John Lennon - "Imagine" (1971)

Another one of these classic albums a record collection worthy of it’s name probably must include, whether you like the album or not. Though I must immediately admit that Imagine hasn’t been long in my collection, just a few weeks. I found it in a store for used record in Gothenburg for the excellent price of 35 Swedish kronor (= 5 USD), a bargain I couldn’t resist. The low price can be explained by the record’s semi shabby condition, but a simple cleaning of the record made it much fresher. The first half of the opening song and also the title track is not possible to listen to, thaks to a small dent (which of course affects the opening track on the B-side in the same way). Who is to blame, the previous owner or the company pressing the album?

Although I haven’t owned the album, I’ve had the music from Imagine at home since my early teens, on the classic and now extinct format cassette tape. My aunt's husband recorded this album and gave me as a Christmas present, so my relationship to the music is long despite the album’s absence in the shelf. And there is a tendency with classic albums like Imagine that you hear the songs in different contexts - radio, television, advertising, in the form of covers, old concert clips, etc. which makes it kept alive.

Imagine is produced by madman Phil Spector together with John and Yoko, and the sound is different from the predecessor John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band. At Imagine the listener gets to hear more spacious productions with fat strings and a large piano sound, something I suspect Mr. Spector should get credit for. Most of the songs are more readily available and the album is on the whole more commercially viable, a bit gentler and nicer than its predecessor. This is not to say that all the songs are easy and straightforward, also Imagine contains its more challenging creations, such as I Don’t Want To Be A Soldier.
The album was recorded in Lennon’s home studio in London, and some extra recordings were made in New York.

The two big hits Imagine and Jealous Guy are in a way quite cheezy songs to be honest. At the same time the former, in its desire for peace and equality, becomes a political statement in a turbulent time, and the latter has a dark undertone consisting of jealousy’s consequences. Although the song Imagine is one of the last hundred years most classic songs, I've heard it too much. I’ve simply grown tired of it. Therefore, the rest of the album is more interesting in my eyes and ears. If you want to hear a couple of other beautiful songs that are not as worn out I recommend How? and Oh Yoko! where the latter is more up-tempo and energizing. At the moment Give Me Some Truth is my favorite song from Imagine, a song that was around already at the time of the Beatles' recording of Let It Be. It’s a song with a political content where you hear George Harrison play guitar.

To be somewhat negative, I’ve never been fond of John’s a bit thin and nasal voice that puts its mark on most songs. To me his voice conveys bitterness, criticism and a somewhat neurotic feeling that creates a picture of a person I problably would find hard to hang out and chill with. This also goes for his more relaxed love songs. Moreover, one can debate whether the texts with an often political content is relevant today. Has the world changed? Unfortunately, a lot of what he sings about is as relevant today as it was then, although some references, eg to Nixon, are outdated. At the same time there are new politicians today representing what Nixon did then, so perhaps Lennon's contemporary criticism is timeless.

In the end, Imagine is an album I would be a sinner if I didn’t recommended. It really is a classical album and a nice piece of history from the early 70's. I don’t think all the songs are great, some are even quite boring, but it’s still a must have in the record shelf (which of course is easy for me to say now, since I finally actually own it). A lot of people claim that Imagine was the high point of Lennon’s solo career.

　
Tracklist

Side A
1. Imagine 3:01
2. Crippled Inside 3:47
3. Jealous Guy 4:14
4. It’s So Hard 2:25
5. I Don’t Want To Be A Soldier 6:05

Side B
1. Give Me Some Truth 3:16
2. Oh My Love 2:50
3. How Do You Sleep 5:36
4. How? 3:43
5. Oh Yoko! 4:20

Lee Hazlewood - "A Cowboy In Sweden" (1970)

I have a fascination for Lee Hazlewood. His deep baritone voice, the slightly twisted half psychedelic country & western music, and his humorous undertone makes me always feel comfortable in his company. This is a record I’ve been looking for, for some time and finally found at a store for used records on the run-down street Andra Långgatan in Gothenburg, of all places. Thanks to a price under a hundred Swedish kronor (around 14 USD) it felt like a good day.
(You can certainly find this LP online, but I have a policy to buy (almost) all my vinyls in physical stores. It's fun to go and rummage in the record shelves and it's easier to check the condition of albums. Moreover, some of the joy of the hunt is lost if you take the easy way out through the internet).

