Ian and 1001 Albums...

[Captain Tancredi]

Hi. Im Ian, and I know nothing about pop music. Thats an exaggeration, of course (well, the second half of the sentence is...) but towards the end of last year I realised that I knew next to nothing about popular music and decided to do something about it. And so I bought the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die and what Im going to do is to try and correct the situation. So every so often (Im aiming for 26 a year but well see how we do) Im going to listen to one of the albums on offer and post some of my thoughts- and Id like your thoughts on my thoughts and, more importantly, on the albums in question. Now where to start...I wanted to start with performers I knew and an album everybody knows, so here it is...

1. The Beatles - Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

People who know such things often acclaim Sgt. Pepper as the greatest album of all time- Im not entirely sure how many you have to have listened to before you can start acclaiming, but there goes. The cover is of course iconic, although what I hadnt realised was that the famous faces were an actual backdrop against which the real Beatles were photographed, rather than the whole thing being a collage of pictures. The well-known songs on the album are the Sgt. Pepper theme, With a Little Help from My Friends (probably now as familiar from the cover used on The Wonder Years), Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (and its a sad reflection that I still cant quite get the William Shatner version out of my head) and When Im Sixty-Four, as covered by prime ministerial wives everywhere. But the album comes across as being more deliberately conceived as a complementary collection of songs, rather than merely a presentation of A-sides and B-sides. The opening Sgt.Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band sets up the conceit of the album as an imitation of a live concert, and the choice and placing of tracks is evidently done for maximum contrast- witness the succession from the poignant Shes Leaving Home to the rumbustious Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite, the meditative Within You Without You and then When Im Sixty-Four, a touching picture of a couple growing old together. The instrumentation is also fascinating, not least the use of Indian instruments on Within You Without You, and practically every other instrument in the orchestra in between- which speaks volumes about the Beatles confidence in using them to add an extra dimension to their songs.

The Beatles are talked up so often that its difficult sometimes to believe that their music can live up to its billing even halfway- but what I think Sgt. Pepper demonstrates is a confidence and pleasure in making music in such a variety of styles and then bringing it all together under one roof. Theres a blend of the earnest and life-affirming, the mystical and spiritual and whimsical comedy- while, say, Shes Leaving Home speaks volumes on generation gaps, controlling families and parental expectatioalmost ns, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite! are essentially poems set to music. Ultimately in many ways this is the Beatles at their most life-affirming and joyful- only A Day in the Life, set outside the main body of the album, is in a more challenging style- and there are certain songs I dont think Ive ever consciously listened to before but have taken straight to heart. Its accessible, fun and most of the songs have a gentle sense of humour which leaves you with a smile.

1 down, 1000 to go...

[Wayne]

Hey, this looks like it's gonna be an intersting thread!
That was a good read. It's fascinating to get a completely fresh viewpoint on this album in particular. Because whilst i don't think it's a bad album particularly, I've always considered it to be a rather overated Beatles album, at the side of some of their other work, But much better than some of dirge that was produced in their last couple of years. (Though i don't mean all of it, by any means)
That said, i haven't listened to this one for a long time. Maybe i should dig it out. But for Beatles, my personal preference is 1964/66 - 'Rubber Soul', 'Help', 'Beatles For Sale'. Great pop music, that's musically interesting, before IMO they got too self indulgent.
It's true that the Beatles are overhyped, & seem to be constantly mythologized by the media, But their contribution to pop music is still valid. Their songwriting, & in particular their construction of chord sequences has influenced 2 generations of bands, & still today there are a lot of very popular guitar based bands that virtually owe their careers to them.
Sorry if all that wasn't very specific to 'Sgt.Pepper', but i look forward with interest to what else is on your list.

[Anthony Williams]

it's a fine book - I bought it when it was on offer a while back

bought a load of albums that I wouldn't normally buy from it, and found myself a few gems!

good luck, Ian!

Ant x

[Andrew Curnow]

Thats an exaggeration, of course (well, the second half of the sentence is...)

That made me chuckle!

I'm another who knows next to nothing about music, so I've certainly never listened to Sgt Pepper. That said, I have heard "She's Leaving Home" which is a beautiful song, and I'm never quite sure why it gets mentioned so rarely when The Beatles come up. I remember having to learn "When I'm Sixty-Four" when we were in the second year at school, and me and Peter Smith thought it the funniest thing in the world ever to say "Birthday greeting, bouteille de vin". Ye-es...

