The Great Album Diaries: Week 34

The second entry this month and this enforced time off is really getting put to good use. This week has seen us listen to some absolute classics and one that is just plain crackers. Here’s how it went…

Week 34

January 18th 2021

Bob Marley & The Wailers

Natty Dread

After listening to – and loving – “Catch A Fire” and the almighty “Exodus” in Weeks 20 and 25 respectively, here we have the third album to feature on these pages from Diary favourites Bob Marley & The Wailers and it’s safe to say it’s another belter.

Released in 1974 this is The Wailers’ seventh album and the first one recorded without original members Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, with many fans acknowledging this record as the bridge between the “rebel music” of their early sound and the “International Reggae” that followed, whilst appearing here for the first time are backing singers “The I-Threes” or Bobs “Three Little Birds” as they would come to be known.

The album takes its name from a term used to describe a member of the Rastafari community, taking the word “natty” meaning “natural” and the style of dreadlocks which have formed naturally without the use of combing, brushing or styling.

Despite every song being written by Bob, he actually gave away all writing credits to friends and family, partly as a means of avoiding any contractual restrictions in a dispute with his publishing company Cayman Music, and also to provide some lasting help to his loved ones.

One of the main beneficiaries of this was a childhood friend of Bobs by the name of Vincent Ford who ran a soup kitchen in Kingston.

He was credited as writing one of Bob’s most famous songs in “No Woman, No Cry” which ensured he was able to carry on with his efforts for many years and the studio version of the song appears here.

Of course the version the whole world has grown to love is the far superior live version which was recorded at London’s Lyceum a year later but nevertheless this original recording still retains its charm, with Bob’s refrain sometimes misunderstood outside of Jamaica to mean “If there is no woman then there is no reason to cry”, when he actually means “No woman, don’t cry.”

As we’ve come to expect with Bob’s albums whilst writing these Diaries the songs are a mix of politics, protest, religion, love, sex, music and skanking and there’s no change here with the likes of “Lively Up Yourself”, “So Jah Seh” and title track “Natty Dread” reaffirming Bob’s increasing devotion to his Rastafari religion.

He shows off his seduction skills with “Bend Down Low” and “Am-A-Do” whilst he is in full protest mood with “Talkin Blues” , “Revolution” and “Rebel Music”.

Perhaps the most prophetic song on here and one I was listening to for the very first time is “Them Belly Full(But We Hungry) which is a warning to governments everywhere against allowing a nations poor to go hungry.

Contining the lyric “A hungry mob is an angry mob” it certainly struck a chord with me and everything we have been seeing in the news during these dark times.

The standout track and a new favourite from an album which is yet another masterpiece from Robert Nesta Marley.

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Listen To: Them Belly Full(But We Hungry)

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Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

The Boatman’s Call

Nick Cave and his old band The Birthday Party have the somewhat dubious honour of being the – so far only – recipient of a one-star rating on these pages all the way back in Week 4 with their album “Junkyard” so its safe to say I was hoping for some kind of improvement when this one popped up earlier this week.

Formed in 1983 just a year after The Birthday Party thankfully called it a day, this is the tenth studio album from Aussie Nick and his Melbourne bandmates The Bad Seeds, and was released in 1997.

Hailed as a departure away from their usual Post-Punk sound, this record is entirely piano-based, leaning towards a more intimate, sombre-feel with Cave singing solo over a sparse arrangement of very few instruments.

With a collection of deeply personal songs, Cave’s baritone voice is a perfect accompaniment to the minimalist sound of the band and I have to say I loved every single second of it.

It opens with the beautifully melancholic “Into My Arms”, a love ballad/spiritual prayer which Cave has said was written around the time of the breakup from his first wife, Brazilian journalist Viviane Carneiro and subsequent relationship with singer PJ Harvey.

Nick actually played this song at the funeral of his old friend and INXS frontman Michael Hutchence in 1997 but requested that all cameras be turned off during his performance.

After opening the album with such a song you could be forgiven for thinking he may have peaked too soon but I can assure you each song that follows is as strong as the previous.

Songs like “Where Do We Go But Nowhere?” and “People Ain’t No Good” continue the theme of lost love whilst “West Country Girl”, “Black Hair” and “Green Eyes” are again a tribute to his new found love PJ Harvey.

The latter in particular, with its spoken word vocal, reminded me of Leonard Cohen and it contains a line from “Sonnet 18” from French Renaissance poet Louise Labè, “Kiss me, rekiss me, & kiss me again”.

Reading about the type of album this is there could be an assumption that such songs could sound morose or mushy when in fact they are nothing short of stunning.

Its poignancy and honesty earned it unanimous critical acclaim upon its release and its easy to see why.

I’ve read that this is easily the most accessible of all Nick Cave’s work and if that’s the case I’m delighted this was the second of his I got to listen to during these Diaries because it could not have sounded more different from that dreaded first one.

A surprising new favourite.

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Listen To: Into My Arms

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Echo & The Bunnymen

Ocean Rain

We had the pleasure of listening to The Bunnymen and their debut album “Crocodiles” all the way back in Week 5 and I was made up to see this one show its face this week. An album regarded by many – including myself – to be the bands best work.

Released in May 1984, this is the fourth album from Ian McCulloch & Co. and was recorded mainly in Paris although a lot of Mac’s vocals were completed at Amazon Studios right here in their hometown of Liverpool, and also Crescent Studios in Bath.

That picturesque album cover of the band in a rowing boat was taken inside Carnglaze Caverns in Cornwall and author Chris Adams described it in his 2002 book about the band as “a perfect visual representation of arguably the Bunnymen’s finest album.”

After previous album “Porcupine” wasn’t as well received as had been hoped, the band wanted a more grandiose sound for this record, so with the help of a 35-piece orchestra they set about making this which according to guitarist Will Sergeant was “…something conceptual with lush orchestration, something with a twist. It’s all pretty dark.”

