1001Albums October 2024

 MTV Unplugged In New York by Nirvana 1994 **** 01/10/2024

The conceit of MTV Unplugged is simple - get a big rock band to come in and play an acoustic set of their greatest hits. Nirvana approached the challenge differently, picking deep cuts and covers over hits, and featuring The Meat Puppets as special guests. Cobain sounds a little nervous at the start and also uses some amplification and effects in places. He passed away 5 months after this recording, lending it a poignant air, especially on Come As You Are.

Bluesbreakers by John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers 1966 did-not-listen 02/10/2024

Clapton is a despicable individual. To misappropriate an entire musical genre while ignoring the oppression that formed it, and going on to express the most loathsome of opinions on a public stage is unforgivable. It’s called the Blues for a reason, and Clapton has not, and never will earn the right to play it. I feel slightly sorry for Mayall being associated with him and apparently Clapton was only in the band for a short while. Skipping this one.

Fever To Tell by Yeah Yeah Yeahs 2003 *** 03/10/2024

Well, this was a lot of fun. Female fronted pop punk, with fuzzed out guitars and even more fuzzed out vocals, tracing a direct line from bands like the Pretenders and Siouxie and the Banshees. It’s not revolutionary or going to change the world in any way, but sometimes you just want something that hits all of the right notes without trying too hard. The highlight for me was the song No, No, No which is very appropriate for the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs.

The Wildest! by Louis Prima 1956 **** 04/10/2024

Louis Prima is probably best known as the voice of King Louis in The Jungle Book, but this album from 1956 is equally joyous. The album was recorded as live in the studio with an excellent group of jazz musicians, who are clearly having a ball, as well as Prima’s wife Keely Smith who provides a cool counterbalance to his wild flights of fancy. It’s a brisk 30 minutes of fun and one of the rare albums where I listened twice. Highlight is opener Just a Gigolo!

Joan Armatrading by Joan Armatrading 1976 **** 07/10/2024

Joan Armatrading has never quite reached the heights of superstardom, perhaps because she has always refused to play the tabloid fame game and kept her private life to herself. This album is a quiet gem, from one of Britain’s greatest singer songwriters, mixing songs of longing and regret with some gorgeously smooth jazzy R&B. There are some very pointed lyrics here too, especially Water with the Wine dealing with date rape.

The Velvet Underground & Nico by The Velvet Underground 1967 ***** 08/10/2024

This isn’t an easy listen, but it’s a worthy inclusion on the list. It opens with the mellow ‘Sunday Morning’ but rapidly moves onto stranger ground with songs about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, layered on top of growling feedback and odd instrumentation. Vocals are split between Lou Reed’s proto punk drawl and Nico’s harmonies. Brian Eno once famously said that not many people bought this album when it was released but everyone that did started a band.

Transformer by Lou Reed 1972 ***** 09/10/2024

ick Ronson and David Bowie were hugely influenced by The Velvet Underground and they repaid the favour by working on this album with Lou Reed. There’s definitely a glam feel to parts of this, but the lyrical content and Lou Reed’s distinctive style loses none of its edge. We still get boundary pushing tracks about trans people, sex of all flavours and a whole song about how nice it is to spend the day in the park off your head on heroin. Smacktastic!

Exodus by Bob Marley & The Wailers 1977 **** 10/10/2024

The 1970s in Jamaica were a turbulent time. Just before he was due to play at a peace concert Bob Marley, his wife Rita, and his manager were shot at and wounded. This led to him moving to London and recording this album. Side one is the stronger, mixing the spiritual and political, with powerful songs. Side 2 is more chilled and has the better known tracks. This needs to be listened to on the biggest sound system you have with bass turned up. Splifftastic!

Crime Of The Century by Supertramp 1974 ** 11/10/2024

y uncle used to be a bit of an audiophile back in the day. He had a fancy turntable and big speakers, and when we went round, he’d put records on to show off how good it sounded. This was one of those records. Technically fine, but lacking anything that grabbed me in any way. This is typically overblown 70s pop prog and I couldn’t tell you what any of the songs were about. I did like the ‘bloody well right’ bit and I think ‘Dreamer’ must have been a single.

Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan 1965 **** 14/10/2024

Like Bringing it all Back Home, this album is also full of complex, multi layered songs, backed with an electric band playing with gusto and sung by Bob in his trademark honking nasal drawl. Every time I listen to Desolation Row, I swear that someone has put extra verses in that I’ve never heard before, and they still feel relevant - the bit about the passengers on Titanic arguing about which side they’re on feels very on the nose today. Bobtastic!

Machine Head by Deep Purple 1972 **** 15/10/2024

Has there ever been a more thrilling start to an album than Highway Star on this one? It perfectly captures the feeling of driving like a maniac on an open road with some of the best guitar solo work on record. The album calms down a little after that with some nice bluesy rock before we hear *that* riff, familiar to anyone who’s ever been in a guitar shop, and probably the best song about someone burning down a casino. Funky Claudetastic!

