Funeral to Finish

  Welp, it sure does sound like Santana, I'll tell you that much.  Santana is one of those bands with an absolutely one-of-a-kind sound.  You know it the second the needle drops, and Carlos Santana's guitar playing is the reason why.  He is an absolutely sui generis guitarist, immediately recognizable. This album is fine, I guess.  You know "Black Magic Woman" and "Oye Como Va," both covers, incidentally, and even if you don't know the rest of the songs, you'll feel like you do.  It's a pleasant sound, punctuated by sharp percussion and Greg Rolle's rolling Hammond organ.  It feels like a sunny afternoon.  That's about all I have to say. BUT speaking of Santana, did you know yesterday was "Smooth" Day?  That's right; Santana's monster hit with Rob Thomas was released June 29, 1999.  I can remember the summer of 1999, and that song was everywhere.  It was, in fact, one of the best-selling singles in history , and now Carl...

  Bob Dylan again!  Too soon.  Well, not just Bob Dylan, Bob and the Band.  And it really doesn't sound super-Dylany, like John Wesley Harding did.  Which can be a good thing, honestly.  Dylan sings lead on, I think, 16 of the songs, and other members of the band (dudes like Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, nbd) sing the rest. Recorded between June and October 1967 in the basement, natch, of the house called Big Pink in Saugerties, NY, these tracks were all recorded into one to three mics, and it definitely has that shaggy, let's-record-some-songs vibe.  I think some of my favorite songs on here are some of the non-Dylan ones, like the plaintive and richly melodic "Bessie Smith," sung by Rick Danko, on which I don't think Dylan plays at all.  The majestic drawl of Levon Helm leads "Ain't No More Cane," a traditional Southern work song that Helm really brings to life; it's lovely.  "Ruben Remus" is a great song, with a climbing chorus (...

  I have another confession to make: this was my high school sex album.  I KNOW.  Can you imagine, being in high school and finally getting to hook up with your fellow high schooler because their parents are out of town or whatever and they put on.... Avalon by Roxy Music?????  What the fuck???? (Now, this move made a lot more sense back then because this album came out in 1982 and I was in high school.... closer to 1982 than you'd think.  I remember thinking of this as "cool" at the time and maybe it still was then and wasn't totally Dad music or maybe cool divorced uncle music.) But it makes sense because this album is extremely horny!  Not just the music itself, although there's a reason I'm probably not the only person who this was a Sex Album for, but the whole vibe.  And leaving that aside, this is just a really good album.  I imagine a lot of later synth-pop was influenced by this record.  Check out "To Turn You On," one of the lesser...

  By 1966, Bob Dylan had been on tour more or less continuously for about five years.  He had moved into a rollicking kind of folk-rock that reached its peak with Blonde on Blonde , an album we shall surely see down the road a ways, and angered audiences by playing electric.  How fucking quaint, you know?  Anyway, later that year he had a mysterious "motorcycle accident" that no ambulance was called for and required no hospitalization, giving rise to the theory that it was just an excuse to pull back from the pressures of fame and touring and drugs and god knows what else. Then one day in 1967 he took a two-day train trip to Nashville with a bunch of songs no one even knew he had written and recorded this absolute gem of an album in about three days with Nashville studio musicians like Charlie McCoy. The album is sparse and eerie and is mostly just Dylan singing and harmonica and his weird strumming on acoustic, with a little bass and drums in the background and occa...

  Man, this album is boring as fuck but it did sometimes drown out the kids from the day care next door, so it's got that going for it.  I would recommend this if: (1) there's a party at your house and you're trying to signal that it's over and get people to stop having fun and leave; (2) you're in a fight with your spouse on a long car drive and neither one of you is speaking to the other right now and you want to piss them off but not overtly like by putting on speed metal or something; (3) you are in a guided LSD session and your guide is Brian Eno; (4) you need something a little more involved than "Box Fan Sound [9 hr loop]" but less involved than "Waves Crashing [9 hr loop]." Some of the songs have words, but they are not very good, like in "I'll Come Running," where the chorus is "And I'll come running to tie your shoe/And I'll come running to tie your shoe." Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500?  To...

