Essential Studio Albums

[liebzz]

Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

I haven’t heard this album since I was a teenager, probably almost 30 years ago since I gave this a spin. The song, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (I was today years old when I learned it was meant to be In the Garden of Eden but the singer was too high to be able to annunciate it) was the first long as hell song I listened to with any regularity. And my memory was that it’s an epic song, but the rest of the album kinda sucked. Fast forward nearly 30 years, and I have to say 16 year old me was pretty much on the money. My Mirage is pretty good, Are You Happy is really great in terms of what the band is doing, but on the whole, the singer sounds cool with the deeper voice but the lyrics really are distractingly bad (“flowers and beads are one thing, but having you girl is something…”). This might be a major exhibit in my life music tastes that I don’t find good lyrics make a song, and mediocre lyrics can be tossed aside for great musicality, but atrocious lyrics are just a song ruined. But! In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida the song is one of the great epic overreaches that’s so fun to listen to. A captivating riff, an engaging drum solo that goes on forever but I don’t mind, and the big payoff return to the riff at the end that’s fabulous. I’m still not sorry for that.

The Essential Track: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

Up Next: Aretha Franklin - Lady Soul

[Happy Trees]

White Light / White Heat is over-rated as hell and easily VU's weakest album.

That's right, I said it.

[liebzz]

Aretha Franklin - Lady Soul

If you had any doubt that Aretha was the GOAT of soul singers, well, this should erase those doubts quickly. Chain of Fools, People Get Ready, (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, and (Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You’ve Been Gone are vocal clinics behind a solid soul band. She sings so powerfully but perfectly controlled. A marvel.

The Essential Track: Chain of Fools

Up Next: Aretha Franklin - Aretha Now

[liebzz]

Aretha Franklin - Aretha Now

I guess ‘68 was a bit of a hot streak for Aretha. This is second straight (and third album overall) where we’ve covered Aretha Franklin transcending soul. Just universally great performances in these albums. Think is the centerpiece of this thing, but I Say a Little Prayer, See Saw, Night Time is the Right Time, You
Send Me and I Take What I Want are all great highlights as well. Her singing is just simply flawless.

The Essential Track: Think

Up Next: Otis Redding - Sittin on the Dock of the Bay

[liebzz]

Otis Redding - Dock of the Bay

What a soul that’s still sorely missed. Otis Redding’s voice is one of the all time greats, and this album has so many highs that it’s hard to even count. I could be shooting off the hip, but it seems like he, Marvin Gaye, and the aforementioned GOAT Aretha Franklin are the mountain tops of the genre. This album in particular features two songs that have to be among my favorite so far: (Sittin’ on the) Dock of the Bay and Let Me Come on Home are just ridiculously great. That they soar above an other spotless collection of tracks is really saying something. I never gave this genre the credit or time it deserved.

The Essential Track: (Sittin’ On the) Dock of the Bay

Up Next: Credence Clearwater Revival

[liebzz]

Credence Clearwater Revival

This debut may not get the attention of their soon to be released later albums (they released a lot of music in very quick succession), but it’s a really killer debut with deeper cuts that can stand up to their big hits and classics. Ninety-Nine and a Half Won’t Do, Gloomy, and Walk On the Water are all swamp master cuts where the band takes moments to let loose, and the covers of I Put A Spell On You and Susie Q. are both so ingrained in their version that it’s the others that feel like covers. Porterville is also top notch here. Lesser known but no less quality here from the great CCR.

The Essential Track: Walk On the Water

Up Next: Cream - Wheels of Fire

[liebzz]

Cream - Wheels of Fire

Double album - side a is the studio album while side b is the live cuts. Side b is admittedly better, with the Crossroads, and a killer Spoonful, but there’s a lot of great studio work on here, including White Room, Politician, the acoustic As You Said, Sitting On Top of the World, and the cover of Born Under a Bad Sign. Bruce and Baker really were such a great team in these albums, and Clapton is at his most creative in guitar.

