98. This Year's Model (1978) Elvis Costello

1. No Action
2. This Year's Girl
3. The Beat
4. Pump It Up
5. Little Triggers
6. You Belong to Me
7. Hand in Hand
8. (I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea
9. Lip Service
10. Living in Paradise
11. Lipstick Vogue
12. Night Rally

Listening to this countdown has been an effective introduction to the career of Elvis Costello, an artist who I'd previously only had a passing acquaintance with. I've now heard all the albums people recommend and I can conclude I've got a real respect for the guy. He can write a tune and put together a good set of lyrics.

This Year's Model is his second album and the highest placed Costello release on the top 500. It's also got his best song in Pump It Up which is a fantastic three minutes of rock and roll. Pump it Up has a riff and a relentless beat which Costello uses as a base to rapidfire some lyrical phrases with some clever rhyming and his trademark word play. It's a great song and listening to it on repeat a few times I drove myself nuts trying to work out what it reminded me of. When Costello was rapid-rhyming there was another song that wandered through my head but would dance away whenever I tried to put my finger on what it was. Eventually I realised it was Wild Wild West by The Escape Club which was a big hit when I was 15 and would surely have had everyone who was 15 when this album came out crying "plagiarism" whenever it comes on. It's impossible to listen to Wild Wild West and not believe Pump it Up played a big part in the songwriting process.

The rest of This Year's Model doesn't quite live up to the highs of its lead single. It rocks when it's fast  but when it slows down it's not as effective. Little Triggers would be the album's lowpoint wherever it came on the album but straight after Pump it Up it's slightly lower still. Costello is such a misfit he's  at his best when he's not quite fitting into any kind of genre. I Don't Want to Go To Chelsea is clearly reggae influenced by it's too fast and rocks too hard for traditional reggae. It doesn't seem to know what it is and Costello clearly doesn't care and neither should you. It's a great song whatever it is you have to wonder what the American record label was thinking when they dropped it from the US release because it sounded "Too English". Idiots.

My main criticism of This Years Model is that the songs aren't really given enough time to breathe. They're mostly around the two or three minute mark and tend to launch straight into the vocals, hurtle through the verses and chorus and then end almost as soon as Costello's final lyric has died away. A bit of an introduction and coda along with an instrumental break somewhere in the middle might give the album a bit more impact and made some of the tracks a bit more memorable. But this was all recorded in 1978 when punk was king and nobody was playing solos anywhere on records. There were gangs of punks roaming recording studios searching for anyone who knew how to play anything more than three chords so they could safety-pin them to their amps and spit on their heads until they promised never to try and play a lead break again.

Elvis Costello definitely deserves to be more than just a blip on your musical radar. He's a real talent and his albums have a lot of hidden gems beyond the singles that were getting any airplay. Track him down and give him a listen

Here's Pump it Up for those that haven't heard it...

And for those who'd like a point of comparison here's Wild Wild West. Sound familiar?

Favourite Amazon Customer Review Quote: "Pop rock at its late 70's heights shows a thinking man's Bruce Springsteen continuing to harness amazing energy and tight interplay out of proportion to many of his peers, furthering an already torrential amount of praise only after this sophomore release."


-I think you've just annoyed a legion of Springsteen fans.

So... this years model or yesterdays papers? Let me know below.

99. There's a Riot Going on (1971) Sly and The Family Stone

1. Luv n' Haight 
2. Just Like a Baby
3. Poet
4. Family Affair
5. Africa Talks to You 'The Asphalt Jungle'
6. There's a Riot Goin' On
7. Brave & Strong
8. (You Caught Me) Smilin'
9. Time
10. Spaced Cowboy
11. Runnin' Away
12. Thank You for Talkin' to Me Africa

Sly and The Family Stone were theoretically a band but in reality weren't. They were basically Sly and whatever he let any of his family members do. On There's a Riot Going On he wrote everything and recorded all the instruments and would occasionally call on a sibling to play something which he'd inevitably overdub anyway. He'd fling on bits of his own and then remove them and overdub other things and delete them too and treat the whole thing like a massive work in progress. Apparently it's the constant overdubbing and editing that has given There's a Riot Goin on its notoriously muddy sound. There's a lack of clarity in everything that reminds me of the old days when you'd copy someone's tape and then someone would copy yours and you'd lose a degree of fidelity every time (I'm sure I had some tapes that were copies of copies of copies and they sounded terrible, but in those days it was all I had).  There's a Riot Goin On is so swampy at times I struggled to work out whether Spaced Cowboy actually had deliberate backing vocals or not. There appears to be some backing singing goin' on but it's so low in the mix it sounds to me like bleeding from other microphones rather than deliberately mixed in. It's entirely possible that there was actually a riot goin' on at the time and protesters outside made their way onto the master tape somehow. Although I should point out that it's hard to focus on what's happening in the background when all you can hear in the foreground is a black guy yodelling. Seriously. I can't think of a single other album in which a black guy yodels. This may well be the only recorded instance in which an African American has been moved to yodel. And if it, is I can see why.

