Album of the Day 5/10/11

Every day, our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues all the way to #1. Tuesday’s album is #630:

Sonic’s Rendezvous Band – Sweet Nothing

Back in the 70s, while the southern midwest had bands like the fictitious Stillwater (the sadly spot-on stoners from the movie Almost Famous), Detroit had hard, intense, uncompromising bands like these guys. Tragically, the bandleader didn’t live to see this album or its successors, and during the band’s lifetime, Sonic’s Rendezvous band (named after its leader, Fred “Sonic” Smith of the MC5) released only one vinyl single. This 1998 collection was the first in a series of reissues that culminated in a six-cd box set for you completists who have to have every outtake with Smith messing around on the saxophone. From the aptly titled first track, Dangerous, it’s careening riff-rock with a surreal, bluesy menace: it’s hard to imagine a lot of garage-punks bands like Radio Birdman without them. There’s some resemblance to the Stooges, but this stuff is heavier, slower and more soul-oriented, especially with the influence of Detroit legend Scott Morgan. The one track that sort of made it into the public eye is City Slang, one of the catchiest rock songs ever written: it blows the Ramones to shreds. There’s also the swaying, potent Getting There Is Half the Fun, the stalking, eight-minute title track; the warped boogie Asteroid B-612; the hammering Song L; the cynical Love and Learn and a careening cover of the Stones’ Heart of Stone. Here’s a random torrent via digitalmeltdown.

Album of the Day 3/18/11

A global emergency that monopolizes media attention provides the cover to do horrible things – like Saudi Arabia’s invasion of Bahrain. It’s like shooting someone on the Fourth of July. We’re going to capitalize on it in a more benign way, by paying some long-overdue attention to stuff that we missed the first time around. In the meantime, as we do every day, our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues all the way to #1. Friday’s album is #683:

Death – For the Whole World to See

Signed to Arista Records in 1975 but dropped when they refused to change their name, this Detroit trio are remembered for being the first black punk band. That’s a bit of a stretch, but David, Bobby and Dennis Hackney took the raw power of the Stooges to new and unexpected places with this brief but intense proto-punk album, never officially released until 24 years later. Rock N Roll Victim foreshadows the Damned; Keep on Knocking is a delicious, shuffling rocker with some sweet Ron Asheton-style lead guitar from guitarist David Hackney, who sadly didn’t live to see this reissue see the light of day. You’re a Prisoner wouldn’t have been out of place on Fun House; Freaking Out, true to its title, is scorching, fast riff-metal. The best songs here are the most original ones; the psychedelic mini-site Let the World Turn and the ferocious, epic antiwar anthem Politicians in My Eyes. The rhythm section would continue later in the excellent roots reggae outfit Lambsbread. Recently reunited with a new guitarist, there’s supposedly more unreleased stuff out that’s due out at some point. Here’s a random torrent.

Album of the Day 2/24/11

Today we’ll be completely out of commission until early evening, at which point we’ll do our best to get back to business and open up the floodgates. In the meantime, as we do every day, our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues all the way to #1. Thursday’s album is #705:

The MC5 – Kick Out the Jams

Here’s one you know. We’re trying to steer clear of the stuff on the web’s two most popular “best albums” lists, but this one pretty much everybody agrees on. It works whether you consider this metal, proto-punk, garage rock or the avant garde (it’s a bit of all of them). The MC5’s 1968 debut kicks off with frontman Rob Tyner screaming “Motherfuckers!” and ends with the drony proto-noiserock epic Starship. In between we get a practically punk version of an old folk song and then the title track – an urgent message to self-indulgent hippie musicians to keep things tight – as well as the completely nonsensical but deliriously fun Rocket Reducer No. 62, the lumpen, proletarian Come Together and Borderline, the searing bluesmetal anthem Motor City Is Burning (which nicks a page from fellow Detroiter John Lee Hooker’s book) and I Want You Right Now, one of the first attempts to blend metal and funk. Guitarists Fred “Sonic” Smith and Wayne Kramer kick up a cataclysm while Dennis Thompson, one of the most exhilarating rock drummers ever, adds extra firepower to the river of molten sludge. Here’s a random torrent.

