ABC Dig Music

Totally agree. Nirvana were one hit wonders whereas The Jam crunched out album after album of great stuff (not to mention Weller solo stuff). Also correct: 'Grunge' just sounds like a cross between Black Sabbath and early Kinks.

Though why he would want to look like Gallagher is a mystery. Oasis were part of the mid 90's British splutter back to half life.

NB: most of LF played on John Cales 1973 masterpiece 'Paris 1919'. Lowell George's guitar was especially memorable.

Always liked their album covers more than their albums. Especially the one with the German Shepherd with antlers and a bone floating in the air. What was that about?

'Heartbreak Hotel' from 'Slow Dazzle' (75). The measure of a great cover version is that it takes the original and turns it into something different and extraordinary. By this measure, this comes close to the greatest cover of all time (if you can find it, check the version from JC's 'John Cale Comes Alive' as well). Instead of the boppy sound of Presley's original, Cale turns the song into a horrifying, screaming, suicidal rant. Someone reviewing it live in about 1984 said that applause seemed totally inappropriate to a song which conjured images of blood dripping down the walls. Cale just said, "It was always in the song". THAT's a cover.

'Love Her Madly'- one of those handful of songs I was talking about. Good stuff. Just don't expect more than two songs this good per album.

The Doors are one of the most overratted band in history. That's not to say that they were no good. They produced at least a half dozen classic songs, but they were never in the same league as The Beatles, The Kinks, Jefferson Airplane, The Who, or The Velvet Underground. Or as TISM put it, on 'Morrison Hostel'

'By Christ you've got a long long way
On a schoolboy's talent with words -
One crappy bit of symbolism
And you're adored by an army of turds.'

I was the only kid in my high school who played piano, so I played keyboards in the school band. This song is basically about statuatory rape. We also did 'April Sun in Cuba', but I didn't get a keyboard solo. I used to have Dragon's first album, 'Universal Radio', one of two only released in NZ. I think they were more fun than this (the other was 'Scented Gardens for the Blind'. Can you imagine Marc Hunter singing lyrics like that? Well, he did.)

Correction: my previous comment was abour John MARTYN, not John Mayall. Though Mayall is excellant - I saw him live in the 70's with Mick Taylor - but Martyn is the one I was recommending.

One of the all time greats. A vocal stylist to rival Vam Morrison. Check out 'Solid Air', 'Inside Out' or One World'

Boring. Most popular in the mid 80's, when he was at his most boring.

'Close Watch' - masterpiece from a genius who has been recording for 45 years.

It doesn't really surprise me. Rotten has already admitted to owning all the Van Der Graaf Generator / Peter Hammill albums, and being a Hawkwind fan (after all, Hawkwind's 'Urban Guerilla' pre-empted 'Anarchy in the UK by nearly four years. I remember in 1977 when 'Animals' came out, RAM said 'Pink Floyd 1 - Sex Pistols 0', when, to me, they were on about pretty much the same thing.

'Harvest' - effortless grace of a great artist at the peak of their talent.

'Bryter Layter' is the midddle of the three LP's Drake released in his lifetime. It's his most accessable, and according to producer Joe Boyd (who produced EVERYONE in the brit folk scene in the late 60's and early 70's) it was the only perfect album he ever produced.

It's hard to disagree. With Fairport Convention members providing the backing, along with John Cale, BT is simply a wonderful record, as are all his others. And this song has a glorious melodic, off-beat sound. I discovered Nick in 1979. If you haven't done so yet, get out from under that rock. He is possibly the greatest of the greats of his genre.

"Can't Help Myself" by Motown greats The Four Tops, with Levi Stubbs on lead vox is a glorious song. It was no.1 twice in 1965. Can't complain much when the song that bumped you from #1 was 'Satisfaction' by The Stones.I adore this song. Go out and buy it. If you hate it, send the bill here and I'll ignore it. You gotta take risks. Trally, this is sublime.

Because of the evolution of tech (e.g., poly vs mono sunths in the very late 70's) Tangerine Dream sound dull noawadays. All they had going for them early on were their warm, organic sound. When they let digitalis creep in, I lost interest.

If you liked early TG, check out Klaus Schulze of the same period. Much better, IMO.

TG are still worth a listen, but their analog albums sound mostly predictable, and their digital ones sound sterile.

pardon typos. Keys have rubbed off KB

As someone who suffers from the same problem - massive tinnitus and hearing loss due to blasting eyeballs out with headphones - I empathaise with Pete. As for Neil Young's 'in ear monitor' suggestion, I recommend this for someone who isn't already stuffed (and NY is lucky not to be, since he is is the most ridiculously loud artist I've ever seen, including Deep Purple and The Dead Kennedys), but a couple of years ago PT wrote that he couldn't use such because anything directed sound into his ears made his tinnitus worse than standing in front of a PA.