  Another album I've never heard before!  Well, I think I had heard the title track before, because I was generally familiar with the (instantly earwormy) chorus, but that's about it.  And guess what?  It slaps!  I know, I'm super late to this (this album came out in 1989) but hey, I'm just throwing it out there.   But let's say this: it is very, very, very 80's-sounding.  I'm not sure there's an actual real drum sound on this album, and it's got that slap bass and too-shimmery guitar through a Roland Jazz Chorus that you associate with the 80's.  It's not really my thing, but the songwriting is pretty great, even if the production is the Crystal Pepsi of sound. I think of all the (faintly similar) uptempo tracks, I like "Rhythm Nation" the most.  It's apparently built on a sample from Sly and the Family Stone's "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" which we just saw , but I listened to the song a number of ti...

  Confession: this is the first rap album I ever bought.  Yes, I lived through the 80's and golden age hip-hop but my first album wasn't LL Cool J or Run-DMC or Public Enemy or even De La Soul (although I think 3 Feet High and Rising was my second); it was this filthy, violent, misogynistic, brilliant masterpiece by the kid from Long Beach who would grow up to be friends with Martha Stewart.  Kids, life will take you some strange places. What is it about this album?  Well, the production (by Dr. Dre, of course) is immaculate, establishing the G-funk sound by blending a booming low end with perfectly selected 70's funk samples, but of course it's Snoop's flow that makes the album.  It's so laid-back and hypnotic that you almost don't realize that he's singing about some gritty shit.  And it's hummable , I mean, there is literally no way you can hear "Who Am I (What's My Name)?" and not get it stuck in your head all day.   See?  Don'...

  These days I guess we mostly know Billy Corgan as a joyless, self-important asshole, so it's sort of reassuring to learn that when the band was making this album, he was also a joyless, self-important asshole.  But ONCE AGAIN we must separate art from the artist because this album fucking RIPS. I somehow never got into the Pumpkins back in the 90's (although I did see them at the Tibetan Freedom Day concert in 1996 at Golden Gate Park , a touchstone for San Francisco Gen-Xers if there ever was one), so I had never heard this album before.  In fact, the only song I'd heard on it was "Today," and that's mostly just because it was permanently on MTV when MTV used to show videos all day and I was home and "between jobs" or whatever.  "Today" is great song!  But there are so many other great songs on this album.   The whole affair starts out with a drum roll, fittingly enough, since Jimmy Chamberlin's intricate drumming is the driver behin...

  I guess Rolling Stone thinks this is the Beatles' worst album because it's the first one we've seen and therefore the lowest ranked and I'm assuming all 12 Beatles studio albums will be on here.  I guess I can see it, which is to say that the worst Beatles album is still better than most other albums ever made.   It's weird, when I first listened to it (and I never owned this album, I'm guessing I never really listened to it all the way through before) it seemed like kind of a patchwork or pastiche.  There's the ragged, poppy, almost demo-sounding "Two of Us," and later there's the orchestral and grand "The Long and Winding Road."  There's a reason for this, of course - by the time they recorded this, the band was openly feuding with each other, and then they eventually just quit and moved on to the sessions for Abbey Road , which was then released before this album was. But man, oh, man, the high points on this album are super ...

  This album is like jukebox paradise, which is no doubt how I first encountered a lot of these songs.  This is an easy Top 500 album, just for "Everyday People" and "Hot Fun in the Summertime" alone.  And then, of course, there's the wackily titled "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," which hit #1 in February of 1970 and is a certified jam. This band has such a fascinating history.  They formed in San Francisco and played at Woodstock.  But by 1970 they had relocated to Los Angeles and Sly was essentially a full-time drug user (coke and PCP, primarily) that it made gigs spotty.  Original drummer Greg Errico left soon after and went on to have a tremendous career, playing with Bowie, Journey, and Jerry Garcia.  Here's a super fucked up Sly on the Dick Cavett show in 1971: Following decades of drug abuse, Sly ended up living in a camper van in the Crenshaw area of LA, where a retired couple made sure he got at least one meal a day.  He's m...

  Even if you don't know it, you are almost certainly familiar with at least one of the songs on this album, and that song is "Pressure Drop," an inspired and instantly catchy ode to karma.  Toots himself recalled, "It’s a song about revenge, but in the form of karma: if you do bad things to innocent people, then bad things will happen to you.  The title was a phrase I used to say.  If someone done me wrong, rather than fight them like a warrior, I’d say: 'The pressure’s going to drop on you.'"  This is not the common understanding of this song!  Rather, it seems like most people interpret it as some kind of kickback anthem.  Like this Coors light ad: (BTW here's an interesting piece about this ad and how it subverts the normal beer-commercial tropes, which I guess it does! Despite the fact that it uses a song about revenge and justice.) "Pressure Drop" has been covered many times, including this fantastic version by the Specials: (No offe...

