Category Archives: Great albums

Beatles, George Harrison, Great albums, John lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr

August 5: The Beatles released “Revolver” in 1966

The-Beatles-Revolver

 

“twice as good and four times as startling as Rubber Soul, with sound effects, Oriental drones, jazz bands, transcendentalist lyrics, all kinds of rhythmic and harmonic surprises, and a filter that made John Lennon sound like God singing through a foghorn.”
~Robert Christgau

The Beatles had initiated a second pop revolution – one which while galvanising their existing rivals and inspiring many new ones, left all of them far behind.
~Ian MacDonald (Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties)

….. Either way, its daring sonic adventures and consistently stunning songcraft set the standard for what pop/rock could achieve. Even after Sgt. Pepper, Revolver stands as the ultimate modern pop album and it’s still as emulated as it was upon its original release.
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine (allmusic.com)

 

Released 5 August 1966
Recorded 6 April – 21 June 1966,
EMI Studios, London
Genre Rock, psychedelic rock
Length 35:01
Label Parlophone (UK), Capitol (US)
Producer George Martin

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Great albums, Music Calendar, Neil Young

July 16: Neil Young released On The Beach in 1974

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Neil Young - on-the-beach

“Good album. One side of it particularly—the side with ‘Ambulance Blues’, ‘Motion Pictures’ and ‘On the Beach’ — it’s out there. It’s a great take.”
~Neil Young

The second in Neil’s ditch trilogy, On the Beach was also disavowed by Young and unreleased on CD until 2003. It is weirder but sharper than Time Fades Away, with harrowing lows and amazing highs, including the off-the-cuff, eight-minute folk jam “Ambulance Blues.”
~rollingstone.com

Walk on:

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Beatles, Great albums, Great Bands

July 10: The Beatles released A Hard Day’s Night in 1964


A_Hard_Day's_Nigth

July 10: The Beatles released A Hard Day’s Night in 1964

“We were different. We were older. We knew each other on all kinds of levels that we didn’t when we were teenagers. The early stuff – the Hard Day’s Night period, I call it – was the sexual equivalent of the beginning hysteria of a relationship. And the Sgt Pepper-Abbey Road period was the mature part of the relationship.”
– John Lennon (1980)

A Hard Day’s Night is the third album by The Beatles; it was released on July 10, 1964. The album is a soundtrack to the A Hard Day’s Night film, starring the Beatles. The American version of the album was released two weeks earlier, on 26 June 1964 by United Artists Records, with a different track listing. This is the first Beatles album to be recorded entirely on four-track tape, allowing for good stereo mixes.

HDN

In 2000, Q placed A Hard Day’s Night at number 5 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. In 2003, the album was ranked number 388 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

The soundtrack songs were recorded in late February, and the non-soundtrack songs were recorded in June. The title song itself was recorded on April 16.

“…but A Hard Day’s Night is perhaps the band’s most straightforward album: You notice the catchiness first, and you can wonder how they got it later.

The best example of this is the title track– the clang of that opening chord to put everyone on notice, two burning minutes thick with percussion (including a hammering cowbell!) thanks to the new four-track machines George Martin was using, and then the song spiraling out with a guitar figure as abstractedly lovely as anything the group had recorded.”

– Tom Ewing, Pitchfork

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Grateful Dead, Great albums

July 6: The Grateful Dead: In the Dark (1987)

grateful dead in the dark

In the Dark, their first studio LP since Heaven, reverses that sorry trend. Its seven songs – averaging six minutes each, just like old times – hark back to the sprawling, easygoing charm of their hallowed American Beauty era. Despite nods to technology in the form of synthesizers, sound effects and a startling “programming” credit, this sounds more like a Dead record than anything they’ve done in years
~David Browne (rollingstone.com)

The Grateful Dead’s last lineup returned intact for In the Dark, an album that ironically thrust the band back into the spotlight on the strength of the band’s lone Top 40 single, “Touch of Grey.” Fans had long mused that the Dead’s studio albums lacked the easygoing energy and natural flow of their live performances, and In the Dark does come close to capturing that lightning in a bottle.
~Dave Connolly (allmusic.com)

Touch of Grey

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Great albums, Neil Young

July 2: Neil Young released “Rust Never Sleeps” in 1979

For anyone still passionately in love with rock & roll, Neil Young has made a record that defines the territory. Defines it, expands it, explodes it. Burns it to the ground. Rust Never Sleeps tells me more about my life, my country and rock & roll than any music I’ve heard in years.
~Paul Nelson (rollingstone.com)

For the decade’s greatest rock and roller to come out with his greatest album in 1979 is no miracle in itself–the Stones made Exile as grizzled veterans. The miracle is that Young doesn’t sound much more grizzled now than he already did in 1969; he’s wiser but not wearier, victor so far over the slow burnout his title warns of. .. A+
~Robert Christgau (robertchristgau.com)

One of Neil’s 2-3 best albums for sure.

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