"All that is old and already formed can continue to live only if it allows within itself the conditions of a new beginning."
101 Albums You
Must Hear ... Part 4Posted 2:51 p.m., Jan. 3, 2007
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The fourth of four parts.
Finally. No excuses, no explanations. The thing is done. Thanks to those of you who kept asking me to finish this project. Here you have it. Sorry I didn't get it out in time for Christmas, when it might have been useful. Still, there's always 2007.
Anyway, here is the final batch, Nos. 76-101 of the 101 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. If any of you actually did die waiting for me to get off my duff and finish the job, well, please don't do anything rash in the afterlife.
76.) "Dark Side of the Moon," Pink Floyd (1973). Honestly, I wasn't going to include this record on my list. Blame Johnny Rotten and his "I Hate Pink Floyd" t-shirt. (You're sort of not supposed to like Pink Floyd, you know, if you're cool and all.) But I've been teaching myself a bit of piano lately, and one tune I keep coming back to as I practice chording is the chilling centerpiece of this album, "The Great Gig in the Sky," a funereal instrumental marked by Rick Wright's stately piano, David Gilmore's languid lap steel and a wordless, mournful wail by session vocalist Claire Torry. With that song living in my head, I had to revisit the record (on vinyl, as nature intended). Now, I have no choice but to acknowledge the obvious.
It's been played to death on FM radio, yes. It's probably overrated at some level. But "Dark Side of the Moon" ultimately belongs on any critic's list of greatest recordings of the 20th century. Thirty-three years after its release, Pink Floyd's magnum opus remains a high-water mark of studio production wizardry, despite arriving a decade ahead of the digital era. More crucial than that, however, this batch of songs represents one of the most fertile bursts of creativity by any self-contained musical unit in the LP era. It also heralded the arrival of Roger Waters as the group's cynical mastermind, ever troubled by the memory of his brain-damaged former band leader, Syd Barrett. In fact, "Dark Side" was a seismic shift in the Pink Floyd approach. Gone is the reckless Barrett-era psychedelia of "Careful With That Axe, Eugene," and "Astronome Domine," along with the band's obsessions about outer space and psychotropic exploration. In a sense, "Dark Side" describes the inevitable hangover after those drug-immersed early years. In the place of the freewheeling experimentation of albums like "Ummagumma" and "Saucerful of Secrets" was left a new diamond-hard classic rock, and a new Barrett-inspired lyrical obsession: the innerscapes of lunacy and dissipation. A measure of this album's greatness is that, because of the sheer context of its songs, the scholarly sounding non sequitur narration that closes the record ("There is no dark side of the moon, really—as a matter of fact, it's all dark") raises not the listener's eyebrows, but the hairs on the back of her neck. Vital.
77.) "With the Beatles," The Beatles (1963). Kurt Vonnegut once gave a speech during which he complained that art is tepid stuff—he had discovered, for example, that its power to catalyze social change is an embarrassingly weak force. But art is valuable, he continued—it can sometimes make people a little gladder to be alive. Someone rose with a question: Has any artist actually accomplished even that? Said Vonnegut, "The Beatles did." As regards the Beatles manifest on this recording—the midwife of Beatlemania—the Vonnegut theory is confirmed, even if these particular performances have sounded uniformly wooden in the CD era. (Dear Capitol/EMI: How about a proper, single-disc SACD re-master to replace those lousy 1987-vintage digital transfers you keep relying on?) To hear the full force of these songs, one needs to find the original mono LP—if a copy can be found that's still in decent shape. Short of that, we're left with this digital version, and even if it sounds like it's being played through a boombox stuffed behind a locked outhouse door, it's great stuff.
The Beatles had already put out one record by the time this album arrived (trivia note: its Nov. 22, 1963, U.K. release date coincided with the assassination of President Kennedy—sales, apparently, were unaffected). This one shares some characteristics with the Beatles' early '63 debut, "Please Please Me," mainly in the inclusion of various girl-group covers and late '50s rockers. But "With the Beatles" (released in the U.S. in slightly different form as "Meet the Beatles" in early '64) demonstrated that the Fabs had very rapidly blossomed into the act that would dominate popular culture by the time the final credits rolled on the film "A Hard Day's Night." Because this album was a kind of launching pad for so much of what would happen in subsequent years, it's relatively easy to overlook the magnificence of "With the Beatles." But consider this: What other group on the planet ever held such a treasure trove of mega-hit singles in storage that it would be forced, as were the Beatles, to relegate a timeless, obvious smash hit song like "All My Loving" to second-tier, album-track status? Unfathomable. No wonder the competition quivered.
Among the other tracks, John Lennon's impassioned "All I've Got to Do" remains a heart-stopper, while the invigorating "It Won't Be Long" is the greatest kick-off track of the British Invasion. Even George Harrison, whose subsequent offerings—up to the release of "Revolver" anyway—would suffer from benign neglect at the hands of the Lennon-McCartney axis, presents his first composition here, the brooding "Don't Bother Me," and it's a minor-chord monster replete with an unhinged guitar lead worthy of Dave Davies. The Beatles also render the definitive reading of Smokey Robinson's "You've Really Got a Hold on Me." Even lesser songs like "The Devil in Her Heart," have an almost unbearable charm. Had the Beatles split after this release, they still would be remembered as pop giants. That they had so much more left to offer afterward is one of the miracles in the annals of mankind. (And you still don't believe in God?)
78.) "Purple Rain," Prince (1984). It's a mighty close call between this album and his Purple Majesty's "Sign O' the Times," the 1987 album that contains Prince's two greatest songs ("Sign O' The Times" and "The Cross"). But where "Sign O' The Times" is a sprawling mess in the tradition of "The White Album" and "London Calling," "Purple Rain" is tight as a drum, a set of songs and arrangements intentionally built to make Prince a star. It succeeded like clockwork.
Ostensibly the soundtrack to the acclaimed, semi-autobiographical movie of the same name, there is nothing incidental or out of context about "Purple Rain." Everything Prince had done up to this point, including the previous year's "1999" turned out to be an apprenticeship for this moment, and Prince capitalized. Here he puts all the elements in his arsenal together expertly. The R&B and funk elements are sharp as ever, but the New Wave rock sensibilities that he tinkered with on 1982's "Dirty Mind" are fleshed out here to stadium rock dimensions, with Hendrixian classic-rock guitars and muscular, Zepplinesque drum patterns. And Prince obviously was listening to George Clinton's "Computer Games," as he all but replicates the Atomic Dog's peculiarly rigid but appealing digital funk grooves.
What is most fascinating about "Purple Rain," however, is the way Prince melds reckless experimentation with laser-sharp commercial acuity, succeeding at a level that had not been seen since Brian Wilson pasted together the disparate elements of "Good Vibrations." The minimalist funk of "When Doves Cry" is still an electrifying and unreplicated achievement, while "Take Me With You" sports an almost confectionary melody, but more natural here than the too-sweet psychedelia of his later "Around the World in a Day." "Computer Blue" is a wonder of early digital production, while "Let's Go Crazy" lives up to its title with Prince's spitfire guitar solo in the track's closing moments. The song that grabbed the masses, however, was perhaps the most moving of all Prince songs, the scorching, bluesy title track. With its gut-wrenching vocal and impassioned guitar pyrotechnics, this song, more than any other, is the one that ensures Prince his place among the immortals.
