Rocks In The Attic #34: Manic Street Preachers - ‘Know Your Enemy’ (2001)

I’m really pissed off with the record label for ripping off Manics fans with this record. Prior to this, each of their album releases on vinyl had been fine. Here, they cram 75 minutes onto a single disc. The result: a very low-fidelity and quiet album. It’s almost unlistenable. Generation Terrorists is just as long and that’s a double-LP.

I was a big Manics fan, probably up to this album. In their day - with Richey on board - they were fantastic, but something died in the band when he disappeared, and they lost their edge. Everything Must Go is a good album considering what they had just been through, but This is My Truth Tell Me Yours is just boring. This album is a bit more up-tempo than its predecessor, but mostly crap.

Know Your Enemy came out when I used to drive over to see my good friend Paul in Todmorden all the time, so it reminds me of making that long drive all the way from my parent’s house in Oldham.

Hit: Found That Soul

Hidden Gem: Miss Europa Disco Dancer

Rocks In The Attic #33: Dark Star - ‘Twenty Twenty Sound’ (1999)

I bought this during the time I used to DJ on Saturday nights at 38 Bar / The Castle, in Oldham. I remember this came out very close to the time that Muse’s first album came out and, to me at least, both bands sound very similar. At least Dark Star sound like the incarnation of Muse on their first album.

It’s odd - I had my money on both bands at the time, but when I think about it, I bought this on vinyl - not Muse’s Showbiz. Looking back, of the two records, Showbiz is the better album, although I would put Twenty Twenty Sound’s lead single I Am The Sun is just as good as anything on Showbiz.

It’s a shame that the band didn’t really go anywhere - I Am The Sun is a fantastic song, and the album was produced by Steve Lillywhite of all people. Wikipedia says they did a second album, but that it remains unreleased.

Hit: I Am The Sun

Hidden Gem: Vertigo

Rocks In The Attic #32: Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble - ‘Couldn’t Stand The Weather’ (1984)

If you ever wonder what a Jimi Hendrix album in the 1980s would sound like, you only have to listen to this. Paying tribute to him on Voodoo Chile, the rest of the album sounds like it might have been recorded by Hendrix, with only the crisp 1980s production dating it to that decade.

This is Vaughan’s second solo album - a year after he played guitar on Bowie’s Let’s Dance. It’s a fine album, aside from the aforementioned dated 80s production.

It’s a shame Vaughan died so young. As Dennis Leary - or was it Bill Hicks? - once said, “Stevie Ray Vaughan is dead, and we can't get Jon Bon Jovi onto a fucking helicopter!"

Hit: Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)

Hidden Gem: Tin Pan Alley

Rocks In The Attic #31: The Darkness - ‘Permission To Land’ (2003)

This album ticks all the right boxes. It’s got a naked lady on the cover. It has a Parental Advisory sticker. It’s on Atlantic Records - home of, amongst others, Led Zeppelin. The guitarist is a big fan of Thin Lizzy. It couldn’t get much better really.

Except the album isn’t actually that great. There’s some killer singles on there - Get Your Hands Off My Woman, Growing On Me,  I Believe In A Thing Called Love and Love Is Only A Feeling - but the rest of the album is just filler. Just like most average rock albums, the singles are good but they obviously didn’t spend as long on the other songs. In fact the second side of the album - the side without all the singles on it - is pretty forgetful.

I regret not seeing the band at Glastonbury. They were playing the Second Stage, just as they were breaking in the UK, and I remember my good friend Natalie saying I should go and watch them as I’d probably like them. I hadn’t heard about them by that point, but they really caught my attention when I finally heard about them. What’s not to like about a band playing classic rock riffs behind a screaming singer in a white lycra jumpsuit?

