93. The Doors - The Doors (1967)



















Track Listing

1. Break On Through
2. Soul Kitchen
3. Crystal Ship
4. Twentieth Century Fox
5. Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)
6. Light My Fire
7. Back Door Man
8. I Looked At You
9. End Of The Night
10. Take It As It Comes
11. End

Review

This is probaly one of the most impressive debut albums of any band, ever. The Doors come up with a sound that is at the same time complex, artful and visceral on a truly great album. There is really very little here that can be criticised negatively. In fact the only thing is the fact that many tracks should be longer if The End and Light My Fire are examples of The Doors long form in this period of their music.

Strangely enough it is the longer songs which stay mostly with you. The brilliance that The Doors allow themselves in the extended tracks is just astonishing. Jim Morrison has since become an iconic legend, but the other members are equally as talented, the proof of this is the instrumental section of Light My Fire where the organ and guitar show the genius or the performers and almost eclipse Morrison's contribuition to the track.

The Doors also provide us with a bit of culture with the Whisky Song, bringing Brecht and Kurt Weill to rock, just like it had been brough before to lounge music with Mack The Knife. So, this is really something which you must have, must listen to, and even if you find the idea of The Doors to be cliched undergraduate student splif-accompaniment, judge it by it's merits and not it's fans.

You can stream it from Napster or buy it at Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Light My Fire
2. The End
3. Whisky Song
4. Break On Through

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The Doors is the debut album by the band The Doors, released in 1967. It features the breakthrough single "Light My Fire", extended with a substantial instrumental section omitted on the single release, and the lengthy song "The End" with its Oedipal spoken-word section. The Doors credit the sheer awesomeness of their first album to being able to work the songs out night after night at the Whiskey A Go Go or the London Fog. The album presents quality songs that are instantly attractive and easily remembered, a quality of work that is lacking in their following albums. "Alabama Song" was originally written and composed by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill for their opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny); "Back Door Man" was a Howlin' Wolf cover. The End's Oedipal climax was first performed live at the Whiskey A Go Go and The Doors were thrown out as a result of Jim screaming "kill the father and fuck the mother."

The album's dark tone and frontman Jim Morrison's sexual charisma and wild lifestyle influenced much of rock and roll to come.

The album is generally thought of as the band's best work, in addition to being one of the greatest debut albums by any band. In 1998 Q magazine readers voted The Doors the 93rd greatest album of all time; in 2003 the TV network VH1 placed it at number 60. In 2003, the album was ranked number 42 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

92. Frank Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim - Frank Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim (1967)




















Track Listing

1. Girl From Ipanema
2. Dindi
3. Change Partners
4. Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars
5. Meditations
6. If You Never Come To Me
7. How Insensitive
8. Concentrate On You
9. Baubles Bangles And Beads
10. Once I Loved

Review

I think whoever was responsible for choosing Brazilian music for the 1001 Albums book was a bit missing the point of Brazilian music and Bossa Nova. This album is nothing if not a throwback, it is surrounded on the list by Velvet Underground and The Doors, its presence here is an anachronism. Brazil was producing modern music, and we will soon have Os Mutantes here as an example of that.

This album is not even a good Frank Sinatra album. I like Sinatra as much as the next man but he is not really shining with charisma or feeling here, he is just flat. Also this is Jobim's ultimate sell out album. He strums his guitar and sings in a couple of songs which he has performed better in 500 other albums. There is no fire and no excitment here, and the same guy who chose this album for the list is probably the one who chose Astrud Gilberto's.

Of course there are redeeming features here, this is not unpleasent. It is not bad background music and it is not offensive. That is however not enough to consider any album good, much less great. Buy it at Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Once I Loved
2. Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars
3. How Insensitive
4. Dindi

Final Grade

4/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Various tributes have been paid to Jobim and his body of work. For example, American jazz singers Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra prominently featured Jobim's songs on their albums Ella Abraça Jobim (1981) and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim (1967), respectively. Other relatively recent works such as Wave: The Antonio Carlos Jobim Songbook (1996) included performances by the likes of Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Toots Thielemans.

91. Velvet Underground - Velvet Underground And Nico





Track Listing

1. Sunday Morning
2. I'm Waiting For The Man
3. Femme Fatale
4. Venus In Furs
5. Run Run Run
6. All Tomorrow's Parties
7. Heroin
8. There She Goes Again
9. I'll Be Your Mirror
10. Black Angel's Death Song
11. European Son

Review

Wow, Nico brings her Albatross talents to yet another great record. Actually Nico just plays a bit part here and you really don't miss her that much. Lou Reed's delivery and writing as well as the music itself is what really matters here. Don't let yourself be deceived by the iconic cover art and stuff, that's just misdirection.

So, is this Velvet Underground at their best? Not really, they did produce great stuff later in White Light/ White Heat particularly, and we won't have to wait much to get that album here.

