At some point a career goes on long enough where it starts to divide the true fans from the people who just got into the artist because they were in the ether, but sometimes the critics will continue to care and sometimes they won’t. I don’t know where exactly that point is with Costello but …
Tag: Rock and Roll
Bluejean Bop! (1956) by Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps
It’s hard to know exactly what to do with Gene Vincent’s debut album. On the one hand, it’s clearly an important record both in the sound and the fact that this is a band playing the music, not a group of session musicians. But it also sounds more dated than a lot of the early …
Rock Around the Clock (1955) by Bill Haley and His Comets
It’s really hard to know what to do with this record. It’s one of the earliest rock and roll records to chart and it contains many of Haley’s early rock and roll songs, so it gives you a pretty good idea of their sound. But it is a compilation. Worse, it’s a compilation which contains Shake, …
The River (1980) by Bruce Springsteen
We were driving back from a ski resort in Vermont – Bolton Valley or Killington, I don’t remember which – and we got slowed by a massive snowstorm. I was in my tweens or early teens. We were driving up the west side of Lake Champlain and we could only get one radio station from …
First Step (1970) by Faces
Full disclosure: I love this band. I have an irrational love of their next two albums, both of which I have listened to way too many times. So even though this record is acknowledged as a bit of a mess I knew I wanted to listen to it anyway and I knew I would like …
Here Are The Sonics!!! (1965)
If you know anything about this record you know the hagiography is really strong. It’s only through actually listening to the music of 1965 and before a lot (as I have and do) that you can maybe see through the canonization of this band as “punk before punk” and see the real band, a band …
High Voltage (1975) by AC/DC
Sometimes debut albums show a fully formed band and listening to them its easy to imagine the band going on to be very successful. (That’s especially easy with the benefit of hindsight, of course.) But sometimes debut albums are more confusing, even or especially with hindsight. And such is the case with AC/DC’s true debut, …
Rock With Bill Haley and the Comets (1954)
Legend has it that this compilation of Haley’s early singles is the first ever Rock and Roll LP. There is a huge problem with that statement but, if accepted on face value, it makes this record seem like a very big deal, perhaps one of the biggest albums of the 1950s.
Chuck Berry is On Top
This is one of those weird records from the 1950s where they hadn’t quite figured out how to sell music yet – it’s a compilation of previously released singles (released over the previous four years) now looked upon as a regular LP because these singles hadn’t been released on his earlier LPs. So, if you’re …
Born in the U.S.A. (1984) by Bruce Springsteen
I understand why a lot of Boss fans love this record. More than any other record of his I’ve heard, this one has a (relative) lot of songs I know, and I generally avoid Springsteen as much as possible. There are at least four songs here which, to me, are among the most famous Springsteen …
The Rolling Stones (1964)
If you were British when this came out, and especially if you were a kid in Britain which didn’t have access to London’s blues scene (or any of the other blues scenes, if they existed), this record was likely a revelation to you – dirty, gritty, blues-based music (more blues-based than anything you’d ever heard …
Ritchie Valens (1959)
Released just after his death, Ritchie Valens’ debut is pretty solid second generation rock and roll, occasionally with a Latin twist (depending as well upon which version of the album you listen to, as there are conflicting track listings out there).
Sports (1983) by Huey Lewis and the News
Imagine recording a song denigrating no wave and new wave in New York and hair metal in Los Angeles (not that I care about the latter) and who knows what else, and celebrating the music of your youth instead – kids today! – but recording that song with terrible ’80s keyboards and a shitty heartbeat …
Surfer Girl (1963) by The Beach Boys
Like every early Beach Boys album, this is a short collection of an incredibly inconsistent set of songs which, on the one hand, show off Brian Wilson’s increasingly elaborate vocal arrangements and increasing compositional sophistication and, on the other, pad things out with songs so inane or derivative you want to burn the record. The …
In Dreams (1963) by Roy Orbison
If there was one artist I grew up with from the ’50s and early ’60s, it was Johnny Rivers. But if there were two artists I grew up from the ’50s and early ’60s it was Roy Orbison. You see, we listened to oldies radio. But when we didn’t listen to oldies stations, we either …
Cadillac Records (2008, Darnell Martin)
From the opening scenes of this docudrama about history of Chess Records, things feel a little off. The attempt to balance the stories of Leonard Chess and Muddy Waters feels a little wonky and the pacing definitely seems off. A man just walks up to Muddy in a field and says he’s Alan Lomax and …
Grease Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1978)
When I was young, I absolutely hated nostalgia. I saw it as the enemy of creativity. Time, and particularly age, has softened that approach; I now understand nostalgia and even sometimes like it despite myself. But the thing is, when I do like nostalgia, it’s nostalgia for something I experienced. So I can understand why …
Surfin’ USA (1963) by The Beach Boys
I know this record is supposed to be the Beach Boys’ best album of their early years – hell, at least one writer is on record claiming it as the best record by an American rock band released before the British invasion, which is one tall order – but I prefer their debut album. I’m …
Bo Diddley (1958) [Compilation]
I don’t like reviewing compilations normally and I try to avoid them as much as possible. But this record is an exception because, prior to this record, Bo Diddley had never released an LP, just singles, for about 3 years.
Have Twangy Guitar, Will Travel (1958) by Duane Eddy
There’s a stereotype that, before The Beatles, rock and roll LPs were just a collection of previously released singles and their b-sides plus a bunch of filler; just enough filler to pad out the LP to make releasing a full LP justified, and filler that was usually just remakes of the hits. Now, that’s not …
Like a Mother Fucker (1977) by Heartbreakers
Aka L.A.M.F. and these Heartbreakers are not to be confused by Tom Petty’s band of the same name. Recorded in the UK, this record still sounds extremely “New York.” In fact, the central feature of this record and the thing that I struggle with while listening to it is its huge resemblance to the New …
Surfin’ Safari (1962) by The Beach Boys
I listened to the Beach Boys a lot growing up, along with a lot of other music from this period. I had some Greatest Hits tapes and such, I believe. So when I discovered actually interesting music, the Beach Boys went the way of nearly all oldies bands and artists I listened to – I …
Elvis’ Christmas Album (1957)
Without doing the appropriate research I am going to assume this was the first “rock and roll” Christmas album. There had been Christmas albums ever since the invention of the format but, until Elvis, they were more the purview of Bing Crosby than rock and roll performers.
RIP Chuck Berry
With guitar-based rock music decidedly out of fashion it is possible – probable? – that many people don’t understand how important Chuck Berry was to the music of the second half of the 20th century. But just because the electric guitar isn’t currently popular doesn’t mean it wasn’t the central vehicle for musical expression of …
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 …
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 …
The Chess Box (1990) by Bo Diddley
This gives a better summary of his career with Chess than His Best. As a result it is a better display of his rather astounding diversity (for a first wave rock and roller).
His Best (1997, MCA) by Bo Diddley
Along time ago R&B was actually something called rhythm and blues. This CD, which collects many of Diddley’s singles and b-sides from 1955 to 1966. His earliest music of 1955 – now his most iconic – lacks the country of Elvis and Carl Perkins, the gospel of Elvis and Little Richard, the manic intensity of …