Tag Archives: Top 100 Albums

Gones for a Song: Now That’s What I Call Music! 21-30

Getting now to the core of this effort to think about and list out my current favorite albums from years of obsessing about music. You can probably spot by now the self-evident obsessions and repetition of styles, there are definitely some sounds that resonate more than others and I have avoided some of the big obvious IMPORTANT albums, partly as they have had the crap played out of them on the radio, soundtracks and have become mundane. No spoilers here but do not be disappointed that your favorite Zep, Beatles, Marvin Gaye, NIN or that not much Rap or modern R&B have made the list. I just did not play that much of any of them to entertain myself over the last couple of decades with the possible exception of the wooden Zeppelin stuff, like ‘Going to California’, “Over the Hills and Far Away” or ‘Tangerine’. There is a real Mix-Tape vibe to this week’s 10 though, all over the shop stylistically and release date too. So let’s get into it “One, two, three, four, tell me that you love me more, Sleepless long nights, that is what my youth was for”https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/6TQbkVVdhJJ0Z345UJZYbt

Number 30: Amyl and the Sniffers “Comfort To Me” 2021. Amy Taylor is a pocket sized banshee backed by some of the scuzziest guitar thrash, it is my distinct pleasure to have ever heard. It could be described as punk and has the same ridiculous amount of energy that sometimes just seems so engrossing and elevating when other punk is just noise. She has a foul mouth and most tracks have the ubiquitous E annotation, but in front of a messed up mosh pit of mouth breathers she rules supreme and takes no shit: “What the fuck’s up?” she yells. “If anyone falls down, you help them up. Don’t touch anyone. Let’s get rowdy!”. If you have to drive somewhere late at night and want to drive faster than is legal or recommended, crank this shit up.

Number 29: Underworld “Drift Series 1 Sampler” 2019. Underworld started a long, long time ago with two friends in Cardiff, I have never heard the first couple of albums which they themselves dismiss as Mark 1. The Mark 2 version saw Karl Hyde and Rick Smith start down a path of electronic music innovation not matched by many, certainly not in terms of longevity, diversity of output all of it relevant and upbeat and they are still at it. I got into them with their trio of mid 90’s bangers, “Dubnobasswithmyheadman”, “Second Toughest In the Infants”, and “Beaucoup Fish”. During Covid and confinement they decided to not let the moment pass of having space to just keep creating, so they committed to release something new every week for a year and Drift is the result. That’s a lot of music, so the Drift Series 1 Sampler is the best way into their world. As ever, a mix of slow chillout tunes amongst dance and upbeat workouts. I threw into the playlist an extra, a great thing they did with the marvelous throated friend of parakeets, Iggy Pop.

Number 28: Joni Mitchell “Shadows and Light” 1980. Joni Mitchell is one of those artists whose name gets shortened like Bruce, Elvis or Lennon and generally is known and loved for her archetypical 1970’s singer-songwriter output, an inspiration to Lana Del Ray, Taylor Swift and Prince amongst many vocal fans. I really enjoyed her forays and explorations into jazz in the late 70’s where she single handled brought Weather Report into the mainstream and Charles Mingus from a jazz footnote to be the name to drop by all wannabe ‘hepcats’. This album is a live selection of that period recorded at the Santa Monica Bowl in 1979 and features a stellar band, Pat Metheny, Lisle Mays, Michael Brecker, the ridiculously pretentious Jaco Pastorius and The Persuasions. All at the top of their game and having fun furrily singing the blues.

Number 27: The Groundhogs “Split” 1971. Tony ‘TS’ McPhee had the good taste to be a massive fan of John Lee Hooker and named his band after Hooker’s ‘Ground Hog Blues’. They provided the backing band to the great man on one of his albums and supported him on his 1964 tour of Britain. They were a power trio with bass and drums similar to Cream, jazz rhythm signatures and lead guitar taking its own path with McPhee’s blues growl singing updated blues rock rather than just rehashing the original blues classics while taking the credit – looking at you Messrs Page and Plant and their pathetic ‘traditional’ credit to avoid paying royalties to Muddy Waters or Jimmy Reed. I first got into them with “Thank Christ For The Bomb” and its odd First World War theme, The Fall covered ‘Strange Town’ which shows I was not alone. This album has the first side four parts of the Split suite, inspired by a months long panic attack and then the more standard 4 songs on side 2 which included the belting ‘Cherry Red’. I saw them on this tour and the “Who Will Save the World, The Mighty Groundhogs” tour the following year, which featured Tony’s new toy, a synthesizer.

Number 26: Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship “Blows Against The Empire” 1968. I heard this one lazy Saturday afternoon listening to the John Peel ‘Top Gear’ radio show and started down a path of obsession with the Airplane, Grace Slick and Paul Kantner. I never got the Grateful Dead, but I absolutely got the Airplane and their side projects were at times better. The sessions for this were from a frenzied stoned summer in Wally Heider’s San Francisco studio where the Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Crosby, Stills and Nash were noodling around on Crosby’s solo album “Almost Cut My Hair”. The Airplane were falling apart but this high concept science fiction space opera meets anarchic revolution (this is 1968 after all) is glorious. Lots of Pooh references, plus hijacking starships and babies. The album won a Hugo award, and I devoured from cover to cover the lyric booklet, including all the artwork by Slick and her odd annotations. Space-ship engine noises and very Robert Heinlein, they didn’t get their dates right though as the starship “ought to be ready by 1990”. Governor Reagan, as he was, also gets a nod “You unleash the dogs of a grade-B movie star Governor’s war…so drop your fuckin’ bombs, burn your demon babies, I will live again!”

Number 25: Talk Talk “Spirit of Eden” 1988. The late and sadly missed Mark Hollis was the inspiration behind all that was great about Talk Talk. They first broke through as a synth pop band doing Duran Duran style dance songs, all big floppy fringes, pastel suits with big lapels and the sleeves rolled up. The dance hits and the 12” mixes of ‘Living In Another World’ and ‘Life’s What You Make It’ are solid bangers so it was a pleasant surprise when they morphed into a thinking man’s creative act with electronics supporting rather than dominating the quiet post-rock with “Colour of Spring” in 1986. Hollis found his niche and that album and the fabulous “Spirit Of Eden” became a real inspiration to many bands including Radiohead, Kate Bush and Elbow amongst them. It’s hard to define their sound but adjectives like pastoral, peaceful, contemplative work but the sound is also glorious, this is the definitive Sunday morning album and cries out for headphones. 

Number 24: Sleeper “The It Girl” 1996. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I had a minor crush on Louise Weiner, the gamin lead singer, who with her partner Andy Maclure had one of the most popular BritPop bands in the early to mid 90’s. Maclure had to endure being one of the infamous Sleeperblokes, a pejorative term at the time in the music press and used by musicians, to refer to any person of limited standing within a band or a drab and unremarkable individual. Maclure and the other “Sleeperblokes” themselves were reported to find it a joke, and even produced an ironic “Sleeperbloke” T-shirt to go with Wener’s “Another Female Fronted Band” T-shirt. This is the third album and is the perfect combination of ironic smart-ass lyrics and driving pop rock, like the Replacements but with a girl singing and less overall angst.

