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!)