Galeote: Proto-Punk

Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta Proto-Punk. Mostrar todas las entradas

domingo, 15 de mayo de 2011

Velvet Underground - 1968 - White Light / White Heat

The world of pop music was hardly ready for The Velvet Underground's first album when it appeared in the spring of 1967, but while The Velvet Underground and Nico sounded like an open challenge to conventional notions of what rock music could sound like (or what it could discuss), 1968's White Light/White Heat was a no-holds-barred frontal assault on cultural and aesthetic propriety. Recorded without the input of either Nico or Andy Warhol, White Light/White Heat was the purest and rawest document of the key Velvets lineup of Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker, capturing the group at their toughest and most abrasive. The album opens with an open and enthusiastic endorsement of amphetamines (startling even from this group of noted drug enthusiasts), and side one continues with an amusing shaggy-dog story set to a slab of lurching mutant R&B ("The Gift"), a perverse variation on an old folktale ("Lady Godiva's Operation"), and the album's sole "pretty" song, the mildly disquieting "Here She Comes Now." While side one was a good bit darker in tone than the Velvets' first album, side two was where they truly threw down the gauntlet with the manic, free-jazz implosion of "I Heard Her Call My Name" (featuring Reed's guitar work at its most gloriously fractured), and the epic noise jam "Sister Ray," 17 minutes of sex, drugs, violence, and other non-wholesome fun with the loudest rock group in the history of Western Civilization as the house band. White Light/White Heat is easily the least accessible of The Velvet Underground's studio albums, but anyone wanting to hear their guitar-mauling tribal frenzy straight with no chaser will love it, and those benighted souls who think of the Velvets as some sort of folk-rock band are advised to crank their stereo up to ten and give side two a spin.

1 White Light/White Heat Reed 2:47
2 The Gift Cale, Morrison, Reed, Tucker 8:19
3 Lady Godiva's Operation Reed 4:56
4 Here She Comes Now Cale, Morrison, Reed, Tucker, Tucker 2:04
5 I Heard Her Call My Name Reed 4:38
6 Sister Ray Cale, Morrison, Reed, Tucker, Tucker 17:27

¡Aquí!

viernes, 11 de septiembre de 2009

Bowie, David - 1973 - Aladdin Sane (30th Anniversary Edition)

Ziggy Stardust wrote the blueprint for David Bowie's hard-rocking glam, and Aladdin Sane essentially follows the pattern, for both better and worse. A lighter affair than Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane is actually a stranger album than its predecessor, buoyed by bizarre lounge-jazz flourishes from pianist Mick Garson and a handful of winding, vaguely experimental songs. Bowie abandons his futuristic obsessions to concentrate on the detached cool of New York and London hipsters, as on the compressed rockers "Watch That Man," "Cracked Actor," and "The Jean Genie." Bowie follows the hard stuff with the jazzy, dissonant sprawls of "Lady Grinning Soul," "Aladdin Sane," and "Time," all of which manage to be both campy and avant-garde simultaneously, while the sweepingly cinematic "Drive-In Saturday" is a soaring fusion of sci-fi doo wop and melodramatic teenage glam. He lets his paranoia slip through in the clenched rhythms of "Panic in Detroit," as well as on his oddly clueless cover of "Let's Spend the Night Together." For all the pleasures on Aladdin Sane, there's no distinctive sound or theme to make the album cohesive; it's Bowie riding the wake of Ziggy Stardust, which means there's a wealth of classic material here, but not enough focus to make the album itself a classic.

1	Watch That Man	Bowie	4:30
2	Aladdin Sane (1913-1938-197?)	Bowie	5:07
3	Drive-In Saturday	Bowie	4:36
4	Panic in Detroit	Bowie	4:27
5	Cracked Actor	Bowie	3:01
6	Time	Bowie	5:14
7	The Prettiest Star	Bowie	3:31
8	Let's Spend the Night Together	Jagger, Richards	3:10
9	The Jean Genie	Bowie	4:06
10	Lady Grinning Soul	Bowie	3:52
11	John, I'm Only Dancing [Sax Version]	Bowie	2:45
12	The Jean Genie [Original Single Mix]	Bowie	4:07
13	Time [Single Edit]	Bowie	3:43
14	All the Young Dudes	Bowie	4:11
15	Changes [live]	Bowie	3:20
16	The Supermen [live]	Bowie	2:42
17	Life on Mars? [live/#]	Bowie	3:25
18	John, I'm Only Dancing [live]	Bowie	2:40
19	The Jean Genie [live]	Bowie	4:10
20	Drive-In Saturday [live/#]	Bowie	4:53

¡Aquí!

miércoles, 19 de agosto de 2009

Modern Lovers - 1976 - The Modern Lovers

Compiled of demos the band recorded with John Cale in 1973, The Modern Lovers is one of the great proto-punk albums of all time, capturing an angst-ridden adolescent geekiness which is married to a stripped-down, minimalistic rock & roll derived from the art punk of the Velvet Underground. While the sound is in debt to the primal three-chord pounding of early Velvet Underground, the attitude of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers is a million miles away from Lou Reed's jaded urban nightmares. As he says in the classic two-chord anthem "Roadrunner," Richman is in love with the modern world and rock & roll. He's still a teenager at heart, which means he's not only in love with girls he can't have, but also radios, suburbs, and fast food, and it also means he'll crack jokes like "Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole...not like you." "Pablo Picasso" is the classic sneer, but "She Cracked" and "I'm Straight" are just as nasty, made all the more edgy by the Modern Lovers' amateurish, minimalist drive. But beneath his adolescent posturing, Richman is also nakedly emotional, pleading for a lover on "Someone I Care About" and "Girl Friend," or romanticizing the future on "Dignified and Old." That combination of musical simplicity, driving rock & roll, and gawky emotional confessions makes The Modern Lovers one of the most startling proto-punk records -- it strips rock & roll to its core and establishes the rock tradition of the geeky, awkward social outcast venting his frustrations. More importantly, the music is just as raw and exciting now as when it was recorded in 1973, or when it was belatedly released in 1976.