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Number 23: Bob Marley & The Wailers “ Rastaman Vibration” 1976. One of the odd side effects of the ‘Mod’ scene in the UK in the 1960’s was the opening up of the market and popular tastes to Jamaican ska music. Named after the rhythm being ‘um ska, um ska’ we danced to ‘Long Shot Kicky Bucket’, ‘The Israelites’ and ‘Double Barrel’ so it was an easy transition to the yet slower still reggae beat in the 70’s. Punk tours were always multicultural and vocally against the casual racism of the skinheads – the biggest fans of ska ironically – so reggae became de rigeur to be played at parties alongside the latest punk or New Wave. Toots and the Maytals gave us the genre with ‘Do The Reggay’ and did well, as did Burning Spear and the homegrown Steel Pulse, but the rulers of reggae were without doubt the Wailers and the king was Bob Marley. They got cross over hits, with white guys like Clapton taking their songs and bringing them mainstream attention. The albums ‘Burnin’ in 1973 with ‘I Shot The Sheriff’ and “Natty Dread” had all the hits that came to fame on “Live” and “Babylon by Bus”. This album is more rounded, no filler or repetitive retreading. The lyrics are more confident, and his voice is now that of a global star and the studio arrangements are superb, with a large band and singers all in one stoned groove.

Number 22: Mathew E. White “K-Bay” 2021. I was late to his 2012 “Big Inner” but fell in love with its big aural landscapes, when I heard it. He is in many ways a Southern songwriter but instead of being influenced by the normal Americana tropes his background in jazz showed through. This is a man who likes wide screen production sound, lots of layers of music, choirs, piano and guitars. The follow up “Fresh Blood” in 2015 was more of the same cosmic gospel but “K-Bay” is his masterpiece, there are shades of “Pet Sounds”, “Give Me The Night” and “Gaucho”. But rather than just be a pastiche of 70-80’s AOR he has taken the smooth production and soundscape but layered over it found sounds and his ironic voice, it also rocks harder than music to cook to.

Number 21: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Push The Sky Away” 2013. Nick Cave is possibly the most attractive version of growing old gracefully there is. He is insanely talented, generous of spirit, creative across several media, was the perfect romantic partner for Polly Jean and has suffered in his personal life in a way no-one would wish on their worst enemy. That he has lost not one but two sons on top of his father dying in a car accident when he was 19 and that he has managed to keep his shit together and keep producing interesting and new music is remarkable. Then in 2023 he admitted part of his ability to get through the turmoil in his private life is that he has been addicted to heroin for 20 years, addicted in a managed way but still every morning and evening addicted. The Birthday Party, Cave’s first band was on the noise side of noise-rock and make The Viagra Boys look like CSN&Y and he has always had that hard edged rock side to him, as much as the later stuff has become more melodic and a real contrast from his Grinderman dark side project. He has a great band in the Bad Seeds but as you can imagine over the 21 years of its existence it has changed, it included Barry Adamson from Magazine, Blixa Bargeld from Einstürzende Neubauten but his core collaborator is Warren Ellis; now that Mick Harvey, who was with him from Birthday Party days is gone, he just gave up in 2012 and moved back to Melbourne, drugs being one of the issues. Cave’s 2024 album “Wild God” was released to rave reviews, but I prefer the darkness of the “Skeleton Tree”, “Dig Lazarus Dig” and this marvelous “Push The Sky Away” version of Cave’s gothic life.

The Tidal playlist is here: https://tidal.com/playlist/a49d4aef-b275-4389-8d37-4dae3554044c

Gones for a Song: Now That’s What I Call Music! 31-40

Definite feeling of being in the home stretch now, which will be a relief for some of the subscribers who didn’t sign up for this and instead are expecting vignettes of daily life in France. Substack does seem to attract nerds of every artistic persuasion, and music anoraks are right up there with train spotters and the guys sitting on camping chairs on the other side of the fence at the bottom of the runway, tuned into ATC and writing down tail numbers. It seems like every day there is someone raving about an album from the 1980’s or something new they have heard. The other odd treat for us is seeing your heroes showing up and writing on Substack, 

Laura Marling, 

Neko Case, 

Stephin Merritt and 

Rickie Lee Jones – although in fairness to RLJ she is writing about films, old films and generally having a metaphorical walk down memory lane. 

Nick Hornby is also on here and although his books always share the joys of music from this side of the speaker he gets a mention purely because of the round about introduction to Steve Mason. 

I have been listening to some cool new stuff over the last few weeks and as much as I have enjoyed writing about the aural bookmarks in my life you can see by the distribution of albums from the last 15 years over my top 100 I actually spend most of my time listening to new music. I will bring back ‘Gones for a Song’ in December with a top 20 albums of 2024. Anyway in the words of young Pink, lets get into it: one, two, “Free, Four”https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/5GUuKta1wlx1Y0AWOm9RB5

Number 40: TV On The Radio “Dear Science” 2008. I get obsessions about certain bands, when it’s not just I like a song or an album but I devour everything I can get hold of. With TVOTR I discovered them through an EP ‘Young Liars” in 2003 which had a Pixies cover ‘Mr Grieves’ and I was hooked. I didn’t get to see them live until 2012 after the unfortunate death of the bassist Gerard Smith. They of course hailed from Brooklyn, you could tell by all the cool kids who would turn up and do guest vocal spots, Bowie, Karen O, Grizzly Bear, Peter Murphy. The music is upbeat rythym driven alt-rock but clever arrangements and interesting melody lines and harmonies made it the thinking man’s music of choice for about a 5 year period from 2006-2011. The 3 middle period albums are all superb but this one has the better overall consistent flow over “Return to Cookie Mountain” or “Nine Types of Light”. Dave Sitek’s side project “Maximum Balloon” is worth checking out if you have never heard it. There is a potential top 20 list project of ‘no hit wonder’ side projects out there.

Number 39: Gil Scott Heron “I’m New Here” 2010. The backstory to this fabulous album and the subsequent two excellent spin-offs is cool in its own right. I remember Scott-Heron as a hipster jazz-poet in the 70’s when his ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ was a staple at any cool party. He was actually a poet and damn angry, he was the first one to make a political point about cultural appropriation. Then funk came along, and he missed it, he was still tied into a loungy jazz beat and flute, which could not get you arrested in the late 70’s, let alone a record deal, so he faded from the limelight, probably because he didn’t pull any punches about the institutional racism all around him. He released a few more albums in the 80’s (“Reflections” is actually really good and worth checking out), but he bubbled around in the background as a kind of godfather of Rap character. Like many black men of the time, he got busted and locked up several times for drug possession, while white men on Wall Street got rich while in possession of the same drug. Richard Russell of the fabulous ‘Everything is Recorded’ releases and lots of production work reached out to his former US label and traveled from England to record Scot-Heron while he was out on bail in 2007 and continued over the next 3 years, helping him get some kind of artistic life back. This album was released in 2010, a mix of his ruminations looking back on his life, his grandmother and interspersed with songs. Sadly, by this time he was HIV positive and in May 2011 he passed due to complications with pneumonia. Jamie XX released a remixed version of the songs under the name “We’re New Here” which is excellent, as is the “We’re New Again” by Makaya McCraven.

