Cannonball Adderley is a tremendously joyful performer. It’s the trait that makes him such a great foil for melancholy Miles on their collaborations. It’s also the trait that makes At the Lighthouse such a beautiful album. A lot of jazz music is aimed at expanding boundaries, or breaking them down entirely. A great deal of the most highly regarded work is exploratory in nature, and that exploration can be breath-taking. There is something to be said, however, for simplicity. The musicians on At the Lighthouse never force a note. Each solo is in complete service of the song, rather than taking the first opportunity to bust free of the song’s framework. The rhythm section of Sam Jones and, particularly, drummer Louis Hayes are economical and straight-forward. Adderley and his brother Nat deliver lovingly crafted solos and have a precise but easy-going chemistry when playing together. The real stand-out, in my mind, is pianist Victor Feldman. He always waits patiently for his solo (always third) and accentuates the rhythm section. Then, he takes the reigns and delivers these long, eloquent solos while still helping to propel the song along. Really lovely stuff. If your thing is Ascension and The Shape of Jazz to Come, and you’re only interested in the outer edge of jazz, then this album may not be for you. If you just love great music, however, then this magical, casual recording of a night at a club in 1960 will make you smile, guaranteed. –Lucas
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The Rolling Stones “Sticky Fingers” (1971)
The Stones in peak form, having with this album reached the point where everything always seems just on the verge of falling apart (listen to that lazy backbeat on “Sway,” easily one of their greatest songs; the chorus of “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” with its vocal declamation/piano vamping/guitar sliding just off-kilter enough to be note-perfect). One of the few rock albums to utilize horns and strings with proper contextuality (only to be outdone with their next release…): rather than filling in space or adding some “mood” or “colour,” these additions flesh out the emotional range of the songs themselves (as does the Santana-lite jam at the end of “CYHMK’ing”, with its suspenseful repetition and restraint). Despite being nearly killed by FM radio, “Brown Sugar” remains a perfect opener, with that fantastic electric/acoustic guitar interplay and the castanets, which burst in through the saloon doors and swagger on up to the bar, but only hint at the brash, swaggering shitkicking that the listener gets from this album. “Moonlight Mile” is a perfect closer, sleepy, resigned, yet ecstatic. The sleaze factor also helps (packaging and all), what with the sex and drugs and generally foggy malaise over the whole thing, letting the highs really rise in contrast. They couldn’t consciously make an album this good – it ain’t about consciousness, it’s about guitar, bass, and drums. –Will
Centipede “Septober Energy” (1971)
This ominous double LP has been sitting there in my record collection since 1973. I don’t know why I haven’t played it for ages, I used to play it a lot. So, the first of October is an apt day to play and review Septober Energy. It is a project assembled by Keith Tippett and produced by Robert Fripp (both members of King Crimson at the time). These two gathered virtually the entire creative British music scene – a who-is-who of some 50 musicians, horns, brass, strings, singers, Alan Skidmore, Elton Dean, Ian Carr, Alan Skidmore, Paul Rutherford, John Marshall, Robert Wyatt, Ian MacDonald, Boz Burrell, Julie Driscoll (Tippett at the time of recording), just to name a few. The music sounds as if Tippett and Fripp were struggling to find a home for their jazzier, freer ideas which they couldn’t incorporate into the King Crimson concept.