I still get shivers when those strings kick-in on opening song “Silver”, then again in the crescendo to “Thorn Of Crowns”.

Its the second half of this album that still means the world to me though.

The haunting gothic masterpiece “Killing Moon” is often credited with being the bands greatest song and McCulloch being McCulloch has gone one better than that by saying “When I sing “The Killing Moon”, I know there isn’t a band in the world who’s got a song anywhere near that.”

The lyrics to the song apparently came to him one night in a dream and when asked about it in 2015 said, “I love it all the more because I didn’t pore over it for days on end. One morning, I just sat bolt upright in bed with this line in my head: ‘Fate up against your will. Through the thick and thin. He will wait until you give yourself to him.’ You don’t dream things like that and remember them. That’s why I’ve always half credited the lyric to God. It’s never happened before or since.” 

Speaking of lyrics, I don’t know where he got the inspiration from for “Seven Seas” but the obscurity of them all and talk of “kissing tortoise shells” and “painting the whole world blue” coupled with those uplifting chimes makes it one of my favourite Bunnymen songs and it still sounds great whenever they play it live all these years later.

Which leads me nicely onto the albums finale…

For me if ever one song summed up one band then it would have to be the title track and closing song on this record.

The imagery it paints of darkness, ships sailing to sadder shores, heavy storms and blackest thoughts conjures up everything I associate with them.

Add to that a soaring finale and those strings reaching an almighty climax paired with Mac’s impassioned pleas and you will understand why it’s my all-time favourite of theirs.

In fact I was lucky enough to witness them play this album in full at The Echo Arena way back in 2008 when they were accompanied by the RLPO and to see them perform this version of it was an honour in itself.

Which reminds me, next time I see you, remind me to tell you all about how me and our Tony managed to blag our way into the bands aftershow party that night with a little help from Miles Kane and ended up sitting at a table with none other than Mac himself.

And Kev Seed.

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Listen To: Ocean Rain

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The Prodigy

Music For The Jilted Generation

Here we have the second album from The Prodigy to feature on these pages after the magnificent “Fat Of The Land” way back in Week 11 and this time we go back a further three years to its 1994 predecessor “Music For The Jilted Generation”.

Its an album which was deemed by many to be a protest record in response to the corruption of the UK Rave Scene which was thought to be heading towards mainstream status and also as direct repose to the recently announced Criminal Justice & Public Order Act which was put forward to parliament by then Home Secretary, Tory Michael Howard.

A primary factor of this was to criminalise Raves and Free Parties, most notably “Section 63-67” which defined any gathering of 20 or more people where “music” included sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.

Despite numerous protests held in the capital from literally tens of thousands of people, the Bill was passed without any opposition from the then Shadow Home Secretary, namely a young Tony Blair.

Liam Howlett’s poetic response to all this was the sonic protest of a tune, three songs into this record. Just one line was needed to sum it all up:

“Fuck ’em, and Their Law”

The inner artwork to this album also featured a drawing commissioned by the band from artist Les Edwards depicting a young male rebel figure protecting a rave from an impending attack of riot police, accompanied by a quote from the band themselves which read, “How can the government stop young people having a good time? Fight this bollocks.” 

Also here is the single “Voodoo People” which is still a massive favourite of mine and its a song that NME’s Dele Fadele described as “Rave Cultures black magic ritual, with The Prodigy as The Witchdoctor of course.”

We also have the vocal debut from band newcomer Maxim Reality on the single “Poison” which was marked as the bands first foray into Hip-Hop, whilst “One Love” was made as a direct result from criticism the band were receiving from certain DJs claiming they themselves had gone too mainstream and had sold out.

For me though the highlight of this album has to be “No Good(Start The Dance)” – which samples the 1987 song “You’re No Good For Me” by Kelly Charles – and its mainly for sentimental reasons.

Shortly after the songs release, we were on a school camping trip to a place called Villard-De-Lans in France and the campsites welcoming French host decided to throw a little soiree of sorts for his young English guests, namely a gang of 15 year old scallies from Liverpool.

Midway through the evening my good mate Kenno decided he’d had enough of our hosts choice of French folk music and somehow managed to get his Prodigy tape blasting out of the campsite speakers which went down an absolute treat as you can imagine.

Great memories of a great song from yet another great album.

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Listen To: No Good(Start The Dance)

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Laibach

Opus Dei

Hahahaha this one is mental!!!

We’ve been doing these Diaries on and off for the best part of five years now and it has to be said that this is possibly the most batshit crazy album I’ve listened to during that whole period.

You know what though….it was alright to be fair!

Do you know anything about Laibach? Didn’t think so. Well let me tell you a little bit about them before we get onto this album.

Formed in Slovenia (then a part of Yugoslavia) in 1980 they take their name from the German name for Slovenian capital Ljubljana in a slight reference to the Nazi occupation there during World War II.

Originally banned and censored in Socialist Yugoslavia due to their parodies and portrayal of Militarism and Totalitarianism, it was only after Slovenia became independent in 1991 that the band were viewed as a cultural icon, gaining the type of following that they had already received of sorts in the rest of Europe due to international touring.

This is their third album, released in 1987 and its success in the rest of Europe mainly through exposure via MTV enabled the band to embark on its first ever worldwide tour.

It contains not one but two covers of the Opus hit “Life Is Live”, one in German called “Leben heißt Leben” and one in English. It also happens to have a German cover of Queens’ “One Vison” called “Geburt einer Nation” which translates as “Birth of a Nation” and it really is as mad as it sounds.

Musically I’d describe them as thumping, bombastic military marches, and even “The Great Seal” has lyrics taken from Winston Churchill’s “We shall fight them on the beaches” speech and has been called “The National Anthem of NSK State”

“What is the NSK State?” I hear you ask?