For Pete's sake, I hope he quits. Let's face it, he hasn't had a really good sudio LP in nearly 40 years, and half the band are dead anyway. He'd be better off quitting any saving what little hearing he has, and preventing his tinnitus from getting worse. Maybe do a madonlin album. Stop believing you have to go windmilling your axe till you'tre, and thank you for all the great stuff.

Fom someone who's had to make the same decision.

New Order were massively overrated early 80's British synth-gloom trash.

XTC were/(are?) one of the most remarkable bands to come out of
England since the late 70's. After astonishing songs like 'Senses Working Overtime', Andy Partridge had a breakdown on stage in 1982 and the band has seldom if ever played concerts since. Instead they followed their ancestors The Beatles, and churned out a successun of jaw-dropping studio LP's, including 1986's 'Skylarking', 'Nonsuch' from 1992 (with ex Fairport Convention man Dave Mattacks on skins), the hilarious and wonderous 'Dukes of Strasophere' parodies of the mid 80's, and later 'Apple Venus' and 'Wasp Star from the late 90's.

Andy Partridge is the Brian Wilson of British rock. But with longer legs, a better grip and fewer calories. If that makes sense.

THIS IS ACTUALLY ABOUT THE AISTRALIAN ROCK BAND CALLED 'THE CHURCH', and not some polemic about religion.

I guess you're all sick of hearing this now, but believe it or not there times when The Church were considered not a national treasure, but some psychadelic anachronism who could only get audiences in Holland.

Well it's been 20 years, and the band that everyone thought would flop after 1983 are still around. Meanwhile, goodbye Cold Chisel, The Angels, Rose Tattoo, Choirboys, Mondo Rock, Icehouse, Men at Work, Eurogliders, Ayers Rock, Midnight Oil, INXS, need I go on...?

I actually played session in a band with The Church's first drummer in 1986 (welll... I'm not amazed he only lasted one album) This anomaly aside the band have lurched from average to brilliant and all points between, but with so many runs on the board you could probably make a 6 CD best-of with few weak songs.

Emerging from Canberra in about 1979-80, they laid down their first album (of skins and heart) and chartbusting single (The Unguarded Moment) in 1981. Exit Nick Ward and a stable lineup emerged with the jangly Rickenbacker guitar sound and the peculiar lyrics of bass player Steve Kilbey, who seemed to be tillting at Marc Bolan's crown for 'most off his head songwriter since Syd Barrett'

This is true, BTW - when they released their 2nd LP - the brilliant 'The Blurred Crusade' in 1982 (with it's glorious single 'Almost With You), it got released a year later in the UK, along with the first one, and NME banged on about them trying to copy R.E.M. - which would have been quite a feat, since R.E.M hadn't released an album at the time this pair were recorded.

'Seance' is a cult (and personal) fave which unfortunately fared poorer in the charts, and the band retreated to a sequence of 12" EP's until their breakthrough 'Heyday' in 1986 which garnered critical and commercial success, adding brass to the jangly guitars. But it was 'Starfish', in 1988 which catapaulted them to international stardom, albeit briefly. 'Under the Milky Way Tonight' remains one of the most haunting, evocative, surreal Australian hits.

From there on there were ups and downs.'Gold Afternoon Fix' failed to recapture the magic of Starfish, but 'Priest=Aura' us still thought by many fans to be their best albums. The mid 90's were dodgey, but even supposed mishaps like 'Magician Among the Spirits' had quality songs, and 'Hologram of Baal' (99) was their most satisfying in years, though 'Box of Birds' was a kindf pontless covers album.. In the 00's they've generally improved their average, quietly producing generally understated pop gems which linger in the minds' ear years after The Sunnyboys or The Celibate Rifles or Psuedo Echo sound dated.

Against all odds this mob just keep on keeping on. Even if they're still more popular in Holland.

Garbage from a band which should have been throttled at birth - or at very least after 'New World Record'.
To give you some idea where John Lennon's head was in the mid 70's, he said that this is what he'd have liked The Beatles to sound like if they were still together. Unfortunately they never had the chance, so he and Yoko attempted to bore the public to death with 'Double Fantasy'. It backfired.

