Jack Flash. On the rockers, his delivery is polished and commanding and sufficiently enthusiastic to disguise the general innnocuousness of the lyrics. On the riff-dominated songs, though, such as "Last Child" or "Back in the Saddle," he is prone to shrieks that don't bear repetition. Unlike Jagger, his vocal performance cannot save otherwise mediocre material.

The material is Rocks' major flaw, mostly pale remakes of their earlier hits, notably "Dream On," a first-album ballad that helped make the complete Aerosmith catalog gold. Aerosmith may have their hard-rock wings, but they won't truly fly until their inventiveness catches up to their fast-maturing professionalism. – John Milward, RS

Another band RS had little love for during their mid-70s heyday, and then reappraised after they had sold millions of records. (Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say that Aerosmith were a group that RS reviled in the '70s almost as a consequence of their success, and later put on a pedestal for the very same reason.) Wayne Robbins provided this predictable critique in the 1983 guide: "Lead vocalist Steven Tyler, with his puffy, pouty lips and salacious eyes, had the manner of his lookalike, Mick Jagger, but none of his command of song or movement."

I would imagine Aerosmith seemed pretty laughable - almost like a cartoon version of the Stones - when they first appeared in 1973. But their timing couldn't have been better: Aerosmith's rise perfectly coincided with the Stones' decline. In recent years, the Stones actually seem to be imitating Aerosmith, and not the other way around: the descending chorus on A Bigger Bang's "Let Me Down Slow," for example, sounds almost identical to Rocks' "Lick and a Promise."

Rocks was #176 on RS's 500 greatest albums list; Toys in the Attics was #228. – schmidtt, Rolling Stone's 500 Worst Reviews of All Time

Flushed with the success of Toys In The Attic, Aerosmith wasted no time or momentum in returning to the studio to cut what for many is their magnum opus. Rocks, recorded partly at their Wherehouse rehearsal space and at the Record Plant in New York, was fueled by the excesses that would prove to be their near-undoing. But with the help of Jack Douglas, theband managed to focus their talents like never before, creating an aptly titled package of gems.

More cohesive than Toys..., Rocks also features a richer, tougher sound -- the downright dangerous guitar combination of Joe Perry and Brad Whitford is spurred on by the sleazy rhythm section of Tom Hamilton and Joy Kramer, making tracks like "Rats In The Cellar" and "Back In The Saddle" send sparks.

At the center of it all is Steven Tyler's determined, devilish howl -- a vocal style that earned him the moniker "The Demon of Screamin'." On "Get The Lead Out," Tyler requested the support of a singer from the Metropolitan Opera on the refrain (making one wonder what happened to the singer's career after a session that must have shredded a once-fine voice).

The lyrics deal with extremes, whether it is sex ("Back In The Saddle"), drugs ("Combination"), or fame ("A Lick And A Promise") -- there is either too much or too little, typically at the same time. The subject matter is fitting for a band whose predilections scared the most drug-addled musicians in the business, leading them to dub Tyler and Perry the Toxic Twins. -- Tim Sheridan, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

Few albums have been so appropriately named as Aerosmith's 1976 classic Rocks. Despite hard drug use escalating among bandmembers, Aerosmith produced a superb follow-up to their masterwork Toys in the Attic, nearly topping it in the process. Many Aero fans will point to Toys as the band's quintessential album (it contained two radio/concert standards after all, "Walk This Way" and "Sweet Emotion"), but out of all their albums, Rocks did the best job of capturing Aerosmith at their most raw and rocking. Like its predecessor, a pair of songs have become their most renowned -- the menacing, hard rock, cowboy-stomper "Back in the Saddle," as well as the downright viscous funk groove of "Last Child." Again, even the lesser-known tracks prove essential to the makeup of the album, such as the stimulated "Rats in the Cellar" (a response of sorts to "Toys in the Attic"), the Stonesy "Combination," and the forgotten riff-rocker "Get the Lead Out." Also included is the apocalyptic "Nobody's Fault," the up-and-coming rock star tale of "Lick and a Promise," and the album-closing ballad "Home Tonight." With Rocks, Aerosmith appeared to be indestructible.

Why did Kiss outsell Aerosmith in the 70s? Aerosmith were so superior

So ZZ Top is gonna play Cleveland on August 24 at...Tiger Stadium.