Well that is the Neue Slowenische Kunst which translates as “New Slovenian Art” a political art collective formed in 1984 that these lads are at the head of, well the musical wing of it anyway.

I was surprised at how easy this was to listen to, probably because I was trying to read all about them at the same time which always helps.

Don’t get me wrong I probably won’t go near it ever again but do you know what, I’ve heard a lot worse.

My Rating: ☆☆☆

Listen To: Geburt einer Nation

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Thats if for another really enjoyable week and its great to be back listening to some fantastic music. I hope you are enjoying them as much as I am. Don’t forget to click on anything highlighted in blue to watch or listen to any of the links posted.

The Great Album Diaries (Week 33 AKA Lockdown II: Back In The Habit)

Week 33

11th January 2021

Has it really been almost a year since the last entry? Another lockdown means another chance to get stuck into the Playlist and some great music. Here’s how the first – and hopefully not last – entry of 2021 panned out….

Johnny Cash

At San Quentin

(Legacy Edition)

“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash…”

Ironic isn’t it that here we are in the middle of another incarceration and the first album that pops up is this – the second of the great man’s live albums recorded in a prison.

Hot on the heels of his enormously successful 1968 album “Live At Folsom Prison”, this was recorded on February 24th 1969 at San Quentin State Prison, Marin County California and was even filmed for UK audiences by Granada Television.

As opposed to the eleven songs on the albums original tracklist, this Legacy Edition from 2006 contains thirty one songs including different versions of some, outtakes of others, and even a few performances from June Carter and Carl Perkins.

This then is widely considered to be the definitive version of which to listen to and it comes in at just under two and a half hours.

Sadly this is the first album Johnny recorded without his good friend and long-time lead guitarist Luther Perkins, who was tragically killed several months earlier as a result of a house fire started by a lit cigarette as he slept in his armchair and Johnny pays tribute to his much-loved bandmate during this performance.

There’s a handful of Johnny’s most well-known songs on offer here including his 1956 ode to newly-married life “I Walk The Line” which he wrote as a vow to his first wife Vivian shortly after they tied the knot.

Cash famously hums throughout the song in between verses in order to reach the desired key-change and it was during this very performance that we see the now iconic image of him giving the middle-finger in an angry looking gesture towards the British film crew after they repeatedly ignore his request to stop blocking the prisoners view.

Although it has since been claimed by photographer Jim Marshall that he in fact asked Johnny to express what he thought of the prison authorities during the show, which led to the famous image.

The song has since gone on to be one of the most recognisable in music history and in 2014 was named by Rolling Stone Magazine as “The Greatest Country Song Of All Time”.

Alongside the albums title track “San Quentin” which Cash wrote especially for this performance, there is also another song being performed live by him for the first time in his career and its a cover of Shel Silverstein’s “A Boy Named Sue” which was only included in the set list at the very last minute.

Such is the spontaneity of the songs performance, Johnny performed it with a lyric sheet placed in front of him and his band improvised with a sparse, rough accompaniment.

Johnny was surprised at how well the song was received during the show and decided that was to be the lead single on the album and not the intended one – “San Quentin”.

It ended up being one of his biggest hits and won him “Best Country Male Vocal” at that years Grammy Awards.

For me, the main endearing quality about this whole record is not the songs themselves but the whole immersive feeling of it being a gig recorded in a prison in front of 1000 raucous inmates and just like it’s predecessor “Live At Folsom Prison” you get a sense from his on-stage banter in between songs that he really feels at home amongst them and that feeling is certainly reciprocated right back at him.

Johnny has never sounded as raw or as good as he does on this record.

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Listen To: A Boy Named Sue

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MGMT

Oracular Spectacular

Summer 2008. The last year of my twenties. Working in a bed shop in Birkenhead. Countless Lost Weekends spent in Bumper, Lago and The Magnet. Fernando Torres making us all question our sexuality. Then lo and behold, my wife Emma and I finding out she was pregnant with our James!

Personally, this album was the soundtrack to that whole period and I can honestly say it brings me nothing but good memories whenever I hear any of the songs featured on it.

Originally calling themselves “The Management”, MGMT were formed in 2002 by two college mates, Ben Goldwasser and Andrew Van Wyngarden during their Freshman year at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, and Oracular Spectacular is their debut release.

After experimenting with Rock and then Electronica they finally found their own sound which Paco Alvarez of Spin Magazine called “shape-shifting psychedelic pop”.

Incidentally, take a look at this early performance from them at Uni doing a cover of the Talking Heads classic “This Must Be The Place”. As equally raw as it is endearing.

The album opens with their self-proclaimed mission statement of a single in “Time To Pretend” and if you want my opinion then you would be hard pressed to find a better 1st song on a debut album that decade.

Mocking the cocaine/prostitutes/choking-on-vomit cliche lifestyle of becoming a Rock Star, the song was widely praised by critics everywhere and whilst it only hit No.35 in the UK Charts, it was still named “2nd Best Song Of The 2000’s” by NME. (Beyonce “Crazy In Love” was No.1 in case you were wondering. It is a belter to be fair.)

Personally I will forever associate it as the soundtrack to that years Creamfields video and one of the greatest weekends of my life. Take a look HERE and feel the pain of nostalgia kick in whilst looking at those crowds of shiny, happy people.

Another favourite is the catchy “Electric Feel” which was allegedly the first song the duo wrote that contained lyrics and according to Andrew is “…about a woman who comes from the Amazonian rainforest that has the power to shock people with the electricity that is running through her vains. She could be an alien or part-eel or something.”

Finally we have another gem in the albums third and final single “Kids” with its now instantly recognisable intro and insanely horrific accompanying VIDEO.

It was named “Best Single of 2008” by NME and was then sampled magnificently by one third of the Swedish House Mafia, Sebastian Ingrosso for his 2009 single Kidsos.

There’s those pangs of nostalgia again.

