the_record_on_my_turntable raze the aladdin sessions (lester young) from leonard feather's liner_notes: "'prez got that tone, so different from coleman hawkins', because that's the way he wanted everything in life,' a former lester young sideman told me many years ago. 'i got him a pair of shoes once, and one day i came in and found them in the wash basket. then i realized they were hard-soled shoes, and he would always wear moccasins or slippers. it had to be soft and gentle or prez wanted no part of it.'" 241125 ... raze music from big pink (the band) the band lost a good chunk of their soul when richard manuel's songwriting voice slipped away. that voice was never stronger than it is right here. "in a station" and "lonesome suzie" are almost too beautiful for words. and i always have to stop myself from moving the needle back to the beginning of "tears of rage" so i can hear it again. few album openers hit so hard. 241129 ... raze don juan's reckless daughter (joni mitchell) the critics have always said this one of joni's worst albums. the critics are fucking morons. 241204 ... raze swordfishtrombones (tom_waits) this wasn't my first tom_waits album. that was "heart_attack and vine". but i think it was my second or third. i grew up in the eighties, so i have a higher tolerance than most for the period's sometimes unwise production touches. still, one of the wonderful things about albums like this and "rain dogs" is that they sound like they were recorded yesterday. while other producers were busy sticking a million microphones in front of a drum kit until it sounded like nothing and turning the reverb up to eleven, mr. waits here was dragging a metal chair across the studio floor, barking into a megaphone, and bashing a dresser drawer with a two-by-four. human noises don't date. as time goes by, they just put on weight. 241208 ... raze show some emotion (joan armatrading) i don't really know what to say about this one other than, "holy shit, this is some good stuff." killer bookends, too. 241217 ... raze tramp (sharon_van_etten) not my favourite thing sharon's done. that's always going to be "epic". but i like this a lot more now than i did when it was new to me. she's got a way of weaving vocal melodies that stop me in my tracks. it needs to be said: this is not a great-sounding record. i don't think it's a bad pressing. i think whoever cut the lathe was working with the digital master used to make the cd, which is never a good idea. what was already compressed to death as a spinning piece of plastic sounds almost absurdly congested in this format. the music is good enough to survive that indignity. but it sure would have been nice if they'd left some dynamics intact. 241221 ... raze the walking (jane_siberry) there's never been anyone else like jane_siberry. she builds songscapes that are at once cinematic in scope and as emotionally unguarded as one hand holding another. for my money, this is her finest hour, though "bound by the beauty" gives it some stiff competition, and there are great chunks of "when_i_was_a_boy" and "maria" i wouldn't want to be without. 241229 ... raze elite hotel (emmylou harris) i swear i could listen to emmylou sing junk_mail and it wouldn't be wasted_time. 250102 ... raze smile (laura nyro) this isn't quite as idiosyncratic as the likes of "new_york tendaberry" and "christmas and the beads of sweat", but i don't think laura was capable of making music that wasn't gorgeous and arresting. 250106 ... raze a wizard, a true star (todd rundgren) twenty-three years ago, gord called to tell me he found this album in josh's record collection and gave it a spin, not knowing anything about it. "are you sure you didn't record this and just not tell anybody?" he said. "because it sounds just like you." it was one of the best compliments eighteen-year-old me ever got. 250110 ... raze pirates (rickie lee jones) if laura nyro has a soul sister, it's gotta be rickie lee. in a contemporaneous review for rolling stone, stephen holden called this album "a cloudburst in the desert of eighties formula pop music and recycled heavy-metal rock" and noted "the bravura way it weaves autobiography and personal myth into a flexible musical setting that conjures a lifetime's worth of character and incident". sometimes the critics *do* get it right. and "skeletons" will never not wreck me. 250124 ... raze mark hollis (mark_hollis) half a lifetime ago, i packed some pot in a tobacco pipe, smoked until the night felt a little more forgiving, and listened to mark hollis' only solo record while a storm raged outside. in the middle of what passed for a turbulent passage in "watershed", the wind whipped the thin arm of a tree against my bedroom window. in shadow, it looked like the evergreen was flailing at the glass, trying to get inside. something about that felt almost too perfect to be real. i wrote in a book i filled for someone who would never read the words i wanted them to have: "this is music that knows the world." few artists have wielded silence with more power or consideration than mark did, treating it as an instrument in its own right. all the hushed beauty makes those moments when things get loud that much more striking and meaningful. 250128 ... raze beauty and the beat (the go-go's) the sort of thing that gives pop-punk a good name. as great as the hits are, it's the deep_cuts i dig the most. belinda carlisle might have been the face of the go-go's, but jane wiedlin was the band's hook-laden heart. 