Hit: I Believe In A Thing Called Love

Hidden Gem: Friday Night

Rocks In The Attic #30: The Beatles - ‘Yellow Submarine Songtrack’ (1999)

It’s odd that they released this, as though admitting that the original Yellow Submarine soundtrack released in 1968 was a bit of a mistake. That album has four previously unreleased songs of varying quality on one side, bookended by the title song and All You Need Is Love; with the flipside covering George Martin’s orchestral score for the film. Of the studio albums in their official cannon, this has to be the weakest as half of it isn’t them playing, and the rest is half-hearted, at best.

Released in 1999 to promote the re-release of the animated film, the Yellow Submarine Songtrack tries to wrong those rights by removing the George Martin tracks and filling the album out with the other Beatles songs that appear in the movie.

Hey Bulldog takes pride of place as the first song on the album (after the title song), and this was released as the only single from the album. Of those 4 previously unreleased songs that appeared on the original soundtrack, it’s clearly the best one - a nice little riff-driven rocker by Lennon that wouldn’t have been out of place as a B-side around the time of The White Album when it was recorded.

This is a nice addition to my Beatles collection - the tracks are fully remixed from the original multitrack tapes (something that they didn’t even do for the 2009 remasters), making it a pretty unique release. And of course it’s on yellow vinyl, and who doesn’t like coloured vinyl?

Hit: Yellow Submarine

Hidden Gem: Hey Bulldog

Rocks In The Attic #29: The Bar-Kays - ‘Soul Finger’ (1967)

Thanks to my Dad, I have this in my collection - an original version of The Bar-Kays’ debut on Volt Records - Stax’s sister label - with the cover held together with a couple of strategically placed pieces of sellotape.

Soul Finger is a great soul record, drawing comparisons to label-mates Booker T. & The M.G.’s, mainly as they’re both organ-driven instrumental groups. The Bar-Keys are a little less organ-heavy compared to the earlier group, but with a brassier sound due to their compliment of saxophone and trumpet.

The band was cut down in its prime as a result of being picked up by Otis Redding as his backing band. Four of the six original members died in the same 1967 plane crash that took his life (only the trumpeter survived the crash, and the bass player was on another flight). The Bar-Kays were then repopulated with replacements, and went on to back many other Stax artists - most notably playing on Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul album - and released records all the way into the 1980s.

The Blues Brothers play a great version of the song Soul Finger, as the opening to their Made In America live LP. It’s fitting that Cropper and Dunn play that version, as the M.G.’s were instrumental (no pun intended) in cultivating The Bar-Kays through the ranks at Stax / Volt.

Soul Finger and one of The Bar-Kays’ later songs, Too Hot To Stop, also feature on the soundtrack to 2007’s Superbad.

Hit: Soul Finger

Hidden Gem: Pearl High

Rocks In The Attic #28: Various Artists - ‘Good Morning Vietnam (O.S.T.)’ (1988)

This is a great film. I’ve always been slightly dubious about Robin Williams, after I heard that on the stand-up circuit he used to shamelessly steal material from other comedians; but in terms of energy and improvisation, there’s no other comic actor to touch him, except maybe Jim Carrey.

Like Jim Carrey, Williams’ best roles are those which are comic with a huge slice of realism involved. Good Morning Vietnam is one of those films, and the music contained on the soundtrack are a great reminder of the happy / sad dynamic that the movie puts across.

I’ve never been a fan of soundtrack albums that have dialogue interspersed with the music tracks, but it works so well here, essentially because Williams is playing a DJ - so the whole album sounds like a radio program. This is probably the first time I heard Them’s version of Baby Please Don’t Go (with a young studio musician named Jimmy Page playing guitar).

Hit: What A Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong

Hidden Gem: Baby Please Don’t Go - Them

Rocks In The Attic #27: The White Stripes - ‘Elephant’ (2003)

I was much more impressed with this album, after White Blood Cells didn’t really live up to the hype that was surrounding the band at the time of that release. I thought White Blood Cells was a bit of a letdown, after the genius of De Stijl, but here on Elephant they seemed to get back on track.