The one minor issue I have with this album is I feel the second half of it tails off slightly compared to the more enjoyable first half, although it is still a lot of fun to listen to even after all these years.

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Listen To: Time To Pretend

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David Bowie

“Heroes”

Following on from “Scary Monsters” in Week 7 and “Aladdin Sane” in Week 20, here we have the third Bowie album to appear in these Diaries and we had the pleasure of listening to it just a couple of days after the fifth anniversary of his death on 10th January 2016.

Released in October 1977, this is Bowie’s 12th studio album and the second in what would become known as his “Berlin Trilogy”, having released “Low” in January of that same year, although this is the only one of the three that was recorded entirely in Germany.

As with “Low” it was once again a collaboration with Brian Eno and produced by Tony Visconti whilst they were joined this time by King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp who joined the fold after an invitation by Eno.

The front cover is a shot taken by Japanese photographer Masayoshi Sukita and was inspired by the painting “Roquairol” by German artist Erich Heckel (see also the front cover of Iggy Pop’s “The Idiot” for the same reason).

The famous Hansa Studios where it was recorded was a former concert hall that was used as a ballroom by Gestapo officers during World War II and was situated about 500 yards from the Berlin Wall.

When asked how this situation affected the recording process, producer Visconti said, “Every afternoon I’d sit down at a desk and see three Russian Red Guards looking at us with binoculars, with their Sten guns over their shoulders, and the barbed wire, and I knew that there were mines buried in that wall, and that atmosphere was so provocative and so stimulating and so frightening that the band played with so much energy”

Album opener “Beauty And The Beast” has been suggested by some to be about Bowie’s mood swings whilst in the throes of his cocaine addiction and living in L.A between 75-76, and Robert Fripps guitar work on the song was apparently done in one single take on his immediate arrival into the studio. How’s that for making a first impression!

“Joe The Lion” is a stomping Krautrock-influenced song inspired by performance artist Chris Burden and its here where Fripp’s talent really comes to the fore.

If that wasn’t enough then what follows next has surely cemented Fripps place in Rock and Roll history.

By simply sitting at different positions in the room to alter the pitch of his feedback, he allowed his guitar to create that unusual sustained sound we hear throughout one of my favourite songs of all time.

With a nod to the song “Hero” by German Krautrock band Neu! and influenced musically by the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting For The Man”, the title track of this album was originally just meant to be an instrumental number (of which there are several on Side B of this record) until Bowie looked out of the Hansa Studios window one day and seen Tony Visconti and his then-girlfriend, backing singer Antonia Maass kissing “…by the wall”.

Eno has gone on record to say that musically he always felt the song had a heroic sound to it even before Bowie approached him with the lyrics, whilst Bowie explained that the song is about “Facing reality and standing up to it…finding joyness in life.”

Whilst it wasn’t a massive hit on its release it has since gone on to become one of Bowie’s signature tunes and NME recently voted it the “15th Greatest Song Of All Time” with David Buckley calling it “Perhaps pop’s definitive statement of the potential triumph of the human spirit over adversity.”

Another favourite of mine is the largely instrumental track “V2-Schneider” which Bowie wrote as a tribute to Kraftwerk co-founder Florien Schneider who were a massive influence to him throughout his whole stay in Germany.

The title is also a reference to the V-2 ballistic missile which was first developed by the Germans during World War II but whose design and engineers ended up playing a major role in the American Space Programme.

If I was pushed to pick one then its quite possible I would have this album as my favourite one of Bowie’s although that can change on an almost daily basis but listening to this again in all its glory has made me appreciate just how good it is.

A long-forgotten favourite.

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Listen To: Heroes

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The Who

Live At Leeds

Extended Edition

The second Live Album in this weeks entry and its one widely regarded as The Greatest Live Album of All Time. Yes, it’s none other than The Who’s “Live At Leeds”, recorded at Leeds University and released in 1970. A gig so revered they erected a Blue Plaque at the venue to commemorate it happening there.

Originally containing a meagre six tracks, I was fortunate to be listening to the 1995 Extended Edition which stretches to fourteen and personally this is the version I urge you to dive into because trust me you will not be disappointed.

The song introductions and on-stage joking amongst the band in between songs really add to the feel of the album and make it a more enjoyable listen than the original release.

Sandwiched in between their 1969 “Tommy” album and “Who’s Next” which came out in ’71 this captures the band in what many fans class as their true golden period, and writing a retrospective review for All Music, Bruce Eder said, “There is certainly no better record of how this band was a volcano of violence on-stage, teetering on the edge of chaos but never blowing apart.“

The majority of the bands hits up until this point are included here and speaking as a fan of the band you will never hear them sound better than right here on this album.

The likes of “I Can’t Explain”, “Substitute” and “Happy Jack” are included in the set list alongside a handful of covers including Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” and Johnny Kidd’s “Shakin’ All Over” and Keith Moon’s drumming in particular is at times simply breathtaking, especially on the mid-section of “A Quick One While He’s Away”.

I was lucky enough to catch The Who in Manchester a year or so before John Entwistle died from a cocaine-induced heart attack in the arms of a stripper in a Las Vegas Hotel Suite (I mean if you are gonna go, go in style!) so I can say I have had the honour of watching the greatest bass player of all time play the greatest bass solo of all time in “My Generation”.

But…

What I would give to have been amongst that crowd in Leeds to witness that mad bastard Keith Moon at work behind a drum kit. What a fella.

Another cover here is the Mose Allison track “Young Man Blues” which Pete Townshend has gone on record saying was one of the main inspirations behind said classic “My Generation” and that also gets the Live treatment here in the form of a fifteen minute medley involving “See Me, Feel Me”, “Sparks” and “Naked Eye” with Pete’s Gibson SG Special (according to Who biographer Dave Marsh) “….so molten with energy at times it resembles the heavy metal of Deep Purple and the atomic blues of Led Zeppelin absolutely non-stop Hard Rock.“

It all draws to a conclusion with an 8-minute extended version of “Magic Bus” that includes Roger Daltrey on harmonica and all four members jamming right to the very end.