Much of the overdubbing comes in the form of percussion which Sly felt would be better if it was played by a machine. There's a Riot Goin on features some of the first ever electronic percussion ever put on record and to be honest you can clearly hear it's technology in its infant stages. It sounds more like a guy playing around with a machine than a live human who understands what the word "groove" means.

There's a riot Goin On is given an extra layer of murkiness thanks to it's subject matter. While other funksters were just obsessed with being funky, Sly was starting to get political and felt the need to write lyrics which (if you could hear them) are apparently politically charged firebombs of latent social-justice fury. Although the murky production means the album is a bit like having someone tell you about bad things while buried in a swamp.

The general consensus among many of the record buying public is that There's a Riot Goin On isn't as good as Stand! and I'd have to agree. Stand! is just straight ahead funk and seems to have a genuine sense of purpose. It wants you to move your feet and shake your body and sing at the same time. It's a disco inferno of your very own to light up your house. There's a riot Going On sounds like someone trying to create their own sound collages while changing the world one mind at a time. There are none of the highpoints that Stand offered and the  alleged "standout" track here is A Family Affair which gets tiring in a hurry. Brave and Strong is a much better song with a lot more funk and groove packed into it's short running time.

There's a Riot Goin On also has the worst song I've ever heard Sly and The Family Stone commit to vinyl. Runnin Away is just awful and sounds like what would happen if 12 year olds tried to write and sing funk music. I can't identify the gender of the lead singer and it's possible they don't actually have one and hover somewhere between the two sexes while being rejected by both. The crap little sing-song rhyme that whatever it is sings is occasionally interrupted by a muted trumpet, and when I say muted I mean severely muted. It sounds like horns being played by a mattress.

The final track on the albums is Thank You For Taking to Me Africa, a self-tribute to their earlier hit Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). I say tribute, I think what I really mean is "watered down version". The band takes the mighty bassline from the original song and slows it down until it's tedious and repeats it over and over again. It's an interesting statement but basically ruins one of their best songs.

There's a Riot Goin On is probably my least favourite Sly and The Family Stone album on the countdown. It's still worth hearing but it's nowhere near as good as Stand! which I still highly recommend.


It's not my favourite track from the album but here's the lead single and the one everyone knows: Family Affair.

Favourite Amazon Customer Review Quote: "This album must release enzymes every time I play it. It's like a full body massage from the inside. "

-A massage from the inside. What a great phrase.

So is this album a riot or just a bunch of people throwing stones at the police? Let me know below

100. In the Wee Small Hours (1955) Frank Sinatra

1. In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning 3:00
2. Mood Indigo 3:30
3. Glad To Be Unhappy 2:35
4. I Get Along Without You Very Well 3:42
5. Deep In A Dream 2:49
6. I See Your Face Before Me 3:24
7. Can't We Be Friends? 2:48
8. When Your Lover Has Gone 3:10
9. What Is This Thing Called Love? 2:35
10. Last Night When We Were Young 3:17
11. I'll Be Around 2:59
12. Ill Wind 3:46
13. It Never Entered My Mind 2:42
14. Dancing On The Ceiling 2:57
15. I'll Never Be The Same 3:05
16. This Love Of Mine 3:35

In The Wee Small Hours was Sinatra's third album after signing a new record deal and the one that proved he was, and always would be, a singing talent first and an actor second. It was a smash hit that proved he was an adult talent and one of the biggest stars of his day and chances are you don't know any of it.

I certainly didn't. When I saw Frank's name appearing on the charts I thought: "Sinatra? Cool. I did it myyyyyy waaaaaaaay!" It turns out My Way isn't on Wee Small Hours (I think it's more of an afternoon song) and neither is any other Sinatra song I'd ever heard.

