Classic Album of the Week

Posted every Wednesday morning right BEFORE the show.

Only the most recent 12 shows are included on this page.

Older Classic Albums can be found on the original playlist pages, listed in alphabetical order here.

Click on LP covers for more info and reviews.

"Chocolate City" by Parliament (1975)
Parliament  "Chocolate City"  1975 (USA)
P-Funk was really two bands in one;  after George Clinton's first group The Parliaments "broke up", he reincorporated the group as Funkadelic and signed a contract with Westbound records.  Then Parliament "reformed" (with literally the exact same musicians who were also Funkadelic) and signed to Motown offshoot Invictus in 1970, before adding James Brown's horn section and Bootsy Collins on bass and re-signing to Casablanca in 1974, all while Funkadelic continued to make records for the Warner Bros label!  Originally the idea was that Parliament was the hooky, horn-driven "pop" group while Funkadelic would remain the heavy psychedelic group, although by 1976 they were regularly touring as "The Parliament Funkadelic" and freely intermixing songs from both groups' albums.  This week's CAOTW is the third long player credited to Parliament, one of many immortal albums from the 1970's by "America's greatest band"  -- if anything the title track celebrating trends in urban demographics is more relevant today than ever.
Here's several clips of P-Funk in their 1970's heyday: "Mothership Connection" which explains the mythology of the funk, "Dr. Funkenstein" on which George Clinton invents "rapping",  as well as the monster jam "Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)" and the guitar showcase "Cosmic Slop".  Plus here's James Brown live in 1971: "Ain't It Funky Now" featuring Bootsy Collins on bass (there's a good close up of him -- without shades! -- around 3:30 into the clip.)  And here's Jimi Hendrix, the original psychedelic afronaut, playing "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)", the song on which he invented the funky wah-wah style of rhythm guitar, which was also later a posthumous #1 hit single in the UK.  And finally here's a rare clip of P-Funk's virtuoso guitar shredder Eddie "Maggot Brain" Hazel
 
"Live At Leeds" by The Who (1970)
The Who  "Live At Leeds"  1970 (UK)
The Who's 1970 live album is considered by many to be among the finest live rock albums of all time, and also one of The Who's most thrilling records.  The group certainly made plenty of outstanding recordings, but it was on the concert stage that they were truly unrivaled.  Though they jammed as much as the Grateful Dead, The Who did so with incredible percision and drama, and never sank into dull noodling or epic drum solos.  The telepathic interplay between the three instrumentalists in the band has probably never been equaled.
Here's the famous TV appearance where they played "My Generation" on the Smothers Brothers show, and Keith permanently damaged Pete's hearing by loading too many explosives into his drum kit!  Here's a documentary clip with Pete Townshend interviews & the "Underture" from Tommy played at Woodstock.  And here's a classic blues cover they often performed live (but never recorded in the studio), "Young Man Blues".
 
"Magical Mystery Tour" by The Beatles (1967)
The Beatles  "Magical Mystery Tour"  1967 (UK)
Today is Sir Paul McCartney's birthday (and it's my birthday too yeah!)  So the CAOTW this week is my all-time favorite Beatles record.  Magical Mystery Tour was originally a British TV special which received dreadful reviews when it aired during Christmas 1967, but the accompanying 6-song soundtrack EP was an instant classic in the psychedelic style of the times.  Their American record company then added five recent non-LP single sides to create this full-length album for the US market (the TV show eventually made it to America in 1976, the same year this LP configuration was released in Britain.)  How could a Beatles album that contains "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Penny Lane" and "I Am The Walrus" NOT be the greatest Beatle record of all time?  Plus "Fool On The Hill", "Baby You're A Rich Man", "All You Need Is Love" -- it's positively crammed with hits!
Here's a clip of silly outtakes from the promo film for "Hello Goodbye", a #1 hit single on this album which is Paul's statement about duality (cause he's a Gemini dontcha know.)  And here's another amazing Paul-penned #1 hit also included on this album, "Penny Lane".  Finally, here's a clip from the Magical Mystery Tour TV programme itself, featuring the most demented genius song John Lennon ever wrote, "I Am The Walrus".
 