But, this does look like it'll be a very interesting thread indeed.

[Anthony Williams]

based on the book, here are some of the albums that I bought (which some of you will agree are very un-Ant-like!):

Christina Aguilera - Stripped
Blur - Parklife
Deep Purple - In Rock
Dizzee Rascal - Boy In Da Corner
King Crimson - In The Court of the Crimson King
Kraftwerk - The Man Machine
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III
Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory
Morrissey - You Are The Quarry
Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells
Moby - Play
Pantera - A Vulgar Display of Power
Primal Scream - Screamadelica
Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine
Scissor Sisters - Scissor Sisters
Sex Pistols - Never Mind the B*******
The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free
Suede - Suede
Suede - Dog Man Star
The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan
Brian Wilson - Smile
Yes - The Yes Album
The Zutons - Who Killed The Zutons?

and I enjoyed them ALL!

Ant x

[Jonno]

I remember having to learn "When I'm Sixty-Four" when we were in the second year at school

How odd - so did I at the same age! Scary thought time - I'm now virtually halfway between my age then and 64!

[Paul Clement]

Like Wayne said, I've always felt this album was overrated. Everytime people mentioned Beatles albums, it was this one and Revolver that people kept insisting were the ones to own or the ones to listen to.
Personally, I much preferred some of their other albums, such as Magical Mystery Tour and Rubber Soul. It does, however, have one of my favourite Beatles songs in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and I generally enjoy most of the songs on the album to some extent, so I'd consider it to be worthwhile owning, just not as good as some of the hype.

[SiHart]

Sgt Pepper isn't a great album, but it is very good. Let's face any album featuring a song as inventive as A Day in the Life has got to be good overall.

Despite that Sgt pepper probably remains their greatest known album more for what it stands for than what it is. To many it is the ulitmate summation of the Summer of Love ethos and it's true to say that it is inextricatably linked with the summer of 67 and the beginnings of the counter-culture revolution.

I've been researching this period for a forthcoming project and you can still sense the optimism that all those involved at the time felt; that something psecial was about to happen. That it soon went sour is a nother matter altogether, but just for a little while there was a felling that the world was going to change. That optimism is what Sgt Pepper has been associated with ever since. It's not a bad thing, but the album will never be able to live up to the ethos and stuff that's been built up around it.

Si xx

[Captain Tancredi]

Of course all the teachers at primary schools in the 1970s were children of the sixties- our recorder group was taught 'Michelle', 'Sloop John B' and the 49th Bridge Street Song. The other thing with music in schools is that the choir/orchestra/whatever works on the basis that if half are sharp and half are flat, it balances itself out somewhere down the line.

[Si Hunt]

It's a shame the concept is sort of forgotton after the first song, but Sgt Pepper is one of those albums full of very good songs, with no bad ones, but perhaps no truly superb ones. My favourites are "Lovely Rita" and "She's Leaving Home" which, actually, IS superb so forget that.

It's a shame that two of their best loved songs, "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields" were recorded around the time of this album but left of - that it's STILL considered a classic without them must be testement to how on fire they were at the time.

Si.

[Carol Baynes]

"Sgt. Pepper" is a very British album, and I will always say that an American group (for example) would find it very difficult to come up with the music on there. It's nods to the Victorian music hall make it a very original album in my opinion, and this fits in surprisingly well with the very English take on the psychedelic sound that had been coming out of west coast America since the mid '60s. There is some great innovationin the production methods on this Lp as well, and as a body of work it is a remarkable (and wonderfully quirky) document. Not sure if I'd say it was the best album The Beatles did. That varies from person to person, I know. I'm more "Rubber soul" or "Revolver" myself.

1967 spawned many a great album, but I think if we'd been there we would perhaps hold "Sgt. Pepper" in far greater esteem. From what I know from those that were around and the right age, this album summed up the colourful confusion of The summer of love very well and really made a huge impression. Even the packaging and graphic design of the album won it many fans.

The cynic in me is slightly dubious about going through a book of 1001 albums with perhaps no idea of their context in the grand tapestry of recording history or the natural progression of things that would normally get me into music, but this could be interesting as your taking the music on very much face value, and (without being patronising) we might well teach you a thing or two along the way!