Number 38: The Knife “Silent Shout” 2006. You have heard Karin Dreijer’s voice if you do not necessarily listen to The Knife, she releases material as Fever Ray, she is on Röyskopp stuff, she has sung with Björk, some of which has made it to ads and TV show episode fade outs. You will however probably never seen what she looks like unless you are a fan, and even then would probably struggle to recognize her in the street, as live she wears masks and outrageous make up, there is a definitely a persona as a singer “dancing for dollars” and as a person she sees that as a separate life. The Knife is the project with her brother Olof, they did 4 albums before they gave up in 2014. This is hard core techno beats but very Swedish with awesome melodies, you can channel some Abba if you look hard enough beneath the distortions, it is also quirky; one of their first big songs was about ‘Lasagna’. They had a couple of hits on their first two albums, but this is peak, edgy Knife, sharp and pointed.

Number 37: Savages “Adore Life” 2016. I had the classic ‘day late and dollar short’ experience with these noisy women, I was really into this the debut album and then word came they were playing ‘The Bottom of the Hill’, a tiny hole in the wall club walking distance from my apartment in SOMA in San Francisco. I thought I should get a ticket for that, but they were so obscure Anglo/French gurrrl rock, no rush. They had such a rush they got moved a week later to the Independent and sold out there within an hour. So, I never saw them. I see Jehnny Beth all the time living in France, she is the Annie Nightingale/Lauren Laverne of French rock shows on ARTE the arts channel, she is also a reasonably well-known actress and was in ‘Anatomy of a Fall’. This is arty post-punk, louder and harder guitars than Warpaint, more catchy and less whiny than Sleater Kinney. They made 2 albums but have not played since 2017 so arguably not still a band. The Beth solo album is terrible, and I have not listened to the other side projects so about time for a reunion.

Number 36: Elbow “The Take Offs and Landings of Everything” 2014. Elbow now snuggle quietly in the bosom of the average British rock fan and Guy Garvey is practically a saint. The lead singer, main songwriter, Radio 6 DJ, professional Mancunian and general great man to have a beer with, in a way that the prior holder of that office Mark E Smith never was. They have released 10 albums since starting out as Elbow in Bury in 1997, they write together and share the credits, so the money is spread out equally. The early albums are claustrophobic, I got “Asleep at the Wheel” but didn’t play it much as I found it all a bit dour, but with each album they got more adventurous in both song structure and emotional heft. “Leaders of the Free World” and “Build a Rocket Boys” are both big, beaty and bouncy, but this is my favorite. Hard to say a bad word about Mr Garvey and his friends, anyone who can write a song called “Jesus is a Rochdale Girl” is a fucking legend.

Number 35: Dry Cleaning “New Long Leg” 2021. Yet another odd British art rock band with the vocals spoken rather than sung? Yes, it is post-rock with great scrunchy guitar and big bass lines with the odd tuning every now and then, that is just on the melodic side of atonal. Floating over that is Florence Shaw’s sprechgesang tales of mundane lives, which are like being part of a conversation in a pub, they are odd and funny as fuck: “I’d like to run away with you on a plane but don’t bring those loafers”, “I’ve been thinking about eating that hot dog for hours”, “What do you think your parents feel? That nod that says, ‘I’ve seen things’”. They have released “Stumpwork” and an EP since this and have had some reasonable commercial success, playing to adoring European festival crowds. I hope they can keep it up.

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Number 34: Genesis “ The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” 1974. Genesis were a nice bunch of public school boys who fell under the impresario Jonathan King’s spell, managed to wriggle out and added Steve Hackett on guitar and Phil Collins on drums. They were prog-rock defined, in fact I first heard their song ‘In The Beginning’ is on the “World of Progressive Music” which was the second album I ever owned. Flowery stories, lots of keyboard flourishes, nursery crimes indeed. Peter Gabriel’s voice telling the story, in this case of a Puerto Rican graffiti tagger in New York city. Gabriel had a dramatic flair and live wore odd costumes, including headdresses and makeup putting him into various characters like the ‘Watcher of the Skies’. “Selling England by The Pound” had set the scene as they got darker and less fey, but TLLDOB is their peak. But the recording of it was the end of Peter Gabriel’s involvement with the band, it was arduous, and he was absent for a lot of it due to his wife’s difficult pregnancy. They toured and performed the album in its entirety plus an encore, a decision that was not supported by the entire band considering the large amount of new material. The stage shows also involved new, more elaborate costumes worn by Gabriel, three backdrop screens that displayed 1,450 slides from eight projectors and lasers. When the reviews came in they focused on Gabriel’s theatrics and took the band’s musical performance as secondary, which pissed the others off. So, he left, and they produced a bunch of boring pop rock albums over the next 20 years while Collins became a mega star and father of Emily in Paris. Odd side note: Eno is on this album.

Number 33: The Tubes “Young and Rich” 1976. When I lived in SF The Tubes were ever present, a bit like the Quicksilver and various Dead spinoffs, well past their sell by date, playing bars and free concerts and I didn’t even bother to find out who was still in the band. In 1976 they tried to present themselves as a punk band on the back of a single “White Punks On Dope” which had been on the 1975 original Tubes album. I saw them on that tour when they were such a contrast to what the English punk scene looked like as to be laughable. They survived being ‘gobbed’ on incessantly – the quaint habit of standing in front of the stage spitting at the band. If it was good enough for the Clash or Souixie then the Tubes had to put up with it, even though they looked more like hair metal than punk. This album is so clever and fun and unlike much of what was produced in 1976 is still compelling. Its tongue is firmly in its cheek for sure with ‘Proud to be an American’ and ‘Don’t Touch Me There’ lots of ironic humor and good musicianship. They were not just vaudeville, the musicianship was consistently good, drummer Prairie Prince played for bunch of bands as a session musician and was part of Jefferson Starship, Vince Welnick ended up playing keys for the Dead.

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Number 32: The Who “Live at Leeds” 1971. The Who were the Mod band to the Stones being the Rockers band. The 4 piece of drums, bass, guitar and singer never changed and was pretty simple, the songs were always poppy, they started out singing Tamala Motown songs and as much as Pete Townsend wrote two ‘rock operas’ they were mainly 3 minute pop songs, verse chorus verse chorus solo verse chorus. Townsend is and was a stunning guitarist, lots of reverb and fret runs, maybe not as technically as complex as Beck or Clapton but he could rock, and this album is his guitar show piece. It includes the Tommy medley of “‘See Me, Feel Me’, as features in the Woodstock movie, the expanded version includes the precursor to Tommy “A Quick One, While He’s Away”. Both demonstrate they had superb harmonies as well as the craziest drummer to ever grace the stage, Keith Moon. The original vinyl had just 6 songs and they were the perfect hard rock. I saw them at Charlton’s The Valley in 1974 with Lou Reed and others in support and they basically mixed this set with the more upbeat Quadrophenia songs.

