The 10 Best John Lennon Songs You May Have Never Heard

by Jim Beviglia, Culture Sonar: http://www.culturesonar.com/john-lennon-songs/

Because his life was cut so short, and also in part due to his long “house-husband” phase in the late ‘70s, John Lennon released only seven post-Beatle studio albums — some in conjunction with wife Yoko Ono. It’s impressive that during that short span and with a relatively small output, so much of Lennon’s solo material made a significant impact. Yet there are still album tracks whose airplay and exposure pale in comparison to the mammoth hits still ingrained in the culture. In that spirit, here are ten John Lennon songs which deserve a little more recognition than they currently enjoy.

1. “Isolation” (1970)
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band was the album on which Lennon finally got to say everything he wanted without having to worry about operating under the Beatle banner. He used the opportunity to lay bare his demons in harrowing, haunting songs that were often screamed more than sung. But on this restrained (for the most part) track, he sings almost meekly over somber piano chords about his all-encompassing fear (“We’re afraid of everyone / Afraid of the sun”) and loneliness, his cries for help made clearer without any Beatlesque exuberance to hide them.

2. “Crippled Inside” (1971)
On his second proper solo release, Lennon was canny enough to realize he needed more than just critical appreciation, which is why Imagine is filled with accessible melodies and lush production. In many ways, “Crippled Inside” deals with similar subject matter as the songs on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. But it’s delivered with saloon piano (played by studio ace Nicky Hopkins), a frisky dobro solo (from George Harrison) and cheeky enthusiasm from Lennon. The end result is as catchy a song about inner torment as you’re likely to encounter.

3. “New York City” (1972)
Well-intentioned as it might have been, Some Time in New York City was a misstep, as Lennon proved a surprisingly heavy-handed protest singer. But this playful rocker survives the wreckage with its humor intact. The music is a bit shambolic, but achieves some excellent forward momentum; Lennon’s recounting of his time in the Big Apple, complete with bizarre characters and welcoming landmarks, proves that he could do a Chuck Berry homage as well as anybody.

4. “Tight A$” (1973)
Mick Jagger gets all the credit for songs with salacious intent, but Lennon was no slouch in that department. This funky rocker from Mind Games shows him indulging in some naughty wordplay and barely-couched innuendo. That’s not enough to make a song, which is why the excellent chemistry from the studio band (with the invaluable Jim Keltner providing the backbeat) is so important. The Carl Perkins influence is palpable — even if Carl might have blushed at the lyrics.

5. “Aisumasen (I’m Sorry)” (1973)
Lennon’s separation from Yoko Ono (around the time that Mind Games was recorded) seems to be the inspiration for this ballad. It strolls along at a measured pace, giving ample room for Lennon to emote with his lead vocal. There’s nothing too fancy going on here, yet Lennon’s uncanny ability to evoke pain and vulnerability is enough to push this song a long way. This one is largely forgotten, coming as it did on an uneven album, but it has soul to spare.

6. “Steel and Glass” (1974)
Beatle fans might not have been too happy to hear Lennon savaging Allen Klein, since the lawyer took hisside over Paul McCartney during the Fab Four’s breakup wars. But there’s no denying how effectively he takes Klein apart in this song from Walls and Bridges. The fact that he reuses many of the same riffs that he used in “How Do You Sleep?” (his takedown of McCartney from a few years earlier) seems like Lennon’s tacit admission that he may have backed the wrong horse.

7. “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down and Out)” (1974)
Lennon allegedly wrote this song with Frank Sinatra in mind, but he actually provides a telling snapshot of his own emotional health (or lack thereof) in this after-hours ballad from Walls and Bridges. It reflects both the emptiness of fame (“It’s all showbiz,” he drily laments) and his loneliness without Ono. Jesse Ed Davis adds a weeping guitar solo that plays beautifully on the drunken horns. Mid-‘70s Lennon often gets overlooked, but this stunner is evidence that that era should get another glance.

8. “Just Because” (1975)
This 1975 album (Rock ‘n’ Roll), with production by Lennon and Phil Spector, casts a hazy cloud on many early rock chestnuts. However, they get it right on the album’s closing track, largely by getting out of the way of this Lloyd Price classic and letting Lennon (or “Dr. Winston O’Boogie” as he calls himself here), wringing every last bit emotion out of the descending melody. It’s far and away his finest interpretation on the record.