I wasn’t a White Stripes fan from the very start, but I remember a lot of talk about them around the same time that The Strokes were being touted as the next big thing. My good friend Paul gave me a copy of De Stijl on CD that he’d won at some music festival, and not knowing anything about them, he’d offloaded it onto me. So from listening to that album (a lot!), I was very into them by the time White Blood Cells came around.

I love De Stijl - a lot of it sounds (to me) like Led Zeppelin, and I like that. White Blood Cells and Elephant are a bit heavier, but still retaining a melodic edge which saves them from the garage rock of their first album.

I don’t usually pay much attention to music videos - I find they can change how you perceive a song, both positively and negatively - but the videos for three of this album’s four singles are outstanding: the kaleidoscopic Seven Nation Army video, directed by Alex And Martin; a scantily-clad Kate Moss swinging around a strippers’ pole in I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself, directed by Sofia Coppola; and the pulsating The Hardest Button To Button video, directed by Michel Gondry.

Hit: Seven Nation Army

Hidden Gem: You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket

Rocks In The Attic #26: Rocket From The Crypt - ‘Scream, Dracula, Scream’ (1995)

I once had the misfortune to accidentally play Rocket From The Crypt’s On A Rope straight after a Joy Division song while DJing in a club. A friend had to race up to my DJ booth and point out my faux pas - after the strains of Love Will Tear Us Apart was dying out, it sounded like I was making light of Ian Curtis’ death by hanging by playing this track. Oh dear.

I bought this album purely on the strength of On A Rope, which had somehow got a bit of attention in the UK when it was released. I even remember the band performing the song on TFI Friday and Top Of The Pops.

The rest of the album didn’t impress me that much, except for the opening track Middle, which segues into Born In ’69 before making way for On A Rope. The energy contained in these three songs is unrelenting and a fantastic starter to an album.

Hit: On A Rope

Hidden Gem: Middle / Born In ‘69

Rocks In The Attic #25: Lionel Richie - ‘Can’t Slow Down’ (1983)

I’m not sure why I have this - I think it may have something I pilfered from my parent’s collection when I was starting to listen to vinyl in a big way. For years it remained on my shelf, unlistened to, and then I noticed it had a song - Running With The Night - that featured on the soundtrack to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I’m glad I finally listened to it, as the rest of the album isn’t half-bad.

Bookended by his big US #1 solo hits - All Night Long (All Night) and Hello - the album is his second solo output after leaving The Commodores, and is full of hits. Each of the five singles taken from the album charted in the US Top 10 - not a bad start for somebody described by one critic as ‘the black Barry Manilow’.

My good friend Roger used to use a ticket stub from a Lionel Richie concert as a bookmark, mainly as a conversation starter to meet girls on the train during his commute to work. Apparently it worked most of the time.

Hit: Hello

Hidden Gem: Running With The Night

Rocks In The Attic #24: Doves - ‘Lost Souls’ (2000)

Another band I liked really early on - I have all their early singles on vinyl - before abandoning them to the Oasis fans. I’d been following their rise in Manchester, mainly on the coat-tails of Badly Drawn Boy, who they used to be a backing band for; and they got played relatively early by Jo Whiley on Radio 1. I can remember working at my desk in my room at University, when she played Sea Song for the first time on radio. I nearly hit the roof - I had bought the song on vinyl (this was way before the album came out) and I had loved it from the first time I heard it.

I then had the misfortune of missing them play a small bar in my hometown, Oldham, because I was playing with my own band a few streets away on the same night. I did get to catch them that summer at Glastonbury on the Second Stage - I think they were the first band I ever saw at the festival - on the ridiculously early Friday morning slot. This set was also the first of many missed meetings at Glastonbury, as my University housemate Kaj, who I was looking out to meet up with (in the days just before mobile phones) saw me watching them, but wasn’t sure enough that it was me to come over and tap me on the shoulder. We caught up the following day if I remember correctly.

