The Byrds - (Untitled)/(Unissued) (deluxe edition 2000, orig. 2LP rel. 1970)

I used to reach for this one a lot at the turning of the seasons, and dug it out for a fresh appraisal the other day.  First released in September 1970 as a live record/studio record double, (Untitled) put in place the Byrds lineup that would prove most stable, carrying them through to the end (apart from the original lineup's reunions).  Roger McGuinn, Clarence White, Skip Battin and Gene Parsons proved to be a tight, adventurous live unit, and the collection of concert recordings that open the collection rip through material old and new culminating in a 16-minute jam around Eight Miles High.

The studio album is equally revelatory, marking a fresh high point in Byrdsian songwriting.  McGuinn at the time was attempting to write a musical entitled Gene Tryp, based on Peer Gynt and in collaboration with Jacques Levy (later Dylan's Desire co-writer).  As well as the live opener Lover Of The Bayou, songs from this abandoned project appearing on (Untitled) are Chestnut Mare, All The Things and Just A Season, working just fine as quality standalone songs.  Skip Battin comes to the fore as a writer too, on the memorable Vietnam-themed closer Well Come Back Home, and collaborative efforts Yesterday's Train, Hungry Planet and You All Look Alike.

Live and studio together, this 70 minutes of music add up to one of the strongest albums ever released under the Byrds moniker, but even more was recorded - and released as a bonus CD 30 years later.  This was my first exposure to (Untitled), on receiving a mix tape from someone with the gorgeous acoustic take on Lowell George's Willin' and seeking out the source.  The (Unissued) disc took a mirror approach to the original album, starting out with 20 minutes of studio outtakes then adding 25 minutes of further live material - and a neat little hidden extra in an accapella Amazing Grace.

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Disc 2 link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Sweetheart Of The Rodeo

Frank Zappa - Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar (1981)

Definitely wound up with a fresh appreciation of Zappa's considerable guitar talents this year, so an hour and a half of guitar solos sounded like a worthwhile acquisition.  Originally a set of three individual mail-order records: Shut Up, Some More & Return Of The Son Of, then a 3-LP box set, then 2 CDs, this entirely instrumental patchwork was mostly recorded live between 1977 and 1980.  

 

Sometimes excerpted from known songs (eg the three title tracks come from Inca Roads performances), sometimes on-the-fly improvisations, Zappa deftly edited these solo highlights into an order that aimed to vary the textures and tempi.  He also "grouted" it all with little snippets of chatter which "just served as punctuation", "to hear another texture and then set you up for the next thing".

The results, which might have come across like the ultimate overindulgence in lesser hands, form a durable, enjoyable portrait of a guitarist who was really maturing as an individual stylist in this era.  Even when there's not much beyond a basic vamp going on behind him (Treacherous Cretins, Soup 'N Old Clothes), Zappa's playing is never less than scintillating.  The sequencing works really well too: rather than front-load all the best cuts, the three-volume album actually gets better as it goes on, so my personal highlights Pink Napkins and Stucco Homes sit on Disc 2 here.  Then, to finish with something completely different (or perhaps he didn't have quite enough material selected for six sides), Zappa lets the album play out on a violin/electric bouzouki duet with Jean-Luc Ponty from 1972.

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Disc 2 link

pw: sgtg

For Zappa-CD-variation trainspotters: source is Japanese Ryko 2-CD from the 80s ("grouts" sit at the beginning of tracks rather than end of track prior).

Previously posted at SGTG:

Lumpy Gravy

Waka/Jawaka

The Grand Wazoo

Roxy & Elsewhere

One Size Fits All

You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 2: The Helsinki Concert

The Perfect Stranger (live 2018)

Brian Eno - Before And After Science (1977)

For his last in a run of art-rock-based albums in the 1970s, Eno assembled the cream of the musicians he'd worked with thus far (including members of Roxy Music, Brand X and Cluster - I ran out of space in the tags to list every name), and recorded over a hundred possible tracks over two years.  This was whittled down to ten that were a summation of the quirky avant-pop/rock sound he'd established, and also looked forward to his increasingly ambient interests.