Number 31: Ian Dury “New Boots and Panties” 1976. Ian Dury was a pub rocker, his band Kilburn and the High Roads (not to be confused with Hatfield and the North) were popular in that early 70’s gap before punk, they ironically supported the Who on their Quadrophenia tour in 1973. Dury, Davey Payne and Chas Jankel came out of the last iteration to become Ian Dury and the Blockheads, although this album, which made his fame was released under his name only although Jankel co-wrote most of the songs. Dury was a multi-talented odd ball, he had been at art school with Peter Blake and had a commercial art career before the music took off. He wrote stories about the characters in the demi monde of East London and Essex where he grew up, the names were changed to ‘protect the innocent’ but Randy Mandy, Plaistow Patricia and Clever Trevor are with us to this day, in the same way that Joyce’s Dublin characters are recognizable today. He was great live, and I was lucky to see him and the Blockheads on the Stiffs tour with Costello, Wreckless Eric and Larry Wallis. I somehow befriended Kosmo Vinyl and got myself, girlfriend and a mate back to the afterparty at The Midland Hotel, which was next to St George’s Hall in Bradford, up close you really understood the degree of his disability from polio but it didn’t stop Dury who, to the strains of JJ Cale’s “Okie” as he tried to seduce the girlfriend. Another small world factette, Dury and the Blockheads toured the US for the one and only time in 1978 supporting recovering former poet, Lou Reed.

Tidal Playlist version is here.

Gones for a Song: Now That’s What I Call Music! 41-50

I went to Toronto at the weekend for a business trip, I spent most of the time in a hotel and in meetings, as you do. I did manage to do two things I do on every big city trip, explore by going for a run and hit up a couple of vinyl stores. I had not been to Toronnuh really before, technically I had once before, but we literally flew in, had 2 meetings and flew back to New York. I will talk more about my thoughts and impressions in Monday’s ‘Gones for Good’. I killed a good hour rack flicking but picked up a Stones Bootleg ‘Bright Lights, Big City’, which is an interesting footnote to my last choice “Get Your Yaya’s Out”, as it’s the original Stones with Brian Jones doing studio demos of blues songs and then 4 songs from the 1973 tour rehearsal in Montreux from mixing desk. I also got the re-release over a double album of White Stripes’ “Elephant” and “Countdown to Ecstasy”, which per my thoughts on the Dan last week features the ‘guitar’ band incarnation before Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter leaves. The Canadian Dollar is a friend to all visitors so I left a happy man. We are over the halfway mark, so there are some seriously great works of art ahead, as well as those albums that just get under your skin even if they never sold a ton. Let’s roll:

Number 50: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah “Only Run” 2014. Alec Ounsworth continues to this day touring as CYHSY but started the band with 3 friends in Philly in 2004. He has what could be disparagingly be called a slightly whiny voice, but so does Eric Johnson of Fruit Bats, Izaak Brock of Modest Mouse and Jordan Dreyer of La Dispute and those are all fine bands. Like them, Alec sings about the absurdity of day to day life in Modern America, like them, he gets shouty and angry at times and soft and caressing at others. The Clappers as a band were successful for a while, the kind of band that NPR’s Bob Boilen would come in his pants over, the band that Cheryl Waters would introduce them by saying their album was the best of the year. That type of accolade makes them popular but doesn’t necessarily translate into fame and fortune, so Alec still making music and taking it around is cool. I met him once and had a beer with him after a show at the Independent, nice guy. Their first album features the gloriously titled “By the Skin of my Yellow Country Teeth”, great album, as was “Some Loud Thunder”. This album, the 4th, was released after that short moment of fame had mainly passed but is to me peak Ounsworth, all big songs and a big setting, Matt Berninger kind of big, and he actually adds vocals on ‘Coming Down’. 

As WordPress does not want to embed the playlist it can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5yvtYVRjFrLqTuxHo9heiE?si=a950e3d8e75446f2

Number 49: B-52s “The B-52s” 1979. The B-52s are almost national treasures in the way that Springteen or Madonna is and Taylor Swift will be, yet back in the late 70’s they were a dance punk band from Athens, GA. They wrote funny and ironic songs and made a fun if kitchy dance sound, they had two singers with bee-hive hair and managed to channel all that was great about life in the 1950’s without the systemic misogyny. They became bigger than life with ‘Love Shack’ from the ‘“Cosmic Thing” album, which to this day will pack any wedding dance floor, but I love their early stuff when Ricky Wilson was still alive and his strange Twilight Zone guitar sound. This contains the fabulous first single ‘Rock Lobster’ which I have on 7” vinyl and bought when it came out just on the title alone.

Number 48: Car Seat Headrest “ Twin Fantasy” 2018. Talking of whiny young men Will Barnes, aka Will Toledo is the mouth and brain behind the Headrest, he released his own stuff on Bandcamp and then when fame came knocking he released some of it again. It’s noisier than typical teenage boy bedroom rock, and it’s happily not even close to Emo. His songs have the conceit of a good education in a let’s break the 4th wall kind of knowingness. As much as he started on his own and his stuff has typical touches of the loop and double tracked vocals that is almost a trope, he actually writes big hooks in a Replacements, Swiss Family Orbison, Big Star way. This album started life as a self-penned college kid piece in 2011 but this release, sometimes shown as ‘In The Mirror’ version, is re-recorded with the full touring band. It builds on the ‘Teens of Style’ and ‘Teens of Denial’ albums with the band in 2015 and 2016, bigger, more flourishes and rocks out.

Number 47: Richard and Linda Thompson “I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight” 1974. Richard Thompson was part of the great Fairport line up and got bored of doing straight folk so left in 1972 just as they were getting famous. He recorded his first solo album “Henry The Fly” which got panned, although it now is seen as a gem. He met on this album the singer Linda Peters who soon became his wife, muse and lead singer. They released 3 albums, this and two others before giving up on music completely and becoming Sufi Muslim in a community in the boonies. Let’s be kind and say they were on a journey and Richard is a practicing Muslim to this day, they produced 3 albums which were faith driven and not well received. They came back with “Shoot Out The Lights” just as Thompson left the pregnant Linda for a US tour promoter. It was a big hit in the US, and they toured to promote it, but the enmity between them was visible to the audience and that was the end. Thompson has produced tons of solo stuff since and is an accomplished guitarist able to play in any style. I am not a massive fan of his voice and the work as a couple is in my mind much better, this album has the glorious mix of influences with Linda’s voice and Richard’s guitar touches pulling it together.

Number 46: Radiohead “Ok Computer” 1997. I bought “Bends” while working briefly back in the UK and loved ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ and ‘Iron Lung’ and was really into their odd strung out sound as it was a contrast to the grunge that dominated mainstream rock in the US. This album if not their masterpiece is the highlight of their early years. The middle period of “Kid A” and “Amnesiac” went all a bit introspective and synth driven but they got back to writing songs with “Moon Shaped Pool” and the fabulous “In Rainbows”, which I came close to nominating. This was recorded near Bath at St Catherine’s Court, which was owned at the time by Jane Seymour, New Order also recorded “Waiting for the Siren’s Call” there. The dub reggae version of this album, “Radiodread” by the marvelous Easy Star All-Stars, shows how great the songs are on this in terms of melodies. The other interesting thing about this album even though it sounds so dense is that it was mostly recorded live which shows how much they were in-synch musically at the time.

Number 45: Roxy Music “For Your Pleasure” 1973. When they appeared on the scene as part of the Glam pop explosion Roxy were always a bit more serious, a bit more studied, a bit more elaborately coiffed than the others. They became major pop stars and Brain Ferry became a global sex symbol and as much as they drifted off into AOR pop rock in the later years the first three albums are amazing. I would argue when Brian Eno left to do his marvelous stuff elsewhere they were inevitably sliding downwards to that smooth fate. There is always a bit of lounge lizard croon to Ferry’s stylings but together with the scent of Naugahyde, whisky and cheap perfume this album creates another world in a dark club somewhere in Eastern Europe before the wall came down. “ Ta ra, ta ra” indeed.

