'John Mayall's Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton' & 'Disreali Gears'

I'm no Eric Clapton fan but it's interesting that four albums from four different facets of his career made it to the 1,001 list including these two, 461 Ocean Boulevard and Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs. And all of them recorded within a decade of each other and it doesn't include a Blind Faith record and Clapton missed out on The Yardbirds' eponymous record by a year (Jeff Beck was featured on that album).

John Mayall is interesting because he's this singer that just took any musician to join his group of white British kids singing black American blues songs. Mick Taylor followed Clapton as guitar player. The band also included John McVie and Mick Fleetwood.

Funny, in 2008 Mayall "broke up" the Blueb

reakers so he could concentrate on playing with other people. This despite the entire 40 years of the Bluesbreakers is Mayall playing with four dozen different players. Then someone convinced him to get the band back together which required getting a new bass player, guitarist and drummer.

Clapton left after the one album upon seeing Buddy Guy in concert and sparking a desire to have a power trio. So he joined up with Jack Bruce (another Bluesbreaker) and Ginger Baker to form Cream and record their mega-hit record, Disreali Gears featuring "Sunshine of Your Love" and "Strange Brew." Unlike the Bluesbreakers, this is real hippy shit. So it can be ignored pretty easily.

'Viva Hate' & 'Your Arsenal' & 'Vauxhall and I' & 'You Are The Quarry'

Should someone that records so prolificly as Morrissey be such a person in demand?

I remember when You Are The Quarry was released and it was a major deal. I assumed that The Smiths quit playing together and the get went into hiding (granted, it was his first album in seven years). But I feel like he's done enough to be a pretty accessible artist. I mean, you can have all the Morrissey you really want.

I don't much care for his music and I'm not a huge Smiths fan in the least. Morrissey is actually kinda of a boring subject although almost everyone I know either loves him or hates him.

I don't know if any recording artist of Morrissey's stature to maybe be known for being a vegetarian as much as he is known for being the lead singer of one of the best bands of a particular decade. It's like equating Paul McCartney with being left handed rather than one of The Beatles.

Morrissey is almost equally as known for his questionable sexuality and being an odd sex symbal not necessarily for his looks (he's not terrible looking) but for being a songwriter that wrote about being awkward, out of sorts and depressed. People latched onto that and made them kindred spirits to the point of being boyfriend and girlfriend.

Most like, he is bisexual although publicly he likes playing word games (once calling himself "humasexual" for being attracted to humans) and avoiding any one stereotype because he knows that girls and boys love him just the same. Gotta keep selling those records.

'Darkness On The Edge Of Town'

I like Bruce Springsteen and all, but if I have one complaint (one that prevents me from being an overly genuine fan) is that Springsteen has created a persona that's really not unlike anything David Bowie or Lady Gaga have done.

And it's not necessarily to question the authenticity of Springsteen's personal background and how the themes of his songs pertaining to "hanging tough," the plight of the worker and being a sad pap are not important to him.

But it does feel like some kind of image was molded and that has the glaze of disingenuousness. If that's a word.

A terrific album nonetheless.

'What's Going On' & 'Let's Get It On' & 'Here My Dear'

No one could do what Marvin Gaye could do. Now or then.

I beg you to do a Google search for his isolated vocal track for "I Heard It Through The Grapevine." Effortless and perfect.

I think he's probably the best soul vocalist in the genre's short history and I can't really imagine anyone being as good as Gaye was. It makes even more tragic that Gaye wound up with a heavy cocaine problem, money issues and his inexplicable death at the hands of his father.

I think What's Going On and Let's Get It On are the superior albums, but all three characterize Gaye in a lot of ways. After an extremely successful debut in the Motown world including a bevy of duet hits, he recorded the socially conscious What's Going On inspired by Obie Benson (of the Four Tops) witnessing police violence during a war protest in Berkeley.

