The Most Brilliant Musical Move the Beatles Ever Made...

...was referencing "She Loves You" in "All You Need is Love."

Discuss.

Public Image Ltd. on American Bandstand, 1980

Well, it's got a good beat n' you can dance to it. I'll give it a 7, Dick!

How the hell PiL got on American Bandstand is one of the great miracles of modern music.

Oh, and don't forgot another one of their wildly successful TV appearances:

Stuff I Left Out

As to be expected, I'm mad at all the stuff I left off yesterday's list of an "alternate" top 20 of all time. Some notable ones I left off:

	Arcade Fire Funeral (2004) Yeah, I don't love it that much either - but it's one of the great albums of the 00s, and it's nice whenever there's a new classic, something that's accepted by the old and young generations as one of the greatest records of this decade. In 10 years, 15 at the most, this should be on every publication's "top 20 of all time."
	Public Image Ltd. Metal Box (1979) I wanted something to represent British punk/post-punk, so I chose Entertainment! but I perhaps should've chosen Metal Box, which I love - probably more than Entertainment!
	Van Morrison Astral Weeks (1968)
	Prince Purple Rain (1984) I'm going to embarrass myself and admit that I've listened to very, very little Prince (I'm still young, after all!), but I don't have to tell you about the acclaim this album has received. I predict that, once I finally get around to listening to it, I'll probably like it a lot.
	TV on the Radio Return to Cookie Mountain (2006) Perhaps I should've chosen this over You Forgot It In People, but "People" has that aura of concise greatness that Return to Cookie Mountain.
	Neil Young Zuma (1975) Yes, I genuinely believe this is Neil Young's greatest album.
	John Lennon Mother (John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band) (1970)
	The Modern Lovers The Modern Lovers (1976)
	The Who Live at Leeds (1970) Probably the greatest live album ever, and definitely the greatest Who album - in my view, miles ahead of Who's Next, which I never liked that much, comparatively.

The Unsung Masterpieces - An Alternate Top 20 of All Time

This list does not contain any albums from an artist that has an album in the top 30 overall rated albums from rateyourmusic.com. It combines overall influence with my personal opinion, and I've tried to keep in mind an equality of eras and genres. This is "pop" only - so, Rock, R&B, Rap, Country, etc. - but I left out genres like jazz and classical, because they can't be compared. Also, to increase diversity, I don't have any artist repeated.

This isn't meant to be definitive, just to make you think. Don't kill your idols; just elevate more people to their level.

20		Buddy Holly Buddy Holly (1958)
19		Broken Social Scene You Forgot It in People (2002)
18		Patti Smith Horses (1975)
17		Hüsker Dü Zen Arcade (1984)
16		The White Stripes Elephant (2003)
15		A Tribe Called Quest The Low End Theory (1991)
14		Nirvana Nevermind (1991)
13		Little Richard Here's Little Richard (1957)
12		Ramones Ramones (1976)
11		Gang of Four Entertainment! (1979)
10		Big Star Radio City (1974)
9		Otis Redding Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul (1965)
8		Talking Heads Remain in Light (1980)
7		Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison (1968)
6		Wu-Tang Clan Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993)
5		Aretha Franklin I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967)
4		The Kinks Face to Face (1966)
3		Stevie Wonder Innervisions (1973)
2		Sonic Youth Daydream Nation (1988)
1		Sly and the Family Stone There's a Riot Goin' On (1971)

Something Else - The Kinks (1969)

What a great album. The Kinks, in my opinion, are easily the most underrated band of the British invasion, possibly of the entire 60s. When everyone else was singing, "all you need is love," the Kinks were singing, "Sylvilla looked into her mirror / Percilla looked into the washing machine / And the drudgery of being wed / She was so jealous of her sister."

That's from one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard, "Two Sisters." Actually, I should mention here that I always thought it was the drudgery of being wet, which I thought Percilla was associating with the washing machine - but it's wed, which although changes a lot of the meaning, it retains the tone that the Kinks were brilliant at. I love these lyrical misunderstandings; I'm not sure exactly what the literary equivalent would be - I hesitate to say impressionist, in a way, though there's not the aspect of misinterpreting individual words in impressionist poetry - but somebody could write a very good dissertation on this phenomenon.

Something Else came after Face to Face, which I find to be their magnum opus, even better than The Village Green Preservation Society, whose production I always found a bit lackluster compared to the previous two; Face to Face perhaps probably contained more harpsichord on a rock'n'roll record than any other at the time, and probably the most since then. It doesn't at all sound corny or like a pastiche - as a matter of fact, it almost sounds like a brilliantly sly fusion of 18th century pomp and circumstance with 20th century noise. No one did satire like the Kinks, reaffirming my belief that seriousness and humor are never incompatible - and that perhaps no other form communicates "serious" themes quite like humor. (See: Dr. Strangelove). Something Else doesn't quite have the mythic level of songwriting that Face to Face exhibited, but it's damn good. Listen to it.

DOWNLOAD (53 MB - RapidShare)

Top 10 Favorite Album Covers: 3-1

I must be cursed! I say that I'll post my final three picks for my favorite covers the next day, thinking, "I'm sure I can make a promise like that, I won't be busy tomorrow!" Well, I wasn't busy at all - unfortunately, my computer crashed. So, here, almost a week late, is my final installment!

