1001 Albums: 0441 - 0453: It's The End Of The Seventies!

As the title says, it's another decade put to rest! How exciting! As a result you get three extra reviews this post! Aren't you lucky? Ruzzells Rambles, the blog that keeps on giving! Yup, purely an altruistic motion on my part, and nothing to do with falling horribly behind. Anyways, this is a bit of a long one, so let's get to the list!


0441 Marianne Faithfull – Broken English - More famous for being Mick Jagger's ex-girlfriend then anything else, Mariaane croaks out an album! Literally croaks out. She sounds like she smokes 5 packs of glass shaving cigarettes a day. I didn’t care for this. It’s silly. It has a terrible cover version of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” and the final profanity filled “Why’d You Do It” is hilariously awful. I’m also guessing the final song is the reason this album is on this list. It was probably considered a very bold move to have an established singer sing such lines as “Every time I see your dick I see her cunt in my bed”, but really, it’s so over the top it’s silly. This is a pass!


0442 The Slits – Cut - This band has a super cool name. They were an all girl punk band which is also super cool. Thankfully the music lives up to the presentation. Kind of a harder edge New Wave thing going on, I really enjoyed it. A nice comeback after that warbling Marianne Faithfull album.


0443 Elvis Costello – Armed Forces - Wow, Elvis sure cranked out the albums didn’t he? This one wasn’t as good as the previous ones, and some of the songs actually sounded the same. Perhaps three albums in as many years was just too much. Anyways, it does have a cleaner and more polished sound, you can tell Elvis is growing as an artist. Which is a good thing, but I just don’t find it as interesting as the previous ones.


0444 Neil Young – Rust Never Sleeps - I think this was the first Neil Young album I bought, on cassette. So I’m very biased about my love for this one. The first side (or half a CD, you kids are missing out not having sides of albums to listen too these days...) is mostly acoustic, and amazing. “Pocahontas” is a great song. Side two is electric and recorded live but with over dubs. There’s not a bad song on here, with tracks like “Welfare Mothers” and “Hey Hey My My” still getting performed regularly in concert. Like I said I love it. That said, I love “Live Rust” even more. It’s the concert that the live tracks was taken from, in full, featuring killer acoustic and electric sets full of songs from Young’s entire career. And if you like that, the DVD of the concert is pretty great too, it has Jawa’s!


0445 Gang of Four – Entertainment! - I’ve said it before, but I still always think I’m going to get a reggae album based on the name “Gang Of Four”. And I’m always surprised to find a solid punk offering instead!


0446 Cheap Trick – At Budokan - An album so popular that the band continues to ride on it’s success to this day! I’ve never been all that impressed with it, but this latest spin I found to be kind of fun. It’s a dopey, fun little record to listen to I guess. Nothing wrong with that!


0447 Fleetwood Mac – Tusk - This one lost me. All the tracks are really slow and moody and dull and boring and it goes on and on and on until it ends and you can move on with your life.


0448 Pink Floyd – The Wall - I have a bit of a love/hate thing going with this. I discovered it as a teenager, both the album and the movie, and it was my introduction to Pink Floyd. I was absolutely obsessed with it for an entire summer. I couldn’t tell you how many times I listened to it or watched the film. In hind sight, it was probably not the best way for an anti-social teenager to spend his time. Anyways, as grunge came around, I moved on with fond memories of how awesome it was. The last time I listened to it a few years ago and I thought it kind of silly, and Pink Floyd on the whole pretty silly really, only liking the old sixties stuff that is genuinely silly and brilliant with Syd Barret. Anyways, this latest listen too reaffirmed my love for this. Taken as a whole, and it really only should be taken as a whole despite some great songs on their own right, it’s as brilliant as it’s hyped to be. A surprisingly frank look at loneliness through popularity, it could only have been created by famous rock stars with huge egos. It SHOULD be awful, but that it’s both not awful and assessable enough that not famous rock stars can identify with the loneliness, it’s great. And a recommend.


0449 Public Image Ltd – Metal Box - This one is great because of the package, which was a film can. The music contained is better then the debut, but still not all that great. I prefer the Sex Pistols.


0450 Michael Jackson – Off the Wall - This isn’t a bad disco-ish R&B album. It’s also nothing all that special, I prefer Jackson in the old Jackson 5 Motown stuff. I wonder how he gets his socks so white?


0451 The Damned – Machine Gun Etiquette - Another cool band name, and a cool album title! The music was pretty good. Solid punk stuff with a hint of the hardcore that will come around in the 80’s. Not a life changer, but also not a disappointment.


0452 Gary Numan – Pleasure Principle - Gary Numan is awesome for one thing, and one thing only, and that is the song “Cars”. It’s a great song, and it’s on this album. I was surprised to find the rest of the album was pretty good too. The song “Films” is awesome and the whole thing sounds like what I kind of wish Kraftwerk sounded like after those first couple albums on the list.


0453 The Specials – Specials (1st Album) - Ska enters the list! Welcome Ska! I don’t know much about you outside of Evan Dorkins comics about the New York Ska scene. I did like this though, it was punky but ska and sounded like what No Doubt wished they sounded like. A dead solid album to wrap up the 70’s!

And that's that. I have mixed feelings about this decade. There were some great albums, but none of them were really surprises. Where was the first rock album I ever owned, the brilliant* "Rock n' Roll Love Letter" by The Bay City Rollers (given to me by my dad from a non-returnable over stock in their record department at "Happy Sound")? Pretty big fail there, 1001 Album list! If someone asked me what stood out in the 70's part of this list, I wouldn't have an answer. I discovered new things in the 50's and 60's, mainly that I'm 100 years old and I like old time-y country and western music. I had no such discoveries here. This could be a sign of trouble ahead, I'm certainly more aware of 70's music, so maybe that's why there are no surprises? Entering the 80's means I'm entering the period where I actually became a music consumer. I used to read Rolling Stone and everything, I must of had my finger on the pulse of the music scene! Hopefully I'm an egomaniac and completely ignorant so I will have nice surprises in the future!

Yes, let us be positive and look forward to the 80's with wide eyes and excitement! It's the decade of Rubic's Cube and Nintendo, it has to be great!

*I haven't listened to this since I was about 6 years old, but I trust it holds up enough to be accurately described as "Brilliant".