Rocks In The Attic #54: The Hives - ‘Your New Favourite Band’ (2001)

They weren’t my new favourite band when I bought this record, so they got that wrong. I seemed to have been buying a lot of contemporary stuff around 2000 and 2001 - a shame really as I could have been spending that money on older, time-proven classic albums. Instead I seem to have lots of albums like this in my collection. Albums where I’ve clearly bought the album because of one or two songs - and the rest of the songs fail to live up to those promises.

This album looks like a studio album, but it’s actually a compilation of sings from the band’s first two albums. Hate To Say I Told You So is a great song - but the rest of the album’s nowhere near as catchy. That’s the thing about garage rock - energy too commonly takes the place of melody.

Hit: Hate To Say I Told You So

Hidden Gem: The Hives Are Law, You Are Crime

Rocks In The Attic #53: The Strokes - ‘Is This It’ (2001)

I remember at the turn of the century, when the NME was proudly declaring that The Strokes were going to save music, somebody wrote in and asked when they eventually did come over to the UK to play live, would they walk out on stage in black and white?

This record was hyped to buggery when it came out. It doesn’t live up to the hype, but it’s not bad. It has a great cover, of a Smell The Glove-like hand resting on a bare lady’s behind. I’m sure feminists would complain that the image is sexist; but as Nigel Tufnel quite correctly pointed out, “What’s wrong with being sexy?”

Is This It didn’t make me fall in love with The Strokes. If anything, it put me off them as the NME had been promising that they were the band to end all bands, and they have been saying this for a very long time before anybody had actually heard anything by them. Nobody could live up to that sort of hype. This was before mySpace took over as the cheap and easy way of making your music accessible to the whole world, so perhaps this was the last band to be broken in the traditional way by the music press.

I eventually got to see The Strokes play at a mini-festival in Manchester - when they were touring their third album. They didn’t walk out on stage in black and white.

Hit: Last Nite

Hidden Gem: The Modern Age

Rocks In The Attic #52: Metallica - ‘...And Justice For All’ (1988)

I first heard this when my good friend Russ put it onto a tape for me. I think I still have that somewhere actually. After hearing Metallica / The Black Album, Russ taped this for me and it put me off the band so much that it stopped me checking out their earlier stuff (especially their second and third albums which I eventually found to be fantastic).

This is a loooooong album, with some reaaaally long songs. One is clearly the centrepiece, and is probably one of the best rock singles of the late 1980s. Kirk Hammett’s guitar work, especially on the intro is superb, and shows off the melodic edge he would have picked up from taking guitar lessons from Joe Satriani in the mid-1980s.

I think the one thing that holds this album back is a very tinny, weak drum sound on certain songs. Take the opening song Blackened. When that ethereal intro gathers momentum and the drums come in, it should kick ass. Instead, it feels jokey and amateurish. The bass is also dialled down significantly on the album - something that angered newbie Jason Newsted, with reason, upon its release.

Hit: One

Hidden Gem: To Live Is To Die

Rocks In The Attic #51: Lenny Kravitz - ‘Mama Said’ (1991)

Record company executives must have been creaming in their pants when Lenny Kravitz came along. Here was somebody who looked and sounded like a cloning experiment between Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Wonder had gone exceedingly well, and an artist that could successfully cross racial boundaries, appealing to white and black audiences alike.

One of my greatest regrets at Glastonbury - and I have quite a few - is walking past Lenny Kravitz playing on the Pyramid Stage on the Sunday afternoon of my first time at the festival, and not really noticing. I had forgotten how much I loved his earlier stuff, because by that time he was very much in the pop buyer’s market with his cover of American Woman. I probably didn’t stop and listen as I had Sunday fatigue at Glastonbury - when you get tired of seeing so bands play that your eyes and ears stop registering. I wouldn’t mind if he was the sort of artist who tours - but he isn’t, and that might have been my only chance to see him. Fuck!

This album is his last record below the radar before its follow-up Are You Gonna Go My Way catapulted him into the mainstream. It has a very nice appearance by Slash on Always On The Run, the standout track on the album aside from the radio-friendly It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over.

Hit: It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over

Hidden Gem: Stop Draggin’ Around

Rocks In The Attic #50: Aerosmith - ‘Rocks’ (1976)

Seeing as this is the 50^th entry in this particular blog, I thought I’d cover an album I really, really love - and one that lends its name to (half of) the blog’s title. Looking back, I regret not doing something similar for the silver posting at #25, which was taken by Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down. Oh dear - perhaps subconsciously I like Lionel Richie solo albums more than I give myself credit for.

Rocks is Aerosmith’s fourth studio album and the creative peak of their classic 70s period. This is the album that was heard by a young Slash and turned him onto rock music, essentially giving birth to Guns ‘N Roses. Of this album, and its predecessor Toys In The Attic, I probably prefer the earlier album as it has a little more light on it. That’s not to say Rocks is a dark album - it’s just darker than Toys... and is very no-nonsense.

Credit also has to be given to the producer, Jack Douglas - now practically a sixth member of the band. The production specifically on the opening track Back In The Saddle is fantastic, building up to a release with sound effects perfectly complimenting the lyrics to conjure up a dusty saloon in the old west.

It’s all the rage these days for bands to play their classic albums in their entirety. I guess this maybe started with Pink Floyd playing Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety on their Pulse tour. I read somewhere that back in 2009, Aerosmith played Rocks from start to finish as the centrepiece of their live show - after giving Toys... the same treatment went down well with the fans. Now normally I’d love to see the band play either of these albums in full, but I’m not really sure I want the 21^st century version of Aerosmith spoiling my love of these two great albums.

