Monthly Archives: August 2017

686. nobody’s fault but mine

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“As my friend Mark once put it, Presence is the good Led Zeppelin heroin album — the mostly sh** one being In Through The Out Door as Jimmy Page was too f***ed up to care. Either way, the Zeppelin’s days of full-on world dominance and glory were slipping past them by 1976, which didn’t exactly stop them from laying down some of the evilest blues mankind has ever known. Even if Nobody’s Fault But Mine is about taking personal responsibility for the mess you’re in, which, when you think about it, is very mature behavior, not really evil at all.” (Philip Random)

ledzeppelin-1977

687. drop the bomb

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“A friend of mine caught Trouble Funk live around this time (1986) while on business in their hometown of Washington, DC (on a Saturday night, of course). I remember him trying to describe the show to me. Like rap, except not at all really because they weren’t rapping, and there was a full-on band. And Holy F***ing Sh** did did people go wild for it! Drop The Bomb indeed.” (Philip Random)

TroubleFUNK

688. Welcome to the Pleasuredome

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“1984 was Frankie‘s year (Goes To Hollywood, that is). Nobody had heard of them before. Nobody would ever really care about them after. The root of it, I figure, was a line from Two Tribes (which won’t be on this list because I’m assuming you’ve heard it). ‘Are we living in a land where sex and horror are the new gods?’ The land they were from was England, but given the degree of international success they had, it’s safe to say they were speaking of the whole mad Cold War world. Which put the Pleasuredome everywhere, including spread across the entirety of side one of Frankie’s debut double album.” (Philip Random)

689. ease

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“Nobody saw this coming in 1986. Public Image Ltd (ie: original Sex Pistol John Lydon) combining forces with Bill Laswell, Ginger Baker, Riuchi Sakamoto, Stevie Vai (and more) and the result was something called Album (unless you bought it in cassette or CD format) which absolutely thundered when it wanted to. In the case of Ease, that meant the closest thing to a proper Led Zeppelin planet cruncher that anybody’d heard since at last 1975. I’m still pretty sure it set the atmosphere on fire for a few seconds one night in early spring.” (Philip Random)

PIL-1986

690. Nimrodel

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBWGjT-XV6g

Camel being a so-called second tier Prog Rock outfit (in other words, not King Crimson, Genesis, Yes, Pink Floyd or ELP), Nimrodel (found on their second album Mirage) being epic in all the right ways. It starts with a parade, it works all manner of moods and changes, it’s even inspired by Lord of the Rings. And at less than ten minutes (even including the parade) it doesn’t overstay its welcome, just takes you there, where the magic is smooth and beautiful and even strong when it needs to be. It must’ve been 1974.

691. the call up

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“Have I raved enough yet about how indispensably, imperfectly essential the Clash’s Sandinista is? Probably not. Three slabs of vinyl, thirty-six songs, jams, dubs, meltdowns, whatever you want to call them. Not World Music so much as what the world actually sounded like in 1980-81, including war, here-there-everywhere, young men being called up, sent off to do and die. Which is what The Call-Up‘s about (from about halfway through Side Four). Don’t go, young man. Don’t fall for the patriotic bullsh** of old men whose blood won’t be doing the spilling. Remember that rose you want to live for.” (Philip Random)

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