500 - Eurythmics - Touch

This is my first post in a series I'm starting where I listen to the Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums list.



Although the album starts out strong with one of my favorite Eurythmic singles, I found the rest of the album a bit of an up and down experience for me. I was pleasantly blown away by "No Fear, No Hate, No Pain (No Broken Hearts)." While Annie Lennox's hot, sultry, soulful vocals can be a nice counterpoint to the cold, synth samples (that frequently sound as if they were played with one finger), there are several songs such as "Right By Your Side" and "Cool Blue" where the mix seems much more awkward to me. I think I would really like "Cool Blue" if sung over different instrumentation.

While I'll accept that there are folks that think of "Right By Your Side" as groundbreaking, it seems more like a cheesy experiment. The sound of the synths just don't seem to jibe with the blend of Caribbean and African sounds also in the song. Other British New Wave bands did a better job at this mix than the Eurythmics in this song (although, admittedly, not were so gung-ho to stick to using the synth kettle drum, horns, and guitar voices rather than the real instruments).

Songs I knew I liked: "Here Comes the Rain Again" and "Who's That Girl"

Songs I didn't know but now like: "No Fear, No Hate, No Pain (No Broken Hearts)" and "Paint a Rumour"

Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: "Right By Your Side"

499 - Albert King - Born Under a Bad Sign

The album benefits a lot from being a collection of mostly already-released singles. The album is consistently interesting. While Albert King delivers good rockin' blues, the Stax band of Booker T and the MGs give the songs a good bit of swing that makes it easier for listeners to bob their heads or dance than merely tap their feet or doing guitar faces during the guitar riffs. The album definitely one I'd recommend to folks that want to dabble a bit into blues. Nothing on this album is too down tempo or spare to scare away pop listeners. I think anyone that enjoys early rock n roll (Chuck Berry-era "early") should include this album in their collection as this album sits in the shared slice of the Blues/Rock Venn diagram.

Just don't confuse "Oh, Pretty Woman" with the version you know. And, maybe it is just me, but the horns on "The Very Thought of You" reminds me a lot of Pink Floyd's "Us and Them."

Songs I Knew I Liked: While "Personal Manager" and "Born Under a Bad Sign" sounded familiar, I'm not entirely certain if I was really familiar with them previously.

Songs I didn't know but now like/Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: I really enjoyed the whole album and was very pleased to like all of the tracks on an album that rated 499. "I Almost Lost My Mind" probably is my least favorite song on the album, but I would love to hear Tom Jones do a cover of it. Something about how Albert sings the song makes me think that Tom Jones can deliver that song with the bombast that the backing band occasionally reaches for when breaking from the downtempo typical blues structure (how many blues songs feature flute, anyway).

498 - ZZ Top - Tres Hombres

Man, oh, man am I enjoying this album. I'm on my third listen to it and I'm not quite ready to move along yet. I love that this album followed Albert King. The two albums make good listening partners.

Tres Hombres was made for road trips. The songs chug and shuffle along with a temporary downshift in tempo in the middle of the track list. With each listen I become convinced that "Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers" and "Master of Sparks" should have also been recorded by KISS. "BD&HR" especially sounds like it just needs a slight dusting off of some of the blues affectations and it could have been a lost track from Rock and Roll Over.

Songs I knew I liked: "Jesus Just Left Chicago" and "La Grange"

Songs I didn't know but now like: "Waitin' For the Bus," "Hot, Blue, and Righteous," "Precious and Grace," and "Have You Heard?"

Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: "Sheik"

497 - Public Enemy - Yo! Bum Rush the Show

I'm far more familiar with Public Enemy's subsequent albums It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet. I think that familiarity with those albums kinda taints my view of this album. Yo! Bum Rush the Show is one of those albums that does more to introduce a band/artist with a ton of potential. Songs like "You're Gonna Get Yours," "Miuzi Weighs a Ton," and "Rightstarter (Message To a Black Man)" display the PE that I know from later tracks. This album isn't the soundtrack for a riot as the next two albums PE would release, but you see the foundation of the group here.

Are "Too Much Posse" and "M.P.E." just a more aggressive version of Cool Moe Dee? That's the feeling I get now when listening. Why is that the case? Chuck D doesn't seem quite as revolutionary in his delivery as he's trying to make his rhymes. Terminator X's sampling on this album is more pedestrian; there isn't quite as much chaotic switches in samples and layers upon layers of music and vocal samples.

I must confess that I found the repeated use of "public enemy" in more than half of the songs as a bit lazy. It comes across more as the chest-thumping of an MC and not the battle cry that Chuck D and Flavor Flav would soon let explode. Had the vocals had less echo on them and maybe giving Chuck D's voice a boost on the low end would help on tracks where the sound of the vocals sound hollow.

Maybe it's just best to consider this a transitional record for Public Enemy, but one that lays the foundation for the albums that would detonate on the music scene shortly thereafter.

Songs I knew I liked: "Miuzi Weighs a Ton"

Songs I didn't know but now like: "Rightstarter (Message to a Black Man)"

Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: "Timebomb," "Too Much Posse," and "Megablast."