Exile on Main Street- The Rolling Stones
This is the album most critics term the best rock album of all time. It is the album I would most want to be stranded on a desert island with. I have bought this on 8-track, vinyl, casette and CD. It is the only album I never get tired of.The sound on this CD is different then previous Stones releases. It is a much rawer soumd than other records of this era. The Rolling Stones just play intense, blues driven rock all the way through.
The first side contains the songs I initially liked the most. The first track "Rocks Off " is one of the best hard rock tunes the Stones have ever recorded. The band then barrels through the rest of the side and ends up with the single "Tumbling Dice". When listening to this side you are struck by the fact that this is a Stones album unlike any other. There is an appealing sloppiness and spontaniaty that was not apparent in their earlier work.
The second side starts with a foray into country, "Sweet Virginia" It is 
reminiscent of "No Expectations" and "Country Honk". The real classic on this side is the second track "Torn and Frayed". Recorded during the heaviest period of Keith Richards' heroin addiction, this is a poignaint look at alienation and loneliness.
Side three is the weakest of the album. "Turd on the Run" and "I just want to See His Face" are the only tracks that can be called filler on the album. The classic on this side is the final track " Let it Loose"
After this mild let-up, the Stones kick it out once again on the final side. The side is highlighted by "Shine a Light" an underappreciated ballad that the band revived on the "Stripped" live album.
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Recovering the Satellites-Counting Crows
I bought this album about a year ago and it just seemed to keep getting better. Rolling Stone magazine called this "a deeply satisfying album " and I have to agree. One of the common points I have noticed about the CDs I particularly like is that I will like different parts of them at different times. It is much better than Counting Crows first record.There is not a bad track on this disc.When I first started listening to this album I was primarily interested in the radio hits "Daylight Fading" and "A Long December". After I spent some time with the CD, I started to gain appreciation for the other tracks on the album. The tune " Have You Seen Me Lately" is a particular favorite that later gained a lot of radio airplay. "Monkey" is a light hearted change from the rest of the albums' rather morose tone.
Trace- Son Volt
This is my current favorite band. I learned about them from reading a review in Rolling Stone magazine and I decided to buy it based on that. I honestly listen to it all the way through every day. I feel Jay Farrar is the best songwriter in music today and that
Son Volt is the most intelligent band since the Who in the 70s. A recent review stated:
What Jay Farrar and Son Volt have made is one great American rock album -- one that might, as years pass, rate with the classics: the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, The Band's Music from Big Pink, Talking Heads' Remain in Light, The Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime, Husker Du's New Day Rising and R.E.M.'s Life's Rich Pageant.
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David Bowie-Diamond Dogs
I bought David Bowie's Diamond Dogs soon after it was released in 1974. Critics had widely critized the album for being pretentious and overwrought. I loved it immediately. The critics said the only good song was "Rebel, Rebel". I not only didn't think that much about that song, I felt it was one of the worst songs on the record. I felt all of the songs the critics said were ill-conceived and farfetched, such as "We Are the Dead" and "Diamond Dogs", were cooler than hell. I really bought into Bowie's vision of a post apocalyptic world. I recently bought the CD reissue and I still think it is a killer set of songs. If you enjoy glam-rock circa 1974, I believe you will like it too. The reissue comes with a couple of bonus tracks ( including a new version of "Candidate") but I still believe the best reason to buy this is for the old sci-fi cuts.Back To Top
Bob Dylan-Blood on the Tracks
I can't remember when I first heard "Tangled Up in Blue", but I do know that it has been my favorite song for as long as I can remember. It is one of the few story-songs that didn't almost immediately become tiring and boring. It is a timeless tale that is open to many different interpretations. It also is a prime example of the sheer mastery Bob Dylan has over the English language. Only Dylan can say things that basically make no sense at all and you immediately assume they have some buried significance. All that having been said, I was almost thirty years old before I finally purchased "Blood on the Tracks". I had heard a lot of Dylan by this time and I was deeply ambivalent to everything he had released since the sixties. This CD was an incredible exception. Every track ( except one) was not only intelligently written, but catchy. This was a major difference from the rest of his post-1970 work. "Simple Twist of Fate", "If You See Her, Say Hello," and "Shelter from the Storm" are all songs that are the equal of TUIB. The one exception is "Lily, Rosemary And The Queen of Hearts"which is an increadibly pretentious story-song that epitomizes everything that TUIB wasn't. Still even with this lone miscue, this is an exceptional album.Back To Top