The Wee Small Hours is actually the world's first concept album, which I'm not sure is something it should be proud of. The linking concept is the fact that Frank is Sad. Frank is Sad because he's a self described manic depressive so he's often a bit blue at the best of times, he's sad because his singing career isn't at the height it once was and he's sad because his tv career flopped (although this melancholy might have been tempered a bit by the fact that his acting career had just produced a series of awards including one Oscar and a further nomination). But most of all he was sad because of Ava Gardner. His second wife was Hollywood star and Femme Fatale Ava Gardner  with whom he enjoyed a tumultuous affair quickly followed by a tumultuous marriage and then completed the tumultuous trifecta by having a divorce heavily steeped in tumult.

As Sinatra entered the studio to record In The Wee Small Hours it was clear that he and Gardner had no future together as a married couple and he was going to have to let her go. Just to put this into perspective, Frank was saying goodbye to a woman who looked like this. I'd be pretty broken up too.

So either in the interests of personal integrity to his current mood, or in an attempt to cash in on the moods of those who had a similar experience (the number of males lamenting an absence of Ava Gardner in their lives was a large enough target market to aim for), Frank recorded an album made up entirely of "I'm so blue and lonely" songs. 16 tracks of music for the jilted, dumped, despondent and crestfallen in a loveless way. An album linked by a common theme.

Consequently In the Wee Small Hours is a fairly depressing listen. It's a cheerless collection of slow numbers with no respite from the doleful tone. In any other hands it would be the most dreadful album ever to wallow in self pity but Frank has Frank's voice and he has Frank's soul and he doesn't have Ava Gardner.

You can really feel the sadness when Sinatra sings. Despite the fact that he's accompanied by a large band and a string section, the loneliness pours out of him and infects every note. He has a beautiful voice which is gold to listen to and he can inject feeling into everything he does. It doesn't sound like someone making a record for the money or to reinvent his career, you could easily believe that if he wasn't singing in the studio he'd be standing at his window looking out at the rain and singing these songs to himself. It's musical therapy.

There's no doubt the breadth of Sinatra's talent means this album isn't just for those who've reached an advanced age where they need a wee themselves in the small hours of morning, it's timeless stuff. But it's kind of hard to enjoy in one sitting if you're not in the same place Frank was. It starts well but 16 songs with a similar theme, mood and tempo gets a bit draining after a while. The last 15 songs feel like lesser versions of the first and it's a bit of a relief when it ended.

Of course my view could be tempered by the fact that my wife was in the room with me and I was cleaning when I heard it so I wasn't really in the right frame of mind. If it had been 3am and not 3pm and my wife had left my life instead of just left her shoes in the middle of the floor I might have suddenly become Frank's target audience and it might have been the right album in the right place at the right time.

In the Wee Small hours is probably the most perfect album for the lonely male I can think of. If you're a lonely male I can't recommend it highly enough. If you're not then you might want to keep it in reserve just in case but listen to something else in the mean time.

Here's the title track to enjoy.

Favourite Amazon Customer Review Quote: "The arrangements are top-heavy and Sinatra himself seems to be led by the orchestrations, rather than the other way around."

-How does an orchestra get led by a musician? Can you jam with a full string section? Is that even possible?

So do you listen to this album In the Wee Small Hours or not at all? Let me know below.

A 500 Horizons Announcement

After 4 years and 400 albums I've finally reached the top 100. Having heard the also rans, near things and bubbling unders, I've finally come to the century of albums that Rolling Stone Magazine have decided are the best recorded by anyone anywhere; a 99 step journey to the album they've decreed is better than anything else ever put down by a musician on planet earth.

At my current rate of two albums a week I could whip through this final 20% in a year but I've decided to give the last fifth of the countdown a bit more time. From here on the reviews will be a bit longer, more detailed and contain a slight format change. These are the biggest releases of all time and deserve more attention than the ones who went before.

Consequently reviews of the top 100 from now on will be posted once a week on the weekend instead of "randomly twice a week" which has been the pattern so far. 

For those of you who have been faithfully following this blog since its launch back in 2009: I can't thank you enough. Your comments have kept me going on this project for the last 4 years despite a change of job and the birth of my two children. It's been fun and I hope you enjoy the next two years as we head towards the number 1 position. 

-David.

101. Fresh Cream- Cream in Blue

Album: Fresh Cream
Artist: Cream
Year: 1966
Genre: Rock

Tracks

1. N.S.U.
2. Sleepy Time Time
3. Dreaming
4. Sweet Wine
5. Spoonful
6. Cat's Squirrel
7. Four Until Late
8. Rollin' And Tumblin'
9. I'm So Glad
10. Toad

Fresh Cream is the debut album by the English supergroup and according to Rolling Stone Magazine it's their finest moment. Which is odd because it's got none of their best songs.