"Emerson Lake & Palmer" by Emerson Lake & Palmer (1970)
Emerson Lake & Palmer  "Emerson Lake & Palmer"  1970 (UK)
For my annual birthday show, I always throw in a bonus CAOTW, so here's one of my favorite guilty pleasures from yesteryear -- the notorious prog rock supergroup Emerson Lake & Palmer.  It all kicked off with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album,  the original "Art Rock" statement, which started a powerful late 60's meme that Rock could be Serious Music, just like Classical and Jazz.  And nobody ever took Serious Rock to a more ridiculous extreme than this super-talented but taste-deprived power trio!  Although their fourth album Trilogy is actually my favorite of their opuses, their debut is a relatively satisfying and sincere stab at combining classical music with heavy rock -- Emerson plays more acoustic than electronic keyboards for this one, and there are no silly epics about space armadillos battling with manticores ("Tarkus") or surrealistic carnivals run by nefarious computers ("Karn Evil 9").
Here's a clip of their debut album's centerpiece "Take A Pebble", featuring the mad Keith Emerson scraping the strings inside his piano.  And here's my favorite of their rocked-up classical pieces, a warp speed version of Aaron Copland's "Hoedown".  The pinnacle of ELP's success was when they headlined the massive (and televised) California Jam festival in 1974 -- here's a bit of "Karn Evil 9".
And finally for something completely different!  Here's a  computerized Japanese anime character singing the third movement of "Karn Evil 9" (somehow, that's strangely fitting -- since the theme of the piece is machines taking over!)
 
"Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements" by Stereolab (1993)
Stereolab  "Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements"  1993 (UK/France)
In some ways Stereolab is the ultimate example of a postmodern band, so much so that they're almost utterly unique.  Combining riffs from trashy easy listening and French 60's "Ya-Ya" pop with the methods of musical heavyweights like Rhys Chatham, Pierre Henry, NEU! and Kraftwerk is the sort of high/low culture bricolage that defines modern art.  Though they wear their influences on their sleeves, no one else has thought to combine this particular groop of musical signifiers together before or since, and as a result Stereolab seems to me to be the most original British band of the last couple decades.  Their music sounds like what hipsters in the sixties would have imagined music would sound like in the 21st century -- a past vision of the future that never came to be.
Here's a video for the edited single version of "Jenny Ondioline", the 18 minute centerpiece of this album which coolly combines Chatham's "Guitar Trio" with the rhythms of NEU!'s "Hallogallo" and a dose of the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray" -- only it's catchy POP!  And here's a ridiculous cheapo music video for one of their Marxist melodies, "Wow and Flutter".  Although they've always been a pretty fiercely "indie" band, Stereolab achieved a certain amount of popularity in the 1990's, peaking with the space age Dots and Loops album in 1997, featuring tunes like "Miss Modular".  
 
"Factor X" by Rhys Chatham (1983)
Rhys Chatham  "Factor X"  1983 (USA)
Rhys Chatham (pronounced "Reese Chadam") might be the most original and influential electric guitarist since Jimi Hendrix.  Chatham was an academically trained composer who decided to join the "New York downtown scene" at the end of the 1970's with all those punk and "no wave" weirdos.  Along with contemporary Glenn Branca, Chatham created music that brought out the "orchestral" possibilities of the harmonics and overtones of amplified guitars, particularly when  a lot of them are playing together very loud.  Although more directly connected to Branca, Sonic Youth is one obvious example of a recent popular group who learned much from Chatham, and Stereolab is certainly another.  Though it was the lesser known Band of Susans, populated by disciples of Rhys, which most directly applied his techniques to the rock 'n' roll stage.
For your video clips this week, here's a Glenn Branca guitar solo from 1978;  Sonic Youth performing the Chatham-esque "Death Valley '69";  and Band of Susans in their music video for "The Pursuit of Happiness".  Finally, here's the man himself:  Rhys Chatham on his "G3" tour live in Oslo (where he performed versions of his classic tune "Guitar Trio" with pick-up bands all over the world), and here's a clip from a documentary about Chatham's 100-guitar orchestral piece "An Angel Moves Too Fast To See".
 
