Ain't no sunshine when she's gone - and she's always gone too long

Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time...

#304 : Just As I Am - Bill Withers (1971)

On the cover, Bill Withers totes a lunch pail, highlighting the down-to-earth everyman vibe of the folk-soul music of his debut album (that’s Withers himself tapping on a box to keep the beat in “Grandma’s Hands”). As he said at the time, “I’m sick and tired of somebody saying ‘I love you’ with both arms up in the air like that.” Instead, Withers strummed his acoustic guitar and spun tales about absent fathers, his West Virginia grandmother, and life in Harlem."

Our second visit with Mr Withers and last time I basically liked it but it didn't exactly make its mark - and I was expecting the same this time around, except that we had "Ain't No Sunshine" to improve matters.  However, actually this caught my interest more - "Grandma's Hands" and a fine cover of "Let It Be" jumped out at me, but there was enough variety there in exactly the way there wasn't with Al Green's songs in the last round.  "Better Off Dead" is also an interesting way to end the album, with the sound of a shotgun blast suggesting that's exactly what happened to the song's narrator.

Wikipedia has remarkably little to say about the album except for Robert Christgau (who I'm beginning to dislike) damning the record with faint praise "this is an unusually likable and listenable middlebrow soul LP" - it never occurred to me that something could be middlebrow, but he didn't make it up!  It's also interesting that Stephens Stills and Booker T. Jones are on the album, who seem quite high profile contributors for something that everything else suggests was just kinda thrown together.  

Bill's Wikipedia page comes to the rescue and points out that the photo on the cover is actually him doing his day job, the album sold a million copies and "Ain't No Sunshine" won a Grammy.  And it still gives the impression he was just the nicest guy who didn't take any of this music stuff all that seriously and always had a big smile on his face.  We need more Bills out there - and given this is likely to be our last visit with the man it would seem rude of me not to ask you how do you turn a duck into a soul singer?  

As before "customers also listened to" Roberta Flack and a load of people I've never heard of but I'd be more likely to listen to on the strength of this album - although I can't help but feel I'd just put the best of Bill on to.  And obviously, with the duck, you put it in the microwave until it's Bill Withers!

#303 : The Definitive Collection - ABBA (2001)

These Swedish pop stars became the world’s biggest group in the 1970s, with a streak of Nordic despair under the sparkly melodies. Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad were the bewitching frontwomen in the sequined pantsuits; their husbands, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, wrote global hits like the joyful “Dancing Queen,” the double-divorce drama “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” and the haunting farewell “Thank You for the Music.”

Sigh, if this the only ABBA album on the list I'm going to be quite annoyed (spoiler alert - it is and I am).  I'm also slightly intrigued as to why, if they're going to go down this route, they'd include this album rather than Abba Gold - this is more of the completist's collection and I think even the most ardent fan would struggle to justify the inclusion of some of the tracks (except that they were released as singles and we have to be definitive because of the album title).  It is a great album though, but just not one I can consider as worthy of inclusion.  I obviously listened to it though - and most of it is pure class.  Hard to pick highlights, but if I had to I'd go for "Take A Chance On Me", "Does Your Mother Know", "The Winner Takes It All", "One Of Us" and "The Day Before You Came".  But, it's definitely a greatest hits album - sigh.

The Wikipedia entry for the album is pretty short, but their entry more than makes up for it - it goes on forever!  I can't said I read it all, but was amused to read they were originally known as "Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid" - i think ABBA is probably a slightly snappier name.  I was also diverted down an "ABBA covers" sidetrack which was in parts enjoyable (Erasure's "Take A Chance On Me" is very well done and has a super cheesy video) and in other parts not so enjoyable (Bananarama's version of "Waterloo" is definitely best avoided).  A lot of their stuff works surprisingly well as metal cover (no, seriously - they do!) - there's a load of them here if you fancy being surprised (including Metallica and Yngwie Malmsteen!).  "Customers also listened to" Blondie, Laura Branigan and Paul McCartney - err, OK although I'm not exactly sure where he fits in.  But whilst I enjoyed this ABBA-based diversion and spent much longer on it than many other albums, it's not allowed to win this round unfortunately.

