'Ocean's Rain' & 'Porcupine' & 'Crocodiles'

Ocean’s Rain is considered Echo and the Bunnymen’s best album although I prefer the earlier Porcupine, which features the great “The Killing Moon.” Crocodiles, the band’s debut, is an interesting album although it catches the band at it’s embronyic stage and sounds excessively pop and 1980s New Wave. 

 

I find it easy to argue that all five of Echo’s albums from the 1980s are really good to great and a relative must for any record collection of note. Outside of Crocodiles, you could struggle with it being 30-year-old music.

'Will The Circle Be Unbroken'

At this point in my life and the evolution of my musical taste, this is the most ideal album for me.

It’s “gritty” and unadulterated old-time country Americana, country and bluegrass. From a relative group of nobodies outside of the special guests like Maybelle Carter, Roy Acuff, Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson. 

However, the band itself is not a group of players you’d know. The group itself has been around since the late 1960s and has evolved thusly including stints from Jackson Browne and The Eagles’ Bernie Leadon. 

Worth mentioning, the Will the Circle Be Unbroken was released in 1972 just as modern country and western music began to get more and more of a commodity and would eventually deviate from its bluegrass and Americana roots. Also, the emphasis would be taken away from harmony and the group dynamic and gravitate toward a singular lead singer, a star. 

Will the Circle Be Unbroken is a total anomaly for the time. Akin to what happened when O Brother, Where Art Thou? released its soundtrack of similar blues and Americana and it catching a mainstream audience as if it were a new genre altogether. The guests on this album were members of a bygone era (Acuff, Scruggs, Carter, Watson) as the matriarch herself, Carter, would die six years later. From my perspective, this album wasn't a salute to the roots of American music or a means of pushing the voices of latter-day artists to a new audience. It's more of a swan song of a dying age, a dying breed of people.

Most notably, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band performed on Saturday Night Live as The Toot Uncommons and the backing band for Steve Martin performing his quintessential song, “King Tut.” So there’s that.

A really perfectly good album.

'Rip It Up' & 'A Walk Across The Rooftops'

I combine these two albums only because they were recorded by Scottish bands and they were released about two years apart in the early 1980s. 

Orange Juice’s Rip It Up was actually a pleasant surprise of 1980s New Wave, punk and ska. It’s a really neat album from a band that’s more notorious for spawning Edwyn Collins, who found solo success years later. And who also sorta looks like the lead singer from Fine Young Cannibals. Who are British.

The Blue Nile, as legend has it, were discovered after Linn Products, who manufactured hi-fi equipment commissioned a song to showcase their products. And The Blue Nile won that privilege and signed to a record label established by Linn.

The band, however, refutes this story saying they were already established and recording when Linn asked to use some of The Blue Nile’s music to test their equipment.

Why this matters is a motherfucking mystery.

'Hunting High and Low'

What sort of value is associated with being A-ha or in A-ha. Nobody I know could name one member from A-ha although almost everyone I know could name one A-ha song, no matter his or her age or having lived under a rock or in a cave for 30 years. 

A-ha is the biggest musical export in the history of Norway (thankfully, ABBA is from Sweden … and black metal is relatively unpopular) and that’s resulted in basically one significant album with two of their top 40 hits including “Take On Me” which is maybe one of the top 20 most popular songs in the history of recorded music.

Surely A-ha are pretty rich. They reformed for about a decade until calling it quits – for good, or so we think – in 2011. I guess it is all about the threshold of having to play “Take On Me” every night which determines how much longer you’d like to be a band. Right?

It’s interesting reading the band’s Wikipedia page and the author stating that A-ha is often perceived as a “one-hit wonder” despite two top 40 hits. Norwegians can have attitude.

'Vincebus Eruptum'

This is what happens when a garage band gets a record deal and records. The musicianship is marginal. The drummer may or may not know how to actually play his instrument. Honestly, it sounds like a poor man’s Jimi Hendrix Experience. In fact, the band culled itself down to three members to ape Hendrix’s group.

Blue Cheer’s had five incarnations spanning five decades. They’ve rolled through 11 drummers, 10 guitar players and two bassists. 

Vincebus Eruptum was the bands only album of note, and their first. It includes their only hit, a heavy cover of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues,” which is often cited as the first metal song. It’s not. But it’s fun to say so.