Berry Gordy refused to release it. Gaye went on strike until it was. And it was in 1971 and went No. 1.

Two years later Gaye recorded and released Let's Get It On (I've always wondered if he intended these albums to be companion pieces because of the use of "on" as a sort of "make love not war" thing). In a lot of ways it's the complete opposite of What's Going On because it's just full of sexual, carnal energy.

Here My Dear is my least favorite of these three 1970s albums from Gaye. It's dour and sad. It is inspired by his divorce from his wife.  In seven years, Gaye managed to run the gamut of emotions from the heartbreak to sheer elation.

'The Coral'

A boringly good album from a boring British band.

'The Mortal Storm'

Sometimes you find a film with a little guts and no matter what you find yourself enjoying it more than you typically would. The Mortal Storm is one of those films.

It's not an alien story. A happy Bavarian family celebrate the birthday of their father, a noted university professor of science (chemistry or eugenics or something ... although it's intimated that he's also non-Aryan although they never call him a Jew). The next minute Adolf Hitler is elected German chancellor and their lives are thrown into tumult.

The two elder sons and the daughter's boyfriend quickly celebrate the Third Reich of the German empire by joining the Nazis. Meanwhile, family friend played by Jimmy Stewart, a farmer, fights assimilation as he foretells the policies of the Nazis including the annihilation of party opponents, intelligentsia and prejudices untold.

Soon relationships unravel as Stewart's character is bullied and the father is imprisoned and later dies under questionable circumstances. The remaining family attempts to leave the country via train. The youngest son and mother flee. The daughter is detained upon suspicion of being an enemy of the state.

She and Stewart's character attempt emigration by skis and she is murdered upon command of her former fiancé.

Why does any of this matter? What makes it any different than any other Nazi film?

This was released in 1940. A full year-and-a-half before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. Here is Jimmy Stewart telling everyone what was going on and still we found ourselves shocked at the atrocities of the Nazis.

If the Nazis are banning your films, you are probably doing things right.

'The Mad Masters'

A very difficult documentary short about the Hauka movement in central and western Africa.

Hauka was a spiritual/ritual/farcical act that involved young African men dancing and mimicking administrators in the colonizing British army and bureaucracy.

I call it a spiritual/ritual/farcical because I can't make heads or tails of it. At times it appears to be just a bunch of deadbeat African guys wasting time. Then you see them frothing at the mouth, drinking the blood of a freshly slaughtered dog and digging their hands into a cauldron of boiling water to pick at pieces of the cooking dog.

Their eyes roll into the back of their head and their bodies take unnatural shapes that would be unreasonable should these men be conscious. They act in some sort of trance because even if they wanted to really fake what they were doing it'd be impossible for anyone with a clear mind.

Still, there's something stupid about the entire thing. The men consider it a protest of the colonizers. Others consider it a sort of tribute to the white conquerers as a means of becoming more like them.

I don't know if there's any more answers as there are questions once you finish.

'Our Aim Is To Satisfy'

I wonder if I'll ever make it through all of this electronic, house, dance stuff.

'Harvest'

 Harvest put Neil Young on the map probably despite his best efforts. Although I truly feel sorry for public figures that put their privacy on the line in exchange for sharing their talents, it’s hard to understand Young playing in Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills and Nash and then releasing three relatively popular solo albums and not expecting some recognition.

Young was taken aback at the popularity that Harvest brought. It topped the Billboard 200 for two weeks. I guess since it’s impossible for me to have it both ways, I don’t comprehend someone else having it both ways.

Harvest came to fruition after Young appeared on The Johnny Cash Show (a show that concerned itself little with what was popular, but instead what Johnny Cash wanted to do inviting all sorts of country and folk acts), which also featured Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. Afterwards, Young invited the duo to his barn studio to record.

Although probably his most popular album, I care little for Harvest. I think his hits – “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man” – are some of his most boring songs.