The next time I saw Doves was a few years later. They were headlining the same stage on the Sunday night, touring their second album, and I walked through the field and caught them for 5 minutes, enough to see them dedicate a song to Marc-Vivien Foé - the Manchester City and Cameroon international who had recently died on the pitch (the band are big Man City fans); but by that point they had got a bit more famous and a lot of Oasis fans (ie. non-musos who only dabble in music) had started liking them as a faux-Oasis substitute band.

I did see Jimi from Doves once in Manchester, as pissed off as I was that we both couldn’t get into a bar that was holding a night celebrating Bill Hicks on the 10^th anniversary of his death. I’ve never seen a rock star so mad.

But I have fond memories of this, a great album.

Hit: Here It Comes

Hidden Gem: Sea Song

Rocks In The Attic #23: R.E.M. - ‘Out Of Time’ (1991)

I’ve never been a huge fan of R.E.M. I’ve always been slightly suspicious that it took them so long to finally start recording hit albums. I was also put off by them because it was fashionable to like them when I was at college. And it was usually knobheads who liked them - R.E.M. and Oasis.

But I’ve always been a big fan of Automatic For The People, and this album’s really growing on me every time I listen to it.  I remember Automatic For The People was one of the first albums I bought on CD - it was one of the five or so CDs I got when I joined one of those music clubs (where they’ll send you the latest chart album if you do absolutely nothing).

Automatic sounded otherworldy back then (and still does now), and this seems much more accessible. I don’t think I’ve ever owned this on CD - I’d probably have listened to it much more than I have if I had it on my iPod, but as it stands I’ve only listened to it on vinyl.

I probably bought it for Shiny Happy People - probably the first R.E.M. song I ever heard  and one of my favourite singles, which I think I bought on CD - and I think I was always slight disappointed that Kate Pierson didn’t sing on all the rest of their songs.

Hit: Losing My Religion

Hidden Gem: Low

Rocks In The Attic #22: Eric Clapton - ‘Journeyman’ (1989)

I bought this because it had Bad Love on it. I’m glad I bought it because the rest of the album is sweet - I could never understand how Unplugged was considered his comeback when he was making albums of this quality 3 years earlier.

The opening guitar riff to Bad Love has to be one of most underrated rock riffs of the 1980s. I’d put it up there with Dire Straits’ Money For Nothing as the best of that decade. In fact, does anybody even write riffs of that calibre anymore? Jack White has a few under his belt, but there’s been a shift away from putting a riff like that front and centre in the production.

I love everything about this album - the photo of Eric looking vaguely psychotic in the dark on the front cover, to the photo of him on the reverse - wearing a grey linen suit over a bright yellow turtleneck, standing on metal shavings.

I read his autobiography not too long ago, and it really got to me that so much of his life has been plagued by alcoholism, and frankly, wasted. If he had been able to knock albums like this out every couple of years, he would have a pretty impressive back catalogue rather than the sketchy affair that it is.

I remember, many years after first buying this record, I was working on a late night as a supervisor of a DIY store. I put the album on in the break room, thinking that nobody would know it, but one of my colleagues Carly got overexcited and started singing and dancing along to it whilst doing the vacuuming - a favourite album of hers too. It’s funny how things stick in your memory like that.

Hit: Bad Love

Hidden Gem: Breaking Point

Rocks In The Attic #21: Monty Norman - ‘Dr.No (O.S.T.)’ (1963)

Another gem in my record collection - an original copy of the soundtrack to the first James Bond film, Dr. No - released in 1963 to coincide with the American release of the film in June of that year (the film was originally released in the UK on the 5^th of October 1962, the same day as The Beatles’ first 7” single Love Me Do).

It’s a shame that John Barry’s work on this album is uncredited, given how vital he was to the music of 007 over the next three decades. He arranged the James Bond Theme, and orchestrated the final song on the album, but the rest of the soundtrack is credited to composer Monty Norman, writer of the James Bond Theme.

This soundtrack is very calypso-sounding, because of the film’s setting in the West Indies. It sounds quite fresh, and is probably the only time a Bond soundtrack has ever leant so much towards a specific genre of music - at least until the soundtrack for The Spy Who Loved Me goes all disco. Ugh.

