Two Stone Roses tracks presented as one because they really are – just played in different directions. Or as some genius put it at the time, “You know the drugs are good when songs are changing direction and you don’t really notice.” And the drugs were very good in Manchester at the time of that first (and only really) Stone Roses album.
Straight outa Jamaica, 1975, Arthur Louis takes on Bob Dylan’s all-time greatest dying cowboy song and makes perfect sense of it, with a little help from a guy named Eric.
“Lewd, crude (some have called it obnoxious) title track from the last Rolling Stones album that anyone needs to hear. Because past Some Girls, they just wouldn’t be that dangerous anymore. Probably connected with Keith Richard finally having to clean up his off-stage act. The western world would never be the same.” (Philip Random)
In which Doug Sahm (aka Sir Douglas Quintet) finds himself in barely post Summer of Love (and madness) Haight-Ashbury (while fleeing a Texas drug bust) and gets in touch with some pretty serious vibrations. “Serious enough to percolate through the decades and finally find me in early winter 1999, stoned on some un-named island, half-seriously wondering if the world was going to end at midnight, New Years Eve. They settled me. The vibrations, that is.” (Philip Random)
In which young Frank Zappa (with help from his Mothers) files his report on the Watts Rebellion (aka riots) of August 1965, pulling no punches lyrically or musically. In fact, it’s the song that got the band signed to MGM Records in the first place, producer Tom Wilson having heard it and decided, yeah, a white blues band from LA, why the hell not? The rest is, shall we say, history.
“Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation being arguably The Greatest Album Ever assuming you don’t mind a pile of noise mixed up with your raw yet mystical guitar stylings, Kissability being the kind of nugget that would’ve torn the charts apart in a better, cooler world. But good luck with that in the Winter of Hate, which is to say, 1988. Twenty years on from the Summer of Love, and trust that it rained every f***ing day. Nothing else to do but daydream.” (Philip Random)
Randophonic 