HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT…
The Beach Boys
“Wouldn’t It Be Nice?”
Pet Sounds
1966 | Capitol Records

Okay, so Pet Sounds isn’t exactly a guilty pleasure album. If you don’t like Pet Sounds, you’re probably deaf and you’re definitely a fucker. Nerds should talk about the Genius of Brian Wilson in the same hushed, reverent tones as they do about George Lucas or Gene Roddenberry. People everywhere should shut the fuck up about The Beatles for a year or two (but not forever, because The Beatles are, you know, The Beatles), and bask in the glory of resounding five-part harmony and crisp, near guitar-free (weird for the 60s, compare The Beach Boys to Animal Collective today, and realize that Wilson and Co. were way ahead of their time; still, fuck Animal Collective) arrangements. Smile, not Abbey Road, should have been the cornerstone album of the 1960s.

But as an admitted rock snob, I can’t help but experience a knee jerk reaction when any big single comes on the radio. Something about the smug satisfaction a record executive must feel whenever the song he picked comes in on the dial makes me kind of queasy. And so, every time I drop the needle on Pet Sounds, I feel a twinge of anxiety at what’s about to come. Wouldn’t want people to think I’d gone soft and started listening to oldies, would I?
More on The Beach Boys | “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?”

HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT…
Onyx
“Slam”
Bacdafucup
1993 | Def Jam

Hey, I’ve got a great idea. Let’s get a bunch of rowdy, Queens-based rappers into a recording studio. Let’s have them write and record a hip-hop song praising the merits of slam dancing, or “moshing.” Then let’s plaster the accompanying video all over MTV and every commercial outlet imaginable. If that doesn’t strike fear into the heart of all the sheltered Midwesterner thinking about vacationing in New York, I don’t know what will.

I’m not talking about every Midwesterner here, folks, or even a majority. In fact, having often been employed in the service industry, I’d hate to see a drop in the amount of tourist dollars flowing through New York in the average year. But there is a certain faction of tourist that I would like to keep out of my new hometown – and theirs is a demographic most self-respecting New Yorkers never see. I’m talking about the tourist that comes here to shop at the biggest Gap in world, and eat at the World’s Biggest T.G.I. Friday’s; the kind of tourist who wakes up at 4AM-on vacation-to get a good spot outside The Today Show. I’m talking about the kind of tourist that thinks that eating a bag of Combos for lunch fulfills two food group requirements; the kind of tourist who comes to New York and asks questions like, “What’s a really good, TOTALLY NEW YORK thing that we can do, right here, in Times Square? No subways, we don’t want to take the subway.” That’s the kind of tourist I’d like to keep out of New York.
More on Onyx | “Slam”

NOT ROCK
Miles Davis
Kind of Blue
1959 | Columbia Records

Fifty years ago, Miles Davis did more than leave a footprint in jazz history – he left an untouchable legacy. It was the recording sessions for Kind of Blue that carved his initials into the jazz tree of life.

It’s the album that everyone has heard at some point, whether they’ve realized it or not. And chances are, if you own only one jazz album, this is it. Kind of Blue is touted as jazz’s bestseller and went quadruple platinum last fall.

Kind of Blue is the product of two recording sessions, the first on March 2, 1959, at Columbia Records’ 30th Street studio in New York City. The session wasn’t greatly planned in any way. The only thing that was premeditated was who was going to perform: Cannonball Elderly, Bill Evans, Jimmy Cobb, Paul Chambers, Wynton Kelly, and last but certainly not least, John Coltrane. A studio crammed with that amount of talent was bound to produce an influential recording.
More on Kind of Amazing

NOT ROCK
The Byrds
Sweetheart of the Rodeo
1968 | Columbia Records

Okay, okay – I know. This is a “not rock” column, and I have chosen to write about the most seminal “country-rock” recording of all time. I would argue, however, that very little, if any, of this album is “rock” (beyond the fact that the name on the record sleeve is that of a rock band). With covers of Dylan and Guthrie, I’d say “country-folk” is a more appropriate category – and there ain’t nothin’ rock about that!  In fact, part of the marketing for Sweetheart of the Rodeo was a radio spot (included on the Columbia/Legacy reissue) featuring a stubborn fan refusing to believe that the sounds he was hearing were from The Byrds. The album is notable then, for what some might consider its early fusing of genres. But genre classifications aside, it’s also just really great.
More on The Byrds | Sweetheart of the Rodeo