Overlapping in part with the time Eno spent with Bowie in Berlin, Before And After Science plays well against Low & Heroes, not least on King's Lead Hat (also anagrammatic of future collaborators), and has several krautrock touch points too.  The lyrics on opener No One Receiving look forwards to The Belldog on After The Heat, and Moebius & Roedelius themselves appear on By This River, giving definitive Cluster & Eno overlap.  Another krautrock guest appearance comes in the form of Jaki Liebezeit's drumming on Backwater.

Energy Fools The Magician aside, the original LP's two sides divide neatly into an uptempo, jagged art-rock side and a sublime pastoral side.  As good as the former is, the latter takes the crown for me in Eno's 70s output: the lovely Here He Comes; the bucolic-melancholic Julie With; the aforementioned Cluster co-write; an ambient instrumental aptly dedicated to Harold Budd, and the gorgeous closer Spider & I (thought by some to be about Bowie).  Outside of his purely ambient work, Eno really doesn't get better than this.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Another Green World
Cluster & Eno 

After The Heat
Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror (with Harold Budd)

Ambient 4: On Land
Apollo - Atmospheres & Soundtracks (with Daniel Lanois & Roger Eno)
The Pearl (with Harold Budd & Daniel Lanois)

Doldinger's Motherhood - Motherhood (1970)

Just before he started the successful jazz fusion outfit Passport, Berliner saxman Klaus Doldinger had this early-Deep Purpleish heavy prog band on the go for a couple of albums, of which this is the second.  If you were looking for a German comparison, I suppose Xhol Caravan wouldn't be a million miles off.  Lots of grungy organ (Doldinger handled all the keys as well as the reeds) and fuzz guitar make for a typical late 60s psych-tinged hard prog sound, particularly effective on the lengthy opener Devil Don't Get Me, and on Song Of Dying which follows - that one suggesting they might've been listening to early Black Sabbath.  Side One is rounded out by a brief novelty instrumental, aptly titled Circus Polka.

The album's second half might start on the album's low point with Men's Quarrel - seriously, there's lyrics here that even Spinal Tap might have drawn the line at - but it picks up again.  Turning Around and the closer Yesterday's Song are really nice psych-pop efforts at giving the album a bit of light and shade, and in between is another groovy workout, Degeneration.  Yet another one of these albums that's very much of its time, but as longtime readers will know, I love digging out little snapshot-of-the-era curios like this every so often - plenty of great fun to be had giving this a spin.

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pw: sgtg

Legendary Pink Dots - Asylum (1985)

Double album of dark psych-pop, post-punk prog weirdness and god knows what else, from Anglo-Dutch cult legends who are still on the go after 40 years.  This is the first album of theirs I've taken a chance on after being vaguely aware of them for ages, so any pointers as to where to go next would be much appreciated.  The attraction of this one from the mid 80s was the editing participation of one Steven Stapleton, which on listening appears to be limited to the strangest tracks at the end, but I could be wrong.

Whether or not Asylum is a good entry point to the Legendary Pink Dots, I loved it, and found it well structured - the short songs at the beginning gradually give way to more ambitious, longer tracks and finally full-on avant-garde insanity on the original Side 4.  The lazy description of this band might be that they're like a post-punk version of Barrett-era Floyd, which has a grain of truth, but there's so much more besides that.

For instance: love the violin sound (although I gather they had numerous lineup changes), Edward Ka-Spel's voice, especially on the spoken-word epic So Gallantly Screaming, and the two gorgeous tracks with a female lead vocal, from Attrition's Julia Niblock.  The keyboard sounds and production values might not be to everyone's taste, but for me they were spot on for an album of this style and vintage.  I'm looking forward to further exploration.

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The Walker Brothers - Nite Flights (1978)

I'm not sure what exactly was the catalyst that finally ended Scott Walker's "wilderness years", in which he'd produced no new songs in seven years, and in such spectacular fashion.  It's generally written that he'd been coasting through an unhappy state of contractual affairs, then reunited with the Walker Brothers at his lowest creative ebb.  By the time the trio put together their third album post-reunion, they apparently saw which way the wind was blowing for the GTO label and went for broke.  But if Gary Leeds and John Maus turned in a fairly decent two/four songs each, Scott Engel's were suddenly on another planet altogether.