9. “I’m Losing You” (1980)
Many people forget that Double Fantasy was actually an album split right down the middle, between performances by Lennon and Yoko Ono. As a result, most of Lennon’s songs on the project either became huge hits in the aftermath of his death or have become well-known since. “I’m Losing You” sort of slips through the cracks,  perhaps because it bucks the perceived notion of the album as one filled with marital bliss. Instead, it’s a bluesy rocker that includes some of Lennon’s grittiest vocals since the Plastic Ono Band days.

10. “I Don’t Want to Face It” (1984)
Right before his death, Lennon was clearly energized to re-enter the recording world, so much so that he had recorded nearly enough material for a follow-up to Double Fantasy. Those songs were collected on a posthumous release in 1984, entitled Milk and Honey. “Nobody Told Me” became a hit, and “Grow Old With Me” became one for the ages. But this rip-roaring track, complete with Lennon’s faux-German count-in and his falsetto vocals, features him dissecting hypocrisy with all of the old humor and insight intact.

–Jim Beviglia

PS.  Read about some great, underrated solo tracks by Lennon’s Beatle bandmates George Harrison and Paul McCartney.

Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

VIDEOS: When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with Household Objects: Hear Two Surviving Tracks Made with Wine Glasses and Rubber Bands

by Josh Jones, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/when-pink-floyd-tried-to-make-an-album-with-household-objects.html

There are bands one casually encounters through greatest hits or breakthrough albums, on which they sound exactly like themselves and no one else. It’s impossible to imagine anyone but Fleetwood Mac making Rumors or Tusk. Or anyone but Pink Floyd recording Wish You Were Here or Dark Side of the Moon. But just like Fleetwood Mac, when we look back before Floyd’s best-known work, we find, as Mark Blake writes at Team Rock, that “they were a very different proposition.”

And yet it wasn't that Pink Floyd radically shuffled the lineup—though they had, since their first album, lost founding singer and guitarist Syd Barrett to mental illness and taken on David Gilmour to replace him. It’s that the same four musicians who re-invented psych-rock in the early 70s with “Money,” “Time,” and “Great Gig in the Sky,” sounded nothing like that blues/funk/disco/prog hybrid in the late 60s. Some of the same elements were there—the sardonic sense of humor, love for sound effects and extended jam sessions—but they cohered in much more alien and experimental shapes.

The title track of 1968’s Saucerful of Secrets, for example, opens with four minutes of dissonant horror-movie organ drones, which give way to primal drumming around which piano chords and sci-fi noises fall haphazardly, then resolve in a closing wordless choral passage. Not a single, cynical lyric about the pains of modern life to be found. The following year’s Ummagumma continued to build the band’s experimental foundations, and in-between these projects, they recorded film soundtracks that, again, do not make one think of laser-lit arena rock shows.

But there is plenty of connective tissue between the various phases of Floyd, much of it, like the bulk of their 1970 soundtrack for Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, officially unreleased. We can add to that list an attempted album called Household Objects, which they began in 1970 and abandoned in ’74. The project, drummer Nick Mason admitted, represents the then-largely-instrumental band “still looking for a coherent direction,” and in so doing, abandoning instruments altogether. On Household Objects, they made serendipitous discoveries using—as the title clearly stated—found sounds, in the vein of John Cage or the avant-garde composers of musique concrete.

In 1971, Abbey Road studios tape operator John Leckie, who went on to produce the heavily Floyd-influenced Muse, remembers the band “making chords up from the tapping of beer bottles, tearing newspapers for rhythm, and letting off aerosol cans to get a hi-hat sound.” Keyboardist Richard Wright recalls spending “days getting a pencil and a rubber band till it sounded like a bass.” The idea began two years earlier when the band performed a composition called Work that “involved,” writes Blake, “sawing wood and boiling kettles on stage.”

Household Objects recording sessions, writes Rolling Stone, “consisted of Pink Floyd playing songs on hand mixers, light bulbs, wood saws, hammers, brooms and other home appliances. Recording in this manner was excruciating.” Wright and Gilmour grew exasperated and the band moved on to other things, namely Wish You Were Here. All that seemingly remains of Household Objects are the two tracks here, “The Hard Way” (an instance where rubber bands sound like a bass) and “Wine Glasses,” the latter employing, you guessed it, wine glasses. But like so much of Floyd’s lesser-known or forgotten experimental work, these sessions created the backdrop for their more accessible hits. “Wine Glasses” survived in “Shine on You Crazy Diamond.” In the video just above, you can see David Gilmour work out the glass arrangements for his performance of the song in the 2006 Royal Albert Hall concert film Remember That Night.

