NEW RELISTENS:

1)Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off: The band’s 1966 debut album is their only good album, let alone strong album, besides Surrealistic Pillow, which is what I had a sinking feeling I was going to find out when I relistened to the entire classic JA catalogue. Marty Balin was the leader back then, no question about it, and Signe Anderson, in her only album, sings like, well, a slightly less powerful Grace Slick, but she works well enough. It’s somewhat similar territory to The Byrds but a bit sadder, if you didn’t know. The ominous “Tobacco Road,” the energetic “Let Me In” with dive-bombing bass scales from Jack Casady (easily the group’s most talented musician!) and the lovely ballad “Come Up The Years” are the classics, but those are the ones I remembered, anyway. The rediscoveries are the opener “Blues From An Airplane,” the punchy “It’s No Secret” and the calm closer, “And I Like It”. Their version of “Let’s Get Together” is pretty cornily soft, though–give me the Nirvana version, dammit! I could see myself going back to this one from time to time, if not buying it.

2)Electric Light Orchestra, ELO 2 (and yes, using the non-Roman numeral is the actual British title; the cover-art was different too): The sophomore album from Lynne and company is their most prog-rock-ish album, and also probably the least-discussed album they put out in the 1970s. I always loved the beautiful, nocturnal ballad “Mama,” but forgot most of the rest of it. “In Old England Town” isn’t bad–does the “monstrous cellos” thing better than most of ELO’s debut album, if you ask me. “From The Sun To The World” has these jazzy piano chord shifts that I sort of like, so maybe I’ll relisten to that in the future. Oh, and the 11-minute “Kiuama” seems to attract the most derision due to its length and possibly its subject matter (it’s about a soldier in a third world country explaining to a young girl that he killed her parents) but it has a really pretty, almost epic McCartney-ish melody to it, so I’m still baffled by the derision. That leaves their hit version of “Roll Over Beethoven,” which…uhm, I just don’t like much. Gahhh. Sorry. I’d give this a decent rating, maybe a higher rating than the debut, which still had Roy Wood on it.

3)Buffalo Springfield, Buffalo Springfield Again: This was the big mature diverse stylistic songwriting explosion the band went through over the course of about nine (!) months of recording the album during rock music’s Most Crucial Year Ever, and it’s a very good and indeed impressive album, but somehow I ended up preferring the more innocent, more uniform (all those janglers!) debut album. Poor Richie Furay comes out in third place for sure; “A Child’s Claim To Fame” is okay, but “Sad Memory” is just bland ballad pudding and “Good Time Boy” is embarrassing white boy imitation soul/R&B. Stephen Stills has the jazz-lite piece “Everydays,” which I came to the album familiar from Yes’s cover, but is probably just as good here, and the excellent “Hung Upside Down” and proto-CSNY piece “Rock & Roll Woman” with its stunning vocal-harmony arrangement, but I have to confess I’m not a big fan, for some reason I can’t really figure out, of “Bluebird,” the song usually listed as the best on the album! That leaves Neil to get away with a surpsisingly effective “Satisfaction” knockoff, “Mr. Soul,” the suite “Broken Arrow” (which seems to be drawing cues from the brand-new Sgt. Pepper’s), and best of all, “Expecting To Fly,” where you get to hear 22 year old Neil Young, of all people, do a sort of Brian Wilson/Phil Spector orchestral thing (nobody else from Buffalo Springfield played on it!), but wonderfully so. Did he ever try ANYTHING like this ever again? A strong album, though like I said I do think the debut is better.

4)AC/DC, For Those About To Rock We Salute You: Yeah, it sucks. I mean, my opinion of Back In Black is kind of lukewarm these days anyway, but at least I don’t have any problem with that album’s popularity and I’ve always disliked this one, and relistening just confirms I was right the first time. All I remembered from the first time was the title track and all I’m going to remember from fancying another go is that and “Evil Walks” (“evil walks, besiiiiide you!”) and, if I’m being REALLY generous, “Night Of The Long Knives.” But those are just songs I remember; I’m probably never once going to listen to any of them out of the context of the album. The rest, of course, are generic and boring and forgettable. Worst followup to a big smash hit album ever?

5)The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope: All I ever revisited from this oft-dismissed album was the beautiful closer, “All The Young Punks (New Boots And Contracts),” because of its wonderful, horn-fanfare-like chorus riff. The reason I forgot the rest of the album is revealed as a simple one: pretty much every single song on it is a big, bright, major-key guitar-based rock & roll anthem, “All The Young Punks” included, so they all just sort of blended together. I agree that the debut album was far better representative of both the Clash’s style (and rage) and punk rock in general, but what most people say about this album is that the band was stupid to choose Blue Oyster Cult’s Sandy Pearlman as producer, claiming that he slowed the band down (only somewhat, really) and turned them into generic 1970s “heavy metal” for crass commercial consumption and I’m just not buying it. “Safe European Home,” “Tommy Gun,” “Last Gang In Town” and “Drug-Stabbing Time” all rock, and “Stay Free,” the second best song, is almost, to my ears, like power-pop. I guess “Julie’s Been Working For The Drug Squad” is all the “diversity” you’re going to get, but all I can say is that I enjoyed hearing all these songs again (“Guns On The Roof,” containing one of the Clash’s many ripoffs of “I Can’t Explain,” is pretty egregious though.) If this is a “stopgap” release or something merely “transitional” or “throwaway” (and yes, the two albums bookending it ARE better–I’d know, I’ve had them on CD for 20 years) it’s one of the better examples of its kind, IMO.

