37. Phil Spector & Various Artists - A Christmas Gift to You from Phil Spector (1963)

Tracks: White Christmas//Frosty the Snowman//The Bells of St. Mary's//Santa Clause is Coming to Town//Sleigh Ride//Marshmallow World//I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus//Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer//Winter Wonderland//Parade of the Wooden Soldiers//Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)//Here Comes Santa Clause//Silent Night

For an Antipodean, the iconography of Christmas can be quite puzzling. Every year, in the midst of summer, the streets are draped with those cut-out snow flakes and Father Christmas prances about in snowscapes on TV. I'll wander into a supermarket and hear "White Christmas" coming over the PA, but unless I'm feeling particularly confrontational I generally won't give it that much thought. But the fact remains that it's High Summer in December here in Australia, and still we cling to things like reindeer and winter wonderlands despite the absolute lack of relevance to our culture. I suppose we interact with the more wintry aspects of Christmas in the same way that most people associate with the Holy Land, but it still seems faintly ridiculous each year when November rolls round and the fake frost starts gracing the storefront windows.

This acceptance of an alien Christmas experience is actually typical of much Australian culture. Essentially a Western enclave tacked-on to the bottom of the Far East, we've never really embraced either our neighbours or our peculiar lot. Almost everyone here is either an immigrant or the child of an immigrant, associating themselves with their mother countries, and those that are "Australian" many generations deep tend to cling tightly to whatever their original stock was - be it English, Scots, German or Czech. The result is a country that tends to live outside of itself to a considerable extent, simultaneously fiercly proud of its local culture and deeply insecure about how it is perceived by the rest of the world. If I could sum-up my perception of the Australian condition in a few words, it would be of a group of children who have been sent-off to a Summer camp and are enjoying themselves a great deal, but at the same time are waiting desperately to be allowed to go back home to their mothers.

I suppose it's something Americans feel too, this idea that their country is something of a sham - just a reflection in a cheap mirror of the genuine Old World. But Americans have had so long to create a history for themselves, and have such a powerful mythic foundation built on the very idea of their newness and self-conscious self-differation from the Old World, that they ride this out quite well. In short, they've decided they're better than Europe, and they've set-about proving it. Australia, by contrast, is deeply conscious of how short it falls in comparison to its perceptions of the US and Europe, and has tried to cover this up with a great deal of hollow bravado. The best example of this is our incessant desire to go off and stick our noses in the business of others, fighting in wars that don't have much to do with us and consistently trying to bat above our weight (Kylie Minogue is another good example, I suppose). America did this too, and had the resources to pull it off - except, apparently, in competitive soccer. Meanwhile Australia is a tiny country, and we're more like the child who gets excited over winning a merit award at primary school, not realising that every other child gets one too.

The point of all of this, arriving in my long and ponderous way, is that I have never ridden in a sleigh but I have worn shorts outside on Boxing Day (though not boxers, regrettably). I also like Christmas music too, although being an Australian atheist it has about as much relevance to me as an Israeli cattle shed has to a full-blooded Welshman.

So, having said I like Christmas music the question now arises of whether or not I like this particular Christmas music. The answer is... it's OK I guess. The problems that beset this collection are the same as those that crop-up in any Christmas album - you have some very fine and enjoyable tunes done badly, some very bad tunes done finely, and some good songs done great. So while this means that things are largely par for the course, there are a few elements to this album that help to lift its game.

The first is, most obviously, Phil Spector. General consensus holds that Spector is batshit insane (evidence to support this ranges from minor eccentricities like having musicians sit-in silent on recording sessions for fear that their absence would change the sound of the room, to more grandiose lunancy such as locking Ronnie Spector away for months in his house or forcing the Ramones to repeat their parts ad infinitum at gun point), but be that as it may he did provide a number of vital contributions to popular music - namely, girl groups and the Wall of Sound. Now I'm not saying he invented the former, but he just might be able to claim credit on the latter, or at least that's what rock historians always say.

