#61 - Freddie King's "Let's Hide Away and Dance Away with Freddy King" (1961)

C.S. Lewis, the professor, children's book author, and Christian apologist once wrote on the problem of pain.  Our inability to understand it as a phenomenon, he said, stems from the limits on our perception.  Feeling pain is primarily a sensory experience.  How can you analyze what you feel as you feel it?  Similarly, analyzing pain requires reason.  And once you think about pain rationally, you are no longer feeling it in the moment.  Similarly, Let's Hide Away and Dance Away with Freddy King is one of those albums that appeals mostly to two categories of listeners: dancers and guitarists.  The dancers, as is their wont, couldn't care a hair what's going on musically so long as it moves them.  And guitarists, looking to pick up a few tricks from a master, cease to consider the music from a purely emotional perspective.  Of the three wise "Kings" of the electric blues (the others being Albert & B.B.), Freddie is the only one whose greatest hits were more often than not instrumentals.  And, as this album's title implies, these are songs meant for soirees, ditties to dance to.  Relegating King to the realm of "dance music," however, would overlook the impact he had on subsequent scores of guitarists, like Eric Clapton, who took his techniques and naturalistic sound to new heights.  But while these later generations would employ complicated song structures to showcase their stuff, all King needs is a serviceable backbeat to help you shake a leg.  The lead and best track "Hide Away" boasts a deceptively simple sound achieved by a series of rolling guitar licks that bend the notes, coaxing them into one another.  This may not be flashy music, but neither is it hard to like.  Grade: B

#50 - Deep Purple's "Machine Head" (1972)

If there are rules to reviewing, the cardinal of these must be:  "don't criticize something for not being what you'd prefer it to be; judge it on its own terms."  Not only is it the only honest way to go about comparing apples and oranges, it also mitigates against the biases we all carry with us.  Simply put, if you're listening to a rock album from the 1950s and you think that what it's really missing is extended organ solos, then maybe you're not being a fair arbiter.  And while it might not be realistic to believe you have the imagination to put yourself in the time and place when and where your subject was produced, you nonetheless have to try.  Machine Head is one of the marker stones for the journey that blues-inflected rock 'n' roll took on its way to heavy metal.  On a purely historical level, Deep Purple is an utterly fascinating outfit.  They are pioneering architects of sound.  The music on this album, however, is of inconsistent quality.  "Highway Star" explodes out of the gate with almost as much insistence as "Black Dog."  From there, the band dials it back on "Maybe I'm a Leo."  Maybe too much.  I understand not wanting to blow your wad all at once, but for an album that comes in at a little over 37 minutes, you really don't have any room for weak tracks and this snoozer looks back to Led Zeppelin more than it looks ahead to anything fresh.  "Pictures of Home" starts to turn things around before "Never Before" pulls the full 180.  It is likely the best song on the album with its slow, funky start giving way to some seriously hard-rocking verses and a killer bridge melody that would make Alex Chilton proud.  Then comes the radio staple "Smoke on the Water," with its autobiographical lyrics detailing the band's trials and tribulations in Montreaux.  Unfortunately, the song's ubiquity tends to work against it here.  In 1972, the listener would have likely considered it the high point, a centerpiece.  Now its omnipresence surrounds it with a "been-there-done-that" aura rendering a once-powerful song tepid and tired.  The penultimate "Lazy" is anything but as most of the band's experimentalism is consolidated within its seven-minute span, but album closer "Space Truckin'" does seem a little half-assed.  The song is a disappointment if only because its music & words forge an uneasy truce between bleating R&B and semi-serious sci-fi.  It is no less dignified than Robert Plant's Tolkien-inspired flights of lyrical fancy, but somehow sillier because it comes off as a half-measure.  Had Ian Gillan gone all in with the theme - instead of occupying a kind of fatuous middle distance between ramblin' blues rumble and Lost in Space-level lyrics - it might have been far more successful.  Plenty of prog-rock bands at that time were exploring the outer reaches of the universe, so it doesn't strike me as unreasonable to take Deep Purple to task for goofing about.  Think about it:  when you're in China, eating the local cuisine, you no longer call it "Chinese food."  And when you're a real space trucker, you'd probably drop the adjectival qualifier on that phrase, too, wouldn't you?  Grade: B

#39 - Björk's "Debut" (1993)

björk  noun  \bē-'ork, byawrk\

1 : any of a variety of Icelandic songbirds celebrated for their distinctive tonal quality, yodel-like trills, ability to live in symbiosis with swans, and talent for mimicking human beings.  The björk sang at my windowsill, content mostly to observe "Human Behaviour," while occasionally imitating its mannerisms.  

2 : a liqueur distilled from refined Sugarcubes and treasured for its pleasantly intoxicating effects, which include mild hallucinations and an absolute freedom from stylistic inhibitions.  After downing a carafe of björk, I envisioned "Venus as a Boy" and became "Violently Happy."

3 : a clinical diagnostic term referring to a patient suffering from the rare psychological stresses associated with first being a child prodigy, going on to achieve consistent - yet unremarkable - success, and finally coming into one's own as a late-blooming Debutante.  By the time she was 29, many critics had written the björk off, wrongly assuming her best days were behind her.