Lee Hazlewood was born in 1929 and died in 2007. For a number of years in the 70's he lived in Sweden. One reason for this choice was that he had become good friends with TV-producer / screenwriter Torbjörn Axelman (who nowdays spends his time in a psychiatric ward thanks to a shooting incident at his home in Brucebo, Sweden. You can’t go around shooting people and police officers without consequences, apparently). Torbjörn’s work included the TV show A Cowboy In Sweden to which today's album was the soundtrack. Lee also starred in the TV show. On the record two female singers are also involved, Nina Lizell and Suzi Jane Hokom, contributing with a fine contrast to Lee’s drawling, deep voice.

Thanks to that Lee lived here in Sweden there are a few albums that are only released here, as I understand it. According to discogs.com this album was only released in Sweden and the U.S in 1970. A reissue was released in the U.S in 1999. The album has a gatefold sleeve, and on the inside you can read:

'Here's some of the music from "A Cowboy In Sweden."

I hope you like the show and the album. It's a part

of my life I'll always remember. I love you, Sweden,

and all you wonderful people. Lee Hazlewood'

Seems to have been a nice man, our Lee.



Lee and Torbjörn

Most of the songs are really good, especially the B-side is filled with beautiful creations. Here and there fat string arrangements present themselves, vibrating electronic organs and soaring flutes also come to visit, while many songs are fairly simple in their sound - acoustic guitar, bass and drums. But thanks to Lee's touch of humor, sadness, irony and psychedelia, it's always interesting. Who can resist such a cocktail? The album and its sound really smells the 70s which in today's text is a compliment.
The album ends with Nina and Lee's collaboration on the song Vem Kan Segla (Who Can Sail). Nina sings it in Swedish and Lee translates. Apparently this was a minor hit, but personally, I’m fed up with this song, I’d heard too many times already in my childhood. How many times did we have to sing it in school? And already then I didn’t like the song - sad, slow and boring.
Cockaburra sits in the old gum tree, eating all the gum drops he can see... Now, that was a song!

Those who previously have heard Lee Hazlewood will recognize the mood. He delivers as always. For those who have never heard him this album is probably as good a starting point as anyone else of his albums. Lee is well known for his collaboration with Nancy Sinatra, but one should certainly not be satisfied with what they did together. Lee had a solo career that was at least as interesting. Should I describe his music it always ends with me reusing a term I have seen others use - psychedelic country & western music. So those who have never heard him will get a perfect understanding of what it is about.


Tracklist

Side A
1 Pray Them Bars Away 3:42
2 Leather & Lace 3:01
3 Forget Marie 2:00
4 Cold Hard Times 2:20
5 The Night Before 3:15
6 Hey Cowboy 3:16

Side B
1 No Train To Stockholm 2:16
2 For A Day Like Today 4:05
3 Easy And Me 2:50
4 What's More I Don’t Need Her 3:28
5 Vem Kan Segla 2:15

Kate Bush – ”The Dreaming” (1982)

Kate Bush's fourth album, The Dreaming, is not the easiest creation to embrace. This was the first album she produced on her own and it’s an album that asks a lot of the listener. Too much?

I've owned this album since my teens and I have the same feeling about it today as then, there is something strange about it. I really like it, but I don’t like it. I enjoy it, but I suffer. I want to listen to it, but do I? It attracts me, and it scares me. Nevertheless, this album has often been spun on the turntable, and many are the times I have let the songs seduce me, and destroy me. In periods, it has been my favourite album, other times I haven’t understood it.
The peculiarity the music conveys comes from the dark sound Kate has created. The sound feels close, neurotic and erratic. Perhaps her former producers / co-producers made sure to keep the music on the right side of the border to madness, but without someone at her side Kate crosses this border and takes the listener on a journey to a dark and somewhat strange place. As is customary with Kate she seems not to care about what she's supposed to do, she does what she wants to do.