79.) "By All Means Necessary," Boogie Down Productions (1988). I was a 23-year-old record store clerk in San Diego when this album debuted, and I must tell you, its cover shot—rapper KRS One posed to resemble a famous photo of an assault-rifle-toting Malcolm X—threw me. Every time I saw another 13-year-old black kid put his money down to walk out of the store with a copy of this tape in hand, I held my breath. Just goes to show, contempt prior to investigation is the path to enduring ignorance—or something like that. Twenty-two years later, having absorbed the contents of this package, if I could, I'd go back in time and hand out free copies.
Rapper KRS One's greatest record is a call to arms—in the cause of peace on the streets. KRS One's partner, DJ Scott LaRock, who played a key role on the previous year's ethically ambiguous "Criminal Minded" got murdered shortly before this recording was made, and LaRock's memory permeates the socially conscious "By All Means Necessary." KRS One, profoundly affected by LaRock's slaying, here recasts himself as "The Teacher," issuing such sermons as "My Philosophy" and "Stop the Violence." ("When you're in a club you just come to chill out / not watch someone's blood just spill out / that's what these other people want to see / another race fight endlessly.") There's also a dose of gleeful humor in "Jimmy," a jam that playfully lauds the use of condoms and safe sex in the fight against AIDS. ("Now, in winter AIDS attacks / so go out and get your Jimmy hat.")
The example set by KRS One—tough, street-smart, wary but keenly aware, condemning bloodshed—was largely ignored as gangsta rap rose to prominence at the turn of the decade. Yet, many of the warnings issued on "By All Means Necessary" continue to reverberate. KRS One would grow more preachy later on, and lose some of his clout as a result, but no one can take from him the triumph of "By All Means Necessary," an album that retains its place at the pinnacle of the hip-hop movement.
80.) "This Year's Model," Elvis Costello (1978). It's 1978. Punk rock is in full swing, and the nerdy, wordy young Liverpudlian with the beastly pair of Buddy Holly glasses has one album under his belt, ready to unleash another. On this, his second and arguably greatest recording, Costello ditches the earthy pub rock sound of his original backing band, Clover, for the leaner, hungrier, angrier New Wave trappings of the Attractions. The combination is pure musical nitroglycerin, resulting in one of the most venomous and dynamic recordings of the rock era.
The marketing of "This Year's Girl" lumped it together with punk (much as were, more inexplicably, Tom Petty's early records). But musically this album is far too varied and accomplished to wear the punk moniker proudly. Doesn't matter. If the colonial fire-and-brimstone preacher Jonathan Edwards had set his sermons to music, they might have sounded like this—except that Costello's rage and condemnation sounds, for the most part on "This Year's Girl," directed inward. (Though womankind in general comes in for quite a verbal lashing.)
The main thing that separates "This Year's Model" from the equally cynical "My Aim is True" is sheer velocity, courtesy of his new backing band. The violent imagery of "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea" might allude to a mental institution as it clatters by on a 90-mph descending bassline, surf-style guitar riff and hyperkinetic ska beat, which together somehow manage to sound claustorophobic. "This Year's Girl" is just about as wicked a depiction of the war of the sexes as Costello ever conjured ("You want her broken with her mouth wide open / cuz she's this year's girl.") while "Pump it Up" is probably the hardest rocking tribute to onanism in rock history. The record's peak achievement, "Lipstick Vogue," positively careens by as Elvis spits out such menacing lines as "sometimes I think that love is just a tumor / and you've got to cut it out." Because he would later find outlet for his restlessness in genre exploration and obtuse lyrical meandering, Costello never again made a record quite this brilliant, or fashioned an aural assault quite this savage.
81.) "Tecnicolor," Os Mutantes (2000). Those in the know about Os Mutantes, heroes of the Brazil's late '60s psychedelic Tropicalista movement, will quibble about this choice. The trio's first album, 1968's "Os Mutantes" is generally considered its indelible statement, and indeed, that one is a terrific record, a wilder, more guitar-oriented and even more experimental take on the musical terrain that American art-rock groups like The United States of America were exploring around the same time. However, recorded as it was with homemade pedal effects, recording gear, and in some cases even instruments (legend has it the band used tin cans for cymbals), the sound of "Os Mutantes," heard by modern ears, can grate a bit. If you want an endlessly listenable, not to mention fun South American take on psychedelic rock that is both beautifully performed and exquisitely recorded, "Tecnicolor" is the better entry point.
Perhaps hoping finally to tap into the American and British rock markets, the trio recorded this album in 1970 in a top-notch Paris studio, refashioning some of the best songs from their previous three albums with new arrangements and English lyrics. For some reason, however, the Philips music label declined to release it at the time, and "Tecnicolor" sat on the shelf until 2000, when Universal Music finally unearthed and issued it. It's hard to imagine that this wouldn't have been a breakthrough for the group had it been released at a point in time when lesser lights like Carlos Santana were popularizing Latin rhythms and instrumentation.
"Technicolor," recorded just two years after the debut, shows Os Mutantes having made gigantic strides as musicians, effortlessly blending rock and folk guitar with elements from French pastoral pop, bossa nova, musique concrete and their own smiling brand of Dadaism. Many of the band's greatest songs are here. "Panis et Circenses" loses some of the more manic and jarring found-sound elements of the original version (and no mid-song tea break), revealing it to be rather beautiful in its unadorned state. Likewise, "Bat Macumba" is stripped of its mic-overloading guitar squall, and augmented with a bass line straight out of the Soweto, South Africa, ghetto topped by addictive Brazilian percussion and Rita Lee's sexy moaned vocals. When the guitar lead arrives, it's an Hendrixian freakout. The real treat is "El Justiceiro," a sun-baked Wild West saga—in Portuguese—that plays a little like Marty Robbins on acid. "Technicolor" finds Os Mutantes as adventurous as ever, but more accomplished and more alluring than on their ground-breaking early works. Check it out quickly, before it goes out of print.
82.) "Phil Ochs In Concert," Phil Ochs (1966). Turns out that this is not really the live show it purports to be. Ochs, who played perpetual second fiddle to Dylan in the '60s protest-singer sweepstakes, did indeed perform live in Boston and New York in early 1966, and he did indeed play the songs represented here. But this is not that. Ochs was so nervous trying to perform and record what he hoped was his commercial breakthrough, that he flopped. So what is represented on "In Concert" is the sound of Ochs playing live in a barren concert hall shortly after the actual shows. The sound of audience response from the actual concert was simply edited in, rather expertly, as though someone anticipated this outcome and decided to point a mic their way.