The Smithsonian Presents a Gallery of 6,000+ Rare Rock ‘n Roll Photos on a Crowdsourced Web Site, and Now a New Book

Rock photography is an art form in itself, as demonstrated by books and exhibitions of some of its masters like Mick Rock, Jenny Lens, Pennie Smith, and so many others. But two years ago, the Smithsonian turned to the crowd, to the fan, to the amateur photographer, with a call to submit photos from over six decades of rock and roll that weren’t hanging on gallery walls, but sitting in a shoebox somewhere. From fans with instamatic cameras to amateurs covering concerts for their school paper, the Smithsonian wanted another angle on our cultural obsession.

Many of the contributions now live on a crowdsourced website. And a resulting book Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen collects the best of these in a chronological history of the genre, from post-war blues to the late 20th century. It will be officially released on October 24, though you can pre-order now.

Websites Mashable and Dangerous Minds present a selection of photos from the book, such as a shot of Sly Stone at the height of his powers (and belt buckle size), a pic of the Talking Heads on stage in Berkeley, 1977; a dark and mysterious glimpse of Bonnie Raitt, circa 1974; and a shot of Cream playing the Chicago Coliseum taken from the side of the stage, with Ginger Baker’s head a complete blur. Also find Joni Mitchell at Kleinhans Music Hall. And The Ramones in Tempe, Arizona, circa 1978.

Bonnie Raitt at the Harvard Square Theatre, by Barry Schneier/Smithsonian Books

It’s a reminder of how unpretentious these live shows could be, happening in a world with the simplest of lighting rigs and decades from the big screen projections even up-and-coming bands now indulge in. For the most part, this was an intimate contract between the artist and the audience, all crammed into small clubs with smoke, sweat, heat, and, most importantly, electricity in the air.

The new book also features tales from the people who took the photos, along with some more professional photos to “flesh out this overview of rock and roll,” according to the introduction by organizer Bill Bentley. He adds: "The results, spanning six decades, aim for neither encyclopedic authority nor comprehensive finality, but rather an index of supreme influence."

The Ramones in Tempe, Arizona, by Dorian Boese/Smithsonian Books

That supreme influence continues to be felt, for sure. Although the submission window is now closed, the Smithsonian's website allows you to look through the hundreds of submissions to the project.

VIDEOS: Frank Zappa Explains the Decline of the Music Business (1987)

by Josh Jones, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2016/09/frank-zappa-explains-the-decline-of-the-music-business-1987.html

“Remember the 60s?” says Frank Zappa in the interview above, “that era that a lot of people have these glorious memories of?... they really weren’t that great, those years.” Ever the grumpy uncle. But Zappa does get nostalgic for one thing, and it’s an unexpected one: the music business. “One thing that did happen in the 60s,” he says, “was some music of an unusual and experimental nature did get recorded, did get released.” The executives of the day were “cigar-chomping old guys who looked at the product and said, 'I don’t know. Who knows what it is? Record it, stick it out. If it sells, alright!'”

“We were better off with those guys,” says Zappa, “than we are with the hip, young executives,” making decisions about what people should hear. The hippies are more conservative than the conservative “old guys” ever were. This Zappa of 1987 recommends getting back to the “who knows?” approach, “that entrepreneurial spirit” of the grand old industry barons of the 60s. One can almost imagine Zappa—in the 60s—pining for the days of Edison, who refused to give up on the wax cylinder but would also record virtually anything. If both the time of Edison and the time of Zappa were bonanzas for makers of novelty records, so much the better. Zappa was novel. 

Still it seems like a funny sentiment coming from a guy who built most of his career in opposition to the record industry. But it was in the period of alleged decay that Zappa broke with Warner Bros. and founded his own label in 1977, making a deal with Phonogram to distribute his releases in the U.S. When Phonogram refused to release his 1981 single “I Don’t Wanna Get Drafted,” Zappa created another label, Barking Pumpkin Records, making sure he got to make and sell the music he wanted to.

In many ways people like Zappa---or later Kate Bush or Prince---anticipated our current music industry, in which we have artists starting labels left and right, controlling their own production and output. But those artists are mostly a tiny handful of hugely successful stars with mogul-sized ambitions. Does this help or harm the music economy as a whole? Independent musicians very rarely get the smallest window on how things work at the level of Beyonce, Jay-Z, or Taylor Swift (who "is the industry," Bloomberg once breathlessly proclaimed). But as Zappa notes, “the person in the executive chair may not be the final arbiter of taste for the entire population.” Even if those executives are themselves artists, we may greatly benefit from a wider range of "unusual and experimental" sounds in popular culture. Zappa suggests the way to do that is to get the "cigar-chomping old guys" (and they were all guys) back in charge. 

