Dr Simon Reads...

  One of the triumvirate of early British folk, Pentangle are more jazz-folk than the folk-rock of Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention. Not surprising perhaps since they feature guitar virtuouso Bert Jansch, with drummer Terry Cox often following the tune rather than driving it, in jazz rather than rock fashion. It’s impossible to hear their famous Light Flight without thinking of Dave Brubeck, for example, and their takes on traditional songs such as The Cuckoo (a waltz-like refrain given great lightness with sparse instrumentation) have a slightly loose jazz feel to them as well. Singer Jacqui McShee has a classic high female folk voice, but she is lighter in timbre than Fairport’s Sandy Denny – to me they’re like English versions of Joni Mitchell vs Joan Baez respectively – and this again give Pentangle a more delicate sound compared to Fairport Convention. Jansch’s complex guitar picking is not quite so evident as on his solo album, and is never really given the fore, but i...

  The album kicks off with one the most instantly recognisable riffs in rock – the opening bars to Whole Lotta Love (somewhat marred in its rock cachet for being used as the theme for Top Of The Pops for years). Heartbreaker has a distinctive riff as well, but not as universally known as Whole Lotta Love.   Despite covering a few bluesmen, this is a less overtly bluesy and more rocky album, with only a couple of slower and more melodic tracks (Thank You and Ramble On). The sexual innuendo in the lyrics, which is barely innuendo at all (e.g. The Lemon Song asking to “ squeeze my lemon ‘til the juice runs down my leg ”) has to be another Spinal Tap inspiration (for e.g. Sex Farm), while Page’s nods to Tolkien in Ramble On surely inspired Tap’s Stonehenge. But seriously, if Gollum steals your girl, something is badly wrong with that relationship. The final musical note I had was that Moby Dick features a lengthy John Bonham drum solo which although fine, crosses that line whe...

  Although there have been a few albums I’ve heard before, this one felt like an old friend, being a staple of my student days. And so when the tracks wandered away into the proggy bits, I recalled every little cymbal rustle or flute motif. This is arguably where the ground rules for prog rock got laid down – a mix of rock, jazz, and classical elements that can either be an exciting journey or annoyingly self-indulgent, sometimes both at the same time. The title track is an odyssey of different “verses” done in different styles – haunting flute one moment, sparse steam calliope the next, linked together by the soaring choral explosion of the chorus. Epitaph is similar in some ways, Greg Lake’s voice almost touching Justin Haywood doing Nights In White Satin levels of soaring, before the track devolves into the “movements” Dream and Illusion, both of which are sparse tone poems of fragmentary sounds that wander in and out. Jazz spontaneity and experimentation, but applied with...

  Going (sort of) solo from The Mothers, Zappa’s first venture is an almost entirely instrumental jazz-rock fusion. This may sound like a horrific prospect, but it isn’t, the tracks manage to be different without becoming the unlistenable kind of experimental. Actually, from a jazz perspective, they’re not especially novel, sounding more like an early Miles Davis, or maybe John Coltrane. And although much of the soloing is done on wah-wah guitar (I suspect played through a Leslie speaker rather than a Crybaby pedal), or with some fabulous electric violin from Don “Sugarcane” Harris in Willie The Pimp, there’s also a bit of hard-bop saxophone too, to make a jazz fan feel safe. This sax, the clarinet soloing, and the lush supporting horn section are all one man – Ian Underwood, made possible by Zappa using a (at the time) novel 16-track recording, allowing many more simultaneous overdubs than possible before. The tracks do what jazz does – start with a phrase, go off on a wande...

  After exploring one strand of Englishness in the nostalgic Village Green Preservation Society, the Davies Brothers and Co take a lightly satirical look at the British Empire in a loosely connected set of songs that, if you read the synopsis, was originally going to be a musical broadly inspired by the Davies’ sister’s emigration to Australia. The character Arthur is an everyday suburban man living in an unremarkable suburban house pretentiously called Shangri-La, and the family entertainment is to go Drivin’ (probably the jauntiest track on the album). Meanwhile, his brother died in the War, as told in the bitter yet humorous track Yes Sir No Sir and the not-comic-at-all Mother’s Son. Best known off the album is Victoria, a classic Kinks sounding song that seems like a celebration of Britishness but in context feels more ironic. Australia is a lengthy piece that parodies adverts for moving to Australia (the Ten Pound Poms), and features an unusually long instrumental jam at...