The first 16 minutes of Nite Flights, which were also released as an EP, are in hindsight the obvious curtain-raiser to Scott Walker's late solo career, in which each album reached further into the abyss.  Wonder what on earth anyone who was listening in 1978 thought.  Kicking off with discordant guitar blasts and blistering solos between the verses, Shutout is just the beginning of the much more abstract approach to lyrics that Walker had adopted - there's even a sly wink to Brion Gysin at the start of the second verse.  Fat Mama Kick takes inspiration from French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy against a similarly harsh background.  Both fade out just as they seem to be getting going, but the album's title track is longer and more electronically tinged, with clear inspiration from Bowie (which wouldn't just go one way).  Then there's The Electrician.

How do you follow a six-minute dark ambient (with an orchestral middle section) horror-story about CIA torture?  Gary Leeds has the unfortunate task, and finishes the first side of the album with the respectable Death Of Romance.  Den Haague is even better, with neat production touches.  By the time you get to John Maus' songs that close the album, though, it's impossible to escape the fact that nothing could touch the sheer otherwordly genius of the first four tracks.

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Scott Walker at SGTG:
Climate Of Hunter
Tilt
Soused

The Jayhawks - Sound Of Lies (1997)

When I ran into this album like an old schoolfriend the other week, it instantly took me back 22 years, to a teenage subscription to MOJO magazine.  Their August 1997 issue I only remember as it carried Volume 2 of their new mix CD series, The MOJO Machine Turns You On - apparently a reference to a CBS loss-leader from the late 60s.  Ending the CD was a six-minute track based around an insistent, pulsing bassline, portentious fuzz guitars and a desperate air that culminated in the refrain "Babe, I'm scared of you".  Fascinated by the track, Dying On The Vine, I sought out its parent album.

Sound Of Lies was reviewed in the magazine as being something of a departure from The Jayhawks' established alt-country sound.  In the aftermath of guitarist-vocalist-key songwriter Mark Olson, and other guitarist Gary Louris' assumption of most writing duties, the review painted a picture of unsettled band chemistry and a much rawer-edged album, typified by the track on the mix CD.  I'm quoting this from memory, so it may not be the reviewer's exact words: "If [predecessor album] Tomorrow The Green Grass was Harvest, this [Sound Of Lies] is Tonight's The Night."  That was enough for this teenage Neil Young obsessive - I was sold.

So nearly 22 years on, and having picked up a cheap copy of Sound Of Lies to replace my long-lost original purchase, how does it sound?  Still pretty damn impressive.  Like almost every album of the mid-late 90s I remember buying, it could maybe have shaved off a couple of tracks for a more concise running time.  The highlights, though (and they are many) still do it for me, despite this kind of thing now being several towns' drive from my usual musical area codes.  The opening Man Who Loved Life establishes the paranoid, hounded atmosphere with some nifty turns of phrase and grungy guitars as the song eventually builds up.  There's fuzzy melodic powerpop in the Big Star vein on the track that nicks their name, and more layers of unsettling threat in the second-half trio of Sixteen Down, Haywire and of course Dying On The Vine.  And the MOJO subscription?  Cancelled circa 2001, when it no longer reflected my musical obsessions.  Maybe I should pick up the occasional copy, if it helps unearth little gems like this album.

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Allan Holdsworth - Road Games (1983)

Finally got hold of something by the erstwhile Gong guitarist whose unique style I've been enjoying so much on their post-Daevid Allen records.  It's not much - a 24-minute mini-album - but it's a start.  Road Games came to be from Eddie Van Halen enthusing to Warner Bros about how much he loved Allan Holdsworth's playing.  It would be a short-lived stint at the corporate behemoth - Holdsworth and producer Ted Templeman didn't get on, and the maverick guitarist broke free of his contract shortly afterwards for pastures new.  Road Games, however, is still pretty damn good.

A top-flight jazz fusion trio was established with Zappa drummer Chad Wackerman and Bruford bassist Jeff Berlin, both of whom Holdsworth knew and liked.  Three of the six tracks also added vocals: Bluesbreakers/Juicy Lucy singer Paul Williams, who also worked with Holdsworth on either side of Road Games, sings the title track, and Jack Bruce is featured on the last two songs.  As fine as their contributions are, Road Games is really all about the music created by the core trio. 