Hit: James Bond Theme

Hidden Gem: Under The Mango Tree

Rocks In The Attic #20: Fleetwood Mac - ‘The Pious Bird Of Good Omen’ (1969)

Gotta love the Mac. I bought this album at some fair on Beech Road park in Chorlton. I think it was during Beech Road festival - and probably on the same day (or during the festival another year), Willow bought Bruce Willis’ The Return Of Bruno. I think I got the better deal.

Just like John Mayall, I could listen to Fleetwood Mac all day and not really notice. It seems so natural to me - I must have been a bluesman in a former life or something. I don’t have much of a thing for country blues, but English blues from the beat explosion of the sixties really speaks to me.

This album is a compilation of the band’s first four singles (and their B-sides), plus two tracks from the Mr. Wonderful (1968) album, and another two tracks from another blues artist Eddie Boyd, backed by Fleetwood Mac.

One of my favourite things to happen at work is for one of the girls in the office to put my iPod on the stereo, choose Fleetwood Mac, and then play all their songs on shuffle. They’re expecting songs off Rumours (1977), but my iPod is heavily weighted towards the 1960s version of Fleetwood Mac. The better version, that is.

Hit: Albatross

Hidden Gem: Need Your Love So Bad

Rocks In The Attic #19: The Band - ‘The Band’ (1969)

Who can’t love this album? Surely it’s impossible. To me, this and its predecessor Music From Big Pink (1968) are like Rubber Soul and Revolver - two back-to-back classics with mostly interchangeable songs. Or Toys In The Attic and Rocks for Aerosmith fans.

I think I prefer Music From Big Pink as it sounds ever so slightly rougher around the edges. That album sounds like a bunch of guys who had a great idea of making an album, this one sounds much more like they’re hitting their stride.

Levon Helm, the band’s drummer, died not too long ago and it was nice to see a wealth of respect paid to him from the music world. There was a documentary about him playing at the Auckland film festival last year which I couldn’t get to see, but I’ll hopefully get to see it one day.

Hit: Rag Mama Rag

Hidden Gem: Jawbone

Rocks In The Attic #18: Stone Temple Pilots - ‘Purple’ (1994)

I was always very anti-Nirvana when I was getting into music, in the early nineties. I’m never one to follow hype, and everybody loved them. The band for me at that time - at least the American band for me - was Stone Temple Pilots.

I remember seeing Weiland singing one of the big songs from Core (1992) - probably Plush - on an MTV Awards show, and not being terribly impressed. Yet another vocalist, singing in the style of Cobain and Vedder, I had probably thought. Then when Purple came out and I heard the single Vaseline, I was hooked. I went out and bought the single (the MTV video was in heavy rotation), and probably the album not long after.

Due to Weiland’s drug problems putting the band into hiatus upon the release of their (very underrated) third album, I was never able to see them play back in the 90s. I saw them play in New Zealand last year though (their first time in this country), and they rocked, playing my favourite song from Purple - Still Remains - along with their great cover of Zeppelin’s Dancing Days.

This is one of many coloured vinyls I have in my collection. Needless to say, it’s purple.

Hit: Interstate Love Song

Hidden Gem: Still Remains

Rocks In The Attic #17: Donna Summer - ‘Walk Away: The Best of 1977-1980’ (1980)

Donna Summer passed away the other day, largely unnoticed compared to some recent deaths in the music industry. It annoys me that somebody like Donna Summer is brushed over, while coke-head Whitney Houston is plastered all over the media when she dies .Well, I guess the media likes a tragedy, and Houston is definitely one of those.

I love I Feel Love. It would probably be one of my favourite songs to hear in a nightclub, and it wasn’t too often that I’d hear it either. It sounds futuristic - miles ahead of anything else that was coming out around that same time, and beat-mixed into something similar sounding from the late 1990s sounds awesome.

