Category Archives: All Vinyl Apocalypse

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

407. big brother + chant of the ever circling skeletal family

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“As the story goes, David Bowie’s first post-Ziggy Stardust album was supposed to be a musical adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, but he couldn’t secure the rights, so it morphed into Diamond Dogs which was its own weird, extreme thing with a few explicitly 1984 songs included in the mix, including the climactic Big Brother that manages to get quite epic before things go deeply off kilter with the Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family. Which is not just some b-grade horror stuff. It’s real. I’ve heard that infernal family, while deep inside the wrong kind of acid trip, the ‘I’m Dead’ kind, the kind you just want to end, but it goes on for millions of years, with all these wraith-like forms howling at you forever, because you’re dead, you died, this is what comes next. Which I suppose is relevant to 1984. What it feels like to get stomped in the face with a boot. Forever. Great music though.” (Philip Random)

DavidBowie-1974-liveBlue

408. thela hun gingeet

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It’s 1981 and King Crimson main man Robert Fripp has reformed the band (after better part of seven years in the wilderness) with a whole new sound and Discipline, and the result is thundering (to put it mildly). Thela Hun Gingeet translates as Heat In The Jungle and it concerns an experience that Adrian Belew (the new guy) had while out for a walk with a tape recorder in the still rather mean streets of NYC. Word is, it actually caused stereo systems to catch fire back in the day.

KingCrimson-1981-liveEDIT

409. tocatta

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“I cannot tell a lie. I was coerced into this selection by my good friend and neighbour, Motron. ‘What do you mean there’s nothing from Brain Salad Surgery on your list? It’s only Emerson Lake + Palmer’s greatest work. What are you, a critic or something?’ Like there was no worse word he could hang on me. And he was right, sort of. Brain Salad Surgery is worthy of inclusion for its title alone, and its cover, an HR Giger original. And the music wasn’t so bad either, just a little (and a lot) overdone at times. So we get Tocatta (Keith Emerson‘s impression of Alberto Evaristo Ginastera‘s original). It’s fast, it’s fierce, it’s as nightmarish an assault as any chart-topping band of the early 1970s was capable of delivering. Or as Motron puts it, soundtrack for the inevitable attack of the meat eating robots. It is going to happen.” (Philip Random)

ELP-1973-live

410. her eyes are a blue million miles

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An almost normal song from the good Captain which proves beyond doubt that there was serious method in his oft savage strangeness, because as Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles makes clear, he had it in him to nail a whole other career of chart topping, unit shifting odes to blue eyes and their imponderable depths. In fact, you get the idea, Beefheart could’ve done it all his sleep. But nah, that was somebody else’s dream.

CaptainBeefheart-1972-withART

411. where is this dream of your youth?

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“The Strawbs original recording of Where is This Dream of Your Youth? is nice enough, a nifty little bit of folk pop, but it’s Rick Wakeman‘s sustained live freakout on the Hammond organ (found on 1970’s Just a Collection of Antiques + Curios) that hooked me, and keeps on hooking me, just keeps going, going, going through the decades – peaks and valleys and all manner of long haired freaky looking people grooving along in smoke filled rooms, smelling of incense and wacky tabacky. Because groovy still meant something in those days, with a new decade dawning, the revolution at hand. Or so it must have seemed.” (Philip Random)

Strawbs-Wakeman

412. we will not be lovers

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Fisherman’s Blues is the album where main Waterboy Mike Scott went to Ireland for a few days, ended up getting lost on the west coast somewhere, not returning for years (or so the legend goes, and goes, and goes). We Will Not Be Lovers feels like the result of a powerhouse jam session wherein rock and folk attitudes piled into each other in a sustained and brilliant collision. “The words are pretty sharp as well, concerning the opposite of a love. Not hate so much as … well, you know the feeling. You look that other in the eye and all you can see is carnage. And yet you are compelled.” (Philip Random)