NOT ROCK
The Byrds
Sweetheart of the Rodeo
1968 | Columbia Records

Okay, okay – I know. This is a “not rock” column, and I have chosen to write about the most seminal “country-rock” recording of all time. I would argue, however, that very little, if any, of this album is “rock” (beyond the fact that the name on the record sleeve is that of a rock band). With covers of Dylan and Guthrie, I’d say “country-folk” is a more appropriate category – and there ain’t nothin’ rock about that!  In fact, part of the marketing for Sweetheart of the Rodeo was a radio spot (included on the Columbia/Legacy reissue) featuring a stubborn fan refusing to believe that the sounds he was hearing were from The Byrds. The album is notable then, for what some might consider its early fusing of genres. But genre classifications aside, it’s also just really great.
More on The Byrds | Sweetheart of the Rodeo

HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT…
“I’m Henry the VIII, I Am”
Herman’s Hermits
Herman’s Hermits On Tour
1965 | MGM

Herman’s Hermits seem to me to be the ultimate faceless British band, sent across the ocean to capitalize on “Beatlemania.” Sort of the Candlebox of the mid 1960’s: the group’s manager, Mickie Most (again, predating svengalis like Colonel Tom Parker and Malcolm Mclaren) sought to create a clean-cut and non-threatening image for the band. This  career pattern garnered Herman’s Hermits a pair of US #1 hits, before the changing musical climate of the 1960’s rendered the group redundant, a novelty. Just like the Beach Boys!
More on Herman’s Hermits | “I’m Henry the VIII, I Am”

HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT…
“I’m Henry the VIII, I Am”
Herman’s Hermits
Herman’s Hermits On Tour
1965 | MGM

Herman’s Hermits seem to me to be the ultimate faceless British band, sent across the ocean to capitalize on “Beatlemania.” Sort of the Candlebox of the mid 1960’s: the group’s manager, Mickie Most (again, predating svengalis like Colonel Tom Parker and Malcolm Mclaren) sought to create a clean-cut and non-threatening image for the band. This  career pattern garnered Herman’s Hermits a pair of US #1 hits, before the changing musical climate of the 1960’s rendered the group redundant, a novelty. Just like the Beach Boys!
More on Herman’s Hermits | “I’m Henry the VIII, I Am”

Hidden Gem:
Joni Mitchell
Hejira
1976 | Asylum

Over the forty-odd years of her career, Joni Mitchell’s unapologetically glorious talent has inspired both fellow folksingers and jazz musicians alike, including Bob Dylan, Graham Nash, Brian Blade, Charles Mingus, and Herbie Hancock. Hejira, one of her most lush and painterly albums, explains why.

Mitchell delicately blends, as is her trademark, wistful vignettes from her life with inventive compositions. Each song, the product of such reminiscence and adventurousness, is like a seed – equally a memento and a promise. Her lyrics particularly investigate a decidedly feminist theme: her predilections for traveling and independence, and their corresponding divergence from traditional roles for women. In “Song For Sharon,” she sings “Sharon you’ve got a husband and a family and a farm.” Mitchell, instead, has “the apple of temptation…” While Sharon sings for her “friends and her family,” Mitchell keeps her eyes “on the land and the sky” and will continue journeying. Close ones also urge her to “have children,” and find a charity to “help the needy,” but all she wants “right now is find another lover.” In the track “Amelia,” the strings of Mitchell’s guitar are the “hexagram of the heavens,” the same unwieldy heavens through which Amelia Earhart bravely flies. Even though people will direct Amelia (and Mitchell) where to go, “until” she “gets there,” she’ll “never really know.”
More on Record Review: Hejira