Number 44: Yves Tumor “Heaven To A Tortured Mind” 2020. Yves Tumor channels Roxy Music as much as he channels Prince and ‘Maggot Brain’ era Funkadelic. A multi-instrumentalist, he has been making music outside the normal R&B or rap scene since 2010 but is super productive and not stuck into one groove or genre. The end result is that interesting blend of funk, guitar rock and pop, he has been quoted as saying he is inspired by Genesis P. Orridge which you can hear in the bass lines, but this is much more varied and less drony. Sean Bowie, who records as Tumor, is helped on this album by the insanely talented Diane Gordon, who also lights up Lil Yachty’s “Let’s Start Here”, and the guitarist Chris Greatti. Bowie is a name already taken in music or at least carries too much freight, so I understand the need for his/their own identity. Originally from Knoxville, TN, he has been based in Turin for a while and channelling his own inner Herman Miller has designed and made furniture as well as this fun collection.

Number 43: School of Seven Bells “Disconnect from Desire” 2010. Dream pop that follows a line back to Cocteau Twins via Slowdive and the other shoe-gaze bands, but that is very bright lit and New York rather than some gloomy northern English steel town. I liked Secret Machines which was Benjamin Curtis’ prior band and this guitar and synth dreamy pop with the twin Deheza sisters vocals was always intriguing and driven by a strong groove. They sing all the songs on the album together, rather than taking turns, and their complex vocal interplay resides at the heart of the band’s sound. The “Alpinisms” album was great but this was their peak. They had a short-lived space in the public conscience as firstly Claudia left the band, while this album was being promoted, for the ubiquitous “personal reasons” and in Feb 2013 Ben Curtis was diagnosed with a lymphoma that he succumbed to 10 months later, and then school was down and out.

Number 42: Gang of Four “Entertainment” 1977. The sound of Leeds, 1970’s angst and cheap guitars. I saw them live a couple of times in the late 70’s while at Uni and they were unique in how they mixed the political polemic and shouty, spitting punk rock. I have the “Damaged Goods” original 7” mainly because I loved the B-side ‘Armalite Rifle’ and that was their opening shot. Over several years they evolved into an odd mix of funk and punk and saw them in the early 80’s with Sara Lee on bass when they toured with ‘“Songs of The Free”. This the first album and has their classics that still stand up today, ‘Love Like Anthrax’, ‘I Found That Essence Rare’ and the brilliant ‘At Home He’s A Tourist”. Spiky anthems and lots of feedback jerky guitar from the wonderful Andy Gill.

Number 41: T Rex “Electric Warrior” 1971. Talking of glam rock, Mark Bolan and side kick Peregrine Took ( not his real name) had been playing fey folk rock and singing about elves and maidens as Tyrannosaurus Rex but then wisely, trimmed the name, went electric and with some eyeliner, a silver sparkly velvet suit and big heels they were away. They kept some of the cosmic bullshit, but now with technically their 5th album it was much more pop with Tony Visconti producing and sprinkling his special own pixie dust over it all. One of the additions was the fabulous Flo and Eddie on backing vocals, this is the same period as the “Mother’s Live At The Fillmore” but less obscenities.

The Tidal version of the playlist is here.

Gones for a song: Now That’s What I Call Music!: 60-51

‘Go on throw this stone Into this halfway home’

It was a relatively straightforward task to come up with the albums that I think are the best, I started with about 130 then knocked it down to 100 and then each week I look at the upcoming 10 and listen to them all week and some get thrown out and some get moved up. As the quality is generally getting less and less disputed or the choice is less perhaps esoteric this gets less easy, play order maybe but now if they are in they are in. It’s also been a fun exercise to reflect how one’s passions change and develop. https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/71QsTs9LNDN07rtxSoeSbG

Popular music has evolved since its invention at sometime in the late 1950’s. A mass media for predominantly the young generation, which facilitated the fascinations of the young, fucking, friendship, frippery and dancing the frug. Not every twist and turn since then has covered every base, I would defy anyone to dance to ‘Metal Machine Music’. The methods of distribution have changed over time on this odd journey from radio, 78’s, 45’s, albums, concept albums, 8-tracks, cassettes, Walkmans, CDs, I-Tunes, Napster, Soulseek and MP3 files and finally streaming. The artist, record company, live music venue and all the people hanging around the edges making money out of the creative process at the heart of it all has not really dramatically changed in the intervening 75 years. Someone writes a song, someone sings or plays the song, someone listens to it and pays for the pleasure. People then write about it, cheer for it and line up to see it played live. Trends come and go and what music press still exists, if any, outside of Substack, talk it up or knock it down. Looking back at these 100 albums that have meant so much to me has reminded me that if there is any common linkage from the first album from 1967 to the most recent which came out last year, its probably that you can dance the frug to all of them, badly and slowly with some but the beat does indeed go on. Halfway though, halfway home!

Number 60: Alvvays “Blue Rev” 2022. Oh, Canada does it again. This cheery bunch hails from Nova Scotia and in terms of heritage, the voice and image of Alvvays is Molly Rankin, who is the daughter of the core founders of the biggest Canadian Celtic music band, The Rankin Family, which I had heard of but other than a teen flirtation with my inner Paddy and Planxty, Celtic music is not something I have ever been that interested in. They are more of a Toronto band in practice, and this is jangly upbeat power pop in its purest form, with enough scuzzy guitar to counter the bubble gum elements. I first saw them in 2014 at Potrero Del Sol, which was the small, intimate fun one-day festival that was everything Outside Lands wasn’t. They had a great first album which featured the irrepressible “Archie, Marry Me” that I had heard thanks to those nice people at Polyvinyl Records so was desperate to see them. The next album got better and this their third continued the progress, and who doesn’t like a song about Tom Verlaine.

Number 59: Prince “1999” 1982. Well now, if you wanted to dance the Frug, or the Mashed Potato, the Texas Slide, the Latin Hustle or even the fucking Twist (which I can remember my mother and sister doing in all seriousness) this whole album is full of bangers. Prince was a genius in a way I just did not see in MJ, who seemed to be heavily dependent on Quincy Jones. Prince played killer guitar (if you have never seen it check out the solo for the George Harrison tribute here, and check out the pre-mike drop mike-drop walk off), wrote a million songs, a variety of other instruments and was pretty adept at putting together great bands, usually heavily featuring women players. 39 albums released before he died, most sold well, many were classics “Sign o’ the Times’, ‘Purple Rain’, ‘Diamonds and Pearls’ but this album I had on cassette, CD and bought again on vinyl as it is all gold, all dance beats and funk-box synth sounds.

Number 58: The Teardrop Explodes “Wilder” 1981. Julian Cope was the face of New Wave, sheepskin lined bomber jackets, blond quiff and quotes from Baudelaire. Illusions of allusions were the lyrical gems cast like pearl before swine, with faux horns and syn drums bopping away. Cope was a bigger talent than the pop leanings that the Teardrop had to produce to pay the bills, and his solo stuff allowed him to later explore the breadth of his imagination, but this album is the perfect package, upbeat, smart and more varied melodies than Morrissey and Marr ever came up with in one album. Part of the Liverpool Eric’s scene with the Bunnymen, Courtney Love was his groupie girlfriend, they were managed by Bill Drummond of the KLF and burning millions of pounds as performance art infamy. This is the second album, produced by Clive Langer, hence the shiny bounciness. The third was aborted due to ‘artistic differences’ between Dave Balfe, the keyboardist and Cope and later released to general snoozes, after the band no longer existed in any practical sense, as “Everybody Wants to Shag the Teardrop Explodes”.

