#339: Tom Waits' The Heart of Saturday Night:

Tom Waits in 1974 was sort of the yin to Billy Joel's yang. Both were formed in roughly the same sort of East-coast, working class, boozy balladeer mold, and while Joel was the kid with a bright future, fighting his way off of Long Island, Waits, the self-styled prematurely old man, was a troubadour from the tough side of the tracks; any threadbare skid-row saloon or flophouse with an out of tune upright in the corner was good enough for him, and there he would stay. While it seemed, for a moment, that there might be as many similarities as differences between the two, their careers would diverge predictably enough, Joel going on to create ever-more radio friendly unit shifters, Waits patiently sculpting his voice with whiskey and cigarettes, content to plumb the dark corners of the America Joel had left behind for his not-ready-for-prime-time characters...

Saturday Night finds Waits at perhaps his most accessible, and would listen like a collection of old standards, but for the fact that Waits is the sort of fellow who writes the standards... "New Coat of Paint" opens the record with a decidedly sleazy optimism, while "San Diego Serenade" portrays the aftermath in all too familiar and ugly colors. From these two points of reference, Waits unfolds his tales onto the streets of his imagined America, in all of its seamy, smoky, neon-shrouded glory and ignominy... "Shiver Me Timbers" and "Please Call Me, Baby" relate parallel accounts of abandonment, while "Diamonds on my Windshield" attempts to wash those sins away in a stream-of-consciousness cross-country meander, a sort of ode to a forgotten, and perhaps un-earned, Beatnik legacy. From here, it's all pretty much a come-and-go-as-you-please complaint desk of hope and regret, from the carefree "Fumblin' with the Blues" to the lovely and gratifying "Drunk on the Moon," right up until the final moment, in which we find neither closure nor redemption, just a solitary sailor, reaching into the pocket of his peacoat and spending the facts of his life, like small change, on a stranger. Which is, of course, the best any of us can hope for. And Brenda and Eddy notwithstanding, it beats the hell out of any scene from any Italian restaurant... So it goes.

#337, Jethro Tull's Aqualung: These guys came along well before my time, and all I've ever really known about them are two things: First, that they were much maligned for introducing the flute into rock music (I'm pretty sure this had been done before, by The Mamas and the Papas, Hawkwind, Moody Blues, Canned Heat, et al), and second, that they knocked the first band I ever saw live, Metallica, out of the running for the first Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Award at the Grammys in 1988 (which is, by any measure, fucking ridiculous). So... they're the old guys with the flute that beat my thrash-metal heroes at the Grammys. That's *all* I knew about Jethro Tull going into this. Luckily for them, I'm possessed of a generous nature. This is actually a pretty good record. I recognized the first six notes of the title track, of course, as anyone would (though I'd ascribed these six notes to Iron Butterfly or Deep Purple or some other band I'd never paid any attention to), but what followed that was a pleasant surprise. Released just a few months after I was conceived, Aqualung is, while not a concept album per se, an examination of the hypocrisy of religion, and finds the band expanding beyond the largely hard-blues sound they'd previously cultivated. Standouts for me are "Cross Eyed Mary," the astounding "Hymn 43" (said to have influenced Iron Maiden) and "Locomotive Breath."

#338, Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills: Great stuff from Big Brother and the Holding Company here. Much is made of Janis Joplin, and great as she was, she surely overshadowed any backing band she ever worked with, and it would seem fitting to give some overdue credit to Peter Albin, Sam Andrew, James Gurley and David Getz. Great job, guys! "Piece of my Heart" is probably my favorite track on this one.

#340: Black Flag's Damaged

It's easy to forget that you can cram three verses and three choruses into just over thirty seconds, or that it was once possible to put fifteen songs onto a single LP... While Damaged doesn't hold up quite as well as some of Black Flag's subsequent releases (My War and In My Head come to mind, though it should be said that "Gimme Gimme Gimme," "Room 13" and "Life of Pain" do give some glimpse into the band's future), it's a classic nonetheless, if only for the fact that it's their debut full-length, and that it marks the beginning of the Rollins era (lest we forget prior singers Keith Morris, of Circle Jerks fame, Ron Reyes and Dez Cadena). The real accomplishment of Damaged, though, was to put the final nail into the coffin of Southern California's musical legacy of carefree innocence... At long last, gone were Don Henley and his God-forsaken Eagles, the Beach Boys and Fleetwood Mac; the road was thus paved for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction and No Doubt. Was it a Faustian bargain? Perhaps. You be the judge...

#341, Moby's Play: Genius. An absolute delight of an album. Unfortunately, my dog hates the thing; he's been chasing his tail the whole time I've been playing it, especially during "Porcelain," "Natural Blues" and "Everloving"...

#342, Depeche Mode's Violator: This one sort of passed me by altogether, all those years ago. My favorite Depeche Mode period was A Broken Frame through Some Great Reward. After that, I just sort of lost touch until I noticed, a few years later, that this little cult band I'd listened to were suddenly, like, huge or something. Violator does a nice enough job of bridging the gap between the two eras, but it doesn't quite equal either, and ultimately falls a bit flat.

#345: Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense

This was a big record for me in my musically-formative years. Of course, the arty, high-culture-of-rock-and-roll aspect of it was important, in a Sonic Youth kind of way, but it was David Byrne's mix of genres and influences that really left a mark. The undercurrents of this record gave me an exposure to the funk, soul and world music I'd been ignoring throughout my early teens, but more importantly, brought me back around to pop. Not long after discovering this record, I was soon to re-examine mid '70s Billy Joel and early '80s John Cougar, which brought me out of the metal and punk rut I'd been stuck in (I was soon to get into a long Grateful Dead/Allman Brothers/Widespread Panic rut, of course, but that's another tale). There cannot, it must be said, be a more accessible and danceable track to come out of the No-Wave scene than "Once In a Lifetime"...

