Steve Miller Band - Number 5 (1970)

Featuring an even more robust and muscular production than predecessor Your Saving Grace, 1970's Number 5 was recorded in Nashville, so expect a little more down-home feel and the odd fiddle n' banjo thrown in the mix. But it's still a rich and heady brew, and by no means a countrified offering.

This album does veer off occasionally on different tangents with horns and strings appearing on stylistic exercises which give an overall feel of the material being a bit more lightweight than previous efforts (a Mexicali song about eating chili?). That, and the weird, stoned liner notes, not to mention a picture of Steve laughing in an embrace of children on the back cover, one has to wonder if he was losing the plot.

But this is the last album of his pre-global stardom phase, so if he was getting a little loopy on the wacky tobaccy, well that's ok since we know he soon pulled it all together again to release an unprecedented string of timeless classics. Enjoy it for for what it is, and especially for the solid gold nuggets like the pre-ZZ Top electric boogie of Going To Mexico, the transcendant and lysergic Never Kill Another Man and others.

The Steve Miller Band - Your Saving Grace (1969)

Much more funky, groovy, soulful and free-flowing than the polished n' precise mega-hits of the mid-70's, Steve Miller's first 5 albums (all before 1973's breakout hit The Joker), are for many purists the "true" Steve Miller albums.

4th album Your Saving Grace was recorded by Glyn Johns and features the ubiquitous Nicky Hopkins tickling the ivories in support of the then-Steve Miller band trio. And by this, I imply a mark of quality.

One look at the cover shows that the flower power era had yet to fully subside, but don't be fooled, this is no hippy dippy shit with harpsichords and singalong chanting. So if you're sick to death (and who isn't?) of Jet Airliner or Rock N' Me, then you owe it to yourself to delve into the early albums and attempt to undo the damage of playlisted classic rock radio stations which churn out the same songs again and again until you can't stand it anymore and impose a 5-year listening ban on Steve Miller, which is exactly what I was compelled to do some years ago.

Lou Reed - Street Hassle (1978)

I've heard this is a great album. I've heard a lot of things.

Lou Reed is an enigma. He sucks in nearly almost every way, yet he has a career and I am buying his albums. The world is a mysterious place. And maybe, just maybe, that's why we all don't go jump off a cliff somewhere. There would be no mystery in it.

The album opens with a jumbled up mess of Reed's Velvets classic Sweet Jane juxtaposed onto something new, intersecting and overlapping incoherently like some kind of speedball-induced psychosis. And given the subject of this story, maybe that's exactly what was happening. I have no problems with that. But it's a shaky start.

The album takes a left turn after the narcotic late-night rock dirge Dirt with the 11-minute title track, and this is when I started to get it. A meandering Heroin-styled untethered exploration for the 70's coked up denizens of the underbelly of society.  Side 2 continues on the drunken, drugged up journey, with the songs lurching and staggering, sweaty and clammy as Reed himself looks on the cover. Wasted, but not elegantly.

And there you have it. You hate it, you love it. Life and Lou Reed. Both are mysteries wrapped up in riddles wrapped up in enigmas. I wouldn't recommend this album to anyone. But I'm still going to buy more of his albums.

The Who - A Quick One (1966)

There are 3 guises of The Who: the 60's pop-art beat combo, the 70's planet-straddling arena rock gods, and everything after Keith Moon's death: The Poo Who.

On A Quick One, The Who's second album, the group are still lovable scamps in British Invasion mode, rock n' roll ragamuffins - not yet the grizzled road warriors they would later become.

There is a pervading sense of ramshackle fun and youthful irreverence to the offerings on display here, with plenty of slapdash experimentation in the songs but especially in the production...indeed, it is called A Quick One after all. It's also by a good mile their weirdest and most unfocused offering, however worth the price of admission alone for the shimmering pop nugget So Sad About Us.