The Essential Track: White Room

Up Next: Big Brother and the Holding Company - Cheap Thrills

[wease]

White Room has always been a favorite. Politician, I’ve long thought, is an underappreciated gem.

[liebzz]

White Room has always been a favorite. Politician, I’ve long thought, is an underappreciated gem.

Yeah, I do really enjoy Politician.

[Happy Trees]

Cream - Wheels of Fire

Double album - side a is the studio album while side b is the live cuts. Side b is admittedly better

To clarify:

Sides A & B / CD 1 = studio
Sides C & D / CD 2 = live (mostly at Winterland, not Fillmore - naughty naughty)

Sorry for being pedantic, but...

[liebzz]

Cream - Wheels of Fire

Double album - side a is the studio album while side b is the live cuts. Side b is admittedly better

To clarify:

Sides A & B / CD 1 = studio
Sides C & D / CD 2 = live (mostly at Winterland, not Fillmore - naughty naughty)

Sorry for being pedantic, but...

Ha. Fair. It could have been a lot worse.

[liebzz]

Big Brother and the Holding Company - Cheap Thrills

This seems like a mosh-mash of love and studio tracks, mostly studio. What it captures is Janis Joplin and this band in the raw, from the power of Piece of My Heart and album defining closer Ball and Chain, to the more subdued Summertime and Turtle Blues. Oh, Sweet Mary is another nice highlight here showing that sometimes sheer force of will can claim victory.

The Essential Track: Ball and Chain

Up Next: Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland

[lvc]

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Axis: Bold As Love

This is my personal most underrated album of all time, meaning I personally underrate this album constantly. In between two albums I grew up loving to death, Are You Experienced and Electric Ladyland, I just don’t give this album the adequate time of day, which frankly is my own misgiving. This album is straight up awesome. A sure bet here is any song with the word Castle in it. Plus there’s the obvious to me epic tracks Little Wing and If 6 Was 9. Wait Til Tomorrow was always one I could hit up. But it’s after that now, on this listen, that I am gravitating more to how phenomenal this thing is. One Rainy Wish, a song I never payed attention to, grabbed me by the horns this time. So did the album closer Bold As Love. Really, I am not sure there’s much of a weak moment here, with Hendrix really mixing in rhythm and blues with that guitar, and a fair dose of psychedelic rock. What a masterful mind.

The Essential Track: Little Wing

Up Next: The Beatles

I was initially quite taken with If 6 Was 9, but slowly, the sound of him sucking on a mint or chewing gum or something while doing the spoken word part with the mics way up to catch it started to sick me out enough that I can't listen to it anymore.

But the rest of this record is indeed a gem. I've said it elsewhere, but Jimi Hendrix is mostly known for his face-melting lead parts, but his rhythm playing is arguably what truly makes him who he is. Shredding out a solo is a dime a dozen, but riffs like Spanish Castle Magic and Wait Until Tomorrow are top tier.

[lvc]

I agree AYE? is his best, but I feel like it’s a matter of time before Band of Gypsies takes the title

The rub being that Band of Gypsies is a live album, but it’s no less really great.

My quibble with Band of Gypsies is the other vocalist just bopping Machine Gun right on the nose by singing something lame like "Look at you you shot him dead." Like they were narrating the stage show for the vision impaired. Took me right out of the song unfortunately.

[lvc]

The Rolling Stones - Between the Buttons

This one comes after the highly successful Aftermath, and historically I have always held this one in high regard, even if on this listen I might have gotten a little less out of it. There’s Yesterday’s Papers and Cool Calm and Collected that show off a bit of their psychedelic side, not realized fully until the next album. There’s also a whole lot of real high highs here: Let’s Spend the Night Together, Connection, Complicated and Miss Amanda Jones are all top notch. The rest is good but not anything you’d throw on a playlist. Those four songs though are really monsters and some of my favorite individual tracks at least from before their album era really gets violin’ in ‘68.