On the album there’s the song Suspended in Gaffa, a song I fell in love with the first time I heard it. This love continues, and it’s one of my favourite songs with Kate. Unlike some other creations on the album this song is quite easy to listen to and traditional in its approach. But you also have a healthy dose of mystery, partly through a text that I don’t understand, and partly through a child's voice that says something barely audible before each chorus. I don’t know what it says, though, maybe "You're a fool who bought this record." Mysteriously enough anyway, and especially the younger version of yours truly liked that. This song alone makes it worth owning The Dreaming.

As mentioned, some of the other songs are not as easy to grasp. The songs often take strange turns and Kate sometimes uses her voice in a way that makes the music both more theatrical, unpredictable and makes you wonder if you really like it. She whispers, sings, screams and yells. It makes the music both more interesting but also more difficult. This is not an immediate record, so to speak. As usual, you have to respect Kate for going in her own direction and creating music that may not be completely tailored. It’s even more impressive when you realize that Kate was only 24 years old when the album was released.

I can’t help but recommend this album, but add a few words of caution. It's probably not the first Kate Bush record one should get if one wants to explore her music. It’ better to get to it a bit later in this process, otherwise the risk is that you become frightened and turn away. Listen at your own risk, in other words.

It can be mentioned that David Gilmour plays some guitar on the album, and do some backing vocals on one of the album’s highlights, Pull Out the Pin.

Tracklist

Side A

1. Sat In Your Lap 3:29

2. There Goes A Tenner 3:24

3. Pull Out The Pin 5:26

4. Suspended In Gaffa 3:54

5. Leave It Open 3:20

Side B

1. The Dreaming 4:41

2. Night Of The Swallow 5:22

3. All The Love 4:29

4. Houdini 3:48

5. Get Out Of My House 5:25

Freedom Road (1970)

Let's be honest, some albums you can do quite well without. Freedom Road is, at least in yours truly's universe, one of these. This record is an echo from my childhood, it belonged to my parents' collection and I often came across it when I flipped through their albums as a kid, in search of something exciting to listen to. But I never spun it. And neither did my parents. Neither my brother. But it was there. I was well acquainted with the cover. The three black men, a title with a hippie vibe, the semi psychedelic design. It could have been something, but there was something about it that never made me curious enough.

It remained an enigma until the day I saved a number of albums from my parents' attic a while ago, when it finally was time to find out what actually was on it.

Rediffusion was a company whose slogan was "The best budget records in the world". I don't know, for some reason it's not the slogan I would have thought was the ultimate for a record company. On the other hand, I'm no businessman. On the other hand, the company was created in 1968 and went down in 1982.
Apparently, Rediffusion was originally a company that distributed radio and television in England. It was created in1928 and a number of sub-companies was started, of which the record label was one.

The content on the record are covers. Who or what bands are singing I do not know. Generally, covers are rarely better than the original, personally, I can only think of a handful. And the same rule applies to Freedom Road. Although the songs in their original forms often are quite good, the selection is OK, the versions on the album are too cheezy. The very first association I got, after a few seconds of the first song, was Paul McCartney at his very cheeziest mood. Not a favorite of mine. The sound is the same on most songs, cheezy and done without even a hint of creativity or challenge. Things you hear in an elevator or in the background in the clothing store that doesn't have a tiniest wish to be at the cutting edge of fashion trends. Since the songs basically are still pretty good songs, you can still listen to the album, and two or three songs are actually quite OK. But I see no reason to buy this album, it's way better to listen to the songs in their original form.

The album cover is perhaps the greatest benefit to this album.

