Funeral to Finish

  Rock is a house that contains many mansions, but if you're looking for an album that is a perfect example of the genre called "rock and roll" this is probably it.  Bruce Springsteen spent a year and a half on this 39-minute long album and said he wanted it to sound like "Roy Orbison singing Bob Dylan, produced by [Phil] Spector."  Instead he got this album, which sounds like the Ten Commandments of Rock, a sound that would be often imitated but which at the same time is so uniquely Springsteen's as to be immediately recognizable and unduplicatable. The top songs of 1975, when this album came out, were "Love Will Keep Us Together" by Captain & Tenille and "Rhinestone Cowboy" by Glen Campbell and "Philadelphia Freedom" by Elton John and while those are all admirable songs in their own right, they aren't really about  anything.  The lyrics exist only to serve the song.  Springsteen was on some different shit, though.  His...

  You may not see a lot of parallels between Jim Morrison and Biggie Smalls, but both were musical artists who died in the prime of their careers, very young (Morrison was 27, Biggie 24) and by unnatural means.  And both were obsessed with death.  Death as a theme, a willingness to accept and an awareness that it's coming, is shot through this record, Biggie's debut, released in 1994, even beyond the title itself.  From "Everyday Struggle": I don't wanna live no more Sometimes I hear death knockin' at my front door I'm livin' every day like a hustle, another drug to juggle Another day, another struggle (Right) I don't wanna live no more And "Suicidal Thoughts": Suicide's on my fuckin' mind, I wanna leave I swear to God I feel like death is fuckin' callin' me But nah, you wouldn't understand Nigga, talk to me please, man! You see, it's kinda like the crack did to Pookie in New Jack Except when I cross over, there ai...

  I was sitting on the floor of one of my apartments in college listening to this album and someone else in the room was idly looking at the track list and said "What's 'Heroin' about?"  Um.   When I put a spike into my vein And I tell you things aren't quite the same When I'm rushin' on my run And I feel just like Jesus' son And I guess that I just don't know Lou Reed was never afraid to tackle stuff that was absolutely not fit for normal conversation in the late 60s, whether it be the rush of heroin or the rush of BDSM (in "Venus in Furs") or prostitution ("There She Goes Again").  It all came together on this album, absolutely one of the most important albums in the history of rock (more on which later). Almost every song on this is a classic.  "Sunday Morning," the album opener, is in the tradition of Sunday Morning songs, about, as guitarist Sterling Morrison put it, "how you feel when you've been up ...

  That's right.  This was the Big One, the Capo di Tutti Capi, the perennial number one Best Album of All Time until they let people other than old white guys vote.  Here we have Sgt. Pepper's, demoted to a (relatively) lowly 24.  Don't weep for what we've lost; celebrate what we had. I mean, it's a pretty fucking good album!!  It kicks off, of course, with a performance of the titular faux band that Paul McCartney dreamed up on a flight to London, which then leads into an introduction of "the one and only Billy Shears," who turns out to be Ringo Starr, of all people, never a featured singer in the Beatles' lineup, gamely baritoning through "With a Little Help From My Friends," a cheerful pop ditty.   The next song, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," really lifts the curtain on what the band is up to here and what they're up to is doing a lot of acid.  The widespread perception that the song is about the effects of LSD (based in p...

  I'm almost sure my Mom had this album in the 70s, nestled comfortably between the original cast recording of The Pajama Game and Deutsche Grammophon's box set of Beethoven, and even if she didn't, she was certainly in the blast radius for this album, our second consecutive day of an album by a female auteur with a singular vision who produced a groundbreaking album.  But if yesterday's album was a formative document in punk and avant garde, today's is a formative document in easy listening.  I don't particularly love either of them. There is close to a 100% chance you know multiple songs on this album, just from cultural osmosis.  I know I did.  You know "It's Too Late" and "I Feel the Earth Move," the latter song written around the time of the now largely forgotten 1971 San Fernando earthquake, a 6.5 temblor that struck on King's birthday, February 9, and caused significant damage.  King takes the metaphor and runs with it, equati...

  It was probably a conflict of interest for ur-rock critic Lester Bangs to review this album for Creem , a music magazine that existed once and that he famously wrote for, when it came out in 1976, because Bangs and Smith were already friends and Bangs, in fact, had promoted Smith's work.  The review is typically Bangs, wild and free-associative: Which is not to say that there's not musical sophistication working here; it's just that it's gut sophistication, unfaltering instinct rather than the clammily cerebral approach of the old "poetry and jazz" albums.  Horses is a commanding record, as opposed to demanding—you don't have to work to "understand" or like it, but you can't ignore it either; it refuses to be background music, stops the action in the room when it's on, and leaves its effects when it's over whether the listeners like it or not. Each song builds with an inexorable seethe, a penchant for lust and risk that shakes you a...

  I had this on in my car the other day and my sister, a white woman of indeterminate age, immediately perked up.  "Wu-Tang, huh?" she said.  "Totally important album.  Foundational." ( As you may recall , my sister has opinions about the seductive powers of 90s hip hop.)  She's absolutely right.  This album hasbecome part of the pantheon, a singular artistic achievement that is (rightfully) regarded as one of the most important hip hop albums, or just albums , of all time. Built on a mashup of samples of classic soul and R&B and sounds lifted from kung-fu movies, the album was unlike anything anyone had ever done before.  Wu-Tang itself was a loose collective of nine or so rappers and DJs, and everyone brought something to the table, but it was RZA (nee Robert Diggs) who presided over the production and shaped the sound. "C.R.E.A.M.," an instant classic, is a prime example of what's going on here.  Built on top of an obscure soul sample (...