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 #131: The Jam - ‘Snap!’ (1983)

Another greatest hits package purchased purely for its use in my DJ bag, this album takes me over the 100 hour mark on this blog. 100 hours of music - what a wonderful way to drown out the rest of life’s noises.

I’ve never been - and never will be - a fan of The Jam. I think this mainly stems from my dislike of Paul Weller, but as a band they’re more lyrical than musical (even though musically they’re fantastic) and that just doesn’t gel with me. With Weller’s scatter-gun lyrics, I always feel like I’m not in on the joke - he’ll cram a song with lyrics and I just get overwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, I regard myself as being relatively literary - I always have a book or two on the go at any one time, and I’m not talking about Dan Brown or Fifty Shades Of Grey here - but when it comes to music, my ears are tuned to the sounds coming out of the instruments, not the words coming out of the singer’s mouth.

I can’t deny that there are some fantastic songs on this record. Going Underground, Town Called Malice, That’s Entertainment and the Beatles-stealing Start! are probably their biggest hits, and they would put a smile on my face any day of the week.

Hit: Town Called Malice

Hidden Gem: English Rose

Rocks In The Attic #130: Guns N’ Roses - ‘G N’ R Lies’ (1988)

I’ve never been overly enamoured with this album. It’s yet another shocking record company cash-in, something to keep the tills ringing between the success of Appetite For Destruction and their follow-up studio albums. Half of the album is made up of previously released material - four songs from the pre-Appetite EP release Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide - together with four ‘new’ acoustic songs (one is an alternate version of a song from Appetite).

I’ve never been a huge fan of this band. Appetite is a good record, but it’s vastly overrated, and mostly subscribed to by girls who claim to be rock chicks but don’t actually listen to any other rock albums. The Use Your Illusion records have their moments but I have trouble seeing behind their pomposity.

Lies is an odd release, capturing the band live a year before their debut album was released, and then again in the year following the spectacular success of Appetite. The band pays homage to Aerosmith twice on the Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide tracks - namechecking Permanent Vacation in the first song Reckless Life, and then following this with a great cover of Mama Kin.

If you were a fan of Appetite when this was released, it would probably disappoint you, but then again wouldn’t everything else in Guns N’ Roses’ subsequent career?

Hit: Patience

Hidden Gem: Mama Kin (Live)

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 #127: Paul & Linda McCartney - ‘Ram’ (1971)

I’m with Moo on this one - mono is pretty pointless. It makes sense if the artist originally mixed it in mono, and intended its release in mono, but most of the time it’s a marketing ploy aimed at audiophiles.

Take this release for example - the limited edition release of McCartney’s second solo album in mono, complete with the most minimal sleeve I’ve ever seen (aside from the scrawl on the top left of the sleeve, the only mention of the album name and artist is on a small slip of paper inside the inner sleeve - it makes the packaging of The White Album look like Sgt. Pepper’s). There’s no reason for it to exist. Mono had been left behind by this point, and all releases were universally in stereo. It exists merely as a curiosity.

However, it’s by a Beatle, it’s a limited collection, and therefore it’s collectable - hence why I bought it. I have the stereo version, with its garish sleeve (possibly the reason this mono release is so minimalist?) and it’s always been a firm favourite. In fact, I swapped my CD copy of the album for the vinyl version back in the late 90s. My Huddersfield friend Dom Beresford had it on vinyl and wanted it on CD. I felt the opposite, so we did a fair trade. The record is forever marked by this transaction - a sticker on the label around the centre of the disc proudly declares it is the property of Kirklees Libraries & Arts.

There’s been a hell of a lot of love for this album of late. It is very good - about a million times better than his hotchpotch debut album; but as much as I love it, and regard it as my favourite McCartney album, it’s not as good as Band On The Run.  I don’t subscribe to the theory that his Wings material is more of a group offering - to me, they’re McCartney albums with a couple of hired hands to play some of the instruments so he didn’t have to play everything.

In terms of the quality of the songwriting here, he matches the strength of his output on Abbey Road. The melodies are strong enough to support an orchestral version of the album - something I’ve been listening to a lot recently. To me, Ram is as strong an album as Imagine - in fact they’d make a killer double album - but it’ll never be as loved by the public as Lennon’s album. There are no big hits, and definitely nothing close to the universality of Imagine’s titular track.

Hit: Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey

Hidden Gem: Ram On

Rocks In The Attic #126: The Edgar Winter Group - ‘They Only Come Out At Night’ (1972)

Ah, Edgar Winter, my favourite albino multi-instrumentalist.