The Essential Track: Complicated

Up Next: The Who - Sell Out

Every time I see a picture of Charlie Watts I expect him to ask me what's the most I ever lost on a coin toss.

[liebzz]

I will talk about this more momentarily or probably later today, but it’s also something about the way he can balance the lead, the rhythm and then structure the songs in a way that pushes past what’s already possible without becoming unlistenable. He tied a very fine line and the result is brilliance. And that is on all 3 studio albums and on Band of Gypsys. It’s a magic trick I don’t know anyone else had.

[Happy Trees]

I agree AYE? is his best, but I feel like it’s a matter of time before Band of Gypsies takes the title

The rub being that Band of Gypsies is a live album, but it’s no less really great.

My quibble with Band of Gypsies is the other vocalist just bopping Machine Gun right on the nose by singing something lame like "Look at you you shot him dead." Like they were narrating the stage show for the vision impaired. Took me right out of the song unfortunately.

Please allow me to take a big steaming shit on this conversation (sorry, Trag).

"Band Of Gypsies" was recorded and released under duress as a contractual obligation because Hendrix was more or less being blackmailed for signing a bogus contract, and the courts sided with the blackmailer. That's why it was on Capitol, not Reprise. It's a similar situation as John Lennon's "Rock And Roll", except Hendrix was in no mood for it.

He hated how the concerts turned out, he hated Buddy Miles's "contributions" (the other vocalist lol) and he hated that he had to release this album. The only solid track he got out of it was "Machine Gun", though there were good performances of other songs available that he really really really wanted to record in the studio (or already had). There were even better versions of almost all of the songs included on the album within that same run of shows. He really didn't want it to be a core catalog album but a side project, because he thought it sucked. And it did.

So what did he do? He assembled a piece of shit based around "Machine Gun" and handed it in defiantly and said "now leave me alone". The recipient wasn't happy and tried to sue again - he wanted an Experience album. So I believe the contract had been legally fulfilled, but it was released as "HENDRIX - Band of Gypsies" in retaliation anyway.

So in my (elderly) opinion, this album's somewhat recent revisionist reputation as an unbeatable classic is sheer lunacy. It's "Machine Gun" and a bunch of sub-par filler. So let's not get carried away.

[tragabigzanda]

[wease]

Them Changes will NEVER be filler!

[liebzz]

Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland

This is the other Hendrix album I drooled over at one point and I just haven’t listened to it in a long while. I have heard this one probably a fair amount less than AYE, but recent years had me believing I preferred AYE. I mean, both are among my favorite albums, but I think I prefer Electric Ladyland. This album is an absolute mind blowing journey into whatever other dimension Hendrix ascended to. His playing on all of this is just on another level entirely, be they solos or rhythm or whatever sounds he’s cajoling out of that thing. And even then, the song choices never fall into the abyss despite ample opportunity, particularly in his suite of psychedelic songs that have him floating away into some alternate oceanic existence (Rainy Day Dream Away, 1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be), Moon Turn the Tides…Gently Gently Away, and Still Raining, Still Dreaming). Then there’s pure rock adrenaline and bliss in Crosstown Traffic, Long Hot Summer Night, Come On (Let the Good Times Roll), Gypsy Eyes, and Burning of the Midnight Lamp. There’s House Burning Down that is exceptional but is almost lost in the so goddamn many great songs on here. And even this alone would make for one of the greatest albums, and I haven’t talked about the 2 versions of Voodoo Child, or All Along the Watchtower that has to be one of the greatest covers ever. This is just plain insanely great. Flabbergasting that it’s so good we can just take one of the greatest covers ever riffs and solos on a studio track for granted and talk about the other stuff.

The Essential Track: Voodoo Child (Slight Return)

Up Next: Pink Floyd - A Saucerful of Secrets