Are the dreams all made solid? Are the dreams made real?
Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time...
#297 : So - Peter Gabriel (1986)
Peter Gabriel got funky on the 1982 single “Shock the Monkey,” and it took him four years to follow up the hit. The similarly visceral “Sledgehammer” slammed So into the mainstream, and its hold on radio and MTV deepened with the upbeat “Big Time,” the gothic love ballad “In Your Eyes” (beautifully employed by filmmaker Cameron Crowe in Say Anything), and the inspirational “Don’t Give Up,” a duet with Kate Bush, who was shown locked in a five-minute embrace with Gabriel in the video.
Yes, I'm slightly aware of this album - if you went to uni in the late 80s then you'll have done well to avoid it. It feels like if you're not going to like it, the main reason is likely to be overexposure to the "Sledgehammer" video (you're not allowed to not like "Don't Give Up" though - just don't go there). Personally, I like the album - I think it has a good mix of upbeat, downbeat and quirk (particularly "This Is The Picture"). If you've not heard it (which seems unlikely, to be honest), then check it out - there's likely to be something on there you like (or at least don't mind). Personally, I prefer the slower stuff - "Don't Give Up" and "Mercy Street" - but there's not really a weak track on there in my opinion.
Wikipedia pretty much tells me that everybody agrees with me (I'm obviously losing my contrary touch) - it even gives the album the honour of a breakdown by track, whilst often having very little of interest to say about them! Wikipedia also has a lot to say about the man, much of which is perfectly interesting and it would benefit you to know, so obviously I'm going to include something of no use whatsoever just because it surprised me "Gabriel's music featured prominently on the popular 1980s television show Miami Vice...With seven songs used total, Gabriel had the most music featured by a solo artist in the series". "Customers also listened to" later Genesis and Phil Collins - which I'm not entirely sure I believe, but that's what they're telling me. I like this though and I revisit it reasonably regularly - and was glad to be given another reason to do so.
#297 : Rust Never Sleeps - Neil Young (1979)
The live Rust Never Sleeps is essential Neil Young, full of impossibly delicate acoustic songs and ragged Crazy Horse rampages. Highlights: “My My Hey Hey” (a tribute to the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten); a surreal political spiel called “Welfare Mothers”; and “Powderfinger,” Young’s greatest song ever, where he unspools a hazy tale of a 22-year-old going up against government violence on the American frontier, and his guitar roars toward the collapsing sky like never before.
Oh joy - more Neil Young (our 4th visit with the man and the 3rd in the last 15 albums!). I've given up having any particular expectations - and this perfectly didn't bother trying to prove me wrong. I do actually remember thinking that his voice works quite well with the harmonica on some of the songs, but there's no danger of me investigating which songs they were. If you like him (and obviously the people who put this list together do) then you're welcome to him. In his defence, this album was only 38 minutes long so I've had to suffer worse.
Wikipedia tells me this is his best album (as I'm pretty sure it's done for all the one's I've listened to so far) mostly because all the critics say so. It also points out that it got to #1 in NZ - but nowhere else. I got the greatest amusement from Wikipedia out of the fact that "Rust Never Sleeps" is also the title of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode and it took me back to the first time I ever heard that series even existed - mind blown, I can tell you! Right - going back to Neil I'm really hoping this will be last we hear from him for quite some time.
#296 : Random Access Memories - Daft Punk (2013)
Having played a massive role in the rise of EDM in the late ‘00s, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo turned away from EDM altogether for a Seventies disco record featuring appearances by Donna Summer producer Giorgio Moroder and Chic’s Nile Rodgers (who played guitar on the gigantic hit “Get Lucky”). The result was a mushy, otherworldly concept LP that was retro, futuristic, trippy, and weirdly human all at once.
Was it really 7 years ago we were all getting lucky? It doesn't seem that long ago, but maybe I'm just getting old. Just maybe, mind. I've got this album and remember liking it, but haven't listened to it for some time, so was interested to see what I thought now. And the good bits are still good, but there's a lot more filler on there than I remember - given that it's 74 minutes long, that's probably not the world's biggest surprise. I do like "Get Lucky" though and I particularly like "Giorgio By Moroder" - "So we put a click on the 24-track which was then synced to the Moog modular - I knew that it could be a sound of the future".
Wikipedia has a load of waffly veneration but the sentence that jumped out at me was "The 79th Annual Wee Waa Show, held on 17 May 2013 in the rural Australian town of Wee Waa, was selected as the venue for the worldwide album launch". I like a festival as much as the next man (probably more, actually) but somehow that one passed me by. The Wikipedia entry for the group is more interesting, particularly since so little is actually known about Daft Punk - but, of course, that doesn't stop Wikipedia from giving it a good go. It also reminded me of their Discovery album, which in my opinion is a much better album and far more worthy of the critical adulation than this one received.
And, unfortunately, this lead me down a very unpleasant sidetrack because I mused "We've not seen many dance albums on this list so far, have we?". And I realise the phrase "dance album" means very different things to different people, but I think most people would agree we've not seen too many albums that would count. Personally, I'd look for some Orb, Orbital, Chemicals, Prodigy or Fatboy on the list - yes, it's a very UK centric list but actually this seems to be something we just do better than they do over there (or anywhere else). And, I don't want to spoil the surprise for you going forward, but if you like stuff like this then I wouldn't get too excited about how many of them you're going to see. We will be revisiting this topic later in the list, I suspect...
"Customers also listened to" Mark Ronson and Calvin Harris, both of whom do this sort of thing pretty well and don't necessarily receive the critical attention they deserve - although they're both sitting pretty on massive piles of cash, so I'm sure they're happy enough. All in all, this was a bit of a disappointment - one of those albums that's not as good as you remember, although the high points still sound good.
Easy winner for me - so well done Pete. And he's so not a Pete, is he?
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