#302 : Tonight's The Night - Neil Young (1975)

Neil Young made this album as a tribute to two friends who died from drugs, Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry. Young sounds like he’s on the edge of a breakdown in the mournful ballads “Tired Eyes” and “Speakin’ Out,” recorded (mostly in one tequila-heavy night) with a loose, heavily emotional sound — “a drunken Irish wake” in the words of Crazy Horse bassist Billy Talbot. Quintessentially Young, it was recorded just a year after his soft-rock hit Harvest. “Everybody was hoping I’d turn into John Denver,” Young said. “That didn’t happen.”

Oh good, more Neil Young - another one of his "Ditch Trilogy" albums.  Him and Bob Dylan are the only people with three entries so far, which is making me question whether this list is really for me.  I can't say I was looking forward to this, especially since all the reviews tell me how grief-crazed he was making it and how the release was delayed for so long (although the reason isn't entirely clear).  And did I like it?  No, I did not - but it did feel like a very personal record and part of me admired the fact that he'd done that.  But that doesn't make it a great album, I'm afraid.

I'm just going to include the one quote from Wikipedia which I think gives you an idea where his head was at - When unfolded, a whole side of the insert features a lengthy article printed entirely in Dutch. It is a review of a Tonight's the Night live show by Dutch journalist Constant Meijers for the Dutch rock music magazine Muziekkrant OOR. In 1976 Young said he chose to print it "Because I didn't understand any of it myself, and when someone is so sickened and fucked up as I was then, everything's in Dutch anyway.".  And I think that's quite enough of that, quite frankly.  "Customers also listened to" yet more Neil Young - these people really don't like themselves, do they?!?  Next!

#301 : The New York Dolls - The New York Dolls (1973)

“Do you think that you could make it with Frankenstein?” they asked, not kidding. Glammed-out punkers the New York Dolls snatched riffs from Chuck Berry and Fats Domino and fattened them with loads of attitude and reverb. Produced by Todd Rundgren, songs like “Personality Crisis” and “Bad Girl” drip with sleaze and style. “What the Dolls did to be influential on punk was show that anybody could do it,” singer David Johansen said. Indeed, its hard to imagine the Ramones or the Replacements or a thousand other trash-junky bands without them.

And we're doing a "Next!" so that we can round off the next hundred - and also because I didn't think I'd be spending very long on this one.  It felt very squarely in the "I'm not going to like it" category - and I really can't say I did.  But, it has more merit than most of the entries in this field because the musicianship is of a higher quality than normal and, whilst I didn't like the vocal style, I didn't absolutely hate it - which is an improvement on many others we've seen.  It also came out slightly earlier than most of its contemporaries so it can claim to be influential (aka "to blame) and is an interesting mix of rock and roll, glam rock and punk.  But, to be clear, despite all these provisos, I still didn't like it.

The Wikipedia entry for the album makes it clear how influential they think it is - you only have to look at the length of it, for starters.  I was most amused at how much Todd Rundgren and the band hated each other - he thought they were a "technically competent, humorous live act" and they thought he was "an expert on second rate rock and roll".  It also makes the point that although the album is highly regarded now, it was not successful at the time with "the band being difficult to market outside of New York" - it's hard to imagine a load of guys wearing high heels and make up as being hard to sell in the rust belt.  An interesting Wikipedia diversion informed me that homosexuality was illegal in New York until 1980 - and adultery is still a criminal activity there now (although I question how many arrests are made)

The band's Wikipedia page is slightly less tortuous than I was expecting, but I still didn't bother reading it.  "Customers also listened to" a load of people there's no danger of me listening to - just like there's no danger of me listening to this again, but I actually enjoyed the experience and related education more than I was expecting.

Which brings us to the end of the next 100 albums and, with a heavy heart. I give this round to Bill Withers.  Not that he doesn't deserve it, but there are so many good ABBA tracks on that GREATEST HITS album.

#307-305 - Soul, soul and not soul
Pause - 40% of the way there!