Funeral to Finish

  Man, the journey I've had with this record.  I picked it up used in the early 90s from Reckless Records on Haight Street and had a very brief but very intense relationship with it for a few months and then promptly forgot about it.  Then I didn't listen to it at all for about 30 years until I put it on again on Friday and have barely listened to anything else since. This weird, wonderful album is a meditation or a tone poem or a portal to another state of consciousness, as the title suggests.  The songs on it aren't really songs in the conventional sense of the term - they're wild and meandering things, almost free-form jams, which makes sense, because, according to bassist Richard Davis, that's exactly what they were.  There were no lead sheets or even basic song outlines, just Van Morrison and the musicians going at it.  This sounds like a recipe for a fucking disaster, but instead it's one of the most famous and influential albums of the 20th century. ...

  This is gonna be really embarrassing, but not only did I not know much about this album, I had never heard it before yesterday.  That's how disconnected from most hip-hop I was in the 80s and 90s.  This was released in 1987, two weeks before yesterday's abum, Appetite for Destruction .  I don't know if that means anything. So first: I was reading up on this album, as I do, and learned that it was incredibly influential and groundbreaking for its time.  Which is great, because it sounds hella dated to me.  Now, this is like someone who only knows modern fiction reading Moby Dick or Jane Eyre and going "lol why do they talk like that, so dumb," I understand that, but I AM THAT PERSON.  My personal enjoyment of rap began roughly with De La Soul, who were on a completely different wavelength than these guys.  Now, of course, you can't have Jonathan Franzen or Ottessa Moshfegh without Herman Melville or Charlotte Brontë so it means if you want...

  You could be anywhere in the world when the opening riff of "Sweet Child O' Mine" comes over the speakers and somebody will go "WHOOOOOO."  I don't care if it's a VFW post in Des Moines or a sushi restaurant in Soho or an abandoned ship on an island in the South Pacific.  Put on that song and someone will WHOOOOO.  That riff - which came in second behind "Whole Lotta Love" in a BBC poll of the greatest guitar riffs in history - is one of the greatest things in rock 'n roll and everyone knows it. This album, the best-selling debut album in US history (in the world, it's Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell , which I fear we will see), initially landed with a thud upon release in 1987, believe it or not.  It wasn't until the following year that Geffen general manager Al Coury convinced MTV to play the video for "Welcome to the Jungle" for three consecutive days.  It became the most-requested video in MTV's history and you k...

  I was never really a Stereo Guy.  I'm not even sure if Stereo Guys exist any more, but they used to hang around hi-fi shops and compare tuners and speakers and use words like "harmonics" and "Blaupunkt" and "Harmon-Kardon."  They had their turntable arms balanced by professionals and their stereo was in a room that was especially tuned for it.  Anyway, if you went over to a Stereo Guy's house (and I can imagine Stereo Girls existing, although I've never seen any evidence of it), he would put on an album to show you how great his stereo was and that album would be Aja  by Steely Dan. The reason is because the production on this album is so crystallinely clear that it sounds like the musicians are actually in your head.  It's so crisp and sharp you could cut diamonds with it.  I guess it's jazz-rock or jazz-pop but it has been rightfully celebrated as one of the foundational albums of Yacht Rock , a genre that did not exist when the alb...

  This big, fun as hell record gave rise to OutKast's first #1 single, "Ms. Jackson," a rap-funk hybrid about Andre 3000's relationship with Erykah Badu; the titular Ms. Jackson is Badu's mother.  Did she take it the wrong way?  No, she did not, according to Badu ; "How did my mama feel? Baby, she bought herself a Ms. Jackson license plate . . .  She had the mug, she had the ink pen, she had the headband, everything.  That’s who loved it.”  The song's absolutely iconic chorus ("I'm sorry Ms. Jackson/I am for real/Never meant to make your daughter cry/I apologize a trillion times") also gave rise to one of the best tweets of all time: But this album is so much more.  The group had recently purchased a studio in Atlanta, and freed from the constraints of studio time, were free to let their imaginations roam.  So you get an incredible pastiche of styles and beats.  "Gasoline Dream," one of the album's best songs, draws from early ...

  What's the Best Live Album of all time?  Some people say it's the Allman Brothers' At Fillmore East , but that album's a bore and they're wrong.  Some people say it's Cheap Trick's at Budokan and they might be right.  I know at least one person who thinks it's Live Rust by Neil Young.  But a lot of people say it's this album (which came in at #1 on Rolling Stone's " 50 Greatest Live Albums of All Time ") but I have to disagree.  I think this album is fine, but it's not the best live album of all time and it's not even close to the best James Brown album. For one thing, it's oddly subdued.  When you think "James Brown live" you're expecting a fucking ferocious barn-burner, dripping sweat from every groove and setting you aflame.  This album has its moments like that - "Think" is full of verve and life - but there's a lot of mellow.  You could put on "I Don't Mind" to put a child t...

