Eligible, not too stupid - intelligible and cute as Cupid
Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time...
#407 : Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere - Neil Young (1969)
Neil Young and Crazy Horse hadn’t been together for more than eight weeks when they cut this album. It’s down-home hippie-grunge with the feel of a jam session conducted by master jammers. Both sides of the album end in monster, 10-minute guitar excursions, especially “Down by the River” and “Cowgirl in the Sand,” and “Cinnamon Girl” was Young’s first big solo single, three minutes of crunching distortion featuring a one-note guitar solo for the ages — “the closest thing Crazy Horse had to a hit,” Young said.
Neil Young is another act I don't really understand what all the fuss is about - I even wandered over to watch him live at Glasto one year and still didn't get it. So I didn't have great expectations for this album - and I can't say it has converted me. This album sounded like what I was expecting the Creedence Clearwater Revival album (here) to sound like and whereas that album was a pleasant surprise, this album was an unpleasantly predictable drag. I don't like his voice and I didn't like the songs - all I can really say is that I'm pleased that's over.
I had a suspicion we were going to get a bit more Neil Young on this list - imagine my delight when I found out there are SIX more of his albums yet to come. Obviously, I'll approach all of them with a completely open mind - but I feel I should warn you that there might be some grumpiness. WIkipedia doesn't have a lot to say about the album, but has a lot to say about him, which I skipped over (I suspect I'll be back) but I was fascinated by the fact that he owns a crystallophone - also known as a glass harmonica (or even a hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica apparently!). And man, it's Wikipedia page (here) is wild - apparently there were rumours that playing it used to drive people mad. So obviously I had to find someone playing it here which is pretty cool - but the next video up was this, which is even better! So I'm actually in a really good mood with Neil Young now - but I can assure you there is no danger of me ever listening to this album again.
#406 : 69 Love Songs - The Magnetic Fields (1999)
“It started with the title,” Stephin Merritt said of 69 Love Songs, which he imagined in the Sinatra-era tradition of “theme” albums. A tour de force of pop mastery, his three-disc splurge had everything from lounge jazz to Podunk country to punk parody, peaking with sidelong standards like “Papa Was a Rodeo” and “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side.” God-level moment: “The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure,” which is titled after a French linguist and rhymes his name with closure, bulldozer, and classic Motown songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland, hooking it all to an unforgettable tune.
"Sigh" I think "I see what they've done there"
[Bill and Ted meet themselves]
Ted : OK wait. If you guys are really us, what number are we thinking of?
Bill, Ted : 69, dudes!
Bill, Ted : Whoa.
[quadruple air guitar solo]
Starts listening...
Keeps listening...
OK, still listening...
Checks track listing.
Now wait a goddamn minute here. There actually are 69 songs. On 3 albums. With a running time of 3 hours. Hmmm...
I must confess I didn't make it to the end - I got about halfway through. Yes, a lot of it is quite clever and there is a wide range of musical styles involved - but there's just too much of it. The best songs remind me of The Divine Comedy, but with lower production values and less archness (which I suspect isn't a word). "Customers also listened to" Belle and Sebastian and Bright Eyes, which feel to be in the right ballpark. Personally, I didn't mind some of the songs - but there's also no danger of me ever going back to the album unless they release the undeluxe, unextended version called "No More Than 15 Love Songs".
#405 : Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era - Various (1972)
This collection of Sixties garage rock, compiled by rock critic and soon-to-be Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye, became a touchstone for Seventies punks and, years later, for the aftershock of post-punk. The 27-track, two-LP set was a radical idea in 1972: While rock was getting bigger, Nuggets established a new canon out of forgotten AM-radio hits — brutally simple singles like the Standells’ “Dirty Water,” the Shadows of Knight’s “Oh Yeah!” and the Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction.” Rhino expanded Nuggets into a sprawling four-CD box in 1998.
I had no real clue what to expect from this - and I'm afraid to say attempts to track it down were unsuccessful, so I'm still in the dark really. I did find some of the tracks on YouTube and they sounded OK and i can quite believe they were influential with some people. However, from such a small sample it doesn't really feel fair to comment on the overall album (and Wikipedia isn't massively helpful either) - so I guess we'll just leave it there.
So, we have the choice between an album I actively disliked, an album I couldn't be bothered finishing and an album I couldn't find. Since the latter caused me the least overall pain, let's go with that one - which says a lot about the competition, I guess...
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