Moss Side Story by Barry Adamson 1989 *** 16/10/2024

When I was a kid, I used to borrow sound effects LPs from the library and record them on to cassettes to make mini audio dramas. This album is a little bit like that, except it also adds in a musical soundtrack for an imaginary film noir with the track names hinting at the unfolding drama. There are some nice nods to the genre with the Hitchcock tune and a stab at a Bond theme. I could imagine using this as a soundtrack for a seedy spy rpg. Cinetastic!

At Budokan by Cheap Trick 1979 *** 17/10/2024

I think that every rock contract in the 70s must have had a clause that the band were obliged to record at least one live album in Japan. Thus we get Cheap Trick, in front of thousands of screaming Japanese fans, plodding through a competent but pedestrian set list. I always assumed that they were hard rock, but apart from the opening track this is closer to glam/pop. The highlight is a Chuck Berry cover where they somehow shoehorn in a drum solo.

Dookie by Green Day 1994 **** 18/10/2024

There are some men of a certain age, probably wearing an old Ramones t shirt that’s a bit too small for them nowadays, who would look at this album and complain that it’s not ‘proper punk’. I would counter by saying that here we have 15 banging tunes in 38 minutes, dealing with boredom, alienation, growing up in an uncertain world that just doesn’t care, as well as the usual teenage concerns of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. What could be more punk than that?

Young Americans by David Bowie 1975 **** 21/10/2024

This is an album that I’ve previously skipped on Bowie’s journey from Aladdin Sane to the Thin White Duke. It’s R&B/funk aimed with laser sharp cynical precision at the American market, and on reflection it’s pretty darned good and sounds better than the R&B that Bowie release in the 80s. The highlight is probably a spectacular cover of Across the Universe but the bitter and angry Fame written with John Lennon is good too, and also foreshadows 80s Bowie too

Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis 1959 ***** 22/10/2024

n 1959 Miles Davis decided to do something different, moving away from hard bop jazz. He assembled a crew of some of the best musicians around, gave them each a set of scales to improvise around, then lit the metaphorical blue touch paper. The result is like listening to a conversation as music is built up in real time with each player contributing to the piece. Music like this really should be heard live, but this recording is probably as good as it gets.

Electric Music For The Mind And Body by Country Joe & The Fish 1967 ** 23/10/2024

This an album of its time, and the time is firmly in the Summer of Love in San Francisco. Whilst the Beatles made a token effort to hide their drug references, Country Joe & the Fish are openly passing round the reefers and whispering LSD over the outro. They’re not shy about sex either and the politics are far to the left. The highlight is the cheeky Superbird where he calls on the Fantastic Four and Doctor Strange to take out LBJ. Hippytastic!

Pearl by Janis Joplin 1971 *** 24/10/2024

In one of those ironic twists that this list throws up, after yesterday’s album about how lovely drugs are, today’s is from someone who died after a heroin overdose. Janis Joplin had an amazing voice, but on this posthumously released album you can already hear it cracking in places and she sounds much older than her 27 years. The highlight is Mercedes Benz where her prayers gradually get scaled back from a new car to the next round of drinks. RIP Janis.

Channel Orange by Frank Ocean 2012 * 25/10/2024

This sounded intriguing from the description - a debut album based on the artist’s synesthesia where he experienced first love as the colour orange. In actually, this is fairly anodyne R&B (albeit with some NSFW lyrics about running out of condoms) interspersed with random and surreal sound collages. The highlight (or very middling light) is where he pays a confused Muslim taxi driver to act as his personal therapist by keeping the meter running. Weird.

Are You Experienced by Jimi Hendrix 1967 ***** 28/10/2024

This album not only broke new ground in exploring the sounds that it was possible to get out of an electric guitar, it pushed the boundaries of rock music genre mashups with the highlight being the sci-fi epic Third Stone From the Sun which veers wildly from acid rock to free jazz noodling to total freak out. Legend has it that Jimi liked to play so loudly in the studio that the neighbours complained about the noise. Another artist who died far too young.

Disraeli Gears by Cream 1967 * 29/10/2024

On October the first, 1966 Eric Clapton watched Jimi Hendrix playing at the London Polytechnic. Shortly after, he switched from ripping off black American blues guitarists to, well, you do the math. Disraeli Gears tries to be a psychedelic acid rock album, but it plods and meanders, and manages to seem tediously long for a running time of just over half an hour. Ginger Baker is still a good drummer but Clapton can get in the bin.

Van Halen by Van Halen 1978 *** 30/10/2024

I only knew Van Halen from their 80s hair metal era, so this album was a pleasant surprise. There are interesting parallels between this and Iron Maiden’s first album, with both having a punk edge, but this album also includes blues and even some vocal scatting on one track. The highlight is probably  the showboating guitar solo from Eddie Van Halen on Eruption that segues into a cheeky cover of The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’. Good fun all round.

Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor by Lupe Fiasco 2006 *** 31/10/2024

For a rap album, this is actually quite sweet and thoughtful. Lupe Fiasco had a tough upbringing, but the thing that he missed out on most was making model trains with his absent father. The cover shows him surrounded by his favourite things, including a Nintendo DS. He tackles the thorny subject of misogyny in rap on one track and spends the outro thanking everyone by name who helped him. The highlight is a two part song about skateboarding. Nerdtastic!