Discussion: The board does the 1970s

[monasterymonochrome]

Ernesto Djédjé - Roi du Zigbilithy: One of the most legendary albums in the history of Cote d'Ivoire popular music, and one of my recent favorites from West Africa. A fusion of Makossa, funk, disco, and traditional rhythms - this record is another beautifully bright whirlwind. Djédjé is the guitarist and vocalist at the forefront of this project, and his sound here is delightfully bouncy and jazzy, accompanied by mixed-in-the-red horns and dancy drums. The record was a huge hit in his home country / West Africa, and went on to become a massive imported favorite to the Caribbean as well. The liner notes on bandcamp below have a nice bio of Djédjé, who passed away "under mysterious circumstances" in 1983.

analogafrica.bandcamp.com/album/ernesto-dj-dj-roi-du-ziglibithy-limited-dance-edition-nr-15

[monasterymonochrome]

Also, can I get an official ruling on the eligibility of Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady? Obvs a compilation of non-album singles, but is often included in Best-Of decade lists.

[venom]

i vote for INCLUDE. all of its music was released during the 1970s, so why not?

[monasterymonochrome]

One more from West Africa for your Friday afternoon - this time heading back to Ghana for Joe Mensah's 1975 release: Cry Laughter. Probably the most immediately accessible of this trio of records, Mensah recorded it in Lagos, and it has more than a few hallmarks of Nigeria's burgeoning afrobeat scene. It moves like a peak-period Fela record, loads of funk guitar, saxophone solos, and busy hand-drumming. But the big star of the show is Mensah's keyboard/organ playing, more reminiscent of the abstract grooves of Sun Ra or electric Mal Waldron than anything else I've heard yet from West Africa, certainly more jazzy than someone like William Onyeabor. It's incredibly cool. This is a mid-period record for Mensah, who came up in Ghana's highlife scene in the 60s. Soonafter he moved to NYC where he hosted The African Show on Columbia University's WKCR for several decades. Mensah passed away in 2003, but the show is still on the air to this day. You can stream it here: www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/wkcr/program/african-show

[monasterymonochrome]

Pinballing back to Brazil, where we started today, with the second record by Airto, Seeds on the Ground. I picked this up as part of a double LP set that also included his first record. Spun it today and maaaan this record is fantastic. So great, in fact, that I immediately added it to my long list for this project. Airto Moreira is a Brazilian percussionist who rose to prominence - alongside his wife, the eminently talented vocalist Flora Purim - during the first wave of fusion. He plays on Bitches Brew and Live-Evil with Miles, was featured with Flora on Return to Forever, and cut several records with Cannonball Adderley and Stanley Clarke. This record was cut in 1971 with a murderer's row of a band: Airto, Flora Purim, Hermeto Pascoal, and Ron Carter. The best tracks ("Andei," "Papa Furado," "O Galho Pt. 1") are lush and exuberant in a way only the best of Brazilian jazz can be. They have the groove of psych rock, but with incessantly creative rhythms bouncing all over the place. Flora's showcases are similarly great, bringing more of cooler side of fusion to the table, very reminiscent to what she and Chick Corea would do later the next year. It's an arresting record that I'm excited to get more familiar with in the coming weeks.

[monasterymonochrome]

Going on a trip this week so reviews will be sparing - but this one (Tim Maia - Racional Vol. 1) is a winner. Similar to Jorge Ben with his take on samba-funk from mid-70s Brazil, but this one digs a little further into his psychedelic side rather than the danceable romp of Africa Brasil. "Bom-Senso" is def my favorite track here, with killer rhythm and laser beamed guitar parts that sound straight out of the Isley Brothers' "That Lady" (which came out two years prior). Whole record is excellent, hinges on the 12-minute funk manifesto "Racional Culture." Not since Phish have I been so passionately exhorted to "read the book." Phenomenal record, if you enjoy it, check out his World Psychedelic Classics comp.

[scoots]

[scoots]

Since I've Been Loving You is one of those songs I'll find myself air drumming to without even realizing it. Just an insane song.