The Phil Spector "Wall of Sound" was actually a pretty simple thing. Spector had an enormous echo-chamber set-up, with angles and planes abounding within it so skewed as to make R'lyeh look like Bauhaus. This was Gold Star, his one-of-a-kind studio, and a lot of his productions (or at least the backing tracks - I can't recall precisely) were recorded more or less live in the studio. Everything would echo around and the glorious, suffocating harmonic reverberations created, well, a massive wall of sound. It was a bit thin, really, in terms of the equalizing, but damned if it didn't sound great blaring out in mono. The pinnacle of this sort of thing is probably "River Deep, Mountain High", on which Spector asembled a massive orchestra including multiple bass-players, conga drummers and banks of electric guitarists - although some people (myself being one of them) think that he was permanently one-upped in this by the release of My Blood Valentine's Loveless twenty-odd years later. Then again, maybe Brian Wilson managed it only a couple of years on - he had a more sophisticated set-up consisting of a closed-off metal echo chamber with a speaker at one end and microphones strung along its length to pick-up the different levels of reverb as the soundwaves traveled down the tunnel. This meant that Wilson could pump a single track of audio through the chamber, listen to the different pick-ups to find the exact sound he wanted, and then record the treated track and mix it back down into the finished recording at whatever level he wanted. Compared to this, Spector was basically just getting a bunch of guys together to yell loudly in a public toilet.

Anyway, it worked, so there's that. It also more or less came to typify Spectors sound until he became something of a one-trick pony, but then who cares if you only know one trick as long as it's a good trick. And besides, the Wall of Sound is especially useful for Christmas songs since it manages to make damned near everything sound like it's happening inside of a snowstorm.

The other big plus to this album is that, in addition to wonderful covers like Darlene Love's "White Christmas", the Ronette's "Frosty the Snowman" with trademark throaty vocals, and the Crystals' explosive rendition of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", you also get a truly great original in the form of the sublime "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)". It's really just a big tidal wave of yearning, but the hook is glorious and Darlene Love provides a truly beautiful soul vocal. It's really one of my very favourite songs, and one of the few Christmas tunes that I feel like listening to all through the year (the other is Julie London's "I'd Like You for Christmas", if you really must know).

Unfortunately while there are exceptional songs here a lot of the other material is just sort of "there", if you sass me. And then there's the problem that most of the good songs here have both been played to death every single year since their release, and thoroughly ripped-off in terms of sound and style by seemingly every single hack R&B singer to even so much as glance at a microphone. It's infuriating! And then there's Spector's fantastically ill-advised voice-overs in which he thanks everyone for buying his album... Best to say as little of those as possible. And I've not even touched on the fact that ninety percent of Christmas music is just vapid novelty numbers anyway.

In any event, while this is a good album, I think the main thing that it proves is that Philles records should have just stuck to singles like they apparently seem, for the most part, to have done. It's kind of funny that despite being one of only twelve long-players they put-out it mostly just seems like an over-extended vehicle for its stand-out single. In fact, this is probably the real reason that this album is here - Spector's early work is massively influential, and this provides just about the only chance in LP format to examine it undiluted, even though anyone being honest with themselves would instead recommend a singles compilation of some kind.

So, in a word: a great Christmas album but a somewhat scattershot LP.

7.5/10

Download: Darlene Love - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) Mp3

36. Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1962)

Tracks: Blowin’ In the Wind//The Girl from North Country//Masters of War//Down the Highway//Bob Dylan’s Blues//A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall//Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright//Bob Dylan’s Dream//Oxford Town//Talking World War III Blues//Corrina, Corrina//Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance//I Shall Be Free

"Unlike most of the songs now days've been written uptown in Tin Pan Alley, that's where most of the folk songs come from now days, this is a song, this wasn't written up there - this was written somewhere down in the United States..."

- "Bob Dylan's Blues"

Oh hey there Bob Dylan, doing your whole bob-dylany thing. You are one the reasons I am doing this list and it is quite nice to have met you at last.

This isn’t actually Dylan’s very first album, but it’s the one everyone pretends was his first since his actual debut is apparently not that great. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, however, is pretty great. It’s simple stuff, really – just Dylan strumming and plucking away at his guitar for the most part, taking breaks from the vocals to let loose with a bit of simple harmonica work. But! Dylan was both quite a fine songwriter and an equally able interpreter of material, and as a consequence manages to overcome his musical limitations and spare backing. The result is a pretty cool mixture of acoustic blues and folk, even stepping over the pond to steal the melody and construction from “Scarborough Fair” for his lovely little love song “The Girl from North Country”. As to the voice he uses to sing it all? Well, a lot of people like to declare Dylan an awful vocalist, but I’d argue that he was really more just a lazy one. Songs like “Visions of Johanna” and the aforementioned “North Country” show that he was capable of summoning something genuinely pretty from his throat, but a lot of the time he goes for emotional more than musical resonance and as a consequence you get the intensely irritating vocals that have become his hallmark. Still, he had character and that makes up for a lot.