Sounds like all the ingredients of a disaster, and on the commercial front, it was. It scraped the pop album charts, reaching No. 149 on Billboard before billowing away to be heard from no more. I actually picked up my copy of the original LP in an Eau Claire, Wis., record store in 1985, resting lonely and forgotten against a wall under the sign, "Free to a good home." Made me feel a bit like Jack with his magic beans. Dylan's early work aside, "In Concert" is the greatest, most informed, most literate and most intelligent album of the protest folk boom, questionable provenance notwithstanding.
You do, however, have to make allowances for Ochs' idiocy in including a sampling of Mao Tse Tung's poetry on the album's back jacket, above the printed question, "Is this the enemy?" (Uh yeah, Phil. Seventy-two million slaughtered Chinese nationals? Actually…) Regardless, "In Concert" contains some of Och's most ambitious, acidic and novelistically evocative political statements. "Cops of the World," "Santo Domingo" and "Bracero" play like Graham Green story sketches set to music. Always skeptical, even of the late '60s political movement and drug culture that championed him, Ochs boldly lambasts his fan base with "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" ("I love Puerto Ricans and negroes / As long as they don't move in next door / Love me, love me, love me / I'm a liberal."). The sharpest attack, however, is saved for "The Canons of Christianity," a blistering critique of organized religion that condemns the Catholic Church for manipulating its followers in the interest of power, goading them to "fear all of eternity." "Holy hands will count the money raised; / like a king the Lord is richly praised," Ochs spits. Also present is Ochs' first pure love song, the bittersweet "Changes," and "There But For Fortune," which became a hit when recorded by Joan Baez. Ochs would write some superior songs before the well ran dry much too early, but he never put together a richer, more bracingly unified or relevant set of songs.
83.) "Lifes Rich Pagent," R.E.M. (1986). This, the fourth album from Michael Stipe and the gang from Athens, Ga., finally proved that R.E.M. could flat out rock. The first three albums in the band's canon ("Murmur," "Reckoning" and "Fables of the Reconstruction") swam in a sort of psychedelic folk-rock channel ("Fables" being a bit creepier than the others). Here R.E.M. veers closer to a classic-rock sound with far more prominent bass and drums than had ever before been the case, though the record retains enough sharp bristles and poetic density to keep the college radio crowd happy, and Def Lepperd fans at bay. There is here a sense of clarity, a sense of purpose as musical communicators that the band's previous records lacked, a quality that pointed the way to the mega-hit breakthrough of "Document." which conquered MTV in 1987.
"Lifes Rich Pageant" contains arguably R.E.M.'s best batch of '80s vintage songs. The obtuse environmental anthem "Fall on Me" makes virtually no sense lyrically, yet with the sweep of its melody, its ardent beat and Stipe's earnest vocal, the song spirals toward a kind of spiritual climax. Possibly the band's finest moment. The album opening one-two punch of "Begin the Begin" and "These Days" gave R.E.M. the hardest-charging pair of songs the band had ever cut to that point, with a snarling, fuzzy guitar riffs from Pete Buck signaling that R.E.M.'s jingle-jangle days were fast coming to a close. "The Flowers of Guatemala" is a lovely, mysterious ballad, while "Swan Swan H" reprises the Civil War balladry of the "Fables" album. And to finish it off, there is a moment of pure, the whimsical charm of the loser's manifesto, "Superman," which sports a perfectly whiny vocal turn from bassist Mike Mills. A bit messy, perhaps a bit incoherent, but no other album R.E.M. is quite so purely enjoyable.
84.) "Pink Moon," Nick Drake (1972). The third and final album released during the short unhappy life of Nick Drake, this is the one upon which his cult legend rests. His friend, the fiery English folk singer John Martyn, described Drake as "the most withdrawn person I've ever met," and this is his most withdrawn album. Which is to take nothing away from it. There is a desolate, slightly creepy beauty to "Pink Moon" that has rarely been duplicated by anyone. Sadly, much as had happened to Phil Ochs two years earlier, the muse seems to have left Drake after he finished this abbreviated album. While he would lay down four more tracks in his lifetime, he would never come close to finishing another album, and within two years, he would be gone, victim of an overdose of antidepressants.
"Know," one of the most remarkable recordings of Drake's career, is also one of the sparsest recordings anyone has ever made. The lyric contains just 18 mournful words, and Drake—one of the most brilliant acoustic guitarists of the early '70s British folk boom—accompanies himself with on a single guitar string, playing a naked four-note figure. His guitar prowess shines, however, on the astonishing "Things Behind the Sun," in which an anguished Drake warns his listeners to "beware of them that stare" because "they only smile to see you while your time away." "Parasite," despite its singsong melody, breathy Donovan-styled vocal and chiming guitar, is a study in depression. "Take a look, you may see me in the dirt," Drake sings, his voice almost a whisper, "for I am the parasite who hangs from your skirt." The meditative, yet vaguely apocalyptic title track gained fame some 30 years after its release when it was featured in a Volkswagen commercial, finally putting Drake in the spotlight that, despite his intense introspection, he so badly craved.
Though he died virtually unknown, Drake has passed into the ranks of rock's cult heroes, along with the likes of Syd Barrett and Judee Sill, who continue to influence the rock underground. This album is the primary reason for the alternative pop culture's continuing fascination with this fragile but immensely talented singer-songwriter.
85.) "The Eminem Show," Eminem (2002). "You know things are screwed up with America," Charles Barkley once said, "when the best rapper is white and the best golfer is black." No argument here, and with "The Eminem Show," rapper Marshall Mathers (a.k.a. Eminem) does his best to render Barkley's point irrefutable. By turns riveting and repulsive, Eminem pushes his music farther into rock terrain than ever before with an astonishing production that is every bit as fascinating for the details in its sonic background as for anything that is happening up front.
Eminem's schtick has always been to leave ambiguous the question of whether he is serious or whether he is simply toying with his audience. It's a routine that inevitably wore thin, but he sustains interest in this record by presenting it with a new twist—open rebellion against the record industry and audience that made him. He is also more overtly political than ever before. In "White America" ("the divided states of embarrassment") he boasts of his status as a spokesman for his young suburban fans, even while complaining about the price their worship extracts: "They connected with me, too, because I looked like them / that's why they put my lyrics up under this microscope, searchin' with a fine tooth comb / it's like this rope waitin' to choke / tightening around my throat."
"Cleaning Out My Closet" sounds like the rapper's most honest, and most angst-ridden statement yet, veering back and forth between saluting his mother and condemning her ("my whole life I was made to believe I was sick when I wasn't"). In "Sing for the Moment" he hammers home the record's overarching theme: "These ideas are nightmares to white parents / Whose worst fear is a child with dyed hair and who likes earrings / Like whatever they say has no bearing. / It's so scary in a house that allows no swearing."
