*Your favourite record and what it means to you!

[Paulie Tandoori]

For music to be great, it should touch you, reach out to you, say something that makes sense of a feeling or an energy or an emotion in a way that is otherwise hard to explain. So imagine my unconfined joy when, at the tender age of 18 years, I found “The Revolution Starts At Closing Time” by Serious Drinking. Here was a band who sang about booze, footie, girls and TV, often all in the same song. From the punky drums that accompany “Spirit of 66”, a stirring rendition of the names of the England team of that very year with a chorus of “We’re gonna win the World Cup in Spain, We’re gonna win the World Cup again” (oh well) through to “Weird Son of an Angry Bastard” (pretty self-explanatory), this album takes in some ska-tinged punk-style sing-along shout-along cry-along tunes that still, some 20-odd years later, make me feel happier about the world generally in a way that not much else can.

You’ve got “Love on the Terraces”, a paean to a girl called Sharon who our joyous singer met when the match got lively and fighting broke out all around these Romeo and Juliet figures. There’s “Countdown to Bilko” about killing time before our favourite Sergeant appears on the box, followed, appropriately enough, by “Really Good Bloke” – sample lyric “He’s a really good bloke, he can share a joke” and then the “TV song” all about not paying your license fee (latent anarchist as well obviously).

And then, what has up to now been a good album playing well suddenly bodyswerves past two tackles, does a Cruyff-turn and becomes a great album. First, an amalgamation of an old Wire song “12XU” that merges into “Bobby Moore was Innocent” which features the great man himself imparting advice which I sadly failed to heed. As for the lyrics, well, what about “Tina worried sick at home, Bobby couldn’t find a phone, News at Ten and Tina heard, Bobby could be doing bird, Bobby Moore was innocent, Bobby Moore was innocent, Bobby Moore was innocent, OK”.

And then, my first ever encounter with a hidden track. Forget about poncy CD-style hidden tracks, this had no mention on the sleeve but there it nestled, a song called “Hangover”. The best song, bar none, on the subject. Our singer wrestles with the fact that he’s overdone the sauce, tries to convince himself that he’s “gonna stop drinking, I must stop drinking” before exploding into “16 pints of lager, 14 vodkas too, hardly bloody surprising, I forgot what I said to you, hangover this morning, it’s dark and it’s thick, I’ve got to give up drinking, I feel so bloody sick”. Class.

The second side of this fine piece of vinyl is more reflective with it’s themes of love lost, listening to the radio, summer arriving and general fun and frolics, and it ends with the mournful “Am I coming over to yours, are you coming over to mine?” Well, are you?

 

[loud 1]

jeff buckley-grace

i stumbled across mr buckley way back in 95,i remember flickin through tv channels and hearing this song (grace),and i was absolutly gob smacked,at the time i was in my first band and trying to find direction,and i think i found it all in that one song!,the way it builds and builds until the end when jeff stays holding one note for what seemed like forever.

funny thing is i didnt at the time know who sang it!,none of my freinds had ever heard the tune or jeff buckley,so after a while it just slipped into the back of my mind.
then a few years ago a female freind played me this album,and up popped that song,the day after i rushed into town and bought the album.....every song blew me away,and not a day goes past that i dont listen to it.

ive spread 'the word' of jeff buckley onto all of my freinds,and it seemed to have exactly the same effect it had on me all them years back.Everyone has at least one song that they can relate too,either happy or sad.

But now he's gone,like so many inspiering artists,jimi hendrix, kurt cobain,rod hullD ).

but the memory never goes.

 

[Nine Bob Note]

Linkin Park: In the End

I tried so hard,
And got so far,
But in the end,
It doesn't even matter.
I had to fall,
To lose it all,
But in the end,
It doesn't even matter.

Bootiful. Sums my worthless existence up perfectly.