Anyway, enough of all that and back to the songs. Most of them are pretty blues, in the whole Jack Elliot way (“Down the Highway” could actually be a left-over track from ...Takes the Floor, judging just by the sound of it). However, Dylan puts his own spin on things, partially I suppose through not being a good enough musician to emulate things perfectly, and creating his own unique sound in the process. Then there’s the fact that he’s a great songwriter, and it’s of course in the lyrics where this whole thing shines. After an age of pop music musing over vague notions of love, here finally is an album with some genuinely great lyrics about genuinely interesting things.

Examples? Well, you want a song about the civil rights movement? How about two! “Blowin’ In the Wind” is a solemn, lyrical mediation on just when exactly equality is going to get its arse into gear and deliver. Not deep, but beautifully phrased and rather moving, and anyway working in the abstract is always more effective when trying to promote a political consciousness. On the opposite end of the scale, “Oxford Town” is a wry bit of reportage about a black guy and his family who get “met with a teargas bomb” in Mississippi, ending with a couple of unfortunates getting lynched. Quite political, yes, but maybe not funny enough. How about “Talking World War III Blues”, a hilarious song where Dylan explains to his doctor a dream he had in which he wakes-up after a nuclear war and wanders around an empty city getting spurned by all the bigoted fools who’ve managed to survive. The best line? How about “I lit a cigarette on a parking meter and walked on down the road... It was a normal day”.

Then you do get some love songs, but these are love songs light years removed from the general vapidity of a Buddy Holly or a Beatle. From the aforementioned “Girl from North Country”, which is a very simple and pretty song with some lovely lyrics, to the bitter and funny break-up number “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”, which features the classic line “I ain’t saying you treated me unkind, you could have done better but I don’t mind, you just wasted my precious time – but don’t think twice, it’s alright”.

The two centrepieces of the album, however, are “Masters of War” and “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”. “Masters of War” isn’t really a song I’m especially enamoured of, to be honest. It has a great jangly, sinister guitar part, and it’s full of bitterness and rage at the military industrial complex, but it’s really a rather simple song that succeeds more through pure rage than anything else. It does have a few great lyrics, though: “A world war can be won, you want me to believe – but I see through your eyes, and I see through your brain, like I see through the water that runs down my drain” is pretty neat, I suppose, as is “You’ve thrown the worst fear that can ever be hurled – fear to bring children into this world”. It’s all noble sentiments, but in the end it wears a bit thin – this isn’t the sort of song it’s fun to listen to more than a few times. I guess I just find it a bit dull and preachy.

“A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”, however, is a stone cold classic from beginning to end, and the song that got me interested in Dylan in the first place. Oh where have you been, my darling young one? “I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard” –“I met a young woman whose body was burning” – “I met a white man who walked a black dog” – “I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it” – “I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding”. On and on the brilliant lyrics pile-up, a shopping list of the horrors of the modern world. It’s almost the perfect protest song, with lines applicable to damned near every woe you’d care to name. Dylan reportedly claimed that he was frightened that he wouldn’t live long enough to write all the songs he wanted to, so instead he crammed the first lines of dozens of prospective songs into this one piece. It’s a great, great song in any event, barely dated after forty years (as depressing a fact as that may be, when I think about it). But, you know, there’s hope in the end – the narrator decides to head out into the horrible landscape he’s just delineated and carry the torch, so to speak. It’s fairly obvious Dylan was engaging in a bit of personal myth-making at this point, but it’s also a marvellous and inspiring tune.

The rest of the songs on this album aren’t quite up to the same standards as those I’ve just discussed, but they’re generally pretty good anyway. The main problem is that they tend to suffer from either being novelty numbers (“Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance”, which is stupid fun but nothing more, or “I Shall Be Free”, which tries real hard to be funny but doesn’t manage to be much more than mildly engaging) or not being about much in particular of interest to the listener (“Down the Highway”, which seems to be about Dylan’s troubles with his then-girlfriend, who had vanished off to Italy at the time). “Bob Dylan’s Dream” is a pretty alright I suppose, or at least tries to be. Dylan’s telling this whole story about how he had a dream about how much he wanted to be back with his friends, and how he would give every penny he had, but while it’s lyrically engaging his performance is so dour that it sinks it for me (judging by this and “Masters of War”, Dylan doesn’t always pan-out when he tries to be really serious – the guy is funny, and thankfully he realised that in time). As for “Corrina, Corrina”, it changes things up by going a little “rock” and incorporating drums and stuff, and manages to be pleasant enough – what really sells this is Dylan’s wonderfully tender vocal. Oh and “Bob Dylan’s Blues” is pretty cool too.