The rest of Zappa’s interview concerns the bogeyman of 80s and 90s music, the PMRC, and his very strong feelings about censorship, social control, and sex. It’s classic Zappa and won’t raise any eyebrows now, but it is interesting to hear his take on the decline of the music business since the 60s. We use different criteria to measure the apex of the industry---often depending on whether the labels or the artists made more money. Whichever period we lionize, for whatever reason, within a hundred-year window a tiny handful of musicians and record executives made enormous, dynasty-making fortunes. It just so happens that these days it's an even tinier handful of musicians and executives at the top, making even huger fortunes. And there's a lot more synergy between them. 

The Crooked Path to Badfinger’s “Straight Up”

by John Visconti, Culture Sonar: http://www.culturesonar.com/badfinger-straight-up/

Badfinger — the band that first found fame with the Paul McCartney penned “Come and Get It” — was riding high in 1971 following the recent release of its well-received album No Dice on the Beatles’ Apple label and its breakout hit “No Matter What” (written by band front-man Pete Ham). But when the band returned to the studio to record their follow-up, no one could have anticipated the twists and turns it would take to complete this next project. Working at first with Geoff Emerick, the producer-engineer for No Dice, who’d also worked on the Beatles’ Revolver and Abbey Road, the band was under a super-tight deadline, what with a pending US tour.

Yet despite the intended quick turnaround, when the completed tracks from the sessions were presented to Apple execs, they were uniformly rejected. Even a remix of “Name of the Game,” drawing on the talents of Phil Spector (working for the label at the time) and George Harrison, who were looking to repackage it for release as a single, was turned down. Eventually, six of these discarded tracks would be re-worked for Straight Up while a few more would be generated from scratch and added to the track list, but only after the band spent even more time in the studio. For much of the next phase on the album, Harrison worked closely with the band to help them craft their sound, even going so far as to sit in on a couple of tunes — playing guitar on “I’d Die Babe” and participating in a slide guitar duet with Ham on “Day After Day.” That memorable tune, which also featured piano work from Leon Russell, became the band’s biggest US hit.

But just as things were coming together for Badfinger, Harrison got pulled in another direction, preparing the live album and film of his Concert for Bangladesh at which Badfinger had actually performed. Busy with other concerns, Harrison told the members of Badfinger that he wouldn’t be able to finish his work on the album, so Apple then brought in Todd Rundgren. The multi-talented Rundgren fostered the band, as they fine-tuned some songs, including Ham’s Bangladesh tribute “Take It All” while also assisting them as they re-recorded several tunes from the previous sessions. One of the new songs that resulted was “Baby Blue,” written by Ham as a tribute to a girl he’d dated during the band’s US tour. (While a hit for the band at the time, this song is now best known for its use in the series finale of Breaking Bad)

There were some other new songs completed during this period such as guitarist Joey Molland’s rocker “Sometimes” and now-bassist Tom Evans’ elegiac closing track “It’s Over.” What had been a drawn out process was wrapped up in a mere two weeks with Rundgren. The results are remarkable. While the band members sometimes clashed with Rundgren during their sessions, there’s no doubt he was a key factor to the record’s success. His polished production and pop sensibilities combined with the excellent songwriting and instrumentation to create an acknowledged power pop classic.

– John Visconti

PS. Badfinger and Straight Up are included in our post about bands following in The Beatles’ footsteps. Read more about the others like them here. Plus, for some more thoughts on George Harrison and Todd Rundgren, check out our posts The “Quiet” Beatle’s Huge Influence and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: And the Nominees Should Be…

VIDEO: The Grateful Dead Play at the Egyptian Pyramids, in the Shadow of the Sphinx (1978)

by Dan Colman, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2015/07/the-grateful-dead-play-at-the-egyptian-pyramids.html

In September of 1978, the Grateful Dead traveled to Egypt and played three shows at the Great Pyramid of Giza, with the Great Sphinx looking over their shoulders. It wasn't the first time a rock band played in an ancient setting. 

Pink Floyd performed songs in the middle of the Amphitheatre of Pompeii in October 1971. But
Floyd performed to an "empty" house, playing to no live fans, only ghosts (watch footage here.) 

