Date: December 1967
Release: MCA #10894
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An early peak in the painfully short career of the greatest guitarist ever. Axis: Bold as Love was a mind blowing journey through the uncharted sounds and emotions of an artist sharing his pure soul. Love was to be the axis of the new galactic order Jimi envisioned, with his music serving as the otherworldly vehicle designed to take us there at 33 1/3 rpm. Innovative beyond compare, Jimi made extraordinary use of the limited 4-track technology at his finger tips, crafting a complex and pivotal album of enduring brilliance. With “Little Wing,” “Castles Made of Sand,” and “One Rainy Wish,” Jimi showed himself capable of creating gently textured songs of poetry that were no less powerful and compelling than the more jamming tunes like “Spanish Castle Magic.” On the electrifying “If 6 Was 9,” Jimi righteously sets forth the philosophy he lived by: “I’m the one who’s gonna die when it’s time for me to die/So let me live my life, the way I want to…” In the jazzed “Up From the Skies,” Jimi sings of the world from the point of view of an extraterrestrial brother hovering high above the clouds. He brings his inventiveness to bear on the solid rhythm and blues of “Ain’t No Telling,” “You Got Me Floatin’, and “Little Miss Lover,” songs which were shamefully ignored by most R&B radio stations across the United States.
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Date: 1982
Release: Warner Bros.
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The album that demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt why Jimi Hendrix still reigns supreme as the God of Guitar. Jimi takes no vocals on any of the six tracks, preferring instead to let his guitar cry and sing. This is a brilliant example of Jimi’s fluid improvisational genius.
His playing is ratcheted up another notch in the fertile jam-session setting of these astounding recordings, which showcase his creative energy and virtuosity. We are able to hear Hendrix thinking aloud, and he consistently astounds the listener with the force of his ideas.
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Date: October 7, 1997
Release: MCA #11684
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Following the release of First Rays Of The New Rising Sun, the Hendrix estate knew that they had to do something different on the follow up. First Rays was the completion of Jimi’s music up until the time of his death, the final songs that would have been on his next album. Janie, Eddie, John McDermott knew that now was the time to bring forward a new offering for long time Hendrix fans–unreleased music. Thus was born South Saturn Delta. Made up of tracks originally found on the long deleted War Heroes, Loose Ends, Rainbow Bridge, as well as some that had appeared on Crash Landing and Midnight Lightning (original tracks were used though, not the Alan Douglas tampered ones). Plus some unreleased songs, studio ideas, etc. Some really good music, “Pali Gap” from Rainbow Bridge is a great late night tune; “Drifter’s Escape,” the Bob Dylan song is a great rocker.
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Date: 1977
Release: VIRGIN #91343-2
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Hands down, this is Iggy Pop‘s best post-Stooges record as well as one of the hardest rocking pop albums to come out of the 1970s. Along with the legendary live shows of Kiss, Lust For Life rescued American music in 1977 from total disco oblivion. British-born David Bowie was the crucial element here, producing, playing, writing, and singing throughout the record with the drive and delivery of an over-achieving genius.
Still, this is Iggy’s show, as he makes perfectly clear with his classically black-edged vocals on the title track (revived in the heroin-chic film, “Trainspotting”). Drummer Hunt Sales‘ relentless pounding on “Lust For Life” holds a candle to the drumming machine known as John Bonham. Bowie-veteran Carlos Alomar plays a mean guitar that defines much of the album’s sound.
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Date: March 6, 2001 (release)
Release: Astralwerks #29072
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Consistent with my post break-up habit of musical masochism, I’ve recently been over-playing Quiet Is The New Loud, encouraging its melancholy melodies to lodge themselves in my heart like salt on an open wound. Instead of letting my old punk records work their healing magic, I keep wallowing in the sadness of morbidly introspective artists like Nick Drake, Neil Halstead, and the Norwegian duo, Kings of Convenience.