So, thirteen songs, none of them what I’d call “bad” and many of them quite good. This isn’t a perfect album(no perfect album would be 1/3 filler, even if the filler is pretty fine) but it is a very good one and I’m looking forward to Dylan’s next a great deal.

8.5/10

Download: Bob Dylan - A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall Mp3

Download: Bob Dylan - Don't Think Twice, It's Alright Mp3

35. The Beatles - With the Beatles (1962)

Tracks: It Won;t Be Long//All I've Got to Do//All My Loving//Don't Bother Me//Little Child//Till There Was You//Please Mr Postman//Roll Over Beethoven//Hold Me Tight//You've Really Got A Hold On Me//I Wanna Be Your Man//Devil In Her Heart//Not A Second Time//Money

“My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!”

- James Bond.

Recently a messageboard I frequent had a thread about what music everyone’s parents listened to. It seemed as though almost every poster had grown up hearing the Beatles. I felt very left-out, having had no more than casual exposure to the Beatles until my sister lent me a burnt copy of Revolver when I was almost 18. I didn’t mind it, but by that point my musical tastes had been fairly well-established, and as a result the only song that really clicked with me was “Tomorrow Never Knows”. I did follow up on this, slowly and with a near-complete lack of interest, but I’m still hardly what you’d call a Beatles “fan” in the full-on, “Abbey Road is the single greatest album ever produced” sort of way. I mean, Abbey Road sucks! Most of side A is alright but the medley is a pile of rubbish, and most of the songs are dispensable with the exception of the Harrison numbers and “You Never Give Me Your Money”. Revolver, however! Now that’s a great album! But we’re not discussing Abbey Road or Revolver at the moment and I suppose I should stay on topic or risk another two thousand word review.

The point of all this is that I have a love-hate sort of relationship with the Beatles, in large part fuelled by baseless antagonism, and as a consequence I am encountering almost everything prior to Revolver for the very first time. It’ll be handy to fill-out my historical knowledge a bit, since I’m pretty soft on the British Invasion – even if I am doing this list more to learn about soul music and ramble on about David Bowie.

So! With the Beatles! First British album to ever sell one million copies! Does it deserve such status? The second UK album by the group, rushed into production four months after debut Please Please Me dropped to quench the thirst of Beatlemania, it’s a very, very, very uneven affair. At this point the Beatles were still a Shadows-meets-the-Everly Brothers sort of combo with a rough soul edge – nothing spectacular but still quite capable of writing fine songs. Unfortunately for the better part of this album they fail to do so. We have some great, great songs, of course – I’m especially fond of the early Harrison number “Don’t Bother Me”, which has a great sort of early Stones feel, with some nicely dark, introspective lyrics at odds with the rest of the album. But for every “It Won’t Be Long” or “All My Loving” – big, dumb fun finely done – there’s an example of unmitigated crap such as “Hold Me Tight” and “I Wanna Be Your Man” (basically just the titles, sung over and over and over – apparently the latter was written in five minutes as a favour for the Rolling Stones!) or the shit-tastic cover of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven”. The original is a fine song. This cover is barely bar-band quality.

The covers are a bit of a problem here, actually. There are fourteen tracks on the album, and only 7 originals. Granted, a some of the originals are rubbish too, but it does give some idea of the hastily-assembled, “Who cares about quality as long as it’s saleable” approach to the music. There’s not an ounce of the studio trickery, or even basic quality control, that would come to define the Beatles’ work later in the decade. In fact it all sounds like it was recorded with a tin and some string. “Money” is cool, I suppose – a pretty neat cover that incorporates wacky piano and a nifty guitar riff, and some marvellous backing vocals (still, not as cool as the Flying Lizards). It’s the sound of the Beatles in later years! The sound of A Hard Day’s Night! The sound of not sucking. “Till There Was You” isn’t bad either, with a bouncy sort of jazzy beat and little more than acoustic guitar. It sounds like someone’s playing bongos in the background – does this hint at an early, aborted Afro-Cuban direction for the group? Anyway, it’s not spectacular but Paul is in very fine voice on the track. The singing here is actually, in general, pretty well done. Not bad either (but just “not bad” – I am bugged by the breaks for handclaps) is “Please Mr Postman”, complete with girl group harmonies!

I don’t want to give the impression that I hate this. I don't, really. The problem is just that the last half of the album is (with the exception of “Money”) so! Damned! Irritating! That it completely ruins the goodwill built-up by the first half, which is really fun stuff, with a few genuinely excellent songs. So, I suppose the usual pop-album complaints. I shouldn’t be too hard on it, anyway – if you read the Beatles’ comments on most of the songs then they freely admit that a lot of them were just thrown together in a few seconds.

