1001 Albums: 0521 - 0530 - Plateau

Time for another blog that only I am interested in! Phew! Been a bit of a long week and I'm still dragging my way out of it. Not the best frame of mind for a blog, but what the hell, these stupid things don't write themselves. So this one might be extra unpleasant and not funny, as opposed to the regular not funny and unpleasant you will find here.


 
0521 The Blue Nile – A Walk Across the Rooftops - A rather unimpressive pop outing. No idea why it’s on here. I don’t remember ever hearing about the band or this album and I’m going to forget about them now.



0522 Hanoi Rocks – Back to Mystery City - Somewhere in the world lives the members of Hanoi Rocks, and they are super pissed off. This is a pretty decent part rock/metal type album that will be the bases of Poison. Poison owes this band a lot, they totally cribbed their girly looks and music style and became super popular with it. Which I never understood since I’ve always hated Poison. I didn’t love this record either, but I didn’t mind it. Which is more then I can say for Poison, Brett Michaels, C.C. Devile and everything and everyone associated with the band.





0523 Cyndi Lauper – She’s So Unusual - I imagine that people kind of snicker about this one and Cyndi since when you think “The 80’s” this is exactly what pops into your head. Lauper hit huge with this album, the track “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” was insanely popular with the video for it, “Time After Time” and “She Bop” playing practically non-stop. Hell, those videos are considered classics now, and hold up just fine. It was so popular she was able to form "The Rock n' Wrestling Connection" which finally united rock music and wrestling into one entity of awesome and kick off Wrestlemania.Aside from all that, the album too, is really dead solid and worthy of such legend. There’s not a bad track on it. The opener “Money Changes Everything” is as good as any of the big hits, and "All Through The Night" is lovely too. Heck, she even does a cute Betty Boop tribute. Really good stuff. So I'm going to hang rubber bands off my face in tribute and memory to all things Rock n' Wrestling.



0524 Paul Simon – Hearts & Bones - The first track was called “Allergies” and it put me off the album. Which isn’t fair since it’s not that bad. It hints at something better, namely his next one “Graceland” that I’m sure will be on this list. So yeah, that’s all I got on this one. It wasn’t remarkable, though the last song “The Late Great Johnny Ace” is partially about John Lennon, so Beatle fans might want to track it down.




 

0525 Echo & the Bunnymen – Porcupine - More of the same from Echo and his Bunnymen.  Not a bad album, just a rather long one. 



 
0526 ZZ Top – Eliminator - This was the second album I bought out of my own money. After this, my purchases get hazey, so don’t worry, I wont be stating "This was the __ album I purchased with my own money" on any more reviews. ZZ Top took complete advantage of music videos to re-invent themselves from a gutsy Texas blues trio to a polished synth based pop-rock outfit. It manages to totally work. Their cheeky sense of humour works in the songs. “Legs” and “Sharp Dressed Man” remain video classics, and the songs hold up too. My fave track though is “T.V. Dinner.” It didn’t get a wacky video though.



 
0527 Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) - We’re really hitting the MTV/Much Music era on this list! Yup, the Eurythmics hit it huge with the Fetish-y (for the time) video title track. The rest of the album though was not that great. It doesn’t sound cohesive, and Sweet Dreams stands out so much that the rest feels like filler.



 
0528 U2 – War - The massively popular band makes their list debut with this one. It’s easy to snicker at U2 these days, that’s the price you pay for getting super rich and super famous and having "The Irish Blowhard" Bono as your leader. People ready to write them off as shit based on their last decade or so of work should really check this out. It has the hit that made them superstars (totally guessing) “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and the not as popular “New Years Day” on it, which are both great songs. The rest of the album holds up. Yup, they're young, earnest and there’s a bit a naivete at play here, but they also fully believe in what they are doing. That music can really change the world. So hats off to Bono, The Edge and the other two guys with boring normal names, well done on this!



  
0529 The Police – Synchronicity - I believe this is the last album by The Police. Which means that if Sting ever appears on this list again, it will be as a shitty solo artist. Thankfully this album is as good as the other Police albums. It has mega hit “Every Breath You Take” on it, but my fave is “Mother”. That song is crazy! As a side note, Sting does a better version of “Murder By Numbers” on Frank Zappa's “Broadway The Hard Way” album. Actually, “Broadway The Hard Way” is way better then this, so go listen to it instead.



