|
| |
|
Saturday, August 30, 2003
|
|
|
|
Exile on Main Street - The Rolling Stones: Almost a decade into a career of enormous fame, extensive touring, prodigious drug use, and premature and sometimes violent death, the Rolling Stones, most of whom weren't yet 30, went into tax exile in the south of France and, in a decadent haze, recorded this brilliant jumble of songs. These worn, semi-lucid explorations of eros and thanatos are as mature and profound as rock music gets. From the junkie rocker of "Rocks Off" to the junkie hymn of "Shine a Light," they achieve a sort of jangled majesty. And whatever the Stones found at the limits or their aesthetic powers, beyond the progressive explorations documented on Beggar's Banquet, Let It Bleed, and Sticky Fingers, they turned away from it and have spent the rest of their career writing extended riffs with pointless lyrics and taking that show on the road.
|
|
|
The Velvet Underground and Nico - The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground were among the first (and certainly the most influential) of the intentionally alternative bands. Other bands have struggled in obscurity, desperate to connect with a broader audience. The Velvet Underground entertained no such hopes. Andy Warhol's participation as the producer of this, their debut album, was intended not to ensure publicity, but to ensure that they would be able to record unfettered by any professional guidance. They fully exploited the opportunity, with metronomic rhythms and the monotone lyrical deadpan of Lou Reed and Nico on sordid classics like "I'm Waiting for the Man," "All Tomorrow's Parties," and "Heroin."
|
|
|
London Calling - The Clash: The Ramones introduced punk rock as something raw, simple, and fun; The Sex Pistols seized on that rawness and made punk rock into sneering, nihilistic provocation; and The Clash--the George Orwells of rock music--found in punk the ideal platform for the expression of leftist politics. But they weren't didactic. They were angry, loud, righteous, and important. On London Calling, they consolidated their sonic power and showed surprising finesse across a growing range of styles, even managing a bona fide pop song in "Train in Vain." Bono has often said that all U2 ever wanted to be was The Clash. This album is the essence of what they're shooting for.
|
|
|
Electric Ladyland - The Jimi Hendrix Experience: With his first album, Are You Experienced?, and his live performances, Jimi Hendrix redefined ideas about the electric guitar. That album was revolutionary, but it was an incomplete expression of his musical vision, and Axis: Bold As Love, his second album, was more of the same. It was only with Electric Ladyland, his third album in less than two years (and a double album at that), that he was able to get beyond the role of guitar magician. There are still guitar pyrotechnics aplenty --especially on "Voodoo Chile" and "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)"-- but there's also the subtler and impossibly expressive guitar work on "All Along the Watchtower" and the third side of the vinyl version ("Rainy Day, Dream Away," "1983...(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)," and "Moon, Turn The Tides...Gently Gently Away") which went beyond the guitar to explore the recording studio and mixing board as instruments of expression as well. It's a cliche, but it's hard not to regret what Hendrix's premature death denied us.
|
|
|
King of the Delta Blues - Robert Johnson: Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil so he could play guitar, and then died prematurely, foaming at the mouth and howling at the moon, or so goes the legend. The brevity of his life, his almost accidental discovery, and the lightning-in-a-bottle quality of these recordings (made in a hotel room by an archivist from the Smithsonian) lend credence to that legend. But the depth and power of these songs, the haunted singing and not-quite-plausible guitar (is there really only one man playing guitar?) render the legend irrelevant. Ralph Macchio made a terribly earnest movie that focused on the legend--Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and a host of others immeasurably enriched blues-based rock by focusing on the music, which includes "Crossroads Blues," "Sweet Home Chicago," "Love in Vain," and "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom."
|
|
|
Rain Dogs - Tom Waits: Tom Waits started his career recording updated, gravelly variations on "One for My Baby," but became more and more adventurous as his career progressed. About a decade along, he recorded the trilogy of albums (which also included Swordfishtrombones and Frank's Wild Years) of which this is the centerpiece. The trilogy is a schlemiel's Exile on Main Street (Keith Richards even appears on a couple of songs), with some of the same broken dignity in the music, but none of the transcendence. Rain Dogs stands out among the trilogy for the battered classics it contains, including "9th & Hennepin" (from which I have taken Gnosis's subtitle), "Downtown Train," and "Anywhere I Lay My Head."
|
|
|
Turandot - Giacomo Puccini (La Scala featuring Maria Callas and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf): A princess uses the power of her beauty to get revenge on men for the rape and murder of an ancestor, but by the power of love her heart is melted and a slave girl is murdered. Is this proto-feminism or profound irony? Is it a comedy or a tragedy? Like Shakespeare's best plays, Turandot (which debuted in 1926) makes a mockery of such simple-minded questions, but unlike Shakespeare's plays, it's filled with some of the richest music ever written (including the stirring aria "Nessun dorma"). This recording features the orchestra and chorus of La Scala, the greatest opera house in the world, and two of the greatest divas (true divas, that is) of the twentieth century.
|
|
|
In the Wee Small Hours - Frank Sinatra: Frank Sinatra's career began in earnest when he joined Tommy Dorsey's band (his boyish, vulnerable voice in this era is my favorite of its incarnations), and after his success there, he decided to go solo. He signed with Columbia Records, and his career slowly withered under the A&R tyranny of Mitch Miller. After about a decade of that, he escaped to Capitol Records, where his career underwent a renaissance. In the Wee Small Hours was the first album he recorded with the brilliant Nelson Riddle as arranger, and it was one of the first that was assembled and recorded as an album (the long-playing recording being a new concept). The supple, carefree voice of his youth was replaced by his mature voice, with its effortless control, perfect enunciation, and incomparable depth. Sinatra could still sing upbeat songs as well as (some say better than) anyone, but in the aftermath of his break-up with Ava Gardner, he found his depressive core, making this the best sad album ever recorded.
|
|
|
The Sun Sessions - Elvis Presley: Everything that could be called native American music--country and blues, black and white, hillbilly and delta, urban and rural--met in these first recordings by Elvis Presley. Only Louis Armstrong and perhaps Jelly Roll Morton before him managed to create something so new in American music from such disparate sources. These songs may not be the earliest rock 'n' roll, but without them it's unlikely that rock 'n' roll would have become the cultural force that it did. Like Louis and Jelly Roll, Elvis managed not only to innovate but also to connect with a massive audience and change the way that audience listened to music through that innovation.
|
|
|
Daydream Nation - Sonic Youth: Like Jimi Hendrix and Tom Waits, Sonic Youth took the basic components and instruments of pop music and stretched them as far as they could while staying in the realm of music. They explored alternate tunings, the effects of drumsticks, pliers, and other tools on guitars, and song structures that included maelstroms of feedback, but they still rocked. Daydream Nation, a sprawling masterpiece, balances their more experimental impulses with the demands of song structure, best exemplified in "Teenage Riot" and "Total Trash."
|
8:23:25 AM 
|
|
|
© Copyright 2003 Morgan N. Sandquist.
Last update: 11/2/03; 10:36:13 AM.
|
|
|
|
|
Links
Weblog Roll
Currently Reading
|
|
|
