Monthly Archives: October 2016

922. where the soul never dies

Posted on by
Reply

“Delaney and Bonnie (Bramlett) and Friends (Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, Duane Allman, among others) cut loose with exactly the kind of raw, unpolished sort of stuff you needed after a decade like the 1960s – so many young minds burned, souls stretched thin.  Not that I was on that particular track myself at the time. I wasn’t even twelve yet. But I’d get there eventually, crashlanding from my own weird and wild early adult adventures, and then somebody put on precisely the right album.” (Philip Random)

delaneybonniefriends

925-924. Computer Blue + Darling Nikki

Posted on by
Reply

“Two in a row from the album (and movie) that finally made Prince a fact, even for white guys from the Canadian suburbs – that album being Purple Rain, of course. Not that I didn’t already think the guy was pretty darned cool in a funky r+b sort of way. You couldn’t hear twenty seconds of 1999 without thinking that. But after Purple Rain, I guess I just wasn’t seeing the colour anymore (other than purple). After Purple Rain, I realized this guy was the closest the 80s would ever get to having its own Bowie, or Beatles even. I’d crossed over, drank the paisley purple koolaid, seen God (or something similar). Every song on the album deserves to be hailed, and heard. But you probably have already heard most of them on the radio or whatever. Except maybe Computer Blue and Darling Nikki (the raunchy duo that brought Side One to a dramatic conclusion). Needless to say, they .got decent folk all hot and bothered at the time.” (Philip Random)

prince-in-purple-rain-1630

925. hallelujah

Posted on by
Reply

“It was 1984 finally, and the nightmare of George Orwell’s Big Brother hadn’t really materialized. True, there was great evil in the world, agents of brutality and control endeavoring to shut down all peace-beauty-freedom-love forever. But the outcome was still in doubt, because they didn’t yet have music under control. They weren’t even close. Maybe they had the mainstream (the Whitney Houstons, the Duran Durans, the Huey Lewises and Phil Collinses), but who the f*** cared about that crap with wild and inventive stuff erupting all over the margins, from all genres in all kinds of guises. Case in point, the Maffia, c/o Mark Stewart and On-U Sound (and its mainman, producer, knob-twiddler, dub adventurer, Adrian Sherwood), none of whom I noticed until 1984’s Pay It All Back Vol.1 crash-landed in my brain – a label sampler offering all manner of tortured beats, breaks, samples, meltdowns long before we even had names for such stuff.  At least Hallelujah had a familiar melody you could hang onto.” (Philip Random)

926. little neutrino

Posted on by
Reply

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk0Is8-gGSQ

“If you were there at the time (1976), the first you heard of Klaatu likely came in the form of rumour. They were the Beatles secretly reunited, with the clues all there if you just did a little digging. It was bullshit, of course, and thank God, because the album really wasn’t that good. Rather like what you would’ve gotten if Paul McCartney had rediscovered LSD and tried to do another Sergeant Pepper’s, but all alone this time, and maybe drinking copious amounts of vodka spiked cream soda on the side. But the last track was a keeper, something to do with split atoms, I think, and the wrath of gods thus unleashed.” (Philip Random)

927. mission (a world record)

Posted on by
Reply

Deep cut from the album that finally, irrefutably kicked the Electric Light Orchestra into the big leagues, 1976’s New World Record. A story song about an alien that comes down to earth, gets taken for a street person, files a negative report back to the home planet. It was a common theme in those days as the afterglow of the big deal moon landings faded and the various grim realities of life on earth got harder and harder to ignore. Same as it ever was.

elo-1976

928. they aren’t the world

Posted on by
Reply

If We Are The World is the worst record ever released, then it’s entirely plausible to argue that Culturcide‘s assassination of it is the best. It’s certainly the purest response to it. Just take the original, sh** all over it and otherwise make an ugly-beautiful mess of things. Maybe you just had to be there to understand. Ronald Reagan‘s trickle down economics in full effect, the rich getting ever richer, pissing from their penthouses on everybody below, nobody really noticing as they stood in line around the block for Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwartzennegar, Michael J Fox movies. There is an alternative history of the past twenty-five where the revolution did happen. The ravenous masses rose in unanimous disgust and ate the rich. And it all started with Tacky Souvenirs of Pre-Revolutionary America (the album).

(image source)