Hehe I was gonna post that gig poster on FB and ask Chuck if he was going

Woah, Epitaph (the one by Judas Preist) is playing now and it totally sounds like a Queen song. I wonder if they threw that in there on purpose with all the harmonies and piano just in case no one cottoned to the whole face-melting riff thing and needed to switch up styles again later.

That's my theory about JP -- they were always far more concerned with commercial success than most other metal bands, and far more studio oriented. It seemed like they were always there to capture the sound of the cutting-edge hard rock zeitgeist, not really be trendsetters.

yes Rocks! one of the albums I can point to whenever I make my argument that "Aerosmith did indeed once rock and not suck!"

KISS had a better stage show, obviously!! You weren't going to a concert, you were going to an EVENT!

did the merch table exist in the 70s? That would explain everything.

You didn'y get Gentle Giant lunchboxes off your dad?

lol

51. THROBBING GRISTLE 20 Jazz funk Greats (2917 Points, 25 Votes)
RYM: #135 for 1979 | Acclaimed: #1804
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/497/MI0002497530.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Twenty Jazz Funk Greats breaks away from D.o.A.'s stark bleakness in an attempted truce between the group's radical attitudes and pop music, removing the cutting edge from their calculated chaos but offering more accessibility. -- Trouser Press

review
by John Bush

It's a break in the clouds from Throbbing Gristle's pummeling noise and a first glimpse at the continuing pop influence on the TG/PTV axis, but 20 Jazz Funk Greats still isn't best described by its title. If there is such a thing as a funky Throbbing Gristle LP, however, this could well be it. "Hot on the Heels of Love," "Still Walking" and "Six Six Sixties" add only occasional bits of distortion between the rigid sequencer lines. 20 Jazz Funk Greats is the best compromise between TG's early industrial aesthetic and the reams of industrial-dance and dark synth-pop groups that used the album as a stepping stone to crossover appeal.

xp Kiss were marketed to a much younger demographic than Aerosmith

pre-teens?

Who were Throbbing Gristle marketed to?

a much more pretentious demographic than Aerosmith

True, when I was in 4th grade, I knew at least two kids who were KISS fanatics (9-10 year-olds in 1978-9), and I probably didn't know who Aerosmith were yet.

Who were Throbbing Gristle marketed to?

jazz-funksters obv

Can't believe that album isn't available on spotify. GET IT TOGETHER PEOPLE!

I've thought for a while that Kiss may have been the worst musicians to achieve that level of success.

Worse than Oasis? or do you mean 1970s?

Mind you, Kiss never got anywhere near the level of Oasis here (and vice versa)

worst ever selling Donington was headlined by Kiss.

the rest are mostly just horror movie plots turned into songs without any clear moral message

I actually think "Paranoid" is weirdly insightful about depression (not paranoia)!: e.g. "All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy" is a very unusual thing to say but very apt re depressive rumination, more so than most pop/rock writing on the subject.

xxxpost I meant of all time.

Worldwide, Oasis is nowhere near Kiss's sales figures, surely?

I've thought for a while that Kiss may have been the worst musicians to achieve that level of success.

That was Throbbing Gristle

ARE YOU READY FOR THE TOP 50?

music for pre-teens with adults on the sleeves vs music for adults with pre-teens on the sleeves

Direct Link to poll recap & full results

Did Kiss sell anything outside the USA? They had belated hits in the UK but well after their heyday (xxp) I knew one guy at school who was into Kiss

TG almost making the top 50 on this poll is pretty sweet

lets do this thing!!!!!

No I think KISS was pretty much a US thing. Maybe South America liked them? IDK.

Kiss had 2 hits here Crazy Nights and that song from Bill & Ted. They do play places like SECC and Wembley Arena but certainly not stadiums (unlike The Eagles who can even sell out Stadiums in Edinburgh)

but weirdly I do know a lot of Kiss fans who probably grew up on them in the 70s/80s as they read sounds/kerrang.