Hot Stuff I can take or leave - it’s a great song, but now seen as something of a novelty after appearing in the Job Centre scene in The Full Monty. As usual, there’s a cruel irony that the song is undoubtedly more famous because of its inclusion in that film, but also cursed forever as that song from that scene.

I’ve heard a lot of press coverage around her supposedly anti-gay comments made in the 1980s which distanced her from her gay fanbase. Elton John, King Of The Gays, was one of the first celebrities to come out and publicly mourn for her, and as there seems to be no hard proof of her alleged comments, I’m prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Hit: I Feel Love

Hidden Gem: Bad Girls

Rocks In The Attic #16: Booker T. & The M.G.’s - ‘McLemore Avenue’ (1970)

I bought this only last Sunday, from Real Groovy in Auckland. Got it home, put in on the turntable and while it’s on its first listen I turn on the internet and find out that Duck Dunn has passed away.

The music world has lost a lot of good people in the last couple of weeks - Levon Helm, The Beastie Boys’ MCA, Duck Dunn, and as of the day before yesterday, Donna Summer. That’s be a nice little band right there - and odd band, but something worth listening to.

McElmore Avenue, as the front cover might suggest, is Booker T. & The M.G.’s doing Abbey Road. Released only a few months as The Beatles’ swansong, it’s missing a few songs (my favourite, Oh! Darling is noticeable absent), but this gives the M.G.’s a bit of room to improvise on the songs chosen.

It’s a great little album, with the band on top form, working their way through a largely instrumental and heavily re-ordered version of Abbey Road.

Hit: Come Together

Hidden Gem: I Want You (She’s So Heavy)

Rocks In The Attic #15: John Mayall With Eric Clapton - ‘Bluesbreakers’ (1966)

The only reason I have this on vinyl is down to my good friend, Moo. I was searching frantically for this in every record shop in Manchester until Moo let me have his copy - a very good copy, too - in exchange for a newly remastered copy of the album on CD.

I can’t remember why I wanted it so much at the time, but it takes pride of place in my collection, alongside Clapton’s other key moonlighting appearances (outside of his solo stuff, Cream and The Yardbirds): the eponymous Blind Faith album, and Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek And The Dominoes.

The album is very easy to listen to - similar to early Fleetwood Mac in scope (and general reverence to the blues), and Clapton’s guitar sound is awesome. This marks the first time a Gibson Les Paul had been recorded through an overdriven Marshall amplifier. Smoking!

Hit: All Your Love

Hidden Gem: Ramblin’ On My Mind

Rocks In The Attic #14: Stevie Wonder - ‘Hotter Than July’ (1980)

The 1980s weren’t very kind to Stevie Wonder. Commercially, he did great - The Woman In Red soundtrack, Ebony and Ivory, Part Time Lover - but his critical successes were largely left behind in the 1970s. I love his classic period, starting with 1972’s Music Of My Mind, and I’d put this album, Hotter Than July, in there as the final album of that run.

It’s a very happy album, and other than Happy Birthday which sounds very ‘80s, the rest of the album stands up to the best of his work on Talking Book or Songs In The Key Of Life. In terms of songwriting, you could put any of these songs on those albums, and the only thing that gives the album away as coming from a slightly different time is that the synthesiser sounds are starting to sound a bit 1980s. They’re not as ‘jolly’ as the synth sounds from songs like Ebony And Ivory, but you can sort of hear them going in that direction.

Looking at the album credits, Michael Jackson pops up as one of several backing vocalists on All I Do, although you can’t hear it’s him. As usual Stevie plays most instruments on most of the songs - all keyboards, drums, and of course vocals. You get the idea that if Stevie Wonder walked up to your house and rang the doorbell, it would be the funkiest sounding time you’d ever hear it ring.

Hit: Happy Birthday

Hidden Gem: Master Blaster (Jammin’)

Rocks In The Attic #13: George Harrison - ‘All Things Must Pass’ (1970)

This is probably the most extravagant record in my collection - being the 2001 digitally remastered box-set. It’s a great album, and definitely the most 70’s rock-sounding of the debut albums by the three songwriting Beatles.

