Rocks In The Attic #151: The Rolling Stones - ‘The Rolling Stones No.2’ (1965)

The first three Stones album are very similar - in that they’re basically a run through of the band’s favourite R&B covers. They manage to inject a bit more of themselves into this, their second attempt, and unlike their debut which only has one original song, this features three Jagger / Richards compositions.

I now can’t listen to Time Is On My Side without thinking of the song’s focus in the Denzel Washington film Fallen. It’s a great song, and takes on a strange, other-worldly feel from its use as an identifier of evil in the film. If Fallen was a truly bad film, I’d be annoyed at its inclusion, but it’s one of those popcorn movies that I’m always glad to watch when it shows on TV.

The Stones pretty much drift through their first album, and most of this one, before putting a foot wrong. Their version of Under The Boardwalk on the second side of ...No.2 really stands out as a misstep, with a weak sound that doesn’t suit the band. This probably comes from an attempt to ape The Drifters’ version as closely as possible, but to me it sounds as wrong as The Beatles’ version of Gerry & The Pacemakers’ How Do You Do It?

Hit: Time Is On My Side

Hidden Gem: I Can’t Be Satisfied

Rocks In The Attic #150: The Jimi Hendrix Experience - ‘Axis: Bold As Love’ (1967)

Ten reasons why I love this album:

1. The Songs

Of the three studio albums released by Hendrix before his death, this comes across as the most personal. Are You Experienced is hook-driven and full of perfect three-minute pop songs, Electric Ladyland finds Hendrix immersed in the New York scene of barflies and hangers-on, but Axis catches him in full songwriter mode.

Hendrix’s lyrics are often overlooked, but he can really paint a picture with words. Axis showcases his love of science-fiction and his vivid imagination on tracks such as Spanish Castle Magic and Little Wing. Other songwriters can sound banal when they tell a story with lyrics - Paul McCartney commonly makes this mistake - but Hendrix seems to effortlessly get you on his side. His lyrics for Wait Until Tomorrow and Castles Made Of Sand are heartbreaking, and far from the sort of expectations set by the simplistic tone of Fire and Foxy Lady only a matter of months prior.

2. The Guitar Sound

I love the fuzz on Hendrix’s guitar throughout Are You Experienced.  The fade-in to Foxy Lady has to be one of the best sounds captured on a rock album - but Hendrix playing a clean tone on his guitar is even better. Thankfully this album is full of it.

The introduction to Little Wing is stunningly beautiful, and wouldn’t be quite the same if there was any overdrive involved. There’s a big difference between playing a guitar to chug away on some barre chords, and using it as a virtuoso instrument. It’s a really delicate piece, complimented perfectly by the addition of a glockenspiel - something that would usually be very much out of place on a rock album.

When I started learning to play the guitar, the first music book I bought was Electric Ladyland - there’s nothing like throwing yourself into the deep end. I didn’t last long with the book - I think I sold it to a friend as it was far too advanced for my skill level at the time. It always rankled me though, and eventually learning to play Little Wing gave me the confidence to go back and learn some of his other songs. I can play Hendrix’s stuff on the guitar reasonably well, but there are always a million subtleties that I overlook.

3. The Cover

If there’s one thing I hate about the late-‘60s, it’s the look associated with psychedelia. When The Beatles jumped on the bandwagon with Sgt. Pepper’s, they brought that look to a worldwide commercial level. People rave on about how timeless the Sgt. Pepper’s sleeve is, but I can’t stand it. It’s garish and like most record sleeves of that time, it dates it to a period when designers could get away with murder - as long as they painted their criminal efforts with as many colours as they had available to them.

The Sgt. Peppers sleeve is probably to blame for opening the doors of possibility for a number of visual crimes - The Rolling Stones’ terrible Their Satanic Majesties Request and Cream’s vomit-inducing Disraeli Gears immediately spring to mind. One other album sleeve to be thrown into that mix is Axis: Bold As Love. Quite simply though, I love it.

Rumour has it that the record company found out about Hendrix’s Cherokee ancestry. This got lost somewhere in translation, and the subsequent cover featured Hendrix amidst the wrong kind of Indians.

I’m sure most people would argue that the cover is just as offensive, wild and garish as anything produced around those times, but I truly see it as a piece of art - one of the nicest gafefold sleeves in my collection.

4. The Drum Intro To Little Miss Lover

Mitch Mitchell is oft-overlooked for his contribution to rock music. John Bonham and Keith Moon are always seen as the best drummers from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, but Mitchell is a master player. He just suffers from having his parts overshadowed by Hendrix - and what a problem to have.