Unlike later Cream albums which contained some great original compositions (Strange Brew, Sunshine of your love, White Room, Badge etc), their debut focused more on their mutual love of old blues tunes. Clapton's reverence for Robert Johnson (Four Until Late) got an early hearing (he would later record entire albums of Johnson covers) and other blues greats like Skip James, Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon get the cover treatment which helped to popularize the expression White Boy Blues, a derogatory term for music of the American black working class played by white English middle class boys.

The originals on Fresh Cream are all lesser efforts which range from the forgettable Dreaming to the annoying Sleepy Time Time which has one word too many in the title and two minutes too many in the running time time. Toad is an excuse for a drum solo which assumes there is such a thing as an excuse for a drum solo when in reality there is no excuse for a drum solo. At least on the album it's limited to five minutes and eleven seconds, Ginger Baker could stretch it out for close to half an hour in a live performance.

But while the songwriting might be lacking, the playing on Fresh Cream certainly isn't. Clapton might be a middle class English white boy but that doesn't mean he can't play guitar. Bruce was better on his bass than any blues bassist ever needed to be and Ginger Baker is almost as good on the drums as he is bad at personal interaction. The three of them would later fall apart onstage but early in their career they improve each other's playing rather than take away from it.

Personally I'd be happier if they'd dropped all the originals from the album and thrown in some more blues covers instead. It might not be original and they might be ripping off the greats but they played so well I wouldn't care in the least. Besides, it's worth pointing out that the original blues masters who wrote the songs the white boys played weren't complaining, they were cashing their royalty cheques and enjoying the fact that a whole new generations of young people was being turned onto their music.

Highlight: Spoonful
Lowlight: Dreaming

Influenced by: Blues
Influenced: Hendrix

Favourite Amazon Customer Review Quote: "Grea"

-That's the entire review right there. What does it say about your opinion if you can't even bother to type the final letter of a one word review?

So do you enjoy your Cream Fresh or are you dieting? Let me know below.

102 Giant Steps. Silliness

Album: Giant Steps
Artist: John Coltrane
Genre: Jazz
Year: 1960

Tracks

1. Giant Steps
2. Cousin Mary
3. Countdown
4. Spiral
5. Syeeda's Song Flute
6. Naima
7. Mr. P.C.

If there is any album which proves exactly what a farce this entire process really is it's this one. The fact that this album is here makes me think I should probably give up on the entire thing and go and do something else instead. By what possible metric can you put Giant Steps in a list of top 500 albums? How can you plonk Coltrane and band at number 102 and claim it's slightly better than Sweet Baby James but not quite as good as Fresh Cream?

I don't like to talk about future albums but I have to point out that Please Please Me by The Beatles comes in at number 39 on the countdown. Regular readers would know I'm one of the biggest Beatles fans around. When I finally get to Please Please Me I will wax lyrical about it and gush over how much I love it and always have. But does it really deserve to be 60 places above Coltrane?

If you could measure musical playing ability on a scale and you added up all of the musical talent of The Beatles they still wouldn't reach halfway to the towering talent of Coltrane. They guy is one of the first names on anyone's lips when they talk of great sax players with only Charlie Parker capable of rivalling him for first place. When you talk about great jazz musicians with any instrument he's in everyone's top ten. He's an undisputed master in his chosen field. The Beatles could all play but none of them would top a poll of greatest guitarists, bass players and (especially) drummers. They were a great band but not great individual players. If I walked the streets today I could find four separate groups of musicians in my local area who could replicated the entire of Please Please me note for note. I'd be hard pressed to find a band in my entire nation who could pull off Giant Steps.

Of course the area where the Beatles shine the most is as songwriters but Please Please Me only contains eight original compositions and not many rate as among their best. The title track and I Saw Her Standing There are great but does anyone really think Do You Want To Know A Secret is anything other than disposable?

I love Please Please Me but it's hardly a musical revolution, contains a few flat spots and for sheer musicality is nothing to write home about.

Giant Steps on the other hand is magnificent. Coltrane and his band are all players at the top of their game, the soloing is perfect and the songwriting, even though it relies heavily on improvisation, is fantastic as well. Lots of these tracks became Jazz standards and yardsticks by which other Jazz compositions are measured. I don't understand it fully but the title track is a revolution in chord progression and is incredibly complicated. To a musical idiot like myself it just sounds good but to someone who knows what they're talking about it's proof that Trane is a genius.