But then, I think we can afford to be hard on these albums, given how much better the guys would be in later years. So!

5.5/10

Download: The Beatles - Money (That's What I Want) Mp3

Download: The Beatles - Don't Bother Me Mp3

34. Ray Price - Night Life (1962)

Tracks: Introduction - Theme - Night Life//Lonely Street//The Wild Side of Life//Sittin' & Thinkin'//The Twenty-Fourth Hour//A Girl in the Night//Pride//There's No Fool Like A Young Fool//If She Could See Me Now//Bright Lights and Blonde-Haired Women//Are You Sure?//Let Me Talk to You

"So me and the Cherokee Cowboys are knocking on you record player once more, and we hope that you can just kinda sit back, kick-off your shoes, and relax just a little bit, and listen to our latest album..."

Well, I suppose I should explain myself. You see, I’m following a couple of other “1001 albums” blogs, and the consensus between them seems to be that Ray Price’s Night Life is a ridiculous load of hooey. Myself, however, I quite liked it. In fact if it weren’t for a few unfortunate missteps I might even have loved it. I put the blame with my father, personally – growing-up I was saturated with AM nostalgia stations to the point where I am now perfectly capable of enjoying “Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks. My dad also has a considerable fondness for country music, and it’s rubbed off on me to an extent. So, given that Ray Price comes across as some sort of strange fusion of Perry Como and Hank Williams, I’ve been well-equipped by life to appreciate his... unique charms.

Putting excuses aside, this is really a pretty fine album. Apparently it is “honky tonk”, but making overtures towards the “Nashville Sound”. I had no real idea what that meant, so I looked it up – apparently honky-tonky is a stripped-back, rhythmic sort of country music with emphasis on things like pedal steel guitars and melancholy lyrics (so basically stereotypical country), while the Nashville Sound is the slick, pop-influenced style of more heavily orchestrated country music coming out of, well, Nashville during the late 50s and early 60s. I guess Patsy Cline falls into the latter category? There are actually a few songs here that sound a lot like Patsy Cline, largely I suppose because Willie Nelson, who wrote the title track, also wrote the Cline hit “Crazy”.

And speaking of that title track – what a song! A song worth buying an album for! “The night life ain’t no good life, but it’s my life...” That about sums-up the tenor of this collection, which has actually been referred to as Country’s first concept album. You get a ghostly, reverb-drenched vocal by Price, appropriately downtrodden and mournful lyrics, and some truly awe-inspiring slide work by Buddy Emmons. It’s a beautiful song, and works as a great intro to the album. Certainly better than the album’s actual intro, which consists of Price addressing the listener directly and explaining that he’s about to sing a collection of down-tempo songs about down-trodden bar-flies. We have ears, Ray. We could figure that out for ourselves.

The rest of the album can’t really match “Night Life” for quality, but it does remain top-flight and consistently engaging throughout its length. The lyrics can occasionally be a little silly – I don’t know that anyone can really take the line “I didn’t know god made honky-tonk angles” seriously, aside from Ray price apparently – and their relentless sentimentalism and “woe-is-me” content did grate on me at times, but thankfully this latter aspect is only really a problem when Price sings in the first person. Songs like “There’s No Fool Like A Young Fool” may not be saying anything especially new, but if there’s one thing country music is good for it’s tugging the heart strings, and if there’s one type of person I’ve known a lot of in my life it’s young women who’ve made some fantastically stupid decisions. Unfortunately, it’s a bit patronising, but its heart’s in the right place.

So, to sum up – I quite like this. Even if one ignores the lyrics, Ray Price’s voice is amazing, Buddy Emmons’ guitar is amazing, and there’s a marvellously subtle use of accompanying instruments like barely audible backing vocals and pianos tinkling away miles into the distance. It may be woefully sentimental and at times rather silly, but it’s the perfect sort of album to pop on and drift off to, and I will admit that I find it very, very hard not to sing along. “Bright Lights and Blonde-Haired Women” is catchy as hell!

So, yeah – Country! An excellent album! I bet you like The Trinity Sessions and Neko Case and maybe you should like this too.