 

3. Ramones - Ramones. No other cover says "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" at the same time like this one. No other covers says "rock 'n' roll" like this one, either.

2. Public Image Ltd. - Metal Box. For those who aren't aware: After Johnny Rotten of Sex Pistols fame found himself to be unemployed, he went against everything that the Pistols stood for and created the supposed antithesis of rock. Atonal, long, electronic, and brilliant, plus a supposed status as a "communications company" and not a "band." They said they did soundtracks, movies, videos, but of course they didn't really do anything of the sort and released albums and played gigs like any other band. But what better way to sell a "corporation" than in a metal box?

1. Sly & the Family Stone - There's a Riot Goin' On. Sly says: "I wanted the flag to truly represent people of all colors. I wanted the color black because it is the absence of color. I wanted the color white because it is the combination of all colors. And I wanted the color red because it represents the one thing that all people have in common: blood. I wanted suns instead of stars because stars to me imply searching, like you search for your star. And there are already too many stars in this world. But the sun, that's something that is always there, looking right at you. Betsy Ross did the best she could with what she had. I thought I could do better." 

Sure, he might be trying a bit too hard to be profound, but I still love the image so much. Even if you don't know exactly what flag "means," it conveys a slight disturbance in patriotism, like America in a parallel universe. This isn't exactly the flag you know. There's something goin' on here... like a riot.

Labels

Poor, poor death metal. The term, as it's now used, seems to refer to anything jarring, loud, fast, and probably evil. Casual metal fans reject it for the Cookie Monster vocals, the indie elite concentrate their attention on hipper metal media, like drone doom, and the general public treats any fan as a deeply disturbed individual. Of course these are all exaggerations, but the case remains that outside of death metal fans, the genre gets very little respect.

The saddest thing here is that death metal's lack of mainstream acceptance (if not mainstream appeal) is purely cosmetic. Death - scary, no? And yet, besides being generally abrasive, the concept of death doesn't have much to do with death metal. When the band Death chose to give themselves that name, they may have wanted to reflect the darkness of the genre. Perhaps they even wanted a name that the public wouldn't accept. And yet, I can't really help but wonder how public perception would be different if the genre had come to be known as Chuck metal, or morbid metal, or possessed metal. Maybe then, we wouldn't use death metal to refer to all the harsh noise in our life, or use it as a buzzword for the taste of the aggressive, crazed youth.

Of course, the whole problem goes deeper than death metal. Musical labels serve an important purpose, but they frequently lose meaning within a ridiculously short amount of time. Today, many of us perceive traditional punk rock as fast, short, political, angry, barely-produced and dead. And yet, when we consider the first punk rock, fast and short are the only adjectives that fit. And in the 21st century, punk fans dismiss bands like Green Day and The Libertines as corporate shit, even though they're about ten times closer to New York and early British punk than any hardcore punk. Ever.

And when's the last time you heard someone in real life use techno to mean techno? It's generally all trance, house, eurodance, synth-pop... you get the idea. Pop music made with a synthesizer or a computer. Then you've got your gangsta rap, like Eminem and Ludacris. Essentially scary men who rap about sex.

I suppose there's no real "so-what" here. Oh well. Enjoy some death metal, and take it easy.

Top 10 Favorite Album Covers: 10-7

Alright, so here's my first installment of my top 10 album covers of all time, from 10 to 7 - the top 3 are coming tomorrow.

10. Sonny Rollins - Way Out West. No comment.

9. Caetano Veloso - Caetano Veloso. There's something about this photo - I love the slight blurriness of the picture, especially the background, combined with an almost haziness you get. Then there's that fur thing Veloso's clutching or wearing, you're not really sure - all topped with the look on Veloso's face.

8. John Coltrane - Ascension. That look in Coltrane's eyes is what made him a Saint in the African Orthodox Saint John Coltrane Church in San Francisco. Contrast the calm of Trane and the actual music inside, and you have a great album cover.

7. Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance. I'm not sure why I like this one so much - you kind of have to listen to the album to kind of put the two together - not that you suddenly realize the "meaning" of the album cover once you listen to it, but they just naturally seem to go together. Just looking at it, you know that this is going album is going to be great, even if you have no idea what it sounds like.

6. Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food. Artists only.

5. The Band - Music From Big Pink. The cover was actually painted by Bob Dylan, and it looks like the greatest piece of folk art ever painted, like a strange dream of Americana.

 

4. Jimi Hendrix - Axis: Bold as Love. A lot of crazy and great album covers came out of psychedelia, but this is the best, hands down.

The final three are coming tomorrow!

Looking back on this I realize that most of my covers are from the 60s and 70s - in fact, the only one that's not is #10. I'd say easily that the artists I listen to come from those two decades more than any others, but they defenitely don't make up 90% of my "library," as this list would suggest. Probably half of it is simply my graphics tastes, but the other half may have to do with the sadly slowly eroding practice of putting yourself on the album cover. Nowadays, there are very, very little "non-mainstream" bands that put a photograph of themselves on the cover, which is a shame because, though often it's a pointless waste of space to sell someone's sex appeal, sometimes it can tell a lot. In each one of these album covers, the photographs tell something about the artist and the music - Caetano Veloso's almost helpless stare, the meditative spirituality of Coltrane, the sheer purposeful awkwardness of Talking Heads.

Notice that I didn't mention Sonny Rollins there.