There are moments of grandezza, pathos, Jazz-Rock passages, Free Jazz – both loud and aggressive and soft and gentle, Bolero-like crescendos, concert music, sheet music, smashing arrangements and orchestrations, all of it played live in the studio and simultaneously recorded. Of course, due to the concept, there are also passages which don’t succeed or which are too long – I’m thinking of the finale. Septober Energy has been put down as megalomania, usually from King Crimson fans. I don’t agree. It’s difficult music, certainly. You have to make an effort to follow the music. It might just not be your taste. But that doesn’t make it a flop. Septober Energy is like nothing else from the early seventies, it’s an important musical document from one of the most exiting musical phases in the twentieth century. I’m glad I re-discovered this album. It’s out on CD and should not be overlooked. –Yofriend
The Allman Brothers Band “At Fillmore East” (1971)
If I was pressed to name the most talented rock band, in terms of pure ability to play their instruments, I would choose the Allman Brothers. The first three tracks, standard blues fair, won’t win any converts. They are played very well, of course, but they’re just the appetizer for the main course. The 20-minute “You Don’t Love Me” kicks off the awe-inspiring portion of the album, show-casing the band’s brilliant interplay and individual contributions. Then, amazingly, “Hot ‘Lanta” does the same thing, even better, in just over five minutes. Finally, “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” and “Whipping Post” deliver 30-plus minutes of the greatest live rock performance I’ve ever heard. The communication between the entire band verges on telepathic, but you’d have to come up with a new super-power to describe the connection between Dickie and Duane. With most live recordings, I get bored by the time a song hits the six-minute mark. Here, even the ample running time seems cruelly short. –Lucas
Starcastle “Starcastle” (1976)
Imagine a group of children raised in total isolation, their only stimulus coming from daily spinnings of Fragile and Close to the Edge. If they were to grow up and make an album of their own, it would be Starcastle. Long-winded compositions full of buzzing Rickenbacker bass, precision drumming and hot shot guitars, a Wakeman-esque pallet of synth tones, and high-pitched vocals delivering nonsensical lyrics of elemental wonder, it’s all here. If there’s anything to separate Starcastle from Yes, it’s that the ‘castle seem to be even more uncompromising in their devotion to the most progressive elements of the sound, generally eschewing the sense of pop smarts that handed Yes a few hits and radio favorites along the way, in favor of a rabid working of the ornate and extravagant end of the spectrum. Yeah, it’s derivativeness is obvious, but it doesn’t change the fact that Starcastle still plays like a wet dream for acne-scarred starship troopers. –Ben
Grateful Dead “Grateful Dead” (1967)
The Dead were never a studio band, and their first record is even overlooked by the most ardent Deadheads. It’s easy to see why; here they sound more like a garage band: raw, loud, way fast, and with only one drummer! Recorded in LA, it’s rumored that the band cut these tracks in just a few hours while hopped up on Ritalin (an irony considering the superhuman attention span required for the long-winded jams of their later years). The opener, “The Golden Road…” sets the momentum for a series of short, bluesy, breakneck tempo numbers that don’t slow down until the beginning of Side Two: a cover of Bonnie Dobson’s post-apocalyptic “Where is everybody?” ballad, “Morning Dew”. But even here there’s a sense of visceral urgency that the band seldom recaptured on stage or off. The closing prison song cover, “Viola Lee Blues”, more closely resembles the exploratory and improvisational sound that would soon become their stock in trade, but with just enough sloppiness and dissonance to keep things interesting. From here, the Dead would inarguably record and perform some more great music while vocalist/organist Pigpen still had his liver, but never again with such reckless abandon. –Richard P
The Replacements “Tim” (1985)
After the skillful Let It Be, Paul Westerberg and the boys decided to make another essential classic rock album, only this time they got even better. Tim is loaded up with first-rate tunes such as the lasting “Bastards of Young” accompanied with the sweet “Kiss Me on the Bus.” Let’s not forget the sacred “Left of the Dial” and the touching “Here Comes a Regular.” One of my personal favorites is “Swingin’ Party,” it’s so catchy and complete with solitude that it’s one of the very few songs I never get tired of. “Hold My Life” is terrific and “Little Mascara” is compelling at times. Every last song on this disc is superlative rock ‘n’ roll. If I was pressed to make a pick for the must hear Replacements album, it just might have to go to Tim. How this wasn’t one of the best selling albums of the 80’s is beyond me. –Jason
Brian Eno “Another Green World” (1975)
