When I was first becoming a really serious music fan, Stevie Ray Vaughan was just one of the guitar greats. It was just assumed but it was hard to really question it. If you talked to more knowledgeable (inevitably male) music fans about which guitarists to listen to, SRV was always on the list. I …
Tag: Blues Rock
It’s All About (1968) by Spooky Tooth
This is one of those records I thought about listening to a decade and a half ago and I’m just getting to it now. That’s often a recipe for disappointment as my tastes in my mid 30s are definitely not what they were in my early 20s.
Approximately Infinite Universe (1973) by Yoko Ono
My first encounter with Yoko Ono as the dominant performer (as opposed to Lennon) was with her Plastic Ono Band. I guess I wasn’t in the right mood for it, as it felt just way too directionless and faux avant garde to my ears at the time. (Some of the stuff they do on that …
Mr. Fantasy (1967) by Traffic
Traffic is one of those bands I’ve come at bass-ackwards, being way too familiar with their jazz rock reunion iteration and not very familiar with the original psychedelic rock band. It’s a stupid way of approaching any band, but particularly one that changed its identity as much as as Traffic did.
Slowhand (1977) by Eric Clapton
At some point during Clapton’s recovery from heroin addiction, his style of music changed rather drastically. He still played the blues but a lot of the fire and rawness of that playing was gone. His solo records from the ’70s (excepting the first one) all have a similar pop blues style, even if the individual …
The World is a Ghetto (1972) by WAR
All I knew of this band was “Low Rider” and “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”. Despite the evident commercial success of this record I had never even heard the title track or the successful single from this record. I had literally no idea what I was getting into. But this is great stuff: the majority …
The Amboy Dukes (1967)
In some circles this record has a reputation as a bit of a lost classic as there is a certain type of person who just loves this kind of vaguely psychedelic rock music from the late ’60s.
Street Survivors (1977) by Lynyrd Skynyrd
This album is perhaps most famous for its unfortunate album cover, showing the band (nearly) engulfed in flames. Three days after this album was released, 2/7ths of Lynyrd Skynyrd and four other people were killed in a plane crash, including one of their backing vocalists. The album then became their most successful, as is often …
Ice Cream for Crow (1982) by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band
If you have come at the Captain through his earliest works, this record might feel like not much or a man settling into his mid life. It’s far less radical than his most radical work of the early ’70s, wherein he basically pioneered the intersection of blues and free jazz and other things.
Danzig III: How the Gods Kill (1992)
I have never heard Danzig before and, to the best of my knowledge, never heard Glenn Danzig before. (Except maybe on some Misfits song, but I think the only version of the band I’ve heard is one without him in it.) And there’s something I am having a hard time shaking, which will likely infuriate …
Night Moves (1976) by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
For much of my life I have had a hatred for “boomer nostalgia” – movies and music that lionize growing up in the ’50s and ’60s as if it was just the bees knees. I am getting to an age where I am finally able to better understand the appeal of such nostalgia – I’m …
The Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (1966)
This is probably the definitive British blues album: it sounds like it could have been made by Americans in the US, it features great playing (particularly by Clapton) and I don’t know of any other pre-psychedelic blues album from the UK that is remotely this good. There is just one minor problem: by the time …
Fly Like an Eagle (1976) by Steve Miller Band
This is my first Steve Miller record, and I don’t get it.
Rocks (1976) by Aerosmith
The first time through this, I didn’t like it as much as Toys in the Attic. Aside from the opening track, there are fewer hits and the songs sounded weaker on the whole. But this is a dirty, perhaps deliberately poorly sounding record. (Listen to the piano on the last track – that piano sounds …
Every Picture Tells a Story (1971) by Rod Stewart
Though it’s hard for us to imagine now, at one point Rod Stewart was a vital, dare I say ‘cool,’ performer. He was involved in two of the great bands of the late ’60s and early ’70s and I have always heard good things about his early solo records. This one – his first big …
Vincebus Eruptum (1968) by Blue Cheer
For years and years I have been telling everyone who would listen that Jeff Beck’s Truth is the First Heavy Metal album of All Time. If people mentioned Blue Cheer, I dismissed them outright – despite only ever hearing their cover of “Summertime Blues” once or twice – or assumed that The Jeff Beck Group …
The Jimi Hendrix Experience (2000)
This is an exhaustive collection of Experience alternate takes, outtakes, alternate mixes and live performances. For the Hendrix completist, it’s probably more essential than any of the other studio rarities collections that have come out, just because it shows off more facets of his playing and his experimentation – unlike those studio rarities collections which …
Emotional Rescue (1980) by the Rolling Stones
I don’t know what to do with my first impressions. I’ve learned to distrust them. I give every album I review a minimum of three listens in order to defeat my initial prejudice. I adopted this approach, I think, because I wanted to be fair, but also because sometimes my initial impression did not jive …
Tonight’s the Night (1973, 1975) by Neil Young
Neil Young was a star for the first time in 1973. And yet even though he was star, and he was expected to pump out further “Heart of Gold” style hits, his life was a mess. Whether or not he may acknowledge it now, he had drug issues. And within a rather short span of …
Workingman’s Dead (1970) by the Grateful Dead
If you had been aware of the Dead in Spring 1970 but you didn’t live in San Francisco, you would have no way of knowing the band was birthed by a folk band in the mid ’60s. If you caught them live, you would have been familiar with how they were the first ever jam …
Winterland [Highlights] (2011) by the Jimi Hendrix Experience
This is the “highlights” disc taken from the Box Set documenting three Experience shows at the Winterland in October of 1968.
Miami Pop Festival (2013) by the Jimi Hendrix Experience
This is an Experience concert from the 1968 Miami Pop Festival (obviously) containing remarkably little music from either Axis or Ladyland – which they had already begun recording. Actually I don’t think there’s a single song from the latter. It’s a strong set and it shows off the Experience as a great live band, which …
People, Hell and Angels (2013) by Jimi Hendrix
This is apparently the “final” official rarities collection we will get from the Hendrix vaults. These are the last previously unreleased studio tracks. It only took 40 years.
Toys in the Attic (1975) by Aerosmith
I grew up during Aerosmith’s reunion: I was eight when Pump came out and twelve when Get a Grip was released – which was apparently old enough to stay up to watch that SNL skit pointing out all Aerosmith ballads are the same. My introduction to Aerosmith was therefore Much Music (Canada’s version of MTV) …
White Lies for Dark Times (2009) by Ben Harper and Relentless7
I have long struggled with Harper. When I arrived at University at the beginning of this century, I don’t know what I was expecting, but what I found was that there was a remarkable amount of commonality in the “underground” music that was cool. In fact, looking back it seems really odd to me that …
Jack White live at the Sony Centre, October 3, 2012
The opener was Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three. They play a mixture of pre-rock and roll styles of music including things like Western Swing and jazz and other styles from that era. The band is very solid – especially his guitarist – and as a singer he is definitely authentic, but this is …