I speed built a fire on Main Street and shot it full of holes

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

#37 : Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan (1966)

Rock’s first studio double LP by a major artist was, as Bob Dylan declared in 1978, “the closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my head … that thin, that wild-mercury sound.” Blonde on Blonde was mainly recorded in Nashville with session pros (another rock first), who created an almost contradictory magnificence: a tightly wound tension around Dylan’s quicksilver language and incisive singing in barrelhouse surrealism such as “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35” and “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again.” Amid the frenzy, Dylan delivered some of his finest, clearest songs of comfort and desire: the sidelong beauty “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and “I Want You,” the title of which Dylan almost used for the album. 

Well, I guess I can't really complain - it's been 143 albums since I last had to endure the man (although there have been two albums from The Band in the intervening period).  And he even managed to win the round with his "just-about-bearable educational experience" in the face of some extremely average competition.  However, this is only his third highest entry on the list - surely I must actually LIKE one of them?!?  I've given up having any expectations on the man beyond songs I don't mind in a voice I don't hate - that's not too much to ask for is it?

Hmmm - well.  He's in his annoying-drawl Dylan phase here, which isn't great, but a vast improvement on annoying-whine Dylan - and there are some songs it works well on.  And some of those songs, I almost enjoy - and I'd even go as far as saying I like “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again" which stands out a mile for me on this album.  I do feel I could have lived without it being 7:05 long though - a snappy 5 minutes would have worked better for me.  I also quite liked "Visions Of Johanna" but that checked in at 7:33 (and don't get me started on "Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands" at 11:23 - all of side 4).  The rest of the stuff I mostly didn't mind and I suspect I'd enjoy a decent cover version or even grow to enjoy some of Dylan's versions if I was to subject myself to them many more times.  Which, of course, I'm not going to do.  I could have done with less harmonica though and, at 72 minutes, the album was definitely far too long.

Something that came out of this album that hadn't occurred to me before is that Dylan is renowned for his lyrics and in places they are indeed absolutely fantastic.  But, in other places, they're mostly definitely not - I mean, "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" is about someone's new hat.  I suspect someone will tell me that I'm missing the deep metaphysical meaning of the hat, but a quick skim of the internet suggests the most that anyone's got is that the hat is representing shallowness, so maybe the song means even less than it seems.  Anyway, it's still rubbish.

Wikpedia has a lot and nothing to say about the album - going into great detail about the recording moving to Nashville and then a track-by-track breakdown reaching astonishing levels of tedium.  The critics loved the album because it allowed them to write nonsense such as this - "The very title suggests the singularity and the duality we expect from Dylan".  It did well with the record-buying public as well, reaching the top 10 in both the UK and the US.  But, I didn't care about any of that though - I was far too busy checking out whether it really was rock's first studio double album and there does seem to be general agreement that it was, beating Freak Out! from The Mothers Of Invention by a week.  

Wikipedia rabbit hole alert - the entry for double albums introduced me to the term sesquialbum which refers to an album featuring three sides of music.  This is not a common phenomenon, but I actually knew one example - Joe Jackson's Big World.  It's also interesting what people do with the fourth side - generally it's left blank with a large groove to prevent stylus damage, but some people replay side 3 and some people etch artwork onto it (which I bet completely ruins your stylus if you're stupid enough to try and play it).  And finally, a special mention goes to Monty Python's Matching Tie And Handkerchief which had three sides on one disc, with the second side featuring two grooves - but, as Wikipedia kindly points out, "this was done for comedic rather than practical reasons".

Given that we had a Wikipedia rabbit hole to explore, I think I can be forgiven for not reading Dylan's entry again - I've only got two more times I need to think of a reason for avoiding it.  "Customers also listened to" The Velvet Underground and the soundtracks to the motion pictures Wonder Boys, Gonzo and North Country - I can only assume they feature one Mr B Dylan amongst their contributors (but didn't care enough to check).  Overall, for me this wasn't even close to being the worst Dylan entry but it also wasn't a dramatic step up in quality from some of the previous entries - the rule of thumb so far for me appears to be "the earlier the Dylan, the less my ears bleed", but there wasn't enough here to draw me back.

