Uughk.. This isn't what I signed-up for. I'm going through a very pop phase and rock is boring and grossing me out lately, but - present head space aside - this blows.

I'm just fifteen minutes into Shake Your Money Maker and I'm ready to call it: Unremarkable rock. Save your time and just go straight to the source by playing the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed.

Now, excuse me - I have another half an hour of that straining, back-of-the-throat yelling to suffer through. Jesus. 

I remember reading some review or artwork or something in which the author reeled off each shard of Bob Dylan factoid they had buried in their consciousness: Zimmerman, Minnesota, Newport Folk Festival, etc.
Before playing this album, my list would've run: 'DK' logo, "Nazi punks fuck off", '80s skater music, Reagan. That last keyword being the key keyword. Funny that I've never listened to DK, know very little about them, and know very little about '80s US politics, but DK and Reagan were still joined at the hip in my mind.
The politicalness may have been what put me off ever giving DK a listen. I'm not huge on politics and I think a lot of the lyrics about issues went over my head, but I was happy to get a few LOLs: "let's lynch the landlord!" and the chorus to Chemical Warfare: "Chemical warfare / chemical warfare / chemical warfare / warfare, warfare!" Yeah! Everybody, all together now!
Dry, trebley, scratchy, tuneful songs. Not bad. I'm going to give it five stars. Out of ten.

I was disappointed by Black Sabbath. I usually find first-of-a-genre albums charming - that cuteness of having some of the sound of the genre they give rise to, but not having the style down yet. Hailed as the first heavy metal album, Black Sabbath has that innocence musically - over-driven riffing guitar, doomy and oppressive production - and I loved it for some of those instrumental parts, but I think I have a problem with Ozzy.

I was introduced to Ozzy as a bumbling, drug-ravaged, shaky, pitiful, shell of a caricature of an aging rocker in his reality TV show, The Osbournes. I assumed that in his younger days, he must've had more vitality and menace - an Alice Cooper/Marilyn Manson-type figure. I can't imagine these lyrics ever sounding as threatening or scary as they're trying to be. And his voice is woefully flat. I'm really surprised that he wasn't a way greater singer and presence.

It's a shame because, like I said, I really liked much of the album when Ozzy wasn't bleating over the top. Liked it quite a lot, actually. I know Ozzy's a huge Beatles fan - Wizard sounds like a heavy metal Can't Buy Me Love. Not just on account of the harmonica, but also the beatiness of it. There's a bunch of really strong, simple songs here. Hopefully I can get over my beef with Ozzy on one of the other couple of Sabbath albums in 1001....

Check this out: Throughout Chicken Shack's four tracks and forty minutes, the organ hurriedly scratches and pecks away at the floor of the soundscape, the saxophone squawks, clucks and cackles, and the guitar and drums contain it all with a rhythm as sure and steady as fence posts and the geometry of chicken-wire.

Yep! Just flexing my critical muscle there with a spot of metaphor. This regime of writing often sure is paying off. Pitchfork will be beating down my door by post #0037/1001, no doubt.

I hadn't heard of Jimmy Smith and started listening to Chicken Shack before reading the ...1001 Albums notes. I assumed that Jimmy must be the saxophonist to have his name on the front of the album because, on the first couple of listens, the sax seemed to be the focus. Lazy listening, perhaps. ...1001 Albums contends that the organ was a churchy and dorky sound before this album and that Jimmy made it cool. I listened with fresh ears and tried to retrain my focus from centering on the sax so closely.

It's a great group performance. Nobody does too much or overstates anything. I might not understand the technicalities of what's happening musically, harmonically, etc., but they're clearly playing with a good understanding of each other and doing as much as they can with the barest elements of the songs.

Chicken Shack has had a lot of air time in my home over the last few days. It's really repeatable. I do love that organ sound. Sounds like it should be the soundtrack for a Ken Burns documentary about southern America in the early '60s: a black and white photo of an old bus full of merry, shining faces pulling out of a highway gas station at night dissolving to a stark and affronting images of separate White/Coloured water fountains. 

A fellow journeyman on this long and winding 1001 Albums... highway offered his two cents on this record the other day - basically that Blueberry Hill is a fantastic, genius track, but that the rest of the album fails to match it. I think I'm the victim of some re-release tracklist-jumbling jabberwocky because the version of This Is Fats that I've been listening to doesn't even include Blueberry Hill. I've been wronged!

I'm not going to go into specifics of songs because I think I should track down the legit version, but I can say that I wasn't thrilled by this (shadow of an) album. That might be down to my expectations going in, though. I was anticipating a raucous and wild honky-tonk rock-out. I'm not sure where I got that idea - it's totally not Fats. Fats peddles a jazz/R'n'B sound, more subtle and sophisticated than straight ahead rock. There's a few special tracks here, but the majority of the album felt mediocre and didn't impress. Most tracks sounded like standards done in a standard way.