Other titles from Redifffusion:
Flower Of Love
Songs Of The Islands
Bill McGuffie And Some Brass
Steve Benbow Sings Irish Songs

Tracklist

Side A
1. He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother 4:10
2. And The Sun Will Shine 3:43
3. Put A Little Love In Your Heart 2:06
4. Melting Pot 3:27
5. Onion Song 2:50
6. Walk A Mile In My Shoes 3:41

Side B
1. United We Stand 3:46
2. Everybody Get Together 3:30
3, Young Gifted And Black 3:12
4. Good Morning Freedom 2:46
5. Abraham, Martin & John 4:15
6. Love Of The Common People 2:25

Storm Corrosion (2012)

Birthdays tend to involve the receiving of gifts, which is nice. Extra nice is it when these are in the form of vinyl records. The summer that just passed included my 40th birthday, and a friend of mine with an interest in music was the man behind this gift. This friend is a man with a good taste in music, and also an admirer of both Opeth and Steven Wilson / Porcupine Tree. For this eponymous album is a collaboration between the singer in the (metal) prog band Opeth, Mikael Åkerfeldt, and singer of Porcupine Tree, Steven Wilson.

I'm no expert on either Opeth or Porcupine Tree, but my view of the music these bands create is that it is relatively loud. This can lead to the expectation that Storm Corrosion is a pretty noisy record. It is not.The listener is treated with atmospheric and beautiful tones that lean towards an ambient direction. It's a double record, where each side clocks in at about 10 minutes, except for side 3, which is about 15 minutes long. The spin, however, is 33 rpm. Maybe it's for the sake of sound quality the record is done in this somewhat odd way, I've heard rumours that it sounds better if the grooves are not too close to each other.

Mikael and Steven have known each other since the early 00's and Steven has produced three of Opeth's albums. Mikael has guest starred on one of Porcupine Tree's records and in addition to this, the two bands have toured together. No one was therefore surprised when the couple announced that they would make music together. Storm Corrosion is the first result of this collaboration, nothing has been said about any possible continuation of this project.

Steven Wilson says: We ran in the opposite direction of the idea of ​​a progressive metal supergroup that people had been talking about and expecting from us. It was a chance to delve into more experimental ideas.

For this is truly a peaceful and atmospheric album. The opening track Drag Ropes gives at least me some Gentle Giant vibes thanks to the song structure, the album then goes on quietly and peacefully to the dreamy and beautiful final track with the Swedish-sounding name Ljudet Innan (=the Sound Before). The beautiful dream is disturbed, however, by the harmonies that alternates between the beautiful and the discordant. All songs except one on the album is with vocals.

From the very beginning it was thought that Mike Portnoy (ex-Dream Theatre) would drum on the album, but Mikael and Steven realized that the music they created had no room for drums. In the end, however, they asked the Porcupine Tree drummer Gavin Harrison to contribute with some drumming, a contribution which stays in the background and doesn't take up much space. According to my friend who gave me the album and also this information, Mike Portnoy took no offense.

This is probably no music for the pre-party or the build-up to the football game. However, it can fit three o'clock at night, when you come home after a breezy night out, with intense socializing and loud music, and have the need to unwind. Breathe and relax. Philosophize over the night that just passed. In your loneliness. Because you always come home alone.

I like the cover, a true work of art. There is a painting by Hans Arnold, the Swiss-Swedish artist who, among many other things, have done a lot of book covers I recognize from my childhood and youth. This painting was made in 1969.

So, not easy to describe the music on the album, and at the risk of repetition, words like beautiful, dreamy, ambient, calm, atmospheric and dark come to me when I try to summarize. It makes me think of David Sylvian and his more atmospheric creations and why not Shearwater, with their quiet, dark songs. Yet Storm Corrosion is not like much else in today's musical landscape. A cool and calm album I can recommend. This is a newcomer in my record collection, strange it would be otherwise since it was released this year, but a record that is sure to get more playing time in the years to come.

(Another obvious theme among the presents for my 40th birthday was beer in various forms, based on my ongoing beer brewing project, but that's a topic for another blog.)