Kerrang mustve got people checking out their older stuff as they were growing up. Of course there was still a big cult of heavy rockers back in the 70s pre-kerrang days who were still into this stuff even if it wasnt mainstream

Mark e is a fan (theres a lot on ilx)

50. SOFT MACHINE Third (2920 Points, 19 Votes, 1 #1
RYM: #20 for 1970 , #441 overall | Acclaimed: #650
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/429/MI0002429020.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/7bJytEOVzTT0TIYfL18hU9
spotify:album:7bJytEOVzTT0TIYfL18hU9

Robert Wyatt's light touch imbues these pleasant experiments with their own unique pulse, but only because the music is labeled rock is it hailed as a breakthrough. It does qualify as a change of pace--on the group's last album three musicians put seventeen titles on two sides, while on this one eight musicians put four on four. But though Mike Ratledge's "Out-Bloody-Rageous," to choose the most interesting example, brings together convincing approximations of Terry Riley-style modular pianistics and John Coltrane-style modal sax (Hugh Hopper has Jimmy Garrison's bass down perfect), Riley and Coltrane do it better. Only Wyatt's "Moon in June" is eccentric by the standards of its influences--which must be why it's hard to name them all. B -- R. Christgau

Psychedelic London hatched just two bands of note: Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd and the Soft Machine, and only the Soft Machine had any musical intelligence. To lock into their world was to receive an education: following them diligently led a young listener directly to Terry Riley, Messaien, Cecil Taylor, Coltrane, electronic music, and British jazz (at one point Keith Tippett's entire front line was in the group). By turns austere, charming and hot, hot, hot, Third, recorded 1970 and featuring an augmented Ratledge-Hopper-Wyatt-Dean line-up, was their finest hour. Wyatt's conversationally intimate "Moon In June" balanced the labyrinthine complexities of Ratledge's writing and the jazzier thrust of Hopper's "Facelift". Saxophonist Elton Dean and Ratledge, a one-of-a-kind organist, delivered the knockout solos. -- SL, THE WIRE's THE HUNDRED BEST RECORDS OF ALL TIME

review
[-] by Peter Kurtz

The Soft Machine plunged deeper into jazz and contemporary electronic music on this pivotal release, which incited the Village Voice to call it a milestone achievement when it was released. It's a double album of stunning music, with each side devoted to one composition -- two by Mike Ratledge, and one each by Hopper and Wyatt, with substantial help from a number of backup musicians, including Canterbury mainstays Elton Dean and Jimmy Hastings. The Ratledge songs come closest to fusion jazz, although this is fusion laced with tape loop effects and hypnotic, repetitive keyboard patterns. Hugh Hopper's "Facelift" recalls "21st Century Schizoid Man" by King Crimson, although it's more complex, with several quite dissimilar sections. The pulsing rhythms, chaotic horn and keyboard sounds, and dark drones on "Facelift" predate some of what Hopper did as a solo artist later (this song was actually culled from two live performances in 1970). Robert Wyatt draws on musical ideas from early 1967 demos done with producer Giorgio Gomelsky, on his capricious composition "Moon in June." Lyrically, it's a satirical alternative to the pretension displayed by a lot of rock writing of the era, and combined with the Softs' exotic instrumentation, it makes for quite a listen (the collection Triple Echo includes a BBC broadcast recording of this song, with different albeit equally fanciful lyrics). Not exactly rock, Third nonetheless pushed the boundaries of rock into areas previously unexplored, and it managed to do so without sounding self-indulgent. A better introduction to the group is either of the first two records, but once introduced, this is the place to go.

http://givemetakeyou.com/wp-content/uploads/softs1.gif

One of THE great inner gatefold sleeves!

Whose bare feet are those I wonder?

a disgusting hippy probably

And who's that at the back half hidden?

now that's a good way to bring in the top 50!

Someone's meaning to sneak up on Wyatt and steal his killer shoes (xp)

Now I can see where Mark Nason rips off those ankle boot designs from.

49. X-RAY SPEX Germ Free Adolescents (2924 Pionts, 22 Votes)
RYM: #33 for 1978 , #1353 overall | Acclaimed: #793
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/958/MI0001958826.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
http://open.spotify.com/album/6XaOF033IKilCnqlg5xbPC
spotify:album:6XaOF033IKilCnqlg5xbPC

X-Ray Spex's one LP collects some of the ace singles that made them such an early punk standout, although it doesn't contain their classic first outing, the wild "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!" Styrene's songs focus on the artificiality of modern life; hence such titles as "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" and "Warrior in Woolworths." Whether the tune is a ballad or a crazed rocker, the band surges as if there were no tomorrow. And for them, there wasn't. A masterpiece! (The CD reissue adds the originally omitted tracks for a more thorough rendering of the band's slim but spectacular output.) -- Trouser Press

Smash the barriers and the truth shall make you free (as long as stocks last, anyway): barriers between humans and objects, between the natural (sic) and the Art—i—ficiaI (sicker).