 

[unclekellan]

Mythical Kings and Iguanas by Dory Previn

given that i almost never buy whole albums but largely think in terms of singles or single tracks this is quite hard

i guess album wise it would be
Mythical Kings and Iguanas by Dory Previn

I first heard it at an all night party when i was 13. I had been allowed to go on special dispensation of my parents. I had just co-founded liecester Youth Cnd and my co-organiser was a 19yr old student at the poly.
she was having a birthday party and i was allowed to go.
my parents were very liberal.
i guess most of the people there were in the 20s or 30s as the girl in question was a 1st year social work student and most of the other students were alreay emploed in departments and were doing PGSoc dips.
The mythical kings and inguanas album spoke clearly to my state of brain - tho janis ian album (the one with 'i learned the truth at 17' on it) comes a close second.
i imagine i freaked out quite a few people at the party, but no one was wierd to my face. and the girl whose flat it was, sister looked after me. and in the morning - this sister put on the dory previn album in question - and we all sang along to the misfortunes of the girl who 'hung herself from the second or third letter O'
the album, whilst deleted, has a charm all of its own - and those that know of it, let alone own it - are a little club all of their own.

dory previn only wrote one other album - reflections in a mud puddle ( i have that as well) and then she met someone, fell in love and announced that she was now so happy and felt good she couldn't write anymore. her work is/was melancholy and cycnical in matters of emotions.
both her albums are out of print.

 

[Cid]

Difficult question, but overall it would be Nirvana-Nevermind.

That was the first truly 'alternative' album that I bought, and it really changed my life in many ways - I stopped viewing the world as I had done before (the sort of naive, childish way) and realised that there was a hell of a lot more going on than I had ever realised.Unfortunately Cobain died soon after I bought the album (musicians ), but it really had kicked my arse into gear - and suddenly there was a whole new world of music open to me.

 

[Epico]

Not the easy choice in the world, but here goes.

Faithless

Reverence/Irreverence

"Wicked" "Massive" "Phat" were words I probably used when I hear the club mix of the now classic ‘Insomnia’ when it was played constantly on Radio One and in the smoke infested under-18 clubs my mates and I used to frequent. I trotted down to some massive megastore in Plymouth and exchanged my cash for this, the first, Faithless album.

I was a greasy fourteen-year-old when I brought this album. I was expecting 10 tracks (and 9 remixes) of ‘Bangin’ choons’ - so imagine my displeasure when I got the album home to find that this album was philosophical and earthy, with some very down tempo beats.

It took a long time for me to come around to even like this album. But four years on and Maxi Jazz’s poignant lyrics coupled with Rollo & Sister Bliss great musical skills and Dido’s amazing voice makes this album one of those that I just could not bear to be parted from.

Track four ‘If loving you is wrong’ found fame in a Boddinton’s advert (you know the one - the one with the male cow with udders) and I reckon it must rank as one of the best songs to have sex to and remains one of my lead reasons for wanting to have a regular girlfriend.

The lyrics on this album along with the lyrics on the other two Faithless albums in my opinion make Maxi Jazz one of the greatest

Salva Mea for me is the one that means the most. I have been known to put this track on when I’ve had a bad day and just lie back and let the euphoric beats and the grounded lyrics clense me of what ever the shit was that’s weighing me down. The single line that sums up days like this: ‘Just below my skin I’m screaming’.

As a bloke trying hard to maintain my macho image I have to say that I have cried myself to sleep listening to this album. It isn’t very often I freely admit to crying but this album acts a great emotional release.

I don’t know how to close this piece, so I’ll just say this: I love it.

 

[mains]

sorry

sorry I messed up here, please delete

 

[Ich bin ein Mod]

Mosely Shoals - Ocean Colour Scene

Came out just as i was getting into music properly (stop laughing at the back!) and provided the soundtrack to my summer. Had the tape player on constantly whilst playing day long games of football up to 20 a side right up till sunset and so even the orangey colour of the cover evokes memories for me. Everyone knows about "The Day We Caught The Train" and that riff from "The Riverboat Song"(used by TFI Friday) but the whole album ebbs and flows brilliantly which is shown most by the closing two tracks, "You've Got It Bad" and "Get Away". The first is a fastpaced rocking song full of intricate guitar work by (the most underrated guitarest in Britain) Steve Craddock whilst the latter comes in at eight minutes and gently floats along touching your senses. A truly great album that is even better live. Go see them while you still can.