Opening track Three Sheets To The Wind starts out with a clean, Metheny-esque chiming tone, but soon Holdsworth's overdubbed lead lines start to cook, showing just why someone like Van Halen would've admired him.  The title track is more of a straightahead rocker, and although the guitar solos are great, I much prefer the jazzier stuff, like Water On The Brain Pt. 2 (there's no Part 1) which follows, or the more laidback Tokyo Dream, which really lets Holdsworth stretch out.  If you want to listen to a really great and underrated guitarist, there's far worse ways to spend 20-odd minutes.

Original 12" cover

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted on SGTG:
Gong - Gazeuse!
Gong - Expresso II

David Fanshawe - African Sanctus / Salaams (1989 compi, rec. 1973/77)

Nice little oddity today that very much reflects its late 60s-early 70s spirit of freewheeling experimentation.  African Sanctus is the most successful work by David Fanshawe (1942-2010), Devon-born ethnomusicologist and composer who was responsible for over thousands of recordings of indigenous music from around the world.  When I found this CD in a charity shop some time ago, I assumed it was another kind of Missa Luba - a gorgeous piece of music I must post some time - an African choral work.  Turns out African Sanctus is way much more eclectic and pleasingly strange than that.

Fanshawe's raw material for the work was the tapes he'd been accumulating in North and East Africa, as well as Arabia, in the late 60s.  He hit upon the idea of using these vocal, instrumental and percussive recordings as backing tapes to use in a Western-style Mass setting, and completed African Sanctus in 1972.  The work would undergo revisions over the years, but this June 1973 recording captures the original 54-minute version that was released as an LP that year.

Along with the indigenous recordings, African Sanctus uses bits of traditional choir and rock instrumentation of piano, electric guitar & bass and organ.  And frankly, it's all over the shop to listen to, in the most enjoyable way possible.  Far from watering down his source tapes into an insipid kind of world music, Fanshawe just let them burst into life in a kitchen sink approach of wildly varying tempi and dynamics.  It's an initially bewildering listen, but just about hangs together on its own internal logic, and not quite knowing what's coming next becomes part of the fun: whether that's African drumming, singing from both Christian and Islamic traditions, pop/rock music or environmental sounds (yep, there's frogs).  This multi-genre collage becomes something very likeable in its intention, and enduringly listenable.

Added on to this CD reissue is a 1977 recording of Fanshawe's 1970 piece Salaams, which again uses tapes (largely of pearl divers in Bahrain) against live instrumentation and singing.  It's a worthwhile inclusion, showing the development of the African Sanctus style on a smaller scale.

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Milton Nascimento/Lô Borges - Clube Da Esquina (1972)

Back to Brazil, with possibly the most stunning high water mark in MPB (música popular brasileira).  Clube Da Esquina (corner club) was a collective of musicians from the Minas Gerais state, led by Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges, the latter just 20 when this double-album was recorded.  With 21 songs in 64 minutes, Clube Da Esquina is like a fat-free White Album or stripped-down Manassas.  Over the succinct running time, it manages to take in regional folk influences, hazy, languid psychedelic pop and a huge dash of Beatlesque styling in a journey that feels more perfect with every listen.  Even the album cover has a great story behind it.

A track-by-track is pointless on an album like this; picking out highlights near-impossible for one with literally no duds - even the two tracks that don't break the minute mark are necessary, rather than jokey filler.  So here's a handful of favourites.  From Lô Borges' seven compositions, I'll go for the sun-dappled goodbyes of O Trem Azul with its gorgeous harmonies, and Trem De Doido, a poignant ode to mistreated psychiatric patients, with Beto Guedes' stinging lead guitar.