One of his standout moments across all three Hendrix studio albums is this funk-driven introduction to Little Miss Lover. Unfortunately, it’s so good that somewhere along the way it caught the ears of the Master of Mediocrity, Noel Gallagher - who used the sample as the basis for Fuckin’ In The Bushes from their Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants album.

This meant that for a distinct period of time, Oasis fans claimed themselves a bit of credibility because of the Hendrix connection. I already despised Oasis and their legion of numbskull fans; I loathed them even more now.

5. Walking Down The Aisle

When I got married in 2011, my wife walked down the aisle to Little Wing.

In the weeks running up the wedding, she couldn’t decide between that and Led Zeppelin’s Over The Hills And Far Away. She wanted both played at the wedding - one to walk down the aisle to, and the other to walk back up the aisle to, as a married couple.

I convinced her that Little Wing worked much better as a down-the-aisle song, as the section in Over The Hills And Far Away where the bass and drums kick in, a minute and a half into the song, seemed more apt to mark a joyous occasion.

The beautiful Little Wing was used to soundtrack a beautiful moment.


6. Fulfilling The Record Contract

Hendrix was tied to a really bad record contract from day one, and never really made any money before he died. His estate now makes millions off his name, and it’s sad that his business affairs were always in such dire straits during his short tenure as a rock star.

The initial contract Hendrix signed with Track Records tied the Experience to release two LPs during 1967. Are You Experienced had already landed in May of that year, so surely another release would be of an inferior quality. Most bands would knock something out quickly, but Hendrix turns around and delivers a masterpiece.

7. Three Copies And Counting

Of all the albums in my vinyl collection, this is the one I own the most copies of. I bought two second hand copies while I was still living in Manchester - neither of which had a gatefold sleeve. About a year ago I bought brand new copy of the 2010 reissue from Real Groovy in Auckland. This is a heavyweight vinyl release, and also features the full gatefold sleeve, together with a booklet containing photos and an essay on the album.

You can say what you want about the Experience Hendrix releases - yes, they may be cashing in on Hendrix - but they’re supremely well packaged, and give his music the justice it deserves. If you don’t like the endless re-releasing of his albums, don’t buy them. It’s that simple.

8. The Production.

Electric Ladyland, would perfect the direction that Hendrix wanted to go but his first soundscapes came along on the title song of Are You Experienced, and were cemented here on Axis.

The wall of rolling feedback that symbolises the sound of a UFO taking off, on the album’s comedic opener EXP, leads the way into a set of songs where production really is as important as the songwriting. Axis would be the second and final album that Hendrix would record with Chas Chandler on production duties, and you definitely get a feeling that these sessions were fun. Electric Ladyland, on the other hand, can sound very serious at times and just a bit too heavy. Man.

9. The Font.

Hendrix’s handwriting is easily identifiable- his handwritten lyrics happily pop up all over the liner notes of the Experience Hendrix releases.

This font of his handwriting style cleverly takes the name of the album - Axis Bold.

10. Spanish Castle Magic.

Purple Haze, Foxy Lady and Fire always get their dues when it comes to their place in the rock riff canon. For some reason, Spanish Castle Magic gets lost in the dust.

It has a wealth of riffs - the stuttering overdrive of the intro, the main arpeggiated riff, and the descending, syncopated power-chords of the verses all combine to provide a really heavy guitar assault.

Hit: Little Wing

Hidden Gem: Bold As Love

Rocks In The Attic #132: Deep Purple - ‘Machine Head’ (1972)

This album kicks ass. It was recorded in Montreux, Switzerland, using the Rolling Stones mobile studio. That particular piece of equipment was responsible for some landmark albums throughout the ‘70s, and this is definitely one of them.

Everybody knows the opening guitar riff to Smoke On The Water, but beyond that first minute or so, it’s a really soulful piece of music, considering it’s supposed to be the blueprint for heavy metal. The lyrics shouldn’t work either. Imagine a heavy rock song released in the 21^st century, where the lyrics recount the inspiration, and the subsequent recording of the song. It sounds terrible - a band resigning themselves to banality because they can’t come up with any original ideas; but everything about Smoke On The Water is awesome.

History - and every guitar magazine on the planet - would have you believe that Ritchie Blackmore is the hero of this album - but Jon Lord’s keyboards really steal the show for me (with Ian Gillan’s vocals a close second). The organ work throughout the album is superb - through the prog rock workouts of Highway Star and Lazy - and that’s coming from a man who usually thinks organs belong in church.

Hit: Smoke On The Water

Hidden Gem: Lazy

Rocks In The Attic #129: Blur - ‘Blur: The Best Of’ (2000)

This was an unsurprising release by Food Records. With only one album left on their contract with Food, a greatest hits collection was assembled. This isn’t a new thing in the record industry - although diehard fans of the band may not rush out to buy a batch of songs they already own, the general public will always buy a compilation album in droves, and so it makes economic sense to bring out a ‘best of’ while the opportunity is ripe, rather than release studio album #452.