  Oh, I don't know, whatever.  This is so far outside my musical area that you might as well put on a recording of someone reciting poetry in Czech and ask me what I think about it.  It's nice? I put it on yesterday while I was working and I guess it was fine to work to.  It's way better than that Miles Davis album we had a while back because it's not actively annoying.  It didn't make me angry and uncomfortable like that one did, so that's a plus!  Here's a good slogan: " A Love Supreme : Jazz that Doesn't Make You Feel Angry or Sick!"  Run with it, marketing! Honestly, what I read about the album makes me feel like I'm a musical idiot or something.  Pitchfork says, "It's the sound of a man laying his soul bare.  Structured as a suite and delivered in praise of God, everything about the record is designed for maximum emotional impact, from Elvin Jones' opening gong crash to the soft rain of McCoy Tyner's piano clusters t...

  Jay-Z's first album, it has been called " one of the finest albums of New York's hip-hop renaissance of the '90s " and " both magnificent and lonely, an immaculate crystal chandelier gathering dust in an abandoned mansion ."  I actually don't love it.  The sound is too smooth and uniform for me and while I admire Jay-Z as a rapper, his laid-back style has never really done it for me.   The highlights are all grim in one way or another.  I like "Brooklyn's Finest," featuring Notorious BIG, but it's mostly a sad reminder of how much Biggie left behind and how much more he had to accomplish.  "D'Evils" sounds great, built on an Allen Toussaint sample (with a Snoop sample also prominently featured) but paints a depressing and disturbing portrait of dealing drugs, an activity that is often lionized and glorified in rap.  Jay contrasts his childhood friendships with adult rivalries, and it's dark: We used to fight for ...

  What brilliant timing, for ths album to arrive in our countdown just as the Kate Bush-assaince is upon us and just months after the single "Runnin' Up That Hill" hit the top 10 in the UK and America again for the first time since 1985 , more than 30 years earlier. The general public did not, of course, wake up one morning seized en masse by a desire to hear Kate's soaring, anthemic single, the first track on this album, it was Netflix's somehow still-going series Stranger Things  that used the song and propelled renewed ineterest in it.  Then it took over TikTok, which is sort of like today's crowdsourced MTV in its ability to drive a song's popularity, with hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of users grabbing parts of the song. It's a great song, and one of only two I recognized from this album, which, believe it ot not, I had never heard all the way through until yesterday.  At first I was pretty sure it wasn't for me, but on second listen...

  I can think of two songs where I remember exactly where I was when I first heard them, like they're a Presidential assassination or something.  One of them you will find out later (it's in the Top 10 I think) and one of them is "You Oughta Know," the lead single from this album.  If you were anywhere near a radio or cable TV in 1995 you remember that this song absolutely dominated the airwaves.  I was helping my friend Ian move and it came on the radio and, reader, I was transfixed .  Not only is it a totally kickass song with a great vocal melody and fantastic production (by Glen Ballard, who also co-wrote the album with Alanis), it also was my first introduction to Morrisette's completely unique vocal style, growling and snarling her way through it.  I thought it was incredible and unlike anything else I'd heard. Another data point courtesy of my wife, who told me she owned a copy of this album and that all of her friends did too.  She was a girl i...

  This absolute banger might be the first rap album I paid attention to, largely because I had a friend who was on the bleeding edge of Nerdy Record Store White Guys Into Gangsta Rap and he used to play it all the time.  The first track I remember going "hey maybe there's something to this rap thing" was "Express Yourself," built around a sample from Charles Wright's classic of the same name, from 1970.  The song is fascinating, actually, not just because it's probably the only song on the album without the word "motherfucker' and also because Dr. Dre loudly disclaims the use of marijuana and other drugs: Even if Yella makes it a cappella I still express, yo, I don't smoke weed or sess 'Cause it's known to give a brother brain damage And brain damage on the mic don't manage nothin' But makin' a sucka and you equal, don't be another sequel Dre would, of course, make an entire album celebrating the virtues of weed a few...

  On December 3, 1976, seven armed men burst into Bob Marley's house in Kingston, Jamaica.  They shot Marley's wife Rita in the head while she was parked in the driveway.  Bob himself was shot in the chest and arm, and two others present were also hit.  Thankfully, no one died.  Although the motive is obscure, it was strongly suspected to be political, as Marley supported the People's National Party and it was believed that the hit was ordered by the head of the rival Labour Party.  (Another rumor placed the blame on the CIA, which is always a good possibility). Recovering from his injuries, Marley took the band and left Jamaica for London.  The attempt on his life was surely in Marley's mind when he wrote "So Much Things To Say": But I'll never forget no way: they crucified Jesus Christ I'll never forget no way: they stole Marcus Garvey for rights Oo-ooh! I'll never forget no way: they turned their back on Paul Bogle Hey-ey! So don't you forge...

  I think I bought my copy of this album on vinyl sometime in high school, junior year I suspect, and it was with me through college and then on cassette for years after I no longer had a lifestyle compatible with a turntable and stereo setup.  To me, this is the quintessential Neil Young, the Neil Young album that stands above all others.  I'm not alone; for a lot of people, it has maybe the only Neil Young song or songs they know on it.  I went on to other Neil Young albums and enjoyed those a lot, but this is the one I will always come back to. And why not?  It's a lovely album, Young at his most gentle and pure country-folk.  This Young as master songwriter, daring anyone to even come close.  It's a colossal achievement of the form.  Just take a song like the title track.  It's got the gently strummed guitar and piano and the pedal steel all add to the lazy, dreamy feel.  The lyrics are obscure, with typically Neil Young surrealism: ...