Out of Milton Nascimento's phenomenal songwriting and legendary voice... what to choose as favourites?  I'm going to plump for his more impressionistic side that comes out in the Side 3-4 split, on Um Gusto De Sol's woozy, sleepy personification of a pear in a fruit bowl, and the swirling production effects of Pelo Amor De Deus.  But then he's just as good as an interpreter, of Spanish songwriter Carmelo Larrea's bolero standard Dos Cruces, or duetting with Alaíde Costa on Me Deixa Em Paz.  Or indeed with no lyrics at all, on the near-title track or on the ode to his adoptive mother Lilia, soon to be re-recorded with Wayne Shorter (Wagner Tiso from Native Dancer is also all over Clube with his great organ style). Stay tuned for more of the near-instrumental side of Milton later this week, but for now make sure to download this perfect album.

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Brast Burn - Debon (1975)

This album seemed like one of these "too good to be true" musical legends when I read about it a few weeks back.  An obscure one-off by a Japanese musician, who may have also been responsible for another album credited to 'Karuna Khyal' on the same tiny label, that briefly appeared in one record shop in Nakano, Tokyo, and sounded like someone doing a mashup of every krautrock album you've ever heard with a dash of Ry Cooder on top?

So when I found a copy of this CD (from the same Paradigm label responsible for reissuing Journey Through Space and Acezantez) going for peanuts shortly afterwards, it was impossible to resist.  The low price was due to library stickers - seriously, the fact that an English public library had something like this in its CD racks at some point was just the icing on the cake - wonder how often it was borrowed?  And of course, there was still the music...

True to the reviews I'd read, the two 23-minute pieces that make up Debon have a very strong krautrock flavour - there's echoes here of both Amon Düüls, Ash Ra Tempel in their mellower moments, a bit of a Faustlike sensibility... you get the idea.  Long, raga-like sections of guitar and percussion jamming cut into each other with occasional vocal declamations and incantations.  Bells, electronic whooshes and other odd bits of studio noise complete the picture of an album that reminds you of a lot of things, sure, but the way it's all put together is utterly unique and mindbending.  One of these wonderful discoveries that always remind me there's infinitely more great music out there still to be found.

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Rheingold - s/t (1980)

Debut album by Neue Deutsche Welle legends Rheingold, who took their name from the luxury Trans-Europe Express train that always passed through Bodo Staiger's native Düsseldorf.  As mentioned in the previous post, Staiger had played guitar on the 1977 second album by Lilac Angels, rock n' rollers formed out of Klaus Dinger's brief attempt at becoming some sort of svengali.

Staiger did become a fan of La Düsseldorf, and it shows in the sound of this album.  In fact, if I had to describe Rheingold in one sentence, it would be to imagine La Düsseldorf had been fronted by Michael Rother rather than Dinger: the propulsive energy is there (check Internationale) but a lot of the guitar tones are softer, cleaner and overall much closer in melodic sensibility to late 70s Rother.  This shows up most in the album's five instrumental tracks.  There's a bit of a Neu! influence too (is it just me, or does the outro on Pirata sound uncannily like the intro to Hero?).

Lyrics are all in German, other than the sweet ballad Rendezvous which is tri-lingual and also gives a vocal spotlight to keyboard player Brigitte Kunze.  To make a bigger impact outwith Germany, Rheingold went on to release English-language versions of the two big singles here, Fluss/River and Dreiklangs-Dimensionen/Triad Dimensions.  The latter is probably still this group's best moment, sounding like Kraftwerk with a muscular rhythm guitar added.

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Steve Hackett - Defector (1980)

Having previously posted my favourite and close-second favourite of his albums, let's round up with my third Hackett-of-choice.  The very loosely Cold War-themed (it only really works for the first two tracks, although some fan reviews try to stretch the concept to the full album) Defector received a mixed critical reception, but IMO is still essential Hackett.

For starters, two of his most unmissable instrumental mini-epics are here: the lovely swirling jazziness of Jacuzzi, and the suitably stark and windswept atmospherics of album opener The Steppes.  Aside from the bonkers robot-rampage of Slogans, the remaining instrumental material is of a mellower, soft-focus nature, making Defector stand out in Hackett's Charisma era as the late-night atmospheric one.