Number 57: LCD Soundsystem “Sound of Silver” 2007. James Murphy’s unique schtick is to be part of the cultural milieu yet at the same time as taking the piss out of it. He is so Brooklyn and so Berlin and so in awe of French disco yet sees the shallow facade that makes up so much of the supposed glamour. He namedrops Can, Suicide, Beefheart, Daft Punk, “Setting the Controls For the Heat of the Sun” and yet it is not pastiche; he and the band had enough really love for the music that they produce great dance music, they didn’t lose their edge, they got the grooves just right. Arguably the ‘Sound of Silver’ just continues what was started with the first album, but the songs are tighter, the ideas slightly better formed. They had some more maturity, but they always seemed to be a bunch of middle-aged friends who loved music rather than a bunch of kids. They did the mature thing and stopped before it got it too boring, and then realized they missed it and have come back for more. The Franz Ferdinand vocal version of “All My Friends” is worth finding if you have not heard it and just for giggles the two songs on the playlist are from the ‘Someone Great’ remixes.

Number 56: The Smiths “Meat Is Murder” 1985. I got into the Smiths relatively early, had the first album on cassette and the ‘Hatful of Hollow’ compilation but bought ‘Meat is Murder’ as soon as it came out and still have the original vinyl, that has survived 17 different moves including crossing the Atlantic 4 times. The Smiths were quintessentially English, they wrote about the dreary life of early 80’s Manchester under the rule of Thatcher and a general sense that it could and should be so much better. Steven Morrissey and Johnny Marr bonded over a mutual love for ‘The Monochrome Set’ which is a fine basis to start a band and The Smiths reached relative commercial success thanks to John Peel, great songs and a consistent commitment to the art they were making, both in the imagery and the sound. ‘The Queen is Dead’ is excellent as well but the last album “Strangeways, Here We Come” named after the Manchester prison was a fitting symbol of the demise of the band, they didn’t really exist at the time it was released, Johnny Marr gave up and precipitated the split as he felt imprisoned in the format of the Smiths and wanted to explore other music. Sadly, none of the 4 of them achieved anything like the success they enjoyed together, Morrissey had minor solo success, Marr has been in Electronic, The The, Modest Mouse and a dozen other cameos and lots of session work. The drummer and bassist O’Rourke and Joyce have done loads of session work but not much else.

Number 55: The National “High Violet” 2010. Originally from Cincinatti but yet another Brooklyn band they are now almost national treasure status, having been around for 25 years. Matt Berninger’s laconic drawl has been getting milder and more restrained of late, but I first saw them at Brixton Academy in 2005, the first gig I had been to in years, due to parenting and living in a musical desert, San Luis Obispo for 4 years. I loved the crazed anger of ‘Murder Me Rachel’ from the “Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers” and that was a highlight of the gig, and I was hooked. I have seen them twice since, and they are a great live band, all good musicians, and have so far avoided the consequences of the rock and roll life. As much as they have got more restrained, they have not stopped evolving their sound to keep it interesting, the vignettes of life that Berninger shares are all relatable in a Paul Auster kind of way. They have released 11 albums, and this is my favorite but there are two or three others that are up there, ‘Trouble Will Find me’ and ‘First Two Pages of Frankenstein’ are brilliant.

Number 54: Stereolab “Emperor Tomato Ketchup” 1996. Sounds like the Velvets with two girls singing counterpoint harmonies and one is French, drone heaven! What was there not to like about these guys, the musical equivalent of the entente cordiale although it’s a stretch to call the band Anglo-French, which you see sometimes, as 3 were English, one was Australian plus good old Laetitia Sadier and they have always been based in England. I first discovered their baroque mix of electronics, krautrock, Brazilian samba and lounge-core with their second album ‘Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements’. They always did ironic album titles as they were music nerds as well as musicians, their second EP was called “Stunning Debut Album”. The band members changed over time with the core of Tim Gane and Sadier, the only constant. Mary Hansen was a constant until her death in 2002, she was killed by a truck while riding her bike. Sean O’Hagen of High Llamas was a member for a few years and contributed to this album, which was produced by John McIntire of Tortoise fame. This is more approachable and less drony than some of their stuff but if you like this they released 10 albums between 1992 and 2010 but in principle they are still around. They have each done solo stuff and they release what they loosely call compilations which includes live tracks, demos and odd versions to this day.

Number 53: Steely Dan “Katy Lied” 1976. The Dan were the thinking man’s rock band, all oblique references to mid century noir literature and the sound becoming progressively less like rock and more like the Crusaders. This was the first album after the departure of Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter to the Doobie Brothers, who together with the Eagles and Jackson Brown formed the new Western American sound. Becker and Fagan meanwhile wanted nothing to do with the wild west, they belonged in lounge bars somewhere off Hollywood Boulevard. The ‘Royal Scam’ came out the following year, also primarily recorded with session musicians but that was 1976 and punk happened and these geezers were definitely not cool by then. ‘Aja’ came out in 77 and is so slick and jazz driven that it is usually found in any high end Hi Fi shop who wants to show off their speakers and $5000 valve amp. To me “Katy Lied” is the perfect peak of Fagan and Becker’s ingenuity yet still constrained by the sense of a band and making a rock album and it all went a little bit boring and jazz from this point forward.

Number 52: Damien Jurado “Brothers And Sisters Of The Eternal Son” 2014. Damien is an old school singer songwriter that has been making records since the late 90s, he has been around long enough that he has been releasing his latest material on his own label. He is a great storyteller and creates worlds to entice you in and take part in the journey. He has a classic American voice so does much of his work with just that powerful voice and acoustic guitar, but he hit a strong creative streak starting in 2010 with ‘Saint Bartlett’ where he used loops, drums and synths to flesh out his songs and the virtual band setting really suited his material. I saw him live a couple of times in 2013 and 2015 and he had a bunch of effect pedals, so he was able to bring the album stuff to life even though it was basically him and his guitar. This album is the strong finish to the suite of 3 albums around a theme of new worlds and the big band sound.

Number 51: The Rolling Stones “Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out”1970. The Stones are more of an institution than simply a band and in some form or another have been around for over 60 years, still releasing albums and more incredibly still selling out stadiums. They had two creative peaks; the sprawling double album ‘Exile on Main Street’ is a giant work and has some glorious moments; the other was arguably ‘Let It Bleed’ in 1969. It is a superb album but as much as I have listened to it and loved it, the live version of it is ‘Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out” and I have played the shit out of this album over the years. They were monsters live, the rhythm of Wyman’s bass, the much missed Charlie Watts and Keith Richard’s rhythm guitar drives the whole thing. This is Mick Taylor on guitar and as much as I loved the Faces Ronnie Wood is no Mick Taylor. This Mick Jagger is the full young prancing prince version, and his stage patter is ever present (“Charlie’s good tonight isnt he?!”) and he can play a reasonably serious harmonica. So, this is ‘Let It Bleed’ on steroids and you understand if you have this much fun playing live you would be happy to do this into your 80’s.