Personally I'd take Please Please Me over Giant Steps if I had to make a choice because I love it but comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. Jazz albums have no place on this list because including a handful of them immediately shows everything else up. Coltrane, Davis and co are in a field of their own and throwing in a few token efforts makes everything look a bit silly. Coltrane's follow up albums are no real drop in quality from Giant Steps so why aren't they here as well? How does that make sense? It doesn't, Rolling Stone have just dumped a few token jazz albums into the list in order to try and give it a degree of added credibility.

It would make a lot more sense to me if Rolling Stone said "We haven't included Jazz albums because we haven't got a clue what we're talking about and it makes it all look a bit daft" check out a jazz magazine's list of greatest albums if you want some kind of perspective.

Giant Steps is magnificent. The playing is wonderful in every respect and it's as perfect as an album can rightfully expect to be. Don't worry about where it appears on some silly listing. Just enjoy a musical great doing what he does best and only he could do.

Favourite Amazon Customer Review Quote: "I don't like modern Jazz much but seeing how this was one of those 'ultimate' records and $1.99 I thought I would try it. The sax is boring and monotonous, the drumming simplistic and dull, this record confirms my prejudices about modern jazz, elevator music".

-1960 is modern jazz now? Surely that makes any jazz albums released in the 1980's futuristic?

So are these Giant steps or massive stumblings? Let me know below

103. Sweet Baby James. Odd title.

Album: Sweet Baby James
Artist: James Taylor
Year: 1970
Genre: Folk

1. Sweet Baby James
2. Lo and Behold
3. Sunny Skies
4. Steamroller
5. Country Road
6. Oh! Susanna
7. Fire and Rain
8. Blossom
9. Anywhere Like Heaven
10. Oh Baby, Don't You Loose Your Lip on Me
11. Suite for 20 G

James Taylor is a folkie with one of the sweetest voices you will find on record. He's the sort of guy who record labels must have heard performing in clubs and fought each other off in order to sign up. It wouldn't have mattered if he couldn't write a tune and enjoyed killing small woodland creatures in between studio sessions, they could sell that voice to the American people.

Fortunately Taylor was an exceptional songwriter (and I assume he never killed a squirrel for laughs, but I could be wrong). Fire and Rain is a great song and not just this album's highlight but the highlight of his entire career. It's a plaintive ballad that talks of suffering and pain and unlike a lot of other songs of woe, it was written by a guy who knew something about sadness. Taylor spent 9 months of his life in a mental institution dealing with crippling depression. Apparently at the height (or more accurately: low) of his illness he was sleeping for twenty hours a day and incapable of doing much for the other four. Fire and Rain deals with his life fighting his feelings and his treatment. Being institutionalised does tend to put the suffering of others into perspective. There are people who have tried to write sad tales about their life because they've been a bit grumpy for an afternoon. They should probably give this album a spin in order to cheer up and find something else to write tunes about.

But Fire and Rain isn't the only thing worth hearing on Sweet Baby James. The title track is a pretty lullaby of sorts which he didn't write for himself (anyone who sleeps 20 hours a day doesn't need a lullaby) but for his nephew who shares his name. The rest of the songs might not be as well-written but they all feature his voice which Taylor uses like a veteran of the studio (although he probably understood studio technique better than most having recorded his debut album in the same studios the Beatles were recording The White Album)

Personally I'm not a fan of Steamroller, which he wrote to satirise white boy blues bands. I like white boy blues bands. I like the Blues and I like it when it's done by guys who try and make it rock and roll. I can appreciate a good satire of the genre (Can Blue Men Sing the Whites? by The Bonzo's is my favourite) but Steamroller just sounds like badly played blues to me and doesn't really work as a parody. Oh Susanna ("don't you cry for me, I come from Alabama with a Banjo on my knee") is a lot more successful and some campy fun.

Sweet Baby James is Taylor's finest moment and captures him still in touch with his folk roots before he became a darling of the middle of the road. It's worth hearing if you think Fire and Rain is all he has to offer. There's a lot more.

Highlight: Fire and Rain
Lowlight: Steamroller

Influenced by: Dylan and Depression
Influenced: Impresarios.

Favourite Amazon Customer Review Quote: "Sweet baby James was the second album by James Taylor released in 1970. It was a very popular album for folk enthusiasts of the time. Unfortunately the cut Steam Roller blues is not original to the album. It is a live version with profanity and bad quality. "

-Steamroller is definitely a live sounding version on the album I heard but this was the first I'd heard of it replacing a studio cut on the original album. Can anyone confirm or deny?

So does this fire up your belly or rain on your parade? Let me know below.