Long out of print for whatever reason, Penelope Spheeris' look at the So-cal punk scene of the early 80's, The Decline Of Western Civilization, has been a bit of a white whale- until Youtube. Spheeris (who directed Wayne's World) has a knack for letting these kids rattle off and act natural, which makes it a disarming look into what music has been and should still be- raw, desperate, and dangerous. No band better exemplifies that aesthetic than the almighty X.
X marries punks aggression and romanticism with Chuck Berry/Bo Diddley riffage and rhythmic shuffle. Los Angeles, Wild Gift, and Under the Big Black Sun are all cold classics in rock and roll history, and- unlike most punk of the time- remain timeless. I could go off for days on their brilliance but I'll let the light and sound do it for me.
Seriously, buy or steal all these albums, they are front to back brilliance.
God DAMN this shit is dope! Definitely reminds me of Parliament/Funkadelic, Herbie Hancock and Sly Stone- all influences of Prince- but Prince avoids being derivative by spinning a prescient yarn about the rumors about him at the time concerning his sexual preference, his race, etc. The song was, indeed, controversial in it's day for using the Lord's prayer to remind people that good Christian folk are supposed to forgive the trespasses of others (this was condemned as blasphemous). The chicken-scratch, staccato guitar and fat funk rhythm help make this one of the best funk jams ever.
Love is one of the biggest hidden gems in the classic rock canon. Having always enjoyed a fair share of critical praise but never with the sales numbers to back it up, singer-songwriter Arthur Lee and crew played the music they felt and were disarmingly honest songwriters and among the heaviest in the 60's (definitely the heaviest in LA). Love got the short shrift in their day for the same reason the Kinks did with the Beatles and Stones, for being more oblique with the structure of songs and how they are sung/played/mixed/performed live, etc. They, like the Kinks, played songs that not everybody got but those who did we're blown away. The Doors and the Byrds are much more popular, historically, yet both those bands, plus the Stones and Hendrix all dug Love. Hendrix even tried to record an album with Lee.
Arthur Lee was an enigma, a black peace-and-love hippie, but one who should have been celebrated for having a mixed race rock band like Sly and the Family Stone were. He was too hard for most white people (basically the second hardest to Black Sabbath in the whole era, "7 and 7 is..." can be considered the first punk song) and too folky for most black people. He made the topic of race irrelevant, he only preached that we love one another (which was not the case with him and his band members who had drug fueled spats regularly before being disbanded and reformed several times). Lee curiously refused to play the Monterey Pop festival the year Hendrix burned his guitar, the Who smashed shit and Otis Redding owned like no other.
When I first heard Forever Changes, I had no expectations going in besides it being psychedelic and folky with an orchestra somewhere in the mix. "Alone Again Or" is one of their more famous songs and that's because people have heard so much about this album and it's the first song, or they saw Wes Anderson's feature debut Bottle Rocket, but suffice it to say it drew me into the bands sound.
In the liner notes to the CD there's an essay saying the album reflected every part of Los Angeles in the 60's with every culture represented equally, which I thought was awesome. I love music that transcends and relates to all of us and Love's songs hit you on every level.
Forever Changes is bottom-to-top, front-to-back brilliance, but it's the only one of theirs that is regarded as classic, which may be true but the others have songs that can hold their worth with anything out of the classic era whether it be the Beatles, Zeppelin, or fucks like Steely Dan and Foreigner and the largely worthless "second tier" of classic rock.
Love are different, they're one of my favorite rock bands ever up there with The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, The Rolling Stones, etc because they're not only great writers but great composers/arrangers. Their dynamics are best experienced live, as the newer live material that they performed right before Arthur Lee's death in 2006 is just as good a the album with totally different musicians- because the arrangements are all still cutting edge and unique, Lee's words still prescient. This is their concert in Glastonbury, with the fat crowd they deserve digging every minute of it.
Check out ALL this bands work, every album is packed full of amazing words and music, but definitely get Forever Changes, it may just blow your mind irrevocably like it has mine. Oh yeah, and this s one of those bands like X and Yes and Television that is hard to google, so look up the words "Love Forever Changes" in wherever you're looking.