Album of the Day 10/5/10

Every day our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues all the way to #1. Tuesday’s album is #847:

The Electric Eels – The Eyeball of Hell

These guys invented no wave. In Cleveland. In 1972. Contemporaries of Rocket from the Tombs as well as the Raspberries (sounds absurd, but it’s true), in their brief three-year career they played three shows and released one album, reputedly because nobody in the band got along. Which makes sense once you hear it. This 1998 compilation contains pretty much everything from that along with almost another album’s worth of outtakes and rehearsal material. Frontman Dave E channels some seriously strung-out vibes over John Morton’s fingers-down-the-blackboard guitar, through a completely unhinged, screeching, feedback-enhanced, sometimes early 70s metal-flaked attack on songs with titles like Agitated, Cyclotron, You’re Full of Shit, Sewercide, and a hilarious spoof of free jazz, Jazz Is. They were also responsible for one of the alltime great punk covers (as a description, punk might be a little tame), a version of Dead Man’s Curve that beats Jan and Dean at the drag race of death. Not exactly easy listening, but as ugly, confrontational, uncompromising and in its own twisted way, disarmingly honest music, it has few equals. Here’s a random torrent.

Album of the Day 8/19/10

Every day, we count down the 1000 best albums of all time all the way to #1. Thursday’s album is #894:

John Cale – Sabotage

A moment in time captured unforgettably: nothing Cale ever did before or after(White Light White Heat included) resembles it. By 1979, when this careening live set was recorded at CBGB, Cale had fallen in with New York’s punk crowd, and the songs reflect it. It’s by far the wildest thing Cale ever recorded, a crazed, drug-fueled night, Mark Aaron’s screaming, unhinged noiserock guitar and George Scott’s loud, distorted, melodic bass flailing against Cale’s off-kilter keys. It’s got the menacing punk/metal anthems Mercenaries/Ready for War (an English counterpart to Warren Zevon), Evidence and Dr. Mudd, a loud, sloppy cover of the blues standard Walkin’ the Dog and in the midst of all the madness, Floor Kiss frontwoman Deerfrance taking a turn in front of the band and stealing the show with her comfortingly calm, tender high soprano on the folk-pop smash Only Time Will Tell. John Cale’s 1970s albums are a mixed bag: the tersely melodic Romantic beauty of Paris 1919; the quirky avant instrumentals of The Academy in Peril and the forgettable stoner folkie songwriting of Vintage Violence. A considerably later Cale live album, 1997’s Fragments of a Rainy Season has him playing a whole bunch of classics including The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Paris 1919, Dying on the Vine and Buffalo Ballet solo on piano along with perhaps the definitive version of his crazed cover of Heartbreak Hotel. Here’s a torrent.

Ron Asheton Lives On In Death

For fans of long-running New England roots reggae band Lambsbread, seeing three of the members onstage at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center Saturday night playing terse, period-perfect, occasionally savage mid-70s Detroit-style rock must have come as a shock – for those who didn’t know the backstory. It’s well-known now: three Detroit brothers start a soul-funk band, discover the MC5 and Stooges, Dennis Thompson rhythm and Ron Asheton guitar snarl, and a new band is born. They called themselves Death, before any heavy metal band could; signed to Columbia Records in 1975, they were unceremoniously dropped when Clive Davis couldn’t persuade them to change their name. The band themselves released a single, then eventually moved to Vermont where they would  turn in a direction about as far from proto-punk as you can get. Nine years after guitarist David Hackney died, Drag City finally released a seven-track cd, For the Whole World to See, last year. And the surviving members, bassist Bobby and drummer Dannis Hackney, enlisted their Lambsbread bandmate, guitarist Bobby Duncan (who as a child was given his first guitar by David). The result: a time trip back to a Detroit of the mind, the Stooges at the peak of their woozy, raw power. Forget for a minute that all three of these men are black – this was yet more enduring testament to how music transcends any racial or ethnic differences.