To be fair the first 2 or 3 ELO albums were bearable by Meatloaf/Bee Gees/Ted Mulry Gang standards, but everything afterwards were actually covers of rejected demos by Boney M.

The Cavern doesn't still exist, does it, so they can't buy that. But they could put in a big bid for The Star Club in Hamburg. That'd be interesting, wouldn't it, 'cause then the Germans would probably get all nationalist and want to buy Germaine Greer. Anyway you cut it, the English win.

Well you see, I'd heard that Abbey Road was closing down because all these tourists are continually posing for photos on the pedesestrian crossing, bringing traffic - busses, cars, hovercraft, etc - to a standstill and making driving in the vicinity impossible. So I thought maybe what they could would be to kind of like... run them over. Then musos could get get into the place again. Not that they need to. Let's face it; any 15 year old with good software and George Martin could make another White Album.

Oh, for crying out loud - they look like Lego. They've been together for about 32 years. They were great in 1981, but why don't they just say “We’d been getting some reports back that we're boring people into a vegetatative state."

Actually he does look a bit like Charlie Watts.

Goodness, he has some stiff competition there, I imagine ecclesiastical crooners would be hard to top, as would 'Really annoyed IrIsh People'. Personally I'd vote for the first one who promised not to release anything.

(Accidents Will Happen) The forgotten single from 'Armed Forces' (79) (the other, of course, was 'Oliver's Army', and frankly it's a better song but that's not dissing AWH much)

Costello is one of those people who just keeps surprising. Just when you think..... WHAM! And I don't doubt he could do it again. All the same, I'm a bit different from those who chant 'This Year's Model' (78) and 'Trust' (81)'. For my money his best two were 'King of America' and 'Blood and Chocolate' (both released in 86). After that he stopped sounding like a lead singer of a band, and started sunding like a singer with a bunch of session musos. Not that that this all bad. The material was almost uniformly terrific, especicially the tragic-glorious 'Veronica' from 'Spike' (89) (I DEFY you to get it out of your head), 'The Other Side of Summer' from 'Mighty Like a Rose (91), and that's just scratching the surface. Then after his Chamber music excursion with the Brodsky Quartet he bounced back with the sublime 'Brutal Youth' (94), in between flirting with Burt Bacarach, Robby the robot and God knows who else. Now he interviews Bill Clinton in between tossing off cello concertos.

Let's be honest. Paul McCartney said he was the only songwriter he'd met who was 'as good as John'. If you want to argue against that, you'll need to do some research.

Godawful rubbish.

Oh, yes - thank you for programming this. From 'Solid Air' (1971) (LP; dedicated to Nick Drake when when he was still alive and nobody had ever heard of him other than Joe Boyd and his Witchseason stable of british folk acts) one of minimum three John Martyn Masterpieces (add 'Inside Out' and 'One World', some with wife Beverley and others I haven't heard. John Martyn does for vocals what pedal steel does for Van Morrison.

(You are...)

Wow, that was nearly as exciting as a bucket of turnips.

Forget Joe Jackson. Yes, even forget Elvis Costello since he's writing operas now (great as he is) - Graham Parker is the original English, nasal, hard-rocking working class git from the mid to late 70's. His debut 'Howlin' Wind' preceded the UK punk movement, and it's insure if Parker was ever part of such, or a rocker who got grabbed by Stiff, Vertigo and Arista because he didn't sound like Yes. Sometimes credited, sometimes not, The Rumour (i.e.Brinsley Scharz) 'stuck by him' through his first 6 or 7 LPs. Even after that members of The Rumour kept playing on GP albums along with Nick Lowe and Steve Nieve (from The The Attractions).

My fave quote re GP, who was previously a gas pump attendant is 'A crabby pug whose bark is every bit as ferocious as his talent, Graham Parker comes on like an arrogant bantam with the world's bone up his buttwere' (TrouserPress)

Like most music (IMHO), Parker went off the boil in the mid 80's (though I admit to liking 'The Real Macaw'), but he clawed his way back with progressively better and better albums, and is now almost back to his original heights. And there's not too many people you can say that about after 35 years.

If you want to try just one Graham Parkler/Rumour album, start with their fourth, 'Squeezing out Sparks'. It's an incendiary post-punk classic, and most uniquely, it's not anti-establishment. Parker sounds like a grass-roots pissed-off conservative, and one of the highlights of his career is the brutal acoustic anti-abortion ballad 'Can't be too Strong'

Levon and the Hawkes - later to become the The Band, on and off from Dylan's infamous 1966 world tour til the mid 70's. The highlight AFAIC is 1973's live double LP/CD 'Before the Flood', which briefly preceded Dylan's 'Blood on the Tracks'.