 
0530 Meat Puppets – II - A band I remember hearing about but never really listened to. Then Nirvana covered “Lake Of Fire” and everyone continued to not listen to them. Anyways, this album was great. Super great. As in I listened to it 3 times. Not a bad song on it, and it plays great as a cohesive whole. Loved it. GREAT!


So there it is. I know. This blog needs to improve. I'm open to any suggestions. Maybe I need happy pills.I'm feeling a little desperate since this blog got stolen by some bot on another site and generated zero views. That's a good sign you're doing something worthwhile huh? Write a blog no one reads? I'm too far in to quit though. Fuck! FUCK FUCK FUCK! Why isn't anything satisfactory anymore?

1001 Albums: 0511 - 520 - I AM NOT A NUMBER!

Hey it's time for another chunk of music reviews based around the 1001 Albums! Yup. Here it is dicks and deedees!



0511 Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska - This would be my favourite Bruce Springsteen album if I liked Bruce enough to have a favourite album of his. It’s a solo album of demos meant to be re-recorded, and because it’s so no bullshit there’s an honesty to these tracks that is lacking to me in most of his work. This one sounds timeless, and would fit just fine with a Woody Guthrie album. Which is fine my me.




0512 The Associates – Sulk - Not a bad pop type album in The Cure vein. Other then not being as good as The Cure and not leaving much of an impression.




0513 Iron Maiden – The Number of the Beast - A personal favourite of mine, but I didn’t hear it until around 1986 since my mum wouldn’t let me listen to it. Ah for the days when music was dangerous! Anyways, this is superb. Bruce Dickinson makes his debut with the band on this one, and the songs transcend metal to the point of being operatic. It’s amazing in every way. The band is completely assured with the material and it makes even the cornier bits work. Not a bad song to found, and add in a sound clip from “The Prisoner” and you just can’t go wrong with this.




0514 Duran Duran – Rio - Duran Duran is one of those bands that thrived in the 80’s and then kind of vanished. In Canada anyways. A friend pointed Simon Le Bon out to me in Heathrow and I didn’t recognize him narf narf. Anyways, this is about as good of a 80’s pop album as you will get. A bunch of non-challenging but pleasing songs. That said, Duran Duran are actually better with music videos. I think that’s why they were so popular, music vids with high production values and lots of pretty girls makes this music much more interesting.




0515 Violent Femmes – Violent Femmes (1st Album) - This album features the song “Blister In The Sun” a song so good that it's impossible to hate. It also features that song that Ethan Hawk sings at Winona Rider in a cunty way in “Reality Bites”. So that’s two pretty great songs, and the rest is great too. They manage to capture angst in a way that’s honest and not annoying. I remember the band from Junior High and not thinking them great, but really enjoyed this now. It’s a gooder.




0516 Malcolm McLaren – Duck Rock - I was ready to flat out hate this. McLaren was the mastermind behind the my beloved Sex Pistols, and apparently totally fucked the band over. Anyways, this is pretty much the perfect club album. Buffalo Girls was the charting single on this, and it’s a great song. The whole album was pretty great. The asshole knew how to make a buck by giving the people what they wanted and this one is no different. Great 80’s dance music that while sounding of the time, still packs a funball shot in the arm. I hate to say it, but I like this and Malcolms music contributions to the world so far. I still think he's a prick though.



0517 Def Leppard – Pyromania - I was never much of a Def Leppard fan. The mega hit album “Hysteria” was just way too over produced for my rock sensibilities. This is the album proceeding that one, and it’s pretty solid. Yeah, the production is there, but the songs are solid enough to make it work.




0518 REM – Murmur - The Georgia boys (no one has ever called them that, they’re probably not from Georgia) make their debut! This was really good. "Radio Free Europe" is a great song. It struck me listening to this, that this genre of music is dead. This used to be called “Alternative”  or “College Rock”. Now REM are legendary artists, and this is simply rock music. It used to be so much easier being a music fan with clear, simple generalized genres. Now with Indie Pop, Classical Pop, Indie Folk, Prog Metal...  I don’t know what the hell anyone is talking about. Fuck I’m old.



0519 The The – Soul Mining - I seem to think there was something important about this band, but I’ve forgotten it. Let me check Wiki... nope, nothing important here. Wiki tells me this is their “synth-noir” debut. What the fuck does that mean? This was noisy, and kind of forgettable. Moving on...




0520 Tom Waits – Swordfishtrombones - MORE TOM WAITS HOORAY! I’m not being sarcastic either. This was really good. I hadn’t heard it before. A bunch of great songs and “Franks Wild Years” is the only song you ever have to listen too in your entire life. This was so good that I’ve been on a Waits binge listening to him non-stop all week. Bless his gravelly voiced heart!