Tracklist

Side A

1. Drag Ropes 9:52

Side B

2. Storm Corrosion 10:09

Side C

1. Hag 6:28

2. Happy 4:53

3. Lock Howl 6:09

Side D

1. Ljudet Innan 10:20

Tangerine Dream - "Rubycon" (1975)

Dope music, I used to call this kind of music when I was younger. The musiscians probably did drugs. The ones listening to the music did drugs. This was a compliment. The music was different, alternative and druggy. It attracted me. At the same time I had, as a teenager, a somewhat hard time with the Tangerine Dream albums. I listened a lot to early Pink Floyd and other psychedelic albums, but Tangerine Dream's instrumental records were a little too formless, shapeless and vague. I guess I missed a clear hook to cling on to. The albums of Tangerine Dream often stood a long time in the shelf witout getting any air time. Maybe I didn't do enough drugs?

Today I think differently about this record. It's a really great album.

Tangerine Dream is a German band that was formed in 1967, and Rubycon was their sixth studio album (if I've counted correctly). The previous album Phaedra had been a great success. Edgar Froese has been the steady member in the band and at the time of recording of Rubycon the band consisted also of Christopher Franke and Peter Baumann.
The band is still active today and has released over one hundred albums since its creation, and if you also count singles and compilations, the number is over two hundred.

Rubycon consists of two songs, one on each side of the album - Rubycon, Part One and Rubycon, Part Two. Simple and logical. The album has a total time of about 35 minutes which is enough. It had been a long time since I played this album, and when I a few weeks ago listened to it, I was surprised how good I thought it was. It has spun a number of times on the turntable since. Synthezeisers and the 70's can go in any direction, but in this case a really nice sound. There is a ceratin attraction to the early development of synth-based music that was largely lost in the 80's. Rubycon takes the listener on a journey that passes through peaceful landscapes, dark and neurotic chambers, harmonic fields and steady pulses. And even though the instruments have evolved tremendously since those days, Rubycon might sound even more beautiful than today's electronic music. Perhaps it is the relative simplicity of the sounds that attracts?

The music can be described as a mix of early Pink Floyd (think Echoes or Time), and Kraftwerk. More electronic than Pink Floyd but druggier than Kraftwerk. Make David Lynch the producer of some darker parts of the record and maybe you'll have a picture of what it is. The music creates a nice wholeness, and even though there are two long songs I don't get tired of the music. The road the music travels on always feels logical and the changes that occur are so integrated that there's no doubt that it's one and the same song. It's like a smooth dark river that flows, it turns here, it turns there, there are rapid parts, there are slow parts, but it is one and the same river.

It's a dark and calm album, although a steady pulse beats in parts of the songs. Rubycon is as much atmosphere as songs, and I think Tangerine Dream finds a good balance between these focuses. Sometimes albums /songs like these have parts that are mostly a chaos of sounds with no structure, I usually don't enjoy such parts. Luckily, Rubycon doesn't have these parts. I would say it's an enjoyable album all the way through even though some parts are less interesting than others.

For some reason, I get a summer vibe from this album, which also happens when I listen to Edgar Froeses solo albums. I don't know why. Maybe I have listened to this album during the summer as a younger man.

I recommend Rubycon. It is a half mystic, beautiful creation that works well a dark winter evening or a sunny summer day. It's a cool sound and the clear 70's stamp only enhances the experience.
And the 70s must have been a fun time when albums like these could spend time on the charts (14 weeks on spot #12).

Tracklist

Side A
1. Rubycon, Part One 17:18

Side B
1. Rubycon, Part Two 17:35

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1969)

From the back cover:

This is a joyous, bouncing and entirely successful piece of pop music, bursting with good tunes and clever words, yet having a musical continuity and wholeness which is quite new in the world where the differing sounds of Beatles, Cream and Doors explode and dominate. "Joseph" is, if you like, pop music moving towards its coming of age.

There you have it, this is heavy stuff, apparently. Personally I think the cover is worth a Nobel prize, if it would be awarded for album covers (which I think it should). That alone is worth the $10 I paid for this LP and makes me return to my ideas that we need to have a mural at home.

