15–11/100 — Top 25 Albums of All Time — Part 3
Freaks, Punks, and Jazz cats. Outsiders who peered in and changed the status quo. We’re almost at the top ten and any of these could fight for a position there depending on the day.
15/100 — Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention — Uncle Meat (1969)
I’ve written about Frank Zappa three times on this list already, so you know the drill; a corruption of pop music with delightfully avant-garde musical ideas and absurd lyrics which poke at the status quo. But to me, Uncle Meat is the big one, the best expression of the intersection of Zappa as musician, composer, band leader, humourist, and satirist. Like the album cover, it is a collage of Frank Zappa, Artist.
From the opening moments of “Uncle Meat: Main Title Theme” it’s like we’re on a bizarre family holiday as marching drums, tinkling vibraphones, and droning keyboards run around the main theme. Then the individual parts seem to disintegrate into a slightly demented harpsichord variation and then just tape noise. BUCKLE UP KIDS! WE’RE GOING FOR A RIDE!
Suzy Creamcheese (one of my favourite repeating characters) reappears for the first of a number of short appearances — a few sarcastic seconds here and there. The first of these occurs right before the very loose jam of “Nine Types of Industrial Pollution” (clearly recorded live on the floor) jumps in showing off Zappa’s melodic improvisation chops on guitar as well as the percussion section of the band.
“Zolar Czakl” is maybe the most demented variation on the main them in that it mostly mirrors the rhythmic form and phrasing rather than any recognizable melodic snippets before the a new theme is introduced with “Dog Breath, In The Year of the Plague.” This is the first appearance of real lyrics and references “fuzzy dice” and “stealing hubcaps.” There’s moments where an operatic female voice mirrors Flo and Eddie’s silly melodies adding a further surreal aspect to it. There are also pitch shifted versions of the vocal line. Then it devolves into something that almost resembles moments in Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. “Dog Breath” returns later in this collage of an album with a Variations version. I love this silly melody.
“The Legend of the Golden Arches” is a bizarre 7/8 melodic jam which again devolves, this time into a weird movie soundtrack almost like a transitional moment in West Side Story.
I can’t go through all 31 tracks one by one so let’s hit some high points before we get to the final suite:
- Jamming to “Louie Louie” live in the Royal Albert Hall on their massive hall organ.
- “Sleeping in a Jar” and its twisted criticism of suburban inanity.
- More variations on the Uncle Meat theme
- The bizarre love song to syrup: “Electric Aunt Jemima” with its twisted doo-wop melody
- A very hilarious derpy version of “God Bless America”
- The complicated time signature jam of “A Pound for a Brown On the Bus”
- The charming story of how Ian Underwood (who would become one of Zappa’s most influential collaborators) got into the band (“What can you do that’s fantastic?”) and 5/4 jam that was his audition on “Ian Underwood Whips It Out”
- The first appearance of “Mr. Green Genes” which became one of my favourite jams on Hot Rats.
- Zappa recording one of his band members complaining about not making enough money and Zappa basically telling him to screw off and learn better money management.
- “The Air” in all it’s sappy doo-wop beauty. It sounds like a love song but it’s just complaining about how someone won’t shut up.
- “Crusin’ for Burgers” — classic Zappa making fun of kids who think they’re being rebellious but still need their daddy’s car to do it properly.
Ok. Now we can talk about “King Kong,” a six-part suite in 3/8 which riffs on one theme in different variations for about 18 minutes. The theme itself flows wonderfully despite its slightly angular structure. It starts out simply enough, a Rhodes solo here, a free-jazz influenced saxophone solo there, a giant gong hit now and then, but it increases in insanity and complexity as it goes incorporating more modular effects and more instruments vying for focus at once. If it wasn’t based on such a silly melody, it could almost be a Miles Davis jam a la Bitches Brew. It’s a wonderful example of how Zappa can craft a silly music, twist it, play with it, and elevate it to the point that it becomes something that deserves to be taken seriously (but never tooo seriously) as art of importance.