[Carol Baynes]

1 down, 1000 to go...

All of them?!

I can only dream of what Ian will make of "Troutmask replica"! I'm sure there's some far more crazier **** than that in there as well.

As an aside, the '50s section of that book is quite interesting (and intriguing) as it was a time before the album format was probably used to it's full potential from the '60s onwards. Saying that two favourites of mine (Sinatra's "Songs for swingin' lovers" and Miles Davis "Kind of blue" are from that decade, and I happen to know they're in the book too!)

[Captain Tancredi]

The cynic in me is slightly dubious about going through a book of 1001 albums with perhaps no idea of their context in the grand tapestry of recording history or the natural progression of things that would normally get me into music, but this could be interesting as your taking the music on very much face value, and (without being patronising) we might well teach you a thing or two along the way!

To explain a bit of my thinking, I just wanted to take things differently- my usual way of looking into a new field is to read around it and follow a list of recommendations rigidly. This time, I thought I'd just follow a progression and see where it leads me- and it seems to be more in the spirit of popular music that it should reflect or speak to its time and not need so much in the way of explanations. The first few albums will (because I've already bought them) be British guitar bands- so after that I'm going to look for something different, perhaps a female solo artist. It's meant to be a bit more random than I usually tend to be.

[Carol Baynes]

Bear in mind popular music and pop music are two different things, although they can be synonymous. Those not familiar with '50s and '60s culture tend to think of 'Pop' as always having existed as just a corruption of 'Popular' (which it obviously is) and nothing else. Pop was something far more transient, gimmicky, sexy and commercial whilst retaining a creative credibility. The Beatles are a fine example. 'Pop' was a very particular movement in the Arts, that did spawn the commercial chart fodder of today (current pop definition). The true original Pop deserves a thread of it's own- I love that era.

Plus not every album in that book is 'pop' music (and maybe the odd title might be slightly too avant-garde to be seen as 'popular' by any definition). What is the aforementioned "Troutmask replica"? Or is "Bitches brew" truly 'popular' or true jazz?
For example, Frank Sinatra is popular music, but I would hesitate to class him as 'pop' music. If rock n' roll was the first pop music, then be assured that Frank hated it!
But Girls Aloud (for example) can be said to be popular music as much as Frank. I like them both, whatever you want to call them.

Labels can haunt music (and I'm not talking about records). Is Sinatra Swing, Jazz, Pop music or all three or not at all?? It might well put you off- but bear with a variety of sounds and eras and find what you like. We all have, with the benefit of many years. If you're starting now, in your thirties, you've got a lot of catching up to do- but put the sound of the music first and you won't go wrong.

Girls Aloud are not in the book.

[Captain Tancredi]

Tonight I've been listening to the next album on my exploration- suffice to say it's already been mentioned in the thread, but I did buy my first three all together (which is my excuse!).

[Simon R]

I'm shocked that Britney's wretched first album is in the book. It's great that there is some bubblegum pop in there but that album is not a good example by any means.

[Si Hunt]

I hope Ian is using Amazon marketplace to pick up 1p deals on some of the albums.

Si.

[Captain Tancredi]

Ian used part of his bonus to get his first three albums and has one in reserve.