Edited to add: bollocks to all that pretentious shite there are so many reasons why this record means so much to me that ill never be able to properly convey them in words. The "brilliance of my fleeting mind" can't cope with it.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour.

I had just moved to a new neighborhood. I'd left elementary school behind, was at a Friday night party with the local junior high socialites, who had taken a liking to my differentness. A new friend put on Magical Mystery Tour. It was psychedelic. I liked it, it had my name on it. I knew there was no going back. I necked with a good looking blonde girl in the rumpus room with a single red light on, while the other kids sat and watched.

 

[arfy]

THE CLASH - LONDON CALLING

Bit of a tough one this as there are so many albums which have had a huge affect on me at different stages of my life , it could have been the stone roses , the la's , massive attack , the pogues or a dozen others but the one that wins through is London Calling , I bought a second hand copy of this in a second hand shop when i was 14 years old , at the time i thought the best bands around were the smiths or the jesus and mary chain , at the time this was the limit of musical taste in my mates although some of us were just getting interested in electro and hip hop , i discovered the clash through one of my cousins who used to take me to the match and he had given me a tape with the first album and give'em enough rope on and i had been blown away with the energy and attitude that burned allthe way through both albums .
One day i was with a couple of my mates looking through the record section of a local second hand shop when i saw the cover , now at this time i didn't know the clash had done any more than what i'd already heard on that tape , I had to have it , How much mate ? 2 and half quid mate , after a brief begging session with my mates and parting with my ciggy money for the day i left the shop with a pretty battered copy of London Calling

The rest is history for me I had never heard anything before or since which has affected ne so profoundly as this double album , every track throws up something different , reggea , ska , jazz ,latin rhythms , rockabilly , rock and roll , soul etc etc

album has been with me ever since , getting me interested in politics , history , styles of music i'd never been open to before , its been the soundtrack to my life ever since , but to that year in particular , it was never off my record player during 1985

the year i discovered London Calling
the year i discovered teenage girls
the year i discovered drugs
the year everton pissed the league and stormed europe

the only one that has never caused me tears has been London Calling !

 

[Ich bin ein Mod]

Would have to couple "London Calling" with "Sandinista". Not the most popular of choices but listen to it in its entirety and marvel at how over five slabs of vinyl how the Clash combined all of the best music of the 20th century.

And laugh at the thought of seeing Joe Strummer rapping on "The Magnificent Seven". "Italian Mobster shoots a lobster" is quite possibly the best ryhme ever.

 

[Stinky Monkey]

Where You Been

This subject is one that instantly intrigued me and at the same time has been driving me slowly up the wall ever since I saw it. How cool would it be, I thought to myself, for me to put into words what my favourite album is and why it's so special to me? With any luck I'd be able to do it in a really clever way that made me look witty, articulate, knowledgeable and, above all, a bit cool. (You'll soon find out that this is far from what happens)

Then the problems started. I am, even at the best of times, a fickle little bastard. I am one of those people who have a bucketload of albums to choose from and who will complain about having nothing to listen to. I also get bored very easily. One week's flavour of the month (eh?) will get nothing but scornful looks the next week cos I'll have played it to death and got sick of it.
So how do I pick a favourite?
The first thing I didn't want to do was tread on other people's toes by doing an album that someone else has done as a favourite. It'd be like saying, "Yeah your reason for liking it's good, but wait til you get of load of why I like it." A little to big headed for the way I work.
I also didn't want it to be a sort of "this album changed my life" type thing because I don't think any one album has done that to me. I can relate an album to a time in my life (in much the same way as Rob Gorden can autobiographically sort his music collection in High Fidelity). However, I don't really think that any one album has picked me up, shaken me and put me down with my eyes suddenly opened to a new style of music/way of life.

So where does that leave us? More than likely it leaves the reader impatiently tapping their fingers waiting for me to get to the point and me to, finally, announce my favourite album.