This is a striking, confrontational and emotionally searing work that gets demerits—and thus a lower place on this list—for the sexual sickstravaganza that is "Drips" and the ultra-violent between-song "skits" that, to these White American ears, are a complete turn-off. But there is no denying the artistry of Eminem, and the record's strengths outshine its blemishes. Barkley is right, about both Tiger and Eminem. Both are the best at what they do.
86.) "War," U2 (1983). The album that proved to the non-collectivist, disenfranchised MTV generation that political rock still has the power to stir an audience. By scaling back the bluster, but not the passion of the band's first two albums, U2 honed its attack on "War" to razor sharpness. As a result, the masses on both sides of the Atlantic went along for the ride.
"War," as a document is inseparable from "the troubles" of Ireland that saw Protestants violently pitted against Catholics for decades. The storming, martial "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" makes the connection explicit, taking as its theme the Jan. 30, 1972, assault by British paratroopers on a group of unarmed civilian demonstrators that left 13 dead. The soaring "New Years Day" is less explicit, but deals with themes of love and spirituality in a time of war. (Bono has said the song was inspired by the internment of Poland's Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, during which he was separated from his wife.) "40" is a simplified adaptation of biblical verse from Psalm 40, but in the context of the album powerfully suggests the irony of people commiting murder in the name of God. Even the album's most overt love song, "Two Hearts Beat As One," bristles with desperation, as though Bono is actually singing about the tragic divisions between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
Musically, "War" is the birthplace of The Edge's dinstinctive "helicopter guitar" sound, and contains standout performances by drummer Larry Mullen Jr. and bassist Adam Clayton. The U2 sound, and the U2 image gelled here. The band would continue to maintain an exceedingly high standard on its subsequent recordings, but as its essential and enduring statement of purpose, "War" remains the band's high-water mark.
87.) "Who's Next," The Who (1971). The band that had hoped it would die before it got old reached maturity with this release. "Who's Next," for many fans the apex of the band's output, is a remarkably cohesive statement considering its origins. Chief songwriter and guitarist Pete Townshend had been cooking up an ambitious multimedia follow-up to the band's starmaking "Tommy," tentatively titled "Lifehouse." The project, a dystopian fantasy set in a polluted futuristic world, was to be a package that included a film, concert series and album, but after Townshed assembled some 40 demo songs for the project, for various reasons it simply collapsed. The Who rallied and settled on a single-disk album, resulting in "Who's Next."
Some of the key "Lifehouse" songs made it onto the record, notably "The Song is Over," "Baba O'Reilly" and "Love Ain't for Keeping." Other key tunes were left off, and Townshend and bassist John Entwistle contributed others intended specifically for this album. It should have been a hodgepodge. Instead "Who's Next" proved a giant stride forward for the group. Though this was the point at which the band seems to have lost its sense of humor (only Entwistle's "My Wife" retains any of the band's old satiric edge), this was the point at which Townshend began to write about adult relationships with a perceptiveness never before apparent in his writing. Still, while there is an element of calm serenity that is new to the Who, the group sacrificed none of its raging power—it merely apportioned it out more judiciously. The two key tracks, the outlaw anthem "Behind Blue Eyes" and especially the hippy kiss-off "Won't Get Fooled Again" show the band at peak hard-rocking form, with the latter song in particular ranking among the most thrilling rock performances ever recorded.
88.) "Heart Food," Judee Sill (1973). Heart stopping. This is the finest work of Sill's brief career. She looked and sounded like a long-haired librarian, but Judee Sill in fact was one of rock's genuine outlaws: Tramping around the Hollywood underground scene of the mid-1960s as a semi-pro jazz player in her 20s, Sill put in time as a junkie, prostitute, armed robber and prisoner before turning full-time and fruitfully to music. (Indeed, her story would not end happily.)
Her highly poetic, spiritually obsessed work, squarely rooted in the early '70s singer-songwriter tradition, is the music of the spheres. "Heart Food" is Sill's sophomore outing. Her countrified, self-titled debut, which also was the inaugural release of David Geffen's Asylum record label, had gone nowhere commercially, despite the presence of her song, "Lady-O," previously a small hit for the Turtles, as well as "Jesus Was a Cross-Maker," which was covered by the Hollies. "Heart Food" would do no better commercially, but as a musical achievement it is light years beyond her also-essential debut.
Having played piano in a junior college orchestra, Sill was schooled in classical music. For this project, she took it upon herself to produce the sessions and score the gorgeous orchestral accompaniments. The results turned out to have more to do with Mahler and Bach than Joni Mitchell; thus, the frequent Brian Wilson comparisons. XTC's Andy Partridge goes so far as to say it was Sill, not Wilson who has most influenced his own ornate arrangements. "They are some of the most achingly beautiful melodies and chord structures I have ever heard," he has said. "And I'd even say that ‘The Kiss’ is the most beautiful song ever recorded." That stunning song can be found here.
One thing "Heart Food" has in common with the debut is a peculiar fixation with Jesus Christ as a romantic, heroic, even a sexual figure—a kind of spiritual Clint Eastwood. The solo, hymnlike "When the Bridegroom Comes" is explicitly religious, and explicitly sensual. "Hear the bride and the spirit say 'Come.' / And won't you who are weary invite in the Son? / When your heart's love is high / won't you hasten to the place where the hour is nigh? / And see that your light is on. / For the bridegroom comes." By the time album's penultimate song, "The Donor" melts into an exhultant "Kyrie Eleison" you may wonder whether the second coming has already been and gone in the form of this tragic California songstress. Sill would live only six more years after this album—a car crash soon after laid her up and left her with chronic back pain, rekindling a dormant herion habit. She never released another album in her lifetime. What we are left with, then, is the wonder of this ecstatic work.
89.) "Houses of the Holy," Led Zeppelin (1973). Ah, the good old days, when a rock record could be recklessly eclectic and still reach No. 1 on the Billboard charts. If the records of so many of today's successful acts contain about as much variety and surprise as a trip Burger King, in the heyday of the Zep, it just was not that way. And "Houses of the Holy" was about as wildly eclectic as this band ever got.
There is nothing here as God-like (or pompous) as Led Zepplin IV's "Rock and Roll" nor as thunderous as "When the Levee Breaks." And there are no earth-stopping anthems on the scale of "Stairway to Heaven," either. What can be found in "Houses of the Holy" is a kind of unbridled, yet simultaneously relaxed creativity. With the release of "IV" two years earlier, this band attained God of Thunder status. With this belated follow-up, they demonstrated they were so comfortable as a band living in that skin that they felt no need to repeat the formula. Which is pretty impressive.
So instead of "Misty Mountain Hop," we get "Song Remains the Same," with its insistently chimey, McGuinn-styled guitar lick counterbalanced by Robert Plant's languid vocal delivery. Instead of the mythic "Battle of Evermore," we get the romping reggae of "D'yer Maker." Instead of "Levee" we get "The Crunge," with a bevy of funk tricks pulled straight out of the James Brown playbook. "Dancing Days" has one of Jimmy Pages greatest, most dizzying circular guitar licks, punctuated by one of John Bonham's tightest, most thundering drum parts. "No Quarter," the band's one nod to it's myth-making past, is filled with anxious tension, augmented by John Paul Jones' gloomy electric piano and Page's exceptional guitar figure. As emotionally varied as it is musically eclectic, this record vies with "Led Zeppelin III" as the least appreciated of this great band's great albums.