"In A Silent Way" by Miles Davis (1969)
Miles Davis  "In A Silent Way"  1969 (USA)
Although this was actually the third album Miles Davis released featuring "electronic instruments" and "rock textures", In A Silent Way is rightly considered a landmark in his transformation from a mere jazz genius into a 20th century icon whose music transcends genre labels.  Although forward looking in many ways, this album still retains a lot of the flavor of Miles' legendary acoustic quintet of the mid-sixties -- stalwarts Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams were all still on board, joined by the electric pianos of Joe Zawinul and Chick Corea, and the electric bass and guitar of Brits Dave Holland and John McLaughlin.  Another notable facet of this recording is that the two side long compositions are spliced together from hours of taped improvisations (again not the first time Miles had relied on his gifted producer/editor Teo Macero to polish things up, but nonetheless a transformational moment in that this time the arrangements were actually created in the editing.)  Miles followed this masterpiece with the double album free form funk of Bitches Brew, another landmark which is one of the best selling "jazz" albums in history (although the all-time top selling jazz record apparently remains Miles' 1959 classic Kind of Blue.)
For a more florid review of the music on this album, read young Lester Bangs' contemporaneous review.  Here's a Miles classic in his modal style of the late 1950's:  "So What".  And here he is 15 years later playing his totally unique style of electro-funk music: "Calypso Frelimo".  Plus here's a rare clip of Miles making his transformation from "acoustic jazz" to "electric rock":  "Spanish Key" live in 1969, a tune released on Bitches Brew  the following year.
 
"Abraxas" by Santana (1970)
Santana  "Abraxas"  1970 (Mexico/USA)
Santana (the group, named after lead guitarist Carlos) are well known for their crucial role in popularizing "Latin rock" in the non-Spanish speaking world, but they were in fact a unique and extremely innovative band that fused a number of styles into their often immitated (but never equaled) sound.  Originally a hippie blues band based out of San Francisco, the group's career is basically a progression from psychedelic rock to the "jazzier" realms of fusion music, and the high water mark in their quest was their second studio album Abraxas, which combines classic late 60's rock with salsa grooves and jazzy arrangements.
Here's Santana playing one of the hit singles from this album,  "Oye Como Va", and here's one of the jazzy instrumentals, "Incident At Neshabur".  Plus here's the live performance of "Soul Sacrifice" from the Woodstock movie which catapulted the band to fame, and finally here they are playing live in Ghana 1971.
 
"Rush" by Rush (1973)
Rush  "Rush"  1973 (Canada)
Rush is another band that doesn't quite belong to the heavy metal genre, but what else would you call a group with roots as a Zeppelin-inspired power trio in the early 70's.  When they added synths and astrophysics to their sound in the later 70's, they became Canada's most globally popular group.  However my favorite Rush albums are their first two, simply because these are their least "philosophical" and also feature the most ass-kicking riffs.  
Here's the band in 1975 playing a tune from their first album,  "Finding My Way". And here they are playing the title track from their second album, "Fly By Night", and here's yet another heavy Rush classic from the early days, the Ayn Rand-inspired "Anthem".  Finally, here they are decades later playing one of their big hits "Spirit of Radio" in front of a gynormous stadium full of fans.