The Dead's shows, on the other hand, were real gigs, attended by Deadheads who made the journey over, and they could thank Phil Lesh for putting it all in motion. Lesh later said, "it sort of became my project because I was one of the first people in the band who was on the trip of playing at places of power. You know, power that's been preserved from the ancient world. The pyramids are like the obvious number one choice because no matter what anyone thinks they might be, there is definitely some kind of mojo about the pyramids."

Logistically speaking, the concerts weren't the easiest to stage. Rolling Stone reported that an "equipment truck got stuck in sand and had to be towed by camels." Because the electricity in Egypt was an "a winkin', blinkin' affair," Bob Weir later recalled, the jetlagged band had difficulties recording the first of the three shows. But, as with most adventures, the inconveniences were offset by the wondrous nature of the experience. Weir captured it well when he said: "I got to a point where the head of the Sphinx was lined up with the top of the Great Pyramid, all lit up. All of a sudden, I went to this timeless place. The sounds from the stage — they could have been from any time. It was as if I went into eternity." The Sphinx and Great Pyramid date back to roughly 2560 BC.

The Dead were joined on this trip by the counterculture author Ken Kesey (not to mention Bill Graham and Bill Walton) who apparently captured footage on Super-8 reels. (Watch it above.) Kesey himself later tried to explain the symbolism of the visit, saying: "The people who were there recognized this as a respectful and holy event that went back to something we can all just barely glimpse, them and us both. Our relationship to ancient humans. To this place on the planet. To the planet's place in the universe. All that cosmic stuff is what the Dead are based on. The Egyptians could understand that."

At the very top of the post, you can see the Dead performing "Ollin Arageed," with Egyptian oudist Hamza el-Din and other local musicians, before seguing into "Fire on the Mountain." The clip gives you a good feel for the awe-inspiring scene. Just above, we have a longer playlist of performances that took place on September 16, 1978 -- the same night there was a lunar eclipse. The complete 9/16/78 show can be streamed on Archive.org, as can the shows from 9/14 and 9/15. A 2CD/1 DVD package (Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978) captures the Dead's visit and can be purchased online.

To get more on the Pyramid concerts, read Chapter 43 of Dennis McNally's book, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead.

The Rolling Stones Introduce Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf on US TV, One of the “Greatest Cultural Moments of the 20th Century” (1965)

by Josh Jones, Open Culture:

http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/the-rolling-stones-introduce-bluesman-howlin-wolf-on-us-tv.html

Josh is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

Howlin’ Wolf may well have been the greatest blues singer of the 20th century. Certainly many people have said so, but there are other measurements than mere opinion, though it’s one I happen to share. The man born Chester Arthur Burnett also had a profound historical effect on popular culture, and on the way the Chicago blues carried “the sound of Jim Crow,” as Eric Lott writes, into American cities in the north, and into Europe and the UK. Recording for both Chess and Sun Records in the 50s (Sam Phillips said of his voice, “It's where the soul of man never dies”), Burnett’s raw sound “was at once urgently urban and country plain… southern and rural in instrumentation and howlingly electric in form.”

He was also phenomenal on stage. His hulking six-foot-six frame and intense glowering stare belied some very smooth moves, but his finesse only enhanced his edginess. He seemed at any moment like he might actually turn into a wolf, letting the impulse give out in plaintive, ragged howls and prowls around the stage. “I couldn’t do no yodelin’,” he said, “so I turned to howlin’. And it’s done me just fine.” He played a very mean harmonica and did acrobatic guitar tricks before Hendrix, picked up from his mentor Charlie Patton. And he played with the best musicians, in large part because he was known to pay well and on time. If you wanted to play electric blues, Howlin’ Wolf was a man to watch.

This reputation was Wolf’s entrée to the stage of ABC variety show Shindig! in 1965, opening for the Rolling Stones. He had just returned from his 1964 tour of Europe and the UK with the American Folk Blues Festival, playing to large, appreciative crossover crowds. He’d also just released “Killing Floor,” a record Ted Gioia notes “reached out to young listeners without losing the deep blues feeling that stood as the cornerstone of Wolf’s sound.” The following year, the Rolling Stones insisted that Shindig!’s producers “also feature either Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf” before they would go on the show. Wolf won out over his rival Waters, toned down the theatrics of his act for a more prudish white audience, and “for the first time in his storied career, the celebrated bluesman performed on a national television broadcast.”