Rod Stewart- Never A Dull Moment
Rod Stewart was the greatest singer in the history of rock and roll. I know a lot of you are thinking that phrase should not contain a "was" because Stewart is still around. Well, the Rod Stewart I am speaking of died sometime in 1972 after he released this album and was replaced by some alien clone who hasn't released a decent song in almost 30 years. The Rod Stewart of the early seventies was the best vocalist in the music world. From the time he released "The Rod Stewart Album" until he came out with "Never a Dull Moment", no singer ever accomplished so much in such a short time. This album is not generally considered to be the best of those early releases, but I believe it is very indicative of the kind of impact Rod could have made in rock if he would have stayed true to his roots. From the opening of "True Blue" through the Dylan cover "Mama, You been on my Mind" and ending with "Twisting the Night Away", this album just flatout smokes. It's really a shame what happened to Rod and I believe you will agree with me after listening to this ( or any of his early solo releases ). He could've been the best ever.
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Guns-N-Roses - Use Your Illusion 1 & 2
I first heard Guns-N-Roses in the summer of 89. The first guitar chords of "Sweet Child O' Mine' made me believe this was a band with something special. I still believe that song is one of the greatest radio songs of all time and it is definitely the best heavy metal single I have ever heard. I bought their first album "Appetite for Destruction" but I was not nearly as enamored of the rest of the album as I was with the single. "Paradise City " was a decent song and " Welcome to the Jungle" was alright, but nothing else impacted me the way that Sweet Child did. GnR took a long time to release their next CD and I bought it the first week it was out.
Use Your Illusion 1&2 were both excellent albums . I liked every song on each of the four sides. Even the songs that the critics had panned' like "November Rain" were terrific. I listened to both CDs all the way through every day for at least six months. I began to feel this was the best album since "Exile". I have since moderated my position on this albums place in rock history, but I still think it is great stuff. I think one of the reasons I like Axl Rose and Slash so much is because they are almost exactly the same age as me. I have read a lot of interviews with the two of them and the music they listened to and were influeced by, were the same songs I grew up with.
Black Oak Arkansas - High on the Hog
Frankly I was shocked when I found out that Black Oak Arkansas had more than one web page devoted to them.. Not that many people liked them back when they were popular! Outside of me I can't remember anyone owning a BOA album. I thought Jim Dandy was funnier than hell and that the big stud-hick thing was just a joke. I later read quite a bit about Mr Mangrum and it turns out he was quite possibly the stupidest rock star in history ( and thats saying a lot). The band really thought of their music as a kind of religion. They always had hokey gimmicks like giving away a deed to an inch of actual Black Oak soil with their " Keep the Faith " disc. 
Later in my early twenties I had a job bartending in a shitty country bar called Dirty Sallys. One afternoon a guy came in and asked to talk to the manager. I introduced him to Chubby (seriously), and went back to serving some drunken backwoods moron. Chubby later told me the guy was the road manager for a band called Black Oak Arkansas and that they would play the bar for a piece of the gate! I was excited as hell thinking I was going to meet Jim Dandy until I found out the big dope had turned him down. I was THIS close to meeting the stupidest man in rock'n'roll !!!The web site devoted to them is a real gas too. These guys take their BOA seriously. Even I might not agree with this statement:
Black Oak Arkansas remains the single most influential of the southern rock bands. Not only did they spawn the Southern rock genre, but their influence reaches well beyond as well. Without Black Oak there would be no Van Halen, no Guns'n'Roses, no Aerosmith.Yeah right.
Click here to see a backstage pass from Black Oak's
golden era..
