scaryblog

Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time... ...OK - another change of format.  I was going to transfer to single album write-ups at some point anyway, but this album has forced my hand somewhat earlier than expected on account of there just being so much to say about it - I suspect most people will have heard of it at some point in their lives. #24 : Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles (1967) For the Beatles, it was a decisive goodbye to screaming crowds, world tours, and assembly-line record making. “We were fed up with being Beatles,” Paul McCartney said decades later. “We were not boys, we were men … artists rather than performers.”  Sgt. Pepper  christened the Summer of Love with the lavish psychedelic daydream “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” the jaunty Ringo Starr-sung communality anthem “With a Little Help From My Friends,” the album-closing multilayered masterwork, “A Day in the Life,” and the title track, wh...

Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time... ...hmmm - two albums from a couple of ladies from a similar era, but that's about where the similarities end, I believe.  But I am unable to comment any further because I know one album very well and like it, whereas the other one I've never listened to.  And it will probably not surprise you to learn that Tapestry is the one I'm familiar with - and Patti is going to have to pull something special out of the bag to beat it. #26 : Horses - Patti Smith (1975) From its first defiant line, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” the opening shot in a bold reinvention of Van Morrison’s garage-rock classic “Gloria,” Patti Smith’s debut album was a declaration of mutiny, a statement of faith in the transfigurative powers of rock & roll.  Horses  made her the queen of punk (her CBGB buddy Tom Verlaine of Television co-wrote the Jim Morrison tribute “Break It Up”), but Smith cared...

Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time... ...hmmm - two albums I've barely heard of, let alone heard any of the tracks.  My suspicion is that D'Angelo is going to bore me and the Wu-Tang Clan are going to annoy me - and the winner will be the one that bores/annoys me the least.  #28 : Voodoo - D'Angelo (2000) In the five years following the release of his 1995 debut,  Brown Sugar ,  D’Angelo grew disillusioned with the genre that had just anointed him a rising star. “I don’t consider myself an R&B artist,” the then-26-year-old told  Jet . “R&B is pop, that’s the new word for R&B.” In his quest to create something new, he looked to both the masters of soul (Marvin, Curtis, Stevie) and contemporary innovators (Lauryn, Erykah). The end result was  Voodoo , a moving, inventive masterpiece that stands as the ultimate achievement of the neo-soul era. Crafted with producer and drummer Questlove, who called the...

  Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time... ...a battle of two late 60s monsters, both of which I'd somehow avoided and never heard before.  My expectation going in was that they'd both be a bit of a mess, but there would be enough quality in The Beatles offering to carry the day. #30 : Are You Experienced - Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967) This is what Britain sounded like in late 1966 and early 1967: ablaze with rainbow blues, orchestral guitar feedback, and cosmic possibility. Jimi Hendrix’s incendiary guitar was historic in itself, the luminescent sum of his chitlin-circuit labors with Little Richard and the Isley Brothers and his melodic exploitation of amp howl. But it was the pictorial heat of songs like “Manic Depression” and “The Wind Cries Mary” that established the transcendent promise of psychedelia. Backed by drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, the guitarist made soul music for inner space. “It’s a collectio...

Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time... ...and, in a WILD change to the format, I'm including a pre-round write-up to describe my "going-in" expectations for the winner - not so much for this round, where I pretty much thought I knew what was going to happen, but more for some of the rounds coming up which are, shall we say, "interesting".  I've listened to both of these albums once and I was expecting Beyoncé to emerge victorious without too much effort. #32 : Lemonade - Beyoncé (2016) " Nine times out of 10 I’m in my feelings,” Beyoncé announced on her heartbreak masterpiece,  Lemonade.  She dropped the album as a Saturday-night surprise, knocking the world sideways — her most expansive and personal statement, tapping into marital breakdown and the state of the nation. It was a different side than she’d shown before, raging over infidelity and jealousy, but reveling in the militant-feminist-funk strut o...

Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time... #34 : Innervisions - Stevie Wonder (1973) “We as a people are not interested in ‘baby, baby’ songs any more, there’s more to life than that,” Stevie Wonder said in 1972. With Innervisions, Wonder offered a landmark fusion of social realism and spiritual idealism; he brings expressive color and irresistible funk to his synth-based keyboards on “Too High” (a cautionary anti-drug song) and “Higher Ground” (which echoes Martin Luther King Jr.’s message of transcendence). The album’s centerpiece is “Living for the City,” a cinematic depiction of exploitation and injustice. “Innervisions gives my own perspective on what’s happening in my world,” Wonder said. “I think it is my most personal album. I don’t care if it sells only five copies.” Our third visit (out of four) with Mr Wonder and it's fair to say I'm just not quite getting it yet - would this be the one where it clicked?  I was expectin...