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

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?

http://thedeal.cleansnipe.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/goretex_clothing112.gif

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
spotify:album:2yFbw2SIBZ7ExIBRVoFkJJ

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
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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
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http://open.spotify.com/album/5d9SN94pxIJlu1dZNBJUvp
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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.