Theses barriers mark the world which X—Ray—Spex inhabit and the world about which Poly Styrene writes with the sophisticated innocence that gives a tree and a supermarket equal value: never mind how it got got here (grew/cloned/came in a box), the fact remains that it’s here and what are we going to do about it? ·D0 you love it/do you hate it/here it is the way you made it/yeah.

"Germ-Free Adolescents" is the first and long-awaited X Ray Spex album, temporarily delayed while Poly Styrene recovered from the effects of letting her particular worldview get the better of her, and it neatly avoids the weakness of previous Spex gigs and records (i.e. cacophony, ramshackle playing boosted by road-drill volume) while t concentrating on the band’s strengths (great lyrics, nifty chewns, energy and a winningly knowing innocence). 

A dozen songs (six per side in the grand manner, none too long, none too short) which will make sure that Poly Styrene gets the respect she deserves as a writer of rock songs and amateur social critic, gets more than simple junior-glossy notoriety as that little halfe-caste girl with the teeth-braces and the funny clothes.

The opening vision is of the world as one big supermarket, where everyone has to compete with all the other products. Opening with a shouted "Art-l-Ficial !" with a soupcon of echo, the sound is like a skinnier Pistols with Rudi Thomson's wheezy saxophone recalling David Bowie and Andy Mackay. ln the relative comfort and stillness of the studio, Poly's singing is more like singingand less like an air—raid siren with its tail caught in a mousetrap (can’t be bad), and the lyrics are couched in the superficially attractive but ultimately repellent terms beloved of copywriters (like the ice-lolly ad that says "New Nicer Taste" and begs the question of what it was like before).

"Obsessed With You" (usually introduced on stage as "Oo—Oo I’m Obsessed With You-oo/1-2-3—4!") is the song that everybody used to think » was about Johnny Rotten, mainly because the way Poly sings, "You are just a concept" sounds uncannily like "You are Johnny Rotten" if you d0n’t check the lyric sheet. lt’s one of a clutch of songs about the internal and external effects of celebhood, and also touches on Poly's perennial theme of L people—as-commodities: "You l are just a symbol/you are just a dream/you are just another figure/for the sales machine. " ( As Poly herself now is, of course. She bites far deeper into the same theme in "ldentity", which closes the first side. "ldentity" was the single that was on release when she had her nervous breakdown, and the lyric was harrowingly appropriate :"When you look in the mirror/do you smash it quick?/Do you take the glass/and slash your wrists?/Did you do it for fame?/Did you do it in a fit?/Did you do it before/you read about it?"

Naturally. This Modern World that we’ve all heard about so much recently is a most unhealthy place, and even grappling with the evil by nailing its colours to your masthead is not necessarily an adequate defence. "Warrior ln Woolworths" (a gently, compassionate piece with one of the album's best vocals and a snub nosed guitar overdub straight out of "Disraeli Gears") makes the same point: "Warrior In Woolworths/His roots are in today/Doesn’t know no history/He threw the past away/He’s the rebel on the underground/she’s the rebel in the modern town. " Ah, remember the days when Barry Melton used to inform us that "the subway is not the underground"? He's wrong: it is. Check out "Let's Submerge", a great rock and roll song in the ’50s tradition (Dave Edmunds could record it), which presents yer average tube station as a place of glamour and terror, not as a vicious arena ala Paul Weller but as something straight out of Cocteau.

"Genetic Engineering", which opens side two sets the theme for the cover: the band in test-tubes. Appropriately enough, Poly counts in the song in German, and there’s a faint aftertaste of Bowie's
European experiment in the texture, but the lyric is less than penetrating. Perhaps the album’s most endearing piece is "l Can't Do Anything", which begins like The Bishops’ "Baby You’re Wrong" (really) and goes on to set a softer, warmer variant of a Ramones pinhead song to a melody not a million miles away from "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" The brilliance of this album is by no means uniform: "I Live Off You" is routine and "Plastic Bag" is by no means as excellently realised as it was on the original ‘ X-Ray—Spex demo tapes of a year or so back (this allusion is not elitism: I just wish you could have heard that version). Plus three A—sides (the title track, "ldentity", and the immortal "The Day The World Turned Dayglo") and one B-side ("I Am A Poseur") on an album makes for poor value in this man's supermarket.