Bonus video (cuz it's dope and check the drummer):
Dub reggae is a special thing to me. It's not a sub genre people recognize all that much, because it was always too psychedelic to get a huge following. If you've heard of it but still don't quite know what it is, it's best described as a fusion of roots reggae with technology that remixes it in such a way that the bass is the most important element in the mix. After it's invention in the early seventies, artists like Lee "Scratch" Perry and King Tubby, made all of their output dubbed out, and when they produced other artists (Perry produced Bob Marley and the Wailers and other luminaries) they made a normal version for the radio and a dub mix for a good stereo.
Dub reggae is generally trippier than roots reggae or the more popular reggae of the Bob Marley/Jimmy Cliff/Toots and the Maytals variety. It is even more weed derived than what is considered popular reggae and is more about rhythm (riddim) and even-metered funk. The bass and chanting vocals (usually processed with effects like echo or a wet mix), but what I really love about it is how locked in the drums are and how different artists deal with melody. Usually when there are lyrics involved, it's all about groovy guitar parts but artists such as Jackie Mittoo and Augustus Pablo use a lot of keyboard and even violin ("K.G.'s Half Way Tree" by Augustus Pablo and the Simplicity is a good example of this).
Anyway here is a short primer to dub reggae artists and my favorite albums.
1.) Lee "Scratch" Perry & the Upsetters- The "Godfather" of Dub, Perry got the technique down to a science of producing the elements of dub. He is also the genre's foremost artist because of it. Classics like Blackboard Jungle, Roast Fish Collie Weed and Corn Bread, and Super Ape are among the best albums in the whole pantheon of reggae, let alone dub. He was also a crazy, delusional motherfucker who was prone to odd, spiritual rambling and he burned down his own Black Arc studio, in a weird fit of paranoia. Don't let that scare you off, he is the genius all geniuses when it comes to the dub sound. He also produced classics such as Max Romero's War Inna Babylon, The Congo's Heart Of The Congos, and the classic Junior Murvin song "Police And Thieves" (covered more famously by The Clash). He is still around to this day, so go see him!!!!
2.) Burning Spear- A more politicized musician than the batshit insane Perry, Winston Rodney's obsessions were social politics. Praising the messages of black leaders such as Marcus Garvey and the messages of Rastafarian spirituality, Burning Spear had a rich, soulful sound in his music. For melody he uses more horns than Perry as well as keyboards. His songs have more variation and changes than Perry's rhythmic grooves. The classic of Burning Spears studio albums is definitely 1975's Marcus Garvey (or the more readily available reissue Harder Than The Best). Accompanied by backing band the Black Disciples, Rodney's politicized message ignited Jamaica just as Diego Rivera's murals ignited Mexico- by using history and spirituality to use as a unifying force for the people to fight against their oppression.
3.) King Tubby- Another aural scientist, King Tubby would be the man you'd say created dub, while Perry was the first to use it in popular music. King Tubby, aka Osborne Ruddock, worked as a radio repairman and diddled with lots of sound and speaker equipment. Fast forward a bit to the 1950's when there was social revolution in Jamaica and people moved out of the dancehall into the streets. Tubby was the man who fixed the speakers when they inevitably blew themselves out due to the fierce ghetto baster competition in the streets. He eventually opened his own speaker shop with huge rigs that could rock a party harder than anyone. The thing about good speakers is how much more they make you notice bass, and Ruddock took the idea and ran with it, and remixed songs until he arrived at the dub sound. He would cut up songs, strip vocals, away, fuck with the elements of the melodic parts and, of course, pump up the bass. This gave him a platform to start making and producing music of his own and people started wanting him to put his spin on their own records. As far as classic albums of all killer-no filler material, Tubby ain't got 'em (he was more a producer) but his compilations are ESSENTIAL. Dub Gone Crazy: The Evolution of Dub At King Tubby's 1975-1977 is amazing, as well as probably any of the other retrospectives.
