Category Archives: All Vinyl Apocalypse

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

389. the beauty of time is that it’s snowing [psychedelic B.B.]

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This one’s found toward the end of side one of the first Steve Miller Band album which sort of stumbled out of freak scene San Francisco at a time when nobody at the business end of things really knew how to handle all the psychedelic weirdness, so they just got out of the way. Thank all gods for that. Because there are few better examples anywhere of just how delirious things were in those days. Songs broke down, evaporated into seagulls and drones, found some bluesy B.B. King riff, evolved into profound and visionary choruses, ended up getting titles that had nothing to do with anything you’d actually heard. Maybe you had to be there, but maybe we all were, in our way, and still are, we children of that madly accelerated past’s glowing future.

SteveMillerBand-1968

390. hypnotized

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“There is no Steely Dan on this list, mainly because I figure you’ve already heard everything of theirs that I genuinely love (which to be honest, is almost all on their first album). Not that I’d deny they were an immensely talented crowd – they just weren’t for me. Too smooth and easy to listen to (albeit hard to play), too mid-70s soft rock and sophisticated and all tangled up with cocaine culture. Which Hypnotized captured perfectly, even if I didn’t particularly like what was getting captured, it was rendered beautiful anyway, and mysterious. Except I could never find the album it was from. Because it wasn’t Steely Dan as I finally figured out one day well into the 1990s. It was Fleetwood Mac, wandering through their vague middle period, lost somewhere between their late 60s psychedelic blues and their mid-70s supernova status. When Bob Welch was doing much of the steering.” (Philip Random)

391. sookie sookie

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“The memory is of Grade Seven, a kid named Malcolm Cale that I wasn’t supposed to hang with, because he was known to be bad. Except we both walked home from school the same way. So I inevitably ended up at his place, which was almost always empty after school, no parents or brothers and sisters around to stop us digging through his dad’s Playboys, having a smoke, sharing a beer, cranking the stereo loud. Which usually meant Malcolm’s fave, Steppenwolf‘s first album, the one with Born to be Wild, and The Pusher (God damn him – we loved that, actual swearing on record). But the track that stands up best for me now is Sookie Sookie, funky and hard, and at least as cool as John Kay‘s shades.” (Philip Random)

392. please crawl out your window

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“True fact. Though The Band may have been Bob Dylan’s favourite band, they didn’t do much actual studio work together. Whatever they had, it was mostly a live thing, which is certainly how Please Crawl Out Your Window feels: just plug in and go for it. Released as a single in late 1965, it mostly missed the charts at the time, thus freeing it up to land freshly with me maybe twenty years later (again via the Biograph box set). Like a postcard from some past cool scene I only wish I could’ve known. The light itself must’ve been different in those days. And it probably was, given all the speed those guys were doing.” (Philip Random)

BobDylan-1965-liveRobbieR

393. sin city

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Los Angeles, 1969, murder, mayhem, earthquakes, rumors of Armageddon, the whole city of angels falling into the Pacific, such that even on the 33rd Floor, beyond the gold plated door, the Lord’s almighty flame would find the wicked, and soon. Meanwhile, country rock was getting invented by a curious crowd of drugged out hippies in cowboy suits calling themselves the Flying Burrito Brothers. Good times.

FlyingBurritoBros-1969-live

394. green shirt

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“David Lee Roth may be a world class ass but he does have a way with a one-liner, such as, ‘The reason more rock critics like Elvis Costello than Van Halen is that more rock critics look like Elvis Costello than Van Halen.’ Which is my way of saying, I guess I’m just not a critic, because I’ve never been an overwhelming Elvis C fan (more of an appreciator really), and most of his tracks that I do really like, you’ve probably already heard them a bunch, and thus they exude allergy potential. But not Green Shirt from 1979’s Armed Forces. I never heard too much Green Shirt. Tight, sharp, and smart as pop.” (Philip Random)

ElvisCostello-1979