The first time I came across this album was when I was staying at my good friend Linsay’s house in Northern Ireland, and my other good friend, Kaj, and I were sleeping outside in the family caravan parked on the driveway. The only music we could find was the cassette album of All Things Must Pass, which we played all weekend, especially the jokey It’s Johnny’s Birthday­  - intended for John Lennon, but relevant to me also.

I don’t know what I like best - this, McCartney or John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band - but it probably depends on what mood I’m in. This album sounds the biggest of the three, no doubt due to Phil Spector’s heavy involvement (although he also co-produced John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, he wasn’t around for a lot of those sessions, whereas you can hear his input all over this).

The ‘informal jams’ that make up the third disc of this triple album are largely pointless - and self-indulgent tossery - given that it feels more like a chance for George to show off his best-friend Eric, rather than to provide anything of substance.

It’s a shame that My Sweet Lord got a lot of undue attention because of its “similarity” to The Chiffons’ He’s So Fine. A shame because it’s practically the same song. Different instruments and different lyrics, but melodically identical.

Hit: My Sweet Lord

Hidden Gem: Wah-Wah

Rocks In The Attic #12: Sam & Dave - ‘Star-Collection’ (1974)

Stax, without a doubt, has to be my favourite record label. And Sam & Dave are my favourite Stax artists - although depending on what mood I’m in, it could be Otis or Booker T & The MGs.


This album, a collection of their singles, is a German release - and from what I can see on the internet, it has the tracklisting as 1969’s The Best Of Sam & Dave, although the songs are presented in order.


I think that that album - the 1969 collection - is what Jake and Elwood are listening to in the Bluesmobile, on an 8-track cartridge, when they first get pulled over by the police in The Blues Brothers (1982). It’s a shame Sam & Dave didn’t feature in that film - it would have been fitting for them to have been backed by Cropper and Dunn, from the Stax backing band - but they were just about to give up touring and would never speak to each other again.


The vast majority of the songs here are written by Isaac Hayes, and his Stax writing partner David Porter - just a few years before Hayes became a household name in his own right. I have the DVD of them performing on the Stax / Volt tour of Europe back in 1967, and it’s clear that they were the hardest-working act on the label, leaving a puddle of sweat on the stage, only for Otis to add to it during his headlining slot.


Hit: Soul Man


Hidden Gem: You Don’t Know Like I Know

Rocks In The Attic #11: Coldplay - ‘Parchutes’ (2000)

Everybody seems to love Coldplay these days, or if you’re a muso you hate them. They’re constantly the butt of jokes on American sitcoms, and generally used disparagingly to indicate that somebody has really bad taste in music.


But in 2000, they were the next big thing and I distinctly remember buying the record as soon as it came out. I was already a big fan of Yellow, which was playing everywhere by that point, but I had also just seen them at Glastonbury and I had really liked the rest of the songs they played in their set. Later a friend would recount that we already seen them play - at a local band level - at The Roadhouse in Manchester, second or third on the bill, when they had been starting out. But I don’t remember that at all. I remember seeing our friend’s band - but not Coldplay.


The thing that strikes me most about this album is how it sounds like nothing else they did after. It’s so downbeat and melancholic - which I like. A lot of the songs on this record are what I would describe as beautiful, and that’s not something I usually look for in an album.


I’d still be a fan now if they had continued in that direction - but I think they traded in what melancholia they had for catchier tunes; and even though some of their later stuff is just as downbeat as the songs here, it doesn’t sound as authentic. Shame.


Hit: Yellow


Hidden Gem: We Never Change

Rocks In The Attic #10: Super Furry Animals - ‘Rings Around The World’ (2001)

I must admit I didn’t really love the Super Furrys until this album. I definitely liked them - my housemates at University in my third year used to play them to death, especially the Outspaced album which had just come out that year. In fact, I think I bought Outspaced first, on vinyl, and then I started buying all the others.


They were a handy band to have when DJing too - they’re probably the band I was asked “Hey mate, who’s this?” most when playing them.