For about three decades I’d say Frankenstein was the hit of this album. It was a US#1, it’s a truly fantastic song, and remains firmly as one of my favourite instrumentals. However, over the last ten or so years, Free Ride has really emerged as the standout track on this album. I’m not sure why, but it seems to encapsulate the 70s better than Frankenstein does. Frankenstein is just sick, to borrow the common parlance of today, but Free Ride is much more accessible. Ask a teenager today, and I reckon they’ll recognise Free Ride, but not Frankenstein.

I first heard Free Ride on the soundtrack to Richard Linklater’s Dazed And Confused. Since then, I’ve heard it on the soundtracks to countless films - it even popped up on one of the classic rock radio stations on a recent Grand Theft Auto video game. It straddles the fence between 70s pop silliness and edgy, ambiguous progressive rock, with that atmospheric break before the end of the song.

I can’t remember when I first heard Frankenstein though. I remember owning it on the soundtrack to one of the Wayne’s World films, but I’d heard it long before then. I remember having it on cassette at some point in my childhood - and I think I had presumed it was a TV or film theme. It could be really - it fits perfectly alongside those jazzy 70s TV themes by the likes of Mike Post and Pete Carpenter.

Hit: Free Ride

Hidden Gem: Alta Mira

Rocks In The Attic #125: Booker T. & The M.G.’s - ‘Green Onions’ (1962)

I have the 1966 Atlantic repressing of this album, in mono. The sleeve isn’t in great condition, but it’s holding together. I’d like to get my hands on the original 1962 Stax pressing - as this album, the band’s debut, was the very first album released on the Stax label (the three previous offerings of the label were distributed on the Atlantic label).

I love Stax. I recently bought the 7” box-set they brought out for Record Store Day this year, and even though that covers the kind of tracks that most people have never heard, that “lesser” material they were producing is still sweet to listen to 40 years later.

As far as instrumentals go, you really can’t beat Green Onions. It’s got a slightly menacing sound, which I think is why it still sounds fresh today. With that sort of tempo and bass line, it should sound poppy and dated, but they approach it without overcooking it. Booker T. Jones may ham it up on the organ when they play it live, but in the studio he remains composed and gives the track chance to breathe.

Hit: Green Onions

Hidden Gem: Behave Yourself

Rocks In The Attic #124: Alison Moyet - ‘Raindancing’ (1987)

Alison Moyet has never really been on my radar, but for some reason I have both of her first two albums on vinyl. I think her first one, Alf, is courtesy of my Dad’s collection. I must have been passed this, her second album, from somebody else’s vinyl clearout.

I saw Moyet the other night on a television chat show. She looked damn good. I always remember her as being a rather rotund lady, with big drapey clothes, standing like a nightclub bouncer, on Top Of The Pops. In fact, she looked like the female version of Ozzy Osbourne in his tubby post-Sabbath early years. She’s lost all that weight now, and is quite the fox.

Still, this album belongs in 1987, like her waistline.

Hit: Is This Love?

Hidden Gem: Blow Wind Blow

Rocks In The Attic #123: Aerosmith - ‘Permanent Vacation’ (1987)

Although essentially this is where the rot set in for Aerosmith - when they started to employ outsiders as songwriters - this album also marks their revival to the second age of their career. It’s a cracking album - a little too much of its time, so I don’t know how it will sound in 10 or 20 years - but it’s got a level of energy that was unheard of from the band up to this point.

This album also hints at their penchant for novelty songs - Dude (Looks Like A Lady) would soon be joined by the likes of Love In An Elevator and Aerosmith would forever be associated with the crazily titled rock song, and for a whole new generation of rock fans (and subsequent generations), this would be the only thing they would know the band for.

This album - or more truthfully, the promotion for this album - would also be the first time they would have great success with music videos, storming their way into the party held over at the house of the MTV generation (their parents must have been out of town). The videos that accompany this album are all very enjoyable (well, Dude and Rag Doll are - I still can’t take the video - or the song, for that matter - of Angel seriously), and at least the band look relatively young. Young enough not to look too much out of place hanging around with hot chicks half their age (compared to now where they’ll star in videos with hot chicks a quarter of their age - ugh).

Years after first hearing Hangman Jury - the band’s one and only real jaunt into roots music - on MTV Unplugged and loving it, I was lucky enough to see the band play it live in Dublin, with the intro played just by Tyler and Perry on acoustic guitar and harmonica, sat at the end of the ego-ramp, mere yards away from where I stood. Fantastic.

Hit: Dude (Looks Like A Lady)

Hidden Gem: Hangman Jury