8.5/10

Download: Ray Price - Night Life Mp3

Tracks: Desafinado//Samba Dees Days//O Pato//Samba Triste//Samba de Uma Nota So//E Luxo So//Baia

Hooray bossa nova! Hooray Brazil! Well, I’ll be honest and admit that my exposure to Brazilian music is rather limited and pretty obvious – I’ve heard the first Os Mutantes album, Joia by Caetano Veloso and of course the album everyone’s heard even if they’ve never heard of it, Getz/Gilberto. But I did spend a good part of my first few months with the internet downloading Sergio Mendes tunes from Limewire, so at least there’s that.

I really do like Bossa Nova, though. Many’s the afternoon I’ve whiled away with an Astrud Gilberto compilation on the turntable, drifting of amidst the narcoleptic haze of minor chords. I guess I’m attracted to it for the same reason most people are – it manages to be about as quiet and unassuming as it’s possible for a pop song to be while still remaining complex and interesting. I don’t know how people from Brazil approach it, but I tend to view it as such lovely, sunny music, like an evening breeze. Unfortunately this sort of listenable quietude has given it the reputation of being elevator music, but as I said the joy of good bossa nova is that it doesn’t step across the line into muzak – there’s usually a great deal of tension in the song, keeping it tightly wound and more than a little danceable.

Given my fondness for this sort of thing, I was looking forward to Jazz Samba quite a bit. Saxophonist Stan Getz is one half of the Getz/Gilberto team, and he has such a marvellous cool jazz sort of tone. Getz was instrumental in introducing Brazilian music to American audiences, both through this album and through his collaborations with Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos “Tom” Jobim. He wasn’t the first, granted – Dizzy Gillespie had already been playing “Desafinado” with his big band for a while, and the film Black Orpheus had of course broken Brazilian music in a big way back in 1960. It actually makes sense that Black Orpheus would have that sort of affect on people. It’s actually a very slight, perhaps even vacuous sort of film (once you get past the idea of an all-black cast playing dignified human beings in 1960 – although I’m not sure you can describe anyone as dignified if they spend most of film running about in gold lame short-shorts), but the makers had such an obvious fascination with the ornamental aspects of Brazilian culture, and layer on the sensory overload to such an extend what with all the swirling colours and constant songs and dancing, that I really doubt that anyone in 1960s America could have failed to be moved. For sheer spectacle, Black Orpheus makes Singin’ in the Rain look like A Man Escaped. Plus they had Jobim doing the songs, and that guy is ace.

To get back around to this album, though (although it’s my blog and I am free to ramble as I will) – Stan Getz recruited Charlie Byrd, fresh back from a state-sponsored tour of Brazil, and together they recorded Jazz Samba. “Desafinado” went on to be a massive hit and really lit a fire under the 1960s bossa nova craze. I can see why “Desafinado” would be a smash – it’s a great song to begin with, and benefits especially from Getz’ lovely sax work and the neat little pulsing bass intro. The percussion is a bit busy, though – there is this especially annoying little tick-tick on a drum rim that is through the whole song and bugs the heck out of me. Maybe the beefier percussion is meant to serve as the “samba” element of the album? And then of course there’s also Charlie Byrd’s guitar work... I’ll be perfectly frank and admit that I could do without Charlie Byrd. He’s a very able guitarist, but he solos his way through everything and the results are just too damned busy. There’s also the problem of his being mixed too bloody loud, and the result is an irritating, tinny jangle away in the right channel that just will not shut up! Why can’t he just play nice little warm chords like Joao Gilberto would? I guess that’s the “jazz” element of the album... I shouldn’t be too hard on Byrd, since he was apparently the driving force behind putting the album together, and he does sound alright when he isn’t trying to noodle away at the same time as Getz. He does have terrible guitar tone, though.

All in all, this is a noble and largely successful attempt to “do” Brazilian music. The best songs here are the Jobim numbers “Desafinado” and “Samba de Uma Nota So” and they are genuinely great recordings, thanks in no small part to some great work by dual bassists Keter Betts and Gene Byrd. The fact that there are two bassists does give some idea of the problem inherent in this album, though. It feels over-stuffed and noodly, and that is never something I want to be able to say about a bossa nova album. The drumming isn’t very good, either...

So, if you’re interested in bossa nova then the best bet might be to just download the two tracks below and then get Getz/Gilberto instead. This is a good album, but hardly a classic – the other cuts can’t hold a candle to the two stand-outs, and “Samba Dees Days” is genuinely annoying. Overall it’s given over a little too much to light-jazz noodling. Remember what I said about good bossa nova being able to avoid the pitfalls of muzak? Still, it’s a very listenable album with some genuine highlights contained therein, and I suppose someone who'd never heard this style of music before would adore it.