The coveted prize of being my favourite album goes to:

Where You Been by Dinosaur Jr.

From the opening riffery of Out There to the soaring faux stadium rock type of the final track, I Ain't Saying, this album has it all. It even has Start Choppin on it. A song that really is too good to be true. I honestly don't believe there is a duff track on the album. Every track is different, yet has a re-assurringly familiar feel to it. 9 times out of 10 there are more musical ideas on one track than I have had in my entire life. All the riffs are clever without sounding overworked or over-complicated. Sickeningly, all the guitar solos not only work, but make most mere mortal guitar players curse their sausage fingers and lack of talent. There's no Yngwie Malmsteem, 192 notes per minute, fretboard wankery though. These are melodic solos that everyone wishes they wrote because they just sound right.
J Mascis has one of those smooth stoner type voices that sounds incredibly soothing. It's nice to hear his drawl contrasting the heavier songs and beautifully complimenting the slower, more mellow songs.
There doesn't seem to be any deep message behind the lyrics. At no point did I feel as if they were speaking directly to me. They, just like everything else, work to compliment the songs. It all fits together to make a good noise and that can't be a bad thing can it?
I am struggling to put into words how good I feel this album is. The fact that, 8 years after first hearing it, I'm regularly drawn back to it is a testament to it's safety blanket type status in my record collection.
It really is one of the few albums that, having discovered, I don't think I could live without.

(My apologies for the length of the post Mr Editor, sir )

 

[Nou Camp]

CHRIST THE ALBUM - CRASS

In 1982 Crass released a new LP, "Christ the Album". Forty songs on two records that came boxed in an all-black cover, embossed with the infamous Crass logo on the front. It came with a 30x58cm poster by anarchist artist and Crass member Gee (G Sus). The music was Crass's usual fair - noisy chain-saw distorted guitar, manic crashing drums and angry words spat out by Steve Ignorant and Eve Libertine. This band had truly been there from the beginning, seeing punk emerge as a threat and then nosedive into the shit that was to become "The Greatest Rock and Roll Swindle" of the Sex Pistols and the like.

But for me, it wasn't the actual music that changed the direction my life was taking - I already had most of the previous releases on Crass records. It was the 26-page booklet that came with it (written by Crass members) entitled "A Series of Shock Slogans and Mindless Token Tantrums". This booklet told the story of Wally Hope, the guy who was involved with setting up the original Stonehenge Free Festival. He'd already helped the famous Windsor Free Festival, where the authorities had decided they were not going to tolerate a few thousand hippies camping in the grounds of the Royal Family (their capital letters not mine!) and clamped down hard. The booklet goes on to describe the emergence of the Free Festival scene, Crass's part in it, and also the death of Wally Hope, drugged and murdered by the State. For me, it really opened my eyes to the possibility that hey, maybe not everything's okay with the world, maybe there is a secret State out there waging war on anyone who dares stand up and tries to change things.

Crass went on to inspire thousands of us (all over the globe) to form bands of our own, pushing a D-I-Y agenda and to live outside the straightjacket of traditional Rock 'n' Roll. Anyway, after first buying that record in 1982 I decided I wasn't ever gonna get a job - I hitched up to London a year later, got involved with squatting, bands, peace camps, anarchism and spent a glorious 16 years (uninterupted) on the dole. In 1998 I was finally forced to get a job and on my first day found out that my new foreman was the son of Crass guitarist Phil Free!

 

[Stibs]

Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables - the Dead Kennedys

In my youth, I was a punk/crusty type. Never missed a New Model Army gig (you know the sort.). When I moved to London from Liverpool, 3 years ago, I left most of my CDs at my mother-in-law's house and hadn't heard the Kennedys since.

FFfRV reminds me of my time working on fair grounds. We used to play the "crushed little kids" track over the tannoy.

The wall of sound guitars just lift you up and carry you along. The bass lines give me goose pimples.

In my late 20s I have found the need for quieter music. I listen to Radio 3, for God's sake and avoid Radio 2 because I fear that I might like it.

I will be 30 this month.