#36 : The Chronic - Dr Dre (1992)

When George Clinton first heard hip-hop artists blending old records with new beats, he wasn’t too impressed. But then Dr. Dre turned samples of Clinton’s P-Funk sides into G-Funk, and Dr. Funkenstein approved, calling funk “the DNA of hip-hop and rap.” Dre had already taken gangsta rap to the mainstream with his earlier group, N.W.A, but on The Chronic, he funked up the rhymes with a smooth bass-heavy production style and the laid-back delivery of then-unknown rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg. When Dre and Snoop dropped “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang,” there was no getting out of the way.

Oh good, more hip-hop.  Expectations were not high, but even I had heard of this one and was aware of its reputation so I was interested to listen to it, if not exactly boiling over with anticipation.  And, well - it's an interesting one.  I found the overall sound much more to my tastes than a lot of its contemporaries I've had to suffer recently.  I think I'd describe it as more "musical" both in terms of the backing tracks (which are suspiciously Will Smith like in places - but don't tell Dre I said that), the frequent uses of "choruses" (refrains?) which I personally think would quite well in hip-hop (even if they don't often particularly relate to many aspects of my life) and the rapping style which is pleasingly "bouncy" and understandable.  

But (and it's a big but - because, well, i like big buts), because it's understandable, that means you can generally hear what he's saying - and unfortunately, this isn't such a great thing.  Most of it is pretty unpleasant and the rest is worse - he just comes across as a bit of an arse either by telling you how super tough he is, by showing you how happy he is to hold a grudge or by demonstrating his high opinion of the ladies (for the avoidance of doubt "Bitches Ain't Shit" is VERY MUCH not a feminist anthem).  And he's also COMPLETELY obsessed with the N word.  I'd also say that for an album that's billed as Dre's alone, Snoop Dogg turns up a lot - I appreciate he was happy to be given his opportunity, but he does a lot of heavy lifting here (and often the better lifting, as far as I could tell).  It also felt like a very long album, although it was "only" 60 minutes.

Wikipedia basically tells me I don't get it coz I ain't lived it - it probably won't surprise you to hear I can't really argue with that.  It also sold ridiculously well - 6 million in the US and 260,814 in the UK, apparently.  Apart from that, there's not a lot in there other than noting he liked to have a pop at his ex N.W.A. colleagues - including implying Eazy-E was homosexual.  Now, I'm not saying it's not possible but, if it was true, then the 11 children he had with 8 women were quite the smokescreen.  

Dre's Wikipedia entry is lengthy and suggests many fingers in many pies, a lot of which have earned him a bit of cash.  Amazingly, it doesn't have a section on his many feuds - choosing instead to concentrate on his, ahem, "unfortunate" history of violence against women.  To be fair to the lad, he has put his hands up and said he regrets the person he was and has been trying to be slightly less unpleasant in recent years - he has at least managed to keep out of the courts for some time now.  There are also more than a few suggestions that he's happy to take the credit for other people's work - which doesn't feel like the sort of thing you'd want hanging around you in his position (and it's worth noting that although I commented that Snoop did a lot of the work on this album, he gets plenty of credit for it here).

"Customers also listened to" Snoop, Eazy, Ice - all the crew.  This is Dre's only solo effort (with a bit of help from Snoop) on this list but he's also appeared with N.W.A and produced efforts from Enimem, Snoop, 50 Cent and Mary J. Blige, so we can see he's probably represented enough.  Personally, I quite like his rapping style, but the offensive content doesn't have enough counterbalancing intelligence, humour or anything else to keep me engaged, I'm afraid.

Hmmm - a tricky one.  I actually prefer the overall general sound on The Chronic, but the lyrical content was just tiresome - and I'm really not sure how much credit (or blame) Dre deserves for any of it.  There are some decent enough songs on Blonde On Blonde, but I think we know that me and Dylan's voice just don't get along.  I did listen to both these albums twice, but my opinion didn't overly change on either of them as a result and there's also no danger of me revisiting either of them. I can see that both these albums can present an argument as to their ongoing legacy and they both have their fans but I count myself in neither camp (and can see very few people being in both camps) - a dishonourable draw seems to be the best way forward to me, so "congratulations" to the pair of them.  Dylan gets the title lyrics though - for obvious reasons.

#40-39 - What?  One of these album actually has a woman on it!
#36-35 - Battle of the heavyweights