Having said all of this, the best version of "One Note Samba" is still of course the one Stereolab did with Herbie Mann.

6.5/10

Download: Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd - Desafinado Mp3
Download: Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd - Samba de Uma Nota So Mp3

32. Booker T. & the M.G.'s - Green Onions (1962)

Tracks: Green Onions//Rinky-Dink//I Got A Woman//Mo'Onions//Twist and Shout//Behave Yourself//Stranger on the Shore//Lonely Avenue//One Who Really Loves You//You Can't Sit Down//A Woman, A Lover. A Friend//Comin' Home Baby

OK, so let's be perfectly honest - I am a complete and utter square. I own terrible "tango for lovers" albums and watch dubious romantic melodramas, and I loved this here Booker T and his M.G.s album too. It's a bundle of badly-dated, go-go boot-wearing, hip-gyrating fun. I say this with some trepidation, as a poke about the internet indicates that most people don't really hold this album in that high a regard. I'll grant that it's hardly a classic, and doesn't really stick with me after listening, but it's still a pretty cool album, all things told.

Booker T. and the M.G.'s were formed as the house band for Stax records, playing on damned near every recording the label put out through the 60s and forging in the process a distinctive "Stax Sound" - tight grooves, cool organs and twangy guitar riffs. And they were one of the very first racially-integrated bands in rock music - two white, and two black - which is a pretty neat thing and carries on from the racial politics and subversiveness of the last album we had, though how much of it was calculated as such is debatable. Anyway, Green Onions was apparently slapped together as a cash-in on the title track, and a part of that can be heard in the number of free in-studio improvisations and in the reliance on covers material. The results are hardly earth-shaking, but this is still some extremely enjoyable music - you get jumping dance music like "Twist and Shout" and the massively-influential "Green Onions", and you get laid-back, swinging affairs like "Lonely Avenue" and "Behave Yourself". It's kind of reminiscent of Jimmy Smith, I guess, except working in a more overtly rocky idiom.

This isn't really essential listening, aside from the title track which you will have already heard even if you don't realise it (it is the riff that sounds just like "Gloria" from Them), and maybe "Comin' Home Baby" which sounds like a dry-run for Seventies cop-show music (oh hey and the cover of "Twist and Shout" is pretty ace, too, once it gets to the big swelling mid section). Oh god! But the title track is just so damned funky and cool, and there's a damned good reason why it managed to be such a big hit - although cranking out the copy-cat "Mo' Onions", as fine as it is, may have been a bit much. Anyway this may not be essential listening, but it is a pretty handy document of the band, who would go on to define so much 60s soul and rock music. Everything from cheesy Italian sci-fi soundtracks to the Beatles and the Doors owe a clear debt to these guys. Plus it is fun! Do the Monkey! Now do the Mashed Potato! Now oh I don't know I'm not Johnny Bravo god damn it.

I kind of wish they had called this album "Leeks".

7/10

Download: Booker T. & the M.G.'s - Green Onions Mp3
Download: Booker T. & the M.G.'s - Comin' Home Baby Mp3

31. Ray Charles - Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music (1962)

Tracks: Bye Bye Love//You Don't Know Me//Half As Much//I Love You So Much It Hurts//Just A Little Lovin'//Born to Lose//Worries Mind//It Makes No Difference Now//You Win Again//Careless Love//I Can't Stop Loving You//Hey, Good Lookin'

Hooray! He's back! A storming, jazzy groove complete with thundering drums and big, joyous sax, and out burst just about the happiest backing vocalists you've ever heard to declare at the top of their voices

Bye bye love

Bye bye happiness

Hello loneliness

I think I'm going to die!

This is one of the swingingest, most upbeat songs we've had yet, and Ray Charles is clearly insane.

One of the best things about this whole venture is that it's introduced me to The Genius of Ray Charles, and now the Genius is here again with another very fine album. Granted, it's also a very different sort of album (something the title has probably clued you in to). Ray Charles had by this point moved over from Atlantic to ABC, securing in the process an astonishing contract that guaranteed him complete artistic freedom. In a wonderful and truly cracked gesture, Charles decided to release an album of pumped-up, swinging covers of country & western standards. The image of a black guy in a dinner jacket belting it out from beside the title "Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music" was probably a bit confusing to some country fans, way back in 1962. Of course in these enlightened days we know far better, what with the vast profusion of black country & western singers pouring out of America and topping charts around the world. But, back then, it may have been something of an oddity.