4.) Augustus Pablo- A virtuoso keyboardist, Pablo instead popularized the Melodica, more known as a child's toy, in his music. The sound fit reggae perfectly, but Pablo's success was due more to his mastery of rhythmic variation married with awesome melodic overtones. He went on to produce and record a score of good shit, but he doesn't have quite the backstory as the other dub gods I chose. He merely made some of the best music reggae has to offer before suffering from a nerve disorder which finally proved too much for him and died in 1999. He left behind a seminal body of work, however, highlighted by the 1978, Lee Perry produced, East Of The River Nile.
Willie Williams- MP3- "Armagideon Time", Scientist, Jackie Mittoo- MP3- "Ghetto Organ", Mad Professor, Dub Syndicate, Twilight Circus Dub Sound System, The Skatalites, Alton Ellis, Etc.
Dub influenced hip hop in a huge way sonically, and it's only fitting that Madlib would return the favor with a mix called Blunted In The Bomb Shelter. It's an awesome crash course in dub reggae and it spans the whole Trojan records collection and features all these artists and more on it.
As far as modern classics go, there is a lack of recognition in the media of things that aren't new and cutting edge. Things as timeless as the Magnetic Fields 1999 triple album 69 Love Songs deserve more praise, especially as the passage of time has seen the touching sentiments of these lyrics get more and more irrelevant in our age. Romance and chivalry are old hat, every relationship seems to have a Southern California twist to it nowadays, yet the Magnetic Field's Stephin Merrit and crew seem to have been sheltered from the fray with just their friends and lovers, Leonard Cohen albums, weed, and the complete Shakespere to keep them busy.
The concept of this album is 69 different love songs (whittled down from 100) about any kind of love (i.e. sex, breakups, happiness, crushes, stalking, animal love, love of objects, etc). The shifts in style and genre are disorienting at first but welcome after getting used to it. The main influence I can pick out is definitely Leonard Cohen, in Stephin Merrit's super low voice to the darkly funny, sad, well written lyrics.
These songs are deep and truthful, to the point of hearing one that cuts to deep may bring you to tears. There are 69 of them, there is probably at least a few that you'll have that experience with. All it took was one for me to get hooked and it happened to be "The Book Of Love," a song about the cliches of love becoming something you can overlook when you're going through the motions with a person so special they make the motions feel new again.
I just bought what they're selling hardcore after that, scouring the album to find another gem that I relate to as much. I found them a few songs down the tracklist with both "The One You Really Love" and "A Pretty Girl Is Like..." which operate on me in different ways. The first almost cuts me too deep with it's lyrics of a girlfriend preoccupied with someone else (in this case someone dead). It's beauty is in its dark humor and slightly pissed off narrator who reduces the object of her affection from "the one you really love" to "the corpse you really love."
"A Pretty Girl Is Like..." is just plain brilliant writing. "A pretty girl is like a violent crime/if get it wrong you could do time/but if you get it right it is sublime/I'm so in love with you girl/It's like I'm on the moon/I can't really breathe but I feel lighter" Bomb.
Another cool thing is that you find songs that you relate to but you know someone else who the song may as well have been written for. Such is the case with this song, but I won't divulge any names.
Well I got shit to do but I'll give you some more songs I love off this album so as to nudge you into buying/downloading it. If you can't take the album as a whole (understandable, I can't really either) just make a mix of the highlights, which i think is necessary to do with any bloated album like this or the Clash's Sandanista!, etc.
Saw FlyLo, Kode9 and the Bug @ Mighty in SF on Saturday and hoo boy what a fucking show! All three owned their sets big time, FlyLo with his blend of hip hop, reggae, dubstep and electro, the others following suit but leaning more toward dubstep. The bass was pumped up so high it knocked the wind out of you (in a good way) and people were dancing 'til they dropped. Some choice tracks were played that I hadn't heard and I tracked a few of them down and added some more highlights that I knew already and was stoked to hear.
Mastodon has never been a stranger to wacky concept albums (like 2004's Moby Dick song suite Leviathan) but this is just an insane concept. So there's this kid in Czarist Russia who's terminally ill and leaves his body to travel to an astral plane via a crack in the sky. Then some crazy shit about Rasputin coming back from the dead and the kid and Rasputin switching places or something. Fucking crazy. Anyways, Crack The Skye rocks pretty hard- you really don't need to understand the subtext of the concept.
