This debut LP laid down a beat that courses through the veins of rock 'n' roll to this very day. Steve Sutherland pays tribute as he hears the 180g reissue on Sundazed
What's the baddest record ever made? I don't mean baddest as in worst. I mean baddest as in bad-ass, brimming with threat and braggadocio. A few candidates immediately spring to mind. Honey Boy Martin's 'Dreader Than Dread' threatens to shank you and send you to the graveyard. Johnny Cash's 'The Man In Black' is a pretty broody dude. Dr John The Night Tripper's 'I Walk On Gilded Splinters' boasts destructive powers of magic malignancy.
Cobbled together by Malcolm McLaren to bring the 'Burundi beat' to the masses, this New Wave group made a brief but memorable impression on Steve Sutherland
Anyone remember SFX? Anyone? No? Nobody? Not to worry. It didn't live that long. SFX was a music magazine launched in November 1981, and which died on the vine in the Summer of '82. It was edited by ex-NME writer Max Bell and the twist was that all the content was on a cassette tape, not printed on paper. Billed as 'The only music magazine on C-60', there were about 19 issues in all, sold in the shops mounted on cardboard.
It was a release that had all the pundits scratching their heads for how best to describe it. Steve Sutherland sits transfixed like Alice in Wonderland by this 180g reissue
Let's get this party started with the tree surgeon. Yup, the tree surgeon. To be strictly accurate, $250's worth of tree surgeon because that's how much Don Van Vliet charged Straight, his record company, for the services of an arboriculturalist's services during the recording of the album we're here to celebrate.
Boasting three of his most cherished songs, this LP would put Stevens in the vanguard of the '70s singer-songwriter movement. Steve Sutherland hears the 180g reissue
In Malibu, it seems, miracles really do happen. 'I was an Englishman. I didn't know it wasn't wise to go out at that time of day and take a swim, so I did. I decided to turn back and head for shore and at that point I realised, "I'm fighting the Pacific". There was no way I was going to win. There was no-one on this earth who could help me so I did the most instinctive thing... I called out to God and said, "God, if you save me, I'll work for you", and in that moment a wave came from behind me and pushed me forward. He saved me... The tide somehow had changed and I was able to get back to land.'
Packed with tracks that would become staples of rock radio, this 1970 LP from Creedence Clearwater Revival is now released on 180g vinyl. Steve Sutherland listens...
Let's talk 'covers'. Surely everyone knows the rule by now: a cover version is only acceptable if it takes the original and does something different with it, which at least equals or at best improves it. There. It's not exactly rocket science is it? So how come there are still so very few classic cover versions after all these many years?
It was the 1962 live album that launched the Surfin' genre. Listening to the 180g reissue, Steve Sutherland still wishes the guy on the sleeve was him
Every now and then, it's OK to be wrong. Not often, I grant you, but on occasion a long-held misbelief can be way better than the actual fact. That lyric you misheard years ago maybe, a phrase which has informed your enjoyment of a particular song – until you discover that the words and meaning were something different all along. Sometimes the reality can ruin the thereafter. And it's better to continue with your fantasy.
Steve Sutherland listens again to the debut LP that catapulted a teenage singer to stardom as over half a century later the album is re-released on 180g vinyl
Dylan digs Donovan!' This was the headline on the front cover of British weekly Melody Maker, on the 8th of May 1965. It wasn't true of course – not remotely so.
The band leader was an unusual but inspired choice for the soundtrack of Otto Preminger's courtroom drama, says Steve Sutherland, as he considers the 180g reissue
Whether life was imitating art or vice versa is a moot point, but whichever way you look at it Joseph Nye Welch was one extraordinary geezer. A partner in a Boston law firm called Hale and Dorr, on the 9th of June 1954 he found himself in court challenging Senator McCarthy to provide 'before sundown' the list of 130 Communists posing a so-called subversive threat in defence plants across the US.
Take one pale Texan and a band of top talent and you have an LP ready to rock the charts. Steve Sutherland assesses a 1972 album destined for reissue on 180g vinyl
Say what you like about Quentin Tarantino, but one thing's for sure: the man's got great taste in movies. Listed among his favourites are the obvious (Apocalypse Now, Fight Club), the not so well known but fantastic (Takashi Miike's Audition, Bong Joon-ho's The Host) and one that especially concerns us here, Richard Linklater's Dazed And Confused.
Stan botches his store raid and is briefly locked away. Steve Sutherland listens to the Bossa Nova sax maestro as this 1964 Verve album is reissued on 180g vinyl
Stan Getz may have been good at many things in 1954 but robbery sure wasn't one of them. Strung out on smack and desperate for a fix, the hot young jazz saxophonist found himself eight days into a tour, standing outside a drugstore in Seattle.
Steve Sutherland savours the thrillingly nutty flavours of this ripe 11-track offering from the multimonikered Aussie musician, as the album is reissued on 180g vinyl
Back in the 1950s, that perpetual scamp and eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell (then well into his 80s) created an analogy to deal with the concept of faith in the existence of God. He said that if he were to assert, without offering any evidence whatsoever, that a teapot – too small to be seen by telescopes – orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, he could not expect anyone to believe him solely because it could not be proven wrong. 'I think,' he concluded, 'the Christian God just as unlikely'.
Steve Sutherland tells how the group's name resulted from a chance find in a reference book and highlights hidden subtleties in this 1971 live set, now on 180g vinyl
Ever heard of bibliomancy? No? Read on… Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was this chap. Let's call him Jerome. Jerome is travelling down a country road when he comes upon a crowd of blokes kicking a corpse and creating a hullabaloo. Our hero stops and he's told the deceased had snuffed it without paying a number of debts he owed to some in the assembled crowd, so there's no way they're going to stump up for a grave-digger to bury him.
Steve Sutherland recalls a riotous night at the Tacoma Dome, resolved into a thrilling musical event, as the group's 1984 compilation album makes its vinyl debut
The cop to our left is on his radio, talking to back-up: 'I thought Vietnam was bad – you should see the casualty room. They're piled up in there. Piled up man!'
Four years after their electrifying debut, Axl, Slash and co returned with not one, but two double albums – and it was all downhill from there, says Steve Sutherland
Back in the late 1960s there was a band hailing from San Francisco called Moby Grape. They had five talented members who could all sing, play and compose to an incredibly high standard incorporating pop, rock, country and blues styles. They looked pretty cool too, with a perfectly contemporary anti-authoritarian attitude that saw one of their number flipping a middle finger against the American flag on the cover of their self-titled debut LP in 1967 – naughtiness that was airbrushed out by their spooked record company.
The 1970 album by the lads from Ladbroke Grove was edited from 'live in the studio' takes. Steve Sutherland listens to a 180g vinyl reissue of their space rock debut
Let us not concern ourselves with debating the greatest album ever made. Or the greatest single, for that matter. Because, let's face it, chances are we won't reach any kind of consensus and most likely we'll be here all day arguing about it.