Recently, however, I acquired Xolox and downloaded "Holiday in Cambodia." It was like I was 17 again. I just rode along on that relentless bass.

I immediately went out and bought another copy of FFfRV. I play it over and over again. It has become a kind of aural Viagra.

Early mid-life crisis anyone?

 

[jaksragingsmile]

fav albumn????!!!

almost like the archtypical loaded question, everytime i have had someone ask me this, in person, it has usually been to sum up a measure of me , as a person, to define a perception of my character. i wonder if anyone else has ever felt that?

Anyway............without question, my favourite album, and i truely believe that it is, for many reasons, must be METALLICA'S ride the lightning.

perhaps it epitomises what i feel was in the air at the time. Maybe it was just spending too much time trying to remember the words, constantly making my ears bleed, blarreing it on my walkman, or to get my head around realising the particular kind of anger that it drew from me, but...man, not many experiences can match the first time i listened to this heavy, gothic and at times somber meld of antatgonistic tunes.

A friend introduced this to me in nineteen ninety, first playing the famous FADE TO BLACK to me, and at first, i just wondered "what is this doing to him?".
It did'nt seem to me that anyone going through any kind of turmoil in their life, especially at the mid teens, could reasonably contain the kind of AGGRESSION that the album bore, but at tyhe same time, there was a kind of beauty to the construction of the of the ebb and flo of the power cords, and a very unusual harmonic rising from the bass guitar (CLIFF BURTON, WHO DIED IN 1988).

IT SCARED ME.
It also intrigued me.
And it has since been a comfort, at times, to me.
Like the best fo friends, it never changed (as albums once made, are never unmade), except to grow in my estimations over the years.

a real light, in the glorious past of the now musically anerexic pop rock band, that once reached out to take every convrt on a journey for the land of the free.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

damn it to hell!iwas gonna do a ride the lightening "review"aswell,ah well looks like you got there first jack me old mate!
a few corrections though(cannot believe you made any mistakes when it came to the 'Tallica boys but there you go...)
it was '89 when i introduced em to you and cliff(R.I.P) died on september 26th 1987.

ai

 

[porno thieving gypsy]

Run DMC - Raising hell

 

[stupid kid]

From the muddy banks of the wishka - Nirvana

This album is everything to me. Not just for the music contained on it.
Back in the year 2000 I was a very a different person, I had been In trouble with the law, expelled from grammar school and I was deeply depressed. I'd just finished yr.10, Just had to go to work experience for two weeks. At a fucking solicitors. After 4 days, I was getting pretty fucked off, went home and turned the TV on to see 'Smells like teen spirit' by Nirvana. It wasn't the first time I'd heard them, and I didn't quite catch most of the lyrics but I just connected with the anger of the song in a way I'd not connected with any song before. I felt energised by it.

The next day, I was payed in full for 2 weeks expenses (£10). After signing 3000 pieces of paper with the name 'James Dodd' I finished work and went to spend my money. I found a copy of muddy banks for £10. As I listened to it at home, something inspired me to phone up James and Charles Dodd of blackheath and tell them, somewhat explictly that I wouldn't be on monday. It was a man called Kurt screaming at the top of his voice.

Whenever I felt that things were going wrong for me, I just listened to the album, because it still inspires me, and makes me feel... right. I Guess if you're not me, you can't understand just how this record makes me feel, or you may have an album that makes you feel a certain way when things aren't so good. well, this is mine.

edited for grammar

 

[dum dum]

Mori Kante , Yeki Yeki .Never fails to move me.

 

[2tone]

COIL - Love's Secret Domain

This record was never off my turntable (well cd player) when i first heard it 89/90, awesome record that manages to effect you on many different levels, the myths that surround the making of it rank amongst the strangest i've heard (the band were taking alot of LSD (hence the title) at the time). My all time favourite track on it is 'Dark River' I can think of nothing else that moves me in the way this track does, beautiful. Marc Almond pops up near the end with the track 'Titan Arch', an epic Lovecraftian hymn. There is also alot of humour within it, something Coil manage to do in their own distinctly sinister way.

