Uriah Heep’s 4th accentuates the pomp and bombast at the band’s core even further, “The Wizard” re-introducing us to the world of Demons and Wizards in grand, whisper to a scream style. Really, only two lively, pure of purpose rockers in this bunch, the good-timer “All My Life” and barreling “Easy Livin'” (the band’s first US top 40 entry). It’s imposing works of sorcery and heft like “Traveller in Time,” the hard swing of “Poet’s Justice,” which sounds in places like Scott Walker gone heavy (really!) and “Circle of Hands,” a majestic number recalling Zep’s “Thank You,” that one carries into the unquiet slumbers experienced after too many hours steeped in the Heep. Elsewhere, “Rainbow Demon” chains you to a Hyborian Wheel of Pain with it’s leaden, Iommi on organ riff, as Demons concludes with the meandering “Paradise/The Spell,” an alternately lush and rollicking soar towards the heavens. –Rob
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Curtis Mayfield “Curtis” (1970)
Curtis’s call to unity and peace is that we are all going to hell for being assholes; I absolutely love that. Here everyone is telling everyone to form a love train and hold hands and Curtis is saying that if things don’t work out now maybe we’ll get things right in hell. The music is just as revolutionary, an embrace of what was going down on the East side of the United States in the 60s and the music that has been going on in the western hemisphere since the 16th century. Dirty funk with prog-rock ascension (“(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell We’re All Going to Go”) and a Motown hit with a 5-minute jam (“Move On Up”), Curtis knows no limits and it’s all for the better; even simple soul like “Miss Black America” and “Wild and Free” feel like transcendent miracles of celebration with lyrical potency.
There’s The Last Poets who were looking at all the failures going on and then there was Isaac Hayes looking at a bright future, but both were either too cynical or scarred to look at each other. This is Curtis standing up aware of the shortcomings of black society in the late 60s (“Don’t accept anything less than 2nd best” he sings in triumphant glory) and looking up at the bright days behind the gloomiest haze of despair in the album’s centerpiece “We the People Who are Darker than Blue”. Curtis knows there is no point in pondering what could have been of Africa had it not been ravaged and he knows there is no use in lying about black people coming on top. There is no black and white, there is only poor or rich and lucky or unfortunate. You can only embrace those small moments when things are looking up in your life and you make a connection to the history that binds you to that moment. This is what Curtis accomplishes for forty minutes and it’s a beautiful thing. –Allistair
Alice Coltrane “Ptah The El Daoud” (1970)
You can tell from the album cover that this isn’t going to be your average jazz album. In fact, it’s an essential avant-garde album to own. It’s proof that John Coltrane’s wife, Alice, was very talented. Ptah, The El Daoud is a unique opportunity to hear tenor saxophone legends Joe Henderson and Pharoah Sanders together. The first thing that strikes you when the record starts is that Ron Carter has so much power on bass. You can almost picture the damage that his playing is doing to your speakers. He’s incredible. My only complaint is that you can’t hear Alice Coltrane play piano and harp at the same time. She’s great on both instruments. If only she had two more arms! –Rob
The Damned “Damned Damned Damned” (1977)
It might not be peanut butter, but no doubt that’s some Stooge flavored pie the Damned are licking up on the cover of Damned, Damned, Damned, an album that wallows in the same scuzzy punk sewer as the influential Detroit rockers, with tracks like “Born To Kill,” speed freakers “Neat Neat Neat,” “New Rose,” and the menacing Cooper-ish sneer of “Fan Club.” Given a brittle and brutal production job by Nick Lowe, the album rattles with a violent energy that rushes in and assaults your eardrums, running off with your wallet and girlfriend before you’ve had a chance to retaliate, as an appropriate cover of “I Feel Alright” slams the door shut. A simple, pure shot of snotty energy that’s refreshingly free of the political posturing of some other first-wave UK punk. –Ben
Frank Zappa “Freak Out!” (1966)
This is a true album for freaks. Back in 1967, Zappa must have felt left out of the hippy dippy counterculture because his musical interests seemed to extend beyond flowers in your hair, acoustic guitars and sitting barefoot in the park. So with this debut he in turn created a counterculture to the counterculture – an album for all the freaks and “left behinds” as he refers to them in the opening track Hungry Freaks Daddy. The music is frequently upbeat, jazzy and conventional, at least by Zappa’s standards. He had not yet started his long guitar explorations of later albums, and the only real “surreal” tracks are Who Are The Brain Police?, Help I’m A Rock, and the truly whacked out closer The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet. It’s these more experimental tracks that most intrigue me just in their sheer ludicrousness. They all sound like drug induced paranoia with their screaming, sound effects and seemingly made up language. –Neal
Caravan “In the Land of Grey and Pink” (1971)
Stevie Wonder “Innervisions” (1973)
There is absolutely nothing like it. I could spend the entire review spouting off fawning superlatives, but suffice to say this is my favorite album of the 70’s, and my favorite non-jazz album of all time. From the opening chords, Stevie envelops you in a new type of funk; dark, complex and intense. “Too High”, “Higher Ground” and especially “Jesus Children of America” exemplify this sound, and they are what immediately grab you about the album. There is also gorgeous, emotional soul (“Golden Lady”, “All in Love is Fair”) and one track that lies in between (“Living for the City”). “Visions” is perhaps the most startling song, however. It isn’t really soul at all, and it’s definitely not funk. It’s a haunting and heart-felt meditation on the blindness of hatred that metiphorically contrasts it with Stevie’s own sightlessness. Just writing about this album gives me goosebumps, and if you’ve never heard it, you need to get on that, right now. –Lucas