2. The Beatles - Rubber Soul (1965)

And so its a slight step back to the second album on my voyage- I promise to be a bit more ambitious in future, but this has something of a personal interest for me, as for many years my folks kept their LP of this album- in fact, long after our last record player had died a death. Its been interesting, then, to actually take a proper listen to the contents.
After a few listenings, I cant help feeling that Rubber Soul sees the Beatles reflecting on the personal and emotional impact of their fame and the superficial world of hangers-on and easy sex this brought them. Its a theme common to roughly half the songs; Norwegian Wood recounts an attempt at seduction, while George Harrisons Think for Yourself seems to speak of disillusionment with what proves to be another follower (and a fickle one at that) rather than a fellow explorer. The pairing of Im Looking Through You and In My Life further on in the album is equally good- one is a song about the old friend or lover who changes on the inside while being superficially the same, while the latter is a heartfelt tribute to the truly important people and genuine friends.
But its simplistic to narrow half the songs down to the things which were happening to the Beatles at the time; theres an awful lot else going on here, not least in the music itself and instrumentation. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I knew the instrumental from Norwegian Wood, although somewhere in my subconscious its connected with 1970s handicraft programmes with people making macrame peg baskets and suchlike (and I cant help thinking that John Lennons voice at the bottom of his range in the line or should I say she once had me sounds uncannily like Paul OGrady. Nowhere Man is probably the most familiar track but is also a classic example of a good Beatles song gently pushing the listener to live life a little more and take the bull by the horns, while to me (and anybody else who attended my primary school) Michelle is inextricably linked with the Recorder Ensemble and their vain attempts at staying in time and in key. Musically the album is ambitious as one might expect; while most have fairly conventional accompaniment, touches like the use of sitar (Im prepared to be corrected) in Norwegian Wood and the Bach parody in In My Life bring together diverse traditions in a popular context.
And so Rubber Soul comes across to me (at least) as an unsettling collection; theres an inescapable sense of frustration and disillusionment with life at the top of the musical totem pole, and yet songs like The Word, In My Life and If I Needed Someone are warm and heartfelt. George Harrisons contributions are challenging and cry out to be mulled over, while Michelle is a comparatively simple love song which is almost certainly responsible for a crop of Michelles in my primary school in the early 1970s. I suspect that one of the reasons why people come back to the Beatles is simply because you can- because the music and lyrics are ultimately inexhaustible and you can find new things every time.
Certain members of this message board will also smile at the line I met you in the morning, waiting for the Tides of Time.
2 down, 999 to go...

[Wayne]

Interesting thoughts on 'Rubber Soul', Ian.

while Michelle is a comparatively simple love song

Just a quickie for now, but i've always been rather the fond of 'Michelle'. Lyrically it may be simple, & i can see why some people find this one really cheesy, but it's a lovely chord sequence which betrays McCartney's greater musical knowledge, & i've always liked the subtle hint of arabesque in the melody at the end of the chorus.
Other faves are 'Nowhere Man', & especially 'Drive My Car'.

[Carol Baynes]

One of my favourite albums!

"Revolver" is a better album, but it's not far behind. Everything is so deceptively simple and the song quality is hight.

Actually, while we're on the subject, my least favourite Beatles LP is "Beatles for sale". It was rush released for Christmas '64 and contains a lot of filler. Still good, but a bit of a come down from "A hard days' night".
"Help!" is seriously underated.

[SiHart]

Rubber Soul is very probably my favourite Beatles album too. I just love the summery feel to the songs and the lovely whistful feel to some of the songs. It feels like they're pushing themslves to develop and grow up musically, from the two "joke" songs Drive my Car and Norweigan Wood (well they do both have punchlines!) to John Lennon's marvellous Nowhere Man and In My Life.

My personal favourite on the album though is The Word. It's a neglected gem! So happy and upbeat and beats all the other similar summer of love songs by a couple of years!

Si xx

[Wayne]

One of my favourite albums!

"Revolver" is a better album, but it's not far behind. Everything is so deceptively simple and the song quality is hight.

Actually, while we're on the subject, my least favourite Beatles LP is "Beatles for sale". It was rush released for Christmas '64 and contains a lot of filler. Still good, but a bit of a come down from "A hard days' night".

I prefer 'Beatles For Sale', personally. 2 reasons: If by 'filler' you mean the Rock n' Roll covers, then no complaints from me, because i like Rock n' Roll. I especially like the 2 Carl Perkins covers, particularly 'Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby'. :wayne
Also, although there are a couple or 3 real gems on 'A Hard Days Night', i think their own material on 'Beatles For Sale' is much stronger. I personally think they got better with each album up to & including 'Rubber Soul', & possibly 'Revolver'. After that, they got more patchy. In my opinion, anyway.

[Captain Tancredi]

Well, the next album won't be the Beatles anyway- to an extent it's a bit like nipping forward thirty years and seeing how things turned out, but then I'll go somewhere different because I want to look at somebody from another part of the world and another style.

And no, I'm not telling, so you can guess all you like.

[Carol Baynes]

I'm going to absolutely loathe the next one aren't I? Just a feeling I have...

[Captain Tancredi]

If you do, it'll be for interesting reasons. Anyway, I now have the next three in hand (and the last two aren't what I thought they'd be, either!)