OLD POSTS

I've been lazy and since I don't upload any of these albums myself, most of them seem to have been taken down from mediafire. I was just going to discreetly re-up all of them... but the number kept getting bigger and I don't want to sit at my computer all day. So I'm just going to leave this here and let people comment if they want something re-upped that has been taken down.

p.s. google it first! someone else probably uploaded it!

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN- LIVE IN PASSAIC, NEW JERSEY 1978

This is the live performance to end all live performances. You can listen to this entire three-hour concert on youtube if you so desire.


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GRAM PARSONS- GP

When you're sad you often want to listen to sad music, and traditionally country music is seen as a genre whose sole-focus is encapsulating the sounds and feelings of heartbreak, regret, loneliness, and whatever shitty emotion happens to be afflicting the writer at that point. Gram Parsons' music perfectly fits this stereotype and not just because his is one of the saddest stories in all of country music. A member of The International Submarine Band, The Byrds, and The Flying Burrito Brothers, Parsons had his eggs in many influential baskets. After ditching all of these bands, he went solo in 1972 but would die a year later at age 27 after overdosing on liquor and morphine. His manager, likely a cool dude, honoured Gram's dying wish and kidnapped Gram's body and coffin from the funeral, drove them out to the Joshua Tree desert and burned them down to ashes. This legendary story, combined with Gram's reputation for being a bit weird, tormented, and under-appreciated in his lifetime, makes him my second favourite member of the twenty-seven-club.

This is his first solo LP and it's just a great, sad, and beautiful country album. If you dig this, the second LP Grievous Angel, is just as good.

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GROUNDHOGS- THANK CHRIST FOR THE BOMB

Groundhogs are one of the few lost classic rock bands that actually deserved to be remembered and aren't just some hyped up record-nerd bullshit. A power-trio in the very traditional sense, the songs are composed of fast, bluesy rhythms with tons of jamming, the occasional sabbathy heavy section and oh yeah, killer solos! I'm a douche so I can tell he's using single-coils and sometimes the guitar sounds a lot thinner than is appropriate for the songs, but when it clicks, it does so in the perfect way. The third track is as good as anything Cream ever did.

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ALEX CHILTON- LIKE FLIES ON SHERBERT

Alex Chilton is awesome. If you enjoy plain old rock music or some really amazing songwriting then you owe it to yourself to get into this man and his odd body of work. The back story that everyone is maybe familiar with goes something like this:

A teenage Chilton somehow lands himself a job as the guitar player in the 60's one-hit-wonders The Box Tops and ends up singing on their biggest hit, that band splits and Chilton befriends fellow songwriter Chris Bell. After awhile they gather two other musicians and form the now legendary Big Star. They write and record two of the greatest and most influential power-pop albums of all time but no one hears them and no one who does seems to care enough. The band splits sometime in the early 70's, Chris Bell becomes a junkie and ends up killing himself while Chilton spends the rest of the decade in a permanent state of depression and intoxication. He regroups with a former Big Star bandmate to record some songs for a new album as The Sister Lovers (the two of them were dating a set of sisters) but it ends up being released as a Big Star album entitled Third, which the label thinks will yield more interest for the album. It doesn't and the album flops, which is no surprise to Chilton at this point. It would go on to be the most lauded and influential of The Big Star LP's but at the time it was just another failure in an ever-expanding list. Shortly after that, Chilton went back to getting fucked up on a permanent basis and somewhere in the haze decided to do his first solo album, Like Flies on Sherbert. A few years later, Chilton became an in-demand producer for new-wave and punk bands and finally earned the long-overdue praise for the material he penned with Big Star. An untouchable cult-figure from the mid 80's on, Chilton enjoyed critical success and unwavering support from the independent music community until his death a few years ago...

But this album... oh boy. One critic said it was the worst album ever made. People hated it's amateurish production and incredibly sloppy playing but listening to it now, you get to hear a power-pop album that predates lo-fi, indie-rock and alt-country by about twelve years. I think it's great and so did Chilton. He said it was made during the worst period of his life but it somehow managed to be a fun reminder of that time instead of the drug-addled mess everyone made it out to be. Decide for yourself I guess.

