I love me some funk, and these guys are the originals. Led by George Clinton, they mastered the funk jam session. Any one who knows me knows that I am a HUGE Prince fan, R.I.P, and Prince was a HUGE George Clinton fan, collaborating with Clinton on a few of Prince's songs. I can definitely see how they would have been an influence on each other's music.
"Give up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)"
George & Prince "Flashlight Jam"
George & Prince - "Paradigm"
Prince inducts Parliament into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
and I could go on :)
Tomorrow's Album #112 The Incredible String Band - The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
I can see why The Beach Boys were popular, This album was pretty dang good, and fun to listen to. I would have guessed that it was one of their earlier albums, but it was in fact their 11th of 27 studio albums, and while it was fun to listen to, these guys were good at taking some darker more depressing themes and making them sound uplifting.
Looking forward to listening to some of their earlier albums with their "beach" music on them
"Wouldn't it be nice"
Tomorrow's Album #329 Parliament - Mothership Connection
If I was going to listen to country, which I'm not, but if I was going to, it might be these guys. Only because they are more on the verge of being rock than most other country bands, and because at times they reminded me of The Eagles, which I love.
The album was ok. Like I said at times it was rocking, which was good, but the lyrics were average at best, and some songs like "let there be rock" they were down right terrible.
So if the criteria to being able to make, record and sell an album is to be able to play an instrument to an average level, string some words together into some sort of lyrics that may or may not make any sense and not have to sing well at all, then I guess all I have to is start learning an instrument.
an example of what I'm talking about:
"The Duchess"
Tomorrow's Album #836 Drive-By Truckers - Southern Rock Opera
This is the 1st album I've listened to that is new to the list, added in for the 2016 edition.
1. Props for being able to pull off the one name, like Madonna, Prince etc.
2. Props for being from Iceland and being able to break into the American music scene and become successful
3. This album was terrible.
I was surprised at how many of the songs I had heard before and didn't realize it. I'm not sure if it is because they sound like many other 70's classic rock bands, or if it is because Bad Company is actually a pretty popular band and I didn't know. The songs are actually pretty good.
I'll admit I played the crap out of this album when it came out. I loved it. I'll also admit that listening to it again now it isn't as good as I had remembered it but it still has a couple of quality songs on it. Gotta love some smooth R&B.
David Holmes is a DJ from Belfast, that started at the age of 15. who, by the mid-90's had released a couple albums including this one in 1997. He lived in New York and over the course of 10 years record different sounds and conversations that he heard in the city and used them to construct the songs and the album. Listening to the album I really got the sense that I was in New York and if ever a city had a soundtrack this is it. The album is all instrumental, except for the recordings that he adds in, and due in part to the fame he achieved after it's release, he was asked to participate in producing soundtracks for a couple movies, which he has turn into a pretty good career looking at the list of movies that he has done.
A pretty cool remake of the James Bond Theme "Radio 7"
Tomorrow's Album #593 Soul II Soul - Club Classics Vol. One
For a 60's band these guys really rocked. It was full of Jerry Lee Lewis style piano, tenor saxophone and loud guitar and drums. I really enjoyed the album, which was their debut. As far as I can tell there is only one original, The Witch, and the rest of the album is covers of other's songs. The band is listed as a grunge rock band from Tacoma Washington, and I can totally see that these guys might have had an influence on bands from the same are like Nirvana.
Great Album.
"The Witch"
"Roll over Beethoven"
"Money"
Tomorrow's Album - I will be at the Blue October concert in Missoula Montana so I will be posting pictures and videos of the concert when I get back.
I would never have guessed that this band would be a Swiss industrial rock band before I listened to them. They sing all their lyrics in French, English and German. As a kid I had the opportunity, growing up in Canada, to learn French, but never did other than a few words. As an adult I wish I had.
All of the songs on this particular
album are in French and the band reminds me a lot of a band that I liked in the 80's, and still occasionally listen to, called Nitzer Ebb, so I enjoyed the music style even though I couldn't understand the lyrics.
"Longue route"
Lyrics in English:
Long Comet Road
Today is party
We made a long way
Give us the sky to drink
Long road my eyes
Oh long blue planet
We made a long fire
And we still burn
For the night ... agrees
Long comet routine
Today is party
We made a long way
It never stops
Long road of stars
Look at them at night
Long Comet Road
And the night agrees
We do not know where to go
Then we come
We have nothing to lose
Then we give
There is this evening girl girl
And the night is ...