20TH ANNIVERSARY RELISTENS FROM 2004:

6)Alice Cooper, DaDa: This has one of the biggest gaps between the listenability and timelessness of the production, and the quality of the actual songs that I know of. I really like this album a lot and I think I got someone to post it on BABBLETRON after George upgraded it to a 13 on his old site, but good LORD do you have to get past some badly dated synthesizers, and on most tracks, too. On top of that, most other instruments that aren’t keyboards sound really badly canned and dated and edge-less, like a suckier version of how the CMI Fairlight makes them sound. But hey, Alice, even if he was old and in the terrible throes of drug and alcohol addiction, came up with some great stuff (some of it wasn’t even him, it was Bob Ezrin.) The novelty tune “I Love America” is one of the funniest songs I’ve ever heard, with brilliant lyrics (“I love blue jeans, hot dogs and mustard! I love my girl, but I sure don’t trust her! I love with the Indians did to Custer!! There they go!”), “DaDa” and “Former Lee Warmer,” even with the crappy 1983 keyboard sounds, are both far creepier and more effective than “Steven” IMO, “Enough’s Enough” and “Dyslexia” are synth-pop, but the melodies are good, “Scarlet and Sheba” and “Fresh Blood” show Alice can still get away with cheeky sicko lyrics, and “Pass The Gun Around” is the saddest song he ever did that I know of, and worse still you know he was really feeling it in 1983. I only forgot “No Man’s Land.” I’ve read there’s supposed to be a concept here, but God knows what it is. Something tells me that anyone into classic Stephen King should love this lost, poorly-selling LP–hey, HE was in the throes of horrible drug addiction back then too!

7)Roy Wood, Boulders: Roy recorded this in 1969, after the heavily 60s-sounding debut album by The Move, but before the heavy/art-rock-ish stuff they got into starting in 1970. Then it didn’t get released until 1973, by which point the rock landscape had changed very heavily. Had it been released in 1969, it would have been ahead of its time; Roy, whom I maintain was the most sheerly talented person to come out of the entire British Invasion, tries a lot of different substyles here and becomes an eclectic hero,, not repeating himself once. The two songs I loved were the bright, catchy, uptempo “Songs Of Praise” and the bright, catchy, midtempo “Nancy Sing Me A Song,” but a couple of tracks worth revisiting here were “Wake Up” with Roy hitting water with his hand for percussion, and two medleys: one, the easy to like “All The Way Over The Hill/Irish Loafer,” and the “Rock Medley,” with Roy nailing an unforgettable minor-key hook that goes “she’s too good for me, she did all she could for me.” I dunno about some of the others, so for me this is more of a pleasant curio of an album than the completely overlooked masterpiece George thought it was (I think it was never released on CD…right?) But hey if you’re the “eclecticism rules” guy, it’s a must…

8)Crispin Hellion Glover, The Big Problem Does Not Equal The Solution. The Solution = Let It Be: One of the few novelty albums I’ve really ever cared for (and certainly just about the ONLY celebrity album I’ve cared for); we used to make fun of the silly “Clowny Clown Clown” and “Auto-Manipulator” in Babble’s old days a lot, and the latter remains particularly stupefying: it’s a rap-metal song about jacking off, in 1989, recorded by a celebrity actor. Kee-rist, I still can’t believe it exists!! And I still LIKE it!! That being said, those two songs are easily the highlights; it’s also cute to hear Crispin sing “These Boots Are Made For Walking” in a sobbing, shrieking, effeminate voice, and at the end of the album he starts yelling in Nazi German, which I’d forgotten. The rest…well, you don’t REALLY need to hear his dumb quavering rendition of “The Daring Young Man On The Flying Trapeze,” or his readings of dumb books about rat catching and “Oak Mot,” whatever the hell that is. Between this, George McFly, his infamous Letterman appearances, and the movie he did as Rubin Farr (the Letterman character)…hell, even his cameo appearances in Wild At Heart and The Doors, it seems like what Crispin was REALLY trying to do was pioneer Autistic Weirdness As Comedy, and since there’s probably a lot more of that nowadays, maybe he really is a hero of importance to us all.

9)Wings, Back To The Egg: Posted on BABBLETRON in 2004, I remember Brian Burks snorting at the choice and saying that was “clearly the runt of the 70s Macca albums” or something like that. It got terrible reviews, apparently (and didn’t poor Paul get terrible reviews from the rock press for everything back in the day that wasn’t Band On The Run, anyway?) Parts of it do indeed seem a bit second-rate, and the album is certainly overlong, but I remember some good stuff here, with Paul trying a few late 70s substyles like the cool quasi-disco-funk song “Arrow Through Me,” the old-timey hard-rock song “Old Siam Sir,” the neon-sign-evoking, punchy, hooky “To You” (“to youuuuuuu!”) and the lovely string-plucking interlude “We’re Open Tonight.” I’d forgotten a couple of tunes, too–it was nice to hear “Getting Closer” and “Spin It On,” Paul could still rock in 1979. Towards the end, though, he starts putting out quasi-filler; “Rockestra Theme” is acceptable enough as novelty music goes but “Winter Love/Rose Awake” is boring piano sappiness, “So Glad To See You Here” is a lame stab at McCartnifying Cheap Trick, “Baby’s Request” isn’t exactly “Honey Pie,” and “The Broadcast” is a waste of 90 seconds. An average album on the whole but the gems were worth revisiting.