Grade: B 

#25 - Wanda Jackson's "Rockin' with Wanda!" (1960)

I'll admit it.  Before last week I had never heard of Wanda Jackson.  I'm no stranger to the rockabilly artists she toured with (Elvis Presley) or the country singers she inspired (Dolly Parton) or the girl group sound she influenced (The Chiffons).  Still, for whatever reason, she had never made a blip on my radar.  It would not be hyperbole to suggest that the concept of a female rock-and-roller is as nearly novel to me as it was to the audiences of the mid- to late-50's.  That is not to say I'm surprised there was a woman bold enough to hang with the boys so much as I can't believe I'm only hearing about her now.  But last week a former student of mine, knowing my penchant for Jack White in general and Van Lear Rose in particular, sent me a link to the video below.  Needless to say, I was intrigued and wasted no time going right to the source.  What I found in Rockin' With Wanda! was the long lost missing link between Kitty Wells, Memphis Minnie, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Loretta Lynn.  Released less as an album and more as an LP collection of her hit singles to date, the songs on Rockin' run the gamut from country to rockabilly and - on "I Gotta Know" - you hear both, tempo changes and all.  If there is a theme to be had here, it's that Wanda's more than a match for all the no-good hound dogs and tomcats scratchin' at her door.  She's a firecracker all the way, whether she's singing about her "Mean Mean Man" or chastising another for lacking passion on "Cool Love."  You do get the sense that one of the reasons she ended up firmly on the side of country was that many of her contemporaries had more potential crossover appeal.  The twang she "brangs" on several of the tracks sounds more "hillbilly" than "rock."  Occasionally she does display some versatility:  she is, after all, capable of both sweetness and grit.  And then, out of left field, there's "Don'a Wan'a" and "Fujiyama Mama" and I'm not sure what to make of either.  The former is sung in a cringe-inducing Italian accent reminiscent of the Andrews Sisters' island patois on "Rum & Coca-Cola" and the latter begins, "I've been to Nagasaki / Hiroshima, too / the same thing I did to them, baby, I can do to you."  Wow.  They were simpler times, weren't they?  Grade: B

#23 - AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" (1976)

One of several quality albums recorded under Bon Scott's reign as lead singer of this Australian hard rock juggernaut.  I had several preconceived notions about what to expect going in.  It'll be trashy.  And it was, but it was also funny and impeccably performed.  Like the dramatization of a Jerry Springer episode by the Royal Shakespeare Company.  It'll be offensive.  Well, kind of.  Our cultural threshold for shocking lyrics has been moved so many times that it's difficult to know where - if anywhere - the line now exists.  There's a streak of juvenile glee running through the songs here, an adolescent fascination with delinquency and hormonal release of all types.  In that context, the monster guitar crunch of Malcolm & Angus Young doesn't sound so much like a back-to-basics aesthetic solution to the art rock pretensions of the 70's as it does self-medication by way of primal scream therapy.  The formula is a simple one:  loud = good, therefore louder = better.  What I didn't expect was the downright conservatism of songs like "Rocker" and "There's Gonna Be Some Rockin'" which, if they had turned down their amps a bit, are essentially straightforward rockabilly blues.  Or how perilously close they get to Spinal Tap-level self-parody on tracks like "Ain't No Fun (Waiting Round To Be a Millionaire)."  As Chris Rock said about Biggie Smalls' "Mo' Money, Mo' Problems," this has to be one of the most popular songs almost no one can relate to.  I could've done without "Big Balls" - the silly, double-entendre-dependent goof that is equal parts Mad Magazine, Dr. Demento, and Tenacious D - but I understand what it's doing here.  It's not as if it's a black sheep track in an otherwise straight-laced family of songs.  At any rate, all albums have their highs and lows, and I'll gladly forgive "Big Balls" after hearing the surprisingly sweet "Ride On." Scott portrays himself  as a lonely, drunken, womanizing drifter, an "empty head."  It's a sad self-inventory, an honest accounting of the emotional bankruptcy that lies beneath the gleaming, gilded surface of the rock and roll lifestyle, which is just one "red light nightmare" after another.  He knows he should change his "evil ways," but he also knows enough to know that's unlikely.  It is a rare island of super-ego in a vast sea of id.  Grade: B

#16 - Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes" (1972)

My knowledge of 70's music has grown in recent years, but it has only begun to process the impact of David Bowie and his cohorts.  If this blog helps me bring that era into greater focus, making artists like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Marc Bolan more than just mile markers on the trek up Mount Glam Rock, then the experiment will be a runaway success.  First stop: Mott the Hoople.  Frustrated by their lack of success and thinking seriously about bowing out of the game, this British band took one more stab at it at Bowie's behest.  In fact, a small, symbolic relic of this encouragement is immortalized on tape as they can be heard scrapping the intro to the second track, "Momma's Little Jewels."  The bandmates sound ready to call it a day when Bowie's voice comes through from the production booth, saying, "Don't stop, carry on."  With Reed's "Sweet Jane" kicking off the album and Bowie contributing the title track, MTH seem content to plant their standard firmly in the glammers' camp.  All the elements are here: seedy lyrics, sleazy guitar riffs, Jagger swagger.  On "One of the Boys," lead songwriter Ian Hunter seems to give away the whole style-over-substance tenet of the glam rock ethos when he sings, "I don't say much, but I make a big noise."  Grade: B