I choose not to call attention to the groundbreaking title track A Quick One While He's Away (from whence sprang all this nonsense about rock operas) because the definitive version is their explosive performance on the Rolling Stones' Rock n' Roll Circus TV special from 1968 which invalidates any other performance of that song. The one on this album is like some shitty demo in comparison. It stinks, people!

The Pretty Things - Parachute (1970)

You know who it sucks to be? You! If you don't have this album, because it's hands down one of the best rock albums ever. But you know who I envy? You! Because you still have this great album to discover.

Beatlesy, Stonesy, tough and sinister, beautiful and tender, trippy and rockin', it's a mystery to me why this is as obscure as it is. I'll be the first to admit that their subsequent output is patchy at best. You only really need to get the previous one, 1968's S.F. Sorrow and this one, and file them right next to whatever other albums you deem to be stone cold classics.

Alice Cooper - Welcome To My Nightmare E.P. (1977)

I wanted to discuss Alice Cooper's Welcome 2 My Nightmare, one of the most hotly-anticipated releases in recent memory. Not only was it produced by Bob Ezrin, but it also features the other 3 surviving Alice Cooper Group members, as well as featuring Steve Hunter on lead guitar (who appeared on both Billion Dollar Babies and Muscle of Love prior to appearing on the subsequent 3 solo releases, in case you didn't know). It had to be great. I wanted so much for it to be great. Folks...it ain't.

Rather than wallow in tears of disappointment, I'll profile the odd Welcome To My Nightmare E.P. from 1977, which is infinitely better, though you should never chop up an album as satisfying in its entirety as the original 1975 Welcome To My Nightmare LP.

Sultry, dark, weird, jazzy and groovy, title track Welcome To My Nightmare is a tour de force.

The what-we-used-to-call-gay-but-now-you're-not-allowed Department of Youth is, despite itself, a classic, especially after listening to Welcome 2 My Nightmare! Bob Ezrin has this thing about putting kids on records...what's it all about, really? I'm not sure we want him watching your kids while you go to the Hamptons for the weekend.

Black Widow...creepy, crawley and a dark n' funky heavy cinematic boogie, a profile in the underrated guitar swagger and deft interplay of Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter.

And lastly, Only Women Bleed, an FM radio classic tossed off as effortlessly as a cardigan on a warm summer's day, so bursting forth with inspiration were the players involved.

But that's crap, really. I want to hear all the other songs that are missing! What is this shit?

Megadeth - Killing Is My Business...And Business Is Good (1985)

Ejected from Metallica despite being their prodigiously-talented lead guitar player and primary songwriter, Dave Mustaine was so filled with anger and bitterness and determination for revenge upon his dismissal some weeks before the recording of Metallica's seminal debut album, that he would spend the next 20-odd years singularly trying to prove what a mistake they made. I'm not sure the masses ever fully rallied behind him on that point, but the fact is, Mustaine's early Megadeth output has a by-the-seat-of-their-pants reckless renegade assault which is flat-out bonkers, enraged and intense in equal measure.

Unfairly maligned for its lacklustre production, Megadeth's debut is an insane thrill-ride of mind-melting rhythms more complex than most leads, and a generally rollicking roller-coaster ride to Hell of thrashy, herky-jerky and catchy metal madness courtesy of an amazingly sympathetic and tight band, featuring jazz-trained duo of Chris Poland on 2nd guitar and the swinging Gar Samuelson on drums.

This album is like Keith's India Pale Ale...those who like it, like it alot. (and implied, is...those who don't ...f*%k you!)

Megadeth - Peace Sells...But Who's Buying? (1986)

"Peace Sells...But Who's Brian?" as we used to say in my teenage rock band when we used to play the title track, as we had two Brians in the band.

When the 80's began waning instead of waxing and as the newly-bred intensity of thrash metal took root and its relentless adrenaline rush superceded the suddenly watered-down-seeming kicks of the old hard-rock guard of AC/DC, KISS et al., most people gravitated towards the mighty Metallica for their daily dose of head banging goodness. Though I too embraced the Bay Area Bashers warmly, it was the snarling, sneering, pissed off, gonzoid and freaky-styley warped metal antics of Megadeth which captured my interest the most.