90.) "Out to Lunch," Eric Dolphy (1961). The great avant-garde jazz record of the '60s, Coltrane's output notwithstanding. This music is a miracle of accessible atonality; even as its time signatures shift, its woodwinds squall and its vibes chord away aimlessly, it all comes together to comprise an absorbing whole. Certainly this is not music for all tastes, but one does not have to be a free jazz aficionado to understand or enjoy "Out to Lunch." This is music on the fringes, driven by an almost childlike curiosity, that nonetheless invites the listener in on the secret—or the joke, whichever it is. No matter, it's brilliant.
Dolphy, the consummate jazz multi-instrumentalist of his day, had a sadly brief career; within two years of this date he would be dead from undiagnosed diabetes. This then, is his key statement. "Hat and Beard" is a strange, vibes-propelled tribute to Thelonius Monk. "Something Sweet, Something Tender," with its spiraling sax solo and scratchy bowed bass has a far more foreboding feel than its title implies. "Out to Lunch" is vaguely martial, punctuated by Bobby Hutcherson's unpredictable, stabbing vibraphone chords. And the closer, "Straight Up and Down" swings like nothing you've ever heard before. It may be a bit like going on an exploring expedition with the Mad Hatter, but as long as you come back home in one piece, what could be more fun?
91.) "The Gilded Palace of Sin," The Flying Burrito Brothers (1969). Though it barely brushed the album charts (peaking at #164 in Billboard), this record from the band formed by ex-Byrds Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons proved to be one of the seminal works of the rock era. It almost single-handedly invented the country-rock trend that would bring the Eagles to prominence. Even more than that, it reshaped all of country music so that, today, most country music is little more than lame southern-fried roots rock with a Lefty Frizell drawl. That may not be the greatest of outcomes, and it certainly wasn't the intent. No matter. "Gilded Palace" is pure gold.
That's largely because of Parsons, who had served his apprenticeship with the International Submarine Band and the Byrds. In both those cases, the country music was played more or less straight, with a Bakersfield bent. But the Burritos were onto something new, omitting the usual scratchy fiddles and melding guitar-oriented country, rock and R&B forms into something that didn't sound quite like anything else going. It wasn't as cosmic as Mike Nesmith's concurrent output, not quite as steeped in the Muscle Shoals sounds as Elvis Presley's contemporary records, and not as rootsy or muscular as Creedence Clearwater Revival, though like the latter, the Burritos were unafraid to whip out loud, squelching guitars when called for, courtesy of steel player Sneaky Pete Klienow.
What really distinguishes "Gilded Palace" is the way it harnesses the performing talents of Parsons, the Grievous Angel, whose excesses would render him a corpse within five years. His heightened productivity here probably has a lot to do with the presence of Hillman, an old pro who helped pen most of the songs. It's clear from the first few bars of the upbeat leadoff track, "Christine's Tune (The Devil in Disguise)" that this record intends to take both rock music and country music in a new direction. Though a great tune in the she's-gonna-ruin-your-life mold, it merely sets the stage for the devastating "Sin City," a hippy saloon ballad that adopts Louvin Brothers-styled close harmonies and religious preoccupations in a song about an earthquake that destroys Los Angeles. ("This old earthquake is gonna leave me in the poorhouse," Parson and Hillman moan in the chorus.) Other classics "Juanita," "Wheels," the anti-draft song "My Uncle" follow, but nothing compares to the wallop of "Hot Burrito #1." One of the most emotionally naked songs of the late '60s, it also represents the high point of Parsons' art. A country weeper of the highest order, the song lays bare the narrator's shame, anger, envy and continuing obsession with the woman who dumped him ("I'm the one who showed you how to do the things you're doin' now," he sings in a voice that sounds on the verge of tears.) A stunning climax to a pivotal recording.
92.) "Oh, Inverted World," The Shins (2001). Their singer and chief songwriter looks like Kevin Spacey, sings like Brian Wilson and writes like a cleaned-up Syd Barrett. The spirit of '66 permeates these concise, shimmering songs—though the second cut, "One By One All Day" wouldn't have been out of place on "Meat Puppets II." But if this record represents an updated form of psychedelia, it brings two elements to the table—understatement and a sense of serenity—that most psychedelic bands, even during the form's heyday, rarely exhibited. The effect is of a rarified LSD trip, one that renders the user more in control, more focused, more serene. And brevity being the soul of wit, only two of the 11 songs here check in at over four minutes, making it a perfect LP-length program. A very nice touch in the bloated CD age.
Two of this album's songs (the spooky "Caring is Creepy" and the folksy "New Slang") found wider audiences through their inclusion in the movie "Garden State." Both are great songs, but the real nugget here is the inscrutable, strangely placid "Weird Divide." No saying exactly what James Mercer is singing about on this one—the lyrics seem comprised of snapshots of thought, possibly reminiscences about a childhood friend. But those little snatches are exquisitely rendered in the lyrics: "It please me this memory / has swollen with age. / Even time can do / good things to you." And Mercer delivers a spine-tingling vocal here that sounds for all the world like a young, healthy Brian Wilson. Not all is a lazy, reverb-soaked, Leslie-cabinet swirl, however. Several cuts, notably "Know Your Onion!" and "Pressed in a Book" are nice bouncy little garage rockers with terrific melodies.
The Shins updated their sound slightly for the worthy follow-up to this album, "Chutes Too Narrow," and even came up with arguably their greatest gem, the desolate "Pink Bullets." But track for track, "Oh Inverted World" is the stronger outing from one of the most promising bands of the decade.
93.) "Brighten the Corners," Pavement (1997). They were referred to as "the thinking man's Nirvana," and that comparison probably shifted some records, but Pavement really is not derivative of the Seattle grunge guys, though there is some resemblance between the bands on their very earliest singles. In some glorious parallel universe, band leader Steven Malkmus, not Kurt Cobain, has emerged as the undisputed leader of smart '90s alternative rock, and in that wonderful place a whole lot of kids with guitars look to books and paintings instead of smack and the underside of highway bridges for their musical inspirations.
Malkmus and his band may have been deserving of the mantle that Nirvana—all but unwillingly—claimed as its own, but Pavement spent its decade-long career squarely in cult-band oblivion. And they spent that time recklessly exploring the boundaries of angular guitar rock, veering from crashing, chaotic white noise to fractured cut-and-paste melodies that would make Captain Beefheart proud, to gorgeous, almost elegiac pop songs, and then back again, with amazing dexterity. By 1997, however, Malkmus and company were beginning to sand down some of their more jagged angles, while honing their literate lyrical approach. That made "Brighten the Corners" a more accessible and purely entertaining listen than anything that had come before it, resulting in your best first stop on an exploration of this great band's underappreciated catalogue.