Okay
Tomorrow's Album #49 The Sonics - Here are The Sonics
This album was surprisingly good. It had a Simon and Garfunkel vibe to it with a modern twist. They also reminded me a little of Oasis, which I don't really like all that much, but this was better. I really liked that a lot of the songs had orchestral additions to them. It gave the songs a little extra something. The whole album wasn't amazing but out of the 12 songs there was 8-9 quality songs on there.
In my opinion the best track "Comedy"
Tomorrow's Album #596 The Young Gods - L'eau Rouge
Maybe this is considered one of the best rap albums of all time but 3 songs in and I couldn't listen any more. I don't love rap at the best of times but I turned it off due to the amount of swearing in each song. I can handle some swearing, some of the songs by Blue October have explicit lyrics, it was the amount of it that I couldn't get past.
I can't even post a video of one of the songs since they all have explicit lyrics
I love the song "Tainted Love". I'm not sure where is falls on a list of my all time favorites, but it is definitely there. So I was excited to listen to the album from which it came, expecting to discover some amazing 80's pop that I had never heard before. Boy was I wrong. This album was garbage! I honestly have no idea how it could have made it to this list. The music was terrible and very amateurish and the lyrics were just plain stupid. It blows me away that the band that created "tainted love" came up with such crap.
An example of the garbage found on the album (I really could have put any of the songs they are all equally terrible)
"Sex Dwarf"
The one redeeming song "Tainted Love"
"Tainted Love/Where did our love go?" extended version
Tomorrow's Album #623 Ice-T O.G. Original Gangster
I have one song on my iTunes by The Orb, I thought that this was the same band. It isn't but the musical style was almost the same. The band is a techno band from England that formed in the early 90's. The album was decent but also repetitive. I find that when songs don't have lyrics and also run 7+ minutes each they start to sound very similar and I start to drown it out
"Forever"
Tomorrow's Album #450 Soft Cell - Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret
Since starting this blog back up there have been a couple albums I haven't liked, a few that were o.k. and a couple that were pretty good. This album is the first one that I have thought was really, really good. Excellent in fact. Now I'm not a Bruce Springsteen fan, I think he has made some pretty good songs but I don't like them enough to have any of them on my Apple Music. This one I just might keep.
"The Rising" was released in 2002, in response to the events of 9/11. It was his first studio album in almost 20 years and all of the songs either directly or indirectly tie to that day. Bruce, who is from New Jersey, says that he recorded the album to talk about and to give hope and faith to people that were shaken by the attack. The album itself is really good, but when you listen to the songs in that context it really shines. Everyone should listen to this album!
Having heard of Steely Dan, in name only, I had never listened to any of their music and no idea that they are, in fact, a jazz/rock band. The album was just o.k. The issue I had with it was that the songs seemed like they were longer than they needed to be, almost all clocking in at 7+ minutes. I felt like each one had a "ending" point, but continued on well past that point, just kind of carrying on as jam sessions. It wasn't a bad thing, it just got to the point where the album started to sound like it was just one long song, but maybe that's what jazz/rock bands are suppose to be like.
"Aja"
Tomorrow's Album #846 Bruce Springsteen - The Rising
A couple of posts ago I wrote about why I think people like the music that they like. I think some of what you like can come from what you hear your parents listen to while you are young. Queen is that band for me. I remember my parents owning a few Queen albums, "The Game" specifically. It would have come out when I was 10 and I listened the crap out of it. I loved it. So when I was older, and as new albums came out, I would give them a listen, and I would go back and listen to older albums that I hadn't heard, and I was never disappointed. Few bands will ever attain the kind of success and the number of hit songs that Queen has had, which is, for the most part due to Freddie Mercury being one of the best singers and frontmen and Brian May being a guitar god. The Band was the Kings, or should I say Queens, of the concept album. I am sure that there are more albums on the list that I'll get a chance to revisit and I welcome the chance.
If I had known about this band when I was a teenager it would have fit right in with the bands that I was listening to at the time, like The Cure, Joy Division and Sisters of Mercy, and I would have loved their music. The Associates are perfectly morose and dark and depressing, just like the music that I was into at the time. Of course I liked other 80's music that was more dance oriented and upbeat but it was The Cure that I loved and this album is album is more of the same. I mean how could it not be with a title like "Sulk".
The best way to describe this album, in my opinion, is BLAH. Everything about it was blah. The music is blah and all sounded pretty much the same, his voice is blah and the lyrics are blah. Nothing about it invoked any kind of emotion in me. it wasn't that I hated it I just didn't care about it in any way.