Johnny Winter - Still Alive and Well
When I first started listening to music, there was no FM rock station in my local market. Therefore I had to hear any new music I could on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert and the Midnight Special. On one night I saw both Black Oak and Johnny Winter. BOA was riding the wave of popularity from their hit single "Jim Dandy". Johnny was going through some hard times at this period. He was in the midst of a widely publicized herion addiction and his solo career was kinda floundering. His brother Edgar was getting ready to break into the mainstream with "Frankenstein" but Johnny was having a hard time finding his niche.Johnny was the first guitarist that I really got into. I have always been more of a fan of songwriters than instrumentalists, but Johnny combined the best of both worlds. He wasn't really a great songwriter but he had great taste in the songs he covered. This disc is a prime example of this. He covers a good Stones' song ( Let it Bleed ) and does some of his best solo work ( Cheap Tequila and Still Alive and Well). He followed this with another excellent album, "Saints and Sinners" but after that I kind of lost track of him. I later saw him at the Agora in Columbus and by this time he was playing a hard core blues show. He still kicked ass, but it was depressing to only see a few hundred people in the crowd.
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New York Dolls - In Too Much Too Soon
Before I became a teenager I guess I was kind of a nerd ( although I never thought of myself that way ). I was a comic book freak. I would buy everything that had anything at all to do with comics. One day when I was about 12, I saw a magazine on the newstand with Spiderman on the cover. Figuring I should own everything that had Spidey in it , I bought the mag. This magazine would change my life. It was Creem magazine which was the coolest music magazine around at the time. I read all about the popular bands at the time and it really whet my appetite for rock. Previous to this I had no interest in music at all and now I knew all about these weird-ass glam rock bands.
One of the bands they wrote of frequently was the New York Dolls. I bought the ITM,TS album without ever hearing the band or even knowing what to expect. I was really disappointed. I expected a radical looking band like the Dolls to sound a helluva lot heavier. They sounded a lot more like Chuck Berry or Elvis than they did like Deep Purple. I later learned to love the Dolls. They were really a fun band and they didnt take themselves as seriousely as most of the other glam rock bands. There are parts of this LP that I still listen to on a regular basis. Stranded in the Jungle is a terrific song and Human Being is a super early punk song. This disc was not as popular as their first , but I like it a lot better. The Dolls were a lot of fun and I wished they would have stuck around longer.
Black Sabbath -Sabbath Bloody Sabbath / Sabotage
Black Sabbath is the band I thought the NY Dolls would be. They were the heaviest thing going in 75 when I first started listening to them. In all the magazines and on the radio you always hear how Led Zeppelin was the most popular metal band of the seventies, but me and all of my friends were into Sabbath. I bought Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath when I was still buying everything in the Circus Magazine Top Twenty. I thought this was the best thing going immediately and it is still my favorite Sabbath album . This album was a lot faster than the earlier Sabbath albums and I think the lyrics are a lot better. Black Sabbath was also one of the first big bands I saw live. I was kinda disappointed because they didn't have a killer light show (hardly anyone did in 75 ) but this album and Sabotage were the soundtracks to my ninth grade life. Lead singer Ozzy Osbourne is one of my few early idols who still has a decent career going. He never really changed and he outlasted Zeppelin and Deep Purple and all the other seventies metal bands. I really like it when I hear a musician giving credit to Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath because in my high school, they were it. I can't believe Lancaster Ohio was the only place where Black Sabbath was more popular then Zeppelin.
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Bridge of Sighs - Robin Trower
I can't remember where I heard about
Robin Trower from. He was definately not one of the glam rock artists that were in all the magazines ( if Jim Dandy was the stupidest man in rock, then Robin Trower was probably the ugliest ).
This is a super album all the way through though. It was widely said at the time that Trower was the next Hendrix, but I always liked him better. I saw him in the third concert I ever saw and he played almost the whole album live. He just stood up there on stage with his ugly mug and jammed. I'll bet he didn't move fifteen feet during the whole show. Although he is still playing today, this CD was the highwater mark of his career. A lot of his music was really similar to BOS (originality was not Robin strong suit), but this was the one where everything came together. Not a bad track on it.
