Bass! How low can you go?
Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time...
...I'd not heard either of these before, but was looking forward to them both, but expecting to like The Stones effort more.
#15 : It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back - Public Enemy (1988)
Loud, obnoxious, funky, avant-garde, political, uncompromising, hilarious – Public Enemy’s brilliant second album is all of these things — all at once. Chuck D booms intricate rhymes with a delivery inspired by sportscaster Marv Albert; sidekick Flavor Flav raps comic relief; and production team the Bomb Squad build mesmerizing, multilayered jams, pierced with shrieking sirens. The title and roiling force of “Bring the Noise” is truth in advertising. “If they’re calling my music ‘noise,’ ” said Chuck D, “if they’re saying that I’m really getting out of character being a black person in America, then fine – I’m bringing more noise.”
I didn’t think I was a Public Enemy fan, but last time I was pleasantly surprised – and I was pretty much expecting the same sort of thing here. And, yeah – it would be a stretch to describe it as widely diverging from a successful formula - and they certainly have plenty to say. “Bring The Noise” and “Don’t Believe The Hype” jumped out as highlights for me, but the rest of it is very much in the same vein. Which I must admit I did start to find a little grating by the end of the album – it’s all done well enough, but a little lacking in variety for me.
Part of the problem here is that it suffers somewhat from its success because, even though I wasn’t familiar with too many of the tracks, they often sounded incredibly familiar now – mostly because both the songs and the samples they use, have been sampled or quoted so many times since (eg the opening “Brothers and sisters” from “Rebel Without A Pause” is lifted straight as the opening line on “Pump Up The Volume”, but now I know it came from "I Don't Know What This World Is Coming To" by The Soul Children feat. Jesse Jackson) that it all sounds so familiar now. I appreciate that this wouldn’t have been a problem back in 1988 – but I can only call it as I hear it now. I also found the opening track somewhat bizarre – why would you include the call-on from a BBC concert in Hammersmith on what is patently a US-centric album?
For an album that has so much to say, Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot to say about it, although this is somewhat impressive - "The album itself was mixed with no automation, instead being recorded on analog tape and later painstakingly mixed by hand", particularly given the 6 week deadline they gave themselves. The critics loved it upon release, but the public didn't exactly rush out to buy it, with it peaking at #42 in the US album charts - which seems criminal when compared with some of the dross that flew straight in #1 in subsequent years, but we have to remember these were very different times for hip-hop. But, bizarrely it got to #8 in the UK - maybe it was the opening track that did it? Of course, everyone agrees it's great these days - and surprisingly, Kurt Cobain liked it - it seems a somewhat obvious choice for the lad (particularly when compared to this).
The group's Wikipedia entry still doesn't have an awful lot to say about them, and what it does have to say is incredibly unstructured. But they're still hanging in there, having produced 15 albums over the years, some of which have particularly bizarre titles. It's somewhat unfortunate that their earlier albums seem to remain as relevant today as they were back then, but you certainly can't accuse them of not having tried to move society forward - both musically and politically. "Customers also listened to" all them early hip-hop types, but there's a good argument that Public Enemy did a lot of the heavy lifting to starting the ball rolling. I can't say I'll be rushing back to this album, but I'm glad I listened to it and I did enjoy the best tracks.
#14 : Exile On Main Street - The Rolling Stones (1972)
A dirty whirl of basement blues and punk boogie, the Rolling Stones’ 1972 double LP was, according to Keith Richards, “maybe the best thing we did.” Indeed, inside its deliberately dense squall — Richards’ and Mick Taylor’s dogfight riffing, the lusty jump of the Bill Wyman–Charlie Watts rhythm engine, Mick Jagger’s caged-animal bark and burned-soul croon — is the Stones’ greatest album and Jagger and Richards’ definitive songwriting statement of outlaw pride and dedication to grit and cold-morning redemption.
Our sixth (and final) trip with The Stones on this list and I think they’ve probably enhanced their reputation in my eyes more than any other group on the list – I didn’t think I was a fan, but it turns out I like them much more than I was expecting to. So, obviously I had great hopes for this which is often mentioned as their greatest album (including by this list, obviously). But I’d have to say, admittedly after only a couple of listens, I’m struggling to get the appeal. There are some fine riffs in there, but I found my interest wandering way before the end of most tracks – and Jagger seems to have decided to use his annoying voice on this album, which did grate with me. I can quite believe that you need to give it a far greater number of listens in order to appreciate it, but personally I haven’t found that to be the case with some of their other albums, so I found this initially a bit of a letdown. “Tumbling Dice” and “Sweet Virginia” were the tracks I liked the most, but I wouldn’t describe them as instant grabbers. I'd also have to say "Turd On The Run" is not a great title for a track and, at 67 minutes, the album also felt too long for me.
Wikipedia has a reasonable amount of text for the album, but surprisingly little content - basically they recorded it in several places for several different reasons, but none of them interesting. The critics' views were somewhat mixed upon release, but apparently it was re-evaluated in the late 70s by everyone as their finest work (possibly because they were churning out some right old shit at the time). Interestingly someone who didn't re-evaluate it was Jagger, who claimed the mixes were lousy but held his hands up as being responsible - he had to do them because everyone else was "drunk or junkies". But people bought it and it got to #1 in the UK and the US - and there's still a lot of love for it out there now.
The band's Wikipedia entry is still massive - it's interesting that the section marked "1978-1982 - Commercial Peak" features only one album from this list - Some Girls, which I found somewhat meh. Apparently at this time they experienced "immense popularity among young people" - I must have been slightly too young at the time to be affected. They've had a few fallow periods since, but they're still doing OK for themselves - Jagger and Richards have been there from the start and they're still going nearly 60 years later (amusingly Mick is the older of the two, but you'd never guess it to look at them). "Customers also listened to" all them late 60s/early 70s names who I now know a hell of a lot more about than I did at the start of this exercise, but The Stones have come out of it with an improved standing in my eyes, which is more than can be said for most of them.
Having said that, six albums on this list feels a little high to me, but I suspect there are plenty of other albums that fans would argue deserve to be on the list as well. General consensus on the internet is that the top four on this list - this one, Sticky Fingers, Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet - are their best four albums, but the order varies from list to list. Personally, given the minimal exposure I've been able to give them, I found the last one to be my favourite but I can believe the others would be growers and the order may change if I put the effort in - it remains to be seen whether that happens though. They've been unlucky to only win one round though - the competition has been tougher in their rounds than in many.
So will they add to that total? I can't say I particularly enjoyed either of these albums - the high points of the Public Enemy album were the high points of the round for me, but I also found the album as a whole to be more of a drag to listen to and it feels much more likely I'll go back to the Stones for a revisit. But Public Enemy have a lot more to say for themselves and I think they deserve some credit for that - all in all, a honourable draw seems the best way forward.
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