Top 50 Favorite Albums: Part 6

Moving right along....

26. September Of My Years - Frank Sinatra

In an earlier post I went on and on about how great this album was. I re-read the post and still feel the same way, so here’s a link to it that will let you know how I feel about this one. September Of My Years previous post

27. Lone Justice (Debut) - Lone Justice

Tell me an album is great before I hear it or before it’s even released and you’re going to have a harder sell. Be a label promotion man calling me and telling me how something is going to change the way I look at music and you’re flirting with the hold button. I had heard so much about this album before its release that I was almost burned out on it before I heard a note.

Then one day a copy arrives in the mail and lo and behold everything was suddenly different. It was actually better than I was led to believe. Like the beast from the wild this band was led by a child. A precocious songwriter and fireball singer that rocked my world. She had so much energy that I thought she was going to explode before she could finish a song. Like Neko Case she could control her voice and wrote songs that she could wrap it around. I’m not sure anyone could really cover one of these songs and do it any justice (pun intended).

To my way of thinking this was really the start of the alt-country movement. This band had ignored any perceived boundaries and just made a record that they liked. It would serve as the template for a whole genre. Forget the Uncle Tupelo and Whiskeytown posing, this band was following their muse and not stopping to label anything.

The band and Maria McKee would of course issue other recordings and some of them are excellent, but this being the first lands it here. I could make the argument that if their second album would have come out first it would have had a similar effect on me. You can pick this one up just about anywhere for under ten bucks. It’s a better deal than a few gallons of gas or a couple of lattes for my money.

28. All The Young Dudes - Mott The Hoople

By now everyone knows the story behind this album and how David Bowie rescued them from their musical malaise. It’s one of the stories that make rock and roll what it is. This was one of the most important albums of my high school years. I may have failed here and there, but this one never failed me. On album, 8-Track, cassette, countless bootlegs and two concerts. I never really let go of it, and when it was re-released a while back with bonus tracks I bit again just to see who had aged better me or it. It hasn‘t aged a day. Wish I could say the same.

It all came rushing back and made me long for the day when bands stuck together through thick and thin and felt it was all worth it for the glory of the music. They played and lived rock and roll. The mix of originals and covers are seamless in their hands. They are all given the “Mott treatment.” Ian Hunter was one of the last of the true front men in a rock band. Like Mick he had his Keith in Mick Ralphs and later Ariel Bender. He had the voice, the hair, the shades and most of the girls too I would think. One of the few albums I still play loud.

29. Rum, Sodomy & The Lash - Pogues

When this Elvis Costello produced album came out I wasn’t as sick of him as I am now. Then he was merely annoying, now I run, not walk from anything with his name near it. Enough about him though, we’re not here to bury him but to praise Shane and his drinking buddies.

Ireland has produced a slew of engaging rock and punk groups. Most of them treaded lightly around their deeper roots and offered a more urban sound and left the traditional stuff to the evening pub crowd. Those that might end the evening with a pint and a clumsy jig stumbling out the door. This band has been and really only can be compared with The Clash as far as their approach to their music. Mixing tried and true traditional tunes and covers with newly written songs this album sprang fully blown from the pubs and alleys of Ireland. They attack the music with an energy you can’t fake. They like the old songs, they just like them better the way they do them. Me too.

Led by legendary boozer and dentist’s nightmare Shane MacGowan they cut a path that went from the Irish pubs, through England and eventually to America. This album has it all and just gets better with the passage of time. Due in large part to the fact that it has a timeless quality that was present the first time I heard it. The loose almost sloppy approach gives the album a vibrancy that makes you think you’re in one of those pubs and those kids just won’t get off the stage. A couple of songs in and you hope they stay up there all night.

They are fine songwriters and have penned some classics, but on this album their own songs are upstaged by two covers for the ages. Their take on “Dirty Old Town” allows you to feel the grime, smells and soot to the extent you’ll want to shower afterwards. Like he does on the other standout cover “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” MacGowan shows that behind the façade of a drunk and rowdy punk he knows when to give a song its due. The closer of Eric Bogle’s “…Matilda” is one of those heartbreaking songs about the human costs of war that you’ll never shake once you hear it. And believe me you’ll try. Sapped of all his swagger and drunken revelry he sings this one as though he’s walking alone across the fresh battlefield leaving footprints of blood with each step and verse.

This would not be their last great album, but it remains my favorite over twenty years later.

30. The Blasters - The Blasters

There was very little in my musical past that prepared me for this album. This was probably a case of timing at its best. Being an Elvis fan I was always interested in rockabilly along with the blues, country and rock marriage of late fifties and early sixties music. I guess like others I was held in the sway of those scratchy film clips of the fifties kids rocking and rolling at some sock hop or VFW hall dance. At the heart of it all was a driving beat that the band seemed to enjoy as much as the audience.

Working the same venues as X and some of the other eighties punk bands the Blasters instead gave the audience a blast of retro done modern day. Like their song said this was American music and it was the sum of nearly everything that came before. To me they were the final great rock band. Others since have made fine music, but this band was the real deal. The impersonated no one because they were just who they were. They didn’t change to suit the younger punks and rockers, they let the crowd come to them. It’s some of the least self conscious rock that has ever been produced. One look at the cover and you know what’s going on inside the jacket.

This album goes wire to wire without tripping and essentially introduced Dave Alvin as a songwriter that we were going to hear plenty from over the years. It also introduced his brother Phil who has one of those unique voices that seems to bend but never break. He gave voice to the incredible songs that Dave was delivering. One listen to “Marie, Marie” and you’d think it’s Memphis in the fifties at some back woods roadhouse that time just forgot. It’s a shot of pure adrenaline that would fill a dance floor in any era. The first time I heard it I was sure they had dug up some obscure track while visiting Sun Studios. When I checked the record and saw that Dave had written it I hopped on board for the whole ride.

For me this was one of the few times that a group actually captured what made Chuck Berry so innovative. Like him they were churning out literate content that rock and roll had very little of in the fifties and even less by the early eighties. The songs were actually short stories disguised as, well, songs. Unfortunately over the years I think we’ve become numb to Berry’s contributions due to repeated listening on oldies radio and fledgling bar bands. Next time one of his songs comes on follow the lyrics and catch the couplets and metering that he employs. Then think of some of the other songs that were popular in the fifties. See how their lyrics compare and don’t forget that Berry was writing all of his. It’s apparent to me that Dave picked up on what Berry was doing from the very beginning. Speaking of picking things up, you should pick up this album.