Colossal Reviews

Only Unbiased Product Reviews

Colossal Reviews > Brenner-Gessner > Page 29

Grateful Dead (Skull Fuck / Skull and Roses) by the Grateful Dead (Vinyl record album review)

By 1 Comment

Record basics

  • Album name: Grateful Dead (Skull Fuck / Skull and Roses)
  • Group name: The Grateful Dead
  • Year: 1971
  • Number of discs: two
  • Label: Warner Bros. Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: my parents had two copies of this record. One has no markings on it at all. The other has “Goldstein” written all over it – on the inside cover and on all four faces of the two LPs.
  • Buy it on Amazon: $69.89

Grateful Dead (Skull Fuck / Skull and Roses) by the Grateful Dead

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m just a bit too young to have seen the Grateful Dead perform live – I vividly recall being in my grandparents’ beach house in Margate, New Jersey, the adults and my cousins shocked and upset, after the news of Jerry Garcia’s death (which was also the same day as the Netscape IPO) when I was 14.

I’ve listened to approximately a zillion hours of live Grateful Dead recordings – in part because my parents were fans when I was a kid, and also in the past ten or fifteen years my father has always had their concerts playing on satellite radio when he’s in his car, but also I love a lot of their music despite not being a “jam band” fan.

I’ve never specifically listened to this this record (which I guess is just called “Grateful Dead,” despite being known by their fans as “Skull and Roses,” and which the band named “Skull Fuck”), but I expect that I’ll know more or less all the songs on it.

What I expected

It’s a live Dead record from 1971, so that basically says everything.

What it was actually like

First of all, this was awesome, and especially so because in 1971, these guys were not really a big deal, but by doing essentially the same things, again and again for three decades or so, they made themselves into the biggest deal. So I’m sure that someone listening to “Skull and Roses” shortly after it was recorded might have enjoyed it, and maybe even loved it, but would have completely lacked the ability to grasp how significant it was.

Also, the Dead could have gone the way of a lot of bands who made horrible music in the later 1970s and 1980s, but chose not to do that, and that’s special.

At any rate: the sound on this record seemed maybe a little flat, or almost compressed too much. It was as if I was listening to MP3s on a MacBook, and wasn’t able to pick out the sharp sounds. Maybe that was the copy I listened to, but what a bummer.

I loved it, though. Two of their covers really stood out: Me and Bobby McGee was good, but their version of Johnny B. Goode was outstanding. Playing in the Band was also so, so good.

Side 2 was an 18+ minute jam called The Other One and, predictably, was the most boring part.

Grade

5/5: love it

Harvest by Neil Young (Vinyl record album review)

By Leave a Comment

Record basics

  • Album name: Harvest
  • Artist name: Neil Young
  • Year: 1972
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Reprise Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $12.98

Harvest by Neil Young

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve listened to “Harvest” more times than I can possibly count: like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Jimmy Buffett and a few others, my parents played Neil Young a lot when I was young, as they were both big fans.

My mother also once described “Harvest” as the soundtrack to her college life (1970-74), though curiously her copy of this record seems to have disappeared along with a lot of other favorites, leaving only my father’s copy in the collection.

My memory is that I bought my own CD copy of “Harvest” in fall 2000 from a magical and wonderful website called UrbanFetch.com, when they were having their going-out-of-business sale. I just rifled through a box of CDs and found it in there, along with “Harvest Moon” and “After the Gold Rush,” so it seems at least plausible.

What I expected

Neil Young’s very own and very special version of country rock.

What it was actually like

Heart of Gold has always been a favorite of mine, and I think it was the first Neil Young song that I loved, and that I would listen to on my own. Also, as I may have mentioned when listening to a Linda Ronstadt record, it was the first song that I liked that I associated with Linda Ronstadt!

Old Man is also a standout on “Harvest,” but it’s so weird that he wrote it when he was 24, and is now 76. And it may be slightly weird that I listened to it all the time when I was under 10, bought it when I was 19, and now I’m 41 – so between the young Neil Young and the old man who was the subject of the song, and between the young Neil Young and the old Neil Young who’s still around half a century later.

And on the subject of hearing things differently as we age, there was a long time when The Needle and the Damage Done was just some words and some music to me, some lyrics attached to a song that didn’t necessarily have to mean anything, but it definitely means so much more now (and why isn’t this song longer?).