History in the making and – according to “The Daily Telegraph”, “The Independent”, “The BBC”, “Q Magazine” and “Rolling Stone Magazine” – has never been bettered.

A must own.

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Listen To: My Generation

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Kanye West

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Way back at the beginning of these Diaires in Week 3 I had my reservations about listening to Kanye and his “Late Registration” album, and despite having to admit it was a very, very good album to listen to, I still thought he was “The Biggest Divvy On The Planet” – albeit a supremely talented one.

In the years that have past since then he has done absolutely nothing to change my opinion of him although he most definitely has some contenders to knock him off his lofty perch, in fact he would be lucky to make a Champions League spot in the current climate. I’m looking at you Matt Hancock you little twerp.

Released in 2010, this is the fifth album from Kanye and it was recorded during his self-imposed exile in Oahu, Hawaii after a period of controversy in his life, namely the end of his relationship with model Amber Rose and then his storming of the stage at the 2009 VMA’s during Taylor Swifts acceptance speech whilst collecting her award for “Best Female Video”.

To help with the recording of this album Kanye roped in a who’s-who of the Music Industry to produce and collaborate on it which seen the likes of Mike Dean, RZA, Nicki Minaj, Jay-Z, Rick Ross, and Rihanna performing alongside Elton John, Bon Iver and John Legend to name but a few.

The running theme of the album is the failed idealism of The American Dream, consumer culture, sex, race, celebrity and everything that goes with it when your name is Kanye West.

It opens with “Dark Fantasy” and Nicki Minaj narrating a reworking of Cinderella in an English accent before a sample of Mike Oldfields “In High Places” takes over and gets us underway.

Samples play a huge part throughout this album and they are used to great effect in “POWER” with that now unmistakable intro sampling “Afromerica” by Continent No.6 and even our old mate Robert Fripp (see above) and his band King Crimson get a look-in with their track “21st Century Schizoid Man” being the premise for the whole song.

“All Of The Lights” was called the “sleb-studded centrepiece” of the album by NME, with its grandiose production and none other than Elton John on piano it tells a story of a parolee hoping to be reunited with his estranged daughter despite a restraining order put in place by the child’s mother, with Kitty Empire of The Guardian calling it “The album’s most magnificent high, that backs up operatic levels of sound with great drama.”

It was also one of the songs that Jordan Henderson and his team chose as part of their trophy presentation when Liverpool Football Club became Premier League Champions at the end of the 2019/20 season. (I had to get it in somewhere.)

“Devil In A New Dress” features a cameo by Rick Ross and a beautiful use of Smokey Robinsons version of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” whilst Kanye touches on love, lust and religion whilst speaking of the women that have wronged him in the past.

The highlight for me has to be the 9-minute piano-driven epic that is “Runaway” which was allegedly inspired by Taylor Swift and what happened at the VMA’s and whilst it isn’t a full blown apology, Kanye wrote on his Twitter account on its release that he had “Written a beautiful song for her”.

Self-reflective and admitting to us and the world that at times he can be a “douchebag”, the song can be interpreted as a take on his relationship with a girl, the media or society in general and one critic labelled it, “An agonizing portrait of a man trying to exit the black hole of his own implacable ego”.

The album went on to win “Best Rap Album” at the 2012 Grammys but remarkably, in what seemed like a monumental snub, it wasn’t even nominated for “Best Album” despite it being hailed by almost everyone in the industry as Kanye’s career-defining work.

It has since gone triple-platinum, shifting over three million copies in the US alone, whilst Spotify announced in November 2020 that the whole album had been streamed one billion times on their site.

Make that one billion and one. Cracking album.

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Listen To: Runaway

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Thats it for another week. Thanks for reading and hopefully you find something to listen to that you’ll enjoy. Don’t forget to click on anything highlighted in blue to watch or listen to any of the links.

The Great Album Diaries (Special Coronavirus Lockdown Edition AKA Week 32)

So here we are in what can only be described as the most surreal, strangest of times in mine or indeed any of our lives, and whilst we should never underestimate the seriousness of what we are all going through it’s important to remember that it will pass and we will get back to normality someday soon.

In the meantime then, what better way to pass some time in our newly-enforced hiatus than to get re-acquainted with each other and some of the greatest music ever made.

Have a read, have a listen, wash your hands, look after each other….

Week 32

23rd March 2020

Derek And The Dominos

Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs

After making no less than three previous appearances on these pages in various guises – with The Yardbirds, Cream, and a solo album – here we have yet another entry from the legendary Eric Clapton and the sole studio album from his Tran-Atlantic Blues outfit Derek & The Dominos.

Released in November 1970, this is a Double LP containing several of Eric’s most well-known songs, including that all too familiar title-track which we will speak about shortly.

After becoming frustrated with the excessive fan-worship he was receiving in Cream and then later Blind Faith, Clapton decided to head out on the road with American Soul Revue act Delaney & Bonnie and Friends in an attempt to enjoy life in a band without the spotlight on himself.

It was whilst on tour across Europe that he teamed up with fellow Delaney & Bonnie members Bobby Whitlock (keyboards), Carl Radle (bass), and Jim Gordon (drums) and were invited by George Harrison to play on his iconic “All Things Must Pass” album. It was during these sessions that Derek & The Dominos became a band.

The story goes that it was during their first gig together that the stage announcer mis-heard their original name of Eric & The Dynamos and coined the now famous moniker but Clapton has denied this saying he tried to keep an air of anonymity around the band and as such it was a purposefully misleading band name.