As a DJ - which I was at the time of this release - it’s always handy to have a collection of hit songs on one disc (or two, in this case), rather than lug a load of albums around for the sake of one or two songs. Still, saying that, this album did open my eyes to some of the other Blur material which I wasn’t familiar with at the time.

Much after the fact, I had discovered Parklife and, subsequently, The Great Escape, while at University. Blur and 13 sort of passed me by, although by this time they were sufficiently on my radar, enough for me to anticipate their singles as they were released.

I’ve been thinking about ‘90s music for a few weeks now, after somebody mentioning what a truly terrible decade for music it was. I guess it’s too early to tell, but will anybody be listening to this sort of thing in 40 or 50 years?

The reason I prefer to listen to older music - specifically from the ‘60s and ‘70s - is that most of the time you can listen to it without having to handle all of the other bullshit that comes with it. It’s almost impossible to listen to a Blur album without thinking about how much of a knobhead Damon Albarn is.

I remember being asked about Blur and Oasis by my sixth-form English teacher in the mid-‘90s. Their rivalry was all over the British press because of the chart race between Country House and Roll With It. He wanted to know who I thought were the better band. This was many years before I would start listening to “Indie” or Britpop music, and I was existing purely on a diet of hard rock and heavy metal at the time, so the question was sort of lost on me. I still stand behind my response back then, which was “Blur, of course, because they’re always doing something different.” The one thing I can always be sure of is that I can happily look back at Oasis’ entire career and proudly declare ‘not guilty’.

When I look back at Blur’s career alongside British bands which I’m sure they’d like to measured against - The Kinks, The Who, The Beatles, The Stones, etc - I’m not sure if they’ll ever be regarded in the same light. Oasis plumbed new depths of mediocrity in the ‘90s, but Blur were simply the best British band of the decade, and I guess that’s all that mattered at the time.

Hit: Song 2Hidden Gem: To The End



Rocks In The Attic #128: The Kinks - ‘Golden Hour Of The Kinks’ (1971)

Another compilation that exists solely in my record collection because it was handy to have in my record bag when DJing.

You have to love The Kinks though - they’re unfairly put to the side when ‘60s beat groups are mentioned. Usually, there’s The Beatles and The Stones, and nothing else. For me, The Kinks fit nicely in the middle between those two bands - they match the songwriting peaks of The Beatles (not as consistently as Lennon & McCartney, but certain songs are the arguably the equal of The Beatles’ singles), but they retain the rough edge (and murky production values) of The Stones.

This particular compilation is pretty poor, however. Their cover of Louie Louie is listed on the sleeve as ‘Lovie Lovie’, which makes you wonder what sort of moron put the sleeve together, when they can misspell one of rock and roll’s universal staples. Secondly, Lola is missing from the collection - even though this was put together a year after that single’s release. It is a budget release though, so Pye Records presumably only allowed the release of their older ‘60s output.

I think more than any other ‘60s band - The Beatles and The Stones included - the template for riff-driven guitar-based rock can be traced back to The Kinks. Dave Davies is a fantastic guitarist in this respect - coming up with short guitar hooks for his brother to write songs around.

During the formation of Led Zeppelin in 1968, Jimmy Page was undecided whether he should form a full-on heavy rock band, or a lighter folk rock band akin to Pentangle. Page played as a session musician on The Kinks’ debut album, and I don’t see it as a coincidence that he then went on to be the flag-bearer throughout the ‘70s for Dave Davies’ brand of riff-based heavy rock.

Hit: You Really Got Me

Hidden Gem: Victoria

Rocks In The Attic #35: The Rolling Stones - ‘Through The Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2)’ (1969)

Out of all the records in my collection, this is probably the worst in terms of condition. The actual disc is fine, but the sleeve - the original gatefold octagonal design - has completely fallen apart. On a normal gatefold album you’re going to get twelve inches of hinge - on this sleeve, because it’s octagonal, not square, the hinge is six inches long, and probably stopped being a hinge a very long time.

The thing is, I think I bought the record in this condition. I’m getting much better these days at only buying records where the sleeve is in as good a condition as the vinyl. I’m still not perfect, but I’m getting better. I should really have held out to try and find this in a better condition - although that would probably mean finding the record in the reissued standard square sleeve.

But my decision to buy this was probably influenced by the fact that I was DJing regularly at the time. And to have this record in your DJ bag is extremely useful. It has my four of my favourite Stones singles - Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Honky Tonk Women, Street Fighting Man and Let’s Spend The Night Together - all on one disc.

Hit: Jumpin’ Jack Flash

Hidden Gem: 2,0000 Light Years From Home