We'll watch the sun rise from the bottom of the sea

 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 collection of free feeling and imagination,” he said of the album. “Imagination is very important.” Widely assumed to be about an acid trip, “Purple Haze” had “nothing to do with drugs,” Hendrix insisted. “‘Purple Haze’ was all about a dream I had that I was walking under the sea.”

Our third (and last) trip with Jimi and his Experience - all in all, I've enjoyed them more than I was expecting to, so was hoping for this trend to continue with his highest entry.  And yeah, it's a bit of a "throw it all at the wall" album but overall, I think it generally works - although I must admit that I listened to it whilst trying to work and I'm not entirely sure anyone could consider that to be an ideal situation for enjoying some Hendrix.  There's obviously a high degree of skill on display on the instruments, but his voice also works well across the album.  No tracks obviously jumped out at me - except maybe "Foxey Lady", "The Wind Cries Mary" and "Purple Haze" (which wasn't on the original UK version, which seems like an odd choice now).   I'd have to say though - is there anything more late 60s than the font used on the album cover? (except maybe the font used on the US version of the album)

I was also amazed to hear that "Are You Experienced" is the same song as the Belly version - I'd just assumed they had named their song the same because it just really works for them (and is well worth checking out if you don't know it).  It never occurred to me that Hendrix stuff was covered much but Devo have also covered the same track and it's, well, it's something, although I'm not entirely sure what. 

The Wikipedia entry for the album has been pulled together by a fan who is definitely has a fondness for detail - there's more there about the various recording sessions than most albums get for the whole thing.  But once it was there, the critics generally liked it and, most importantly, the people having over their money liked it - particularly in the US where it's sold 5 million copies.  Pleasingly, it got to #2 in the UK which gives me an opportunity to investigate and find it was kept off the top by Sergeant Pepper - unlucky with the timing there, Jimi (and in the following week it was pushed down to #3 by the extremely rock and roll soundtrack from The Sound Of Music).

The group's Wikipedia entry is a subset of Jimi's which seems a little unfair, so I'm going to specifically namecheck Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell who, I was somewhat surprised to learn, were both English.  There's really so much in Jimi's entry - I suspect the guy (and it's going to be a guy, isn't it?) who wrote the album's entry has been involved here as well.  There's no denying the guy did a lot in his 27 years though (Jimi, not the obsessive Wiki fan) - I imagine seeing him live was a particularly exhilarating occasion (and you wouldn't believe how many times I've had to think up synonyms for "experience" whilst typing this up).

"Customers also listened to" Derek & The Dominos, Cream, The Who and The Kinks, with the latter seeming somewhat incongruous given the albums we've had from them on this list, but their earlier stuff was somewhat rockier than the fey crap they came out with later.  Of the three Jimi entries we've had on this list, I think this was my favourite but they've all been a lot better than I was expecting and I can see me being in the mood to put any of them or his greatest hits on if I fancied annoying the neighbours (although, to be honest, they'd be fine about it and it would be my wife telling me to turn it down).

#29 : The White Album - The Beatles (1968)

They wrote the songs while on retreat with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India, taking a break from the celebrity grind. As John Lennon later said, “We sat in the mountains eating lousy vegetarian food, and we wrote all these songs.” They came back with more great tunes than they could release. Lennon pursued his hard-edged vision in the cynical wit of “Sexy Sadie” and “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” as well as the childlike yearning of “Julia” and “Dear Prudence.” Paul McCartney’s playful pop energy came through in “Martha My Dear” and his inversion of Chuck Berry’s American values, “Back in the U.S.S.R.” George Harrison’s spiritual yearning led him to “Long, Long, Long” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” featuring a guest guitar solo from Eric Clapton. Even Ringo Starr contributes his first original, the country-tinged “Don’t Pass Me By.” The Beatles tried a little of everything, and all their adventures paid off.

Well, that cover "art" really doesn't work well when included in the text, does it?  An album just a few months younger than me, which I have consciously or unconsciously avoided for entire life - I think my suspicion was that it's a bit odd/self-indulgent.  And having listened to it, my suspicion wasn't a million miles off, although it's not really all that odd except for the weird mix of genres involved.  What I wasn't expecting was for large swathes of it to be, well, just a bit shit.  And some of it is REALLY shit.  I mean, I knew "Ob-la-di Ob-la-da" wasn't exactly on too many people's list of favourite Beatles tracks (Lennon described it at the time as "granny music shit") but there are a lot of others here which are even worse - side 2 goes on a really terrible run with "Piggies", "Rocky Raccoon", "Pass Me By" and "Why Don't We Do It In The Road".

Most of the rest of it only really reaches the dizzy heights of "OK, I guess" whilst often seemingly surprisingly simple - although I'm feeling generous enough to say they may be deceptively so.  But I'd only call out "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Blackbird" and "Revolution 1" as being particularly noteworthy from a quality perspective and I'd expect more from an album of 30 songs.  "Dear Prudence" and "Helter Skelter" come close but suffer from having (imho!) superior cover versions by Siouxsie and the Banshees and U2 respectively - and I'm also going to give "Revolution 9" a "special" mention for being incredibly self-indulgent.  It is also, at 93:33, far too long and it reminds me of some of the hip-hop monstrosities I've had to suffer in that they obviously surrounded themselves with people who wouldn't/couldn't tell them when to stop - less would have definitely been more here.

WIkipedia tells me it's not even called The White Album - it's officially just The Beatles, but I think we can understand how it got its alternative name (the packaging was a reaction to the somewhat more decorated Sergeant Pepper).  It also, of course, tells me I'm totally wrong and it's a postmodern masterpiece - I guess I'm just an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy who's set in his ways.  Apparently, George Martin was keen to make it a single album but the band refused - later George Harrison said it might have made sense for it to happen but it didn't because "there was a lot of ego in that band".  It certainly doesn't sound like they were getting on brilliantly - obviously it was all Yoko's fault.   Their long-standing recording engineer upped and left halfway through because he got bored with the bickering and Ringo left them to it for a couple of weeks because Paul kept slagging him off.  The rest of the entry is basically a track-by-track breakdown which I didn't feel the need to read and the critics all attempting to outdo each other by writing nonsense, although not all of them loved it at the time (they all think it's great now though, obviously).  It sold a few copies worldwide as well - 15 million or so - although the group weren't as universally popular as they once were (and again Yoko takes the blame here).

I still don't know what to do about the group's Wikipedia entry - concentrating on this time period tells us about Apple Corps which they (John and Paul, it sounds like) set up to create a multi-faceted business empire but all it ended up doing was losing them shedloads of cash.  One subsidiary was Apple Electronics which was run by a guy called Magic Alex, who'd managed to impress John with a small box with a load of randomly blinking lights on it.  What a surprise that he turned out to be a less-than-impressive businessmen, eh?!?

"Customers also listened to" the usual Beatles related stuff (including the tribute band again).  However, whilst some of their output has been pleasingly more enjoyable than expected (particularly the last entry) there is absolutely no danger of me revisiting this - I just can't imagine why anyone would want to listen to it.

So, in distinct contrast to my pre-round expectations, there was nowhere near enough quality in The Beatles offering to carry the day and so Jimi strolled away with the round easily.

#32-31 - Another woman!
#28-27 - Not the finest round for me