[venom]

while we're on a little west africa kick, i'm going to toss out william onyeabor's Atomic Bomb. this is a little funk, a little electronic. i first heard of this when seeing alexis taylor from hot chip head up a tribute to onyeabor in 2015. then i got really into this album for a while. i don't know whether it will cut into my top 100, but it's a real nice listen.

[monasterymonochrome]

Jun 20, 2023 8:18:29 GMT -6 venom said:

while we're on a little west africa kick, i'm going to toss out william onyeabor's Atomic Bomb. this is a little funk, a little electronic. i first heard of this when seeing alexis taylor from hot chip head up a tribute to onyeabor in 2015. then i got really into this album for a while. i don't know whether it will cut into my top 100, but it's a real nice listen.

Oooh I haven't actually heard the studio LP for this one.  Big fan of the Who Is... comp and Anything You Sow.  I'ma queue this up today.

[scoots]

Hey hey first time listening to Queen albums straight through. Started out with Day at the Races and it's pretty solid. I'll check out A Night at the Opera and Sheer Heart Attack next.

[thebosma]

A Night at the Opera has their best song and also their worst song on it

[ten15]

Jun 22, 2023 7:40:47 GMT -6 thebosma said:

A Night at the Opera has their best song and also their worst song on it

"Radio Ga Ga" would like a word with you

[scoots]

Damn this is really good. Only song I had heard previously was Killer Queen, and that kind of feels like an outlier on the album.

[monasterymonochrome]

An easy lock for my Top 5, and possibly the album most likely to end up as my #1. It's like the platonic ideal of a Great Album. Perfect hits, the extended, blown-out closer, killer deep cuts, ample glockenspiel and Clarence solos, and even a fuckin' origin story thrown in for good measure. It's the pinnacle of recorded American rock music. I get chills every time I listen.

For fun, here's my ranking of the 10 best Bruce lines on this record:

1. It's a town full of losers, I'm pulling out of here to win
2. Man, there's an opera out on the Turnpike, there's a ballet being fought out in the alley
3. In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream / At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines
4. Show a little faith, there's magic in the night / You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright
5. When that change was made uptown and the Big Man joined the band / From the coastline to the city all the little pretties raise their hands
6. I wanna die with you, Wendy, on the street tonight in an everlasting kiss. Huh!
7. The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive / Everybody's out on the run tonight but there's no place left to hide
8. Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz between what's flesh and what's fantasy / And the poets down here don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be
9. Terry you swore we'd live forever / Taking it on them backstreets together
10. Will you walk with me out on the wire /'Cause baby I'm just a scared and lonely rider

[chvrchbarrel]

trying to think of a single more cathartic moment in music than "the highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive"

[monasterymonochrome]

The wildly anticipated follow-up that didn't quite reach the highs of its predecessor, but deepened the lore and songcraft behind Bruce & the E Street Band, cementing them as capital G, Great, artists. The best moments on BTR were the bravado-soaked bangers, the life-on-a-knife's-edge stakes the songs exhibited. Many of the same themes are found here, but they choose death instead of life. "Racing in the Street" is the natural conclusion of the protagonist of "Thunder Road" or "Born to Run." It's what happens when there's nowhere left to run, nowhere to hide, but you still have the desperate urge for going. "Some guys they just give up living, And start dying little by little, piece by piece. Some guys come home from work and wash up, And go racin' in the street." The tone is more world-weary, more insular, but there's still triumph here. The swagger of "Badlands," the soaring solo of "Streets of Fire." On its own, this would be a career-making album for Bruce. And it'll find its way onto my list no problem.

Also, it has my absolute favorite album cover of all time.