Maybe I’ve undersold Uncle Meat here. I hope not. It’s an incredible feat to craft a collage in any medium that results in something greater than the whole of its own parts. I believe Zappa accomplished that best here. The band’s chops alone are worth digging into this record for, but there’s so much more. This really is a window into what Zappa thought music could do, and what it was for. It’s as captivating and exciting as anything else he ever made.
Favourite Tracks: Anything “Dog Breath”, anything “King Kong”, “Mr. Green Genes”
Least Favourite Track: Uhhh… “Our Bizarre Relationship” is just spoken word silliness so I guess that? It all flows together so much it’s hard to pick.
PS: Apparently this is a soundtrack for a film? But that doesn’t matter.
PPS: The movie was never completed…there’s a making of documentary tho…
14 — The Velvet Underground — The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)
Please Kill Me Online — The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s seminal book sets the stage for all of punk rock by giving the entire prologue to the influence of the Velvet Underground. Brian Eno (generally considered the inventor of ambient music, and a founding member of Roxy Music) is quoted as having said, “I was talking to Lou Reed the other day, and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years. Yet, that was an enormously important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!”
In other words, there’s been a lot of ink spilled over The Velvet Underground and Nico. So, I don’t want to spend too much time on the mythos —you know, Andy Warhol’s involvement, and how some idiot/genius said “Lou can’t sing, here’s a Teutonic supermodel chanteuse to sing for you instead” (not a direct quote), etc. Just those two examples already show how this album is definitely a collision of a number of artistic forces with disparate goals. It’s interesting to me how this tension results in the tracks feeling like they fall into three different levels of production, and yet, remarkably, they still sound like they form a complete album. Basically every track with Nico has real pop sheen on it, but then there are tracks like “I’m Waiting for the Man” which feel well produced but a little rawer. Finally the production falls all the way down to the almost lo-fi rock and roll bombast of songs like “Run Run Run.”
“Sunday Morning” and “Femme Fatale” might lead you to believe that this is a cute little art-pop album even with Lou’s full-on apocalyptic drug-scoring boogie “I’m Waiting for the Man” appearing between them to interrupt their blissed out stoner twinkle. But the birth of punk rock is waiting just around the corner. Speaking of “I’m Waiting for the Man,” it’s the song that converted me into a VU fan. The boogie, the blown out guitars and pounding pianos, the Dylanesque delivery, the brutal honesty intertwined with a sort of social commentary:
Hey, white boy, what you doin’ uptown?
Hey, white boy, you chasin’ our women around?
Oh pardon me sir, it’s the furthest from my mind
I’m just lookin’ for a dear, dear friend of mine
It all combines into something that feels revolutionary by 1967 standards. For context, the Rolling Stones were a year away from the start of their best period which started with 1968’s Beggar’s Banquet, and the Beatles had just released two of their best albums (Revolver and Sgt Pepper’s) and nothing on either of those rocks as hard (or feels as counter-culture) as this. And we’re only on track two!
“Venus In Furs” still kind of makes me uncomfortable. It’s dominated by John Cale’s droning electric violin and Moe Tucker’s thunderous heartbeat drums. It’s full of themes of BDSM and other alternative behaviours: “shiny leather in the dark” / “taste the whip! now bleed for me!” The guitar is ever so slightly out of tune adding an edge to the sound while Lou gives one of his best vocal performances, intoning rather than singing. However when the chorus finally breaks in for its brief duration there is a release, “I am tired, I am weary, I could sleep for a thousand years.”
Picking up the pace, the blues rock boogie of “Run Run Run” predates similar explorations by the Beatles on the White Album and Let It Be by a year or two. And those insane post-chorus guitar solos throughout are just bananas! — no cover art pun intended — they reach Beefheart levels of rhythmic and melodic complexity for 30 seconds at a time.
“All Tomorrow’s Parties” — a Nico helmed number — is a dirge about a young girl who can’t fit in because she’s poor. It showcases her thunderous voice and forecasts that just because she was supposed to be the pop element of the band doesn’t mean that’s what she’ll end up being known for. Some of her subsequent solo albums are more out there than anything Lou and John ever did (see Desertshore). The song also explores drones (this time in the form of a repetitively staccato piano part) and the guitar part is really atonal, adding to the heavy atmosphere of the piece.
Side two kicks off with the craziest and most rebellious piece of the whole album: “Heroin.” Blending violin drones, pounding toms which imitate a heart beating more quickly in anticipation of shooting up before relaxing into a drug-fueled ecstasy, and another of Reed’s best vocal performances as he alternates his delivery between dispassionate and manic turn the song into a 7 minute trip of its own. One of the most powerful moments (possibly in all of rock music) is actually when the drums cut out entirely as if the addict is actually dying from an overdose while insane guitar squeals swirl around like the electricity of a disconnected brain before a weak heartbeat begins to return. Oh and the lyrics really emphasize the insanity and pain/pleasure cycle of addiction:
Heroin, be the death of me
Heroin, it’s my wife and it’s my life, haha
Because a mainline into my vein
Leads to a center in my head
And then I’m better off than dead
Because when the smack begins to flow
I really don’t care anymore
“There She Goes Again” feels more upbeat by contrast (no drones and a traditional 60’s pop structure) but is thematically nearly as bleak as it talks about a prostitute and the physical violence she accepts as a daily risk in her line of work. Similarly, as Nico sings a nursery-rhyme type tune on “I’ll Be Your Mirror” the sweetness is undermined slightly by the lyrics about codependent love.
Finally “European Son” closes the album with a return to the cataclysmic boogie that would dominate their next album. There’s a chugging bass line, musique-concrete sound effects, multiple overlayed guitar solos — each driving as hard and loud as possible, and Moe’s drums are absolutely thunderous and cacophonous. It’s a 7 minute jam of the style that would come to typify their live performances and would extend sometimes up to 30 minutes in length, exhausting both the performers and the audience alike. It’s the kind of thing that made the Stooges want to have John Cale produce their first album. It feels more like a nuclear explosion than most metal bands have ever accomplished, and it makes the thunderous crescendo I praised so highly on Sgt Pepper’s sound like a C-major chord by comparison. It is the complete opposite of “Sunday Morning” and yet, it feels like we’ve earned this, the journey makes sense.
So ya. It’s no surprise that those who wanted more than what Beatlemania could offer, and those who were tired of moral majority latched onto The Velvet Underground and Nico as a signpost to what could come next. There may be very little in the way of four on the floor “Hey Ho, Let’s Go” style punk here, but this record opened the door to talking about drugs, and the seedier side of big city life, and a noisier DIY aesthetic that could lead to the Stooges and the Ramones. Even if the music wasn’t amazing (which it is), those breakthroughs alone would make the VU’s first record worthy of a mighty respect.
Favourite Tracks: “Heroin”, “I’m Waiting for the Man”, “All Tomorrow’s Parties”
Least Favourite Track: “I’ll Be Your Mirror”
13/100 — Charles Mingus — The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963)
If Mingus Ah Um is Charles Mingus’ Brilliant Corners, then The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is his Sketches of Spain. It’s more of a symphony (or more accurately a ballet) than a jazz album. Mingus himself referred to the musical style of BSSL as “ethnic folk-dance music.” Each of its 4 tracks are titled after dance arrangements: “Solo Dancer”, “Duet Solo Dancers”, etc. Another oddity with this record is the structure of the solos. Rather than creating space for free expression, each instrument plays a roll, a character, within which the musician can play around. It’s less improv and more method acting. This is Mingus, not as band leader, but as composer.
The first track (“Solo Dancer”) opens with a drum rat-a-tat before a squelching baritone saxophone begins to below like a foghorn, instantly creating a seedy atmospheric tone. then other instruments begin to swirl around, enticing the listener in from the cold night into somewhere a little warmer and more entertaining. Eventually things really get swinging (literally) and while the underlying squelching rhythm continues underneath, a saxophone starts to take center stage (representing the dancer). What’s maybe most remarkable is the timbre palette that Mingus’ band creates, it’s rich, and always moving as each instrument blends with each other and then separates, creating a real tension and release. One such release occurs when the orchestration reduces back to just a quartet about two thirds through, making room for a brilliant tenor sax/bass duet with piano and drums underneath.
The “Duet Solo Dancers” in contrast to the bustling nightclub atmosphere of the first track is smooth and sensual, long piano runs and swaying horns really give the impression of a love scene in a movie an early Hollywood film This vibe gets interrupted by a chugging low end part that escalates almost as if a fight is starting to break out. The horns certainly sound like they’re trading insults while the rest of the band circles around them, egging them on. Finally the drums explode in a frenetic argument with a trumpet creating one of my favourite little moments on the album. Then things calm down and there’s a return to the opening rat-a-tat and foghorn theme.
“Group Dancers” once again opens with wonderful solo piano, this time establishing a sparkling new theme. Seriously, just sink into that piano for a bit. Enjoy it. Then the flute picks up the theme and makes it sound a bit like a WW2 murder mystery show (think the opening theme of “Poirot”.) Each time the theme returns the flute is the main player but there are slight variations in the accompaniment before suddenly an absolutely exquisite classical guitar solo enters the scene, and a very latin explosion ensues. It’s the kind of music you might find if West Side Story had a bullfight scene. Where before we had one or two musical voices in the limelight at a time, now it feels like almost every instrument is competing for attention as the rhythm section switches from slow and bouncy to absolutely breakneck in their delivery. It’s really thrilling stuff.
And now for the real masterpiece: the three movement “Medley: Trio and Group Dancers/ Single Solos and Group Dance/ Group and Solo Dance.” In the medley all the themes we’ve heard through out the first half of the piece return in new contexts, the guitar solo is extended dramatically, and the Mingus’ genius really shines through. Here, a phrase from track one is pitted against the chaos of track three. And there, three different voices shout for attention at once, and all of their performances deserve it. For almost 19 minutes musical ideas compete, resolve, fade, return with more friends, and dissolve into the night. At one point part way through an extended piano section you hear one musician just yell “goddamnit!” in the middle of a take — just loud enough for the mics to hear. It’s a charming reminder of how human and difficult this piece is.
The majority of the second half of the medley returns to the swaying sexiness of the second track. But now a new saxophone voice is intruding on the lovers’ theme and turns it from something romantic into something down and dirty and burlesque instead. The speed and intensity of builds and wains for remaining minutes, and I love the way the drums build here, whipping the instruments into a frenzy of an almost punk rock pace. Finally there is a return to the opening theme as if our hero has left the club and fades back into the grey city fog from whence he came.
I think every person should listen to The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady at least once, regardless of whether or not he considers himself a jazz fan. Consider it a pictureless film noir, or an aural art exhibit. It’s a brilliantly executed piece of compositional story telling, and it’s no wonder to me that it consistently tops lists of the greatest jazz albums of all times.
Favourite Track: “Medley…”
Least Favourite Track: nope.
12/100 — Dead Kennedys — Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables (1980)
To me, Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables is the ultimate punk rock album. It’s aggressive, it’s political, it’s irreverent, it’s darkly humourous, and it doesn’t care about you. About a decade ago, my Uncle Don once flipped through the CDs I’d brought to play on my Sony Discman over the Christmas break at his house, and just the track listing had him a little shocked: “Kill the Poor”, “Ill in the Head”, “I Kill Children.” This is 32 minutes of pure “Fuck the Establishment!”
Jello Biafra, lead singer and lyricist (and founder of the influential punk label Alternative Tentacles) howls and warbles and spits his lyrics with a ferocious vibrato that is immediately captivating in the same way that David Thomas of Pere Ubu is. East Bay Ray’s guitars are appropriately vicious and dangerous to match, and the rhythm section of Klause Flouride and Ted (just Ted) drive everything forward relentlessly.
“Kill The Poor” opens with huge single chords and Jello mocking the neutron bomb as a sign of progress. One thing to bear in mind here is that all the lyrics are satire. Jello is often speaking on behalf of someone he has no respect for. So on “Kill The Poor” the theme is “Now that we have the ultimate power in the universe and have proven that we have achieved progress we can kill the poor without consequence to increase our power further.”
“Forward to Death” rips in (and out — it’s only 82 seconds long) with breakneck pace and has a crazy bassline and explores a deep sense of nihilism: “I don’t need this fucking world, this world brings me down, down with every breath.” But this isn’t apathetic emo nihilism, this has an aggressive “Fuck this shit, let’s burn it all down !” attitude, that doesn’t wallow, it fights.
“When Ya Get Drafted” warns of the possibility of repeating the patterns of the Vietnam War in the face of Cold War anti-communist hysteria in order to help the government fulfill alterior motives:
Economy is looking bad
Let’s start another war when ya get drafted
Fan the fires of racist hatred
We want total war when ya get drafted
“Drug Me” is almost incomprehensibly quick in its attack of big Pharma, and adds spooooky keyboards to the madness. But it’s not just actual drugs the band is warning about. Jello points out that magazines, crosswords, and any other mindless entertainment that keeps a population passive can be a drug. The vocal delivery reminds me of some of the tongue twisters System of a Down would later utilize in some of their equally political music.
Similarly “Your Emotions” challenges you to analyse your beliefs:
Your school told you this
And your church told you that
Memorize this
And don’t you dare look at that
They’re all so concerned to make their thoughts into yoursJust a tape recorder
Mimicking of the bores
This is in someways the basics of punk rock, but the vitriolic fervor and concision with which it’s delivered is breath taking. The whole album almost has no time to breathe. “Chemical Warfare” slows it down a bit but that only seems to add a sinister atmosphere, not a reprieve. Then there’s the anti-fascist “California Uber Alles” which calls out a Californian Governor and warns about a sense of coastal superiority and invulnerability. There’s a sinister break down that implies that electing Governor Brown to president is one step away from the thought police of 1984 and then the gas chambers of Nazi concentration camps:
Come quietly to the camp
You’d look nice as a drawstring lamp
Don’t you worry, it’s only a shower
For your clothes here’s a pretty flower
It’s chilling stuff but nothing compared to the “God told me to skin you alive” nightmare that opens “I Kill Children.” This song has one of the best bass lines on the record, and has a few great little timing touches with little breaks here and there to bring your focus back to the lyrics.
I’ll briefly touch on a few other highlights, like the staccato guitar intro of “Funland at the Beach” (again, the theme entertainment as a mind-numbing drug), and the demented carnival music of “Ill in the Head” that approaches dissonant free jazz in some of the fills (and definitely inspired some of nomeansno’s more twisted compositions.) There’s also the rewritten cover of Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas” which adds a verse about cocaine culture in the entertainment industry and a sexy dangerous swagger. It’s a good 40% faster than the original.
But the crown of this unrelenting album is the stunning “Holiday in Cambodia.” It’s the only song over four minutes (most are under two) and really sums up the whole record. From the frightening guitar noise intro to the chugging and sinister build up to the horror-disco drumbeat the first minute of the song builds up a electric nightmare atmosphere. Then Jello yells at students who have read a few books and think they know how hard life can be for the disenfranchised people of the world and challenges them to take a real look at how brutal things can really be. Take a holiday in post-Vietnam Cambodia and see how things really are:
Well, you’ll work harder
With a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers
Till you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake
All the musical performances here are perfect, especially the stunning vocal and guitar work. It’s one of the greatest protest songs ever written on one of the greatest protest albums ever made.
I have nothing left to say sheeple. Get with it.
Favourite Tracks: “Holiday in Cambodia”, “Forward to Death”, “California Uber Alles”
Least Favourite Track: “Stealing Peoples’ Mail”
11/100 — Miles Davis — Bitches Brew (1970)
Miles Davis has appear on this list before with his classic Kind of Blue, a record of modal explorations and soothing blues based experimentation. Bitches Brew couldn’t be more different. For one thing it’s groovy and tribal as hell, and for another it’s a collage of sorts, assembled in the studio from multiple takes of various compositions to make each track a multifaceted frankenjam. These seven tracks run over 100 minutes and completely blew the walls off the box of what people categorized as Jazz.
“bappa bappa bappa bap”
“Pharaoh’s Dance” starts the record off with just drums before Rhodes keyboards, bass, and saxophone, start to noodle over top with a loose theme. The interplay is captivating tho, but strangely it’s a full two and a half minutes before Miles even makes his first appearance, and when he does he does nothing to establish a melody of any kind. If anything he makes things more dissonant for a moment before the keyboards regroup with that opening theme again. Throughout the piece’s 19+ minutes, the band takes turns in the spot light while the initial “bappa bap” groove carries on.
When I say a musician has a turn in the spot light, I don’t mean a traditional jazz solo per se. Yes, Davis has a solo here and there, but the whole band is going so hard that sometimes it’s more like two (and sometimes up to five) instruments are improvising over the groove and theme at once with varying degress of focus being paid to each of them at any given moment. This isn’t a play full of soliloquies, it’s more like the part in an opera where each singer sings their own distinctive melody at the same time in a way that contributes to an overwhelming whole.
Ya. We’re one track in.
The title track is less like one continual jam and more of a modular experiment. What I mean is that it comes in sections. Section A is a slow droning pull in the bass followed by explosions in the upper register filled with trumpet squeals, tinkling Rhodes, and shimmering cymbals. Section B gravitates around an immediately recognizable bass groove which feels like a hungry predator on the prowl. There are even some creepy finger snaps. Around this bass groove, an improvisational forest — like that in “Pharaoh’s Dance” — grows.
I use the forest comparison because this album is much less like an art gallery that wants you to look at one thing at a time, and more like a natural setting where every where you stand or turn your focus changes the nature of the whole. This adds both complexity and depth as each time you explore the sonic space of these compositions you can choose a different angle to focus on. For example, on my most recent listen I tried my best to only pick out what the Rhodes keyboard was doing and there was SO much I’d never heard before. And even as I listen now I just caught a brilliant electric guitar attack layer I’d ignored up until now. “Bitches Brew” rocks back and forth between sections A and B a few times adding new variations each time and exploring the space with a new approach.
“Spanish Key” is a funkier and slightly more straightforward jam — Miles seems a little more focused in the melodies he’s creating, and its 17 minutes feel breezy compared to the colossal 25 minutes of “Bitches Brew.”
“John McLaughlin” is the shortest song by a good margin at a little over four minutes, and while still a free-wheeling jam, feels more focused for it, with themes that are readily apparent even on a first listen. Named after Miles guitar player it’s no surprise that electric guitar takes centre stage on this one and John McLaughlin does not disappoint. He later became a hell of a band leader in his own right, leading the Mahavishnu Orchestra among other musical projects.
“Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” slows the grooves down and really digs in to a funky sexy territory. If this nastiness doesn’t make you hunch your shoulders, frown, and move side to side a bit, you may want to check that you still have a pulse.
The album ends with two Wayne Shorter compositions; “Santuary” and “Feio.” These pieces are a little more meditative. They take their time. The musical environment has more space. There’s still groovy moments, and “Feio” has some dirty explosions here and there, but another band could almost make these compositions ambient. They really show off how well the band listens to each other. Without this level of attention and skill the previous jams would have been impossible, but this really just shows how closely everyone is locked in to each other.
Bitches Brew is really a remarkable auditory experience. The way it was assemble and the sheer amount of music occuring make it hard to describe. Most tracks have at least ten musicians playing, and many of those musicians became some of the biggest names in Jazz: in addition to those I’ve highlighted already there’s also Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, and Dave Holland. This is a monster album. One that gives me a huge thrill on every listen. Wander into these mysterious musical woods with me, won’t you?
Favourite Tracks: “Pharoah’s Dance”, “Bitches Brew”, “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down”
Least Favourite Track: “Sanctuary”
Bonus cover version for fun:
