590. R.E.M. - Document (1987)
















Track Listing

1. Finest Worksong
2. Welcome To The Occupation
3. Exhuming McCarthy
4. Disturbance At The Heron House
5. Strange
6. It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
7. One I Love
8. Fireplace
9. Lightnin' Hopkins
10. King Of Birds
11. Oddfellows Local 151

Review

R.E.M. finally go mainstream(ish) with this album with two great hits in it and a much more (at least apparently) track selection than their previous album. Fortunately, however, REM are not compromising quality by making this move. In fact this is a great album, the lyrics are just as abstract and referential as before but now the hooks are catchier.

This is intelligent popular music of a kind seldomly seen before, and is most definitely the first of the great albums by REM and also one of the great propellers of indie music into a more mainstream conscience, with all the good and band that that entails.

One of the very good things is how labels started paying attention to a different quality of music, to the idea that it doesn't have to be lowest common denominator to be successful, and at least for a few years that worked pretty well culminating in acts like Nirvana in the 90s. Of course this led to the massification of what was an authentic art form leading to its inexorable dumbing down. But here we have a good example of successful, independent, intelligent music.

Track Highlights

1. It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
2. One I Love
3. Exhuming McCarthy
4. King Of Birds

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Document was R.E.M.'s first album co-produced by Scott Litt and the band, a collaboration that continued through Green, Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster, and New Adventures in Hi-Fi, and may account for their success with this album as well as the following five. The album's clear production and muscular rock riffs helped to move the band towards mainstream success and built on the work done by Don Gehman, who had produced their previous album Lifes Rich Pageant. This album was significant not only in launching R.E.M.'s first U.S. Top 10 hit in "The One I Love" (which reached #9), but also giving them their first platinum album. It was also their first Top 10 hit on the Billboard 200.


Great live performance of It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine):

589. Def Leppard - Hysteria (1987)
















Track Listing

1. Women
2. Rocket
3. Animal
4. Love Bites
5. Pour Some Sugar On Me
6. Armageddon It
7. Gods Of War
8. Don't Shoot Shot Gun
9. Run Riot
10. Hysteria
11. Excitable
12. Love And Affection

Review

Well if you ever need to have a cock-rock/ pop-metal album this might be a good choice. Def Leppard manage to make an album which I don't dislike. Not because it is good or great quality music, but it is a competent enough piece of pop masquerading as metal to be quite enjoyable.

The album is full of famous tracks which also help, they have that particular flavour of the tackiest times of the 1980's which serve as nostalgia fodder and also a bit of fun. So this is really to be filed in the "so bad it's good" category.

There are however some good things about the album beyond it's cartoony kitschness, it is very well produced with an extremely clean sound that really allows you to appreciate it at a technical level, the lyrics are inane but quite funny and never as childish as in thrash metal. In the end enjoyable something I wouldn't mind dancing to in an 80s party, but definitely not something I want to put in my personal collection.

Track Highlights

1. Pour Some Sugar On Me
2. Animal
3. Love Bites
4. Women

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The album's goal, set out by Lange, was to be a hard rock version of Michael Jackson's Thriller, in that every track was a potential hit single. Songs were therefore written with this concept in mind, disappointing heavy metal fans who clamored for a straight sequel to Pyromania.

Indeed, while Pyromania contained traces of heavy metal, "Hysteria" removed them in favor of the latest sonic technology available at the time (best displayed on "Rocket", "Love Bites", "Excitable", and "Gods of War").

As with Pyromania, every song was recorded by every member in the studio separately instead of the whole band. The multiple vocal harmonies were enhanced by Lange's techniques, even pitching background vocals on all tracks. Guitar parts were now focused more on emphasizing melody than hard rock's more basic and cliched riffs.

This unique approach sometimes led to painstaking lengths of time in the recording studio. The smash single, "Pour Some Sugar on Me", was the last song written but was quickly finished within two weeks. In sharp contrast, the final version of "Animal" took almost a full three years to be developed but did become one of the bigger hits from the album.

Pour Some Sugar on Me, strip club anthem extrordinaire:

588. Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris - Trio (1987)

















Track Listing


1. Pain Of Loving You
2. Making Plans
3. To Know Him Is To Love Him
4. Hobo's Meditation
5. Wildflowers
6. Telling Me Lies
7. My Dear Companion
8. Those Memories Of You
9. I've Had Enough
10. Rose Wood Casket
11. Farther Along

Review

This is probably the best traditional country music album on this list since the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, (Nanci Griffith is great as well but that is Alt Country) and that is saying something. Firstly we have the union of three of the greatest singers and performers in Country music history in Parton, Ronstadt and Harris. And as I was saying to my wife just now they aren't just great interpreters they are also very intelligent women and pretty savvy business-women.

