230. Joni MItchell - Blue (1971)
















Track Listing

1. All I Want
2. My Old Man
3. Little Green
4. Carey
5. Blue
6. California
7. This Flight Tonight
8. River
9. Case Of You
10. Last Time I Saw Richard

Review

This has been one of my favourite singer/songwriter albums for a long long time. Actually I've never got into any other Joni Mitchell album other than this one, I will however get to hear some more of her in the future, and that's a good thing. This is a really beautiful album. The writing is superb, she has an amazing voice and the music is just plain perfect.

It is an interesting album in the way that it makes you listen to the lyrics, they demand your attention in a really good way, because the lyrics are great. Joni's voice modulates in a way that grabs your attention throughout, and the lyrics are really beautiful poetry. There are lines in these tracks which are as good if not better than any Dylan or Cohen, but are seen from a very different perspective; Joni sees relationships from the other side as a female and relates events that male singer/songwriters don't, like in Little Green where she talks about the daughter she gave up for adoption.

Very good singer/songwriters are rare, and I am sorry to say that female singer/songwriters of note are even rarer, maybe because of societies pressures that a woman in the music business has to have a pretty face. Joni is however a perfect example of an amazing female singer/songwriter. If they ask me to name five it would have to be Joni Mitchell, P J Harvey, Tori Amos, Bjork and Ani Di Franco, oh and Suzanne Vega. Six... six then! Tracy Chapman is quite good... crap, there's loads of good fermale singer/songwriters after all... me and my sexism. Just keep in mind Joni is really, really good! So buy it from UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Case Of You
2. River
3. California
4. The Last Time I Saw Richard

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:


In 2003, the album was ranked number 30 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In Chart's three reader polls to determine the 50 greatest Canadian albums of all time, Blue won the top spot in 2000 and third place in 1996 and 2005. It was also ranked #14 on a list compiled by VH1 of the 100 Greatest Albums of All Time, the highest album by a female artist to appear on the list. In addition, it was also voted also 13 on Hotpress Magazine's "Top 100 Albums ever" by various other artists, and was voted 66th in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 Greatest Albums. It was listed among the "All-Time 100 albums by Time magazine in november 2006.

Case Of You:

229. Leonard Cohen - Songs Of Love And Hate (1971)
















Track Listing

1. Avalanche
2. Last Year's Man
3. Dress Rehearsal Rag
4. Diamonds In The Mine
5. Love Calls You By Your Name
6. Famous Blue Raincoat
7. Sing Another Song Boys
8. Joan Of Arc

Review

Cohen is angrier, but you'd like him when he's angry! In this album there is a kind of a shift for Cohen, while until now most of his songs were about love or, even if they weren't, they were quite soothing, here his voice his tinged with hatred. There is a lot of unresolved issues here and the music is all the better for it.

Some people may say that a lot of early Cohen is a bit samey, but fact the variety is not so much musical as in terms of feelings. In Diamonds In The Mine Cohen almost spits his words out with rage while in Last Years Man is hust melancholy.

Just because Lenny is angry it doesn't mean he has got any less depressing. The tracks here are nothing if not melancholy,The angry tracks have a feeling of helplessness, but the music is beautiful. Listen to it, it'll do you good, or make you slash your wrists. Get it from Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Famous Blue Raincoat
2. Joan OF Arc
3. Diamonds In The Mine
4. Sing Another Song, Boys

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

"Famous Blue Raincoat" has been covered numerous times, notably by Jennifer Warnes, who was once a Cohen back-up singer, on her 1987 album Famous Blue Raincoat, and by Tori Amos on the Leonard Cohen tribute album Tower of Song. Warnes also covered "Joan of Arc" on her album as a duet between herself and Leonard.


