'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.