Their 1986 sophomore release is probably the most focused and perfectly realized onslaught of taut, crushing tunes and precision tunesmithery in the band's illustrious catalogue. I remember seeing an evening news item around that time specifically calling out this album and the song Bad Omen in particular as being one prime example of the pressing problem of "today's" new breed of music warping teenagers' minds.

Poppycock, I say! It rules, say I! It may have been good then, but darn it all if'n it ain't even better now!

KISS - Alive (1975)

KISS lore has it that this was the album that cemented KISS' reputation and propelled them into stardom, finally providing them with the hit album they so wanted with their first three releases but didn't quite manage. This is original KISS at their toughest and most raw, indeed their most genuine as a rock band and containing all the solid, heavy-hitting nuggets that they mostly still play to this day and delivered here with youthful passion, panache and balls-out drive.

The wife, upon looking at the cover, said they looked unbelievably gay. I was fairly aghast. I asked her to reconsider her definition of "gay". She pointed to Gene Simmons, of all people, and rested her case. Well, I didn't know quite what to say. Gay!? Well, yes, I can see what she means. But no...not gay! (sticks fingers in ears and hums "Hot, hot..hotter than hell!!"...)

KISS - Alive II (1977)

This is where it all began for me and KISS. My buddy Vince lent me his cassette of Alive II which I listened to when moving downstairs into my older brother's vacated bedroom and out from under the aegis of my parents. My own pad, so to speak, at a time when the discovery of (and obsession for) rock and roll was still blossoming and taking deep root. This 1977 double album has it all for any budding KISS fan, the songs are energetic, fun, instantly memorable and as a bonus you get one side of new studio cuts at the end.

Funnily enough, as a teenager, I was competely oblivious to lyrics in music. I'm still that way. I hear the "shapes" of music when I listen, not the words. So when Paul Stanley is shouting "You pulled the trigger of my love gun", it just didn't register to my naive ears that it is overtly sexual. I would sing along and not even realize what I was saying. When Gene Simmons (a grown man), in his little monologue in Christine Sixteen, says, "I don't usually say things like this to girls your age, but when I saw you coming out of school that day I knew...I've got to have you...I'VE GOT TO HAVE YOU!!!"...it didn't register how wrong and ridiculous that is. I just didn't hear any of that. The guitars and drums were my drug. And when you're dealing with a band as crude as KISS, it's probably for the best if you tune out the lyrics otherwise you might not respect yourself in the morning for being a fan.

Led Zeppelin - Presence (1976)

I'm not afraid to say that I think this LP stinks!

Ok, well I don't think it stinks, but I do think it is the weakest Zeppelin album. Funnily enough, it is Jimmy Page's favorite Zeppelin album. But whose word are you going to take? That of some flakey old has-been who hasn't done anything productive for the past 30 years and lives on past glories or that of Jimmy Page?

Opener Achilles' Last Stand is much lauded by rock afficionados, but let's just admit that it is long, drawn out and frankly, dull. It features lots of strident, prog-like flourishes later appropriated by Iron Maiden, so it is interesting in that respect. But the song exudes what has been lost. From the first self-titled LP through to Physical Graffiti, the band had a mystique which was intrinsically felt within the music itself. There was something magical there; indeed, a "presence", the very self-same notion after which this 1976 album was named. Only the presence is lacking here. The songs feel more clinical, cold, precise. Executed rather than a release. Put simply, they were coked out and it can be heard in the music. But them being Zeppelin and all, it's still a good album and injected full of your usual juicy Zeppelinisms. And to be fair, its harsh, repetitive rhythms do work on a certain hypnotic level if you let them, as best exemplified on the justly classic Nobody's Fault But Mine.

And basically, if you don't own it then you aren't really considered a true Led Zeppelin fan, and that's just how it is. Thank you and good day!