  In my mind I keep two different "Best of" lists: the objective list and the subjective list.  In other words, there are the songs that I think are maybe the Greatest Songs in Rock, and then there are My Favorite Songs, and those are two very different lists.  Same with albums, I guess.  I think Sgt Pepper is one of the best and most important albums in rock history, but it's not in my personal top 20. This album is a dead lock for Top 500 because of one song and that song is "Rosalita," objectively one of the best songs in the history of rock music.  I was borderline obsessed with "Rosalita" when I was aboooouuuuut 13 or 14 years old maybe, and while I still love it, our ardor has cooled.  It is no longer one of my favorite songs, but I still firmly believe it is one of the best songs.   (This is a live version, but it's similar to the version on this record and it's probably even better of a song live.)  So for "Rosalita" alone, t...

  You know what, I kind of admire the Arctic Monkeys for this.  They could have stuck with their rock revival sound (you might remember the great rock revival of the early aughts, what with your Strokes and Kings of Leon and Libertines and ugh yes your The Darkness too I guess) that sold them eleven trillion records but instead they moved to LA and got, well, LA about it.  Where their first album,  Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not , is a bottle-throwing, pogo dancing party, this is the grown-up aftermath.  It sounds like 3 am in LA, brooding and introspective and, well, rich. This is a good album!  There are a lot of good ideas and a couple of great songs (my personal favorite is "No.1 Party Anthem," which is decidedly not a party anthem, get it?, but ymmv) but honestly this is one of the few albums that I don't understand why it's here.  I mean, Whatever  I could see, it's a fantastic record and a fully developed sound for a first al...

  Before we proceed we must pause and acknowledge what some have referred to as the Best Tweet Ever: I don't know if it's the best ever, but it's really good.  The image of an old white guy stunting on the first black President with his superior rap knowledge is a powerful one.  Alas, this is not my favorite Wu Tang album (remember Ghost's Supreme Clientele from a while back? Yeah, that's the one), it is certainly a very good album.  (One of the top Google results for "liquid swords" is "Why is Liquid Swords so good?")  It's got the perfect blend of everything that made Wu Tang famous: hustling, street life, kung fu, and tight rhymes. Lyrically, this probably outstrips Clientele and maybe most other Wu albums.  You can pick a verse from almost any song, but it's shit like this (from "Gold"): Snake got smoked on the set like Brandon Lee Blown out the frame like Pan Am Flight 103 He got swung on, his lungs was torn A kingpin jus...

  A while back, we talked about selling out .  Today let's touch on its close cousin, authenticity .  Although the concept is amorphous, it generally means that a certain group of fans expect you to be real to your roots.  So, for example, Vanilla Ice claimed to be from the mean streets of Miami but in fact grew up fairly well-off and privileged.  Not very authentic, people who care about that judged!  Personally I think it's all bullshit unless you make your mythical background central to your work.   So here we have Gillian Welch, who produced this achingly beautiful and deeply felt album that is based heavily on the folk music of Appalachia.  Does it make it any less authentic that Welch was born in New York City and grew up in Los Angeles and her parents wrote music for TV and appeared on the Tonight Show?  And then she went to UC Santa Cruz and then Berklee in Boston?  No it does not.  This album, which to my mind is as go...

  Just a pure blast of guitar energy.  It's really unfocused and raw but that's ok because MC5 was busy inventing punk in 1969 and then wedding it to explicitly far-left (at the time) politics.  Hey, guess where Rage Against the Machine came from?  RATM is like if you took all the partying out of this, and there's a lot of partying. I appreciate how incredibly influential it was and how fresh and brash it must have seemed at the time but it's just a little unfocused for my taste.  ALSO it's ironic that the name of the song "Kick Out the Jams" came from the band's dislike of lengthy jams when the last song on this album - "Starship" - is really just a long, messy jam. All that said, however, this album truly is a charge, raw energy and rebellious spirit at its finest.  Recorded live, it starts with what would become an iconic call to arms issued by Rob Tyner: Brothers and sisters, the time has come for each and every one of you to decide Wheth...