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Cluster - Zuckerzeit

So here's a perfect record. What I generally define perfection as is not necessarily that all the songs are good, or all the parts all have meaning all of the time to everyone who will ever hear this, but that the package operates as a whole of it's parts, not off of one or two singles and the rest of the chaff just holding it together like glue on a model plane. This is some serious genius stuff right here, I don't even know what to compare it to in terms of the same time. It definitely has a quality that artists like Boards of Canada would have found very attractive in building their aesthetic. This record kind of jams with some of the more spaced Can stuff but it's still in a league of it's own. The album lead in, 'Hollywood' is probably one of my favorite pieces of music and also a indicator if this is going to be your jam or not. I hope it is, you will not be sorry.

PLAY ME

MILES DAVIS- A TRIBUTE TO JACK JOHNSON

Yeah, I'm posting some jazz. Get over it... if you want to. This is Miles in 1970, definitely entering into the era in which he was obsessed with rock and soul music but still a jazz player at heart. This shit is very not jazzy. It sounds at first like it's going to be a blues jam, then Miles shows up and starts blowing over everything in the way only he's capable of but you also get some cool shit from John Mclaughlin and Herbie Hancock, who apparently wasn't supposed to be on here but was in the building during recording and just showed up to lay down some organ. If you're new to Miles, don't start here unless you're tempted by what I've written above. This is one of his more atypical albums, of which there are many.

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THE EAGLES- DESPERADO

Some things take a long time and for me, one of them was the Eagles. Marred by permanent uncool status by everyone, including the most ironic hipsters, (strange considering every douchebag with a mustache and a fixie will go on about how Fleetwood Mac is supposedly amazing but mention this band and you will get scoffed) the Eagles have never been given a fair shake by the music-snob types who decide what is and isn't good these days... if you are one of the aforementioned douchebags, I do not apologize because the Eagles and the Mac sound exactly the fucking same just the Mac have Stevie Nicks and her legendary cocaine-up-the-ass tales to boost them into hipster favour... fuck I hate cool people.

Point is, this is some golden 70's rock n' roll right here. Due to all the bullshit, I basically never gave the band a chance until finally one night my friend and I were driving around at 2AM and he says "hey, I know you hate the Eagles BUT you should give this album a listen. It's a concept album about two brothers, one good, one bad and their trials and tribulations!"... Don't ask me why, but I felt compelled to just sit back, turn up the volume and listen without prejudice. Long story short, this album is great and so are the Eagles. Still too douchey to give em a chance? Fine, I'm sure there's some great new minimal-techno from France that's just begging to have its ass sniffed

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CULPEPER'S ORCHARD- S/T

This is something of a lost-classic. Unfortunately it's really great heavy-psych with elements of prog and folk... Not exactly a style that hipster music-nerds are currently enamored with so I imagine this will stay in the lost-classic section for at least a few more years. According to Wikipedia they weren't even a big deal in their homeland of Denmark... shitty because this is better than a lot of supposedly 'classic' music from the era. You may want some chemical-aid before taking in this one

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BOSTON

It's saturday night.

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NEIL YOUNG- AMERICAN STARS N' BARS

This is one of my favourite Neil Young albums and as far as I can tell, it's not really included in the cannon of his greatest albums. A damn shame really, as this is his best synthesis of country-balladry and drunken guitar-wailing. It was widely unavailable and fairly unknown for a long time because it was not transferred to CD or reissued after its 1977 release. Thankfully about eight years ago it was reissued alongside On the Beach and a few other not-so-greats...

