Dabbling on 1001 Albums

One blog that I regularly visit is Francisco Silva’s 1001 Albums. Sort of a companion blog for the book entitled 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, the intrepid music critic sets out to listen to all 1001 and review them individually. And as of today, three years running, he has heard 887 albums and wrote about them. Quite an impressive feat for a task so formidable, if I may say so myself.

Anyway, last week I also got my own 1001 Albums book. And then after reading it for a short while, I said to myself, “I think I might as well listen to all 1001 albums too” (so far I’ve only heard of 100+; shamed that I am to admit that). Thus a new endeavor began: I will comment on all 1001 albums from this point onward. Of course, this nightdreamer.i.ph blog, aside from chronicling my “history” with all the selections, remains a repository for all other stuff I write about – videogames, movies, my life, random crap. I will just add more music to the mix. Oh, and you can read the catalog of all 1001 albums here (it’s a .xls file, so use appropriate software).

The format I’m using will be different from Silva, because I don’t want to look like I’m copying his style.

1. Four or five albums in one post, once a week.

2. Albums will be selected randomly, by use of the random generator from random.org (which is superb at what it does).

I don’t assume to be anywhere as educated as your average music critic, so feel free to tell me more about the artists that I mention (their backgrounds, inspirations, influences, musical styles, etc).

So without further delay, my inaugural 1001 albums post. All photos taken from Amazon.com. 

1. War – The World is A Ghetto

The title reads like one of those sociopolitical albums of the 70s – the same decade this album got made – but it’s far from being full of protests, for better or worse. Instead, it’s a celebration of everything that’s fun with funk –the goofy lyrics, the emphasis on percussions, and the meanderings. Those familiar with Sly and the Family Stone can easily think of War as how Sly’s songs would sound like if they were infused with some jazz, afro-cuban and reggae. This also means that War’s music is more complicated-sounding and, as a result, has fewer hooks, which make it less memorable than Sly and the Family Stone. I’d take Sly to War any day, but really, this album is pretty good. Wonderful cover art too.

2. Ms Dynamite – A Little Deeper

Despite being a moderate fan of R&B, I’ve never gotten to love The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill despite the media constantly heralding it as a masterpiece. Since that album is part of the 1001, I will eventually give it another listen, so there’s a small chance that my opinion of it might change, but as of now I find it overall uneven. Most of the tracks where Lauryn sings are okay, but I’m not a big fan of her rapping.

Lauryn Hill has gone crazy after The Miseducation…, disappearing from the music industry for a while, and when she came back with an Unplugged album, reactions were mixed at best. Fans of Lauryn Hill frustrated by her turn to acoustic over-indulgence could, thankfully, seek solace from Miss Dynamite. She is pretty much a Lauryn Hill sound-alike from UK, minus the rapping. Her debut album, A Little Deeper has the angry criticisms about how romantic relationships are abused by men, and more of the same soulful singing that made Miseducation… a massive hit. Still not a Miseducation fan and A Little Deeper isn’t my favorite R&B album either, but this is good stuff nonetheless.

(As I can’t embed videos of Miss Dynamite’s “It Takes More”, which is a hit single from this album, just head over here to hear it.)

3. Radiohead – OK Computer

This confession is going to out me as very ignorant when it comes to certain genres of music, but for the longest time I’ve been oblivious to Radiohead’s career, and the only single that I knew was made by them is Creep. I can already hear people crying “madness!” over this, and I make no excuses: missing out on Radiohead is an incredibly awful oversight. This ignorance is one thing that motivated me to go through  catalog of 1001 (still trying to forget that Limp Bizkit is in it too. Ugh!).

Thanks to the random generator I jumped into the middle of Radiohead’s discography instead of taking them in chronologically, so the part where this album marks a turning point of their career or has become their new landmark is lost to me. That aside, I can now imagine myself liking Radiohead more. The best way I can describe their songs here is that they rely more on creating landscapes or textures of sounds (or set “moods”) than on melodic hooks. Subtle stuff, for sure; I don’t want all rock music to beat me over the head repeatedly with anthemic guitar solos and wailings anyway. The lyrics are top quality stuff too, if a tad on the pretentious side. My favorite track here is “Paranoid Android”.

4. Steely Dan – Pretzel Logic

From the moment I heard the first song “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” I instantly became a fan. Steely Dan is, of course, a rock duo that, according to music critics, “doesn’t like rock all that much”, so they perform their songs with a tone of irony. How they’re ironic tends to be a subject that highbrow armchair music critics each with a glass of martini in their hands indulge in for 50 hours – some of them actually said “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” is about drugs. Of course Steely Dan rejected the idea, saying it’s just a love letter written for their high school crush. Oops, failure in over-analysis!

Anyway, their boring discussions aside, what I dig about Steely Dan is their obvious leanings on jazz (always a plus, as jazz is, of course, my favorite genre). The lyrics, like those from the song “Pretzel Logic”, are based on blues poetry that dominated the era of The Great Depression, if wryly written. Steely Dan’s music reminds us that rock musicians don’t always have to take themselves so seriously, and that it’s fine to rollick like people did in the ragtime days of Art Tatum (since when did they have to take off the “roll” in the rock n’ roll?). Get it and just live with it night by night.