After a period of writing the main bulk of the album at Clapton’s UK home in Surrey, the band flew out to Criteria Studios in Miami to record and it was here that all four band members started to use heroin more frequently after experimenting with it during the “All Things Must Pass” sessions, with Eric later admitting, “We were staying in this hotel on the beach, and whatever drug you wanted, you could get it at the newsstand. The girl would just take your orders.”

It was during the Criteria sessions that producer Tom Dowd brought the Dominos to watch an Allman Brothers concert and it was here that Eric would invite Nashville-born guitarist Duane Allman into the fold where the two would form an instant bond with each other with Clapton later calling Allman “The musical brother I never had but I wished I did.”

A mixture of original songs and some old Blues covers, the running theme of the album is one of hopeless unrequited love due to Eric’s infatuation with his friend George Harrison’s then-wife Pattie Boyd.

It’s all well and good being able to sing the Blues but listening to the songs featured here you get the feel of a man who is living and breathing the Blues through his music.

You can hear the pain and longing coming from Clapton’s very soul in the classic “Bell Bottomed Blues” – which he wrote after Boyd requested he bring her back a pair of sought after blue jeans from America – and also on “Anyday” where he implores, “If you believed in me like I believe in you we could have a love so true.”

Which leads us to that monumental title-track and it’s one which was voted No.27 in Rolling Stones “500 Greatest Songs Of All Time”.

Originally written as a ballad with Clapton declaring his love for the then Mrs. Harrison, “Layla” was transformed after Duane Allman came up with that now legendary signature riff.

As well as Pattie Boyd, the song was also inspired by a love story which originated in 7th Century Arabia and later appeared in the form of “The Story of Layla & Majnun” which was written by 12th Century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi, a copy of which Clapton was given by a friend.

Telling the story of a young man who falls so hopelessly in love with a girl he can not marry that it drives him insane, Clapton identified with it so much that he used it as the basis to the track we now all recognise as the true shining moment in his career.

Recorded in two parts, the songs second movement or “piano exit” as it’s known was only added onto the track after Clapton heard Jim Gordon playing it after they had recorded the main parts of the song.

It has since been claimed that it was actually Gordon’s ex-girlfriend, composer Rita Coolidge, that came up with the part although she has never been credited for it.

Whoever it was, they can certainly be proud of turning what would have been an already brilliant Rock song into one of the most beautiful endings to any song in Rock history, and while were at it, who can forget its appearance throughout the final moments of Goodfellas when Jimmy & Henry’s associates are turning up in bin wagons and frozen solid in meat trucks.

Anyway, after going their separate ways the band suffered from tragedy in every way shape or form with Duane Allman dying in a motorcycle accident in 1971 aged just 24 years old and Carl Radle dying in 1980 from a drug and alcohol induced kidney infection at the age of 37.

Even more tragedy followed with Clapton’s four year old son Conor dying in March 1991 after falling out of a 53rd floor window of a New York City apartment, whilst Jim Gordon is currently serving life imprisonment as the result of brutally killing his mother in 1983 after suffering from an undiagnosed form of psychotic schizophrenia.

Although he did play the drums on “Apache” so it’s not all bad!

This then is the one and only studio album from “Derek” and the last word I feel should belong to Pattie Boyd, without whom this song or even album as a whole would probably have never happened, (and as we all know, she did eventually marry Eric, with George Harrison even attending their wedding!).

“I think that Eric was amazingly raw at the time… He’s such an incredible musician that he’s able to put his emotions into music in such a way that the audience can feel it instinctively. It goes right through you.”

A must own.

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Listen To: Layla

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The Grateful Dead

American Beauty

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“Lately, it occurs to me, what a long strange trip it’s been.”

FUN FACT: The Grateful Dead were the offical sponsors to the 1992 Lithuanian Olympic Basketball Team!

These lads are a band I’ve only ever heard good things about and yet believe it or not this album is actually the very first time I’ve ever listened to any of their stuff, so it’s safe to say I was looking forward to giving it a once-over when it popped up on the playlist on Wed – or as it was known officially in our house – “Day Two of Lockdown”.

Formed in Palo Alto, California in 1965, The Grateful Dead consisted of founding members Jerry Garcia on lead guitar and vocals, Bob Weir (rhythm guitar and vocals), Ron ”Pigpen” McKernan (keyboards, harmonica and vocals), Phil Lesh (bass and vocals) and Bill Kreutzmann on drums.

Two years later they added a second drummer in Mickey Hart and he was joined by lyricist Robert Hunter.

They became one of the main acts associated with the Counterculture movement that sprung out of San Francisco in the late 1960’s and this particular record is their fifth studio album, released in 1970.

Famous for the spaced out sound of improvisational jams at their gigs, the country-tinged folk-rock of this record was a departure from the more psychedelic rock of their first three albums, and it was released just four short months after its predecessor “Workingman’s Dead”, which is where the move towards a more “Americana” sound began in essence.

Usually led by the songwriting duo of Garcia and Hunter, this was the first time that a bulk of material from the rest of the band made up most of the album and it’s the Phil Lesh-penned “Box Of Rain” that gets us under way here.

You can certainly pick up on the influence Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young had on the band during this period as the vocal harmonies present on this track are reminiscent of something on their “Deja Vu” album.

Lesh commented later that he wanted to write a song he could sing to his terminally ill father and as soon as it was complete he rushed to his bedside to recite it to him as he lay dying from cancer.

“Friend Of The Devil” is apparently written about the bands womanising road manager Rock Scully and the scrapes he would get himself into, whilst “Sugar Magnolia” was written by Bob Weir about his girlfriend at the time.

One of The Grateful Dead’s most famous tracks – and the standout song on this album – is the beautiful “Ripple” and I was hearing it for the first time here whilst I was in the middle of doing some work in the garden. For a few moments with this playing in my earphones and the sun on my face, I forgot all about what was happening in the news and the world was a better place for it. It’s certainly a new favourite of mine.