AC/DC - Fly On The Wall (1985)

Let's go back to the mid-80's, deep into the sticks where me and my friend Brian heard about our other friend David's older brother's friend owning a copy of the Fly On The Wall VHS video. This was big news. As scrawny, pimple-faced AC/DC acolytes in a town where one could not buy music cassettes or videos, this was a treasure we had to seek out. Now, this was pre-internet. We didn't know about any AC/DC video. What was on it? Was it a live concert? Some other kind of footage? We were desperate to get our grubby paws on it and find out! My memory is that we rode our bikes to the guy's house, simply knocked on the door, and asked to see him. His mother said he wasn't home, and upon learning that we had hoped to borrow something told us to just go downstairs into his bedroom and find what we were looking for, which we did. And we found it. We cycled, bristling with anticipation to the nearest VCR. (Turns out the video was kinda lame.)

When I think back on those days, it seems that things went down in strange ways. That kind of thing would never happen today. "Some kids that I let in were here rifling through your things this afternoon." "OK mom, what's for supper?"

Though AC/DC were never quite as good with singer Brian Johnson (barring his first two albums with them) they have nevertheless put out a lot of top drawer stuff since the Bon Scott days, right up to the present day. 1985's Fly On The Wall gets a bad reputation for muddy production and poor vocals. But listening to a vinyl copy at top volume, I have no complaints whatsoever. This album is snarling. In addition to the fan favorites (Shake Your Foundations, Sink The Pink), you have unheralded cuts like the title track or the incendiary stomper Playing With Girls (inexplicably not hailed as one of their greatest songs). Additionally you get atypical stylistic shifts like the laid back groover, Danger, which features an extraordinary lightning-in-a-bottle guitar solo by Angus Young - still very much in top creative form throughout. Naysayers be damned, this album rocks my socks off. Unfairly maligned, I say!

KISS - Best Of The Solo Albums (1981)

Most KISS fans don't rate the solo albums too highly. Sure, we all agree Ace's was the best but beyond that, it's patchy terrain. However, for my money, Gene's album gets better with age. He had a real knack for a crackin' melody. Then there's Paul and Peter's albums. Meh.

So what could be better than the record company realizing what a misguided ploy these solo albums were than to cut the crap and release one album of just the best songs?

It was a good idea, but this compilation doesn't flow right. They should have tried to make it flow more like a proper KISS album. Paul doesn't even make an appearance until side 2!

For KISS completists only.

Yes - Close To The Edge (1972)

Look at how bleedin' awful my copy of the sleeve is. Terrible glossy finish which is bubbling and warping...I can never understand why people prefer glossy anything over matte. Matte is where it's at. Feel free to make a T-shirt with that slogan.

If someone says "prog rock", the first band that springs to mind, and the one that typifies and embodies the genre the most is Yes.

I'm still pretty green, I actually thought this set, from 1972, was their first album, but it's their 5th.
Most people of a certain age probably remember the Yes song "Owner of a Lonely Heart" from the early 80's. This album isn't anything like that. Long, meandering suites ranging from pastoral acoustic dreamscapes to furious and frantic nimble noodling, it's diametrically opposed to Louie Louie. It might not be the best choice for kicking off your Saturday night shindig, but if you're alone at home nursing lumbago and drinking tea on a Monday morning, it might be just the ticket.

Lou Reed - Coney Island Baby (1976)

Very much a spiritual heir to Transformer, Lou Reed's Coney Island Baby is a warmly recorded gem featuring Bob Kulick on guitar. I'm never sure about Lou Reed. Most of the time I think he is tone deaf and marvel at how such an awful, out-of-tune warble could have sustained such a storied and successful career. Then sometimes I hear it and think he is brilliant, a true maverick. He's peculiarly fascinating. And he just recorded an album with Metallica! The wife asked if he was gay. I said I didn't really know, but I was pretty sure he was in a long-term relationship with a transvestite in the 70's. Does that make him gay? I'm not so sure.