 

[noelgetshorter]

Songs in the key of life Stevie Wonder 1976

The album that was the culmination in stevies unprecedented and still unsurpassed series of albums starting with music of my mind in 1972 through talking book, innervison and fullingness's first finale. Wonder was on a quest to relate all the thoughts in his mind into music, restricted by his sight music was his primary source of expression. And what expression it was. Every track carries an overwhelming message that is carried on an unfrogettable tune. Although I've never been religous Have A Talk With God seriously made me consider talking to something I don't believe in. Village ghetto land carries all stevies usual political message but delivered with a kind of regret and sadness rather than anger. In sir duke stevie unleahes a celebration of music itself which I deny anyone to listen to and not tap a foot. He shows his lyrical power in pastime paradise "They've been wasting most there days. In remembrance of ignorance oldest praise. In the hand of anyone else isn't she lovely would come across as sickly but with stevie its heartwarming. Stevies message was simple, love and he drives it home in such a joyous way that you cannot listen to the album without feeling lifted. Stevie said in his intro to the album "if I were a pyramid give me the key in which I am to sing, and if it is a key that you too feel, may you join and sing with me" Well I for one am certainly singing with you.

 

[Idris2002]

If you have a record that really means a lot to you it goes beyond "favourite" I think.

I always have a favourite record at one particular time - for a while it was Mercury Rev's All is Dream. Now it's Tchaikovsky's No. 1 Piano Concerto in B flat Minor

But the records that mean the most to me are the Waterboy's _This is the Sea_ and Billy Bragg's _Brewing up with Billy Bragg_


What makes a record, or any work of art really great is whether or not it transports you to another place, either in a place your life could have taken you but didn't, or in a place where you were once a long time ago.

I mean place both metaphorically and literally, btw.

 

[aurora green]

My favourite album of all time, the one that has had the most profound influence on me is Prodigys' 'Music for a Jilted Generation'
On my 30th birthday, in 1994, I made my first ever visit to a protest site. Claremont road E11.
Site of then then proposed M11 extention. I guess Id been watching the campaign on tv and I think it was a kind of a mixture of birthday panic combined with sustained curiosity that brought me there, and I found myself literally stepping into another world.
The terraced street of squatted houses was closed to traffic, barricaded at each end. The only cars remaining had been speared with scaffolding poles or filled with earth and sprouted with flowers, the trees were decorated and had tree houses, the houses painted, the place was alive with art and vision. Out of one houses sprouted a huge tower and within this structure, was a sound system.
And it was while I was taking all this in that I heard the Prodigy for the very first time. It blasted out of the tower... "what we're dealing with here is a total lack of respect of the law..."
It was the very first techno I'd ever heard. My mind really was glowing.
This music was the perfect accompanyment to the anarchic, utopian, visionary world that had intoxicated me.
The lyrics expressed rejection of authority and the prevailing order, and yet had answers.
They had the poison and the remedy...
In 'Break & Enter' a womans sings, "give the planet love" accompanied by the sound of smashing glass. This was direct action in musical form.
Nothing has ever moved me so much since, and thus started a long love affair with both the anti-road movement and techno.

To this day when I get up to go on an action, or come home from a political event, I will open all the windows in my council flat and blast it out top volume as a kind of battle cry, a message to everyone of the possibilties...'Fuck 'em and their laws..'

 

[John Quays]

Get it all out while you still can...

The Principle of Evil Made Flesh: Cradle of Filth (1994)

My initiation into black metal and the first album that just blew me away. I'd never been much into Metallica or Slayer, finding them a bit tinny and thrashy (well, they were thrash...) or just knowing too little about them, but the raw agression on this one was frightening. There were passages that chilled my blood, of utter warp-speed metal and super-dramatic blakk metaaall screaming. There were genuinely resourceful, blasphemous and romantic lyrics and a gorgeous booklet with quotations from Swinburne, Nietzche, (yeah well, I was just 18) and so forth, plus the most glorious hammy outro and occasional spoken-word bits. I saw them later that year at Rio's in Bradford, booked a B&B room and all that... I was utterly astonished. Five young men (only slightly older than me I now realise), backs turned to crowd. Then, the crashing opening of the title track and the musicians whirl round snarling... keyboardist in goat's head mask... all I knew was that I had, in some way, to BE them, or express what they were expressing, or something. 'Vempire' was a cool follow-up and 'Dusk...' terrific, but after that...