Still its nice having the (almost) complete works of X—Ray-Spex in one place. What makes Poly Styrene a more appealing commodity than many of her fellow chroniclers of the urban delusion is the warmth and ’ wit of her writing and singing, and her refusal to capitulate to the Big Freeze by reducing herself to yet another blueprint on a different drawing board. l hope she wins (just as l hope that we don’t get buried in an avalanche of albums with diagrams of washing machines and refrigerators on the innersleeves), because despite her subject matter- or even because of it - her music says that human resources beat mechanical resources every time. And while the difference between the two is till discernible, that's the wonder of Spex. -- Charles Shaar Murray, NME

review
[-] by Steve Huey

Perhaps the most utopian aspect of the U.K. punk scene was that it offered creative, articulate young people the opportunity to express themselves, and to kick up an exuberantly noisy racket in the process. X-Ray Spex certainly came from this wing of the movement, the brainchild of two female schoolmates who re-christened themselves Poly Styrene and Lora Logic. X-Ray Spex was far from the only female-centered British punk act, but they were arguably the best, combining exuberant energy with a cohesive worldview courtesy of singer and songwriter Poly Styrene. As her nom de punk hinted, Styrene was obsessed with the artificiality she saw permeating Britain's consumer society, linking synthetic goods with a sort of processed, manufactured humanity. Styrene's frantic claustrophobia permeates the record, as she rails in her distinctively quavering yowl against the alienation she feels preventing her from discovering her true self. Germ Free Adolescents is tied together by Styrene's yearning to be free not only from demands for consumption, but from the insecurity corporate advertisers used to exploit their targets (especially in women) -- in other words, to enjoy being real, imperfect, non-sterile humans living in a real, imperfect, non-Day-Glo world. Fortunately, the record is just as effective musically as it is conceptually. It's full of kick-out-the-jams rockers, with a few up-tempo thrashers and surprisingly atmospheric pieces mixed in; the raw, wailing saxophone of Rudi Thomson (who replaced Lora Logic early on) gives the band its true sonic signature. The CD reissue of Germ Free Adolescents appends both sides of the classic debut single "Oh Bondage Up Yours!," one of the most visceral moments in all of British punk -- which means everything you need is right here.

Pretty psyched that only 2 of my top 10 have placed so far. A couple are guaranteed top 10 material but some of the other one's are exactly the kind of outsider classics that only this poll rank so highly.

#6 in johnny fever's alternate 70s poll a few years ago

That album is so damn fun. Genuinely surprised it did not make the Pitchfork top 100.

48. YOKO ONO Fly (2988 Points, 22 Votes)
RYM: #552 for 1971
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To Beatle fans who picked up either volume of Unfinished Music or Fly, they probably sounded unfathomably strange, but to the contemporary listener they sound amazingly of a piece, on a par with Beefheart, Can and Public Image. The exploded song forms anticipate techno and rock music's interest in dub production techniques ("Mind Train") and the music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Yet, "Midsummer New York" and "Is Winter Here to Stay?" — either of which would sound at home on a Fall or Sonic Youth album — show that Ono can nail a twisty rocker. -- Trouser Press

review
[-] by Ned Raggett

By the time Fly emerged, the battle lines had long been drawn, and those who preferred to place Ono's domestic situation rather than her music in the foreground were never going to give it a fair shake. Very much their loss -- not only is it that rarest of all beasts, a '70s double album that rewards repeated listening, but Fly also shows the work of a creative artist working with a sympathetic set of backing players to create inspired, varied songs. At points, the appeal lies simply in Ono's implicit "to heck with you" approach to singing -- compositions like "Midsummer New York" are easygoing rock chug that won't surprise many, but it's her take on high-pitched soul and quivering delivery that transforms them into something else. The screwy blues yowl of "Don't Worry Kyoko" is something else again, suggesting something off Led Zeppelin III gone utterly berserk. Meanwhile, check the fragile, pretty acoustic guitar of "Mind Holes," her singing swooping in the background like a lost ghost, while the reflective "Mrs. Lennon," as wry but heartfelt a portrait of her position in the public eye as any, ended up being used by Alex Chilton for "Holocaust," which gives a good sense of the sad tug of the melody. Perhaps the best measure of Fly is how Ono ended up inventing Krautrock, or perhaps more seriously bringing the sense of motorik's pulse and slow-building tension to an English-language audience. There weren't many artists of her profile in America getting trance-y, heavy-duty songs like "Mindtrain" and the murky ambient howls of "Aimale" out to an English-language audience. Such songs readily match the work of Can, another band with a Japanese vocalist taking things to a higher level. As for "Fly" itself, the mostly unaccompanied wails and trills from Ono will confirm stereotypes in many folks' minds, but it's a strange, often beautiful performance that follows its own logic.