By the time Rings Around The World came out, I had been buying their albums as they came out - Guerilla after Outspaced, and then Mwng - partly becase they’re an awesome band, but also because they always did something nice with their vinyl releases.


On Rings Around The World, side C, the side with Juxtapozed With U on it, plays ‘backwards’ - that is, you drop the needle in the centre, where the run-out groove usually is, and it plays from centre out to the edge. Sure, it’s gimmicky, but at least it’s something that sets the record apart from others. You just need to be bloody fast, when side C finishes, to save your needle before it does a suicide leap off the record.


I used to listen to this a lot when I drove over to Ireland to see my long-distance girlfriend in Wexford. As the band are Welsh, it’s quite nice that the album became my soundtrack for driving through that country to get to the ferry port in Fishguard.


Paul McCartney appears on this album too, on Receptacle For The Respectable, channelling his earlier role on one of the Beach Boys’ albums by crunching on some celery and carrots. Nice!


Hit: Juxtapozed With U


Hidden Gem: Receptacle For The Respectable

Rocks In The Attic #9: Supertramp - ‘...famous last words...’ (1982)

I don’t mind a bit of Supertramp. They always remind of me of Princess Diana for some reason - probably because Roger Hodgson played at that big musical event held in her honour. Apparently she was a big fan.


What I like about Supertramp is that although they’re ridiculously mainstream and pop-sounding, they’re also very downbeat and melancholic. Some of their biggest hits have a real bittersweet streak running straight through them, and I like that.


I don’t remember buying this so I think it might have been something I “borrowed” from my Dad’s collection when I started buying vinyl. It’s not their greatest record - probably viewed as a let-down, coming after Breakfast In America (1979, but It’s Raining Again is a decent song, and is really the only song that comes close to the heavy hitters on its predecessor.


Hit: It’s Raining Again


Hidden Gem: N/A

Rocks In The Attic #8: Rod Stewart - ‘Every Picture Tells A Story’ (1971)

I don’t know why I have this record in my collection. I certainly don’t remember buying it, and I don’t remember inheriting it. Presumably it was given to me. I mean, who would buy a Rod Stewart record, unless you were stuck for something to buy your Mum on Mother’s Day?


It’s a shame really, because Rod seems to have started off with good intentions. Lead singer with The Faces, lead vocals on that great Truth album by Jeff Beck (also in my collection), and then a solo a career which started off strongly and descended into Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? Ugh, even the spelling of that song makes me want to vomit.


It’s odd that this is Stewart’s third solo album, but all five members of The Faces appear on the record.  Kind of pointless, if you ask me. There’s some very nice guitar work on this album though. Worth a listen just for that.


Hit: Maggie May


Hidden Gem: Amazing Grace

Rocks In The Attic #7: The Beatles - ‘The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl’ (1977)

I love everything about this album, from the hasty introduction by Ed Sullivan to the constant scream from the fans which never lets up.

It’s a shame this album has never been released on CD - there seems to have been enough pressure for Parlophone to release the LP back in 1977, but this must have been regarded as a mis-step somewhere along the way as it now seems to fit strangely outside the official cannon of Beatles recording.

To my ears, this LP is just as important as any of their studio albums - if only as a historical document of the shows during the height of Beatlemania. The 2009 studio remasters would have been a great opportunity to clean the recording up a little bit more and place it alongside the other albums.

It’s incredibly short at only 33 minutes, but this is in line with the running time of their albums at the time. I love how they start Twist And Shout on the middle-8, and instead of playing the whole song with that section as the starting point, they quickly end it after a minute and twenty seconds, as though they had simply come into the song halfway through.

The liner notes by George Martin add a nice touch, writing a short history of how he was approached to revisit the recordings and produce the record. The only sour point is mention of the current teen heart-throbs of the late 1970s, The Bay City Rollers, courtesy of a comment from Martin’s daughter.

Hit: Twist And Shout

Hidden Gem: Help