I wore corpsepaint to parties, looked down on Goths, who, it seemed to me, had just missed the point; bought the shirts and tried to explain politely to friends - to this day I've never met another fan.

Since that summer I've seen CoF all over the shop, but now they're going for the fat and dirty dollar. Hey, I'm pleased for them and all, but I don't think they'll ever become my vision of true British black metal again. Supreme Vamyric Evil...

Otherwise, I'm an indie fan, really you know...

 

[Lollybelle]

Blue, Joni Mitchell (1971)

Being a mere slip of a thing, I only heard of this album about 5 years ago through another of my favourites, Boys for Pele by Tori Amos (one of the reviews for that said "This is her Blue" so naturally, I had to see where the comparisons lay).

It means so much to me simply because of its sheer beauty, in the melodies of the songs themselves, the lyrics (she is the goddess of all lyricists, they get you in the gut and then take you to the sky), and her stunning soprano in the years before it started to sound a bit smoke-addled. I never really start to love an album until I know it as well as my hometown, I have to be able to sing every single word by heart before it starts to feel like a friend, and this is the holy grail amongst them, an emotional journey through love, loss, excitement, leaving home, the life of a child. The only way to listen to it, for me, is alone, in a room with a window, and everyone else out so I can sing as much as I want to - I've never wanted to share this one with anyone else. When I've been heartbroken, her songs about love feel as though she's singing about everything that I've lost.

Being unable to sing or play any of it online, my words won't describe the tracks anywhere close to Joni's own, so here's a few of the lyrics that I love and which still make me weep...

"Oh, I am a lonely painter, I live in a box of paints,
I'm frightened by the devil, and I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid,
You remember that time that you told me, you said "Love is touching souls", surely you touched mine cos,
Part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time,
I met a woman, she had a mouth like yours, she knew your life, she knew your devils and your deeds and she said,
"Go to him, stay with him if you can, but be prepared to bleed"
You are in my blood, you're my holy wine, you taste so bitter, and yet so sweet,
Oh I could drink a case of you, darling, and I would still be on my feet, oh I would still be on my feet"

 

[shoddysolutions]

KLF - Chill Out

Way back, way back in the warehouse days of glory ... we used to party ... 'til the break of dawn. Then, after the break of dawn, we used to 'Chill Out'. Chilling out was an essential part of the process, not the bland lifestyle option it is now. And not surprisingly, 'Chill Out', the pinnacle of the KLF's musical achievements, was top of its hit parade.

The beauty of 'Chill Out' is not simply that it is a pioneering live DJ mix album, nor that it manages to truly traverse musical barriers by combining Elvis, Acker Bilk, a few stray sheep and some guttural tribal chanting. Its true genius is in the way it successfully encapsulates that altered state familiar to anyone who returned to a mysterious house with a bunch of strangers, having necked lots of drugs, hugged everybody and waved their arms manically for hours on end with their eyes bulging like a company director's share porfolio.

'Chill Out' was the soundtrack to which a million reefers were smoked, several million friendships formed, and several tons of crap spoken as conversation gradually took the inevitable downward spiral until a half dozen human vegetables were left babbling inanely about 70s children's television for the twenty-third time that year . Even now I can faintly hear shrieks of laughter echoing round a council flat in Stoke-on-Trent at the mere mention of Noggin the Nog, as Elvis croons 'In the ghetto' over a slide guitar in the background.

In those days we lived as one family, there was no division between house or garage and the music, not the DJ, was the star. 'Chill Out' and its sheer simplicity are a reminder of happier and more innocent times, post-acid house hysteria but before the commercial takeover of clubland and the aggressive marketing of both club and drug culture to a passive generation of consumers.