The Tidal version of the playlist is here as their embed coding doesnt work on Subtsack.

Gones for a Song: Now That’s What I Call The 100 Best Albums!: 91-100

I had so much fun reading Kevin Alexander and Sam Colt’s “Wax Ecstatic: The Hundred Greatest Albums of All Times” posts that I could not stop trying to have a go myself, it’s a slow summer and who doesn’t like listicle. I enjoy writing the “Gones for good” weekly about life in Lyon, but in the summer we get the hell out of the heat, as do most of the other Gones*, and so for a change I thought I would do some album musings. After all, I am one who delights in all manifestations of the Terpsichorean muse. The clever conceit in their approach was to make it personal for each of them without trying to tick boxes.

My choices differ in that they are mine, based on my listening to music as a soundtrack to my life. I kept it simple and only one album per artist, as opposed to it being half Zappa and the Fall. I am not trying to make a case for being genre defining but for each artist I think the choice is about being the most important to their careers, as short as some of them were and for the major artists these are very much my personal favorites based on a couple of simple tests. Can I play it today and still enjoy it? When I compiled this there were some that I thought I had to include then I played it and realized, like some wines, they did not get better with age, or that my taste had definitely changed. If someone like my daughter has just discovered them and wants to check out their music, which one album would I suggest to start with? I tried to avoid recency bias and the distribution to me tends to reflect when I have been more and less engaged with music, due to having kids, living in the boonies or been led down what turned out in hindsight to be bad alleyways. In a vainglorious effort to keep in my ex-wife’s good books, there was definitely a period in the late 90’s when I bought and played more mellow and less interesting music than I would normally listen to.

There are 5 from the 1960’s, 25 from the 1970’s, 16 from the 1980’s, a mere 8 from the 1990’s and 2000’s each, 32 from the 2010’s (thanks to San Francisco) and 6 from the last 4 years.

I wanted to share a simple playlist for each weekly release of 10, so I can do two tracks, 20 songs to share but check out the whole thing, especially the stuff from pre-streaming times when an insane amount of thought went into play order. Spotify has once again shit all over artists with the recent change to royalty payments so I have been encouraged by a post from The Slow Music Movement to try Tidal (yes Pete, I know you told me) and using Soundiiz I am able to replicate all the playlists I made on Spotify, and it even lets me update artists from Discogs, which is massive. If I can solve the Bandcamp log-in problem, I will have that set up on Tidal too. If, however, the sharing doesn’t work without people signing up, it’s fucked.

Number 100: Tim Buckley – Greetings From LA (1972). Buckley was an odd, tortured soul who bounced from one genre to another over 9 albums in, so his fame never matched his talent. Sadly, now known more for being the father of the Jeff Buckley who also died too young. Father died of an overdose at 28 while the son drowned swimming at night in the Mississippi at the ripe old age of 31. Buckley was raised in upstate New York before the family moved to SOCAL where he had aunts who shared their love of blues music. After high school where he was the big man on campus, he went to Cal State Fullerton but dropped out of college after two weeks to be the new Bob Dylan. He played folk which morphed into folk rock as did everyone in 1965-66 and yet he was open to all styles and influences, which in an odd way is the death knell of a popular music career. He had two insanely productive periods when he recorded 4 albums from 1969-70 and then completely different style for the final 3 recorded in 1972-3. Unable to be pigeon-holed it was tough to get consistent support on radio which at the time was the only way an artist made it. He had two well received folk rock albums and Happy Sad was commercially successful at a time when this was hip in a Dylan, Byrds, CS&N way. The third album, Starsailor, had his probably most well-known song on it, “Song to the Siren”. He then threw out two more albums that did meh and got sick of the singer-songwriter stuff, fired his touring band and in 1970 went funky. This lost him most of his remaining audience, and the album that came out of that was Greetings From LA. Sometimes derided as ‘sex funk’ it is a free-flowing upbeat album that shows off his amazing range and the cool large band and is the classic vibe album. The problem was the sexually explicit lyrics, which believe me kindergarteners would sing today compared most mainstream rap, at the time it meant little to no airplay apart from the, at the time limited, FM alternative stations. Warner Brothers in their intimate wisdom deleted it from their catalog in a couple of years later.

Number 99: J.Geils Band “Live Full House” (1972) The “Detroit demolition” crew were the archetypal urban white blues rock band that took the British Blues invasion and instead of being fused with the country blues of Elmore James and Robert Johnson were influenced as much by Motown and Stax as by Muddy Waters. Yes, it has Magic Dick on the ‘licking stick’, or harmonica as us regular folks might call it, and Mr Geils himself could shred along with the best, but they brought more of a soul and hard old school R&B sound than a pure south side Chicago blues sound. They were fun and their two live albums are masterpieces of the genre, this one and the aptly named “Blow Your Face Out”, both helped along with Peter Wolf’s crazy hepcat ad-libbing between songs. Wolf looks as louche as his name suggests, and dated Faye Dunaway as living proof that it was not just bluster, damn he was cool. Further proof of his undoubtable swagger was when he was at school at Boston Museum of Fine Art, he roomed with director David Lynch. The band from Boston were originally called Snoopy and the Sopwith Camels but as J.Geils Band they had a good run as a bluesy R&B rock band before making the commercial cross over in the early 80’s with most people knowing the song “Love Stinks” from the Wedding Singer and their biggest hit “Centerfold” in 1982 which even charted in England. J.Geils in its original blues form was probably the inspiration for the Blues Brothers and so much more interesting than the stuff that probably made them rich.

Number 98: Sparks “Gratuitous Sax and Violins” (1994) The Mael brothers are still today producing original fun pop music having started in 1971 as ‘Halfnelson’. Although SOCAL through and through, UCLA Arts grads the pair, Russell, he of vocal antics and ridiculously black hair, and Ron, he of keyboards and crazed stare over a Gumby mustache, really broke as a band in the UK. Having relocated to London after a couple of poorly received albums, in 1974 they released “Kimono to My House” and the standard “This Town’s Not Big Enough For The Both Of Us” made them popstars. They have released 25 studio albums up to and including last year’s “Girl Crying Into her Latte” which they persuaded Kate Blanchette to star in the video for the title track. They have not only survived they have managed to stay relevant; they are fucking weird, they live in rather strange personal circumstances but they are loved. The Maels write eminently danceable classics and as much as the techno stuff sounds like the straight man’s Pet Shop Boys, they can do way more than irony. Their lyrics are literary, obscure, kitschy and funny, they write clever songs and have played around with most variations of modern pop that has come up over the last 50 years and made it their own. So out of 25 albums where do you start? Here, it is peak Sparks, all puns, starting with “Gratuitous Sax” and ending with “Senseless Violins”. The hits keep coming “When Do I Get To Sing My Way”,” I Thought I told You To Wait In The Car” and the stunning “Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil”. 