Another of the bands most famous songs – and yet another one I had never heard – is album closer “Truckin” which is all about life on the road and was inspired by a drugs raid in the bands hotel room in New Orleans earlier that same year.

In 1997 the song was recognized as a National Treasure by the United States Library of Congress whilst the album itself was named by Rolling Stone as No.258 in their “500 Greatest Albums” list.

Personally I’d like to give this record another few listens as I feel it’s one I could grow to love. It has been labelled by some as the bands masterpiece and whilst I really enjoyed the songs mentioned I think it fell a little short on the rest of it.

We shall see. One to go back to.

Incidentally, the Lithuanians won a bronze medal. Good for them.

My Rating: ☆☆☆

Listen To: Ripple

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Supergrass

I Should Coco

Oh to be sixteen again.

I felt a warm pang of nostalgia float over me as this old favourite began playing on Thursday morning.

May 1995. Stan Collymore is on the verge of signing for Liverpool. GCSE’s are done and dusted. School’s out forever and one of the hottest summers on record is spent listening to what seems like the freshest collection of bands for a whole generation. For some of them – the good ones anyway – their music would be fondly remembered by all of us who lived and breathed it on a daily basis, so as I headed out on my early morning run I couldnt wait to get re-acquainted with Gaz, Mick and Danny for a listen of their debut album.

Formed in Oxford in 1993 and originally calling themselves Theodore Supergrass, the band were heavily influenced by The Buzzcocks, The Jam, Madness and The Kinks and released their debut single “Caught By The Fuzz” a year later.

It appears here in all it’s glory and is based on singer Gaz Coombes real-life arrest and caution for possession of cannabis at the age of fifteen.

Speaking about it in 2004 Gaz commented, “It wasn’t trying to be a real statement, but at the time we knew that it was a big deal. Kids all around England were getting nicked for having a bit of hash on them. In Oxford that kind of thing happened quite a lot. It’s all true so it was easy to write. It was a funny experience – not too funny at the time ’cause I was only 15 and shitting myself. The song has that disturbing energy. It’s comparable to your heart racing. The adrenaline rush you get when your mum walks into the police station is similar to the energy of the song.”

Three more singles followed shortly after in “Mansize Rooster” “Lose It” and “Lenny” (which all appear here) but it wasn’t until the release of their hugely successful fifth single that things really took off for these three likeable lads.

It may have been played to death by now, some twenty five (really?) years later but if ever a song epitomised the innocence of youthful optimism and British youth culture in general during this period then surely “Alright” wins hands down and hearing it properly again here for the first time in a long time it’s easy to remember just how good it sounded back then too.

It helped shift sales of this album past the million mark with half of those coming in the UK alone where it got to No1 in the Album Charts.

At the same time it also became the most successful debut release on Parlophone Records since The Beatles “Please Please Me” some thirty years earlier. Not bad at all.

Personally though, what I like most about this record is not the singles we all know and love but the hidden gems also contained on it.

“Strange Ones” and “I’d Like To Know” are both about the weird and wonderful inhabitants of Cowley Road in Oxford and speaking about both tracks Mick said, “There’s a few people who are just really out there. There’s a lot of people around Oxford who are real spliffheads and that, who go and lie down in Port Meadow, but I’m not really sure about them. I’m not really sure that they’re individuals: they’re part of a much larger thing.”

The standout song for me has to be “Sofa Of My Lethargy”, a song slightly more laidback and trippier than the rest of the album and it was apparently all recorded in just one take in Mick’s living room when trying to rush through the final tracks for it’s completion.

Maybe it’s the hammond organ, or maybe its the guitar solo it contains that reminds me of Peter Green’s in “Albatross” but something about it will forever remind me of summer.

Simpler times. An old favourite rediscovered thanks to these Diaries.

I can’t believe we finished talking about 1995 without mentioning it was the last time Everton won a trophy….oh.

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Listen To: Sofa Of My Lethargy

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Van Halen

1984

What an album cover that is!

It was designed by graphic artist Margo Nahas and its image of a cigarette smoking cherub is supposed to depict the transition of purity into mischief, which could be used as a metaphor for what happened to a lot of wholesome Pop Music-loving American kids after buying this album on the back of its biggest hit.

That’s right, after we spent Thursday evening with the rest of the country on our doorsteps saluting our heroes of the NHS with an emotional, fully deserved round of applause, I ran back inside and had this long forgotten old favourite blasting over the kitchen – much to the annoyance of my daughter Caitlin who stormed downstairs and asked me to keep the noise down!

Taking its name from the year it was released, it’s Van Halen’s sixth and most commercially successful album containing one of the biggest songs of the decade and a collection of 80’s Heavy Rock at its absolute finest.

I still have the copy of this album my uncle Ian gave me when I was around 11 or 12 after he made me a mixtape which just so happened to have “Jump” by Van Halen included on it – and after the opening title track on this record which is just a short, Tangerine Dream-sounding keyboard instrumental, we are hit with that monumental intro from Eddie Van Halens Oberheim synthesizer and the song that catapulted the band into the mainstream (much to the dismay of their keyboard-hating hardcore fans).

After unsuccessfully bouncing ideas around with his bandmates and producer Ted Templemen at the start of the decade about introducing a more electronic sound into their music, Eddie Van Halen decided to build his own studio situated in the backyard of his home in Los Angeles.

He named it “5150” which is LA Police Code for “Escaped Mental Patient” and it was here that the majority of this album was conceived. Forging a compromise between the keyboard-heavy new sound Eddie wanted for the band and the more intense guitar-driven rock that they were known for.

After hearing the music for an unfinished demo, singer Dave Lee Roth remembered a news story from the night before about a man threatening to commit suicide by jumping from a high building. He commented that one of the many onlookers there would probably have got bored and shouted, “Go ahead and jump!”

