Category Archives: All Vinyl Apocalypse

1,111 greatest records you probably haven’t already heard

690. Nimrodel

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

“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)

Clash-1981-03

692. season of the witch

Posted on by
Reply

The album is called Super Session with Al Kooper, Stephen Stills and Mike Bloomfield credited on the cover, but read the fine print and you’ll discover that all three never actually play together. But so what? It’s hot stuff anyway with the Stephen Stills, Al Kooper jam on Donovan’s creepy Halloween hit Season of the Witch going all kinds of cool places for a nice long time. Trippy in a word.

AlKooper+StephenStills

693. morning dew

Posted on by
Reply

In which Einsturzende Neubauten, barely four years on from tearing up condemned Berlin real estate and calling it Art (if not music), get traditional, dig up an old folk ditty (written by a Canadian) concerning the last man and woman alive after a nuclear war, and make it their own. Which is to say, they sharpen the edges, darken the shadows, pound some metal, and otherwise call out the banshees.

Einsturzende-1987

694. Dachau blues

Posted on by
Reply

From an album where everything else is lyrically (and musically) full-on Dada to the point of absolute confusion, Captain Beefheart leaves not even a trace of ambiguity as to what this one‘s about, those Final Solution Blues being the heaviest ever known.

CaptainBeefheart-smoking

695. Celtic Rock

Posted on by
Reply

In which the the Sunshine Superman (aka Donovan) sees which way the wind is blowing at the dawn of the 1970s, ditches the flowers and patchoulie, straps on an electric guitar and gets to rocking, celtically, with a murky tale from times of old about real trolls, the kind that live in caves or under bridges, sometimes giants, sometimes dwarfs, always very ugly and keen to grab unsuspecting travelers. And it’s not just a one-off. The whole Open Road album is a keeper, its raw elemental sound reminding us that before he was anything else, Donovan Leitch was a folk singer, a minstrel, traveling alone through hollow lands, taking notes, telling stories, telling the truth.