Honky Chateau finds Elton John tentatively leaving his singer/songwriter ways behind in favor of a more straightforward rock approach, one infused at times with funky Southern swagger ("Honky Cat," "Susie"), at others with a romantic nostalgia suggesting Coney Island or Asbury Park ("Amy," "Hercules"); in any case, the American pop idiom was always John's meal ticket, and he mined it effortlessly on this, his fifth release. I would be ignoring the elephant in the room, of course, were I not to mention that many of the songs on this record were ostensibly penned, as their titles would suggest, about women; while it's easy to forget that there was a time when Elton wasn't the outest gay man in contemporary music this side of Holly Johnson, his odes to the fairer sex, however tenuous their sincerity may have been, still make for some great listening.
#356, Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain: This record grew out of a project between Davis and composer Gil Evans to record the second movement of Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez; the resulting elaboration explored the folk music of early to mid-century Spain, and won Davis and Evans a Grammy for Best Original Jazz Composition in 1961. And it's a great fuckin' record, to boot...
#355, The Rolling Stones' Between the Buttons: "Let's Spend the Night Together," "Ruby Tuesday" and "Miss Amanda Jones" notwithstanding, 1967's Between the Buttons is not the Stones' best work... Exile on Main Street it ain't. The record finds the Stones playing catch-up with the Beatles, which they would, arguably, eventually do with Their Satanic Majestys Request later that year. In Jagger's own words, though, this one is "more or less rubbish."
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