Greg Kihn Band - Rockihnroll (1981)

Greg Kihn....another one of those WTFIT guys. (whothefuckisthat). Probably best known for the classic rock radio hit, The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'Em), which has a Tom Petty-from-the-same-era kind of vibe. The album artwork suggests new wave, but the sounds contained therein are firmly in the classic rock mold, albeit with a bright and snappy production and memorable, buoyant songs. In short, great stuff worth having in your collection.

The Kinks - Give The People What They Want (1981)

Perennial favorites of mine ever since I first heard Lola one Friday night in my buddy Vince's basement on a cassette belonging to his older sister (and where his parents would let us drink when we were teenagers; they were very cool in our eyes for that), the Kinks may have cemented their deserved reputation as musical deities by being among the original Big 4 (Beatles, Stones, Who & Kinks, of course), but it's the era of their creative re-birth and second wind as a US stadium act (roughly '77 through '83) that I find myself going back to most for kicks.

More so than their 60's peers, they managed to seamlessly update their sound without compromising their identity and thus were able to have something valid to say to their original fans, classic rock fans, new wave fans and music fans in general, more than a decade after they made their first impact.

Give The People What They Want is a band energized, still vital and firing on all cylinders even after almost 20 years of endless slogging in the industry. All killer and no filler, the album features the band delivering the goods in fine Kinksian style (standard review blather, yada, yada)...

I'm not usually a lyrics guy, but that Ray Davies sure has an able way with words that's obvious even to me.

Go, Kinks!

Donnie Iris - Back On The Streets (1980)

The greatest song that Foreigner never wrote, Ah! Leah! is classic rock at its most sublime and FM radio ready. But hold on...Donnie Iris?! Who the hell is that? I know the song, but I don't know that name. Is he the dork on the album cover? (That's all the same guy in various states of undress.) I'm getting mixed signals. Is this guy for real? Was Ah! Leah! all a ruse to get me to buy some kind of ur-Weird Al record? I, for one, wasn't sure.

But I was soon put at ease, gentle reader, for this is a great record! Quintessential classic rock flawlessly executed and recorded but unabashedly straddling the decade and embracing wholeheartedly the emerging new wave to produce a spunky and sparkly brew consisting of equal parts of both.

Eminently enjoyable. Recommended.

Max Webster - A Million Vacations (1979)

Edging toward the mainstream, A Million Vacations finds Max Webster pruning their prog-nudging sound towards more straightforward classic rock bolstered by a crisp n' clear production.

Max Webster - Mutiny Up My Sleeve (1978)

From the outset, Mutiny Up My Sleeve has a more balls-out swagger and strut to it than predecessor High Class in Borrowed Shoes, with a deliciously fat and biting tone to Kim Mitchell's lead guitar.

However, complete accessibility still wasn't the order of the day, with sudden time and key signature changes, swathes of synth (all hallmarks of prog-rock) going toe to toe with melodic and straightforward bids for mainstream appeal throughout the album.


Max Webster - High Class In Borrowed Shoes (1977)

Odd-duck bunch of misfits, it's hard to know what to make of Kim Mitchell's first band's second album, High Class In Borrowed Shoes. Gonzoid power pop and hard rock, prog rock flourishes, Beach Boys harmonies, some ballads and a general left-field point of view, it's a mixed bag to be sure. But does it work? I'm still trying to get my head around it.

John Martyn - So Far So Good (1977)

A perfect Sunday morning record, John Martyn is criminally overlooked by all the people who heap praise on Nick Drake (who is also darn good).

Exquisitely beautiful guitar playing, an almost stream-of-consciousness singing style, lush yet bold arrangements and more than a dollop of mastery in blending musical forms to dizzying effect, John Martyn's music is nothing short of awe inspiring.

No less than Eric Clapton has stated of him, "so far ahead of everything, it's almost inconceivable."

He's dead now (since 2009), from a life of hard drinkin' and druggin', if that helps you get into it.