250204 ... raze indelibly_stamped (supertramp) i think roger hodgson is one of the great unsung guitarists in popular music. he always serves the song, never sacrificing melody or soul for meaningless fretboard fireworks. the solo he chips in at the end of "crime of the century" is a good example. it's nothing flashy. just a few notes. but their emotional impact is immense. this is pre-"crime", pre-fame 'tramp. i've always liked the cut of its jib. (homer says, "what's a jib?") 250205 ... raze moon_pix (cat_power) the cat_power album i love most. always has been. always will be. even if the supposed audiophile pressing makes "he turns down" sound like it's being sung through a fan. 250209 ... raze either_or (elliott_smith) my favourite elliott smith album changes all the time. some days it's "xo". some days it's "from_a_basement_on_the_hill". some days it's the self-titled one. today it's this. 250213 ... raze 50_words_for_snow (kate_bush) i've loved kate for almost as long as i've been alive. i have every album she's made, in more than one format. "50_words_for_snow" is one i've somehow never spent much time with, though i bought it the day it was released. it's winter_music par excellence, and so much more. "snowflake" is just ... beautiful beyond words. knowing it's her son singing with her adds yet another layer of emotional depth. 250224 ... raze loveless (my bloody valentine) kevin shields might be the architect of my bloody valentine's vastly influential sound, but bilinda butcher's voice has always been an irreplaceable element of the sonic tapestry. it's impossible to imagine a song like "only shallow" or "to here knows when" working without her. i've always thought she sounded a little like a very sleepy kate_bush. and that's a good thing. (i would have thrown on "isn't_anything", but alas, i don't have that one on vinyl.) 250228 ... raze it's too late to stop now (van morrison) there are great live albums, and then there's this powderkeg. you can almost hear the sweat hit the stage. the only real mark against it is the way "into_the_mystic" is taken at too fast a tempo and made a little shoutier than it wants to be. other than that, i have no complaints. 250304 ... warmthofrelease ^It's Too Late to Stop Now is incredible. So nice I own it twice, both the cd and the vinyl, one of the few albums I doubled up on. Personally I like that live Mystic, great keyboard work. I think Caravan from this one doesn't live up to the Last Waltz version, and I had to learn to like this Cypress Ave compared to the album version, there's an aspect of "you had to be there" in that performance. But there are so many great moments here, Listen to the Lion in particular feels like an entire spiritual awakening. Such a beautiful intimate moment for Van the man to have exposed himself so completely in front of a crowd. One of the absolute best live albums of the entire 1970s and that's really saying something. 250304 ... raze (in all honesty, i think i might just be partial to the original studio cut for emotional reasons. "heart over head" has kind of been the guiding principle of my life ... with all the disastrous results you'd expect. ha!) 250304 ... raze waltz for debby (bill_evans trio) if i could only listen to one person play piano for the rest of my life, i think my choice would be bill_evans. everything he recorded is worth hearing, but there's something extra special about the work he did with paul motian and scott lafaro. it almost feels like they knew how little time they had together (scott was killed in a car accident ten days after the village vanguard live date this album is drawn from). though bill went on to make more great music in the trio setting, nothing else carries quite the same emotional current this stuff does. 250312 ... raze a_walk_across_the_rooftops (the blue nile) most pundits would have you believe "hats" is the crown jewel in the blue nile's slim but stunning catalogue of recorded work. great as it is, i think it's missing a bit of the sense of urgency and wide-eyed wonder that runs through "rooftops". the band didn't know if they would get the chance to make another album, so they put everything they had into their first fully formed artistic statement. they would never do anything quite this daring or eccentric again in terms of sonics. it must be one of the most organic and least dated-sounding "synth pop" albums on the planet, though that description doesn't begin to do justice to what's under the hood. then there's paul buchanan's voice — a remarkably expressive instrument that humanizes everything it touches. i think a lot of love songs and their singers are full of shit. when paul sings about being in love with a person, or a feeling, or a wild, wild sky, i believe him. 250316 ... raze anthology (the temptations) there are thirty-seven tracks spread across the six sides of this compilation, with nary a dud in the bunch. deathless as the likes of "my girl" and "ain't too proud to beg" are, i'm partial to the stuff that comes from the "psychedelic soul" period. i could hear "papa was a rollin' stone" a million times and never tire of it. 250327 ... raze l.a. woman (the doors) it might not be the best doors album ever made ("strange days" would probably get my vote), but this is almost always the first one i reach for when i'm in the mood for jim morrison and co., due in no small part to the memories_embedded_in_objects. i also just dig the bluesy atmosphere, and the way fragments of some guide vocals can still be heard at the bottom of the mix like little whispers in the dark. 250403 ... raze plastic ono band (john lennon) i think there's a case to be made for paul mccartney having the most interesting post-beatles solo career. and that's without even counting some of his best-known and most celebrated albums. "mccartney", "ram", "back to the egg", "mccartney ii", and "electric arguments" alone are packed with more invention and melodic heft than most writers manage in a lifetime. sometimes i think paul might be my favourite beatle. but john was the one whose songs dug deepest into me. and the sharpest shovel he ever had was right here on "plastic ono band". depending on what you read, this was either the most restrained production job of phil spector's life, or he wasn't even in the studio most days and john effectively produced himself. whoever was calling the shots, they knew exactly what they were doing. there are no string arrangements and almost no overdubs of any kind. the sound world is at once narrow and as wide as the ear can hear. even the song titles are honed to the bone but made massive by all that lives within their walls: "god". "mother". "love". "remember". john and yoko had recently thrown themselves into primal therapy with arthur janov. the sessions were cut short when