'Chill Out' is not original music, but unlike the formulaic DJ compilations falling off the shelves in your local HMV store is so much better than the sum of its parts. If you only ever buy one 'mix' album, buy this one. 'Chill Out'. Over and out.

 

[pixie-iso]

right dudesthis isn't 500 words, but it is my favourite album...i know i know it sounds like a school essay.. force of habit i suppose!!

Well, my favourite album of all time is Marvin Gaye's what’s going on, I first heard some of it when Robert Elms did a show about Vietnam protest songs on greater London radio. One of the songs that caught my attention was inner city blues (makes you wanna holler) I agree with Robert elms that its possibly one of the best songs on the album. It was written when Marvin Gaye’s brother came back from Vietnam and instead of getting a hero's welcome; like most other Vietnam war veterans he found that he was looked down on and shunned from society. This album is a wonderful historical document, and the words still ring true, for me anyway!! I’m doing an artwork at the moment using the inner city blues song.
I love to put the whole album on and sing along to every single word all the way through, it's beautiful music as well as interesting lyrics, even now I’m finding little bits and details in the music that impress me. Surprisingly it’s this kind of music that got me into folk music as well, I started to become interested in music that had something to say, and something I agreed with. Bands like rage against the machine manage to combine music with politics, but in such an aggressive way that I think undermines their message. People like Alabama 3, Joan Baez and Woody Guthrie I have all got into partially because of this Marvin Gaye album. It’s also made me admire my uncle a bit more as well because he’s got it!!

 

[corporate whore]

Primal Scream - Screamadelica

"Today on this program you will hear gospel,
And rhythm and blues, and jazz"

As spoken by Jessie Jackson at the Watts Summer Festival in 1972, and as sampled by Primal Scream on 'Come Together', the mid point of my choice, Screamadelica.

If only the Reverend had known, he could have gone on to add "...and dub, and good time boogie woogie, and techno". But, as he did say: "all those are just labels, we know music is music"

This is a best-weekend-of-your-life album, fuelled by E - well, it was 1991....

Abandoning the Sonic Flower Groove of their previous outings, Primal Scream set controls for the heart of the party, deftly combining productions by men steeped in dance music (Weatherall) and the finest rock'n'roll (Jimmy Miller).

The motive was clear from the start - gospel-tinged opener 'Movin' on Up', a clarion call to shake off the shackles of the mid-80s and start partying: "I'm movin' on up now, yeah I'm out of the darkness, my light shines on".

The theme continued - 'Slip Inside This House' exorted everyone to 'sweep the shadows from your eyes, sweep the realm of dark aside', and, when you have, you're 'gonna dance to the music all night long, gettin' high gettin' heavy, gettin' gone' ('Don't Fight It Feel It').

The Scream were now 'Higher Than The Sun', and hit the listener with the killer double header of 'Come Together' and 'Loaded' before descending through the beautiful, Jimmy Miller-produced 'Damaged' ('I never felt so happy') and 'I'm Coming Down' ('I see the world through bloodshot eyes') and closing it off with Jah Wobble's bass in a reprise of Higher Than The Sun'

With the benefit of hindsight one could dismiss Screamadelica as the work of chancers - no other British band has moved so deftly with changing trends - but even if it is, what the hell? A glorious mix of the old and the new, a lost weekend, getting so high, you never wanted to come down.

Just what is it that you want to do?
We wanna be free
We wanna be free to do what we wanna do
And we wanna get loaded
And we wanna have a good time
That's what we're gonna do
No way baby lets go
We're gonna have a good time
We're gonna have a party

 

[charliecrocker]

Paul Weller days of speed

Quite a new album but already without doubt the best thing to be burned onto disk. Weller is a god and this proves it. Everybody go out now and buy this cd.If the hairs on the back of your neck do not stand up during english rose well I am afraid you are dead and should seek medical help forthwith.

Sorry I could not get the 500 word out but I am at work and should be doing something else.

 

[exosculate]

Just wanted to say - I am truly quite moved by some of the album reviews on this thread.

If music was taken away from me - I would no longer feel alive.