[monasterymonochrome]

One of two Pink Floyd albums that are likely to make my list. That said, I am by no means a big Floyd fan. Or, at least I'm not a massive fan of their two biggest albums (Dark Side, The Wall). The former is pretty great, but it just missed my Top 150 cut-off, and the latter I don't like at all. Meddle is def my favorite of their more psych-leaning records, and it's the kind of transitional point to their successful middle period. They were always great at creating cool, off-kilter sounds, but here the songs themselves are great as well. "A Pillow of Winds" is a light, lovely acoustic trip. "Fearless" is the best riff they ever wrote. Probably the best riff to ever come out of the British psych / space rock scene. "San Tropez" is a fun, campy breather. And "Echoes" is the searingly epic extended track they'd come to perfect. I have a slight gripe with the abstract "so totally random!" sound collage section that totally halts the track's momentum, but the melt back into the jam is very cool. Top-tier Floyd, might be my favorite of theirs all told.

[chvrchbarrel]

Pink Floyd might be my toughest artist to handle list-wise.

Atom Heart Mother
Meddle
Animals
Dark Side
Wish You Were Here
The Wall

could all easily be in contention for my list of 100 albums

[monasterymonochrome]

I did do a relisten of Dark Side of the Moon this afternoon tho just to confirm my current take on it. It's a good to great album that doesn't really move me anymore like it did when I was, like, a freshman in high school. And that's okay! "Money" probably shouldn't hit the same way when you're 27 or 37 as it does when you're 17. What remains sublime, tho, is the rest of the album's back-half. "Us and Them" is my favorite of the major hits from this record, and the Brain Damage > Eclipse combo is a high water mark of the band's career. Simply sublime. All three of these songs are the band swinging for the fences and fucking connecting. Now if only they have laid off of the "baby's first psychedelic record" sound effects and tropes that pocket the rest of the record.

[monasterymonochrome]

Jun 26, 2023 12:31:06 GMT -6 chvrchbarrel said:

Pink Floyd might be my toughest artist to handle list-wise.

Atom Heart Mother
Meddle
Animals
Dark Side
Wish You Were Here
The Wall

could all easily be in contention for my list of 100 albums

Yeah it's gonna cause a lot of headaches for sure.  But their catalogue's been fun to revisit, something I've been meaning to do for a few years.  Only one I haven't really heard yet is "Atom Heart Mother," which I maybe listened to once like five years ago?  I'll queue it up after my Wish You Were Here relisten (prolly my fave of theirs) that's happening rn

[chvrchbarrel]

Jun 26, 2023 12:34:33 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

Jun 26, 2023 12:31:06 GMT -6 chvrchbarrel said:

Pink Floyd might be my toughest artist to handle list-wise.

Atom Heart Mother
Meddle
Animals
Dark Side
Wish You Were Here
The Wall

could all easily be in contention for my list of 100 albums

Yeah it's gonna cause a lot of headaches for sure.  But their catalogue's been fun to revisit, something I've been meaning to do for a few years.  Only one I haven't really heard yet is "Atom Heart Mother," which I maybe listened to once like five years ago?  I'll queue it up after my Wish You Were Here relisten (prolly my fave of theirs) that's happening rn

Atom Heart Mother is great; I used to really love Wish You Were Here but I've never been the biggest fan of Have a Cigar, and Welcome to the Machine has sort of lost my interest over time, too. It doesn't leave a lot else, even though the remainder is phenomenal. I have a hard time ranking it as high as DSOTM. I agree that DSOTM isn't as revolutionary as it was when I was 17 or so, but when 'Money' is the weakest track on the album (in my opinion), you're doing more than alright. Big soft spot for oddity On the Run, hearing it as away-team intro music during Bulls games through the '90s.

The Wall is one of the first classic rock albums I ever heard and the mere scope, along with the narrative, was something I'd never experienced before. The mammoth undertaking and presentation of that material still makes it my favorite Floyd, even though its certainly scattered and inconsistent. I still feel a really strong personal connection to it.

Never cared much for Animals which I feel like is a wild Floyd take but *shrug*. Sheep is awesome.

I recently heard almost all of Meddle (up til Echoes) in a record store and it reminded me that it belongs in the conversation alongside all the Floyd records mentioned above. Insanely solid and beautiful-sounding album that's just difficult to stack up against their later ambitions. It's gonna be tough to sort these out for me.