Quiet Is The New Loud—it’s almost pathetic how perfectly this album title describes the dominant trend in my listening habits. As I get older, I’ve noticed the volume knob on my stereo progressively turning in the wrong direction (to the delight of my neighbors), even as the music itself has become gentler and more polite. Ten years ago I’d have trashed this record as unpardonably toothless and sissy-sweet, but now it strikes a chord. I’m not afraid to admit it—I’ve grown soft in my not-so-old age.
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Date: 1965
Release: Essential #483
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Mod-rockers from the mid-60s, the Kinks understood how to crank out three-minute pop songs that were as catchy as Beatlemania. While the Davies Brothers were no match for Lennon/McCartney or even Jagger/Richards, they definitely put a little of fire under the feet of their rivals that kept them from getting too complacent. Their classic “All Day And All Of The Night,” opens the album with punk-sounding guitar riffs and sexually-charged lyrics that point the way towards the future of Rock and Punk. The album’s next smash hit, “Tired Of Waiting For You,” demonstrates why the Kinks unique 60s sound has remained so influential and appealing.
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Date: November 22, 1968 (recording)
Release: Castle #481
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Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks once desperately, memorably sang of "nostalgia for an age yet to come," expressing a yearning for a simpler, happier time that actually never really existed. Now, Shelley may be one the finest pop lyricists the U.K. ever spawned, but it was a previous British generation’s staggeringly gifted songsmith who best captured this sense of bittersweet longing and loss of innocence.
That man was the genteel, smarmy-charmy Ray Davies, who in the Kinks‘ jaunty songs pined intensely for the romanticized, storybook Merry Olde England of his boyhood. But while his seemingly rosy-spectacled odes to the Golden Age Of Britain were populated with quirky, Dickensian characters and self-consciously clever anecdotes, it wasn’t all tea and crumpets and cricket games in Ray’s imaginary world, oh no. Read more »
Date: June 11, 1968
Release: PRESTIGE OJC-355-2
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Adventurous fusions of Indian, psychedelic, rock, funk, and jazz music by one of the great risk-takers of the electric guitar. Baiyina features fluid guitars, exotic Indian percussion and drone instruments, unique time signatures, swirling flute and sax, deep grooving bass, and in-the-pocket drumming, making it one of the most unique acid-drenched albums to come out of the late 60s. As the album’s subtitle reads: “A psychedelic excursion through the magical mysteries of the Koran.” Indeed, each track takes its inspiration and name from different parts of the Koran.
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Date: 1968 (recording) / April 19, 1999 (release)
Release: Immediate #414
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The story of Billy Nicholls is a sadly familiar one. It parallels the tragedy of Shuggie Otis, a young child prodigy who delivered an incredibly great album to his record label (1974’s Inspiration Information), and got dropped in return. It’s a life story lived by legions of gifted artists, who, through lack of commercial success, burn through their prime creative years in muted obscurity, waiting for a public embrace that always seems to comes too late, if at all. At 16, Billy Nicholls was a total unknown, a kid with more guts than talent. As the story goes, the teenaged British songwriter had the chutzpah to approach George Harrison and enlist the quiet Beatle’s help in landing him a record deal (clinched with then Rolling Stones manager Andrew Oldham’s new and edgy Immediate label).
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Date: Jan 19, 1980 (release)
Release: Warner Brothers #6083
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When I was in junior high, I really, really wanted to be Chrissie Hynde. A regular American heartland chick from Akron, Ohio, she lived out the rock ‘n’ roll fantasy of every early-’80s, MTV-addicted, suburban girl like myself. She moved to swinging London, where she landed a job at Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s SEX boutique, rubbed safety-pinned shoulders with the Sex Pistols, wrote for NME under the tutelage of demi-legendary rock scribe Nick Kent, and even won the heart of her long-admired teenhood heartthrob, Ray Davies of the Kinks (this is the equivalent of me bagging Duran Duran’s John Taylor now). Oh yeah–and she also formed a totally fierce, foxy, all-around fearsomely great band with three Brit gents and, in 1980, released one of the most kickass debut albums in rock history: the Pretenders I.
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