It's a pretty balanced effort: plenty of Band songs without Bob, but the highlights are the Dylan moments- particularly the last side, with 'All Along the Watchtower' and an utterly explosive 'Like a Rolling Stone' - Dylan wasn't singing at this point. he was raving flat-out like a lunatic. Incredible stuff, and if you want the ultimate for my money it's Dylan's solo acoustic 'It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)' originally from nearly 20 years before. Dylan is full-throttle maniacal in this song, and remembering that this was recorded in the middle of the Nixon/Watergate scandal, the volcanic eruption of the audience after the line 'sometimes the President of the United States may have to stand naked' is one of the great live rock moments.

Springsteen has several fine albums under his belt: 'The River', was always my fave. Til I heard the radio-ignored masterpiece 'Nebraska'. Chase this up. It's worth the price for the extraordinary 'Highway Patrolman', which cuts the ice like Dylan in '63.

John Cale is incredible. I saw him at Dallas Brooks Hall on my 20th Birthday. He curled up on his seat and screamed like a madman. This, on the same bill as Jonothan Richman crawling up and down the aisles singing "I'm a little dinosaur'. That was the last year I took acid.

Bur really, 'Buffalo Ballet' is from his 1974 classic 'Fear' (known more for its proto-punk influences than ballads like this). It followed up his amazing 1973 LP 'Paris 1919', which was rich and lyrical. 'Fear' (the first of his 'Island Trilogy') was diametrically different: shuddering, wrenching songs like 'Gun' and 'Fear' with the madcap playing of Manzanera and Eno contrasted with the odd ballad like 'Buffalo Ballet', making for an extraordunary album which is still awkward to pigeonhole. But never mind: amongst the mayhem and chaos, BB is a sublime, sad and beautiful song, just proving that Cale is one of the few writers who can turn an album on a dime and make you wonder what you expected in the first place.

Tom is simply one of the few remining geniuses. Girlfriend who visits every friday always mistakes him for Nick Cave (she has a Cave fetish, and I don't blame her - but the amount of money I've won from her, and then forfeited on the Cave/Waits/Beefheart thang...) Anyway if Tom Waits reamins me of anyone, it's Alice Cooper. That same love/hate relationship with God/Satan (Cooper deserves more airplay, BTW. Chek out his 2001 'Dragontown'. It's by turns hilarious and terrifying).

Oh yeah, Tom Waits. Well, there were his early albums (remember seeing him on 'The Don Lane Show'), his classic, percussive trio of 'Swordfish Trombones', 'Rain Dogs' and 'Frank's Wild Years', and then the aftermath, including the horrifying 'Bone Machine'..... the man is not a God. That's the point.

'Nursery Chyme' (complete with deranged artwork by Paul Whitehead who did the early Van Der Graaf Generaror covers) is sandwiched between the better 'Trespass' (70) and 'Foxtrot' (72) - though I've always thought the trouble with NC was not so much the songs as the thin, uninteresting production. Buy this album though, if for nothing else than the glorious 'Musical Box'. Peter Gabriel at his insane best.

Brian Eno and David Byrne at their their collaborative peak - this album ('Remain in Light') and 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts'. Indespensible.

Not a bad song, but by an artist capable of much better. I don't wish him to rest in peace. Who the hell wants to reat in peace fo 50 trillion trillion trillion years? He'd rather be annoying people.

Self confesed fans of Guided by Voices, who were a hundred times better. Nuff said, as Stan Lee used to say.

I've not heard this album, so take it with a pinch of salt, but covers albums are usually what people do when they've run out of ideas. For me, Gabriel was the brilliant frontman with Genesis, and then produced possibly even better solo albums between 76 and 80 (highpoint being 'Melt' or the third solo album: the one with 'Games Without Frontiers'.)

After that it was downhill, AFAIC. The fourth album was decent ('Shock the Monkey') but 'So' sounded like he'd sold out, albeit in an interesting way (it wasn't hard to be interesting in the early to mid mid 80's, since there was so much rubbish around). I lost interest after that.

Everyone is capable of a mid or late life comeback - think Loudon Wainwright III, Johnny Cash or Graham Parker - but I'm a cynic here. I'll have to catch this album and see what I think.

(NB: check out 'Biko' (originally on 'Melt'), by Manu Dibango on 'Wakafrika' (94). So much irony you could move it about with magnets.

Loop

Typical, irritating elevator music.