"Vincebus Eruptum" by Blue Cheer (1968)
Blue Cheer  "Vincebus Eruptum"  1968 (USA)
For this week's special on the roots of heavy metal music, I give you arguably the most important album that gave birth to that genre.  Massively distorted riffs go back at least as far as The Kinks hit "You Really Got Me" in 1964 (or arguably even Link Wray and Dick Dale five years before that), and there were certainly other groups using Marshall amps to get a huge sound in 1968, but nothing before this record was as HEAVY.  In essence, Blue Cheer was a dumbed-down garage band version of The Jimi Hendrix Experience,  only far louder (they were the first group to use an entire wall of amplifiers in their stage show.)  Their combination of menacing attitude, sexual blues motifs, druggy references and vague occultism also make them much "more metal" than their heavy contemporaries like Cream or The Who.
Here's an old TV clip of Blue Cheer's bona-fide American Top 40 hit single "Summertime Blues" which is on their debut album, and here's another song from this record, "Out of Focus" performed live in 2007 by the current band including original members Dickie Peterson on bass and Paul Whaley on drums.  Blue Cheer's official website.

"Sad Wings of Destiny" by Judas Priest (1976)
Judas Priest  "Sad Wings of Destiny"  1976 (UK)
April 30 is Walpurgisnacht (sort of a Northern European version of Hallowe'en, only in the springtime), and next week's special is "the roots of metal", so here's a spooky heavy metal classic.  Judas Priest was part of the second wave of heavy metal, debuting about 5 years after Led Zeppelin and their fellow Birminghaminites Black Sabbath, but their stylistic innovations were very influential on metal bands that followed.  Sonicly, they combined operatic vocals with rapid fire guitar riffs -- a "fast treble" sound which was the inversion of Black Sabbath's "slow bass"  style, and the black leather and smoke machines from their stage show were perhaps even more influential on the development of heavy metal's look.  It's hard to imagine groups like Iron Maiden or Slayer without the Priest influence.  My favorite of all of their albums is this record, their second, which still retains some progressive and psychedelic touches from the early 70's.
Here's Judas Priest performing "Dreamer Deceiver" on television in 1975, before they recorded it for this album (when Rob Halford still had hippie hair!)  Here they are in their iconic studs 'n' leather phase, performing the hit "Breaking The Law", and here's a recent clip of the reunited band playing another Sad Wings classic, "The Ripper".  Finally, here's a preview of the forthcoming 2008 Judas Priest "metal opera" Nostradamus, which hearkens back to their mid-70's sound!
"Budgie" by Budgie (1971)
Budgie  "Budgie"  1971 (UK-Wales)
Rodger Bain is an unsung architect of the heavy rock sound, having produced the first three Black Sabbath albums, as well as the debut by Judas Priest and the first two albums by the lesser-known Welsh power trio Budgie.  Budgie is best known these days because Metallica covered a couple of their songs in the 1980's, including "Crash Course In Brain Surgery" off of this, their first album.  (Metallica discovered the band when Budgie's former lead singer & bassist Burke Shelley worked as a roadie on one of their first European tours.)
Here's a video clip for the other Budgie tune Metallica covered, called "Breadfan";  and here's a later non-hit, "I Ain't No Mountain";  finally, here's the reconstituted band playing "Panzer Divivion Destroyed" live in Poland 2007!

"N***a Please" by Ol' Dirty Bastard (1999)
Ol' Dirty Bastard  "N***a Please"  1999 (USA)
The late Russell Jones aka Ol' Dirty Bastard had a reputation as the craziest man in hip-hop, and his second solo album may be the most profane record ever made (even the very title is censored out on the cover!)  But it's also totally brilliant in a demented way -- Syd Barrett with tourette's?  Not really, but Dirty was certainly a musical as well as lyrical original.  Aside from his absurd ranting about sex, drugs and racist conspiracies, he interprets Rick James and Billie Holiday songs on this record, which works surprisingly well due to his bluesy and "singerly" style of rapping.  (This one goes out to the Federal Communications Commision for Tax Day!)
Here's the first part of a typically obscene and incoherent interview with ODB (WARNING: not recommended for work or family viewing!)  And here's a couple music videos:  Dirt Dog's biggest solo hit was "Got Your Money" (featuring Kelis, The Neptunes and Dolemite footage), and here's another of ODB's weirdest appearances on the pop charts rapping with Mariah Carey! 


 
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