Once again, Mastodon's musicianship is par excellence. The way they change tempos and time signatures is just nutty. You really don't know what's coming next in every song and once you know the songs well, it's still awesome to marvel at their genius in putting it all together. The best songs on here are "Divinations," "Quintessence" and "The Last Baron" all who share the same qualities of having epic choruses, ripping solos and crazy shifts in tempo. The surf-y guitar solo at the 2:13 mark on "Divinations" is the best moment of the whole album but the whole thing flows together very cohesively.
One thing about Mastodon is that they don't fit into any category or sub-genre of metal (like grindcore, doom, black metal etc) and thats much to their credit, they just make the music that comes to them and their fans accept that gladly. You can tell they're really pushing themselves musically on this album, pushing their voices especially. The choruses are epic as I said, but the main difference is more singing and less screaming than 2007's Blood Mountain or Leviathan. These guys nail it pretty well though, I'm very impressed.
Sorry Animal Collective, but we have a new album of the year. I've been waiting for Veckatimest in a ravenous way, eating up any bit of info, any live version of a new song, constantly checking torrent sites to see if it's leaking, etc, just like I did with Animal Collectives Merriweather Post Pavillion. But when they day came when Veckatimest did leak, I couldn't tear myself away from it for anything. A few days past that, I still can't. It's simply the most mesmerizingly beautiful album I've ever heard.
The album versions of the two songs that have been floating around the internet for about a year now- "Two Weeks" and "While You Wait For Others"- sound amazing in their studio incarnations, yet my surprise is that they're not the best the album has to offer. The gem of the album is "I Live With You" which features Beach House singer Victoria Legrand, singing backup to Daniel Rossen. The song starts off in a swell of stings evoking an old school romance in the golden age of cinema, before Danny and Victoria make the mood ethereal with their angelic voices and the rest of the band explodes into cacophony. Sandwiched between "While You Wait For Others" and album closer "Foreground," Veckatimest has possibly the best three song conclusion ever.
Other stand out tracks took a listen or two to register. "Cheerleader" and "Dory" are both amazing as well. "Cheerleader" has an amazing lead vocal by Ed Droste in which the verse contains the hook, and then Victoria Legrand and the rest of the band comes in to make the song almost levitate in the chorus as the solid bassline and reverbed guitar create a prickly backdrop that soars when called upon. "Dory" is a Danny track that is more a vocal workout in the beginnign until about halfway when Droste comes in and the song becomes something else I have no words for. Just suffice to say it's magestic.
The entire album is good from start to finish, with a perfect opener in "Southern Point" and a great closer in "Foreground." It's almost an objective reality to call it better than 2006's Yellow House, which i love as well, but this is a different animal entirely. It might break out to a little mainstream success, and it might not but more people are definitely going to take notice of this band now.
I got the leaked copy but I am definitely gonna buy the album the day it comes out (May 26th) and you should do the same. They earned it.
OK it's official- with his dope new album Born Like This, MF Doom (now sans the MF, apparently) is now my favorite MC, beating out the likes of Biggie, Andre 3000, RZA, Chuck D, Nas, KRS-One, and a short list of others. His career is just untouchable and he has never sold out to gain mass appeal. His tight writing and woozy delivery set him apart now, yet he had a completely different flow in the early 90's group, KMD. Since then, his output under a number of pseudonyms and collaborations such as King Geedorah, Viktor Vaughn, Madvillian (W/Madlib), Dangerdoom (W/Danger Mouse), has quietly built up what I think is the most consistent body of work in all of hip hop in terms of quality (yeah even more than Ghostface Killah).
Born Like This is tight and succinct in it's execution, and shows off all of Doom's best qualities- his writing, his flow, his trippy sample-based interludes, but the star of the show is his touch as producer. The beats fit the rhymes perfectly as he weaves various tales of crime and ugliness often intoning a noirish, spy movie feel. Sampling ESG's "UFO" on "Yessir" was genious and I like the way he slows it down and pumps up the bass (definitely one you'll want to bump in your car). I'm also glad he used the "Styrax Gum" instrumental that he made for his Special Herbs series on "That's That."