What was most revealing about this show was what a smart band these guys were – and remain. Introducing the ornately scurrying, utterly psychedelic Politicians in My Eyes (the A-side of their prized 1975 single), Bobby Hackney explained that he’d written it in protest of the Vietnam War, watching his friends and neighbors getting drafted left and right. When the band launched into the funereal four-chord progression on the song’s bridge, it was unaffectedly intense. The band’s riff-rock songs – notably the brief Rock N Roll Victim, which could have been early Joy Division, or a cut from the Stooges’ Kill City period – are very simple and catchy. Yet like the Stooges, they didn’t limit themselves to three-minute gems.

And the ghost of Ron Asheton was everywhere. David Hackney internalized Asheton’s bluesy wail and careening riffage as well any other guitarist ever did, and so does Duncan, if with considerably more focus and precision, often tossing off a brief, perfectly executed, barely two-bar lead at the end of a phrase. This version of the band makes every note count, often leaving a lot of space in between guitar fills. Duncan was playing without any effects, which combined with the park’s dodgy sonics to limit his sustain. As a result, a lot of the songs took on a skeletal feel that isn’t present on the album, or in the various live versions scattered around the web. This didn’t pose a problem during the slow, bluesy epic Let the World Turn, with its tricky 7/4 interlude, but it sapped the energy during the chromatically charged You’re a Prisoner and the band’s ridiculously catchy encore, possibly titled Blood on the Highway, to be released by Drag City sometimes this Fall. Like the great Detroit bands who preceded them, Death undoubtedly sound best the closer you are to them. Ron Asheton would approve.

Song of the Day 2/16/10

The best 666 songs of alltime countdown continues every day, all the way to #1. Tuesday’s song is #163:

The Dead Boys – Caught with the Meat in Your Mouth

This furious, filthy, barely two-minute Chuck Berry-inflected punk classic is actually a remake of lead guitarist Cheetah Chrome’s Never Gonna Kill Myself Again, by Chrome’s old (and current) band Rocket from the Tombs, who continue to reunite and tour every couple of years. The best of the Dead Boys versions is probably the one on Night of the Living Dead Boys; the studio track on Young Loud & Snotty features mixing engineer Bob Clearmountain playing bass, uncredited, and doing a creditable job.

Song of the Day 2/1/10

The best 666 songs of alltime countdown continues every day, all the way to #1. Monday’s song is #178:

Scott Morgan’s Powertrane – Rock n Roll, Rest in Peace

Morgan is a legend in Detroit, a pioneer dating back to the 70s whose inimitable style blends gritty soul vocals with raw, uncompromising Murder City rock. This bruising anthem, with its endlessly, ominously circling series of chords on the way out, is a highlight from Morgan’s all-star crew Powertrane, a band that once featured both Ron Asheton and Radio Birdman’s Deniz Tek.

Song of the Day 8/26/09

Every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1. Wednesday’s song is #336:

The Doctors of Madness – Noises of the Evening

Scorching, angsted, guitar-and-violin-fueled druggy art-rock epic from these glam-ish mid 70s art-rockers, a UK sensation but virtually unknown here. The long crescendo at the end is amazing. From the band’s second album, a self-titled double lp, part rehab concept album – pretty ahead of its time for 1978, huh? Frontman/lyricist Richard Strange would subsequently pursue a solo career as a cult artist in the 80s.

Song of the Day 7/27/09

Every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1. Monday’s song is #366:

The Velvet Underground – Run Run Run

A NYC classic, best song on the Velvets’ first album. This careening, hypnotic sprint through a junkie 1965 East Village of the mind harkens back to when there was no telling what a person could find at Union Square, no Whole Foods, no Trader Joe’s and no undercover cops either.