I’ve never been a big fan of A Man Needs a Maid or There’s a World – the whole symphony orchestra accompaniment just seems really unnecessary, and if Neil Young wanted to get a more layered, textured wall-of-sound sort of feel to these songs, I don’t see why he didn’t get just more guitars and harmonicas. Also, these songs just put me to sleep!

Grade

5/5: love it

Hooligans by The Who (Vinyl record album review)

By Leave a Comment

Record basics

  • Album name: Hooligans
  • Group name: The Who
  • Year: 1981
  • Number of discs: two
  • Label: MCA Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: I think I bought this one!
  • Buy it on Amazon: $10.99

Hooligans by The Who

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve been a fan of the Who for decades, and I’m pretty sure that this record was part of my parents’ collection because I bought it and left it in their basement (as I never owned a turntable until my parents gave me theirs when they moved). It’s a compilation and I know most of the songs on it, especially the earlier songs, but I don’t have any clear memory of ever listening to it.

What I expected

Four sides of The Who, but focusing much more on their 1970s era music than on their earlier eras.

What it was actually like

If you name your band “the Who,” you’re obviously doing it for the puns, and for other people to use a lot of puns about you. In this case, the name of the record, “Hooligans,” is an obvious example, and then to take it a step further, they even named the four sides “First Bunch of Hooligans,” “Second Bunch…,” &c.

First Bunch of Hooligans

This was the most varied and excellent side, covering a very small sampling of their Maximum R&B era (I Can’t Explain), extending through the “Tommy” era (Pinball Wizard) and “Live at Leeds”[1] (Summertime Blues). I have always loved the Who’s reinterpretation of Summertime Blues as a hard rock song.

The Relay was the only song I didn’t already know, and also the only song I didn’t enjoy.

Second Bunch of Hooligans

It’s just four songs from Who’s Next (Baba O’Riley, Behind Blue Eyes, Bargain and The Song Is Over), so it might be easier just to read what I wrote when I listened to it last month.

Third Bunch of Hooligans

Slip Kid is an astonishingly bad song, and in fact, this is really the era of the Who that I enjoy much less, and I know very little about it – as far as I’m concerned, there was redeeming value in “Quadrophenia,” but so much of their work from the mid 1970s was highly questionable.

Join Together and Squeeze Box are both good, but I have a difficult time listening to Squeeze Box because it’s so over the top. The Real Me was also all right.

Fourth Bunch of Hooligans

I did not like side four of this double LP.

Who Are You is annoying, but doesn’t really bother me, except that it’s somehow treated as one of the Who’s better known and/or more important songs, but all three other songs – Drowned, Had Enough and Sister Disco were abysmal. Rock bands should not play disco music, period. And with extremely rare exceptions, such as “Who’s Next,” they should just avoid any and all techno music.

I really wish The Who had retired after “Quadrophenia.”

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

References

References
↑1 “Live at Leeds” is a desert island record for me, and that was probably what I was listening to on repeat, on the CD player in my mother’s Volvo, around the time that I bought “Hooligans.” I’m guessing it would have been around summer 2000, at the used record store around East Gude Drive in Rockville.

Abbey Road by the Beatles (Vinyl record album review)

By Leave a Comment

Record basics

  • Album name: Abbey Road
  • Group name: The Beatles
  • Year: 1969
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Apple
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics:
    • “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
    • “GESSNER” written on inside of album sleeve, indicating that my father owned it
    • “GESSNER” written on face of second side of record, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $33.98

Abbey Road by the Beatles (Vinyl record album review)

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

When I reviewed the White Album, I said that I had heard it more times than I could possibly estimate, and that’s true of “Abbey Road” too.

What I expected

Abbey Road.

What it was actually like

Come Together

I love this song every time I hear it, and yet I never consider it one of my favorite Beatles songs. Why is that? Could it be because Bob Dylan obviously contributed to the lyrics?

If I had been in the band, I would have tried to make the tempo faster, but I would have been dead wrong: this song must be just as slow as it is.

In any case, Come Together has never sounded as good as it does on my father’s vinyl, playing on his Yamaha turntable and blasting through his pair of Advent loudspeakers.