Famous Blue Raincoat:

228. Emerson Lake And Palmer - Pictures At An Exhibtion (1971)

















Track Listing

1. Promenade
2. Gnome
3. Promenade
4. Sage
5. Old Castle
6. Blues Variation
7. Promenade
8. Hut of Baba Yaga
9. Curse of Baba Yaga
10. Hut of Baba Yaga
11. Great Gates of Kiev
12. Nut Rocker

Review

Some decades ago Modest Mussorgsky made this pretty piano music inspired by some paintings he'd seen. Some decades later Maurice Ravel made an adaptation for it for orchestra. And now ELP do it for PROG! YEAH BABY!

It's another traditional Prog Wankathon tm, but it does have its charms. Firstly the source material is pretty amazing, even my girlfriend who hates this album cried when the Great Gates Of Kiev came on when we went to see the Ravel version at the Bridgewater Hall. It is pretty powerful music and all the Russian composers (I'm excluding Tchaykovsky here) are pretty moving composers. And really the ELP version isn't that bad an adaptation.

There are some interesting elements to this album, firstly it's live and that makes it more impressive, secondly it seems like the Isle Of Wight festival had a whole contingent of Mussorgsky lovers, since as when they state at the beggining "We're gonna give you Pictures At An Exhibition", the crowd goes wild... this has always puzzled me, in the many years I've perused this album.

Then you have to imagine how complex it was to do the things that are done to that Moog live! Expert knob twisting Greg! All in all self-indulgent if very interesting album... and now waiting for 1001 Classical Pieces You Must Hear Before You Die! Buy it at Amazon UK or US.

Track Listing

1. The Curse Of Baba Yaga
2. Old Castle
3. Blues Variation
4. The Sage

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:


There was also a video made of a different live performance. This had a limited theatrical release in 1973, and a remastered DVD release with Dolby surround sound in 2000. This performance is notable for the energy passed by the three young musicians. Being a live album, sometimes Keith Emerson's voltage-controlled synthesizer sometimes plays the wrong notes, apparently due to power supply problems.

This album produced much discussion, and has many lovers, who think the band did a great job arranging Mussorgsky's piece in an entirely different way, and adding some songs by themselves. On the other hand, this album is hated by an equal amount of people, with many rock fans finding it boring and self-indulgent, and fans of Mussorgky's work deeming it as a complete desecration of his work.

The Whole Album!:

227. Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story (1971)

















Track Listng

1. Every Picture Tells A Story
2. Seems Like A Long Time
3. That's All Right
4. Tomorrow Is A Long Time
5. Maggie May
6. Mandolin Wind
7. (I Know) I'm Losing You
8. (Find A) Reason To Believe

Review

Another good Rod Stewart album. Scrap that, another positively GREAT Rod Stewart album. What the hell is wrong with me? There are some similarities with Gasoline Alley here, the use of acoustic instrumentation and rocking hard with it. But this comes off as an even better album, more delicate and beautiful.

The use of acoustic instrumentation works brilliantly here and particularly the use of mandolins in Maggie May and Mandolin Wind are particularly inspired. Hell, Rod even makes an amazing cover of a Dylan song here. In fact the album is pretty much inspired, there are elements of blues and folk tinged with good rock.

It is actually very sad to see how far Rod has fallen from these early days. He is an amazing singer and the instrumentation in his songs is just amazing. He makes sparse use of electric material, but when he does it works really well. He manages to make mostly acoustic songs vibrate with more joie de vivre than many electric rock bands. Rod is never far from his roots and that shows in this album, although he is British he was clearly brought up listening to the Blues and has filtered that Blues tradition into something different and original as well as updated to his own time. Really nifty album, you'll never think of Rod the same way. Get it at Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Maggie May
2. Mandolin Wind
3. Every Picture Tells A Story
4. (Find A) Reason To Believe

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Every Picture Tells A Story is the third album by Rod Stewart, released in the middle of 1971. The album is a mixture of rock, blues, soul and folk, and includes his breakthrough hit, "Maggie May", co-written by classical guitarist Martin Quittenton, as well as "(Find A) Reason To Believe", the song from Tim Hardin debut album of 1966. "Reason" had initially been the A-side of the single and "Maggie May", the B-side, until general reaction resulted in their reversal.

