Reviews by declaniom

Better than remembered.

Cool album.

Standard Van Morrison lp.

Strong album anchored around the behemoth Papa Was A Rolling Stone.

Strong 4 suffers from the Motown habit of padding their albums with the artists take on a current hit. In this case Ewan Macoll’s First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, which had been a smash for Roberta Flack a few months before. It’s a fine recording but not especially original.

I love Sinèad but this in’t her best work. But it does have that song.

I love her Debut the Lion and The Cobra compared to it this is pretty tame.

Best song apart from you know what. Is Black Boys On Mopeds. I don’t like it when people say “I was lucky enough to see …” when they’ve chosen to see that gig, given up their time to travel to it and spend their money that they presumably worked hard for (well someone did!). But I was lucky enough to see what turned out to be Sinéad’s last gig in the British Isles - the Villa Marina Douglas Isle of Man. It was fantastic as were the other times I saw her.

Anyway I was unlucky enough to have the local Minister of Business next to me and the Treasury minister in front of me. Probably a freebie. They kept leaning over to talk to each other and “network”. They made sure they were applauding wildly whenever she called for “peace” or “compassion”. But during Black Boys on Mopeds, a song in part about the hypocrisy of politicians, they shut the fuck up.

She was a fansdtc singer, a brave compelling live performer and I urge you to check out her work beyond this lp.

It certainly has its moments. I think it's place here owes a lot to it's story as a lost classic of the sixties, with a good story and Rolling Stone loved a good story and defined "the classic rock" cannon. It helps that the singer was already well-known and from California. The book, this list is based on seems to have lifted that cannon wholesale around 2000 and used that as it's list of 60's lps you must here - then not revised the list of albums before the 90s.

I can see someone into the 60's psyche would want to hear this and track it down. But there's loads of rediscovered gems in recent years and many are better than this.

So yes this is a album to hear before you die. but only if you live a long, long life.

I'm a fan of reggae, so it's disappointing that of the 5 Jamaican reggae records in this list 3 are by Bob Marley.

Marley did a great job bringing the music to UK rock audiences and being the first "World Music" superstar. But most of those who explored the genre further found artists they prefer.

This record is bland, a bit slow paced and Bob isn't the best singer in reggae. There's better version out there of Stop This Train, and Concrete Jungle - seek them out.

Goods songs. But the best - Dolphins and Green Rocky Road have been sung better by others.

The Kraftwek thing - metronomik beats, gradually progressing electronic music and unemotive vocals - is pretty ubiquitous now. You have to remind yourself it wasn’t once and Kraftwerk are a key reason that it’s now commonplace.

Listening again I was struck that despite being innovators they were also amongst the best electronics bands ever.

Music for corporate wankers off to the rugger!

The staccato character study lyrical lines accentuated by a guitar phrase are well done and a unique thing for this band. I think they’d have been terrible prog but punk (via Pub Rock) saved us from that and the record is competent and concise and Mercifully free of self indulgent noodling.

Overall it gets a bit dull and you end up howling at the moon “Kick Out The Jams, Mark Knopfler”.

Obviously this is a classic. It’s the Beatles at their loosest playing with ideas in the studio.

Some of McCartney’s best albums - Wild Life, McCartney II - are him amusing himself in the studio and there’s elements of that here.

Plus you’ve John’s vocals, which are at their Scousest and characterful on my vinyl copy but is lost on subsequent remasters.

There’s a prevailing arguement that this should have been a single album. But what would you leave off Revolution #9? Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da? One of the whimsy animal songs? What else maybe they’d have left off one your faves? Maybe we’d have had to wait for Anthology for Helter Skelter or Happiness is a Warm Gun?

The truth is all these songs deserved release in 1968. Revolution 9 introduced avant garde composition and proto sampling to every home with variable results! While an inferior cover version of Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da went to number 1.

Maybe it could be paired back to a single lp a children’s ep of the animal songs and the two Revolutions pressed up as an extended 12” available only at Yoko shows.

What I think latter day listeners miss is it wasn’t meant to be listened to in one sitting without a break but in four chunks. At their loosest playing very least a listener would need to get up and flip the record between sides but in reality I think they made a brew, went to the loo or played another record in between. It’s a record to be dipped into over a day not an hour and a half.

This is such a great album. I can’t think of an album on the list like it. Maybe the first Specials lp and the Pogues Rum Sodomy and the Lash are it’s spiritual predecessors. Mixture of the children of immigrants processing the music of their parents homelands and combining it with the music of peers.

This is one of the hundred greatest albums ever and arrived unexpectedly because previous Cornershop albums were like an Asian equivalent to the riot grrrl of Huggy Bear.

Cornershop continue to make great records. My recommendation is the single What Does the Hippie Have in His Bag? And the lp England is a Garden.

Very well crafted pop rock.

Pleasant easy listening From a group who can do better.

I think I like this album now more than it was released.

Basically the horrid music you fast forward through during Stuart Maconnie’s Freak Zone.

This is as contrived and fake as any game show boy band. The classic bigwigs at the record company decided what rock needed was a dose of classical music to educate the youth and keep them docile. The result is a mess of unconnected ideas and hideous virtuosity.

Punk must have seemed like a godsend a few years later.

All hard edges removed.

Good album. Dolly’s great but I think she could have done with a Jimmy Webb or Lee Hazelwood or Bobbie Gentry to elevate the arrangements.

The lyrics were written by a divorced Dad who sees his kids once every few months and wants to use this window of of opportunity impart wisdom upon them. But all he can think of is Live Laugh Love.

Vocals are posh bloke puts on estuary accent to appear like a man of the people.

Music almost nonexistent.

I cut the grass while listening to this. The rum tum tum of my elderly petrol lawnmower was the best thing I heard.

Better than everything else I’ve heard by this lot like they’re trying and failing to sound like 00’s losees Athlete. 1 star.

Oi! Gobshite! Shut the fuck up and let us hear the guitar!