IN THE FOLLOWING SLIDE SHOW, you will find a bunch of LPs that I’ve picked out of my collection that I have been inclined to listen to of late. There’s rock, classical, modern, folk, jazz, blues, R&B, gospel, motown, country, country rock, Latin, tango and more.
I have had many of these LPs for a very long time. Some have a special meaning for me. Maybe they will blow your mind as well (there, I just dated myself). If you don’t see anything you like here – reggae, ska, calypso, klezmer, gamelan, zydeco, cajun, country-western, bluegrass, Andean flutes, raga, santur, hip hop, whatever – you will find that there are more where these came from if you come back in a little while to see what else shows up. You may also simply ask if I have something or other: I do have things in my collection for the sole reason that they are crowd-pleasers.
To save time and to get this thing up and running as quickly as possible, I surfed the net for the commentary that accompanies each LP in this slide show, a lot of it coming from All Music, made changes as needed, and then wrote myself what couldn’t be found quickly.
THE DOORS
THE DOORS
1967
One of the best first-time outings in rock history, introducing the band’s fusion of acid rock, blues, classical, jazz, and poetry, often seething with subversive menace. “Light My Fire” was the cut that topped the charts and established the group as stars, but the rest of the album is even more impressive. Morrison was a fan of Bertolt Brecht, and pulled “Alabama Song” from the Brecht/Weill opera “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny”, an unusual gesture from low to hi at the time. The 11-minute Oedipal drama “The End” was a haunting cap to an album whose nonstop dynamic tension would never be equaled by the group again, let alone bettered.
BERTOLT BRECHT & CURT WEILL
GISELA MAY
DIE SIEBEN TODSUNDEN DER KLEINBERGER
FIRST PERFORMED 1933
RECORDING 1966
Jim Morrison of The Doors was first and foremost a poet, and one that he admired greatly was Bertolt Brecht, whose “Alabama Song” is given a raunchy, cabaret treatment on the Doors 1st album. This recording of “The Seven Deadly Sins of Small-time Citizens” – a ballet that Brecht wrote with Kurt Weill – came out the year before the Doors first LP, and the sense of sardonic urgency found here had an influence on the entire band. Echoes of “Sins” can be also be heard in Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde as well. Weill – the first classical composer to reject high for low – is a model of crossover before the concept became politically correct.
MUDDY WATERS | THE ROLLING STONES
LIVE AT THE CHECKERBOARD LOUNGE, CHICAGO
1981
In the middle of their huge American tour, the Rolling Stones arrived in Chicago to play 3 nights at the Rosemont Horizon. Long influenced by the Chicago blues, the band paid a “surprise” visit to Muddy Waters’ club The Checkerboard Lounge to see the master himself. It didn’t take long before Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Ian Stewart were joining in on stage. Urban legends claim that “fortunately for posterity”, “folks” present “happened” to record the goings on, but the superb sound quality is a dead giveaway to the careful planning that went into this event.