Of course, the shock value is reduced somewhat by Ray's straight-laced interpretations of the songs. I can just imagine the chagrin of the label execs - "Oh, so you've added a soul groove and funky snare drum to 'You Are My Sunshine', Ray? A bit old hat, isn't it?" That song wasn't actually on the original album, having been added as a bonus track, but that's a pity since it's really an amazing tune. I won't review it though, since I'm like that.

Anyway, putting all that aside Ray Charles does a great job here. The production is much cleaner and more evenly balanced than it was on The Genius of..., which is great since the arrangements here are even bigger and fancier than they were on that album. Swooping backing vocals, massive beds of lush strings, heavenly choirs, funky bass, funky brass, and Ray's excellent piano work all wrap around one another like wicker work, and Ray sits in the middle and spills out all these sad little tales of woe. It's such a strange album, and pulls-off my favourite trick of being suicidally depressing in its lyrical content while for the most part just being so much damned fun. Did Ray Charles invent the Cure? Let's ask Siouxsie Sioux!

Oh, but then there are the sad parts too... The big wooshing strings-and-choir opening on "Worried Mind", for example. And then along comes Ray's piano (you can actually hear the piano on this album!) and, ah, it's just lovely. But god those strings sound beautiful, drenched in reverb and such. And Ray sounds great, too, his voice far lower and more... woody? on this album and providing a lovely contrast with the music.

Look, I can't really thing of much else to say about this except that it's brilliant and you should buy it now if you don't already own it. It's a glimpse into a strange and beautiful world where people can mix Sinatra, Marty Robins and Count Basie . It's such a clever way to blend genres and it deserved the massive commercial success it received. Hell, I downloaded this from the internet but I am going to order a copy on eBay right away!

I don't have a credit card and so I cannot use Amazon.

Ah damn it no-one is selling it.

I'm going to JB Hi-Fi.

9/10

Download: Ray Charles - Makes No Difference Now Mp3

30. Bill Evans Trio - Sunday at the Village Vanguard

Track List: Gloria's Steps (Take 2)//My Ma's Gone Now//Solar//Alice in Wonderland (Take 2)//All of You (Take 2)//Jade Visions (Take 2)

This is actually quite an impressive album, although it may be more fun on an intellectual level than when it actually comes to listening to the thing. When we last heard from Bill Evans, he was tickling the old goanna on Miles Davis' Kind of Blue album, and doing a very good job of it too. Evans has a very flowery, pretty style, and it worked wonderfully in the context of Davis' slightly more... aggressive? musical approach. Left to his own devices, however, Evans allows this tendency to run free, and the result is an album which is extremely listenable, but which could easily be dismissed as intellectualist elevator music.

It's actually kind of funny, in it's way - despite the surface prettiness of the album, it makes a lot of demands on the listener. I suppose I like overtly jarring music because it forces me to examine what's going on almost against my will. Here, however, I'm perfectly capable of ignoring all the harmonic complexities and virtuoso playing and, ashamed as I am to admit it, this is in large part what I did.

Which is really a pity on my part, since this is actually a very good album. A live set, it was apparently structured around Evans' desire to showcase the bass-playing of Scott LaFaro, even opening and closing with LaFaro compositions filled-out by a few standards. This turned-out to be a good move on Evans' part, since LaFaro died just days after recording this, almost certainly the last thing he ever put to tape. LaFaro is truly a brilliant bassist, adept at everything from big, fat, loping rhythms to Jaco Pastorius-style avant-noodling. He anchors this set, but never really takes control. The most interesting thing about this album is the way that no-one really leads in these compositions - well, that's not strictly true, since Evans is usually anchoring the tracks with a main theme which gets reworked and repeated throughout the track to hold it all together. But, you know, the bass, drums and pianos merge perfectly into a sort of seething ocean of sound. Harmonically, it's very complex, following on from the whole "modal" notion of everyone moving within scales that work together and creation interest through forward momentum and harmonic tension more than big, flashy chord changes. The most obvious point of comparison would be the noodly bits on Kind of Blue, except that I actually think this manages to pull this off a little better at times, even if it isn't always as immediately likeable.

I don't know how I feel about this album. It's quite pretty, and very interesting if I pay attention to it, but nothing about it really grabs me... This is especially true if one takes into account the fact that most of the songs are extremely similar on a casual listen. Though they raise the tempo in "Alice in Wonderland", giving the album a nice, upbeat centrepoint.

Still, it may be brilliant but it doesn't really grab me, and so I am not going to give it a brilliant mark!

7.5/10

Download: Bill Evans Trio - My Man's Gone Mp3