Category Archives: All Vinyl Apocalypse

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

940. pressure drop

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“I’m pretty sure Toots + the Maytals were the first reggae band I ever consciously heard. It was their cover of John Denver’s Take Me Home Country Roads, which showed up on local radio in around 1976. I would’ve been sixteen or seventeen at the time, and I hated it. The man couldn’t sing and the rest of the band were just wrong somehow, seeming to have no idea how to play proper funk. But jump ahead to 1983 and I was naming Funky Kingston as one of my fave all time party albums. And I was right. It really is right up there. Which gets us to teenagers. When they’re wrong about something, they’re at least comprehensive about it.” (Philip Random)

toots-1973

941. look back in anger

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“A nifty bit of Bowie genius from 1979’s Lodger, the comparatively overlooked album that capped off his so-called Berlin Trilogy. So-called because Lodger was actually recorded in Switzerland and NYC in and around various tours. But Berlin was never far away from Bowie’s heart and brain in those days, the friction of its divided soul fueling mutant sounds and angles that couldn’t seem to help invent the future — the decade to be known as the 1980s.” (Philip Random)

bowie-1979-01

942. imperial zeppelin

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Peter Hammill (aka The Jesus of angst) actually has fun here in a track from his first solo album Pawn Hearts. Dating back to 1971 (the same year that Hammill’s band Van der Graaf Generator called it quits for a while, though they would return to further trouble our dreams), Philip Random wouldn’t actually hear Imperial Zeppelin until at least 1979 at which point it quickly became a key part of the soundtrack to his short, albeit rich “tea drinking period”.

peterhammill-1971

943. house of the rising sun

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“They released a few albums and a pile of singles, but for me Frijid Pink will always be just the one thing – that band whose full roar garage take on House of the Rising Sun was (short of Jimi Hendrix) the heaviest thing ever heard on AM pop radio back in that strange, extended season of stormy and endless summer that happened somewhere between 1969 and 1972 (the rear view is always confusing).” (Philip Random)

frijidpink

944. private world

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“I would’ve first heard of the New York Dolls when they were still pretty new, 1973, early Grade Nine. A friend pointed out a picture of them, probably in Creem magazine, guys in dresses, even freakier than Alice Cooper. No mention of their music. In fact, I wouldn’t hear any of that for at least another five years. A mixtape heard at a punk rock party. I’d say they fit right in, but they didn’t. They stood out. Like the Rolling Stones at their sleazy early 70s best, except harder, trashier, sleazier. Who cared what they were wearing?” (Philip Random)

newyorkdolls-1973

945. ghosts on the road

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“Guadalcanal Diary generally got compared to REM back in the day, because they were also from Georgia and their guitars had a tendency to jangle. But their songs always felt more direct to me, less concerned with being Art, more with melodies that tended to get stuck in your head for days afterward. Their first release, In The Shadow Of The Big Man, was jammed with such stuff.” (Philip Random)

guadalcanalshadow