The great tracks had a propulsive beat, lively piano, bursting brass and - how to put this? - a rich, thick, syrupy mise en scène. Know what I mean? A warm, whole sound. Nice. I love Fats's voice on the stronger tracks. He has a great accent and bends and twists his pronunciation quite strangely at times in service to the flow of the lyrics.

I really want to hear Blueberry Hill now. It's been too long.

I can vouch for this album as being good hangover music. Please excuse me as I curl up and regret. 

I've really enjoyed revisiting The La's. It had been a while. I first heard it years ago when I was tracing the lineage of my favourite bands who always cited this album as an influence - N. Gallagher famously stated that Oasis's modus operandi was to "finish what the La's started." I think that I just appreciated The La's as a footnote to the albums that I properly loved back then. Funny then that nowadays, I'd much rather spin this than anything by Oasis, Libertines, et al.

I used to have beef with some of the lyrics. I thought they were too earnest or simplistic or something. "Run, rabbit, run / Run into the sun." I'm fine with them now. I find the self-seriousness that used to bother me charming. I love all the nautical references in the lyrics sprinkled throughout the album. Sort of loosely ties it all together, thematically.

There She Goes is the hit, of course. I don't really think it's representational of the album, though. There's not much jangly guitar and cooing harmonies on the rest of the album. The other songs are split between uptempo skiffley/R'n'B jams and slower, strummy laments. I've been really cranking this album this week and have been surprised by it being much rockier than I remembered.

In any account of this album, one can't not mention Lee Mavers' perfectionism and the fact that The La's was released despite his dissatisfaction after a few attempts at recording with a number of producers to capture the sound he envisaged. Apparently the Deluxe Edition has another mix that he was happier with. I'm curious to hear that. I think I remember reading that he wanted mics put under the floor of a shack and to just bash the album out live. Amazing. Anyway, the album sounds great as is, so he's trippin'.

The La's were the first thing I heard on the radio when I landed in London - "sail away on the airwaves..." Good times.  (I'm too scared to google and check whether I'm correct in half remembering that The La's reformed a while ago. Maybe even did a Don't Look Back-style, play-the-whole-album gig. I fucking hope not. Hey, bands: STOP.)

An eight track mix of songs from posts 0009-0017. (I streamed The Shamen's En-Tact and don't have any files to upload from it, sorry.) Miriam Makeba, Elvis Presley, Dexy's Midnight Runners, Air, the Louvin Brothers, AC/DC, Derek And The Dominoes (vom!), Miles Davis. The mix is here if the embed above doesn't float your boat.

 

Perfect.

Trash. Noise. Reverb. Loud. Snarl. Sleaze. Frenzied. Ugh. Shlock. Chainsaw. Zombies. Vampires. Eyeballs. Attitude. Mars. Treble. Jungle. Swampy. Television. B-grade. Snaking. Snakes. Dumb. Genius. Motorcycle. Beat. Surf. Cute. Punk. Squeal. Scream. Junk. Funny. Schizoid. Louie. Dead. Undead. Sex. Drugs. Boom. Bang. Scrape. Echo. Distorted. Teenage. Sunglasses. Leather. Slime. Stink. Scars. Thunderous. Howl. Hammering. Grinding. Stuttering. Shouting. Hollering. Stomping. Hallelujah. Heartbeat. Primal. Mean. Cool. Tearing. Blues. Bruised. Broken. Violent. Swinging. Droning. Doom. Dirty. Filthy. Dripping. Riffing. Dance. Clammy. Cluttering. Mad. Groove. Jiving. Jumping. Garage. Lux. Fever. Werewolf. Poison. Aaargh. UFOs. Mystery. Piercing. Puncturing. Disease. Fever.

Rock. And. Roll.

 

Confucius says: A quick post is a good post.

Mercifully (and uncharacteristically), my listening itinerary is a few days ahead of my Dying Daily 1001 post schedule at the moment, so I've had a few days to stew on this album. I had very high hopes to start with. There's a few gems of tracks here. I was certain that I'd unearthed some amazing work that had somehow eluded me through all the other Greatest Album lists I'd poured over before. Every time I put it on, my girlfriend's ears would prick up and she'd immediately ask, "Cool. Who is this again?" The problem is that it's a very front-loaded album.

The whole album runs the gauntlet of music styles - straight-out rock, folkiness, Moog-weirdness, jazziness, '70ness - but I'd argue that they ticked all these boxes within the first four or five tracks. The second half of the album seemed to go over old ground. The thirty-nine minutes of this album seem to take a lot longer to pass than thirty-nine minutes. Not that I'm adverse to longer, reflective, immersive, let-it-roll albums - it just doesn't feel like I'm getting anything more for my attention during the second half of the album than I was offered during the first. It may be a track-listing issue that I have beef with.

There's some fine musicianship and interesting production tricks on show. I hope my missus demands that this album gets some more spins in this home in the future. But for the time being, as Confucius says: Daddy has some drinking to do.