Now people will tell you that On the Beach is his classic 'lost' album and the great minds over at pitchfork gave it a 9.5 rating, which didn't help the throngs of hipsters who immediately decided it was their faaaavourite Neil Young album... well those people don't know After the Gold Rush from Trans, maaaannnnn! This is the shit, trust me. Country-fried bummer jams for the weary soul. Tear in your beer shit

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THIN LIZZY- JAILBREAK

I'm tired and I won't go into any detail about this. All I'll say is that this record is probably better than you think it is. If you don't like guitars and feeling good then don't even bother.

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SIR LORD BALTIMORE- KINGDOM COME

This is another one of those 'proto-metal-why-don't-more-people-know-about-this?' records and shit, this one smokes! The guitar is so thick and fuzzed-out and it cannot wait for the next solo, meanwhile the singer sounds like he's just escaped from an asylum and found his true calling... more boogie than doom but man... think a faster Grand Funk with more sloppy abandon

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GENESIS- FOXTROT

The other night my friend and I drove around listening to this album on repeat. I had never heard it before and all I can say is I wish I hadn't held out for so long. This is phenomenal prog. Every member shines, the songs never descend into mindless wanking and believe it or not, these songs contain a lot of feeling. Prog and emotion, I know. It sounds crazy. Enjoy!

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MIDDLE CLASS- OUT OF VOGUE

blah, blah, blah. hardcore. 1978. no shit? yup, 1978. its not that amazing but there a million KBD-loving assholes who will tell you otherwise. If you like hardcore then definitely check this out. Has a weird vibe. Kind of like they had no idea what they were doing. First song is pretty cool

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STONED

Linked HERE is a documentary that was brought to my attention today. A pretty recent documentary on the American doom/stoner-metal underground from the 70's onward. Lots of great interviews, archival footage and, oh yeah! GREAT music!

SHOES- BLACK VINYL SHOES

I love power-pop. A lot of it is too cheesy for its own good. Most of it is not as good as Cheap Trick's first five releases. Shoes are an exception. and exceptionally good one! but seriously, This is a really cool power-pop album. Recorded at the band's house in Zion, Illinois! This is fifteen songs of sugary-goodness that will have you tapping your feet and thinking about mushy-stuff, which is what I do all the time anyway.

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CHRIS BELL- I AM THE COSMOS

For a long time Big Star were a band who's appeal I just didn't understand. Countless 'most under-appreciated bands of all-time' lists, constantly mentioned amongst great ahead-of-their-time bands like MC5 and New York Dolls and still on Allmusic's genre listing of proto-punk?

Upon first hearing 'Feel' I was immediately disappointed. I wanted everything I'd read, not the sugary 70's pop I was given. Needless to say, I left Big Star alone for a long time. Some years later I was getting into Cheap Trick pretty heavily and decided Big Star were worth a revisit. Oh what a fool I was for sleeping on them all those years. Some of the best pop-music ever committed to record.

So, a couple of months ago I saw that 4 Men With Beards had reissued this album by Chris Bell, one half of Big Star's chief songwriting-duo, that I had never heard of. Knowing that label's pretty reliable selection in the material they see fit to reissue, I opted to make a spur-of-the-moment purchase and I was not disappointed.

Much in the same way that Big Star's last original album Third was a sharp left-turn into sadsville, I Am The Cosmos is basically a heroin-soaked car ride to the edge of a cliff in the middle of the night. Bible in hand, of course. Bell would die shortly after the majority of these songs were completed, while driving home from the restaurant he worked at...

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RUSH- FLY BY NIGHT

Over the years there has been one constant when Rush is concerned and that is the polarizing place they occupy in the minds of music fans. Some people, like my former self, throw out the common complaints: "They suck" "Geddy Lee is the worst singer of all time" "They're douchebags" "It's sooooo nerdy."

Then of course, there are those, like my current self, who have nothing but the highest praise for the boys: "They're awesome!" "Geddy Lee has an amazing voice" "They're really genuine people" "It's so cool!"

I understand if you're one of the former and if so, I urge you to check out this gem in their discography that I think is not only one of their best, but also the album that least embodies the Rush-stereotype. If you enjoy any element of 70's hard rock then you owe it to yourself to give this a listen.

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