Bee Gees – Odessa (Polydor)
Having gotten a turntable for X-mas, I’m rediscovering a vinyl collection that has gone unplayed for several years (the deluge of new CDs keeps a critic busy anyway). This 1969 double-LP gatefold sleeve in original all-felt cover is a pop masterpiece, their finest LP as a whole, if not actually the best place to start if you want to hear what the brothers were doing back when they were the poor man’s Beatles (see 1967’s Bee Gees 1st for that). But I wouldn’t change a note of this brilliantly crafted, ambitious work.
The Beatles – The Beatles Again (Capitol)
Capitol released this grab bag of non-LP songs as an album here in the late 1960s to once again capitalize on the insane appetite for Beatles LPs then. (I’m surprised they didn’t try to do the “butcher” cover again!) If not a real album by their British LPs catalog, it’s always been a strange favorite of mine, as truly underrated songs such as GEORGE HARRISON’s “Old Brown Shoe” sit alongside JOHN LENNON’s pulverizing psych-pop killer “Rain” and PAUL MCCARTNEY’s epic power in “Hey Jude.” It would all be over soon, but this was one band not going quietly.
Nick Drake – Pink Moon (Rykodisc)
As Brit folk of the early ‘70s goes, it doesn’t get more mesmerizing than the tragic Drake.
Red Lorry Yellow Lorry – Talk About the Weather (Cherry Red U.K.)
This York mid-80s foursome used scary guitars, snarly, doomy vocals, and punishing drum machine beats to whip a lashing post-punk stew I’ve never forgotten. Sounds particularly good heard on vinyl again!
Simon & Garfunkel – Bookends (Columbia)
Oh man, it amazes me that everyone knows this singing duo, but so few know this pinnacle LP they made, one that they admit was one they were enormously proud of when they finished it (they knew it was beyond the realm of mere pop music). A watershed record even by the ungodly great standards of the later 1960s, it evokes an era every bit as much as some of these songs spoke for the action in the movie The Graduate.
Louis Armstrong – The Essential (double CD) (Sony)
Taking a break from vinyl, New Orleans has been much on my mind this holiday season, as what happened to it of late has broken my heart for a city I hold in the highest esteem as the cradle of all the music I hold dear, from jazz, to the blues, to original R&B / rock ‘n’ roll. And who is more New Orleans than Louis Armstrong? Just listen to “St. James Infirmary” a few hundred times, and you’ll have it all right there, all that is good and noble and heart-tearing about that true melting pot of a culture. This double-CD is as good a non-box-set collection as any of his I’ve heard.
Fats Domino –
Millions Sellers By (Imperial)
See above comment about New Orleans. I bought a reissue of this original ‘50s LP in Rhino Records in Westwood, near Hollywood in 1983 (advised by the great PHAST PHREDDIE, rock historian par excellence), and have listened to the likes of “Three Nights a Week” 1000 times since. You can get this on a CD with another great original ‘50s LP, Rockin’ and a Rollin’ (and the great “Ain’t That a Shame”) nowadays, too! Fats Domino should get a nomination for greatest living musical American. He’s up there with JOHNNY CASH and RAY CHARLES for all-time favorites, and now that they are both gone… We ought to give Fats his own TV special.
Buffalo Springfield – Again (Atco)
One of those incredible 1967 albums I revisit every year and get something entirely new out of. Just for “Broken Arrow” and “Expecting to Fly” alone, you have a few of the songs that have moved me more than any others in the world. Unspeakable bittersweet beauty. But it also has “Mr. Soul” and, just to get away from the great NEIL YOUNG for a second, “Hung Upside Down.” Brilliant.
King Oliver and his Orchestra – Jazz Tribute #6, 1929-1930 (RCA)
Among several others, this was Armstrong’s primary influence, and for his brief life, was clearly his equal as a player at least.
Neil Halstead – Sleeping on Roads (4AD)
The only CD from the ‘00s on this list (OK, I get a little in the mood for the old at winter solstice), it may have made it here because this solo LP by the MOJAVE 3 leader seems so early ‘70s gorgeous to me. There’s a lot of people out there influenced by BOB DYLAN, BYRDS, GRAM PARSONS, etc., but this guy completely soaks up the timeless hush of some of the above’s best work too!