He decided against writing a song about suicide but instead made it about an invitation to “jump” into love.

It reached No.1 on the US Billboard 100, becoming by far the bands biggest selling hit, was ranked No.15 on VH1’s “100 Greatest Songs of The 80’s” and was even inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the “500 Songs That Shaped Rock And Roll”.

Despite this being the bands only No1 single, 1984 also spawned three other Top 20 Hits in “Panama” – named after a car called Panama Express which Dave Lee Roth seen racing in Las Vegas, “I’ll Wait”, which is another keyboard-heavy song co-written with Doobie Brother Michael McDonald, and everyone’s MTV favourite “Hot For Teacher” which unsurprisingly came under scrutiny from the Parent Music Resource Centre who protested that the video and the songs lyrics were too sexually suggestive.

As for the rest of the album, I had completely forgotten just how good the likes of “Top Jimmy” and “Drop Dead Legs” were as it must be a good fifteen years since I last listened to it in its entirety and it was pleasure getting to know them again.

1984 got to No.2 on the US Album Chart where it stayed for five weeks behind Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album (which if you remember included that famous Eddie Van Halen guitar solo on “Beat It”) and speaking to Rolling Stone magazine a few years later, producer Ted Templemen said, “It’s  real obvious to me why 1984 won Van Halen a broader and larger audience – Eddie Van Halen discovered the synthesizer.”

I for one am thankful he did.

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Listen To: Jump

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Daft Punk

Discovery

Is this my favourite Electronic album of all time? It may just well be….

After spending the best part of Saturday morning having my brain wrecked from various Maths puzzles being sent over WhatsApp to get us all through the day (really, Day 5 and this is what it’s come to?) I was relieved to see this stone cold “Great” finally show itself on these pages.

After speaking about their 1997 debut “Homework” way back in Week 17 of these Diaries, it’s taken around the same amount of time Thomas and Guy-Man had between actually making these albums than it has been for us to write about them in here.

Released in 2001, almost four long-awaited years after its predecessor, mesdames et messieurs I give you the truly magnifique “Discovery” from Daft Punk.

After they finished their Daftendirekt Tour at the end of 1997 the duo started work on what would eventually be this album at the beginning of 1998 and over the course of the next two years set out to make a record that would reflect their childhood spent growing up in the decade between 1975 and 1985 and the Discovery of their musical tastes.

The title is also a play on words and can be read as “Disco” “Very” with one of the tracks that appears on it given a faux-Latin name of “Veridis Quo” or “Very Disco”. Clever, oui?

The duo intended to create a playful, open and honest attitude towards listening to records in the way a child has no agenda or analysis whenever it hears a song playing whilst at the same time keeping a focus on song structure using more musical instruments and sampling of songs from that decade mentioned above.

This was in contrast to the bands previous effort which had a raw, clubbier feel to it and one which was noted by Thomas when he said, “Homework was a way to say to the rock kids, like, ‘Electronic music is cool’. Discovery was the opposite, of saying to the electronic kids, ‘Rock is cool, you know? You can like that.”

It was during the lead up to this albums release that the duo famously took on the personas of two robots claiming, “We did not choose to become robots. There was an accident in our studio. We were working on our sampler, and at exactly 9:09 am on September 9, 1999, it exploded. When we regained consciousness, we discovered that we had become robots.”

In reality it stemmed from an initial shyness and reluctance to show their real selves to the media which then grew into a feeling of being an average guy with a superpower that their fans ran with and as such became an iconic look for them just as say, makeup was for KISS.

The album opens with a song featuring the late, great Romanthony on guest vocals – remember his House classic Hold On – and when all is said and done it is quiet simply one of the greatest dance songs ever.

Whenever I have been on any dancefloor in the world be it a club or a festival, if “One More Time” comes on you can guarantee it will still take the roof off, nearly twenty years after its release. Now that is the mark of a legendary dance record.

In fact only recently it was voted “The Greatest Dance Record Of All Time” by readers of Mixmag Magazine. Personally I’d have it as No.2 behind “Music Sounds Better With You” by Stardust but that’s just my opinion. Although Thomas from Daft Punk was one half of Stardust so I’m sure he won’t mind!

All of the songs used on this album were featured in the Anime movie “Interstellar 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem” which was a collaboration between the band and one of their childhood heroes the Japanese Mangaka, Leiji Matasumoto and as such all of the videos for each single released were taken from said movie.

Using a sample of “Cola Bottle Baby” by Edwin Birdsong, the duo gave us the futuristic, funky, “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”, which was itself sampled of course by Kanye West in 2007 for his track “Stronger”.

What was interesting at the time were the number of homemade videos to accompany “HBFS” which appeared online and went viral such as Daft Hands or Daft Bodies and they are probably more memorable than the songs actual video with some 90 Million Views between them on YouTube alone!

Another personal favourite is the single “Digital Love” which samples George Duke’s “I Love You More” to great effect and any Supertramp fans out there surely cannot help but fall in love with that Wurtlitzer piano solo on the bridge. I clearly remember it being one of the early things I loved about this album when I listened to it for the first time back in the day.

Another favourite of mine and possibly my pick of the bunch is near the end of the album and it’s the song “Face To Face” which was co-produced with another of the bands musical heroes in US House & Garage producer Todd Edwards who also sings lead vocals on the track after Thomas & Guy-Man asked him to “Make it sound like Foreigner”.

Todd would again team up with The Robots some twelve years later and perform with them on “Fragments Of Time” for their 2013 album “Random Access Memories”, but that’s a conversation we can have at another date.

My Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Listen To: Face To Face

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That’s it for this week’s entry. Thanks for reading and don’t forget to click on any of the links highlighted in blue to hear or watch any of the media mentioned.

Also click on any of the albums mentioned above to give them a listen should you wish to do so.

I hope you find something in amongst them to make these hours go a little quicker whilst we are all going through this together. X