Borrowing heavily from Marc Bolan's glam rock and the future shock of A Clockwork Orange, David Bowie reached back to the heavy rock of The Man Who Sold the World for The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Constructed as a loose concept album about an androgynous alien rock star named Ziggy Stardust, the story falls apart ...
There ought to be a warning label on this double-CD set, and not for parents (though with the Doors you never know) but for fans -- thanks to the "40th Anniversary Remixes," almost every song here is so different from the established versions of the Doors' classic repertory, that it is certain to annoy the hell out of longtime fans and will give ...
A well-chosen, 19-track compilation balancing the radio hits with the longer, more complex song poems. It's a good sampler (and contains enough of the good tracks from Strange Days that we didn't bother to list that album separately), but this is one group for whom you need to hear the whole story. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Rushed out in 1970 as a way to bide time as the Who toiled away on their follow-up to Tommy, Live at Leeds wasn't intended to be the definitive Who live album, and many collectors maintain that the band had better shows available on bootlegs. But those shows weren't easily available whereas Live at Leeds was, and even if this show may not have ...
Falling halfway between musical primitivism and art rock ambition, Roxy Music's eponymous debut remains a startling redefinition of rock's boundaries. Simultaneously embracing kitschy glamour and avant-pop, Roxy Music shimmers with seductive style and pulsates with disturbing synthetic textures. Although no musician demonstrates much technical ...
For those under 17 or for those whose knowledge or impressions of the Doors were formed by AM radio play of the band's singles, early hits compilations (especially 13), or the shorter and poppier songs from the band's albums, this four-CD set is probably not something they want to own, or a place that they should go -- not yet, anyway. The Doors ...
Rushed out in 1970 as a way to bide time as the Who toiled away on their sequel to Tommy, Live at Leeds wasn't intended to be the definitive Who live album and many collectors maintain that the band had better shows only available on bootlegs. But those shows weren't easily available whereas Live at Leeds was, and even if this show may not have ...
After the freakish hard rock of The Man Who Sold the World, David Bowie returned to singer/songwriter territory on Hunky Dory. Not only did the album boast more folky songs ("Song for Bob Dylan," "The Bewlay Brothers"), but he again flirted with Anthony Newley-esque dancehall music ("Kooks," "Fill Your Heart"), seemingly leaving heavy metal behind ...
Pin Ups fits into David Bowie's output roughly where Moondog Matinee (which, strangely enough, appeared the very same month) did into the Band's output, which is to say that it didn't seem to fit in at all. Just as a lot of fans of Levon Helm et al. couldn't figure where a bunch of rock & roll and R&B covers fit alongside their output of original ...
Rather than try to capture their legendary on-stage energy in a studio, MC5 opted to record their first album during a live concert at their home base, Detroit's Grande Ballroom, and while some folks who were there have quibbled that Kick Out the Jams isn't the most accurate representation of the band's sound, it's certainly the best of the band's ...
Many of the songs on Strange Days had been written around the same time as the ones that appeared on The Doors, and with hindsight one has the sense that the best of the batch had already been cherry picked for the debut album. For that reason, the band's second effort isn't as consistently stunning as their debut, though overall it's a very ...
Taking the detached plastic soul of Young Americans to an elegant, robotic extreme, Station to Station is a transitional album that creates its own distinctive style. Abandoning any pretense of being a soulman, yet keeping rhythmic elements of soul, David Bowie positions himself as a cold, clinical crooner and explores a variety of styles. ...
The Faces' third album, A Nod Is as Good as a Wink...to a Blind Horse, finally gave the group their long-awaited hit single in "Stay with Me," helping send the album into the Billboard Top Ten, which is certainly a testament to both the song and the album, but it's hard to separate its success from that of Rod Stewart's sudden solo stardom. In the ...
The Doors' 1967 albums had raised expectations so high that their third effort was greeted as a major disappointment. With a few exceptions, the material was much mellower, and while this yielded some fine melodic ballad rock in "Love Street," "Wintertime Love," "Summer's Almost Gone," and "Yes, the River Knows," there was no denying that the ...
In Concert is the successor CD set to the individual releases of Absolutely Live (which remains in print as a single CD), Alive, She Cried, and Live at the Hollywood Bowl -- as none of them presented more than a single angle or two of the group's sound and each confined itself to only a portion of the group's repertoire, the three-in-one release ...
Enough works on Mott the Hoople's eponymous debut album, and enough is so imaginatively freewheeling, that it's easier to think of the record as a bit more successful than it actually is. After all, their combination of Stonesy swagger, Kinks-ian crunch, and Dylanesque cynicism is one of the great blueprints for hard rock, and its potential is ...
On Roxy Music's debut, the tensions between Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry propelled their music to great, unexpected heights, and for most of the group's second album, For Your Pleasure, the band equals, if not surpasses, those expectations. However, there are a handful of moments where those tensions become unbearable, as when Eno wants to move ...
Trout Mask Replica is Captain Beefheart's masterpiece, a fascinating, stunningly imaginative work that still sounds like little else in the rock & roll canon. Given total creative control by producer and friend Frank Zappa, Beefheart and his Magic Band rehearsed the material for this 28-song double album for over a year, wedding minimalistic R&B, ...
On The Idiot, Iggy Pop looked deep inside himself, trying to figure out how his life and his art had gone wrong in the past. But on Lust for Life, released less than a year later, Iggy decided it was time to kick up his heels, as he traded in the mid-tempo introspection of his first album and began rocking hard again. Musically, Lust for Life is a ...
One of the most ambitious debuts in rock history, Freak Out! was a seminal concept album that somehow foreshadowed both art rock and punk at the same time. Its four LP sides deconstruct rock conventions right and left, eventually pushing into territory inspired by avant-garde classical composers. Yet the album is sequenced in an accessibly logical ...
Given that the T. Rex/Marc Bolan catalog is cluttered with collections, all recycling much of the same material, it's easy to be suspicious of another hits compilation, such as Hip-0's 2002 release 20th Century Boy: The Ultimate Collection, especially if it's billed as an "ultimate" retrospective. Against all odds, this 23-track disc really is ...
A tremendous debut album, and indeed one of the best first-time outings in rock history, introducing the band's fusion of rock, blues, classical, jazz, and poetry with a knockout punch. The lean, spidery guitar and organ riffs interweave with a hypnotic menace, providing a seductive backdrop for Jim Morrison's captivating vocals and probing prose. ...
Many of the songs on Strange Days had been written around the same time as the ones that appeared on The Doors, and with hindsight one has the sense that the best of the batch had already been cherry picked for the debut album. For that reason, the band's second effort isn't as consistently stunning as their debut, though overall it's a very ...
Rhino's 2003 expanded edition of Television's seminal debut, Marquee Moon, doesn't add much on the surface -- in addition to the de rigueur liner notes and loving packaging, all standard fare on serious reissues here in the early days of the 21st century, there are a mere five bonus tracks. Some might complain, but dealing with scarcity is part ...
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