Prefab Sprout “Steve McQueen” (1985)
Saying Steve McQueen is easy listening, is like saying Twin Peaks was a soap opera. At first glance both statements seem true, yet both works have a way of distorting such unattractive mediums so much that it becomes something so different that could never be replicated again. Now Steven McQueen doesn’t have scary synths or a lady carrying logs narrating, so I’m going to kill that comparison now. Song by song, I have heard very few albums that measure up as well as Prefab Sprout’s crowning achievement. Listening over and over (sometimes five times in a row), I just start picking out individual moments in a song that add so much more charm and mystery to the bigger picture. Paddy McAloon has one of the best vocals in music, and just had the essence of someone you want to follow or know about simply through the power of his performance. Every song on here comes so close to the line between heartbreak and recovery, that they all capture the essence of both and never fail to move me. It’s something truly special and one of the greatest albums ever. Like at the end of The Great Escape when Steven McQueen is out running the germans on his motorcycle. He sadly flips out and ends up where he began, back in the camp. He didn’t succeed but he’s happy. Why? Because he’s Steve McQueen and that’s a bad mother fucker. –Allistair
Jaco Pastorius “Jaco Pastorius” (1976)
To say that Jaco Pastorius lived a tumultuous life filled with incredible highs and lows would be an understatement. Cursed with mental illness and drug and alcohol problems, his life came crashing down to a violent end in 1987 after an altercation with a bouncer outside of a Florida club. I’m actually stunned just reading about this incident. The bouncer in question only received four months in prison for essentially beating a man to death. But I guess we don’t know the whole story. I hadn’t heard bass playing quite like the way Pastorius played it before I’d heard him play on Weather Report and Pat Metheny albums. He really could make the bass “sing” and sound divine. This debut solo record highlights these qualities with fast flashy playing alternating with slow contemplative passages. Pastorius had his musical roots in R&B, so the inclusion of Sam and Dave’s vocals on the funky “Come On, Come Over” is something of an homage to these roots. Another interesting highlight are the steel drums on “Opus Pocus”, which really add texture to the song. Overall, this album is a must for jazz and fusion fans, as well as a necessary lesson for electric bass students. –Neal
Earth, Wind & Fire “Earth, Wind & Fire” (1971)
I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard this debut because it couldn’t be further from the glossy disco I was used to associating with the group. Instead it is a bare bones, no nonsense funky affair not unlike early Tower of Power or Sly and the Family Stone. There are also nods to rock in the tough drumming, and jazz fusion on the weirdly titled closer “Bad Tune”. The peace and love lyrics get kind of grating, as does the “banter” in between songs, but these are small grievances on an otherwise still fresh sounding album. –Neal
Incredible String Band “The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter” (1968)
The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. Where to start? The lyrics are full of imagination, but almost devoid of sense. In that respect, this is almost the ultimate psychedelic album. Though Heron and Williamson lack the lyricism of Dylan, they come up with some nice music. “Koeeoaddi There” starts the album in classic psychedelic style. There aren’t two related sentences there. Sometimes there aren’t even two related clauses within a sentence. It all becomes too much when Williamson sings ‘Ladybird, ladybird, what is your wish? Your wish is not granted unless it’s a fish’. This is followed by the equally weird “The Minotaur’s Song” which is sung in the style of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The classic line this time: ‘I can’t dream well because of my horns’. The best song is “A Very Cellular Song”. Even this is best appreciated with an unnaturally open mind. It starts off in sort of hazy fairground style, then breaks into a touching spiritual. This is followed by what I can best describe as spoof-baroque. Next is some kind of folk interlude, before the spoof-baroque resumes. The music then takes the back seat as some strange lyrics about slithering and squelching take the foreground. The final section sees a return to fairground music accompanying some mystical mantra or something. Remarkable, but totally bizarre. –Jim
Nektar “Down to Earth” (1974)
Temporarily abandoning the extended suite forms of their previous releases, Nektar turn in an accessible, almost pop-flavored collection of shorter songs with Down To Earth. Although it orbits in a sort of Euro-hippie galaxy, and features a vague circus concept running throughout, don’t let that scare you away, as this is a focused album with consistently strong songs. My favorites include the giant-sized “Nelly The Elephant,” (which sounds more than a little like part of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”), animated “That’s Life,” expressive ballad “Little Boy,” and insistent “Show Me The Way,” but even the lesser stuff is pretty great. A refreshing, successful departure from the norm for Nektar. –Ben
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