This extends to the vocal tracks too, which more than once recall the guitarist's final Genesis era.  Leaving and The Toast respectively invoke Wind & Wuthering and Trick Of The Tail; the latter song could almost be a mini-Entangled, with the wooziness of anaesthesia being replaced by a more everyday, self-imbibed wooziness.  Comparisons are also often noted to Camel of a similar vintage, who I haven't really listened to enough to comment.  Don't miss the cute little closing gag of Hackett using an Optigan keyboard and period-piece vocal to evoke 1940s novelty jazz - I really don't get all the hate that Sentimental Institution receives from some fans, it always makes me crack a grin.

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Ry Cooder & Vishwa Mohan Bhatt - A Meeting By The River (1993)

And an inspired and fruitful meeting it was.  Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, the Rajasthani master of the Mohan Vina - a modified slide guitar of his own creation, with eight sympathetic drone strings added; and Ry Cooder, the eternal journeyman, on regular slide, recorded these four tracks in a Santa Barbara church - shame they didn't record more.  My only minus point for this record is always that I wish it was twice as long, but what was captured, backed up by Bhatt's regular tabla player Sukhvinder Singh, and Cooder's son Joachim, is superb.  A pair of lengthy, exploratory tracks are followed up by a catchy, upbeat jam and then a gorgeous closing ballad, the only non-original, a Fijian folk song.  One for al fresco listening with a long cool drink.

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Yoko Ono - Fly (1971; new reissue 2017)

Ideal time to do a post of this classic double-album - there's a new reissue doing the rounds, and label Secretly Canadian seem to have done a great job.  Sounds good, has a couple of bonus tracks I hadn't heard before so have kept them in the download (the eerie electronics of The Path are definitely worth hearing) and the CDs come in a hard-card vinyl gatefold replica.  Worth buying, for sure, along with the others that have been reissued.

If this is your first encounter with (arguably) Yoko Ono's greatest album, though, you're in for a real treat.  One album's worth of raw, propulsive avant-rock which at its greatest (the 17 minutes of Mind Train) sounds like a feminine version of Can's Halleluwah, then a side's worth of clattering, echoing collaborations with another Fluxus artist Joe Jones and his 'percussion machines', then rounding off with the 22-minute title track.  The latter might be the most spartan and difficult to love - it's mostly solo voice, until some reversed slide guitar towards the end makes things a bit more interesting, but it's still an utterly unique voice that I could listen to all day.

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Disc 2

Die Engel Des Herrn - Live! As Hippie-Punks (rec. 1993, rel. 1995)

Can't believe it's been a year already!  Firstly, many thanks to everyone who dropped by to download, leave comments, and follow-back on their blogrolls - you make it all worthwhile.

Here's to this year then.  First order of business - I believe I said I'd post this album eventually, a year ago today in fact when kicking things off with DEDH's studio album.   So what better time for some live Klaus Dinger in all his shambolic glory, with his most underrated band, in what may have actually been their only gig in Dusseldorf at the Malkasten arts centre, on 21 June 1993.

And a nice rough-and-ready recording it is too, with a decent, clear bootleg quality, of Dinger and DEDH revisiting material from their album - most notably transposing Bitte, Bitte into a minor key, which does it a world of good - and making a decent fist of two La Dusseldorf classics.  Viva is the opener, and a good 25 minutes are set aside for a fine, bluesy version of Cha Cha 2000.  Before Dinger's signature song, there's also 20 minutes of fresh DEDH material, proving that there could've been more mileage in this group - The Song in particular develops from a subtle start to a classic Dinger buildup towards the end of its 10 minute duration - but true to their frontman's mercurial form, Die Engel Des Herrn would fall apart shortly afterwards and the remnants would morph into early La! Neu?.

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Peter Gabriel - Third Album (1980)

Dug this out for the first time in ages after Friday and the mention of Gabriel in the Gasparyan post.  For me, Peter Gabriel's third album remains a (if not the) high watermark of truly progressive rock - not a note, lyric or effect wasted, just breaking new ground at every turn in service of a unique set of songs.

Gabriel's old bandmate Phil Collins was in the headlines a few weeks back in light of his latest return, to predictable derision in the comment boards and many, many Patrick Bateman quotes.  So even more of an ideal time to dig out this album and listen to the very first sound on it - the gated reverb famously claimed by Collins, Hugh Padgham and Steve Lilywhite in equal parts.  Intruder scared the crap out of me when I first heard it aged about twelve, and it's still a brilliant piece of tightly-wound home invasion thriller-dramatics.

