I’m kinda glad to have this done, actually–it’s been pretty damn time consuming reading loads of old reviews and Wikipedia entries. I will say that it was more worth my time to do these relistens than it wasn’t, even though only a large handful of these albums actually got better.

1)The Jam, Sound Affects: I always thought this was a strong album, just like the three before it, but never revisited any song on it besides “That’s Entertainment,” one of Weller’s four or five best. How the hell I forgot “Set The House Ablaze” (ripped off by Robert Pollard for the wondrous obscurity “Subspace Biographies”!), “Boy About Town” or “Man In The Corner Shop” is beyond me, those are all glorious. I think I’d have to defend “Monday,” “Pretty Green” and “Scrape Away” too. I’m not sure about “Dream Time” or “Start,” which has a hook (“what you give is what you get!”) if you can ignore the slightly cringey Beatles theft. It does seem to be Weller’s most artistically mature and diverse album, so it’s probably their best, though I wouldn’t argue that it stands head and shoulders above their other three strong albums that I also recently revisited. It’s the one I’d be most likely to purchase, put it that way.
NOTE: I only found out yesterday that Morrissey did a very surprisingly lame cover of “That’s Entertainment.” Skip it!

2)Tim Buckley, Starsailor: This is the only thing I ever heard by him, because I heard it was one of the weirdest and most challenging vocal performances in rock. I forgot about it completely afterwards and didn’t bother to hear any of the rest of Buckley’s work (and as much as I like Grace, I’ve not bothered with much of the rest of his son’s work, either! Shows how lazy I am!) Hearing it again, I only think I like about three songs: “Song To The Siren” (eerily dreamy and beautiful), “Moulin Rouge” (cute hearing him daintily imitating French mannerisms) and “Down On The Borderline” (his vocals work well with that chopping, repetitive guitar riff.) If you don’t know what this album is like, young Tim, still only around 23 years of age, does all sorts of crazy gymnastics, yodelings, off-key warblings, voice-crackings, and the like all over the place, and you can guess that the album didn’t sell worth a shit in 1970. BUT: it’s not actually Buckley’s vocal weirdness that’s the problem, it’s the dull musical backing, with some of Zappa’s people helping out, and they play what sounds like lobotomized, crude, ultra-simplistic jazz-rock. Poorly recorded instruments, too. Like Beefheart, I’m not a big fan of this one and I feel safe about probably never revisiting it again, possibly aside from those three songs.

3)Pink Floyd, Atom Heart Mother: Yeah, like I said. “If” is still great, but that’s the one I’ve already been revisiting a lot–I find Roger Waters’ bitter sentiments less obnoxious ever since turning 30, for some reason. “Summer ‘68” has that “how do you feel” hook and clanking piano bit, so that’s not bad. “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” gets a bad rap but it’s pretty good as 14 minutes of relaxing background music, albeit background music that I’ve never really revisited outside of the album. “Fat Old Sun” isn’t that great though–like a bored, stretched out version of the Kinks’ “No Return” or something vibe-wise. And as I already said, all 23 minutes of the title track are an epic fail, Floyd’s worst track to be sure. It’s boring movie music, that’s all! This album gets a mediocre-to-okay rating, like 9.5 out of 15 or something. I will definitely never purchase it, and once again must note that if one were to ever make a movie about Pink Floyd, I hope they’d make it about the 1968-72 period where they kept fidgeting around trying to figure out what the hell to do. Fascinating failure!

4)Neil Young, Harvest: I wanted to say that it made no sense to me whatsoever that After The Gold Rush and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere sold moderately at the time and this was a blockbuster, because to the undiscerning listener who wasn’t around in 1972, Harvest hardly sounds different than those two. Not only was I mystified by Harvest becoming a blockbuster, I didn’t even understand why it would be rated lower than its predecessors, or labelled a “sellout,” for exactly the reasons I just stated, and yet a number of review sites do exactly that, bash it as a watering down of the 1969-70 stuff. Really? I suppose on closer inspection, after reading all the bad reviews they do have a point about Neil rewriting some of his earlier songs–“Alabama” was probably uncalled for after the already hysterical “Southern Man,” “The Needle And The Damage Done” reuses the vocal melody of “Til The Morning Comes” (not pointed out in reviews) and “Words” at the end seemed to be rehashing “Cowgirl In The Sand” to lesser effect (also not pointed out in reviews). I also see that some of his lyrics were called dumb, too. But…I’m still not seeing a big failure here, “Heart Of Gold” and “Old Man” are still small classics that haven’t been ruined by overplay, “A Man Needs A Maid” and “There’s A World” get ripped on for the bombastic Nitzsche orchestration, but I think they both work pretty well, and “Out On The Weekend” is good laid back stuff. So whatever–this is just another Neil Young album to me, I probably didn’t like it any less than the first time around.

5)The Sex Pistols, Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols: I wonder just how many rock music fans actually still love this album and frequently play it all the way through. Certainly I haven’t been–God knows how many years ago I even listened to it, and aside from digging out “Anarchy In The UK” and “God Save The Queen” every now and then, all I’ve ever actively listened to from this album is “Problem,” and that’s when it’s in the opening credits to Freddy Got Fingered. I only remember “Bodies” because of the interesting lyrics, which have been politicized by both sides of the abortion debate, but not the actual music. “Pretty Vacant” is supposed to be a classic, but I’d completely forgotten it and that riff has been used better elsewhere anyway. “Holidays In The Sun” would be a classic, but now that I know the Jam did it first, I don’t have much use for it. “New York,” “Submission,” “Seventeen,” “Liar”…meh. Bland soup. “EMI” is sort of funny though, and I can still enjoy “Problem” and “No Feeling,” for their major-key vibes. Steve Jones could play guitar but some variance in tone or something would have been nice, and Johnny Rotten, much as we’ve all been amused by him over the years, really seems to be recycling his vocal melodies quite a bit too, doesn’t he? No wonder I’d forgotten so much of it. So really I barely liked half of this. THE END!!!!!!!! You’ll never have to read one of my “5ive relistens” posts again!!!