'Figure 8'

No lie, my wife went to high school with Elliot Smith. It was during the years he lived in Duncanville, Texas. She later worked for the local newspaper and when Smith was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song (“Miss Misery” from Good Will Hunting) and she wrote a story about him.

So, when he killed himself in 2003 I was absolutely heartbroken. At the time was digging deep into all of his material including the fantastic Figure 8.

I don’t know if it’s a perfect album, but it’s close. Certainly one of my favorites of all time. I felt that Smith met a healthy median between his lower-fi early albums, which are damn near whispered, and his love for melody along with arranging and adding piano and electric guitar. If Smith was ever happy, I don’t know that he was, it had to have been while recording this album.

'Gris Gris'

Mac Rebennack oozes New Orleans. It’s not easy a recording artist, who is known best as being some ambassador for a particular city. The Beatles and Liverpool come to mind, particularly because their early music mirrored the grind of the shipping port city.

Boston and Chicago don’t represent their city any more or less than Letters to Cleo or Kanye West.  Hip-hop artists tend to attach themselves with their city or region as more often than not they tend to live by the creed of the cold streets.

Rebennack is a different story. Before recording and releasing his debut album Gris Gris, Rebennack decided on the idea of going by a nom de plume. He decided on Dr. John thanks to a supposed voodoo holy man named Dr. John Montaine. Although he never intended to keep the moniker (instead attempting to get a bandmate to adopt it as his own) , it stuck and ever since you don’t think of Dr. John without thinking of New Orleans.

Certainly, there’s a lot of New Orleans in Gris Gris, which is actually a voodoo amulet often used as a contraceptive and brought over by the West African slaves and serving as an important item amid the New Orleans voodoo scene.

Oh, and tremendous album cover too.

'Phaedra' & 'Leftism'

I was set to present these two albums (neither are which are bad, by any means) only because they reminded me of each other only because they're both electronic music with sparse lyrics.

The two are actually very, very different (although I bet Leftfield played the hell out of Phaedra when they were growing up).

Phaedra from Tangerine Dream is a sequencer-driven prog album from the 1970s and, most notably, from Germany. I mean, who was doing weirder shit than the art-school Germans in the 1970s? No one, that's who.

Imagine Pink Floyd if they dumped all of the guitars, drums and bass ... and songs lasted 10 minutes a piece.

Leftism is 1990s British trip-hop. And it's very good. If you're the type to throw a party you probably would not go wrong with this album.

Two different albums, but both are brilliant examples of two important sub-genres of recorded music.

'Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols'

I think it is funny when “punks” make a really clean, melodic rock album. What’s less anarchic than recording an album for Virgin? 

Interestingly, Sid Vicious (the noted drug addict, who sometimes played bass guitar) is featured just on one song on the Sex Pistols’ only record. Former bassist Glen Matlock was asked to return, but once he wasn’t paid he laid down only one song. Guitarist Steve Jones played bass on every other track.

Say what you will about the vapid modern entertainment culture, but Vicious is a well-known “rock god” for basically dying. He’s famous for nothing.

'The Rolling Stones'

I think it’s noteworthy that The Rolling Stones’ first album, as it was released in the United Kingdom, features the five members photographed facing the same way looking to their right at the camera. 

No identifying copy on the album cover. Just a photo with the record company’s logo. And 60 years later those same visages are as recognizable as they probably weren’t when it was released in 1964. Still, there is a certain amount of vibrato in presenting yourself as such considering how new they were.

The Rolling Stones was recorded in five days in February 1964 right when The Beatles were invading the United States. When the album was released in America in May 1964, “England’s Newest Hit Makers” along with the band’s name was added. Don’t want to mix them up with the other English hit makers.

It’s a … perfect rock album. Full of R&B, blues and early rock covers. Mick Jagger’s voice is at home. It finds its happy place amid these songs of woe and want. All of it tips of the cap to Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. It might be as good as The Rolling Stones got. Or it could be argued.