I've become a big believer in less is more. Especially when it comes to music. We only have so much time. And I'd rather use it to have genuine love & appreciation for just a few records than a cursory appreciation for a bunch. So now I'm just going to let these seven albums sink in over the next week and re-rank them.
My First Impression (sort of) rankings are as follows.
2. The Beths - Future Me Hates Me (Great Indie Punk)
3. Peggy Lee - Black Coffee (Great vocal jazz)
4. Children Collide - Theory Of Everything (I'm a sucker for hard-edged 90s AOR. A staple in my car the past week. Like a better (early career) Foo Fighters or Everclear.)
Good (Recommended)
5. Stephen Malkmus - Groove Denied ( I love synth punk and this is a great tribute/tip-of-the-hat to the late 70s synth punk genre, but it does seem to be a genre exercise)
6. Reba McEntire - My Kind Of Country ( Good and some GREAT singles but too often delves into coffeehouse/cheesy 80s adult contemporary pop
7. Steve Hillage - Rainbow Dome ( Decent but not memorable ambient stuff that seems more suited as a soundtrack. Definitely background music.)
Wonder how much this may change over the next week. Probably not that much actually as many of these I've already spinned 5+ times.
I never got into Uriah Heep back when I was super into 70s hard rock. I always expected them to be a whole lot heavier, and I think those expectations got in the way of what they truly are. Luckily, the recent hard rock thread encouraged me to revisit this album & I've really been enjoying it for what it is. While I can see how they were derided at the time as Deep Purple Lite - especially on their biggest hit "Easy Living" - there's a whole lot to love here. Their mix of proletarian Prog and Hard Rock is very catchy & likable for kicking back on the porch & just chilling while having a beer. "Circle of Hands" totally reminds me of a Led Zeppelin song. Recommended!
Grade: B
RIYL: Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson
I never got into Uriah Heep back when I was super into 70s hard rock. I always expected them to be a whole lot heavier, and I think those expectations got in the way of what they truly are. Luckily, the recent hard rock thread encouraged me to revisit this album & I've really been enjoying it for what it is. While I can see how they were derided at the time as Deep Purple Lite - especially on their biggest hit "Easy Living" - there's a whole lot to love here. Their mix of proletarian Prog and Hard Rock is very catchy & likable for kicking back on the porch & just chilling while having a beer. "Circle of Hands" totally reminds me of a Led Zeppelin song. Recommended!
Grade: B
RIYL: Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson
I'm glad you like it because this is one of those greatest seventies hardrock albums in my opinion and to me not a Deep Purple ripp-off. I've always been a great fan of songs like Easy Livin' but for me the trio Circle Of Hands, Rainbow Demon and All My Life are also real highlights of that era.
btw I like the way you used the term proletarian prog 🙏
It makes no sense. it's critically lauded. It has one of the best pop punk singles of all time in Teenage Kicks, an absolutely essential banger. Yet.... I find it rather dull and unmemorable. Borrowing elements from bands I love such as The Ramones, The Buzzcocks and The Sweet should endear them to me , but instead I'd rather just listed to more of THEM. It certainly isn't bad. Just a bit lackluster. I prefer 80s Ramones to this stuff (which is NOT an insult. 80s ramones is massively underappreciated.) Also I think their sophomore album Hypnotised is better.
Grade: C+
RIYL: The Ramones, The Sweet, The Buzzcocks
Must READ.... One of the best rock stories I've ever read.... And it's short! .....
Even in a town as steeped in folklore as Nashville, how Waylon Jennings came to record “Honky Tonk Heroes”—and the album of the same name—has to be one of the best tales in country music. The story goes that Jennings had promised Billy Joe Shaver, then an unknown songwriter from Texas, that’d he’d do a full album of Shaver’s songs (according to Shaver’s memoir, Honky Tonk Hero) or just “Willie The Wandering Gypsy And Me” (according to Jennings’ autobiography, Waylon). But everyone agrees that, after Jennings forgot about the promise and blew Shaver off, Shaver showed up at the studio one night and threatened to beat him up. “Waylon, you said you were going to do a whole album of my songs,” Shaver writes in Honky Tonk Hero. “I’ve got those songs, and you’re going to listen to them—or I’m going to kick your ass right here in front of God and everybody.”
It was a bold move for a variety of reasons, not the least of which were Jennings’ biker friends, who could have made short work of Shaver. Jennings took the Texan to the back room and said, “Hoss, you don’t do things like that,” Jennings writes in Waylon. “I’m going to listen to one song, and if ain’t no good, I’m telling you goodbye. We ain’t never going to talk again.”
Jennings says Shaver played “Old Five And Dimers (Like Me),” though Shaver says it was “Ain’t No God In Mexico.” Either way, Shaver kept playing songs. “By the time he ran out of breath, I wanted to record all of them,” Jennings writes.
That became Honky Tonk Heroes, a seminal album in the world of country music and one few people believed would succeed at the time. Shaver didn’t make it easy for Jennings, either. When they recorded the title track, Shaver complained about the changes Jennings made until the singer had enough: “Let me tell you something,” Jennings said to him, according to Waylon. “You are going to get your ass out of here and stop bugging me. I love your songs, but I’m starting not to like you worth a damn. Stand outside the studio, go for a walk, watch some television. I don’t care what you do. When I get through, you can come back in. If you don’t like it, I’ll change it and do it another way, but now get the hell on the other side of that door.”
More than 40 years later, when Honky Tonk Heroes is considered some of Jennings’ finest work and a high-water mark of the outlaw-country movement, it’s difficult to imagine how risky that album was. “Honky Tonk Heroes,” the title and leadoff track, captures its spirit. It builds slowly, starting off with Jennings’ voice and a guitar, wistfully looking back at a lifetime of bad decisions. A fiddle joins in, then a bass guitar, then everything stops for a moment after he sings, “There weren’t another other way to be / For lovable losers, no account boozers / And honky tonk heroes like me.” The guitar kicks back in as he says, “Hey hey,” and “Honky Tonk Heroes” is wistful no more: Jennings repeats that last verse again, this time defiant. The tinge of sadness in “There weren’t another other way to be” is now a celebratory statement of purpose.
The sadness comes back quickly, and more intensely, on “Old Five And Dimers (Like Me),” the next song on Honky Tonk Heroes. But for a few minutes at least, being a honky-tonk hero sounds heroic.
-From the AV Club
Grade: A+
Essential listening for anyone with even an inkling of an interest in country music. One of the best albums from the 70s.
One of the finest Nashville songwriters finds his own voice and composes a concept album for the ages. One of the finest albums of 70s country and the first of a string of albums which would make him one of the leaders of the outlaw country movement. This is where his legendary status as a renegade and artist truly begins.
A Masterpiece! Highly Recommended!
Grade: A+
mickilennialThe Most Trusted Name in NewsProfile Detroit
Ok. I'm on a serious 70s outlaw country kick. Seriously great genre that I never really got into before I guess because it was... you know... country. My loss. Because this stuff is rules. These albums will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about country. Just great 70s singer-songwriter/rock albums really not that far removed from Laurel Canyon/ California country that I'm really into.
This album is a notch below Honky Tonk Heroes but just a notch. Meaning it's fantastic.
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