Number 97: Canned Heat “Living The Blues” (1968) I made a stab at a ‘Best of the Blues’ a few years ago called ‘Cultural Appropriations Poster Child – Blues Rock’, which broke down into the original black blues and the white copyists they inspired, you can check that out here. For some reason I managed to overlook the Heat and in a way this addresses the omission, I had this record as a beat up double album back in the day and played the crap out of the two-sided Refried Boogie, which is a 40 minute live version of a John Lee Hooker riff recorded at the Kaleidoscope Club in LA which they ran and operated as the house band for a couple of years in the late 60’s. It also has “Going Up The Country” which they made famous at Woodstock. The Heat went through numerous changes over the year, losing members to overdoses, fights and exhaustion. John Mayall took the bassist Larry Taylor and guitarist Harvey Mandell for his backing band and writes about the Heat and Bob ‘The Bear’ Hite on the “Blues From Laurel Canyon” album. The best line up is the classic one featured on Living The Blues. Versions of the band toured through the mid 2010’s but the heart and soul of Wilson and Hite had passed years before the death of Larry Taylor in 2017, the last remaining founding member.

Number 96: Electrelane “The Power Out” (2004) The first of several angular arty English bands to appear in the listing – spoiler alert! It has that Stereolab drony sound that apes the best of the Velvet Underground, but it has the gorgeous harmonies that make them so much more interesting than many of the Velvet copyists. The band from Brighton, of course they are, wear their intellectualism on their sleeves a bit with one song in French, one in Spanish and one in German. The latter, “This Deed” using a repeating line the meaning of which I have no idea other than its from Nietsche, has the amusing outro of “Hande Hoch” which every older British kid knows means “Hands Up” from jingoistic cartoon books showing brave Tommies capturing ‘Jerries’. The musical arrangements are always interesting as much as the drums keep the rhythm on track, Verity Husman, who did most of the complex vocal arranging on this album has since had a successful career in Avant Garde and improvised music and playing in touring bands including a favorite French band of mine Francois and the Atlas Mountains, but that’s probably because Francois was based in Brighton for a long time. They stopped doing anything much after the excellent 4th album “Shouts and Calls” in 2007.

Number 95: Warren Zevon “Sentimental Hygiene” (1987) Warren Zevon is known for his wry rock songs, which tell of losers and characters out of James Thurber, he was the original for Stan Ridgway’s late-night tales. His real life as a child in Chicago was like something out of a Thurber story: His father, a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine, changed his name from Zivotofsky to William Zevon and worked as a bookie who handled volume bets and dice games for the notorious LA mobster Mickey Cohen. Better known as Stumpy Zevon, worked for years in the Cohen gang, and was best man at Cohen’s first wedding. Warren’s mother meanwhile was a Mormon, so she had enough of the crazy and his parents divorced when he was 16 years old when she moved Warren to Fresno. Somehow Zevon was an occasional visitor to the home of Stranvinsky and he briefly studied modern classical music alongside Robert Craft. Warren is best known for “Werewolves of London” which inspired the movie, and “Lawyers, Guns and Money”, but all his stuff has the common reference points of the ups and downs of life in LA with rock and strong harmonies. He nearly gave up after a crappily received first album and moved to Spain in summer 1975 and sang Country and Western songs in an Irish bar called The Dubliner. Attempting to get him to come home, Jackson Browne wrote Warren a postcard, somehow it works, and he returns in September, rooming with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. The next album gets rave reviews from Rolling Stone and Linda Ronstadt covers two songs to acclaim. His career goes up and down as does his drug and alcohol consumption. This album is his first after a gap of 5 years and features REM’s Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry, as Zevon’s band. Michael Stipe sings Harmony on Bad Karma. Odd backing vocals and other stuff from Dylan, Neil Young, Brian Setzer, Jennifer Warnes, Flea and Don Henley. 

Number 94: Little Feat “Waiting For Columbus” 1978. Little Feat were the thinking man’s classic rock band in the mid 70’s, deep themes, technically complex without disappearing up their own ass like Steely Dan had and getting all soft jazz on us. The band featured 3 ex Zappa sidemen so a very LA sound but when they started out in the early 70’s on Warner’s new rock label, they were Dixie rock with a swampy southern spin on things thanks to Lowell George’s lilting voice. George had enough country chops to resonate with many folks without being syrupy C&W like the Burritos or Poco and were not as consciously country folk like the early Eagles output. “Time Loves a Hero” and “The Last Record Album” were their creatively sophisticated peak but live they were always a really tight band and so this album is a kind of best of but it also features the Tower of Power horn section which fleshes out some of the songs to deliver their best funky pomp. From 1969, when he was fired by Zappa supposedly for “Willin” and the “weed, whites and wine” drug reference, until 1979 when George disbanded the group they were one of the most interesting bands around, no blues changes but lots of soul. The band was reformed after George’s death and tour to this day with Bill Payne, Sam Clayton and Kenney Gradney from the original line up. Lowell George’s death from pizza overdose does not make pleasant reading.

Number 93: Orange Juice “Rip It Up” 1982. This band with their sound of Glasgow was one of the break through acts that moved from post-punk New Wave towards a more whimsical pop phase that included the so-called New Romantics. Orange Juice never took themselves that seriously and produced only 3 albums over a 3 year period before the classic “musical differences” but had an immense influence on people as diverse as the Smiths, Franz Ferdinand, Wet Wet Wet and The Wedding Present. Edwyn Collins who sang most of the vocals and wrote the bigger hits had a relatively successful solo career before suffering a stroke in 2005 which forced him to relearn to play guitar and impacted his vocal chords. The title track features one of my favorite in-song shout outs to another song, Collins references the original Howard Devoto fronted Buzzcocks ‘Spiral Scratch’ and the outro on “Boredom” where Devoto can’t be bothered to sing the whole chorus and intones “budum budum”.

Number 92: Neil Young and Crazy Horse “Rust Never Sleep” 1979. So while the rest of the world was obsessed with punk and New Wave Neil Young was also ripping it up and starting again, something he has done often in his long career. A lot of the frustration with the excesses of Prog Rock, corporate rock and pomp which brought about the rest from Punk was equally felt by Young and he showed it in the desire to strip it back to drums and guitars. Neil Young has had such an incredibly diverse and long time in the spotlight, 48 albums and counting. He has delivered some atrocious rabbit holes, “Trans” which was Neil Young does Kraftwerk, “Everybodys Rocking” which is Neil doing the Stray Cats, “This Notes For You” which is Neil meets Booker T and the MGs. In general, you can group Young’s ouvre into two sides, the country tinged acoustic folk and the alter ego is banging feedback soaked guitar rock. This album is the archetypal example of Mr. Hyde to Dr Jeckel’s Harvest Moon.

Number 91: Phantogram “Voices” 2014. I have a bias towards the female voice I think. There were numerous electronica meets rock bands in the 2010’s, The Pains of Being Pure of Heart, Superhumanoids, Hundred Waters, Mr Little Jeans, Fear of Men, and I was fortunate to see all of them over a 5 year period while living in San Francisco. Phantogram were the best of the pack, and this album is representative of the sound. They are a duo from New York, Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter, who record and work together, and both sing and play multiple instruments although live they have a backing band so the sound is harder in the flesh. They have also worked with Big Boi of OutKast and together have a project called Big Grams.

The playlist is here in Spotify and Tidal here.

* ‘Gones’ in local Lyonais patois refers to the inhabitants of the city, its slang for kids so its use in “nous Gônes” is kind of “us kids” . The origin is one of two competing theories: firstly it comes from the Gaulish gunna (“pelisse, dress”). This meaning is found in the old French gonne (“dress”), so kids clothing. The other is that it comes from the ancient Greek γόνος, pronounced gonos (“child”), how ancient Greek gets into common usage is beyond me.