"Identity" was used repeatedly and to great effect in Isaac Julien's movie Young Soul Rebels (1991).

Did you own this Tom D?

nothing? anyone? everyone just assumed this would be top 50 as it's in all top 50s of the 70s?

I've got it but I don't think it's that good, overrated

did your sister have it in the 70s or did you hear it later?

47. BLACK SABBATH Master of Reality (2993 Ponts, 19 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #5 for 1971 , #60 overall | Acclaimed: #992 | RS: #298
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CgXOrpKQMKQ/T5X-78Ts8sI/AAAAAAAAD0A/JQVIgiEirjI/s1600/black-sabbath-deluxe-flac.jpeg
http://open.spotify.com/album/6wGefWkaqP2Sh6L2Gi0zsI
spotify:album:6wGefWkaqP2Sh6L2Gi0zsI

As an increasingly regretful spearhead of the great Grand Funk switch, in which critics redefined GFR as a 1971 good old-fashioned rock and roll band even though I've never met a critic (myself included) who actually played the records, I feel entitled to put this in its place. Grand Funk is like an American white blues band of three years ago--dull. Black Sabbath is English--dull and decadent. I don't care how many rebels and incipient groovies are buying. I don't even care if the band members believe in their own Christian/satanist/liberal murk. This is a dim-witted, amoral exploitation. C- -- R. Christgau

The second-generation rock audience (that is, those who went steady to "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and got serious with Highway 62 Revisited) suffer mightily wrestling with the phenomenon represented by Grank Funk and Black Sabbath. If nothing else, though, both Funk and Sabbath are for all their monotony at least supremely consistent — as opposed to schtick collectors with no personal vision like Deep Purple. And since when is monotony so taboo in rock & roll, anyway? Rock has been — some of the best of it too in large part monotonous from the beginning, hypnotically so, as rightwingers would say. As far apart as they are, Black Sabbath is only slightly more monotonous than James Taylor or Joni Mitchell, and any Stooges or MC5 fan who disdains Black Sabbath is just bigoted.

The thing is that, like all the best rock & rollers since the Pleistocene era, Black Sabbath (and Grand Funk) have a vision that informs their music with unity and direction and makes their simple structures more than they might seem. Grand Funk's vision is one of universal brotherhood (as when they have spoken of taking their millions to the White House with a list of demands), but Black Sabbath's, until Master of Reality anyway, has concentrated relentlessly on the self-immolating underside of all the beatific Let's Get Together platitudes of the counter culture.

Their first album found them still locked lyrically into the initial Spiritualist-Satanic hype and was filled out mostly with jamming, while Paranoid reflected that theme only, in the great line in "War Pigs": "Generals gathered in their masses Just like witches at black masses." The rest of the album dealt mostly with social anomie in general, from the title track's picture of total disjuncture (rendered with authentic power too) to "Iron Man's" picture of an unloved Golem in a hostile world, the stark picture of ultimate needle-freak breakdown painted in the philippic "Hand of Doom," and finally the unique "Fairies Wear Boots": "I went walkin' late last night Suddenly I got a fright/I looked in the window, was surprised what I saw/Fairies in boots dancin' with the broads!"

Not all of this, incidentally, was rendered in La Brea sinks of lugubrious bass blasts — several of the songs had high wailing solos and interesting changes of tempo, and "Paranoid" really moved. If you took the trouble to listen to the album all the way through.

Master of Reality both extends and modifies the trends on Paranoid. It has fewer songs, if you discount the two short instrumental interludes, but it is not that the songs are longer than the first record — the album is shorter. The sound, with a couple of exceptions, has evolved little if at all. The thick, plodding, almost arrhythmic steel wool curtains of sound the group is celebrated and reviled for only appear in their classical state of excruciating slowness on two tracks, "Sweet Leaf" and "Lord of This World," and both break into driving jams that are well worth the wait. Which itself is no problem once you stop thinking about how bored you are and just let it filter down your innards like a good bottle of Romilar. Rock & roll has always been noise, and Black Sabbath have boiled that noise to its resinous essence. Did you expect bones to be anything else but rigid?