This is a musical on the theme of Joseph, you know, the one with the evil brothers who was going to kill him but instead sold him as a slave. After some adventures including a dream interpretation regarding seven good years and seven poor years in Egypt, he became Pharaoh's second man. There, he was finally reunited with his brothers during the famine years, when the brothers were seeking help from Egypt's Pharaoh (who did well thanks to good preparations before the famine). The brothers' initial ill will against Joseph was partially based on a nice colorful coat he got from his father. And they probably thought he was somewhat self-important, and also his father's favorite. Of course they had to kill him. If you want to read the original story, just check out the Book of Genesis.

This musical is written by no less than Andrew Lloyd Webber (music) and Tim Rice (lyrics), or Sir Tim Rice as he is addressed nowdays. Both were in their 20s when they wrote it and they did it on commission of Alan Doggett, music master of the school Colet Court. And it is as musicals tend to be, conceptual and theatrical music that sometimes is really great, but sometimes the music needs the visuals to really work. I'm no great connoisseur of Lloyd Webber but still recognize Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats and Phantom of the Opera in the music. Although both Webber's and Rice's careers at this point hadn't really got going, it feels like they already had found their way to make music (plagiarism and copying many claim in the case of Webber).


Webber and Rice

The first version of the music was a 15-minute concert by the choir at Colet Court, there was also an orchestra and the pop band The Mixed Bag which played along. It was the school's Easter concert 1968. Lloyd Webber's father felt this could become something really big and organized a concert in his own church, and now the show had become a bit longer. A third concert was made later that year and by this time it was a 35-minute show, thanks to some new songs. The Mixed Bag and the choir from Colet Court participated in these concerts and they also play on the LP that was recorded the following year. After Lloyd Webber's big success with Jesus Christ Superstar 1970, Jospeh ... attracted new attention and was launched in the United States as the follow-up to Jesus Christ. Since then it has been set up in countless productions at various places in the world throughout the decades. A film has also been made based on the musical.

Personally I think it's an OK album, but the music doesn't stand up to the fantastic cover. One thing I like about musicals is that it's often quite bombastic music, big choires, cool harmonies and sweeping, catchy choruses which often are really powerful. In its best moments. In its worst moments, the music without its visual complement is rather dull and a bit strange, more theater than music. On Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat you get both. There's a lot of humor in the music, and the first time I listened to it I followed the lyrics through out the whole LP even though I really hadn't thought I would do so. But the story was so exciting and fun so I got stuck in it.



Recording in the Decca studio

Many other musical albums are double-LPs, but not this one which is good. A double-LP often contains more fillers and boring songs you want to skip, especially when it comes to musicals. On a single LP you get more quality than quantity.
Conclusion: No real need to have this record in the shelf, but it's fun to have music from Webber's and Rice's early careers and at the same time a piece of art to hang on the wall (if you have a wife that doesn't allow murals at home).

Just as Joseph had a vision of the future, the text on the back of the cover holds a prediction by the Sunday Times' Derek Jewell, apparently a mystic:

The names on this disc aren't yet well-known. But with Lloyd Webber (currently at the Royal College of Music), Rice and Doggett all now involved in the record production game, that situation will change swiftly. "Joseph" is splendid enough in itself. It could be the start of something even bigger.

Tracklist

Side A
1. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Side B
1. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

That's the official tracklist, a clear concept, wouldn't you say? But you can find tracklists that list the individual songs:

Side A
1. Way Way Back
2. Jacob Chorus
3. Favourite Son
4. Joseph's Coat
5. I Dreamed
6. The Dreams Were More Than
7. Next Day
8. Poor Poor Jacob
9. Joseph Was Taken
10. Potiphar
11. Suddenly They Heard
12. Poor Poor Joseph
13. Close Every Door

Side B
1. Joseph's Luck
2. Meanwhile in Bed
3. Poor Poor Pharap
4. Chained and Bound
5. I Was Wandering
6. Seven Years
7. Pharao Thought Well Stone
8. Back In Canaan
9. Stop
10. Who's the Thief
11. Is It
12. Benjamin
13. Show Him Some
14. And Joseph Knew
15. Joseph Joseph
16. So Jacob
17. I Closed My Eyes
18. Give Me

You'll find tons of clips from the musical on Youtube, but I couldn't find any songs from this original album.