[monasterymonochrome]

Pretty hard to disagree with much of what you said there, a pretty fair analysis of one of the more interesting decades a band ever had. I just finished my WYWH relisten and felt similarly about "Have a Cigar," a song I hadn't heard in several years and remembered much more fondly than it deserved. But I just love "Shine On..." so fuckin' much that it outweighs any of the schlock on this record. I especially love the back-half again, with the title track (which still hits for me no matter how many times - and in how many banal contexts - I've heard it) and the jammy fold back into the reprise of Shine On. It's such a great execution of the band's experimental and stadium rock ambitions. Meddle might actually edge it for my top PF spot at the moment, but it's still definitely placing well on my final list.

[monasterymonochrome]

Forgot that Jewels of Thought was from 1969, so I bumped it in favor of another great Pharoah Sanders record, 1970's Summum Bukmun Umyun. Here's what I wrote about it when I did my deep dive on Pharoah's discog last October, it's been in pretty steady rotation since then and I agree with pretty much everything I said then. Another high point in what is one of the greatest album runs in music history.



"Another day, another startling Pharoah Sanders track. The first song on this record is all rhythm - an unrelenting flourish of hand drums that move away from the more laconic style of Roy Haynes on previous records. But this track - the second of two - is my favorite. It is all peace, settling into a waterfall of sound. Once again, Lonnie Liston Smith is the star, and his solo that culminates around the 8-9 minute mark is the album's highlight. Cecil McBee then plays a stirring section on cello and Pharoah takes it home with a beautiful, non-skronky lead. Would recommend this one to folks who are skeptical of 'free jazz' or atonal sections. It's beautiful through and through.

Also, seems I'm gonna check out some of Lonnie's stuff next. Dude is a force on these Pharoah records."

[monasterymonochrome]

One of the most iconic spiritual jazz records, Pharoah Sanders' 1971 release Thembi. Relatively unusual for him, in that it consists of 6 tracks, all clocking in under 10 minutes. In that sense, it's his most accessible album. "Astral Traveling," written by Pharoah's pianist Lonnie Liston Smith, and later re-recorded for the latter's 1973 likewise-titled record, is one of the signature tracks of the movement, full of otherworldly textures and Pharoah's exploratory playing. The title track and "Morning Prayer" are similarly bite-sized versions of Pharoah's trademark 3-chord vamp jazz, and they're both beautiful and luscious. We have a few anomalies tucked in tho. "Red, Black & Green" is a burst of furiously skronky free jazz, with torrents of dissonance the likes of which Pharoah hadn't really played since "The Creator Has A Master Plan." We also get "Love," which is basically an extended Cecil McBee bass solo. All packaged together - what you get is a grab bag of what makes Pharoah and the spiritual jazz "genre" so great. If you're at all curious to see what he has to offer, this is the record I'd recommend. Just keep an open mind (and don't get scared off by the second track).

[monasterymonochrome]

Revisiting one of the great guitar shredding records of all time. Probably my #1 go-to if I needed to demonstrate why Hendrix is always near/at the top of any GOAT guitarist list. This record is fucking ferocious, unrelenting waves of feedback and fire that totally overpower the listener. It's not as gorgeous or melodic or carefully crafted as his studio work. What it does do is blow the roof off your head and make you go "Daaaaaaaamn." "Machine Gun" is the classic here and it deserves all its love. Shit, just listen to this Trey Anastasio quote I found on wiki: "It was the record. I listened to that solo on 'Machine Gun' a million times." I also want to give love to "Message to Love," with it's earth-twisting solo and stomping outro. Plus Buddy Miles (drummer for Electric Flag and, yes, the California Raisins) on his signature track "Changes" (or "Them Changes," as it was titled on his 1970 solo LP). Whole album rocks - the songs aren't half as good as a typical Hendrix release, but it goes twice as hard. It ought to make my list.