The rest of the songs, while not exactly lilting, have all the drive and frenzy you could wish for in this day and age. Thematically the group has mellowed a bit, and although the morbidity still shines rankly in almost every song, the group seems to have taken its popularity and position seriously enough to begin offering some answers to the dark cul-de-sacs of Paranoid. "Sweet Leaf," for instance, shows that Black Sabbath have the balls to write a song celebrating grass this late date, and the double entendre, if you can even call it that, is much less tortuous than it would have been in 1966, with an added touch of salvation from grosser potions: "My life was empty forever on a down/Until you took me, showed me around ... Straight people don't know what you're about..."

Unfortunately, the religious virus also rears its zealot head, in "After Forever," which is a great Yardbirds-type arrangement nevertheless and despite its drubbing us over the head with "God is the only way to love" it does have the great line "Would you like to see the Pope on the end of a rope?"

And besides, isn't all this Christian folderol just the flip side of the Luciferian creed they commenced with and look back on balefully in "Lord of This World"? And for those of us, like me, who prefer the secular side of Black Sabbath, there's "Solitude," a ballad as lovely as any out of England in the last year (with flute yet), and "Children of the Grave": with "Revolution in their minds the children start to march Against the world they have to live in Oh! The hate that's in their hearts They're tired of being pushed around and told just what to do. They'll fight the world until they've won and love comes flowing through."

I'm not saying that either that or the arrangement it's set in is the new "My Generation," but it is a rocking, churning addition to the long line of defiant, self-affirmative and certainly a little defensive songs that goes right back to the earliest whap and wail of rock 'n' roll. It's naive, simplistic, repetitive, absolute doggerel — but in the tradition. Chuck Berry sang in more repressed times. "Don't bother us, leave us 'lone/Anyway we almost grown." The Who stuttered "hope I die before I get old," but the MC5 wanted to "Kick Out the Jams" or at least escape on a "Starship," and Black Sabbath have picked up the addled, quasi-politicized desperation of growing up in these times exactly where they left off: "Freedom fighters sent out to the sun Escape from brainwashed minds and pollution/Leave the earth to all its sin and hate/Find another world where freedom waits."

The question now is not whether we can accept lines as obvious and juvenile as that from a rock & roll record. They should be as palatable to anyone with a memory as the stereotypic two-and three-chord structures of the songs. The only criterion is excitement, and Black Sabbath's got it. The real question is whether Black Sabbath can grow and evolve, as a band like the MC5 has, so that there is a bit more variation in their sound from album to album. And that's a question this group hasn't answered yet. – Lester Bangs, RS

Constructed from pure throbbing guitar gone bad, a righteous wrecking ball that seems to just spill bass, drums and vocals out in some dense, effluent birthing, Master Of Reality is a masterpiece beyond words and beyond compare with other music. An expulsion of glorious thick power, this definitive Sab statement wallows in primordial energy, simply cocooning itself under heavier and heavier blankets of the earth's crust. The most decisive and deafening of the original four heavy metal records, above IN Rock, above the band's own Paranoid, and way aboe URiah Heep, Master Of Reality is a relentless and pulveriziing mountain of power chords, in essence the original model for future torch-bearers Trouble, and the last thing Sabbath would ever really need to say to turn rock on its broken neck forever. .. 9/10 -- M. Popoff

Admittedly, it’s a cruel, heartless question to ask, and yet, can there be any doubt as to the answer? Could anything ever top Master of Reality? I ask the question mostly because I want to see if anyone sticks up for Vol. 4, which, apart from “Changes,” is about as flawless as an album can get. With the recent terrible news of Tony Iommi‘s lymphoma diagnosis, I think we’re due for a good time. So let’s have some fun.

Earliest Black Sabbath was nothing if not a coalescing of various elements into a cohesive whole.  A kind of cultural distillation, ground down and remade into the singular most formative basis of doom — the album Black Sabbath. Only months later in 1970, they released Paranoid and refined the darkness of the first record, adding range and sonic breadth. While the title-track became the band’s signature piece, “Electric Funeral” and “Fairies Wear Boots” grew into the anthems of a subculture within a subculture, and they remain so to this day.