The best track on this album is definitely "Cellz" which starts out with a sinister spoken word piece by one of my favorite authors, Charles Bukowski, about the violent ends that a society of greed will bring about and how we we're all born into it (hence the title of the album) and it's up to us if we want to change it or let it reduce us to "radiated men eating the flesh of radiated men." After the spoken word intro, Doom busts out a fat rhyme over the most epic of beats. Of of my favorite Doom tracks ever.
If you're new to MF Doom, the places to start are probably Operation: Doomsday and Madvillain's Madvilliany. Also, my opinion on all these rumors that he's hired impostors to do his live shows or that he's dead or whatever is that they're probably false (uh hopefully about the death thing) or of his own fabrication to serve his larger than life legend as the king of the underground. Either way it doesn't devalue his music at all, it anything it makes him slightly more interesting.
Here are some samples (Right Click To Save you know the drill) but this is definitely an album that's worth the money so buy it!
The Black Lips' new album 200 Million Thousand is extremely fucking addicting. It's one of those albums where bands to try expand their sound a bit after they broke through to a bigger audience like with 2007's Good Bad Not Evil. Their new approach have the notoriously drunken, filthy Southerners getting a little more serious (like on heartfelt lead single "Starting Over") and a little more insane (like on the AWESOME hip hop song "The Drop I Hold"). The album's catchiest tune, "Short Fuse," is as good a song as they've ever released and features a prickly guitar lead and propulsive drums along with their usual cache of echo aural effects and a killer lead vocal.
When you first hear the album you may just get stuck on their singles but the hooks on songs like "Old Man," "Trapped In A Basement," and "Body Combat" will win you ever with a few spins. 200 Million Thousand, overall, is a more psychedelic album than their previous efforts, which is exactly what I wanted from this band. Their murky and dirty but so fuckin' likable that even if lo fidelity shits usually not your bag they'll still win you over. At the very least this albums gives them a few more weapons to add to their infamous live shows, which there will be a lot of in the near future as their touring A LOT in the coming months.
Grade: A-
Here are some samples, make sure you cop the album ASAP.
J Dilla (or Jay Dee), posthumously, has become known one of the most respected producers in the history of hip hop. Before his heartbreaking death due to a combination of Lupus and a rare blood disease called TTP, he was produced Busta Rhymes, Ghostface, A Tribe Called Quest, The Pharcyde, Common, De La Soul, Mos Def, and rapped on and produced his own hip hop collective Slum Village, and collaborated with Pete Rock (who he idolized) and Madlib, and also released solo records. Anyone who likes hip hop should know this cat because he's one of the heavies. His production style borrows from all over but typically relies on soul and jazz loops but his signatures are woozy basslines and drums that always have that satisfying thwack that is essential for good hip hop.
With anyone as diverse as Dilla, a primer is necessary and for this I recommend:
1.) The 2006 album Donuts- I can say, without fear of hyperbole, that this is easily one of the most creative things hip hop has ever been responsible for. The principal of the album is fragmented beats that are primarily based off loops but have more changes than you're typical hip hop instrumental. The songs flow into each other but you don't have much warning of what's gonna come next, it just hits you, you start grooving to it and- WHAM- next song. It's a headspinner at first but once you start digging it, you start to gain more and more respect for this guy. This album was a labor of love and will be his enduring masterpiece.
2.) The Pharcyde songs "Runnin" and "Drop" off 1995's Labcabincalifornia- Perhaps after the psychedelic experience of Donuts, you need some more proof that Dilla was the man. Look no further than these mid-90's classics. "Runnin" features the production techniques that he held until he passed away- a thumping bassline, odd African drum loops, and also adds in simple, down home guitar lines, a sax solo and the Pharcyde's rhymes. "Drop" is very bit it's equal in quality and features a trippy backwards synth (?) loop and another good bassline and drums that are higher and harder than those of "Runnin."