There are none of the sonic squalls of Pavement's earlier albums—much of this is actually quite mellow, utilizing a kind of crablike take on the classic rock sound. But Malkmus has sacrificed none of his humorously snotty attitude or bookishness. Many of his lyrics are like lines from a magazine, stripped apart and laid back together randomly like especially sophisticated refrigerator-magnet poems. "From the cheap seats / see us wave to the camera / we took a giant ramrod / and razed the demon settlement," Malkmus blurts on the galloping operner, "Stereo." "And Hi-ho Silver, ride!" he throws in for good measure. Elsewhere, on songs like "Transport is Arranged" and "Type Slowly," Pavement achieves a strange kind of majesty. The single, "Shady Long," is a kind of singalong chant, featuring Malkmus laying a bizarre curse on someone: "You've been chosen / as an extra in the movie adaptation / to the sequel of your life." Or maybe that's his description of parenthood? Who knows?
"Brighten the Corners" is a blessed offering, and when you're done falling in love with it, you can go back and check out the earlier offerings "Wowee Zowee" (1995) "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" (1994) and "Slanted and Enchanted" (1992). You'll want to stick your head in the Pavement on a regular basis.
94.) "Blinking Lights and Other Revelations," Eels (2005). Every year, one half expects to learn that Eels' ersatz leader, Mark Oliver Everett, has finally committed suicide. Such is the frequency with which he mentions the unmentionable in his music. Instead, Eels—the member-rotating band actually is just a nominal front for Everett, more commonly known as "E"—just keeps putting out brilliant records. In this case, truly, musical creativity obviously provides a life-preserving catharsis.
"Blinking Lights" is a dark, mammoth, 33-song avalanche of emotion, not unlike the more terse "Electro-Shock Blues" (1998), but with an important difference. Where "Electro-Shock Blues" was unrelentingly bleak, here E seems to be using his music to come to terms with the tragedies he has endured. (At 19, he discovered the body of his alcoholic father, a famed theoretical physicist. His sister committed suicide in the mid-1990s and he lost his mother later in the decade to cancer, leaving him the only surviving member of his family well before his 40th birthday.) It's all distressing stuff, and some of this is indeed distressing, but this time there seems to be a willful effort to cast a glance toward the bright side.
In "Son of a Bitch," E paints an unsparing portrait of his parents, describing in Polaroid detail a childhood recollection of his abusive father dead drunk and asleep on the floor. However, his grandmother takes him in, comforting him and informing him that he is not a son of a bitch. In "Suicide Life," he wills himself to throw off recurrent visions of self-destruction: "I'll go none too bravely into the night / I'm tired of living the suicide life." In the lovely "I'm Going To Stop Pretending That I Didn't Break Your Heart," he offers solicitude to a cast-off girlfriend, informing her that, at the time they were together, he didn't think enough of himself "to realize that losing me could mean something / like the tears in your eyes." It's not just a confession, it's an acceptance of self-worth and adult responsibility.
The album's key track—which interestingly is not placed at the end of the program—is "Hey, Man (Now You're Really Living)," a buoyant celebration of life in all its aspects, good and bad. "Now you're really giving everything," he sings, for one moment positively ebullient, "and you're really getting all you gave." It turns out to be a momentary respite, as the sadness of songs like "The Stars Shine in the Sky Tonight" and "Things the Grandchildren Should Know" soon reemerges. But there is a palpable sense that an important moment has passed, that key lessons have been learned and that a new, more positive and mature take on life is commencing. With important contributions from such guests as R.E.M's Pete Buck and the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian, and with fascinating detours like the countrified lament "Railroad Man," and the intriguing Civil War pastiche "Dusk: A Peach in the Orchard," this is an intimate, thorny work of dark pop art, polished to a brilliant sheen.
95.) "Shoot out the Lights," Richard and Linda Thompson (1981). Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" is considered rock's great chronicle-of-a-breakup album, and its status is unchallenged. But if Dylan had never gotten around to recording that one, the case for Richard and Linda Thompson's potent "Shoot Out the Lights" album would be a strong one. Written by Richard Thompson with vocal chores split between the husband and wife team, the album has a to-the-point lyrical directness and musical tautness that even "Blood on the Tracks" lacks.
The album's cover tells much of the story. Shot at a point when the couple had already split, it depicts a laughing Richard Thompson collapsed in the corner of a dirty room that he apparently has just finished trashing—even ripping up the wallpaper. A bare lightbulb swings overhead. Linda is nowhere to be found, except in the publicity photo that someone has tacked to the wall above her estranged husband's head.
The irony is that these songs were written several years earlier, for a series of 1979 sessions with producer Gerry Rafferty that never came off, and so it was not intended as the diary of an impending divorce. The songs Richard Thompson had been writing for the duo, going all the way back to their fabulous 1974 debut ("I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight") tended to be doomy and dour. But it is impossible to deny the pall of anger, regret and tension that hangs over these tracks. The storming title track, which features some stellar guitar fireworks from Richard Thompson, apparently is not even about relationships, but about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. If so, the lyrics are elliptical enough to leave room for many readings—all of them ominous—and it sits quite snugly here, providing the album's dramatic center. Linda's understated but heart-wrenching alto takes the folksy tunes her husband has written for her ("Walking on a Wire," "Just the Motion," "Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed?") to a higher plane of beauty and pain.
Richard saves the rock-oriented songs for himself. Showcased by Joe Boyd's stripped down, dry production approach, these come across by turns as passionate, pensive, frustrated and angry. The insistent "Don't Renege On Our Love" is delivered with a flinty, wounded stubbornness, while the jaunty "Back Street Slide" is cynical even for Thompson. Remember as you read this little sound bite that even after the breakup, the couple carried on a concert tour and performed these songs in public: "Those backstreet women, watch what you say / You turn your back and they slide away. / They run next door, they give it all away. / Doing the slide." A dark, stirring journey, and one of the most remarkable recordings of the 1980s.
96.) "No Other," Gene Clark (1974). Among the recordings on this list that failed to achieve commercial success, this album is perhaps the most baffling case. Gene Clark had been the least-heralded member of the original Byrds, but in some ways he was the heart and soul of the original group. ("Eight Miles High" was his song, as were such great album tracks and B-sides as "Set You Free This Time," "I Knew I'd Want You" and "Feel A Whole Lot Better.") He set off to go solo in 1966, too afraid of flying to continue the torrid pace of touring with the group. But somehow, despite loads of talent and some fine recordings along the way, both solo and with the Gosdin Brothers, Clark failed to make a dent on his own. Even attempts to rejoin the Byrds bore little fruit.