#343, Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell: Meat Loaf is one of those artists that's indelibly imprinted on the psyche of anybody who grew up in Michigan in the '70s and '80s (he lived in Freeland for a time). It really doesn't matter if you like his music or not; like Bob Seger, Mitch Ryder or the Nuge, he's as big a part of you as your parents, your friends or your favorite high school teacher. "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" evokes many things for many people in many places, no doubt, but for Michiganders, it's a re-visiting of an often joyous, and often challenging, Rust Belt matriculation.

#344, Lou Reed's Berlin: This one was a bit of a departure for Reed, both in terms of concept and instrumentation. Predictably enough, it wasn't well received at the time of its release (and, to be honest, it took me a while to warm up to it as well). But subsequent listens reveal it to be a competent and ambitious record, if not one Reed's audience might've expected. 34 years later, Reed toured the record with a 30-piece band, which was filmed by Julian Schnabel (you can check out a clip of that here).

#346: De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising

A bit heavy on production tricks and jokey affectations for my taste... I was always somewhat partial to the more serious musical aspirations of contemporaries Tribe, Guru, Planets and the like. But I can appreciate the whimsy of this record, particularly in light of the Gangsta vibe of the day (though I love that stuff as well). Standouts on this record for me are "The Magic Number," "Eye Know," "Plug Tunin'" and "This Is a Recording."

#347, Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn: My words can't even begin to do justice to this, Syd Barrett's masterpiece. A touchstone of Sixties psychedelia, it left its indelible mark on nearly everything that would come after it, from the Grateful Dead right on up to VoiVod... Simply astounding.

#348, Muddy Waters' At Newport 1960: A great set from Muddy, to be sure, and irrespective of history, that would be praise enough. But in this day and age, it's all too easy to forget that recordings such as this are more than the sum of their parts; in the wake of the Donna Reed era, a blues set of this caliber was nothing short of revolutionary, and this one fueled the spirit of the Woodstock generation. So tip your hat and raise a toast to the master...

#351: Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms

Like many of my vintage, I would imagine, what I remember most about this record from the time it was current is "Money for Nothing." Which, of course, now sounds the most dated of the record's tracks (who "installs microwave ovens" or "moves color TVs" these days, or for that matter, writes the word "faggot" into a pop song, no matter how ironic the intent?). "So Far Away" and "Walk of Life" are the standouts on this record, yet for whatever reason I missed them at the time, and have since associated these songs with the Straits' earlier years; go figure. The rest of the record, at turns, hides behind a maudlin curtain of soft rock ("Your Latest Trick" and "Why Worry"), while at others showcases the diversity of Knopfler's musical sensibilities, as well as his sheer muscle as a songwriter ("Ride Across the River" and "The Man's Too Strong"). A mixed bag to be sure, but this is what I've always loved about Knopfler: his unpredictability, rather than his consistency.

#350, Niel Young & Crazy Horse's Rust Never Sleeps: Neil Young paints the experience of Americana (or more accurately, North Americana) in all of its colors, with an admirably broad brush at that. Yet he's always seemed like a lake I could never really jump into, as though there's something there that I can't quite wrap my head around; there are moments, though, "Pocahontas" and "Powderfinger" among them. I may well get around to understanding Neil someday... Or perhaps I'm just more of a Springsteen guy.

#349, The Yardbirds' Roger the Engineer: More great stuff from the Yardbirds. This one finds them acknowledging their blues revival roots, while moving into the edgier psychedelic territory of the late '60s. Not surprisingly, it was their first record without Eric Clapton...

#353: The Yardbirds' Having a Rave Up with the Yardbirds

I've never been all that into the early British Invasion stuff, and I could never quite wrap my mind around the appeal of Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton (heresy, yes, I know), but it's always fun to go back and listen to what scared the shit out of parents in the mid-sixties... Honestly, I'm a bit surprised at how impressed I am with this one. Who can deny the perfection of "Heart Full of Soul," with its textbook opening riff? Or the dirty blues stomp of "Smokestack Lightning"? And of course, it must be said that a range of bands as diverse as Aerosmith and The Dirtbombs owe their meal ticket to "The Train Kept A-Rollin"... Of course, none of these songs were penned by any of the Yardbirds themselves, but their contribution to rock as, at the very least, curators of the blues is no less the diminished.

#352, Billy Joel's 52nd Street: An appropriately eclectic follow up to what I would consider Joel's best work, The Stranger. Producer Phil Ramone brought a jazz flavor to much of this record, most notably on the Becker/Fagen-esque "Zanzibar." "Honesty" and "Until the Night" showcase Joel's balladeering skills, while "Big Shot" chronicles the cocaine-fueled zeitgeist of the era. "Stiletto" infuses a curiously intriguing mix of funk and boogie-woogie into Joel's pop vernacular, and for my money is the best track on the record. Like its predecessor, 52nd Street won Joel two Grammys.

#354, Randy Newman's 12 Songs: Everybody covers Randy Newman's songs, but nobody seems to listen to them, and that's a shame. Newman is an American treasure. Do yourself a favor and give this one a spin, that's all I'm gonna say...

#357: Elton John's Honky Chateau

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."