I used to love Blondie, but seeing them live at Glastonbury in 1999 really turned me off them, and it took me a very long time to start appreciating them again. I have an almost religious love for the Toys... and Rocks albums and I wouldn’t want that to be destroyed. Sometimes nostalgia should be left in its box.

Hit: Last Child

Hidden Gem: Combination

Rocks In The Attic #49: The Beatles - ‘Beatles For Sale’ (1964)

The fourth Beatles album - also known as the ‘haphazardly-put-together-between-tours-to-get-it-out-in-time-for-Christmas’ album - and for me, just as good as the albums on either side of it.

I read somewhere that Eight Days A Week is notable as the first ever pop song with a faded-in intro. Now, I don’t know if that’s true - I’m sure whoever came up with that fact hadn’t listened to every pop song that came before this, but it does seem a little unlikely. Especially since the way recording had progressed from single takes into multitracking. With single takes, it’s far more likely that a song would be faded in at the start. Anyway, who knows? Or cares?

I sometime have great difficulty picking the ‘Hidden Gem’ on albums to detail at the foot of these blogs, but with Beatles For Sale it was too easy. The McCartney song What You’re Doing is so underrated - essentially unknown - that it’s almost criminal.

It’s also worth mentioning I Feel Fine (b/w She’s A Woman) which was released a week before this album - a great single, with a lead-guitar riff setting the template for rock music, and proof again that they were starting to get better and better at capturing the excitement of their live performances in the studio.

Hit: Eight Days A Week

Hidden Gem: What You’re Doing

Rocks In The Attic #48: Clint Mansell - ‘Moon (O.S.T.)’ (2009)

Soundtracks are a minefield. You can have the great themes by composers like Bernard Hermann and John Williams, but those soundtracks can also be marred by short, unmelodic bursts of score that only serve the purpose of matching cues in the accompanying film. Then there are the soundtracks that just have popular songs on them, starting with American Graffiti and continuing through the John Hughes films of the 1980s. These types of soundtracks are all the rage these days (especially since Tarantino lent an air of cool to the process in the 1990s) as they’re easy to cobble together. Then there are composers who simply try to put across a mood or a feeling in their soundtracks. Clint Mansell is one of those composers.

Looking at the subject matter of this film, and the identity of the film’s director Duncan Jones (also known as Zowie Bowie), it would have been all too easy to plonk Space Oddity on the film’s soundtrack. Thankfully, this fantastic film was made in the UK, away from the clichés of Hollywood.

Hit: Welcome To Lunar Industries

Hidden Gem: Memories (Someone We’ll Never Know)

Rocks In The Attic #47: Blind Faith - ‘Blind Faith’ (1969)

In terms of album covers, this has to be up there with the worst. Not only is it a photograph of a topless 11-year old girl (who is now a massage therapist in London), but this has been badly superimposed onto another image of a pastoral landscape, which clashes with the futuristic “spaceship” that the girl has in her hands. Thankfully the music inside is much better.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Cream because Jack Bruce’s vocals can be pretty annoying. Here you get Steve Winwood’s vocals (and keyboards) on top of Clapton’s guitar playing, and Ginger Baker on drums. It’s not the greatest album in the world - falling somewhere between late-60s psychedelia and early-70s rock - but it was a stepping stone nonetheless for Clapton.

Hit: Well All Right

Hidden Gem: Can’t Find My Way Home

Rocks In The Attic #46: The Doobie Brothers - ‘One Step Closer’ (1980)

This album is so Michael McDonald it’s almost impossible to listen to. The Tom Johnston-era Doobie Brothers were a great rock band, but from Takin’ It To The Streets, when McDonald took over lead vocals, their albums get increasingly towards the middle of the road.

This is the first Doobies album after Jeff “Skunk” Baxter left the band, but they seem to be very aware that they needed someone with a crazy name to play on the record, so instead they have a guy called Cornelius Bumpus on saxophone.

One Step Closer is their last studio album before disbanding (and eventually reforming in the late 80s). Patrick Simmons walked away from the band in 1981, and as he was the last original member left in the band, they called it a day. Michael McDonald was last seen drowning in a river of MOR sludge.

Hit: Real Love

Hidden Gem: N/A

Rocks In The Attic #45: U2 - ‘War’ (1983)

Alan Partridge: 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'. What a great song. It really encapsulates the frustration of a Sunday, doesn't it? You wake up in the morning, you've got to read all the Sunday papers, the kids are running round, you've got to mow the lawn, wash the car, and you think "Sunday, bloody Sunday!".
Aidan Walsh: I really hate to do this to you, Alan, but it's actually a song about...
Paul Tool: Yeah, bloody Sunday is actually about a massacre in Derry in 1972.
Alan Partridge: A massacre? Ugh. I'm not playing that again.

I have four favourite U2 songs. Two of them are on this album. Both times I have seen U2 play live, I have been willing them to play Sunday Bloody Sunday and New Year’s Day - and both times they’ve played both songs. My other two favourite songs are (Pride) In The Name Of Love, which they only played the first time I saw them, and Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me, which they only played the second time I saw them.

I really wish they had kept making albums like this and The Unforgettable Fire - they lost something (their sense of humour?) from The Joshua Tree onwards.

Hit: New Year’s Day

Hidden Gem: Drowning Man