Rocks In The Attic #135: Pink Floyd - ‘Meddle’ (1971)

My favourite Pink Floyd album changes all the time. When I first started listening to them, Meddle was easily my favourite as it didn’t come prepackaged with a load of hype and expectancy like their later albums. I’d say the same for the Obscured By Clouds soundtrack too - another hidden gem in their back-catalogue.

You can hear the beginnings of Dark Side Of The Moon on Meddle too, in the close-knit harmonies of David Gilmour and Rick Wright’s vocals. If they hadn’t recorded Dark Side, and instead gone on to record umpteen albums like Meddle, I’d be a very happy man; but I’d also be very sad at losing Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall from that parallel universe.

Right now, and for maybe the past year or so, Wish You Were Here has been my favourite Floyd album.  That doesn’t mean I still don’t enjoy Meddle though. I love its laid-back attitude, and the low-key approach to the song choices - as though they just recorded what seemed to fall out of them at the time. I also like the fact that they decided to fill one side of the record up with just one song - albeit a 23-minute song.

In terms of album covers, it might be one of their most overlooked, but I love it. On the outside cover, a super close-up photograph of a human ear, overlaid with a lighting effect projected onto ripples of water; on the inner gatefold, a warts and all black and white shot of the band - essentially just a photograph, but one of my favourites.

Hit: One Of These Days

Hidden Gem: A Pillow Of Winds

Rocks In The Attic #117: Peter Gabriel - ‘So’ (1986)

I really should listen to more Peter Gabriel. His voice is awesome, but for some reason even though I have a fair bit of early Genesis on vinyl - plus their entire back catalogue on my iPod - their brand of Englishness doesn’t connect with me as much as, say, Pink Floyd.

I saw a foreign pressing of this record the other week in the sales racks at Real Groovy. A Russian version, with all writing - bizarrely even Peter Gabriel’s name I think - in Russian. There wasn’t anything on the record in English, and nothing that would lead a non-Russian speaker that it was a record by Peter Gabriel - unless you recognised his photo on the cover (designed by Factory Records’ Peter Saville). I should have bought it simply for its curiosity value, but left it there. I’ll have to manage with my normal English version.

Sledgehammer is a song that reminds me of my youth, and of family holidays. My Dad loves the track, and I think most people loved it at the time because of its groundbreaking video. I haven’t seen that in a few years, but the song is a classic - a little bit funky, a little bit menacing, and a choice of arrangement and orchestration that on paper doesn’t sound too great, but completely fits when it blasts out of the speakers.

The album is co-produced (alongside Gabriel) by Daniel Lanois - better known for his work with Brian Eno amongst a whole raft of other notable production credits. It’s probably because of this that the album doesn’t sound as dated as it should. It’s slightly more experimental and cutting edge than most ‘rock’ albums of the mid-80s, and even though the record is peppered with synthesisers it doesn’t make the same kind of mistakes that cheeseballs like Paul McCartney were making with synths around the same time.

There’s a whole list of guest appearances on So - the most famous being the duet with Kate Bush, but also showing up are The Police’s Stewart Copeland, PP Arnold, Wayne Jackson from Stax Records’ Memphis Horns, Youssou N’dour, Simple Minds frontman Jim Kerr, and Larry Klein (better known as the producer and former husband of Joni Mitchell).

Hit: Sledgehammer

Hidden Gem: Big Time

Rocks In The Attic #96: Pink Floyd - ‘Animals’ (1977)

It doesn’t surprise me, but it always saddens me, that this album tends to get a bit brushed to the side. The latest round of Pink Floyd remastering has thrown up 3 relatively hefty box sets of Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall, and even though this album comes along in that run of albums, it hasn’t been treated with the same love and attention.

Unfortunately for this album, it doesn’t have a hit like Money or Wish You Were Here, or something throwaway like Another Brick In The Wall Part 2 to attract casual listeners to. In fact, casual listeners would also be wary of the album as it only has five tracks (and if you told them two of those tracks were under two minutes in length, they’d throw the album back at you and demand a better rate of songs per dollar.

On hearing the album, it really isn’t the most accessible of their 70s output so you can sort of understand why it isn’t as ingrained in popular culture as its neighbours. Aside from the orchestral suite that opens Atom Heart Mother, Animals really is the most progressive thing they put out in that decade. The songs really shy away from traditional verse and chorus structures, with only a sprinkling of passages repeated here and there. The other major difference between Animals and its predecessors is that Roger Waters is almost exclusively the lead vocalist throughout the album. The harmonic dual vocals between David Gilmour and Rick Wright that emerged on Meddle and was cemented on Dark Side took a back seat on Wish You Were Here, with Gilmour sharing duties with Waters. On Animals, Waters sings on each of the 5 tracks, and appears to be almost exclusively leading the band, paving the way for his complete direction on The Wall and The Final Cut.

Great album cover too - one of Storm Thorgerson’s best.

Hit: Pigs On The Wing 1

Hidden Gem: Sheep

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