  This is almost a “posthumous” Beatles Album since Lennon left before it was released (but presumably came back to do their last one, Let It Be). But it’s pretty good, probably the most sophisticated in terms of production. Everything sounds more full and rounded than earlier albums, suggesting not only a maturity in songwriting, but also technology in making and recording music. The Moog synth features a bit (in the lengthy and almost prog-rock I Want You for example), there are guitar solos, and even a pretty good drum solo from Ringo during The End. Normally he’s the reliable work horse of the rock drummer pantheon. Not as flamboyant as Ginger Baker or John Paul Jones, not as dextrous as Neil Peart, but he usually does a good job by going unnoticed. So it’s nice to hear him get a bit of limelight. He also has another underwater-themed composition, the optimistic Octopus’s Garden, where all is welcoming and peaceful.   And actually, it’s musically pretty good. Harriso...

  Some more Americana from The Band, continuing the theme of music no longer falling neatly into genre categories. Although “folk/country” is an inevitable label, The Band’s music blends in so much more – pulling in “juke joint” African-American elements, all played by a bunch of mainly Canadians. As usual, Garth Hudson’s keyboards are what give The Band their distinctive   sound,   over and above the rest. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down could have been done, for example,   as a pure Bakersfield country sound, being the lament of a former train driver from the Deep South who has lost his brother and his livelihood to the Civil War. Although Virgil Kane, the narrator, lives in the Confederacy, he doesn’t come across as especially sympathetic to the cause, even while he remains proud to be a Southerner. But the sound is distinctively The Band. As is Up On Cripple Creek, somewhat reminiscent of Little Feat in sound, a little bit funky, a little bit honky-tonk. ...

  Now this, I’d say, is more noteworthy than the last album. Iggy Pop and his pals give us some proto-punk/garage rock, falling somewhere between Velvet Underground and Rolling Stones. The Stooges songs tend to be based around simple repeated riff over which Iggy sings and guitars are soloed. The tone palette isn’t as scratchy and harsh as White Light/White Heat style Velvets, but is more rugged and chunky. Pop’s vocals, meanwhile, mimic Jagger’s tortured pronunciations – a word like “now” becoming “nee-ay-owww”. The opening track 1969 (which isn’t, ironically, on the soundtrack album of that name I keep whanging on about) draws heavily on Not Fade Away, complete with hand claps.  The big single I Wanna Be   Your Dog takes the best bit of Pink Floyd’s Interstellar Overdrive and turns it into the ongoing riff. The use throughout of sleigh bells makes it sound amusingly like a very un-Christmassy Christmas song.   It is, however, very indicative of the Stooges’ sound...

  I’ve been noting for a while that many tracks, or entire albums, are becoming increasingly harder to pin to a particular genre. Not that I like pigeon-holing things too much if I can avoid it, but increasingly the lines between genres are becoming more blurred. So although this album could be classed as “country rock”, it’s not that way throughout. Yes, the track Tombstone Shadow is quite pure blues, while Lodi is pure country, but these serve to highlight the more marginal tracks. Wrote A Song For Everyone is a lighters-aloft slow rock classic, others like Commotion sounds quite rockabilly to me, with a classic walk down the bass between phrases. There are two tracks on here that I know from films – Bad Moon Rising (which now I hear it again is a rockabilly number too) from An American Werewolf In London, and the title track Green River is another from the soundtrack to 1969. Which, for all I keep mentioning it, I don’t actually think I’ve seen, I just knew somebody with the...

