The Beatles - Abbey Road - 1969
Here we are. This is the last album The Beatles ever recorded. Not the last album they released, that will be Let it be, of course, and some of the work done for it was finished after this album was released, but by the time they got into the studio to record it, most of the recording for Let it be was completed.The story goes that they actually enjoyed themselves recording this one much more than they had in a good while. There were some disagreements during this one too, mostly due to the ever increasing presence of Yoko Ono during sessions, but I like to think that they had fun doing this album. I certainly have a lot of fun listening to it.
Compared to their previous two or three albums (not counting Yellow Submarine), this is much more terse, with them seemingly leaving all the pretentiousness and experimentation behind and, instead, focused on sheer quality and good compositions.
This doesn't mean that they went back to being simplistic or formulaic. Quite the contrary, some of their most interesting songs are here, including two brilliant songs written by George, "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun", the former considered by many as his best one. I can't make up my mind between it and "While my Guitar Gently Weeps". But this also contains the classic "Come Together", the massive and amazing "I Want You (She's so Heavy)", which is heavy and hypnotic. The album also contains the dreamy and beautiful "Because" and a medley on its side B, that features several shorter pieces linked together.
This is one of those albums I would not need to listen to again in order to write about. Certainly, I don't need to remind me of anything about it. But what a pleasure it is to listen to it again!
- One of the main topics of arguments was Paul's annoying perfectionism during the recording of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", which apparently ended up exasperating everybody. John Lennon's opinion on the song? "It was granny music". Probably true, but I still like it.
- This one has one of the few songs Ringo ever wrote for the band, "Octopus's Garden". It feels like a weird mixture of childishness and surrealism.
- Side A closes with "I Want you", which lasts nearly 8 minutes and, as I said, it's one of their heaviest. Some critics have pointed out that it's one of the pre Black Sabbath era really heavy songs, with some even saying that "it might have inadvertently started doom metal". And listening to the last 3 minutes of the song or so, I have to agree.
- John Lennon got inspiration from "Because" after listening to Yoko playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, when he asked her to play the chords backwards, and wrote the song around that.
- This is the only Beatles album to feature a drum solo by Ringo, which is near the end of the medley, at the start of "The End".
- Incidentally, "The End" is actually the last song the four of them recorded together. The only song recorded after that one would be "I me mine", but John didn't take part of the recording. It was the last song as listed in the original sleeve for the album, with the short "Her Majesty", which starts after 17 seconds of silence, being a "hidden track" in the original version.
- Oh, and by the way, this album's cover must be the most famous album cover ever.
A squid eating dough in a Polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica - 1969
Ok, I tried. I tried a couple of times, at different times of day and night. I tried, oh my God did I try!
This one is the most difficult album to digest I can remember listening to. It is probably an acquired taste, but one that is quite difficult to acquire, I guess.
One of the problems it has is that it's very long, at nearly 80 minutes long. Just imagine 80 minutes of absolute nonsense. This album is full of atonality, weird rhythms, detuning, and general madness.
I will probably come back to this one from time to time, to see if at some point it starts clicking in. There is that feeling that there might actually be something really cool about it, and not just hype. After all, the cover has a fish wearing a top hat and the album has songs with titles such as "She's Too Much for my Mirror", "Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish", or "Old Fart at Play". I will definitely go back to this one from time to time, at least out of curiosity.
- The New York Times said once that Beefheart's voice makes Tom Waits sound like Julie Andrews. I just can't stop laughing.
- This album was actually added to the United States National Recording Registry for the year 2010 by the Library of Congress.
- He was friends with Frank Zappa since they were both teenagers. That does explain a lot.
- I'm not going to put a video of any of the songs here. This time, I'm going to post this video I found on Youtube in which some of the crazy things they do on this album is explained from the point of view of the musicianship. It's a very interesting video.
Yeah, love is really good to me
Ten Years After - Ssssh - 1969
Another year, another blues album. And it would be actually quite good if they had stuck to that. There's a couple of late 1960s sounding pop/rock songs that bring the whole album down. They're quite good at the more bluesy tunes, like "I woke up this morning", "The Stomp" or their version of "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl".
All in all it's a good album, but they seem to lack the gritty and raw quality that made them quite famous in live performances.
Oh, and the lyrics are all just as deep as the title of this section.
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