Full disclosure part 1: I listened to this on a streaming service so a few tracks were missing, the videos were included in the track list, and I really have no idea how it would compare to the actual boxed set. (No booklets, etc.) Full disclosure part 2: the time for me to have listened …
Tag: Jazz Rock
Crash (1996) by Dave Matthews Band
When I graduated high school in 2000, I barely knew who the Dave Matthews Band was. Sure, I must have seen their videos on TV, but I don’t know that I could have told you anything about them.
H to He Who Am the Only One (1970) by Van Der Graaf Generator
This has got to be the best-produced Van Der Graaf Generator record, at least among the albums of their first few eras. It’s clear and there are fewer instruments – or, rather, fewer effects on the instruments, I guess – and things don’t bleed together like they do on basically every other record this version …
Godbluff (1975) by Van Der Graaf Generator
Van Der Graaf Generator’s firs reunion album feels like the first step in the band’s evolution from its dense prog sound of its early days to the almost new wave sound they would have on The Quiet Zone. It’s a notably sparer record, which may seem like an odd thing to say if this is …
Katy Lied (1975) by Steely Dan
Here we go again: I do not like Steely Dan. This album does not change that feeling in any way. The problems I have with Steely Dan records are as present on this record as any of their ’70s records I’ve heard. The more albums I listen to, the more I become convinced that, once …
The Civil Surface (1974) by Egg
Here I am coming at yet another band backwards. This time, it’s even worse, because this album was made by Egg after they had broken up, to basically tie up loose ends or something. So, um, it’s probably not the best place to start.
Ruby Vroom (1994) by Soul Coughing
Beginning sometime in the mid to late ’80s, there was a curious trend in the UK where a bunch of white guys began to appropriate much of the music of hip hop to make music that was, mostly, decidedly not hip hop. This music has very little rap in it (sometimes absolutely none) and had …
Rock Bottom (1974) by Robert Wyatt
As I write in seemingly half the reviews of albums I write, expectations are a terrible thing. I have heard about Rock Bottom for perhaps as long as I was aware of Wyatt’s existence, which dates back to my first encounter with Soft Machine maybe 20 years ago (or slightly less than that).
Unrest (1974) by Henry Cow
One of the most appealing things for me Henry Cow is how utterly uncategorizable they are. Though regularly lumped in with the Canterbury Scene, it’s basically impossible to compare them to any of those bands, or really any prog rock band. This isn’t prog rock. I sometimes don’t know what it is, but it has …
Chicago Transit Authority (1969)
Imagine you were out on the street and you went to check your phone, and the battery ran out. And you said to the person nearest you “Do you know what time it is?” And he responded “Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care? If so I can’t imagine why. …
Breakfast in America (1979) by Supertramp
I grew up listening to Oldies Radio when that meant music from the 1960s and, occasionally, the late ’50s. Especially as I got older, the station I used to listen to would make exceptions for some music from the 1970s, usually MOR and singer-songwriter stuff. Supertramp was one of the bands that made that cut. …
Pretzel Logic (1974) by Steely Dan
I liked Countdown to Ecstasy more than any other Steely Dan record I’ve ever heard. And it imbued me with the hope that I would hear further records, probably from this time in their career, that I would also enjoy more than most of their records. I had that hope until I listened to this …
The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle (1973) by Bruce Springsteen
I have never heard a Springsteen record like this one. Maybe that’s because I just haven’t heard that many Springsteen records but I suspect or at least wonder that it’s because, at some point later on, he figured out who he was, and this version wasn’t part of that (or wasn’t normally part of that).
Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) (1978) by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band
For some reason, so much of my experience of Beefheart is tied up with Safe as Milk and Trout Mask Replica, and how the latter is such a huge departure from a former, that when I hear latter Beefheart records that are closer in spirit to his early work than Trout Mask Replica I’m not …
Cure for Pain (1993) by Morphine
The thing that makes Morphine so unique is, in some ways, the thing that keeps them from ever being a band that I will truly love. That’s not their fault, of course, but it does make them one of those bands who I like more or less depending upon the quality of their songs.
Focus (1993) by Cynic
Most of the time, when I encounter “progressive death metal” (which this sounds like to me, but which it isn’t categorized as on RYM), I think “this isn’t very progressive.” It usually sounds like more ambitious death metal, but it doesn’t sound very proggy. Well, not so here. If there is one thing this record …
Black Music (1998) by Chocolate Genius
It’s pretty hard to talk about this record without talking about the title. Clearly, the title is intended as some kind of statement challenging the tendencies in media to characterize certain music as “black” music, because what’s here is, for the most part, not what would be associated with “black” music in 1998 – except …
Countdown to Ecstasy (1973) by Steely Dan
I don’t like Steely Dan. I’ve given them four albums (if you include this one), and I find their early stuff way too poppy for my liking and their “mature” stuff to be way too “hipper than thou,” but also far, far too slick. But lo and behold, I like this record. And it’s making …
Before These Crowded Streets (1998) by Dave Matthews Band
I have always been the kind of person to go left when everyone else was going right, when it comes to cultural things. If a song is everywhere, it’s pretty much guaranteed I won’t like it. If a movie is getting celebrated a little too much, I want to not like it. What does this …
Solid Air (1973) by John Martyn
I had never even heard of John Martyn before listening to this. Just an album that came out in February 1973 so it was on my list of 45tth anniversaries. So this is, um, a giant surprise.
Introducing The Eleventh House With Larry Coryell (1974)
This is fusion very much in the Mahavishnu Orchestra mode. In fact, listening to the opening of “Birdfingers,” you wouldn’t be faulted for thinking this was the Mahavishnu Orchestra itself, or perhaps Jeff Beck and the Jan Hammer Group, or something like that. As jazz fusion goes, a lot of it is very much on …
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.
Can’t Buy a Thrill (1972) by Steely Dan
My understanding is that this full-band debut album is not really canon or at least is looked as an immature effort by fans of the band’s later music. But I must say that I think I like it more than their other music.
Aja (1977) by Steely Dan
This is my second Steely Dan album and, once again, I find I have the same problem with the band: these guys don’t like the same things I like, beyond stellar musicianship.
Fabulosos Calavera (1997) by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs
In 1997, I fell in love with Grosse Pointe Blank, the only romantic comedy that was violent enough for my 15 year old soul to feel okay about liking. I liked it so much I went out and bought the soundtrack. (Well, the first soundtrack as there’s a Volume 2 I never purchased.) It was …