  Sandy Denny and Co. bring us some definitive British folk-rock, and I have to admit I’m a sucker for this kind of thing. Fairport Convention bestride the British folk scene like a colossus, surviving multiple changes in personnel and creating the Cropredy Festival, one of the biggest folk gatherings in the UK. I was surprised to learn how short a time Sandy Denny was (a) with the group and (b) alive. Her voice is like an English Joan Baez, very distinctive and gloriously clear. Here the Convention are also joined by fiddler Dave Swarbrick, making it a top line up of folk talent (all that’s needed is a Carthy). In this, their third album, FC are turning more to their roots from having started with covers of American folk. There are some Dylan covers, notably from the (at the time) unpublished Basement Tapes, including Million Dollar Bash and the lengthy ballad of criminal injustice that is Percy’s Song. Si Tu Dois Partir is a French language version of Dylan’s If You Go Away (...

  Another old friend from what feels like an age ago now. Okay, let’s talk long tracks. This album has two, originally a side of the record each. Shh/Peaceful on Side One, and In A Silent Way/It’s About That Time on Side Two. Even more so when streaming, they all blend into one piece which I think improves it. Davis has stripped everything down for this album – gone are the hard-bop styling, this is gossamer thin music with dabs of phrases and super-mellow tunes. Davis brings in Hammond organ and electric piano (played by Chick Corea and one Herbie Hancock (heard of him…)). The bass and drums are still acoustic though, giving the music a fusion sound and very modern, if at times it reminded me of Vince Guaraldi’s work for the Peanuts cartoons. In some ways, since a lot of the more avant-garde psychedelic albums have approached jazz from the direction of rock, here where Davis approaches rock from the direction of jazz it doesn’t sound too unusual by this stage in the 1001 Album...

  I first encountered Drake at some time in the late Nineties when Mark Radcliffe and Marc “Lard” Riley had just moved from their Out On Blue Six radio show to a nightly slot between 10pm and midnight. On quite a few occasions they’d end with a Nick Drake song, including the sublime Cello Song found on this album. Soft voiced with complex guitar arpeggios, Drake’s music draws inevitable comparisons to Bert Jansch and Fred Neil.   It’s use in a film or TV show is shorthand for the creators having great musical taste. Drake used unusual guitar tunings, often allowing him to play his arpeggios open stringed. His untimely death at a young age cut short a potentially great talent and although he was forgotten for a while it’s nice to see him getting gradually more and more of the attention he deserved. As somebody that both craves validation and hates attention I can empathise with him. As well as Cello Song, when The Day is Done is another glorious sound. Of his small discography ...

  I mentioned South park's Cartman last album, now we have Chef. There are just four tracks on this 45 minute album, and you may recall my musings on long tracks generally either being extended jams or added with proggy noise bits. These tracks are jams, although it might be better to call them "grooves", with the Band rolling around simple musical phrases and adding dabs of sound here and there. It’s lengthy soul, and mostly more of the slow variety, very much music for lovin’ to. Smooth as you like, slightly funky, never over-empowering. Again I found I had very little to say about this album, which is not to say that it is bad in any way. So enjoy the shorter entry, and use the time to go and listen to the album yourself.

  After the last album I think we can rely on Elvis to not get too experimental. Which he doesn’t, sticking to blues and a good old-fashioned rock and roll ballad on a couple of tracks, with quite a few country style tracks. The first two tracks, however are more R’n’B in flavour, and it’s easy to imagine fellow Memphis albumeer Dusty Springfield singing them as much as Elvis.  The best known song on here is In The Ghetto. As well as being a favourite for Cartman from South Park, it’s a surprisingly socially conscious track about the trap of poverty, kind of soul but also transcending genre. The reissue also features karaoke favourite Suspicious Minds. Like an old friend we haven’t seen in ages, it’s nice to have Elvis back, and he makes it all sound as effortless as ever. Not the most thrilling album compared to contemporary stuff, apart from In The Ghetto. I noticed in editing that I had very little to say about this album and the next, I suspect I was still stupified by Tro...