"No Other," with its tuneful, heady brew of space rock, country-fried folk and jazzy pop should have been the breakthrough, capturing as it does the coked-out mid-70s zeitgeist like virtually no other contemporary recording. Not only does it contain some of Clark's most breathtaking and Zen-like songwriting ("Silver Raven" and "Strength of Strings" are standouts), and his most quavering, vulnerable tenor singing, not only does it feature the top session musicians then working in Los Angeles, but it introduces some of the modern instrumentation and production techniques that would be adopted by Fleetwood Mac for the blockbuster 1976 album, "Rumours." Yet Clark's work was not just an abject commercial failure, it was absolutely reviled by critics of the day who tarred it as an exercise in bloated excess by a washed-up rock vet.
True, Clark pulls out all the stops, particularly on the title track, with its droning melody and ominous, spacey synths percolating under the mix. But what sounded like self-indulgence 30 years ago sounds simply fascinating today. It's still possible the public at the time might have caught the wave, but the album had several things working against it aside from critical derision. Clark still hated to fly and didn't want to tour to support the album. Perhaps an even deadlier blow was the label's choice of packaging. The album's garish Roaring Twenties cover art has zilch to do with this music, and the back panel photo of Clark, decked out in a flowing white blouse and a poodle-dog perm would have looked ridiculously desperate even to contemporary audiences accustomed to the excesses of the '70s. Alas, success wasn't to be, and Clark went to his maker in 1991 a tired alcoholic, still bitter that this worthy record had not made his reputation. Now that's it's been released on CD, however, it might finally do that.
97.) "Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard," Paul McCartney (2005). The thing with Paul McCartney's solo career is that virtually every moment of brilliance has had its opposing counterweight, generally on the same album, of bland silliness. Every gem like "Beware My Love" had the albatross of a "Cook of the House" to contend with. Every "Call Me Back Again" was neutralized by a "Magneto and Titanium Man." Until 2005, only "Band on the Run"—itself the product of high tension—rose above McCartney's penchant for wanting to seem adorable. Then McCartney teamed with producer Nigel Godrich, who masterminded Radiohead's "OK Computer." The result was "Chaos and Creation," the most poignant and emotionally sincere album Paul McCartney has ever recorded.
It's not as though no McCartney song had ever been emotionally affecting—"Yesterday" comes to mind, the pretty pout of "For No One," "Hey Jude." But if any of these was autobiographical, it was from a safe distance. That's not true on "Choas and Creation." Certainly there are moments of almost defiant fancifulness ("English Tea") and rather generic romance ("A Certain Softness"), and these pass by pleasantly enough, rendered with enough craftsmanship to prevent them from being mere filler. But elsewhere there is a directness that has been highly unusual in McCartney's post-Beatles career. "Too Much Rain" is the kind of "cheer up, mate" song that McCartney excels at (even "Hey Jude" falls into this category), but this time he offers no vapid sentiments, just straight, battle-weary advice. "Jenny Wren" is a cousin to the finger-picking folk of the Beatles' "Blackbird," but it has a somberness that has hardly ever been heard from the Cute One. "How we spend our days / casting love aside / Losing sight of life / day by day," he sings. These are very un-McCartney-like sentiments, with weight added by the reedy vulnerability of the 60-something's fading falsetto.
If that song is the record's emotional right cross, the uppercut is "Riding to Vanity Fair." It's hard not to hear this as a swipe at the lingering ghost of John Lennon, who went to his grave villifying his former partner's talents. Against a smoldering, spooky musical backdrop, McCartney lets fly with his bitterness: "You're not aware of what you put me through, / but now the feeling's gone. / But I don't mind, / do what you have to do. / You don't fool anyone." For someone like Johnny Rotten, these qualify as saccharine sentiments. But for the insistently cheerful Cute Beatle, this is pure invective. And welcome it is, as it adds an edge of authenticity to the carefully crafted McCartney persona. Hopefully as he embarks on future projects, McCartney won't lose sight of the achievement of his direct approach in "Chaos and Creation." "We used to hide away our feelings," he sings at one point. "Make a vow that it's not gonna happen again." Yes. Quite. Do that, Sir Paul.
98.) "Anthology," Steve Miller Band (1972). There was a time when Steve Miller was described as a genius. That probably should have clued in the rock literati that the word "genius" has no relationship whatever to pop musicians and composers. But Steve Miller has serious talent, and this best-of package mines the most interesting portion of his career, the bluesy space-rock years of the late '60s, well before Miller honed his sound to the tuneful, juiced-up roots pop that made him a superstar in the mid-70s.
This package samples the highlights of the Miller Band's first five albums, at least three of which are stone classics in their own right. But this is the place to start; the proper albums could meander, where this set dumps any trace of incoherence to home in on the most brilliant aspects of the band's output. Boz Scaggs, who would briefly rival Miller as a titan of late '70s chart pop, was present for the first two LPs, "Children of the Future" and "Sailor" (both from 1968) and contributed a number of songs, particularly to the latter record. None of those shows up on this set, unfortunately, leaving it a bit short of definitive. Miller's own compositions are the focus. That's not a bad thing, given that his songs were generally the strongest, but a slice of the Boz would have been worthy. (The surging "Dime-a-Dance Romance" and the spacey "Baby's Calling Me Home" could both have replaced some of the set's weaker links.)
But that's a minor gripe, given that this double-length album mostly contains prime stuff. At the time, Miller was exploring hard-rock sonic innovations with the best of them. If none of these tunes are as immediately radio-friendly as "Rock'n Me" or "Jet Airliner" ("Livin' in the U.S.A." and "Space Cowboy" were early FM rock staples), "Anthology" contains the generally more rewarding tunes. "Journey From Eden" is a great lost mellow chestnut, "Never Kill Another Man" prime second-generation baroque pop. The starry sha-la-las of "Celebration Song" evoke a blissed-out sunny day at an early outdoor rock festival, while "Going to Mexico" anticipates the ZZ Top sound by several years. The great lost track here, however, is "My Dark Hour," a heavy rock number featuring only Miller on guitar and vocals and guest musician Paul McCartney on drums, bass and howling backing vocals. Recorded at EMI Studios around the time of the "Abbey Road" sessions, the desparation in this ardent track is so thick you can almost grip it, as McCartney unleashes an unbridled ferocity he rarely granted himself with the Beatles. (The riff to this fantastic song, possibly the best of Miller's career, was later recycled for the FM hit "Fly Like an Eagle.") "Anthology" is a great time capsule of exploratory late '60s blues rock, and well worth seeking out.
99.) "Stealing Fire," Bruce Cockburn (1984). "I hope in God," the folk-rocker Bruce Cockburn told the Washington Post in 1984. "As a result of being in Nicaragua [in 1983], there's hope—or at least there's the possibility—that people can accomplish something. Not anything perfect, but workable. For the first time, in that country I witnessed virtually a whole nation of people working together to better their situation, willingly and in a spirit of commitment, a positive spirit."
