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]
― Algerian Goalkeeper, Tuesday, 26 March 2013 02:07 (eleven years ago) link
90. VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR Pawn Hearts (2271 Points, 16 Votes, 1 #1)
RYM: #23 for 1971 , #332 overall | Acclaimed: #1383
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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 PressA 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 EderVan 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.
― Algerian Goalkeeper, Tuesday, 26 March 2013 14:00 (eleven years ago) link