  Sweet Baby Jesus. If you’ve been following me through this journey, you’ll know that I’m not averse to a spot of weirdness now and again, but this album makes even Mingus sound sane. Beefheart (Don van Vliet) sings or recites stream of consciousness style nonsense over polyphonic tracks where the guitar screeches through atonal notes and the drums play a polyrhythmic journey. After about 30 minutes of this my brain finally relaxed and it all started to make a strange kind of sense. Actually it’s like a beat poetry performance rather than music, but sometimes the body of quite a good tune emerges. It’s a little bit disappointing that for the hour-plus run time much of it is all the same kind of thing, so what inventiveness there is gets diluted. Some are easier than others – Neon Meat is pretty good, as is Sugar And Spikes (love that subversion of the title too). A few tracks are just Van Vliet himself with no instrumentation, and they sound more like they’re meant to mimic ...

  There’s more to Johnny Cash than playing gigs in prison, surely? But so far that’s what he gets in this list, probably because as an ongoing concept it’s something that he made his own. This particular gig is also recorded by Granada TV from the UK, and at times Cash expresses frustration at the way the film crew dictates affairs on the stage. As with Folsom Prison, there’s a bit of banter with the audience, although Cash sounds a bit more tired and low-key, boosted when June Carter joins him on stage for Darlin’ Companion. But this is also the first outing for A Boy Named Sue, as well as featuring performances of I Walk The Line and Folsom Prison Blues. There’s a track specially written for this concert, San Quentin, which is played twice. When you compare the original album release to some of the re-releases, there was a *lot* of material trimmed from the concert, and you can tell how chopped up the album was, with Cash talking about a new song called A Boy Named Sue before...

  When you combine Dave Crosby of The Byrds (Dimery’s favourite group?), Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield, and Graham Nash from The Hollies (who haven’t appeared here so presumably were more of a singles group than an album group), you get some radio-friendly country/folk/rock that’s super laid-back and mellow; the next iteration of the California sound that will make its apogee in The Eagles. The biggest hit on this album is probably Marrakesh Express, a jaunty, dare I say twee, bimble along the hippie trail that still gets a lot of airplay. Listening to it again, I wondered if Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy was inspired by it to write National Express, taking a song about an exotic journey and turning it into a trip on a budget coach company. Maybe. One of my favourites is the track Wooden Ships, another one from the soundtrack to the film 1969. Laid-back to the point of horizontal, with a spoken word (ish) bit where two former enemy soldiers meet and share purple berr...

  Of all the remaining artists for 1969, this is the only one that I’d never heard of before, although it turns out I have heard him before. Alexander “Skip” Spence was the drummer for Moby Grape, as well as working with Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service. On this album, he does everything – all vocals and instruments are him. What to make of it? What, even, to call it? It’s a little bit folky, a little bit country, all odd. At times Spencer sings in a rich deep voice that calls to mind Fred Neill, other times in a thin voice like a dying man. Which, in some ways, he was. Like Syd Barrett’s solo work, this is  outsider art from a man who is clearly not mentally in a good place, or at the very least is in a period of lucidity amidst other troubles. Not long before recording this album, for example, Spence had been hospitalised after chasing the other members of Moby Grape with an axe while spaced on LSD. Spence’s singing is often off-key and troubled, but...

  Here we go with arguably the first “rock opera”, although SF Sorrow by the Pretty Things makes some claim to this. Where The Who differ from the Pretty Things, however, is that Tommy is more deliberately operatic in nature, whereas SF Sorrow may have an over-arching biographical story, but it is comprised of songs that each fundamentally stand on their own. In some ways, Pink Floyd’s The Wall will build on both of these traditions – while it tells the story of the unhappy childhood, unhappy marriage, and unhappy success of its protagonist, each track more or less stands alone. With Tommy, however, many of the tracks are linking refrains, and returns to leitmotifs that run throughout the album. Listening to the whole thing, it’s unsurprising that Pinball Wizard is the only single from it, since it’s also the most entire and self-contained song. The plot starts with the apparent death of Captain Walker in the Great War, leaving his widow to raise his infant son Tommy alone (The...