Something

Many consider this to be one of George Harrison’s greatest compositions, but I think it’s just all right, that Harrison was maybe too virtuosic-showy, and that a more straightforward rock version would have been better. Also, though I guess I’m supposed to assume he wrote this song about an adult human female, knowing the intensity of his commitment to Hinduism, some part of me can’t shake the idea that the song’s subject was Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu.

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

Faul’s granny music. Is there a granny somewhere who enjoys this?

Oh! Darling

This song is probably the best tribute to John Lennon’s musical genius that was ever composed by Faul McCartney. As of Monday 15 August 2022 6:48 PM EDT, it is my absolute favorite song on on “Abbey Road”[1], and I think it’s awesome how much the intensity increases over the course of the song, how McCartney’s Lennonesque vocals evoke their early records, how it’s simultaneously both a hard rock song and a corny piano lounge love song.

Octopus’s Garden

As the greatest Beatle, I’m always attentive to Ringo’s work (notwithstanding some of the dreck he did in the 1970s), and I really think that this must be one of his best songs. Does that mean that it’s a great song in its own right? Not exactly, but I love all the little guitar parts in it and I love how it begins and ends.

I Want You (She’s So Heavy)

This song is probably the best parody of John Lennon that was ever composed by John Lennon. The way the guitar takes over powerfully after the first switch from the “I Want You” part to the “She’s So Heavy” part is pure gold. I wish he had taken the time to write some more lyrics for it.

Also, I love that it’s dark and eerie, even a little threatening – and it’s about Yoko.

Here Comes the Sun

I’m totally incapable of listening to this song without immediately listening to the Velvet Underground’s response to it, Who Loves the Sun, and today is no different, but today was the first time I ever looked up the two songs to see other people acknowledging their relationship – and to my shock, many people deny it! Anyway, the Beatles’ song is not as good as the Velvets’ – Harrison was clearly trying to make a Faul McCartney track as Lou Reed was trying to make a hit single – but it’s still pretty good.

Because

I’ve never been a fan of this song, but I bet I would like it a lot better if they had taken just a snippet of it and put that in their medley.

Also, the synthesizer part has always reminded me of the soundtrack to the movie A Clockwork Orange.

The weird medley

Not that all the songs on the medley are bad, or that they had no business getting included on a Beatles record, but a group that does a gimmick like this has to know that they’re done as a group, right?

Golden Slumbers is the worst. Sun King and Mean Mr. Mustard are also quite bad – and the latter is probably the worst parody of Faul McCartney that was ever composed by John Lennon – but others are relatively good. I wouldn’t have minded at all if Polythene Pam had been expanded into a full length song, and I love Carry That Weight.

Grade

5/5: love it

There are people who say that “Abbey Road” is the Beatles’ best record, and you know what? De gustibus non est disputandum, that’s what. Just kidding! Those people are wrong. “Abbey Road” still rocks, though.

References

References
↑1 Favorite songs are subject to change at no notice.

Aqualung by Jethro Tull (Vinyl record album review)

By Leave a Comment

Record basics

  • Album name: Aqualung
  • Group name: Jethro Tull
  • Year: 1971
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Chrysalis Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics:
    • “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
    • “PRAGER” written on top of album, indicating that it was owned by a family friend
  • Buy it on Amazon: $28.99

Aqualung by Jethro Tull

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I think I first heard this on classic rock radio in the 1990s, and I’ve probably listened to it about a hundred times in the past few decades.

What I expected

Progressive rock, hard rock, folk rock, weirdness, and a flute.

What it was actually like

All of the above and more!

I suppose I can’t be the only person who has long assumed that this record was a joke of some kind, though I acknowledge that I’ve never been able to articulate the joke’s punchline, and occasionally worried if that means it’s on me.

Aqualung and Cross-eyed Mary on side one (which is called “Aqualung”) are an uncommon pair of thematically linked, dark, dispiriting and creepy hard rock songs that are also excellent and even moving, while Hymn 43 and especially Locomotive breath on side two (which is called “My God”) are in a similar style and add even more depth the record’s own little universe.

I understand that I’m not supposed to treat it as a concept album, but I see it as much more of one than other records that are widely treated that way.

Of the acoustic, folkier songs, Mother Goose is the best.

Grade

4/5: would listen again