[monasterymonochrome]

The theme of this afternoon is: Best Guitar Albums of the 70s - here we have another strong contender, Funkadelic's Maggot Brain. A perfect album. Probably not a Top 5 contender for me, but it's definitely going to be somewhere in that 10-20 territory. First of all, "Maggot Brain," the title track. Fuck. If you're familiar with the album you probably know the lore behind it, but if not: 20-year old guitarist Eddie Hazel was told by George Clinton (who was tripping balls) before the take to, "Play as if your mother was dead." Or, more specifically, to "picture that day, what he would feel, how he would make sense of his life, how he would take a measure of everything that was inside him and let it out through his guitar." The results speak for themselves. One of the most cathartic and iconic guitar solos in music history, and a must-listen for any uninitiated among us. The rest of the record is a masterclass is the deepest, most fried-out funk you've ever heard. Hazel strikes again with Hendrix-ian aplomb on "Super Stupid" and "Wars of Armageddon," and the rhythms on "Can You Get To That," "Hit It And Quit," and "Back In Our Minds" are so lethal they should be illegal. This is a phenomenal record - the picture-perfect depiction of the bad trip America's been rocketing through over the last 50 years. It's not a good time, but I still think it's the best thing P-Funk ever put out.

[monasterymonochrome]

Another top 20 lock, probably more like top 10. Look, I've been there. I've been the guy who insists that III is actually the underrated masterpiece of the original quartet. That it's the best Zeppelin record! But guess what? It's not. The answer is IV. The answer will always be IV. Not Physical Graffiti. Not Houses of the Holy. Okay, maybe II. But no. No. It's Zeppelin IV. Like Born to Run, this is also the pinnacle - the platonic ideal - of a type of rock music. But it's not Springsteen's America of burnt out drifters and suicide dreams. It's a British strain, the land of the monarchy, of God's Will. Except this time it's the Nordic Gods, or the pagan idols of thunder and lightning being worshipped. Is it pretentious? Abso-fucking-lutely. But it also fuckin' rules. And that, I think, is the only thing that matters.

[monasterymonochrome]

Jun 27, 2023 14:02:16 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

Another top 20 lock, probably more like top 10. Look, I've been there. I've been the guy who insists that III is actually the underrated masterpiece of the original quartet. That it's the best Zeppelin record! But guess what? It's not. The answer is IV. The answer will always be IV. Not Physical Graffiti. Not Houses of the Holy. Okay, maybe II. But no. No. It's Zeppelin IV. Like Born to Run, this is also the pinnacle - the platonic ideal - of a type of rock music. But it's not Springsteen's America of burnt out drifters and suicide dreams. It's a British strain, the land of the monarchy, of God's Will. Except this time it's the Nordic Gods, or the pagan idols of thunder and lightning being worshipped. Is it pretentious? Abso-fucking-lutely. But it also fuckin' rules. And that, I think, is the only thing that matters.

[This post was basically a plagiarized version of an old Pitchfork Best of the 70s write-up that cracked me up back in the day, but I always agreed with.  I would be remiss not to share it here]

"We must be lying to ourselves: There is no way this album should not be #1. If my fellow PFM writers could go to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s memory-erasure clinic and wipe out everything related to this record and band—the radio overplay, the Spinal Tap jokes, Robert Plant asking, “Does anybody remember laughter?”—and hear IV again for the first time, it would be at the very top of this list. Because when the riff from “Black Dog” hits you for the first time, you come face to face with God. Nothing is bigger than Led Zeppelin IV. It tears your skin and grinds away your doubt and self-hatred, freeing the rage and lust and anger of cockblocked adolescence. Listening to this album is like fucking the Grand Canyon.

Some people call “When the Levee Breaks” the album’s true epic, because it sounds like the blues while “Stairway to Heaven” sounds like druids. But that was the fucking point. Zeppelin understood that you spend your days under the weight of shit, so they show you the way out with a moronized stewpot of myth, Tolkien and California daydreaming, a place where you can pray for greatness from battles you’ll never fight. Zeppelin spanned it all, because they knew sometimes you wield the Hammer of the Gods and sometimes you just get the shaft. –Chris Dahlen"

[ten15]

Houses of the Holy edges out IV for me, strictly because of Stairway to Heaven.