3.) The Busta Rhymes song "Woo Haa!! (Got You All In Check)- A cold classic of mid-90's hip hop and a hit on the radio too. You've probably heard this but in the context of the Dilla canon, it deserves another spin.
4.) The collaboration with Madlib, Jaylib, and their album Champion Sound- A perfect mathc, Madlib and Dilla both seemed to be coming from the same place sonically and their collaboration is mostly golden. At it's best it's some of the best work the two have ever done and at its "worst" its still better everything on major hip hop radio. They have loads of stoner-y battle raps and their production makes the best with the combines jazz influence and even touches on Madlib's Indian music fetish (especially "Survival Test").
5.) The Jaylib remix of Quasimoto's "Hydrant Game"- One of Dilla's all time best beats, put to Madlib's high-voiced alter ego. This is one of the most addicting songs I've ever come across and the rhyme fully does the beat justice.
Further studies: J Dilla- Ruff Draft, Slum Village- Fantastic Vol. 2 (actually any Slum Village is good but that's the best that Dilla produced), and the Ghostface Killah song "Whip You With a Strap" off 2006's Fishscale.
Here's a few samples but listen here- Normally I want you to get the albums I'm talking about by any means necessary but here's the deal- you need to buy at least Donuts. Since Dilla's death, his estate has not been getting hardly any money, even as his notoriety spread. Also complicating matters is that Dilla's mom, Ma Dukes as she's nicknamed, has also been battling lupus. So BUY some of this shit. You won't regret it- scouts honor!
I became aware of the Motown sound nearly three decades after it was “hip”. The music of Motown, and to an equal extent, Stax, are still relevant because they differed from their contemporaries. Four decades after their composition(s), the brands’ opuses still hold significant musical weight because their sound was simple and appealed to a broad audience. The solely African American rhythm and blues music of the 1950s and early 1960s branched out into the musical mainstream with the help of a number of musical acts. Rhythm and blues was banned from a number of mainstream radio stations, white radio stations, because the music was viewed as subversive. The rhythm and blues acts of the late 1950s that heralded the sound under a new musical banner, rock n’ roll, blazed a path for the Motown, Stax, Brit rock, and jazz fusion acts of the 1960s. White and black acts including Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly (to name a few) helped redefine popular music. Though many music critics will argue that the 1960s was the decade dominated by rock n’ roll, the various genres tested the limits of their respective sounds. Rock acts, bourne of rhythm and blues, incorporated everything from jazz to world music. Jazz artists like Miles Davis were intent on keeping their genre relevant by incorporating psychedelic rock and electronic sonorities. Though lambasted by critics, the musical acts of the 1960s redefined our nation and our world’s musical perspectives. Below are a few defining tracks from 60s artist that (I feel) changed music forever:
1) Otis Redding- “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (The Sad Song)” and “A Change Is Gonna Come”: Otis Redding and the Bar Kays were one of the most soulful and energetic live acts of the 1960s. Both the “Sad Song” and “A Change…” are some of Redding’s better balads (with the latter a cover of Sam Cooke’s classic ballad). Redding and most of the original members of the Bar Kays, his backing band when he toured, died tragically in a late 1960s plane crash.
2) The Animals- “House of the Rising Sun”: The Animals and the psychedelic rock revolution that dominated most of the 60s redefined popular music. The group was among the many British rock acts that was inspired by the black rhythm and blues acts of the 1950s. They interpolated that sound into their own to develop a rich, soulful tone. Lead vocalist Eric Burdon’s work on this track alone sends chills down my spine.
3) The Beatles- “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Helter Skelter”, “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds” (take your pick of any album they did when they were experimenting with psychedelic drugs and you’ll be amazed): You can’t discuss popular music in the 1960s without mentioning the Beatles. Their earlier works were pop laden opuses with a great degree of radio airplay. As the decade progressed, the group experimented with drugs, made several movies, delved into world music, and even made the silly mistake of recording an album with Phil Spector. Nonetheless, the writing team of Paul McCartney and John Lennon was one of the most prodigious in the history of rock music.
