Jack Rabid's 2005 Top 40 Best Albums: Old Recordings/Retrospectives [40-21]

I’m still counting down my top picks for the year 2005 in this space, with brief comments on each. Having done all the new recordings in the last three entries, here’s 40-21 for Old Recordings/Retrospectives!!! After all, why should old recordings have to compete with the new work of artists? Note, when this list is finished, that will be 100 Top CDs for 2005. For all the same old perennial moaning, 2005 was another brilliant year for music, same as every year, and don’t let some stupid aging critic or hipster-gone-jaded tell you different! (Again, there will be four categories: New Recordings, which I did already and you can still read, Old Recordings/Retrospectives, Singles, and Music DVDS. Enjoy!)

40. LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS – Bluesman (Fuel 2000/UNI)

Fuel 2000 combines their 2003 issue Freeform Patterns issue with their 2001 & the Blues Summit in one package, and it’s a decent deal. The former is a LP for the International Artists label recorded, interestingly enough, live in the studio February 1, 1968 in Texas with the young (more than half the age of the 55-year-old Houston legend Hopkins!) rhythm section from Austin’s now-renowned 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS. Whereas the latter is, as the title suggests, an improvised supergroup session in Hollywood, CA July 6, 1960. It’s more of the much lesser, aforementioned acoustic blues by the 48-year-old Hopkins and the equally revered trio of guitarists BIG JOE WILLIAMS (56) and BROWNIE MCGHEE (44) and harmonica player SONNY TERRY (48).

39. KILLING JOKE – Democracy (Cooking Vinyl)

[NOTE: Killing Joke’s six reissues are collectively #s 34-39; I list them reverse chronologically together, unranked amongst each other.]

With its marriage of the band’s original devastating attack and its mid-’80s “Eighties” and “Love Like Blood” more melodic, torrential-punk-disco standouts, this 1996 album is a total gale force. In particular, GEORDIE’s guitar has never sounded bigger or stronger, bursting like bombs on searing numbers like “Democracy” and the raw fury of the closing “Another Bloody Election”—the sentiments of which seemed prescient in 2000 and 2004. It’s uncanny, in fact, that their last two albums, Democracy and the 2003 Killing Joke, are as powerful as their early ones.

38. KILLING JOKE – Pandemonium (Cooking Vinyl)

1994’s well-titled, trance-inducing Pandemonium yields an LP full of repetitive highs like the forceful “Millennium” and “Jana,” even if its production doesn’t seem as unrestrained as customary for the band.

37. KILLING JOKE – ha! (Virgin)

A memorable 1982 North American summer tour in support of Revelations (I recall two mind-blowing sets at L.A.’s Whiskey I saw, straight from the airport) thankfully yielded this resounding 10-inch live EP—the first of a few documents to reveal KJ’s wicked live prowess—which included three little-known non-LP songs.

36. KILLING JOKE – Revelations (Virgin)

This 1982 third album sags under the weight of inconsistency after a roaring start with “The Hum” and “Empire Song” but I played those two songs over and over in 2005, so…

35. KILLING JOKE – what’s THIS for…! (Virgin)

Though they may not have matched that near-perfect manifesto of a debut LP in their nine subsequent LPs, Killing Joke have been extrapolating on its blueprint (with the exception of one failed, disowned exception, 1988’s Outside the Gate). Speakers-expanding, exploding guitars, fast, booming bass, thundering drums, and JAZ COLEMAN’s manic, extroverted, gritted-teeth vocals run just as roughshod throughout the more esoteric, danceable drone rock of 1981’s also-gutsy What’s THIS For…! (don’t miss “The Fall of Because” and “Follow the Leaders”).

34. KILLING JOKE – Killing Joke (Virgin)

Start with the 1980 self-titled debut (not to be confused with 2003’s second eponymous album, a successor of sorts). It’s as shockingly original, fiery, oddly, stubbornly danceable, hyper-intelligent (for its paranoia), and most of all apocalyptic, brutal, and crunching today as it was a quarter century ago—back when “War Dance,” “Change,” “The Wait,” and “Requiem” were spun in every cutting-edge dance club in America.

33. JOHNNY CASH – The Legend [box set] (Universal/Sony BMG)

Since Columbia doesn’t discount their box sets, it’s likely to cost a load of cash for this load of Cash, so it’s up to you whether you want it. But from “Cocaine Blues” to “The Wreck of the Old 97” to “Jackson” to “Big River,” this is five hours of distinct pleasure, too—if you don’t have those recordings already!

32. JOHNNY CASH – The Legend of [box set] (Universal/Sony BMG)

If you still need an overview of a giant on just one disc instead, Legend is 50 years well pinched into 21 songs. How few have made music of such heart, quality, and substance, in plainspoken sympathy for the common for so long! And having revisited his ‘50s/’60s gold ad nauseum, here are also 11 songs from his post-live-at-prisons second-heyday, proving that point.

31. JOHN LENNON – Working Class Hero—The Definitive [double CD] (Capitol/EMI)

The ‘definitive’ Lennon? With not a BEATLES recording in sight, out of 38? (Just a bad live version) That’s the height of absurdity—it’s not like those are on a different label. Yet for all this, the man was a leviathan; most of this is great; and you can’t really go on living your life without “Working Class Hero,” “Cold Turkey,” and “Gimme Some Truth.”

