The above thumb (also a link on the FB ‘feed’) cropped up in my FB account today. I didn’t click on the link. And I’m not going to.
My immediate thought/riposte, to ‘Why Ginger Baker HATED John Bonham’? Because he (Ginger) was a dick.
Baker fancied himself as a jazzer, and held that Bonham didn’t or couldn’t swing. Complete and utter bollocks. In terms of technique and smooth execution Bonham is way better than Baker (or Moon The Loon, for that matter).
Why figures like Baker get, or got, so catty about it all is, if not a mystery, at least a shame. Why not just admit that they’re different, but both great, in their own ways?
For sheer innocent sentimental sweet beauty, this is a corker!
Wow!? How hard is this!? It might be easier to pick my top few artists? Joni Mitchell and Tom Waits are no brainers. After that it gets tricky.
This one is etched into my being; melancholy beauty, at its most powerfully maudlin.But I love For The Roses as well!
This all came about when I wanted to pick a ‘top five albums’ list, to illustrate a private posting on cataloguing my CD collection. it rapidly became clear that it was not going to be easy! Perhaps not even possible?
J-Fusion at its slick funky glossy and melodic best.
If it were my current top five that’d be different. My most listened to CD right now, for example, is Casiopea’s debut(pictured above). But I’m also listening to a lot of Sons of Champlin, right now, and I’m not as sold on them as the other artists that I’m featuring in this post.
I know it might seem weird, but as a historic top five disc, Trout Mask Replica is definitely up there (with Lick My Decals Off in hot pursuit!). Not music I’d listen to all the time. And my honeymoons with these discs were many, many moons ago. But I have an abiding love for them.
Slabs of sound, wafting through space and time, all floating atop Leibezeit’s incredible grooves.
Can’s Future Days also has a special place in my musical heart, closely pursued by Tago Mago!).
Memories of this on constant rotation are bittersweet.
And whilst I’m thinking in the longer term, like this, then I suppose Steely Dan and Donald Fagen figure very large. Aja, Katy Lied and The Nightfly all being rave faves.
Ah, The Don. An almost perfect record!Mad cover! Great album.
Apart from the Casiopea one, so far these are all song-based albums, of a broadly speaking Pop nature. If I were to pick some Rock albums, Thin Lizzy, Zep and Van Halen would be right up there (poss’ even Slayer’s Reign in Blood, perhaps?).
It’s close with Lizzy, ‘twixt this…… and this. Still In Love With You is Divine!!!
Takes me back to my childhood. After Status Quo, and with far more earnest interest, Lizzy were the first group I really got into.
Likewise with Zep, is it this one…
And, thanks to both my dad, and my first drum teacher, Bernie ‘Boogie Man’ Pritchard, Zeppelin soon followed Lizzy on to my dad’s ol’ (then new!) Technics Stereo.
… or this one?
With Zep I was equally taken with all of I, II and III. I only got into IV later, and – as brilliant as it is – (Stairway alone is priceless), it didn’t have the same visceral impact the first three had.
And then there’s Jaaazz…
This was massive for me in my mid-teens. Still love it.
I could go on like this. Should I go with Caravanserai, or Welcome, for Santana? With Herbie, is it Fat Albert, Headhunters or… Coltrane’s Love Supreme is up there, as is Davis’ Kind Of Blue (or back in my late teens, ESP).
And what about Brazil? Jobim, Joyce, Marcos Valle… and on it goes!
I got lost in the deserts with this one!This ought to be a guilty pleasure. But I have no shame!
I’m finishing with one that really isn’t anywhere near the top. But to be fair to Slayer and the album, I’ve listened to it tons. Rather like true crime and serial killers – the kind of dark subjects with which Slayer themselves were obsessed – I find it hypnotically compelling. If Van Halen’s 1984 is a ‘guilty pleasure’, this is a ‘dirty secret’!
A dirty little secret…
Anyway, I can only conclude that picking my top five favourite albums is pretty near impossible! I mean, The Beatles Rubber Soul, a biggie for me around 16-18, didn’t even get a mention ‘til right here, at the very end!
Conclusion? I can’t pick just five albums. Just too limiting!
Wow! An absolute monstrosity. Led Zeppeloid, at their Titanic swaggering best. With a fuzzed out riff that is pure Valhalla. The power trio of Page, Jones and Bonham, with Plant as hoodoo shaman, stride across continents in shining iron bellbottoms, their sloshing wake a tsunami that drowns entire nations in 100% proof rock’n’roll.
And what amazes me. Nay, astounds me. Is that despite all the trappings that might make for a very dated sound, the energy is so massively ‘in the present’, it sounds as fresh today as it ever did.
People often think of Whole Lotta Love as The Zep’s totemic riff Leviathan. And of course, that’s a fabulous track as well. But there’s something about the joyous elastic bounce of the How Many More Times riff that transcends almost all ostensibly similar rock music.
