Attention Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, and Dan Fogelberg: lock up your slick mid/late ’70s production values, because The Kinks are gonna ape the hell outta them. Well by 1976, RCA had just about had it with The Kinks: six albums of diminishing returns, both commercially and critically, and several outright flops. Once the contract was…
So their previous album The Kinks Present: A Soap Opera represented The Kinks at their absolute lousiest. Crappy album, crappy critical reception, crappy sales. If the previous two albums — the ambitious, sometimes entertaining but ultimately unsatisfactory Preservation Act I and Preservation Act II — didn’t drive away most of their 60s fans, Soap Opera…
Wait! One last bit! I have never really shared my Playlists before, but I figure I might as well include the tracks I listened to last weekend during the Disneyland 10K and Half Marathon. I have a pool of songs on my Android and basically set them to Shuffle. It’s a weird selection of tunes…
The film was a disaster, but the soundtrack album consisting of re-recordings of Beatles and Wings tunes and a few new tracks definitely has its moments.
Yet another trip down The Beatles and their American LP mystery trip… and yes, this one takes a bit of context. So we’re now in the late 1960s. After the release of the seminal 1966 Beatles album Revolver, the band has decided to assert more control over their music, business ventures, touring (i.e. ceasing touring entirely),…
Well, the Preservation project failed. A noble effort, maybe, but a total freakin’ mess by any commercial, critic, or artistic standards. At least Ray got all that “theatrical presentation” stuff out of his system, right? Well, Ray’s not here right now. In his place is some whackadoo Starmaker dope who conceived and wrote the worst Kinks…
So here we are in late 1965, and The Kinks have effectively been banned from performing the US, reportedly due to onstage fights and antics and what-not. But ever since the release of their previous LP Kinda Kinks, the band had remained quite active. Aside from constant touring and recording, they managed to release the…
The Beatles. aka “The White Album”. My God. Where do I even begin with this record? First off, an admission of sorts: I am a huge sucker when it comes to big, bombastic, self-indulgent classic albums. Whenever the artist or band has decided to take control of their music and explore their creative boundaries, despite the…
A Hard Day’s Night is a landmark album for the Fab Four. Ostensibly it was their first “soundtrack album”, featuring seven songs from their debut film of the same name (or eight, depending on how you look at it). More importantly, it was the first Beatles album that consisted entirely of original songs from the…
Creatures Of The Night is one of the great ’80s hard rock albums. And easily one of the best Kiss records. On a personal note, Creatures Of The Night is a big nostalgic favorite. Even though I was only 11 when it came out in 1982, I had already zoned out of Kiss after Dynasty in ’79.…