30. FIRE ENGINES – _ Codex Teenage Premonition_ (Domino)

This is raw demos and live tracks full of quirky, raw, unpredictable, repetitive, evanescent, brief, stripped down rockers that had me thinking they were the U.K. URINALS or MINUTEMEN back then. For a band so influential for 25 years, they’ve proved just too unique to really imitate. So you can only really hear this here. Wish I’d seen them then or now!

29. THE 101ERS – _ Elgin Avenue Breakdown_ (EMI/Astralwerks)

In one of those rare legends that is actually true, frontman JOE STRUMMER quit this otherwise rockin’ London quintet named for their street number after an unknown new opening band, THE SEX PISTOLS, blew them off the stage at the Nashville club on April 3, 1976—and blew his mind. The 101ers’ blend of hard R&B-ish pub rock and rockabilly immediately felt like last era’s newspaper, whereas the Pistols were the revolution that Strummer badly wanted but that hadn’t previously existed in the U.K. Right as that decision obviously was, it cast undue aspersion on an unusually good precursor band. Hear them here.

28. GUIDED BY VOICES – Propeller (Scat)

It’s hard to remember now that Dayton, OH’s GBV were once so unknown, they only made 500—vinyl—copies of their first five LPs and EP, 1986-1992, and went five years without playing live. Propeller, GBV’s true breakout (previous LPs were as obtuse as they were obscure), remains the hotfoot in their 15-proper-album career, their heaviest, wildest, punk-garage distillation in its unusually meaty, driving songs.

27. POINTED STICKS – Perfect Youth (Sudden Death Canada)

Vancouver’s Pointed Sticks were North America’s answer to THE UNDERTONES in their sound, pop-loving style, and lyrics about girls in a more sociopolitical British Columbia scene. Though their earlier singles were better, Perfect Youth still sports strong songwriting, with the snappy tunes and youthful angst that separated the good new wave bands from the mediocre bandwagon..

26. CHARLIE POOLE & THE NORTH CAROLINA RAMBLERS – You Ain’t Talking’ to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of country music box set (Columbia/Legacy/Sony)

Feverish North Carolinian banjoist/singer Poole (1892-1931) is generally regarded as the first star of country music, however brief his career and a major figure in bluegrass, folk, and blues history as well. (From 1925-1930, when he recorded in New York, these genres were more entwined.) His “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues” b/w “May I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight, Mister” 78 rpm single was the first blockbuster hit of its kind, selling 102,000 copies during the roaring ’20s (not bad for a good ol’ boy paid $75 for his first studio session up nort’), leading to a flurry of recording of other such hillbilly Prohibition-era gold. As a result, the world would soon discover the likes of JIMMIE RODGERS and THE CARTER FAMILY.

25. JOHNNY MADDOX & HIS DIXIE BOYS – Dixieland Blues (Crazy Otto/Universal)

This reissue of the 1950’s traditionalist instrumental Dixieland rave-ups of the white Dixieland star pianist (“with the colored fingers,” as genre pioneer W.C. HANDY once said of him), together with his eight-piece blowin’ band, is a real good time. From the starting, startling “Bluin’ the Blues” to the tuba-rumbling “Strut Miss Lizzy,” everything jumps out with verve, panache, and a high-kicking strut. This would have been good enough to play at a Storyville bordello during Prohibition, and it’s still good 45 years later.

24. DINOSAUR JR. – Bug (Merge)

[NOTE: Dinosaur Jr.’s six reissues are collectively #s 24-26; I list them reverse chronologically together, unranked amongst each other.]

This 1988 third LP is more of the same for these Massachusetts greats as their previous two LPs, only three times better produced. As a result, is not as vicious as the sophomore You’re Living All Over Me, but it’s much easier on the ears and no less exciting, with even tighter ensemble playing and a more audible vocal style.

23. DINOSAUR JR. – You’re Living all Over Me (Merge)

This thickly-produced, raw, raging, slightly-sunken-sounding 1987 masterstroke ignited the 1988-1993 U.K. shoegaze/dreampop scene, the finest musical movement since 1978-1983 early post-punk. MY BLOODY VALENTINE in particular obsessed over this dust bomb, with its searing distorto-guitars, grinding but quick basslines, and sinewy, half-buried vocals.

22. DINOSAUR JR. – Dinosaur Jr. (Merge)

The 1985 Homestead-issued self-titled debut may be the weakest of the three in terms of musicianship and sound, but leader J MASCIS had already hit on the singular signature formula and developed his songwriting chops. Two of its songs are among his highest-rising cream, the bone-shaking and disarming “Forget the Swan” and the groovy “Repulsion”—both enlivened by his barbed-wire lead guitar, hard-digging basslines by LOU BARLOW, and simple, strong drumming from MURPH. There’s a sense that the band’s just finding its footing, though.

21. Various Artists – Harvest Showdown; Early Classics on Harvest Records 1970-1973 (EMI U.K.)

ROY WOOD fans would like this 14-song look at THE MOVE, E.L.O., WIZZARD, and solo Wood. By alternating these four Wood incarnations, Harvest Showdown provides a wellspring of context on the totality of Wood’s (and the younger JEFF LYNNE’s) manic, infectious rock desires in the madcap early ‘70s.