Category Archives: All Vinyl Apocalypse

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

499. done changed my way of living

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“It says 1968 on the record jacket but this Taj Mahal stomper is pure 1998 for me, serving as a personal anthem while I scaled back certain extremes of lifestyle, making that decision that most of us make as we see our forties looming – to not just burn out, but to change, because change is good, certainly the kind you choose to make. Like maybe opening your mind, maybe starting to actually ‘get’ the blues. Not just the obvious stuff, howling and mean. No, the real stuff, or real enough anyway, whatever Taj Mahal was digging up and dealing out way back when.” (Philip Random)

TajMahal-1968-withBIRDS

500. guns of Brixton

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“More than any other track, I’m thinking Guns of Brixton is what hooked me to the Clash. Because as much as I’d enjoyed their punk and powerful raving and drooling, this was obviously something else. Reggae, I guess, but not really. Because there’s way more going on here than just some white people ripping off Jamaican sounds, making it all sound like tourist music. Nah, Guns of Brixton is dangerous. What do you do when the cops bust in?” (Philip Random)

Clash-1979-room

501. 16 tons

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The album title Wereldsuccessen says it all (a Dutch double vinyl compilation that I grabbed one day at a yard sale). Because by 1970, Mr. Tom Jones was an international monster, a force of passion and life that had more or less conquered all comers be they hip or straight, cool or absurd, and all by taking none of it remotely seriously. Except maybe when he took on 16 Tons, the old mining song, his Welsh blood rising, giving voice to who knows how many ghosts.

TomJones-1970-cookingSteak

502. country death song

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The Violent Femmes‘ debut album tends to get most of the hype, but the follow up Hallowed Ground is better. It goes deeper, rocks harder, bites more fiercely, covers more ground. And it kicks off with Country Death Song, a murder ballad that gets all the more harrowing when you realize that Gordon Gano was still in high school when he wrote it.  The opposite of a feel-good unless you just can’t enough of that those toe tapping backwoods American myths and legends and brutal truths.

violentFEMMES-1984-promo

503. I Travel

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“Back in the very early 1980s, before they became huge, absurd and even stupider than their name implied, Simple Minds were pretty darned cool. Smart modern beats and grooves that weren’t afraid to be dance-able. Lots of pumped up sonics, often machine driven, but hinting at an inner light. And they were strong live. I’m guessing I Travel was about being on the road, not that I ever bothered to study it. Just did what it was telling me, which was hit the dance floor, shake off the ghosts, be glad I was alive in interesting times.” (Philip Random)

504. gut feeling

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“Devo were impossible to ignore when I first started hearing them in about 1978. Because there had NEVER been anything remotely like them. Even a diehard prog-rocker like me got that. But being the genius I was in my late teens, I found them easy to dismiss as gimmicky fun, a one or three hit wonder at best. I mean, they weren’t actually important or anything. Then one day I was hitchhiking, caught a ride with a punk sort of guy who had the first album on, playing loud. Gut Feeling came on as we were crossing the Second Narrows Bridge, everything steely industrial grey, giving way to the great North Shore mountains, and let’s just say, I realized I was wrong, wrong, wrong … yet again.” (Philip Random)

devo-1978-TV