Some good stuff here. I listened to that Tom Waits one 3 times I did yes I did! So it wins! I guess I'm picking winning albums again? Who knows, this project is a fucking mess...

1001 Albums: 0501 - 510 - A Milestone Is Reached

You did read that right, another milestone has been reached on this project! And for me, it's more important then being over half done the list. It's at this point that we reach the era of modern music where I became "aware" of music around me. This pack features the first album that I spent my own allowance money on. It's late 1982, music videos are all the rage though us poor souls in Canada wont get MTV for years, and Much Music is a couple years away. We still got to see videos though, a half hour a day on Video Hits and Rock Around The Clock. I loved them. I STILL love them! Nothing beats a great video, even though they seem harder to view now then they did since the music channels don't air them.

I'm getting off topic. Music videos had an effect on me, and I started to enjoy music and seeking it out. So from this point on, I'm going to be seeing this list through even darker rose coloured glasses. I'm also interested to see if the music I loved still holds up- if it makes the list at all, and if the stuff I poo pooed I still loath or now like. It's going to be super interesting! For me.

You all will just have to deal with the shit recaps.



0501 Dexys Midnight Runners – Too Rye Ay - The previously mentioned Dexys make their appearance, and it includes mega-hit “Come On Eileen”. So there you go, your life is set with this record if you like that song. The rest of the album is kind of annoying and not that great.




0502 Simple Minds – New Gold Dream (81, 82, 83, 84) - Simple Minds were huge in the eighties and I was never a fan. This one doesn’t include their big hit “Don’t You Forget About Me". So you can skip it I think. It was not impressionable.



0503 Madness – The Rise & Fall - Everyone loves Madness. Specifically, everyone loves the song “Our House” by Madness. It’s on here so we’re all lucky! The whole album is pretty decent, but that song is certainly the high light.




0504 Donald Fagen – The Nightfly - This is the first solo album by one of the guys in Steely Dan, as well as being an early record fully recorded digitally. Neat eh? I fucking hated it. It’s so over produced and slick, not to mention meandering and slow, it drove me crazy listening to it. It completely lacks any sense of life or soul. Fuck this guy and his shitty album, I haven’t liked a single thing he’s done.




0505 Haircut One Hundred – Pelican West - This is an 80’s sounding album from the 80’s by an 80’s band with a cute 80’s band name. Ummm....




0506 Kate Bush – The Dreaming - My MP3s of this one is miss-tagged as “Kates Bush”. Bwaaa ha ha! It cracks me up! Anyways, this was pretty good. I don't know what to call it as far as genre, art pop? It’s the type of music that I’m surprised I like since Kate has amazing vocal range and seems to want to hit every note possible in every single song, sometimes in the same line. It shouldn’t work, but it does, so let’s not questions it further and just say it’s good.




0507 Orange Juice – Rip it Up - Nothing really rips on this despite being kind of punky. It’s another forgotten album that the authors of this thing seem to think should be mentioned since they are clever.




0508 Michael Jackson – Thriller - This is arguably the most popular, best selling album of all time. I know I bought it. This was the first album I spent my money on. Bought it at Woolcos for $8 on vinyl. Anyways, it is surprisingly good to a point. That point is that the songs “Thriller”, Beat It” and “Billie Jean” all show up back to back, and it’s pretty great. You get a Vincent Price poem, a Eddie Van Halen solo and a creepy song about a baby daddy. The rest of the album is weak compared to it. Particularly the painfully bad duet with Paul McCartney “The Girl Is Mine”. It’s a horrible gutless ballad with a hilariously bad spoken word part that features the 1000 year old Paul politely arguing with boy-fucker Michael about who gets a girl. Oh, 80’s, you were so innocent!




0509 The Birthday Party – Junkyard - This is a noisy rock album that really stuck with me. Reminded me of the Butthole Surfers and old Flaming Lips. Noisy, messy, but holds your ear-holes.




0510 Venom – Black Metal - This is hilarious in it’s desire to be scary and satanic. It also totally rocks. Death Metal, Speed Metal, thrash... you all start here. It’s surprisingly good with solid playing to keep you interested despite the funny lyrics.

Well it's pretty apparent that I'm not falling madly in love with all the music on the list from now on. Man, that Steely Dan guy, he should be hanged for crimes against humanity. What an asshole!

Agree or disagree? That's what the comments are for! Please share with your music loving friends! I need the love!