KISS - Rock And Roll Over (1976)

Lest you think that KISS were tame wimps because of their #4 hit ballad Beth and the glossy production of Destroyer, KISS returned with their second album of 1976, the considerably more raw and rockin' Rock And Roll Over, produced and engineered by Eddie Kramer.

There's no sophistication here, whether in sound or lyrical content (bountiful with couplets of 'pockets' and 'rockets' and the like) and that's exactly the notion they were trying to get across. They like to rock ...and to get their rocks off. See, they knew what their audience of 15-year old pimply adolescents wanted most out of life...non-stop rockin', partying, and chicks.  (Pretty please? any chicks will do!)

My old cassette of this back in the 80's used to drag and so I never embraced the album as much as I knew I should. I recognized it as being rife with classic tunes and unsung gems like the hard jivin' Baby Driver, but who had money to buy the same cassette twice?! Not poor old me. Besides, you couldn't even buy cassettes in our town.

But all that is now rectified by having just received the LP, the way it should be heard, on vinyl.  Beautiful matte sleeve lovingly rendered by Michael Doret, this is a tasty piece of work and the sound is fantastic. And I might not have as many pimples, but I still want those same things out of life.  (And the chick part is covered these days, courtesy of the wife, who quite simply, rocks!).

KISS - Destroyer (1976)

The only real problem with KISS is that they didn't die in a plane crash during their 1977 Japanese tour. If they had, they'd be hailed as some of the greatest entertainers in pop history, yea even among the most innovative and influential artists of modern times. Alas, 'twas not to be. They didn't die a horrible death and are now merely rich and bloated chumps that get some begrudging respect when pressed. (But they still put on an entertaining and exciting show, as anyone who has seen them will testify.)

If ever there was a touchstone for fuelling the imagination of a 15-year-old boy leaving his youth of cartoons and toys behind him, what better gateway musical drug than the superheroic theatrics of KISS and the big n' bold songs of Destroyer?  Peppered with classics and not a weak track in the set, the album plays strong and doesn't overstay its welcome.

It's easy to forget the visual and game-changing impact that the group initially had. In those heady days of their slow but steady rise to global fame, this album, produced by none other than living legend Bob Ezrin (Alice Cooper Group, The Wall, etc.) distills and crystallizes the many pleasures of KISS in grand cinematic technicolor.

It may not be the album you call your favorite, but if any was to be considered their (cough) masterpiece, this is the one, and the first one any newbie should acquire.

In closing, Ace Frehley is perhaps the coolest individual of all time, though admittedly his presence is muted on this album.  

Mötley Crüe - Shout At The Devil (1983)

The vinyl sleeve is so much more attractive than the cassette, which is what everyone had back in the 80's in our small town. Nice matte texture with glossy pentagram, gatefold sleeve, simple yet elegant design...gorgeous.

I didn't like the Crüe that much when they were happening. For some reason the question always was "are you an AC/DC fan or a Crüe fan?" And I was firmly in the AC/DC camp. I can't imagine why these two bands should have been at odds or in competition with each other, but there you go. In the 60's it was Beatles or Stones. In the early to mid-80's, in our small town it was AC/DC or Crüe which determined your position in the headbanging community.

The songs are great, the dynamics and interplay of the band are in full force. Nobody in the band is a virtuoso, but they play to each other's strengths. The sound is competently no-frills, each performance exactly what it should be and not a note more. I respect any band that can pull that off; it's not as easy at it seems.

A quick peak at the lyrics, Ten Seconds To Love for example, reveal that in the early 80's, sexism and the objectification of women was at an all-time high. But you know, it was good times.

If you've seen recent footage of the band and were thinking that Mick Mars is some kind of weird freako not quite of this earth, as I was recently thinking...one look at the back cover photo quickly reminds you that even 28 years ago he looked like he was the black sheep of the Addams Family. 

Anyway the album rocks righteously. \m/   \m/