4) Smokey Robinson and the Miracles- “Tears of a Clown”, “Ooo, Baby Baby”, “If You Can Want”, and “Second That Emotion”, “Going To A Go-Go”: Smokey Robinson is someone who will always be cool in my eyes. I saw him perform a few years ago (I’m pretty sure he’s in his late 70’s) and he sounds as good as he did on the Motown songs he wrote and performed 40 years ago. Robinson was one of Motown’s most prodigious song writers, composing tracks for his label mates and other artists (he composed “My Guy” performed by Mary Wells, “My Girl” made famous by the Temptations as well as Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain). Robinson left the Miracles in 1970 to pursue a solo career. The Miracles continued to produce hits including 1970’s “Love Machine”.
5) Marvin Gaye- “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing (w/ Tammi Tyrell)”, “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby”, and “Heard It Through the Grapevine”: The music Marvin Gaye recorded in the 1960s was in stark contrast to what he wrote and recorded in the 1970s. The socially conscious “What’s Going On?” and the sexually charged “I Want U” were a quantum leap from the poppy duets performed with Tammi Tyrell in the 1960s. It was, nevertheless, the genesis of a 60s music legend.
6) The Velvet Underground and Nico- “Heroin” and “I’m Waiting for the Man”: The Velvet’s influence on rock music is undeniable. They never enjoyed a great degree of commercial success, but the critics couldn’t (and still cannot) say enough about this legendary musical act‘s influence on the rock genre and all the avant garde rock that came after it. The group’s first album (colloquially known as the “banana cover album”) was one of the greatest cult rock albums of the 1960s. It was produced by the band’s manager, artist Andy Warhol, who introduced the band to a German model named Nico. Nico was the source of a lot of turmoil in the band and she was never truly treated as a member of the group. “Heroin” and “I’m Waiting…” were two songs that ostensibly discussed 60s drug culture.
7) The Rolling Stones- “Under My Thumb”, “Paint It Black”, “Ruby Tuesday”, and “Gimme Shelter”: The Rolling Stones were white boys, British white boys, that knew the blues. Their aforementioned songs are some of the greatest rhythm and blues songs of the decade though they were considered a hard blues/rock n’ roll band. Mick Jagger’s cacophonous voice was the perfect accompaniment to the band’s gritty sound. He was sex on a microphone.
8) Jimi Hendrix- “All Along the Watchtower”, “Little Wing”, “Angel”, and “Stone Free”: Jimi was another 60s legend who was posthumously celebrated. A decade or so after his passing, fans were drawn to his sound and style. The song “All Along…” was his only song that hit the musical charts.
9) James Brown and the JBs- “Night Train”, “Cold Sweat”, “Get Up (I Feel Like A Sex Machine)”, “Doing It To Death” (the JBs), and “Cold Sweat Pt. I and II”: The self proclaimed “Hardest Working Man in Show Business” was a phenom in the 1960s with the tightest, most disciplined live act of any rhythm and blues outfit. His backup band, the JBs, were a who’s-who of 1970s funk instrumentalists. Maceo Parker, William “Bootsy” Collins and his brother “Catfish” were just a few members of the legendary backup outfit. Brown’s sound is so synonymous with 60s R&B music that it’s no wonder he also holds another nom de guerre: “Godfather of Soul”.
10) The Who- “Substitute”, “My Generation”, “Magic Bus”, “I Can’t Explain”, and “Boris the Spider”: The Who was another group that came to the states with the wave of British boy groups during the British invasion. Their sound wasn’t as edgy as the Stones yet not as pop laden as the early Beatles records, yet anticipated punk and grunge by being TOUGH. Keith Moon's and John Entwistle are one of the all time great rhythm sections in all of popular music and make their more adventurous songs such as "A Quick One While He's Away" and their more theatrical operatic albums work so well, because they never loose sight of their groovy roots in rhythm and blues.
And yeah, feel free to disagree with me…I dare you.