john's american visa expired. he walked into the studio with every old wound janov pried open still oozing, and out came the most nakedly honest art he would ever make. i love that it's john himself who's responsible for all the guitar and most of the piano parts. there's something urgent in his unstudied playing that hits harder than anything a technically more proficient musician might have done in his place. those swollen major chords that hold "mother" together feel like they're being ripped right out of his guts. it's impossible to overstate how important this music was to me as a teenager. i responded viscerally to its anger, its pain, and its power. i felt like i'd found a friend. he just happened to be dead. for all the throat-scorching screams, the most moving moment might come in the album's final minutes, when the man who was once vilified for saying the beatles were more popular than jesus finishes running through a list of everything and everyone he doesn't believe in anymore, and then he almost whispers: "i just believe in me." what's more, for maybe the first (and last) time, you believe him. 250406 ... raze just another diamond day (vashti_bunyan) in the pantheon of impossible living_room_concerts, here's one i would have loved to see: nick drake, connie converse, sibylle baier, karen dalton, tim buckley, and vashti_bunyan all trading songs and stories (and likely passing the same guitar back and forth). my brain would have exploded, sure. and then i would have been dead. but what a fine way to go. 250410 ... releaseofwarmth (adds to the music_to-do_list while contemplating a switch of record_on_display) 250410 ... raze summer breeze (seals and crofts) america's "a horse with no name" seems to be the popular choice for "best crosby, stills & nash song not actually written or performed by crosty, stills & nash". i'm gonna go with jim and dash's "the euphrates" instead. i had to do a deep dive to make sure david crosby wasn't singing uncredited backup vocals on that cut. some of the best stuff here never got any airplay. it's just great seventies folk rock all the way around. 250416 ... raze the original soundtrack (10cc) come for the immortal "i'm not in love". stay for the minestrone and flying junk. 250417 ... ovenbird It's my dad's turntable technically but I have access to it today! So, it's Beatles for Sale and then it's going to be this totally obscure old record that we always played on Easter for some reason. It's called Sing for Joy and it's music performed by members of the London England Girl Guide Association from 1978. 250420 ... raze that's a phenomenal album right there. those harmonies on "no reply" kill me every time. and i feel like "i'll follow the sun" is one of the great beatles ballads no one ever talks about. 250420 ... ovenbird Was I just moments ago standing alone in my parents' livingroom singing "I'll follow the sun" along to the crackling record on the turntable because it's my favorite song on that album? This answer is yes. 250420 ... raze the nylon curtain (billy_joel) i might be a lot of things, but a billy_joel apologist isn't one of them. there's never been any guilt embedded in what his music has given me. this stuff is in my blood. my dad used to dance with me to "the stranger" and "52nd street" when i was sleep-starved baby. i own every album the man made up to and including "river of dreams". i love them all. even "cold spring harbor", where billy sounds like a chipmunk with a chest cold. even "the bridge". anyone would be forgiven for never wanting to hear "piano man", "we didn't start the fire", "moving out (anthony's song)", or "my life" again after the radio made all those songs familiar to the point of insanity. billy's true brilliance lies in his deep_cuts — things like "the ballad of billy the kid", "root_beer_rag", "james", "prelude / angry young man", "get it right the first time", "until the night", "sleeping with the television on", "through the long night", "code of silence", "and_so_it_goes", and "a minor variation". in my estimation, "the nylon curtain" is his masterpiece, and one of the best explicitly beatles-influenced albums ever made by anyone. there's an unshakeable undercurrent of darkness running through it that isn't quite like anything else in his catalogue of recorded work. even a love song like "she's right on time" feels like it's waiting for the other shoe to drop. the sweat-slicked, panic-stricken "pressure" must be one of the strangest hit singles of the eighties. "laura" is home to billy's only f_bomb, and he laces it with some serious venom. "scandinavian skies" is widescreen psychedelia that recounts a hellish heroin experience had while on tour. "goodnight saigon" is as striking a war-themed scream as anyone has set down in sound. these lyrics spin a harrowing story in just fourteen words: "we came in spastic like tame-less horses. we left in plastic as numbered corpses." i could go on. but i need to give a shout-out to "songs in the attic", which preceded "the nylon curtain" by a year and is one of the great unsung live albums. it might have been a desperation move meant to buy time while billy dealt with cocaine addiction and writer's block, but ignoring every hit he had and focusing on little-known pre-"stranger" material was a masterstroke. these are the definitive readings of "she's got a way", "everybody loves you now", "miami 2017 (seen the lights go out on broadway)", "los angelenos", "summer, highland falls", and "streetlife serenader". it's a shame this band was later dismantled a piece at a time, because man, could they cook. 250501 ... raze the smoker you drink, the player you get (joe walsh) sometimes i forget just how eclectic joe walsh was one upon a time. this album offers a solid refresher course. "dreams" is one of the finest things the man ever wrote. the other joe (vitale) gets a song on each side, and they're both ridiculously good. but while "rocky mountain way" is in the running for "best talk box solo", i think first prize has to go to pete drake and "forever". i'd like to think joe would back me up on that. 250507 what's it to you? who go blather from