This album, not unlike like the Oliver Stone film "Salvador" two years later, is a harrowing time capsule of a fleeting moment in U.S. history—a moment when the American political left engaged in what now feels like the final rush of internationalist involvement that it could believe in absolutely—the defense of Central America's leftist rebels during the early to mid-1980s. Cockburn, a gifted Canadian songwriter with a deft facility for laying world beat details into his jazzy western folk song structures, was the singer who stepped up with the most important and successful protest album that reflected on those struggles.
Like Phil Ochs before him, Cockburn writes for this album with a novelist's unsparing eye for detail; and like Ochs before him, he absorbed those details journalistically, with boots on the ground. Unlike Ochs, Cockburn is an inspired guitarist with the musical chops to forcefully convey his muted rage. The result is a record that absolutely vibrates with Cockburn's outrage at the injustices suffered by Nicaragua's poor under seige by an American-backed counterinsurgency. His is a pacifism driven to the edge. "When I talk with the survivors / of things too sickening to relate," he sings, "If I had a rocket launcher / I would retaliate." "Nicaragua" is even more effective. Singing over a resigned Spanish-inflected backing track, Cockburn records what he sees in such stunning detail that he ought to have been nominated for journalism's Pulitzer Prize: "The kid who guards Fonseca's tomb / Cradles a beat-up submachine gun. / At age 15 he's a veteran of four years of war. / Proud to pay his dues, / he knows who turns the screws. / A baby face and an old man's eyes." The album closing "Dust and Diesel" is a little less of a tour de force, but its cinematic detail is no less riveting as Cockburn at one point describes a smiling girl with a .45 strapped across her cotton print dress as she directs traffic on Nicaragua's Interamerican Highway.
"Stealing Fire" reached No. 74 on the Billboard album charts and produced a No. 16 single on the mainstream rock charts ("If I Had a Rocket Launcher"). It's virtually inconceivable that an album of such hard-edged, radicalized protest could gain that kind of an audience in the current climate. Whether you agree with Cockburn's point of view or not, that's all the more reason to go back and review this thoroughly committed music, to see what it is that we lose as we endeavor in these present times to silence our bards and poets.
100.) "Songs of the Free," Gang of Four (1982). "What I love about their records," the critic Robert Christgau wrote in his review of this album, "is the very thing that keeps me from playing them much—the guitars are so harsh, the rhythms so skewed, the voices so hectoring, the lyrics so programmatic that they function as a critique of casual hedonism." The Gang of Four was a British funk-punk group that took its name from the group of four Chinese communist leaders who were arrested and deposed after the death of Mao Tse Tung, marking the end of the Cultural Revolution. The point of that choice of names is drilled home throughout the band's output. Their songs consisted largely of bitter leftist polemics about the ills of politics and society—about the end of culture, as it were.
But that's not really what lands them a spot on this list. If the angry anarcho-Marxist pop polemics of the Situationist movement were the qualifying criteria, much rougher critiques could be gotten from likes of The Pop Group or Crass. What's much more interesting about the Gang of Four is the way they wed some of the most darkly cynical political screeds this side of The Last Poets with deep, jagged, danceable funk grooves. It's notable that the Gang's greatest successes came not on rock radio, but in the dance clubs. (The electro-funk single "I Love a Man in Uniform" from this set reached No. 27 on Billboard's Club Play Singles chart in the U.S. in 1982.)
Give credit where it's due—Gang of Four cannot be faulted for falsely advertising their intentions by masking songs behind soft-peddled titles. "We Live As We Dream, Alone," "History of the World," "The World at Fault," and "Life! It's a Shame" sound like the titles to Guy Debord essays. Frankly, the politics, incisive and informed as it is, can get a bit ponderous. But the band very skillfully encourages the listener to focus on the groove—perhaps, allowing the messages to operate at a more subliminal level. Either way, here it is the music that matters. Gang of Four's itchy-scratchy, disco-fied funk arrangements would eventually prove influential over such disparate later figures as U2's The Edge, Rage against the Machine and Franz Ferdinand. And it's not as though the Gang lacks a sense of humor—it's just a rather dark sense of humor. "When I was in my mother’s womb," singer Jon King whines in "History of the World, "social structure seemed a simple thing. / After birth I cursed my luck / then went down to breakfast." Who can't relate?
101.) "Achtung Baby," U2 (1991). After such worthy entries as "Joshua Tree" (1986) and "Rattle and Hum" (1988), U2 were a bit boxed in. Hardly a blues band, the American obssessions of those previous two albums had turned into something of a dead end. In any case, it had been three years between records—and "Rattle and Hum" had been something of a holding pattern as it was. Now, hairbands, boy bands, rappers and Garth Brooks ruled the planet, while grunge was just about to blow. What was a vulnerable little Irish band to do?
U2 chose to gamble it all by undergoing a radical transformation of their music, their image and in the case of Bono's new "The Fly" persona, even their identity. Gone was the windblown ghost of Gram Parsons and all pretense of Americana. Virtually absent is any impulse to shepherd the world's political affairs. In place of all that was a new, electro-fied Euro-dance sound that borrowed heavily of England's thriving rave scene, along with a focus on (some potentially twisted) personal and sexual concerns. It was like nothing U2 had ever attempted before, and it was an enormous risk for a band still vying for claim to most-popular-group-on-Earth status. Nothing about this music, with the possible exception of the soulful-but-disturbed ballad "One," guaranteed that the audience would go along for the ride.
However, perhaps because "Joshua Tree" producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno were on board, there were just enough traces of the old U2 sound to at least get the old fans in the door. The melody of "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses," for example, mirrors the granduer of old-school U2 songs like "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." And "One" would have been a hit for a cigar-store Indian. But there is much here that is rash and unfamiliar to U2 fans. The clanging guitar and truncated electronic drums that introduce the leadoff track, "Zoo Station" leave no doubt that this new, distinctly unholy territory. "I'm ready," Bono sings in a weird disembodied voice, "I'm ready for what's next." The first few bars of "Even Better Than The Real Thing" sound like a reworking of the Raspberries' "Go All the Way," and in a way, it is—a rather bizarre and distrubing one. "You're the real thing," Bono hisses, "even better than the real thing." "So Cruel" has an etherial sound, yet it introduces a personal animus toward a lover that the beatific Bono had always studiously avoided. "We're cut adrift / We're still floating / I'm only hanging on / To watch you go down, my love," he sings. "To stay with you, I'd be a fool." The slinky, forboding "Mysterious Ways," with its snaky belly-dance rhythms and punching, distorted guitars may be the most exotic and dreamlike song the band ever concocted. "Love is Blindness" features U2 at its most funereal, summoning an airless, claustrophic sound reminiscent of Joy Division.
The album, which hit octuple platinum status by 1997, contained no fewer than seven songs that made waves on one or more of the pop and dance charts, making "Achtung Baby" U2's own "Born in the U.S.A." Clearly the fan base was hungry for what U2 (Mach II) had to offer. By taking a chance and retooling its approach, the Irish band liberated itself musically and extended its commercial and artistic shelf-life by a good 15 years. And counting.
-- Kevin Featherly
