∞ dropout boogie (2013)

This is so fucking beautiful. All it cares about is sharing its c 1989 shut-in grungemonkey/lumberjack/biker/whatever fantasy and rocking with you (all niiiiight) in a way that seems natural and totally physical in the moment, that is, regardless of trends and any ideas related to seriousness and originality and longevity etc

A-

here

ELIMINATE ME DRIVE OVER MY FACE

Because streamlining your blues rock and bringing out a record more mechanical, futuristic, cold, driving, and grandiose than your blues rock contemporaries and heavy metal rivals should be the stupidest fucking idea in the world (Trans), but it was the best decision the beards and the non-bearded Beard ever made, not just commercially, but to my ear too. Then again, I'm a fan of Trans.

A+

here

Son of a bitch

'cause that's the joke. Not the bullshit hangover cure which has you wincing and crying. I always thought it was the hangover cure 'cause Dan McCafferty sounds like he doesn't care whether his voice lasts 'til the next song or not and that's raw/rugged/cool. Hard rock reviews are hilarious/bad so I don't wanna copy+paste one. Nazareth gave us McCafferty and the best versions of Love Hurts and This Flight Tonight. Hair of the Dog is meant to be their best album. The version here has Love Hurts on it, and McCafferty too. Soon there'll be Loud 'n' Proud, which has This Flight Tonight on it, and McCafferty too. I actually think they're equally good

A

here

You Better Run: The Essential Junior Kimbrough (2002)

try / buy / spotify

Masters Apprentices - A Toast To Panama Red (1972)

My two favourite decades in music: the 70s and the 80s. The 80s had the best music, the 70s had record covers like A Toast To Panama Red: the reason for second-hand record stores

As a New Zealander and lover of most things Australian, I feel that it is my duty to give records like A Toast To Panama Red the benefit of the doubt rather than resorting to bratty write-offs common over the internet where music is concerned- overrated Australian trash or nobody would even care if this wasn't Australian (???) or comebacks like pump your breaks, kid, A Toast To Panama Red's a national treasure

I did it. I listened. Twice! I learned nothing. I posted it. For the cover. I'll keep any eye out for it at second-hand record stores. Maybe then it will make sense.

try
spotify

Lowell George - Thanks, I’ll Eat It Here (1979)

Thanks, I’ll Eat It Here is Lowell George’s response to both Little Feat’s progressively complex fusion direction, and critics’ expectations of the solo record as the artist’s visionary statement. Stripping back his band’s pretensions, he gives the listener a set of originals and covers daringly organic and humble. He lets Toussaint have his What Do You Want the Girl to Do?, and refuses to compete with Ann Peebles on Can’t Stand the Rain. Warmly personal rather than visionary, his record pays tribute to the influences he lovingly aped on Dixie Chicken, and plays like a best-of as it so succinctly showcases his charm and simple genius

A

spotify

Little Feat - Dixie Chicken (1973)

It bums me out that I like this Little Feat record the most 'cause Sailin' Shoes, The Last Record Album, and Waiting For Columbus have even cooler album artwork

I like Little Feat a lot 'cause I like Lowell George's voice and also his taste in music. After playing country/blues really well for a while, Little Feat started bringing in more New Orleans R&B influences and writing better choruses, and that's Dixie Chicken.

A

spotify

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Green River (1969)

One of my favourite albums ever! I love the cover so much that I'm gonna put the back below!

It's so awesome! The weird rural washed-out-ness of those pictures makes Fogerty's reminiscences on the opening track Green River seem all the more personal to him, and also make the listener nostalgic whether or not they know where the catfish bite. The rose-tinted Romantcism- not only rural, but childhood memories leads into Commotion, where the timeless sentimental vacuum full of small but exciting details is replaced by the modern obsession with time, treadmills, and political gibberish. It'd be cheesy but the band earn the right to be Romantic every now and then by being so convincingly chaotic when they need to be. Things only get darker as the album progresses! The nasty side to nostalgia is that it can only exist when the person feeling it believes that the present and future are in decline, and that's what happens in Green River. As soon as the regrets of Commotion are out of the way, Fogerty's paranoid in Tomb Stone Shadow where he's reminded of death whenever he's happy, and practically welcomes the apocalypse in Bad Moon Rising. Part of what sells all this to me is his voice which once annoyed me but started to click as I played Green River for the first time. Wrote A Song For Everyone is moving in a way that his superstitions can't be, the down-and-out Lodi becomes all the more sympathetic, and the closing cover The Night Time Is the Right Time convinces me that he's one of rock's greatest vocalists. 9 tracks, under half an hour, all good, 3 of the best rock songs of all time, and a dark, regretful atmosphere hanging over even the more excited ones