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All The Young Dudes - Mott the Hoople
I remember buying "All the Young Dudes" in about 1975. They were another example of a band I listened to that none of my friends did. I think a lot of the music that I listened to when I first started listening to rock would be terned Alternative today, Mott the Hoople was definitely one of these. 
The single ATYD was popular on the radio, but no one actually owned the album. Except me. To this day I feel Ian Hunter is a terrific songwriter. There is a lot of really good stuff on this album. This is also the only CD on this list I do not own today. I haven't been able to find it on CD but it is definetly next on my list.
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Love it to Death - Alice Cooper
Killer - Alice Cooper
Schools Out - Alice Cooper
Billion Dollar Babies - Alice Cooper
When I first started listening to music, Alice Cooper was just finishing a three album run that was just incredible. I have always believed that most artists have a peak creational period that will last only a couple of years. The Stones had it between the albums " Beggar's Banquet" and " Exile on Main Street", Bowie had it between "Ziggy Stardust" and "DIamnod Dogs" and Cooper had it in this period. I recently purchased the Alice Cooper box set and it shows that he had released a lot of music that was pure crap prior to "LITD" and his releases after "BDB" were pretty spotty as well. ( "BDB" was not all that spectacular itself and might be the beginning of his decline). The songs on "LITD" were stunningly creative and original. " The Ballad of Dwight Fry" was full of tempo changes and set a mood quite effectively. The singles from this album were catchy with a teenage angst edge that was quite original for music of this time. ( It was almost proto-punk). "Killer" was the first album of the Cooper band I bought and hearing "Dead Babies" for the first time scared the shit out of me ( remember I was only twelve at the time). I didnt understand that the song was about child abuse at the time and I thougt it was just about people killing kids. I no longer feel it is one of the better songs on the album, but it's still an effective morality tale. "Killer", "Halo of Flies" and "Under My Wheels" are the true classics on this disc.
Of the four albums I am reviewing here, my favorite is "Scool's Out". I have just recently ordered it and I am really looking forward to receiving it. "Alma Mater" is a song that you can really appreciate once you have been out of school for a while. "Public Animal No. 9" is a super rave up that has never been appreciated as much as it should have been. The title track is an all time classic that signals the coming of summer every year.
"Billion Dollar Babies" was my favorite album when I first started listening to all these but now I feel that it signals the end of Alice Cooper as a significant creative force. " I Love the Dead" and "Sick Things" were forced and played out merely for shock value. There were real highlights on the disc, though. "No More Mr Nice Guy" was a single that was nearly the equal of "Schools Out" and "Elected" showed a wry sense of humor that was missing in most of the music released at the time.
After these albums, the band released one more album "Muscle of Love" but they were never the same. There were a couple of decent tunes but nothing that even compared to "BDB". I always wondered what happened that the band decided to break up. Cooper continues releasing music to this day, but the other bandmates were never heard from again. This is really weird with Micheal Bruce who co-wrote most of the classics. I really wonder what his input was because Cooper never wrote a song that approached the quality of the early tracks.
I also wonder about the Alice Cooper box set "The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper". This collection has four songs from "Muscle of Love" but only two songs from "Killer". What's up with that? Where is "Halo of Flies"? Where is "Luney Tune"? Where is "Public Animal No. 9"?
Rides Again- David Allen Coe
David
Allen Coe kicks ass. He is one of the best songwriters in country and
although he kinda goes over the edge with the outlaw thing occasionally, he does
some really good work. This is one of my favorite country albums. There are no
weak songs and he really gives the impression of knowing what he's talking
about. If you own a Harley, this should be the album that plays through your
mind everytime you fire it up.. If that aint country is truly a masterpiece.
When I was growing up in Lancaster, I knew a lot of people who were described
exactly by this song. If you have never lived in a rural part of the country ,
you don't realize how many people are like this. They are pretty good people but
it is truly a different world. If you want a glimpse into their lives, this is
the album to pick up.
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Last Modified on 12/22/2000
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