The hardcore punk made in L.A. during the early 80's is some of the most culturally significant music ever put on record. The kids who rallied around the scene needed the music as much as the music needed them (look at the movies Suburbia and The Decline Of Western Civilization Pt. 1 for anthropological proof), and the barrier between audience and performer was near-invisible. Never was this more apparent in the even the most talented on the L.A. punk bands- Black Flag- who recruited two of their lead singers (Ron "Chavo" Reyes and Henry Rollins) from out of the audience at shows. Guitarist Greg Ginn was the driving force of the band, often incorporating micro-tonal solos among his distorted riffage, before losing control later on to Henry Rollins who eventually came into his own as the prototypical punk grunt singer.
The first album with Rollins, 1980's Damaged is the high point of hardcore punk, second only to maybe the Bad Brains self titled LP. It's lyrical content and sonic aggression channel the frustration of being on the fringes of society in Los Angeles. Raging against the police, the idle, and their own personal demons, they gave people who relate a masterpiece and anyone who doesn't an emphatic "fuck you." Not to say you have to be poor and misanthropic to succumb to the charms of this album, but you should be empathetic to the outlaw kids this album emboldens.
Just because I'm such an amazing guy (and because I happened to come across it), here's the entire album for free. If you've never heard any original LA hardcore punk music, be prepared to be blown away at it's inspiring vitriol. Keep an open mind and decide your yourself which side of their war you're on.
Click HERE and follow directions to get the whole album in a ZIP file.
Now, let me tell you the story of how I came to love Public Enemy. I was into Rage Against The Machine all through Junior High. "Into" may not be the right word- obsessed! They represented all that I thought was awesome sonically and railed on all that I was angry about lyrically. Having learned this, my brother gave me a copy of Public Enemy's 1988 masterpiece It Takes A Nation Of Millions to Hold Us Back. I was skeptical because I'd never related to hip hop before this point and after a couple listens, I still didn't. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard- dense and angry, get I couldn't penetrate it because it didn't have big guitar riffs or whatever my wack hang-up was when I was 14. The breakthrough came when I started reading up on them. About how they scared the shit out of white people at their stage shows opening up for the Beastie Boys with their S1-W security team armed with Uzis. About how they said 'Mother fuck Elvis and John Wayne' (I paraphrase). About how they were basically a PUNK band. This little nugget of context blew my mind and I had a new obsession, devouring their albums and breaking down every song, looking up every reference.
A lot of people think it's kinda strange that I like a group that is so radically black and I'm a white kid from a lower-middle class background, but I've always been confronted with social issues that I find unjust. I went to Christian School in Marin, and I stood out for being ungodly and poor. I was raised by a single mother. I was born into certain circumstances and can empathize with anyone who fights back against this sort of American fatalism, and Public Enemy not only fought back, they challenged those who adhered to the status quo and scared them a lot with threats of revolutionary action.
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back is probably the greatest whole ALBUM in hip hop right next to Wu Tang's Enter The Wu Tang, Quasimoto's The Unseen, The Beastie Boy's Paul's Boutique, Nas' Illmatic, N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton, A Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory, and Biggie's Ready To Die. The production of the Bomb Squad has withstood the test of time and their technique of layering samples has yet to be duplicated. They sample Slayer, ESG, Isaac Hayes, Queen and shitload of others on Nation Of Millions and to this day I'm still picking up new sounds among the horns, drums, sirens, samples and scratches.
Public Enemy's other masterpiece- 1990's Fear of A Black Planet- riled just as many people and is equally essential to the Hip Hop canon and their 1987 debut Yo! Bum Rush the Show, is good too, but their place in music history is cemented with Nation of Millions and every person should own it if you're into hip hop or not. If you're not it may just make you come around.
If you're down with the Bomb Squad, they also did an awesome album with Ice Cube called Amerikkka's Most Wanted, which is really the only solo album he has thats up to the standard of Straight Outta Compton.
P.S. Notice how I didn't mention Flava Flav's reality show bullshit? Yeah thats because P.E. is not about him. He was the court jester to Chuck D's king. He was hilarious for being wack and then he got into hard drugs and now he's just kinda wack. Yet, when I saw them live at Rock The Bells in 2007 it was pretty obvious Flava's still got it as the best hype man in the business.
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