So... if you don't know tyhis get to know it and know that I love it... even when it goes all weird in Heroin and European Son it makes sense, I mean particularly in Heroin the song mimics a rush perfectly from the quiet to the rush to the chaos... Maybe I'm talking shit. I had a mug of bubbly... Yesh! That's how classy I am... so goodnight and good luck... I'm going to kiss the boots of shiny, shiny leather... if only.

Stream it from Napster or buy it at UK or US... which I know you won't seeing as I haven't made a penny from you stingy fuckheads and I need money to spend it on booze and drugs... thanks!

Track Highlights

1. Venus In Furs
2. Heroin
3. I'm Waiting For The Man
4. All Tomorrow's Parties

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

Why do I do this to myself? I should be in bed, I should....

90. The Who - The Who Sell Out (1967)




















Track Listing

1. Armenia City In The Sky
2. Heinz Baked Beans/More Music (Jingle)
3. Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand/Premier Drums/Radio London (jingles)
4. Odorono/Radio London (jingle)
5. Tattoo/Radio London (Church Of Your Choice Jingle)
6. Our Love Was
7. I Can See For Miles/Charles Atlas (Jingle)
8. I Can't Reach You
9. Medac
10. Relax
11. Silas Stingy
12. Sunrise
13. Rael 1

Review

Now here's an album with novelty value. The Who quite smartly decide to "sell out" and create an album which is almost like the recreation of a radio program, with jingles, adverts and songs. These are actually quite funny/weird and are well done, but there is more than novelty value here. The Who are able to create a wide variety of music while still being quite good at all of it. On track 3 they mimic the Byrds for example, and do it perfectly.

This is a very good album, and in my opinion much better than My Generation, the conceptual idea behind it is strong and it's here that you see the door opening up to stuff like Tommy. There are some really good tracks here, I have a special place in my heart for Silas Stingy but I Can See For Miles is great rock and their biggest hit in the US.

The Who are not one of those bands that easily overwhelms you, and the very concept that makes this album so strong is also its downfall. After a few times of listening to it the interjections are a bit tiring and you just want to listen to the music. Which is quite a compliment. It is also a not very coherent album, but I think that is part of the idea behind it, a radio does not pass uniform music, so it kind of works in the end. Stream it from Napster or buy it at Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. I Can See For Miles
2. Our Love Was
3. Silas Stingy
4. Armenia City in The Sky

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The cover is divided into panels featuring each of the band members, two on the front and two on the back. Front: Pete Townshend applying Odorono brand deodorant from an oversized stick; Roger Daltrey sitting in a bathtub full of Heinz baked beans. Back: Keith Moon applying Medac from an oversized tube; John Entwistle in a leopard-skin Tarzan suit, squeezing a blonde woman in a leopard-skin bikini with one arm and a teddy bear with the other (an ad for the Charles Atlas course mentioned in one of the album's faux commercials). Originally Moon was seen applying a tube of Clearasil, but the manufacturer objected and the cover was changed for the US and subsequent editions.

89. Pink Floyd - The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967)



















Track Listing

1. Astronomy Domine
2. Lucifer Sam
3. Matilda Mother
4. Flaming
5. Pow R Toc H
6. Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk
7. Interstellar Overdrive
8. Gnome
9. Chapter 24
10. Scarecrow
11. Bike

Review

Trippy album. No, really trippy, but with a foundation in pop, which is nice. This pop-psychadelia is more apparent in Astronomy Domine for example, where a traditionally pop structure is transformed into something else. This album has a sense of constant foreboding which is very well achieved, in all the tracks there lurks a darkness of some kind. Even when the song is about gnomes, you can't help but think of them having satanic orgies at night.

All this might be attributable to Syd Barret's rapidly sliding sanity and copious usage of LSD, a bad LSD trip lurks behind all the fairytale imagery. And that decadent, repressed dementia is what makes this such a good album. Ok, it is not an easy album to listen to, in fact it is quite demanding on tracks like Interstellar Overdrive but it does pay off.

Overdrive has one of the coolest guitar riffs to be commited to vinyl; pity that between it's first and last appearance on the track there's 7 minutes where the mask of sanity has slipped and noise takes over. Pink Floyd sound like nothing else at this time. It does have its downsides, however, some of the more narrative songs seem a bit out of place, and I really prefer the more instrumental/spacy tracks. Honestly I think it is a good thing Barrett left, letting Pink Floyd explore those sounds on Dark Side Of The Moon for example.

I know I will go to hell for this, but Syd was overrated and I am more of a Roger Waters man myself. David Gilmour can go screw himself however (sorry Gilly, you know I love you). Stream it from Napster or buy it at Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Interstellar Overdrive
2. Astronomy Domine
3. Pow R. Toc. H
4. Bike (just because)

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The album's title comes from the title of the seventh chapter of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, where Water Rat and Mole, while searching for a lost animal, have a spiritual experience. "This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me," whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. "Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!". The Piper referred to is the Greek god Pan. Vic Singh photographed and designed the album cover, unlike subsequent Pink Floyd albums.