A+

spotify

Bob Seger - Ramblin' Gamblin' Man (1968)

Was at some point known as Tales of Lucy Blue

But then it was not

Bob fuckin Seger. Not the most popular dude I've ever posted music by, and maybe for good reason. But here's Ramblin' Gamblin' Man any way

Some of Seger's most hateful haters like Ramblin' Gamblin' Man because it's so different to what you expect from him. They find it's either good, admirable, or interesting. Or maybe all of those, I dunno. Seger fans on the other hand (I half count myself as one), might find issue with it because it's NOT unpretentious HARD WORKING blue collar heroism, and is in fact PSYCHEDELIC. I have my reasons for not giving a shit about psych-seger, but here's some RAMBLIN' ones to flesh this page out: Seger's hard-working blue collar freedom loving lyricism, aesthetic, and fanbase, are largely at odds with the idea of the psychedelic if one takes Morrison's and then Kael's (>implying I've ever read Kael) ideas seriously- that the naivete of the psych-fan is a sugar-coated pill of lies and optimism available solely to those of privilege, the denial of things evil, which is dangerous as for all that optimism, hedonism, and intellectualism, when those of high-profile get involved, it's all the more irresponsible, blinding, and is in fact wholly immoral. Make sense? No? Good. Ramblin' Gamblin' Man has a few really good tracks on it- 2 + 2 = ? might be a protest song, but it's a good pissed off garage rock one that'd indicate the tipping of the pendulum toward Seger's world-weary working-class narratives, or at least the end of all the dumb joy to the world bullshit that Ramblin' Gamblin' Man accidentally half-embodies. Is it his fault? Nah, it half seems like he's tried to cover up his psych material (okay, I made that up), and the fact that this was released in 1968 just reminds me how hard he had to work to break into any real fame. Also, I haven't read any of the lyrics 'cause frankly I'm not moved by how this record sounds. For all I know, he acknowledges time, place, gender, ethnicity, and income, making even his psych record far from blind, but I'm just so indifferent to Ramblin' Gamblin' Man that I guess I'll never know. I mean, that hardly ever happens! I find music crazy polarizing! Ramblin'? Good! Check it out if you're a Seger-hater! Or maybe get it for 2 + 2 = ? 'cause that song rules

C

Nazareth - Classics Volume 16 (1987)

1. This Flight Tonight

2. Expect No Mercy

3. Love Hurts

4. Morning Dew

5. Carry Out Feelings

6. Hair of the Dog

7. Razamanaz

8. Love Leads to Madness

9. I Want to (Do Everything)

10. Holiday

11. Star

12. Dressed to Kill

13. Broken Down Angel

14. My White Bicycle

15. Heart's Grown Cold

16. Shanghai'd in Shanghai

17. Go Down Fighting

I could write about how for some reason critics hated Nazareth more than other hard rock bands in the 70s, or how Hair of the Dog is definitely worth checking out if you want a whole album and not just a best of (but starting here is a good idea), but I'm only really in it for This Flight Tonight