Another Green World is a mix between the instrumental ambient music Eno was making at the time, and the relatively more structured pop/rock songs he had released on albums like Here Come the Warm Jets. Somehow, the combination works even better than either of individual elements does on their own, as this is his best album. More than anything, Another Green World is about atmosphere. In that regard, it’s dreamy soundscapes remind me of Miles’ In a Silent Way. –Lucas
Cheap Trick “At Budokan” (1979)
At Budokan brought Cheap Trick to the masses with a vibrant live set that captured the band in front of an adoring Japanese audience. Entirely overlooked on the original, the band’s debut is represented by “ELO Kiddies” and “Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace,” while essential In Color Tricksters “Downed” and “Southern Girls” are cranked to arena-rockin’ levels in the same way the live “I Want You to Want Me” blew the lid off the studio version to achieve hit status. Elsewhere, “Auf Wiedersehen” and “High Roller” are featured from Heaven Tonight, as is the slow burning non-LP ballad “Can’t Hold On.” While the original At Budokan is a potent single album’s worth of smoldering melodic rock fire, 1998’s expanded “At Budokan: The Complete Concert” proves you can’t get too much of a good thing. –Ben
Miles Davis “Nefertiti” (1968)
I wish I’d been a fly on the wall, no, a fly on producer Teo Macero’s shoulder during the classic sessions which yielded this album and the rest of the quintet’s catalogue in the late 60s. Creative tension probably doesn’t even begin to describe the atmosphere. Strangely, there are no Davis compositions here, but Wayne Shorter weighs in with the first two tracks – the slightly off key, circular title track and beautiful Hand Jive. On the latter, the sax is a true wonder in his hands, soulful, searching, graceful. I much prefer the version of Herbie Hancock’s Riot heard here, rather than on his own album Speak Like A Child. It’s slightly faster, with an almost mambo, Latin sounding tempo. –Neal
Talk Talk “Laughing Stock” (1991)
They started [in 1982] with “The Party’s Over” – that’s precisely how ten years later, Talk Talk’s last album sounds – the party’s over. Their music always contained elements of what Talk Talk would eventually develop into on their last two LPs, but who would have expected such a radical mutation, from synth Pop to practically classical music? Laughing Stock continues where Spirit Of Eden ended; the two LPs could be a double album, and anyone who loves one of the two should make sure he/she got both. Myrrhman starts the album with searching for structure. A mixture of Blues and modern classical music, the music is played on acoustic instruments. With Ascension Day, a groove is introduced; there are Jazz influences. The mighty and hymnic After the Flood, my favorite song of this album, is the closest Laughing Stock gets to resemble regular Pop, only its length (over 9 minutes) shuts it off from Radio play. It flows directly into the spacious and ambient Taphead. A 6/8 beat brings back the motion on the blissful and meditative New Grass – a Bach choral (from the St. Matthew’s passion – O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden) appears, reinforcing the religious mood of the album. The final song, Runeii, starts with only voice and guitar, later, organ, piano and drums fade in and out; it’s a quiet windup with a hippie feel. Laughing Stock is the ultimate step of Talk Talk’s musical search into the soul. Commercially, it was a fiasco, and Laughing Stock, with its lengthy and introvert songs, sounds as if Talk Talk never planned to compete with this LP on the Pop market; it remains their last album. As a creative effort within the realms of Pop music, however, it’s a victory, a timeless beauty and one of the best Pop records of the 90s. –Yofriend
Gene Clark “Gene Clark With The Gosdin Brothers” (1967)
After leaving the Byrds, Clark should’ve been a huge success. But in a way I’m selfishly glad that he remains one of the best kept secrets in popular music, widely influential but entirely under the radar of popular recognition. While his Dylanesque White Light and his coked-out baroque country masterpiece, No Other, are generally the ones most often mentioned, this one, which to all intents and purposes is his solo debut (the Gosdin brothers playing an integral role but having little to do with the album’s composition), is a record of tremendous scope for its modest length, with flashes of country, bluegrass, baroque pop, psychedelia—and more than an occasional nod to the spare melodicism of Rubber Soul. It’s the kind of record only a singer and songwriter as talented as Clark could pull off without coming off as pretentious or boring or unfocused. This album is none of those things. It frequently beats the Byrds at their own game, so fans of that group’s ilk should get this posthaste. But I’d recommend this to anyone with an interest in the best stuff from the mid 60s. –Will
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