Other great stuff abounds on the 'Melt' album too - what I wouldn't have recognised back in the day was the Music For 18 Musicians influence on No Self Control; there's further Reichiness on Lead A Normal Life.  Don't think I heard The Jam either until my late teens, but I always loved the driving guitar riff on And Through The Wire - Gabriel grabbed Weller from an adjoining recording studio after guessing that he'd have the perfect style for the track.  With I Don't Remember and Games Without Frontiers on board as well, Gabriel's off-kilter commerical stock was rising too; for my money, he never made another album quite as complete and satisying as this one.

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Joe Satriani - Flying In A Blue Dream (1989)

A slight guilty pleasure today, but one that never, ever fails to put a big dumb grin on my face.  Must confess I haven't bought a new Satch album in six years, as they've started to feel bit interchangeable (perhaps bigger fans can correct me on that, and let me know if the last two are worth picking up), but back in 1989 Satriani was still young, vital, and breaking his own boundaries on this, his third full-length album.

Flying In A Blue Dream is actually a significant 'first' in Satriani's career - he's periodically stepped up to the microphone ever since, but this the first time he'd attempted songs with vocals after two completely instumental albums.  And in the nicest, most sincere way possible, the vocal tracks are hilarious.  Can't Slow Down, Big Bad Moon and Ride are classic 80s hair-rawk, I Believe a rousing power ballad; Strange is more enjoyable than the Red Hot Chili Peppers' entire discography, and The Phone Call is a great novelty rock n roll groove.

There's stil plenty of room for Satch's instrumental virtuosity on this 64-minute album though, with my favourite being the double-tapping masterpiece Day At The Beach - the original and best version, notwithstanding a thousand YouTube covers (many of which are pretty good!).

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Public Image Limited - Metal Box (1979)

Simply one of the most important and essential post-punk albums ever made - in fact, if we could've gone straight from the mid 70s to this without having to have The Pistols and The Clash in between, I might have actually believed that punk was a proper 'year zero'.  Metal Box, aka Second Edition (when reissued in regular packaging), changed my whole perception of how songs could be constructed and how the guitar could be played.  It was a massive influence on my musical development, to the point where I must've ripped off every single note Keith Levene played on this album in every band I was in during high school and university.

Always loved Jah Wobble's bass playing in PiL as well, and this is very much an album to crank up the low frequencies for.  Holding much of the responsibility for Metal Box's krautrock and dub influences, the former John Wardle famously started playing without access to an amp, so would press the body of the bass guitar against a bedstead to get some rudimentary amplification and play as hard as he could - and it shows.  And John Lydon... never better on this album, letting his Peter Hammill influences show and feeling freed by the non-linear, atonal song structures to just wail at full tilt, railing against society and exorcising the pain of his mother's death.  One of the most unique 'rock' albums ever made.  Play loud.

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The Byrds - Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968)

Every time I hear this album, my mind immediately goes back to a moment in a documentary programme I watched in the mid-90s about the history of rock in the 1960s.  I can't remember whether this was a series, or a one-off, or even what it was called.  The one thing I've never forgotten though is the moment it cuts away from the chaos of Altamont to a peaceful country highway, Hickory Wind starts playing, and country rock is born.  Even though the chronology's back to front* (this album predates Altamont by a year), it was still a great piece of narrative direction, and it introduced me to Gram Parsons and to Sweetheart Of The Rodeo.
* there's always the possibility that I'm remembering this completely wrong; it has been twenty years now!

All I knew of The Byrds up until then was their debut album - still good in its own way, but by 1968 Jim McGuinn was Roger, and was rebuilding The Byrds from the ground up.  Initially planning a comprehensive history of American music, along came Gram Parsons and an immersion in pure country.  Sweetheart Of The Rodeo is completely on-point in its song choices - alongside Woody Guthrie, Merle Haggard and the Louvin Brothers sits brand new material from a mythic session that Bob Dylan was then deep in the midst of, and a couple of stunning songs from Parsons himself.  One Hundred Years From Now is where it's at, folks - one of my all-time favourite Byrds songs.

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