However, every time I put on Master of Reality and listen to it straight through, with each successive track, I say to myself, “This is the heaviest shit ever made.” And each song proves the prior assessment wrong — yes, even “Solitude” — until finally, “Into the Void” offers clear and indisputable truth of riff. It is pure in its muck, and as perfect as stoner rock has ever gotten. The standard by which the genre is and should be measured: the heaviest shit ever made.

But what about Vol. 4? It seems to have an answer for every challenge Master of Reality throws at it. A “Snowblind” for “Sweet Leaf,” “Supernaut” for “Into the Void,” “Under the Sun/Every Day Comes and Goes” for “Lord of this World.” 1972 found Black Sabbath a more realized beast with a perfected heavy rock that seemed to already know the tropes of the metal genre it was shaping.

I could go on. I won’t. Is “Changes” enough to hold back Vol. 4 from standing up to Master of Reality? There are people who consider “Solitude” a misstep of similar magnitude. I leave it to you to decide in the comments.
You know the scenario. You can only pick one, so which is it? -- The Obelisk

review
[-] by Steve Huey

The shortest album of Black Sabbath's glory years, Master of Reality is also their most sonically influential work. Here Tony Iommi began to experiment with tuning his guitar down three half-steps to C#, producing a sound that was darker, deeper, and sludgier than anything they'd yet committed to record. (This trick was still being copied 25 years later by every metal band looking to push the limits of heaviness, from trendy nu-metallers to Swedish deathsters.) Much more than that, Master of Reality essentially created multiple metal subgenres all by itself, laying the sonic foundations for doom, stoner and sludge metal, all in the space of just over half an hour. Classic opener "Sweet Leaf" certainly ranks as a defining stoner metal song, making its drug references far more overt (and adoring) than the preceding album's "Fairies Wear Boots." The album's other signature song, "Children of the Grave," is driven by a galloping rhythm that would later pop up on a slew of Iron Maiden tunes, among many others. Aside from "Sweet Leaf," much of Master of Reality finds the band displaying a stronger moral sense, in part an attempt to counteract the growing perception that they were Satanists. "Children of the Grave" posits a stark choice between love and nuclear annihilation, while "After Forever" philosophizes about death and the afterlife in an openly religious (but, of course, superficially morbid) fashion that offered a blueprint for the career of Christian doom band Trouble. And although the alternately sinister and jaunty "Lord of This World" is sung from Satan's point of view, he clearly doesn't think much of his own followers (and neither, by extension, does the band). It's all handled much like a horror movie with a clear moral message, for example The Exorcist. Past those four tracks, listeners get sharply contrasting tempos in the rumbling sci-fi tale "Into the Void," which shortens the distances between the multiple sections of the band's previous epics. And there's the core of the album -- all that's left is a couple of brief instrumental interludes, plus the quiet, brooding loneliness of "Solitude," a mostly textural piece that frames Osbourne's phased vocals with acoustic guitars and flutes. But, if a core of five songs seems slight for a classic album, it's also important to note that those five songs represent a nearly bottomless bag of tricks, many of which are still being imitated and explored decades later. If Paranoid has more widely known songs, the suffocating and oppressive Master of Reality was the Sabbath record that die-hard metalheads took most closely to heart.

As an increasingly regretful spearhead of the great Grand Funk switch, in which critics redefined GFR as a 1971 good old-fashioned rock and roll band even though I've never met a critic (myself included) who actually played the records, I feel entitled to put this in its place. Grand Funk is like an American white blues band of three years ago--dull. Black Sabbath is English--dull and decadent. I don't care how many rebels and incipient groovies are buying. I don't even care if the band members believe in their own Christian/satanist/liberal murk. This is a dim-witted, amoral exploitation. C- -- R. Christgau

any Stooges or MC5 fan who disdains Black Sabbath is just bigoted.

riiight

'Lord of This World' = unnecessarily, righteously rockin'.

After buying and enjoying Rising in '95, I checked out some of Ono's old stuff. Some of it's unlistenable, but some certainly sounds groundbreaking. It's cool that she'd been re-evaluated and had the box set reissued and given some respect. OTOH, this high placing feels like some affirmative-action type voting going on. I'm all for giving women artists all due respect, but don't necessarily feel the need to compensate by overestimating something like Fly. But I'm sure many of the voters sincerely believe it's worthy, so, cool. Just please don't make me listen to that whole thing all at once ever again!