I feel like it is easy to tell songs created while heavy amounts of drugs were used. This album is a perfect example. In fact the story goes that the band's manager rented them a place to create the album and then supplied them with huge amounts of drugs and told them not to emerge until they had produced something "heavy". The result is a odd album that you can definitely tell was inspired by drug use. The final song, coming at 19 minutes, tells the story of Stan and his search for the moon.
Sparks are a band started in 1972 by two brothers. They fall under the category of "art rock" which basically means that they produce albums that kind of follow a story line and and "perform" their songs in concert vs. just singing them. It wasn't a terrible album, although for the first few songs I thought it was a female singing, due to the falsetto. Other bands have also have attempted this same path and produced "rock operas" The Who and Queen being two extremely popular bands to accomplish it. There are even current bands, like Foxy Shazam that produce albums the same way.
Tomorrow's album #117 Small Faces - Ogdens' Nut Gone Flakes
Before there was Amy Winehouse, before there was Lady Gaga, there was P.J. Harvey. I actually really enjoyed this album. It was pretty raw and stripped down.
I believe you like the music you like. I know that sounds like a "duh" statement but it's true. I believe the music that you like is influenced by a number of factors, starting from a young age. As a child you probably liked the music that you heard relatives listening to. As you grow older you branch out and "learn" to like other styles of music, probably influenced by the time period that you grow up in and probably the music that friends like.
I also believe that there is some sort of internal component, maybe genetics, that draws you to certain types of music, allows you to tolerate other types and causes you to all out "hate" other types.
Since starting this blog I'd say probably 85% or more of the albums I have never heard before and while I haven't loved them all and some of them I have outright disliked, most of the time I have "suffered" through the album to the end. Most of the time I haven't wanted to turn the albums off.
I know this next statement is not going to be liked by a huge population of people, sorry Mom, but I just can't listen to The Rolling Stones. To me it is listening to fingernails on a chalkboard, and I just want it to end. Now I know that they are insanely popular, and they have written some of the biggest classic rock hits ever, and it's not that Mick Jagger is a terrible singer or that the band isn't talented, I just don't like their music.
This album. btw, starts off with "Paint it Black" probably one of their biggest songs ever and a song that has been covered by other artists numerous times, at least 50 from what I could find. Fun fact, unfortunately for the band they sold the rights to the song to a manger in the late 60's so every time it is used in any way or covered the band doesn't see a penny of the money
John Coltrane was a jazz saxophonist who record this album in 1965. The Album is made up of 4 part; Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance and Psalm. Although the album is short, only 33 minutes, it definitely shows off Coltrane's, and those in his band, skills as a musician. I found it a very relaxing and chill album, and I could totally picture people, when it came out, having it playing in the background during a party.
Tomorrow's Album #66 The Rolling Stones - Aftermath
Once upon a time Suzanne Vega had a hit song called "Luka". I remember it coming out and I absolutely hated it. Then a few years later she had another song called "Tom's Diner" which really like so I didn't really know what to expect from a full album of her music. Well, it was about the same as her two songs, some I liked and others I didn't. I don't know much about Suzanne Vega but listening to her songs it's almost like she is a poet that decided to add music to her poems. They don't follow typical song format and are more like telling a story to music that worrying about them rhyming.
In fact the style reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies, So I Married an Axe Murderer:
Anyways for the most part I was kind of indifferent about the album and would give it a 2.5/5 for just being o.k. but also prompting me to watch the above clips again.
Tomorrow's Album #38 John Coltrane - A Love Supreme
I wasn't a fan of this album. Listed as a old-time classic country and bluegrass artist I knew it might be a struggle for me to get through. The problem for me with this type of music is that it is so bare, essentially only guitar and banjo, no percussion or other instruments to liven things up. So over the course of the album it all just started to sound the same. I know there are millions of country fans out there and for them someone recording an album that tries to return to the roots of country this is probably a great album but it just wasn't for me.
1/5 for being ironic with your song "I Want to Sing that Rock and Roll"
I like Tom Petty and was glad to have the chance to listen to this album since I haven't listened to any of his music in quite awhile. Released in 1977 as their debut album it is pretty solid rock album. I had previously heard the hit songs "Breakdown" and "American Girl" but was surprised at how good the rest of the album was. Definitely worth adding to my music collection. 4/5
Tomorrow's Album #837 Gillian Welch - Time (The Revelator)
I love me some funk, and these guys are the originals. Led by George Clinton, they mastered the funk jam session. Any one who knows me knows that I am a HUGE Prince fan, R.I.P, and Prince was a HUGE George Clinton fan, collaborating with Clinton on a few of Prince's songs. I can definitely see how they would have been an influence on each other's music.