  Well, well, well, color me surprised.  Not that this album is number 73 - that's almost certainly exactly where it should be, more on that below, but that it actually was voted number 73 by the same panel of voters who put Plastic Ono Band at number 85.  See, kids?  The system works sometimes! This brilliant tangle of an album blew my fucking mind the first time I heard it.  I wasn't sure what it was, because it sounds more like compressed and intensified raw emotion than music.  I don't even know how to describe it, other than a fever dream set to a squall of guitar and ethereal voices.  I don't think there's any question that this is one of the greatest 100 albums in rock history, and is such an incredible achievement that it's a Third Rail Album that actually deserves to be.  But if I was trying to make an objective list of the 100 greatest albums (which would look quite different from the list we're exploring), I wouldn't be upset if this e...

  Oh dear.  Just as we come to this album, Kanye has once again inserted himself into The Discourse in a most unpleasurable way, first by wearing a "White Lives Matter" t-shirt to Paris Fashion Week (accompanied by wingnut star Candace Owens), then by appearing on Tucker Carlson's White Nationalist Power Hour to express confusion about the whole thing.  There is a lot more stuff, some of it very bad . Kanye has also been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and it's probably safe to say that some or most or all of his very unsettling behavior is attributable to that.  Erica Schwiegershausen wrote a great piece for the Cut about how West's mental illness affects him and our perceptions of him; I encourage you to read it. I'm not sure what my point is here, beyond the fact that I feel sort of uncomfortable just talking about this album and pretending that there isn't all this frankly disturbing shit going on. The last straw I guess was Saturday, when West post...

  Even if you don't particularly care for Aretha Franklin or soul music or even just music in general, this album will still fill your heart with joy and make you happy you lived long enough to hear it.  It is an absolute classic in every sense of the word and it can even warm the heart of a sad, broken-down bastard such as myself.  The only possible downside to this album is that Eric Clapton plays guitar on one track ("Good to Me as I Am to You," probably the most straight-up blues song on the record) but even his noxious presence doesn't dampen its sweetness. This was Ms. Franklin's twelfth  album.  It was recorded, you will not be surprised to learn, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, throughout 1967 and was released on January 22, 1968.  The first song, "Chain of Fools," which you might have heard of, had already been released as a single and gone to number 2 on the Hot 100.  (Number one was "Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)" by John Fred & His...

  Quick confession: I have never seen the film this is the soundtrack to, so I'm at something of a disadvantage.  But I can take this as an artistic statement on its own merits, I feel like.  Like I did Saturday Night Fever and I've only seen parts of that movie.  There are some soundtracks I think that lose something if you haven't seen the movie or play, but even if there was never a movie, this album would still be regarded as one of the best ever. I'm not sure I've ever listened to it all the way through, but I knew a lot of it just through cultural osmosis.  That second song, "Pusherman," is an absolute soul/funk classic, a total jam with that bass groove and those guitar accents and most of all those drums!  The sound is all about the drums.  Tyrone McCullen stepped in for Mayfield's regular drummer, Morris Jennings, who was back in Chicago when this track was recorded in New York.  He works seamlessly with percussionist Henry Gibson to get...

  Swear to God, I'm not trying to be intentionally provocative for clicks, but it's gonna come across like that when I say this album is overrated, a sometimes bore sandwiched between two deadass all-time classics.   The first ATC is, of course, "Baba O'Riley," with its chattering synth background (apparently played on a living room Lowrey TBO-1 organ on the "marimba repeat" setting) and it's soaring, majestic "Don't cry/don't raise your eye/it's only teenage wasteland" crescendo that still gives me chills occasionally.  The song, like most of the rest of the album, was left over from an ill-fated project called Lifehouse that was to be the follow-up rock opera to Tommy , as if the world was just clamoring for more and more rock operas.  Thankfully, that project was abandoned and the band used the leftover songs on this record, recorded from April to June of 1971.  Although the cover is unmistakably juvenile, featuring what app...

  If you look closely you can see exactly where Elvis appropriated rock from black people!  I'm just kidding, you don't have to look hard at all, it's right in the first song, "That's All Right Mama," recorded in 1946 by black blues artist Arthur Crudup.  In 1954, Elvis Presley was in Sun Studios in Memphis with a band called the Blue Moon Boys when, as legend has it, they started messing around with this song between takes and owner Sam Phillips told them to stick with it.  The result is probably the first white person rock and roll record, maybe the first rockabilly record, you get the picture. But the real genius of Presley (and his backing band, especially guitarist Scotty Moore, who probably doesn't get enough credit for being the Buzz Aldrin to Elvis's Neil Armstrong) was the ability to take any song from any genre, run it through the Rockabillificator, and come out with an indisputably Elvis Presley song.  He did it with "Mama," and wi...