The album also included version of Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right (Mama)" (the first single for Elvis Presley) and a cover of the Bob Dylan song, "Tomorrow Is A Long Time", an outtake to Dylan's 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (Dylan would later officially release the song on his 1971 release, Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II).

Again in addition to Ron Wood and Ian McLagan, members of The Faces (with whom Stewart at that time was lead vocalist), musicians included Ray Jackson on mandolin (though Stewart forgot his name and merely mentioned "the mandolin player in Lindisfarne" on the sleeve). Maggie Bell made backing vocals (mentioned on the sleeve as "vocal abrasives") on the title track, as well as Madeline Bell on next one, "Seems Like A Long Time".

It reached the No. 1 position in both the UK (for six weeks) and the USA (four weeks) at the same time that "Maggie May" was topping the singles charts in both territories, making Stewart the first artist to achieve such a feat. It has often been voted among the best British albums of all time.

In 1992, the album was awarded the number one spot in Jimmy Guterman's book The Best Rock 'N' Roll Records of All Time: A Fan's Guide to the Stuff You Love.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 172 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Every Picture Tells A Story was ranked 99th in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time.

Maggie May (The Faces are there and is that John Peel pretending to play the Mandolin? Yes, yes it is!):

226. Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire De Melody Nelson (1971)
















Track Listing

1. Melody
2. Ballade De Melody Nelson
3. Valse De Melody
4. Ah Melody
5. L'Hotel Particulier
6. En Melody
7. Cargo Culte

Review

This is a truly amazing album. Serge is years ahead of his time here, this is an album which almost sounds more like something by Air for example, than something made in 1971. This is a really short album, clocking under half an hour, and this makes it an even more precious little gem.

What we have here is nothing less than the most perfect concept album ever done. The tracks are beautiful poetry as well as amazingly played. There is a distinctively funky beat to the tracks, and Serge speaks over the music dripping with pervyness and tenderness as well. Serge was smart enough to make this an album which is suite like, the tracks are joined not only by the lyrics but by the musical themes themselves.

This is a reworking of the Lolita story, a man runs over a girl with his Rolls and falls in love with her. It has a tragic ending of course, and in independent poems he tells the story of the forbidden and torrid love. I starts with a song about the Rolls with a beautiful bit about the Rolls mascot, the Spirit of Ecstasy and end with an equally amazing track about the Cargo Cults of Papua New Guinea. Seems weird? It is, and still it makes sense, Melody dies in a cargo plane and Serge becomes one with the people of the secluded Islands of New Guinea, waiting for the godlike cargo planes to drop his everything back to earth.

Yes, it is a pretty sick album, an ode to pedophilia but with such brilliance and beauty that it makes a perfect little album. Buy it, really, from Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Cargo Culte
2. Melody
3. L'Hotel Particulier
4. Valse De Melody

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

* "Melody" is the default author name and "Nelson" is the default password in Six Apart's Movable Type weblog software (which had the working title of "Serge", after Gainsbourg).

* British rock band Placebo recorded a cover version of Gainsbourg's "The Ballad Of Melody Nelson", which was released on a compilation of cover versions with their Sleeping With Ghosts album.

* In 21st october 2006, Vannier conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra, Crouch End Festival Chorus, a children’s string quintet plus the inimitable musicians Dougie Wright, Big Jim Sullivan, Herbie Flowers and Vic Flick from the original recordings in the Barbican Centre Theatre, London. Brigitte Fontaine, Laetitita Sedier from Stereolab, Jarvis Cocker, Badly Drawn Boy, The Bad Seeds’ Mick Harvey and The Super Furries’ Gruff Rhys take it in turns to sing for the performance of L’Histoire De Melody Nelson’.


Cargo Culte:




Trippy!