Nazareth famously covered songs by a wide range of artists (their best songs are Love Hurts and This Flight Tonight- that's The Everly Brothers and Joni Mitchell) and they were a pretty good band 'cause they rocked hard and lead singer Dan McCafferty had a raw ass voice which is real moving on Love Hurts in particular- way more moving than you'd expect from a Scottish hard rocker- but, again, it's This Flight Tonight which really gets me. Joni did what a folky does and wrote a sentimental song which because of the nature of the folky being um an artist or singer-songwriter, had listeners wondering WHO IS THIS ABOUT, JONI? WHAT BOOKS WERE YOU READING? WERE YOU ON DRUGS AND WHAT ONES? so it had to be auto-biographical- a song treated like a diary entry where the author's intention is the end of interpretation and universality and so on. It's a good song but that's what happens to folk. SO THEN NAZARETH COVER IT ON A SHITTY ALBUM. Shitty album? Yeah, that's why I got this compilation for you! NAZARETH COVER JONI? Yes!!!! Perhaps it's the fact that we know it's a cover, or perhaps it's just the heavy way Nazareth perform it, but the love song previously only related to our understanding of Joni begins to reach further- the regret she felt, the broken heart, the frustration of powers beyond her control restricting her and not letting her grab true love and never let it go------ all of it becomes the listener's  in the Nazareth version. Starting heavy (muted distortion) and dealing with the lyrical low-point (as it's meant to (forces beyond one's control stopping us achieving LOVE LOVE)), the song builds and builds with melodies and other sweet things (uh drums AND SWEET RIFFS) entering- not only do the feelings become OURS, but Nazareth have turned the melancholy into something heavy, so as the song ascends (and it does), the melancholy is buried and McCafferty makes sure that despite the regrets, he will not be defeated (AND NEITHER WILL WE). It's the same bittersweet mixture of triumph and defeat AND SO TRIUMPH AND NOT DEFEAT (bitch!) that makes The Pogues' Fairytale of New York so heartbreakingly exciting and moving every time you hear that

Oh yeah, and there's 16 other tracks too

This Flight Tonight A+++
Classics Volume B

Tom Waits - Bone Machine (1992)

1. Earth Died Screaming 3:41

2. Dirt in the Ground 4:10

3. Such a Scream 2:10

4. All Stripped Down 3:05

5. Who Are You 3:59

6. The Ocean Doesn't Want Me 1:53

7. Jesus Gonna Be Here 3:23

8. A Little Rain 3:00

9. In the Colosseum 4:52

10. Goin' Out West 3:22

11. Murder in the Red Barn 4:31

12. Black Wings 4:39

13. Whistle Down the Wind 4:37

14. I Don't Wanna Grow Up 2:33

15. Let Me Get Up On It 0:57

16. That Feel 3:12

Really heavy album by Tom Waits where the blues influence is most clear because he dwells on the atmosphere and darkness which he thinks inhabits the blues, but it is also distorted and evil despite being stripped down, so I guess that is just the lyrics and ambience which do that

Perhaps Tom Waits' most cohesive album, Bone Machine is a morbid, sinister nightmare, one that applied the quirks of his experimental '80s classics to stunningly evocative -- and often harrowing -- effect. In keeping with the title's grotesque image of the human body, Bone Machine is obsessed with decay and mortality, the ease with which earthly existence can be destroyed. The arrangements are accordingly stripped of all excess flesh; the very few, often non-traditional instruments float in distinct separation over the clanking junkyard percussion that dominates the record. It's a chilling, primal sound made all the more otherworldly (or, perhaps, underworldly) by Waits' raspy falsetto and often-distorted roars and growls. Matching that evocative power is Waits' songwriting, which is arguably the most consistently focused it's ever been. Rich in strange and extraordinarily vivid imagery, many of Waits' tales and musings are spun against an imposing backdrop of apocalyptic natural fury, underlining the insignificance of his subjects and their universally impending doom. Death is seen as freedom for the spirit, an escape from the dread and suffering of life in this world -- which he paints as hellishly bleak, full of murder, suicide, and corruption. The chugging, oddly bouncy beats of the more uptempo numbers make them even more disturbing -- there's a detached nonchalance beneath the horrific visions. Even the narrator of the catchy, playful "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" seems hopeless in this context, but that song paves the way for the closer "That Feel," an ode to the endurance of the human soul (with ultimate survivor Keith Richards on harmony vocals). The more upbeat ending hardly dispels the cloud of doom hanging over the rest of Bone Machine, but it does give the listener a gentler escape from that terrifying sonic world. All of it adds up to Waits' most affecting and powerful recording, even if it isn't his most accessible.
-AMG

I particularly enjoy the sentiment expressed in Dirt in the Ground because it makes the listener feel like he/she has died a little bit inside on every listen

A+

here