This album is such a great move for them, particularly Parton which had been dabbling in less than tasteful country-pop, but here the electronics are trimmed down almost to no existence (with the exception of Telling Me Lies, which is nonetheless a great track) giving the album a much more authentic feel. And then they have Ry Cooder in the band.

The lyrics are the traditional women-country-fare with the bitterness towards unfaithful men taking center stage, but it is much more than that, a track like Hobo's Meditation takes on social politics for example. And the selection of tracks is a pretty good one. Well I for one missed a good traditional Country album on this list, the last really good one was in 1972 with Will The Circle Be Unbroken, and finally, 15 years later there's another one I would put in my iPod.

Track Highlights

1. I've Had Enough
2. To Know Him Is To Love Him
3. My Dear Companion
4. Making Plans

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Longtime friends and admirers of one another, Parton, Ronstadt and Harris first attempted to record an album together in the mid-1970s, but scheduling conflicts and other difficulties (including the fact that the three women all recorded for different record labels) prevented its release. Some of the fruits of those aborted 1970s recording sessions did make it to the women's respective solo recordings. "Mister Sandman" appeared on Emmylou's album Evangeline (album) and Parton's "My Blue Tears" was included on Ronstadt's Get Closer.

Finally a colloboration effort went to full fruition, being produced by George Massenburg. When Trio was finally released in early 1987, it spawned four hit country singles -- including the country #1 remake of Phil Spector's 1958 hit by the Teddy Bears, "To Know Him is to Love Him" -- and reached number 1 on the U.S. country album charts, and number 6 on the U.S. pop album charts. It won Grammy Awards for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. (It was also nominated for Album of the Year.)

To Know Him Is To Love Him:

587. Dinosaur Jr. - You're Living All Over Me (1987)
















Track Listing

1. Little Fury Things
2. Kracked
3. Sludgefeast
4. Lung
5. Raisans
6. Tarpit
7. In A Jar
8. Lose
9. Poledo
10. Show Me The Way

Review

If you listened to this album with no historical context you would not believe it is from 1987, this is ahead of their time by a decade, but then it could be like something you get from an OC mixed CD. So it has its good points and its bad points.

Part of the good points is the way in which they use tape loops and weird sounds experiments in their music. And you can so see the beginnings of slacker rock that would be so extremely popular some years later. It can be very melodic or noisy as hell, but as you listen to it repeatedly the noise starts becoming coherent and it just sounds good.

All this said, the main singers voice does sound a bit trite at times, standard indie rock voice for the masses, but them musical bits do compensate for that and it isn't a voice common at the time, although it kind of reminds me of Violent Femmes at times although it is never as good. Good album


Track Highlights

1. Little Fury Things
2. The Lung
3. In A Jar
4. Poledo


Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In 2005, it was ranked 31 in Spin's "100 Greatest Albums, 1985-2005". "Poledo" is unique from the rest of the album in that half of it is a lo-fi recording of Lou Barlow singing and playing ukulele, much like his own group Sebadoh, while the other half is a collection of sound collages and abstract noise pieces.

In 2005 the album was performed live in its entirety as part of the All Tomorrow's Parties-curated Don't Look Back series.

Little Fury Things:

586. Anthrax - Among The Living (1987)
















Track Listing

1. Among The Living
2. Caught In A Mosh
3. I Am The Law
4. Efilkinufesin
5. A Skeleton In The Closet
6. Indians
7. One World
8. A.D.I. / Horror Of It All
9. Imitation Of Life

Review

If Slayer is the thrash metal band that has the track length most similar to hardcore, then Anthrax is the thrash metal band that sounds most like an hardcore punk band, but it is of course peppered with all the silly excesses of thrash.

They are fast, but not as fast as Slayer, sounding meek in comparison and the lyrics are excruciatingly bad. If you are making a song about the plight of Native Americans you could have avoided calling them Indians.

But you don't look for smarts in a metal album, and this isn't the worse on the list by far, it is bearable. Caught in a Mosh is a good track, but the whole album quickly starts feeling boring and repetitive. Not terrible but not that good.

Track Highlights

1. Caught in a Mosh
2. Efilkinufesin
3, Among The Living
4. I Am The Law

Final Grade

6/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The band and Eddie Kramer produced the album, which was released as a double album (along with Persistence of Time) in Germany in 2000. The album includes the singles, "I Am the Law" and "Indians". It is widely regarded as one of their best works and sets itself apart from many of its contemporaries by the lyrical humor of some of the songs. There are, however, also several songs with a serious political message behind them. On Anthrax's re-union tour in 2005 the bulk of their set consisted of material from Among the Living, while on their 2006 tour at solo-dates, for the first time ever, they performed the entire album.

Among the Living features a drawing of Henry Kane (a character from Poltergeist II motion picture). The band stated in interviews that he was the one thing that scared them the most.

Caught in a Mosh played on Guitar Hero by someone with the right mental age to truly appreciate it: