Album #7: Queen, "A Night at the Opera" (1975)

We have a special place in our heart for our first love.  We never forget those first loves, even though we often outgrow them.  Queen happens to be my first love - when it comes to albums, at least.  Their amazingly awesome "The Game" was one of those loves that I must have listened to over five hundred times through the course of about two years.  I would literally listen to that album twice a day, five days a week, almost without fail. 

But, as I got older, I put it behind me, and as I've become a more mature music listener, I have to admit the album can be kind of hokey.  I outgrew it, and put Queen behind me. 

Then, while talking to a friend in a college history class, I mentioned my old love of queen.  And he mentioned "A Night at the Opera" - and I shamefacedly admitted I had never actually given the whole album a listen.  He pressured me to check it out, so I wound up buying the album and listening to it that very night.

It opens with the unusually-aggressive (For Queen, at least) "Death on Two Legs", a spiteful song dedicated to Queen's former manager (one of the best lines, sung in the usual harmonic chorus that is Queen's trademark:  "Do you feel like suicide?  I think you should.").  And then it goes all over the place.  There are some of the weird, operatic songs that are very playful ("Seaside Rendezvous", "Good Company", "Lazing on a sunday afternoon");  there are the zeppelinesque arena rock tunes that originally put Queen on the map ("Sweet Lady", "I'm in love with my car", "The Prophet's Song"); and then there are lovely ballads ("you're my best friend", which actually outsold "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a single), super pretty songs involving harps ("Love of my Life"), and even the mandatory song about science fiction that makes absolutely no sense ("39").

Oh, yeah.  And its penultimate song is a little ditty called "Bohemian Rhapsody".  You may have heard of it.  Its generally been declared one of the best songs ever written.  It is, as far as I know, the only song to have ever made it to the #1 spot on the records charts in two seperate decades (once when the album was released, and then again when it was featured on Wayne's World). 

Fun fact about Bohemian Rhapsody.  The song was recorded on analog tape, and the band did so many parts for the song dubbed onto the master reel (each time, using up more and more of the spool of tape), that by the time the song was done, guitarist Brian May recalled that the spool (which is supposed to be be brown, sort of like on a cassette tape - you remember those, right?) was nearly transparent.  He figures there are perhaps seventeen guitar parts recorded on that song.  And, lesse here... at least four vocal tracks... and two piano tracks... and a drum track... and a bass track... and... 

Album #8: A Perfect Circle, "Thirteenth Step" (2003)

I haven't forgotten about my old list of "top ten albums" - I've just been wondering exactly what to say about the #8 choice.  It's an album I've listened to over and over again, but it's one that I've heard so many times that I wonder if there's anything new to say about it.  But, finally, I just had to bite the bullet and get this series on with. 

A Perfect Circle was a "super group", formed in a time period when it seemed like forming "super groups" was the in-thing to do.  In a few short years, we were given bands like Audioslave, Velvet Revolver, and A Perfect Circle - fusions in the rock world that all seemed destined for short term greatness.  This particular super group was fronted by Maynard James Keenan, the lead singer for the metal group TOOL, and contained members from various low-key rock groups, as well as well-known guitar technician Billy Howerdel.

I had always figured APC's first album, "Mer De Noms", was a rather boring and flat set of recordings, lacking the musical depth and emotional range of a tool album - which is something I still believe.  However, after listening to the album on a midnight drive with a friend of mine, I started to hear a new side to the band - a sort of mainstream rock sound that also incorporated string work and a 1980's "New Wave" sound.  Without any of the crap that you would usually associate with new wave - there are no flocks of seagulls, and David Bowie won't be talking about any sort of China Girl.  The jury's still out on Devo, though. 

The problem with many fans' perception of APC stems from the frontman.  Too many people (myself included) imagined that any band fronted by Maynard James Keenan would be a "metal" band, and APC is anything but metal.  It's not even a lightweight metal - on the periodic table, I'd put it somewhere around Hydrogen - lightweight, lacking in complexity, but volatile and one spark away from exploding. 

"Thirteenth Step" was APC's second release, and, in my mind, the best of the three.  The entire album deals with the subject matter of addiction, through multiple perspectives.  It opens with the creepy drum-based song "The Package" - a whispered song about sex addiction and the lack of respect for both parties in such a relationship - and goes strong from there.  We've got songs like "Weak and Powerless" (a song that was generally well-received on the radio, though I find it to be one of the more flat songs on the album), an anthemic "blue", and the brilliant "The Outsider".

My favourite track on the album is "The Noose", which does that trick I love so well:  constantly layering tracks on to a repeating section of the song, modifying instruments and rhythms slightly as the song carries on.  The repeated chorus ("And I'm more than just a little curious/how you're planning to go about making your amends/to the dead") is one that always gets stuck in my head, and the main idea of the song - that an addict who has cleaned his act should not necessarily be absolved of crimes committed while using - is just brilliant.  And the last lines of the song ("your halo is slipping down to choke you now") is about as awesome as last lines can get. 

But this isn't just an album of hard core rock.  Listen to the creepy cover of "The Nurse Who Loved Me", which is funny, poetic, and offbeat, or the pretty guitar work in "Gravity" (I really believe they made a mistake in putting some of those heavier parts in the song).  Really, the album shines when it's soft, not when it's hard.  If you want hard, listen to Tool. 

I love this album to the point where I actually have a copy of the vinyl hanging on the wall, right next to my imitation les paul guitar.  It is also, for those who are curious, the youngest album on my top ten list, and one of a very few that were released in the last decade.  Yes, it belongs on the same list as The Who, Led Zeppelin, and the others to come.  Will people remember it in two decades?  I don't know.  But they probably should. 

Album #9: The Who, "Who's Next" (1971)

There are albums everyone knows.  Times when you can ask someone "Hey, have you heard this album?", and they will shake their heads.  And then you put the album on the stereo, and you catch those very same people singing along.  In short, there are albums that have been burned into the collective consciousness. 

Everybody knows Pink Floyd's Money.  Or Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Chile.  Or Michael Jackson's Thriller.  Or at least a dozen Beatles' songs. 

And I think pretty much every North American has a pretty big familiarity with the Who.  I blame Jerry Bruckheimer.

Bruckheimer being the TV producer who started using Who songs for the opening credits on his ridiculously popular CSI series.  The original CSI plays "Who Are You?", off the album of the same name. But later CSI series mine from an earlier source, 1971's Who's Next.  We hear a chopped and mangled version of "Baba O'Riley" for CSI: New York, and a slightly less chopped up (but still barely recognizable) version of "Won't Get Fooled Again" for CSI: Miami (which, personally, I think should be a song referring to David Caruso's career.  If you ever want to see a good David Caruso parody, watch William Baldwin's performance in Forgetting Sarah Marshall). 

The point of all this is, the second you put Who's Next into your stereo these days, you might be tempted to think of it in reference to shade-wearing ginger fucks making stupid one-liners.  Or... whatever the hell goes on in CSI New York.  I've never seen it.  But try not to think of the album in reference to what came after it;  look at it on its own merits. 

Who's Next is a rock album in a way that we rarely see rock albums.  We get Keith Moon's frenetic drumming, mixed with the fairly simple guitar lines of Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey's raw vocals, and John Entwistle's amazing bass lines.  But let's focus on the first two - the drums, and the guitar.

Keith Moon never does anything simple.  Listen to the starting track, the previously mentioned "Baba O'Riley" - we get a crazy, computerized set of tones, followed up by simple piano tones and then Moon's amazing ability to find the perfect drum counterbalance.  And when the guitars finally kick in (at 1:39), they are fairly simplified - Townshend is a master at basic guitar lines that just added to the overall tone of the song, letting his bandmates really come forward.  (As a side note, I think Baba O'Riley is one of those songs that has been "creatively borrowed from" since its release.  For example, compare the piano chords from the original to the guitar chords in this little number). 

Every song on this album is golden, with a wide range of sounds.  It's not one of those albums where you get the same song, played slightly differently, thirteen times.  Instead, you get everything from ballads ("The Song is Over"), to songs I'd call Seventies Grunge ("Behind Blue Eyes"), to acoustic rock pieces ("Going Mobile"), to lyrically pessimistic Arena Rock ("Won't Get Fooled Again"). 

What's funny about this album is that it was never supposed to exist at all.  Good ol' Mr. Townshend, in the hopes of making a rock opera in the same lines as Tommy, had this idea for something called Lifehouse.  The basic idea was, people would watch the show, and input in the creation of some sort of cosmic music experiment that would free the consciousness of those involved.  Basically, your usual early 70s combination of ego and drugs that plagued too many guitarists of the era.  I'm pretty sure if this sort of thing happened nowadays, there'd be magical kool-aid, matching nike runners and track pants.  Just sayin'.

Anyways, this project was understood by only Pete Townshend, which should give an idea just how messed up he was while putting it together.  Eventually, the concept was dropped, but some of the songs he wrote for Lifehouse made it onto this album (and later albums, such as "905" and "Who Are You?", both on Who Are You).  Pretty good, if you ask me, because I've seen some of the directions Lifehouse was heading.  Imagine an even more fucked up version of Tommy, and you get the basic gist.

So.  Why does this album need to be on your shelf?

Well, first off, because it's pure rock and roll.  And that's always a good thing.  But more importantly, because it's an album that shows the purest form of The Who's songwriting.  Every track tells a story.  Every track is pure music-  there are no lengthy guitar or drum solos to show off an individual's musical proficiency.  This is an album where the band shows their strength as a whole. 

And, let's be frank here.  You've seen CSI how many times?  Every time you're sick from work, lying on the couch in the middle of the day, watching a marathon on TV.  Odds are you've accumulated more hours watching CSI than the waking lifespan of some animals.  And, well, CSI isn't really that good. 

This album is.  So listen to those songs CSI made famous, the way they were supposed to be heard.  Trust me, David Caruso had nothing to do with this album.  Thank God.

Album #10: Queens of the Stone Age, "Rated R" (2000)

I first bought this album roughly six months after its release, knowing only a little bit about Josh Homme's previous band (Kyuss), and not really into the so-called Stoner Rock scene. In fact, the only reason I'd picked up the album in the first place was because an article about Stoner Rock in an issue of Guitar World mentioned Kyuss and Josh Homme's work with his new band, Queens of the Stone Age.
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I think everyone nowadays is familiar with Queens of the Stone Age (or, as they're more commonly known in print, QOTSA) - but they are familiar with a different beast than the one present on this album. This was an album that bridged Homme's fuzzier, riff-driven guitar work from Kyuss with the pop/rock sounds found on later QOTSA albums. While I'm sure a lot of mainstream music fans will disagree with me, I still hold that Rated R is the best QOTSA album out there - in fact, I sometimes think it is the only QOTSA album that is good overall.

The album has much of that riff-driven, fuzzed-up hard rock sound that is essential for what is commonly known as "Stoner Rock" - groovy beats that draw equally from Led Zeppelin, Delta Blues, R&B, Black Sabbath, early 1980s punk, and underground Grunge. But it is also more accessible, with a very polished quality to the recordings (rare in the world of Stoner Rock, where even the major records seemed to be produced on a shoestring budget). Many times, the Stoner sound is dropped in favour of mainstream rock - "The Feel Good Hit of the Summer", for example, has a guitar sound that is familiar to any rock fan, even going so far as to be accompanied by a driving piano beat that always reminds me of Little Richard. Only without, you know, the veiled references to Butt Sex.

The album goes from that super-charged opener (which consists of a single line, repeated over and over again - "Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, Marijuana, Ecstacy and Alcohol", and the chorus of "C-c-c-c-Cocaine!"), into the more groove-driven "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret". After a more traditional Stoner Rock style piece ("Leg of Lamb"), we get "Auto Pilot", a sort of Drug Ballad with a chorus that reminds me of early Beatles, with the verses sounding sort of like acid blues.

As an aside, this whole album is about drugs. If the title didn't warn you, the song titles should. Most are about taking drugs in one way or another - "Feel Good Hit of the Summer", "Leg of Lamb", "Auto Pilot", "Better Living Through Chemistry", "Tension Head", and "I Think I Lost My Headache" all involve drug use in one way or another. And I'd be willing to bet that band was stoned out of their minds through the recording of much of this record. I can visualize Josh Homme lying sprawled on a couch, guitar in his lap, staring vacantly into space before saying "Hey, guys? This album needs to, like, have a song with a japanese school girl singing along...".

And you know Mr. Homme is big on the drugs. I mean, take a look at the man's wardrobe choices.

The album fluctuates in its middle, going from a power ballad ("In the Fade", sung by ex-Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan) to a rhythmic punk piece ("Tension Head") to a striking acoustic guitar and piano duet ("Lightning Song"). It finishes with the occasionally rocky, occasionally bizarre "I Think I lost My Headache", which begins with a confusing time signature and devolves into bizarre jazz-like guitar stylings and wailing saxophones. The song is apparently Josh Homme's favourite on the album; I've always liked the first half of the song, but been annoyed by the second half. Imagine a good-old-fashioned rock song getting interrupted by a jazz band that's lost its sense of rhythm. And imagine slipping said jazz band some acid. That is pretty much how the last half of the song plays out.

So, why does this album need to be on your shelf?

To begin with, it's an example of modern rock at its finest, unburdened by record producers trying to create a radio-worthy single. After this album, the studio heads were much more attentive, and it shows in the band's next release - the financially successful Songs for the Deaf that plays it much more safe. And suffers as a result - but only in comparison to Rated R (it's still a great album).

Much like later QOTSA albums, Rated R is an amalgamation of talented musicians - QOTSA has never had a consistent lineup, which is one of their strengths as a band; there's never enough time for any one particular lineup to create a consistent QOTSA "sound". This collusion of musical minds can be heard in the versatility of the album's sound, and a feeling of experimentation pervades the entire piece. While I'm not a huge fan of the song, I have to admire the fact that the band was able to release such an unconventional song as "I Think I Lost my Headache"; I don't think that later producers for the band would allow such a release on the album.

Which is why this album remains QOTSA's finest - no one really expected QOTSA to be as successful as they would become. In many ways, it reminds me of Dark Side of the Moon in that regard - an album that would serve to elevate a B-list band into the big leagues.

Intro to the Top Ten Albums of All Time...

So. After listening to The Beatles' Abbey Road for, um, about the tenth time in the last two days, I got to thinking about albums. Or, more specifically, my "desert island" list of albums. Which I blame on Kittens.

We had been talking about Desert Island movies (my three being Bladerunner, High Fidelity, and Fight Club), and since then, I've been thinking about albums. What are the albums that I'd feel were necessary to always have on me?

Or, more importantly for this blog, what are the albums that I think everyone should have on their shelf?

So, over the next couple of weeks, in a very High Fidelity-esque way, I'll be listing the top 10 albums of all time. Those ten albums that everyone should own. Of course, the list comes entirely from my perspective (obviously), so I'm sure there are albums that should be on there, that I haven't listened to yet. So don't give me any of that B.S. I'll concede your point before you make it.

Should be a fun way for me to pass the time, and at the same time rant and rave about the best music ever made.