Why is this significant? Over the decades, the Stones regularly performed with their blues heroes. But this was new media ground. Brian Jones' shy, starstruck introduction to Wolf before his performance above conveys what he saw as the importance of the moment. Jones' biographer Paul Trynka may overstate the case, but in some degree at least, Wolf’s appearance on Shindig! “built a bridge over a cultural abyss and connected America with its own black culture.” The show constituted “a life-changing moment, both for the American teenagers clustered round the TV in their living rooms, and for a generation of blues performers who had been stuck in a cultural ghetto.” One of these teenagers described the event as “like Christmas morning.”

Eric Lott points to the show's formative importance to the Stones, who “sit scattered around the Shindig! set watching Wolf in full-metal idolatry” as he sings "How Many More Years," a song Led Zeppelin would later turn into "How Many More Times." (See the Stones do their Shindig! performance of jangly, subdued "The Last Time," above.)  The performance represents more, however, than the "British Invasion embrace" of the blues. It shows Wolf's mainstream breakout, and the Stones paying tribute to a founding father of rock and roll, an act of humility in a band not especially known or appreciated for that quality.

“It was altogether appropriate,” says music writer Peter Guralnick, “that they would be sitting at Wolf’s feet… that’s what it represented. His music was not simply the foundation or the cornerstone; it was the most vital thing you could ever imagine.” Guralnick, notes John Burnett at NPR, calls it "one of the the greatest cultural moments of the 20th century." At minimum, Burnett writes, it's "one of the most incongruous moments in American pop music"---up until the mid-sixties, at least.

Whether or not the moment could live up to its legend, the people involved saw it as groundbreaking. The venerable Son House sat in attendance---“the man who knew Robert Johnson and Charley Patton,” remarked Brian Jones in awe. And the Rolling Stone positioning himself in deference to “Chicago blues," Trynka writes, "uncompromising music aimed at a black audience, was a radical, epoch-changing step, both for baby boomer Americans and the musicians themselves. Fourteen and fifteen-year-old kids… hardly understood the growth of civil rights; but they could understand the importance of a handsome Englishman who described the mountainous, gravel-voiced bluesman as a ‘hero’ and sat smiling at his feet.”

Related Content:

Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sister Rosetta Tharpe & Other American Blues Legends Perform in the UK (1963-66)

Chuck Berry Takes Keith Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Muddy Waters

Classic Album Series #18: Led Zeppelin – "Led Zeppelin IV"

by Tom Caswell: https://tomcaswell.net/2017/05/16/classic-album-series-18-led-zeppelin-led-zeppelin-iv/

In the 18th instalment of my CLASSIC ALBUM SERIES I’m yet to cover a Led Zeppelin album, but that changes now with the incredible Led Zeppelin IV. Released in 1971, their fourth album is my favourite of theirs and features eight incredible songs. Every album after this in my opinion struggled to match the greatness of the songs on this album, aside from perhaps Physical Graffiti. But there’s no doubt when I say this one album contained their best work, their most consistent songs and their most focused and driven playing.

The song Black Dog opens the album which features one of the most complex and exciting riffs that Led Zeppelin ever came up with. It was John Paul Jones that initially thought of it, having wanted to compose a riff that people found hard to dance to. You take away the drums and he succeeded. The band came up with so many infectious riffs in their career and Black Dog, along with the following song Rock And Roll, are two of their all time best. Rock And Roll is a song all guitarists should learn to play at some point. The song is a pretty straight forward blues number but the opening drum sequence can really throw you off when you’re trying to play along. It’s almost like they deliberately tried to throw a spanner in the works with that one, but it fits the song perfectly. Looking back at their entire catalogue it’s easy to say that this song stands out as one of their most explosive. And it’s as addictive as hell.

1. Black Dog
2. Rock And Roll
3. The Battle Of Evermore
4. Stairway To Heaven
5. Misty Mountain Hop
6. Four Sticks
7. Going To California
8. When The Levee Breaks

Things head in a more mellow direction with The Battle Of Evermore which features singer songwriter Sandy Denny on guest vocals. The song has a distinctive folk feel to it with Jimmy Page playing mandolin on the song which resulting in John Paul Jones playing acoustic guitar. It’s a song that doesn’t stand out initially compared to the others but the more you listen to it the more you fall in love with it. Stairway To Heaven comes next which is probably my least favourite song on the album, yes you read that right. I’ve always considered this song overrated especially compared to the other songs on the album. I know it’s seen as one of the greatest songs of all time but I’ve never bought into that. While the guitar solo section in the final third of the song is exciting to listen to, everything else really doesn’t do that much for me. Just my opinion.

Things return to excellent form with Misty Mountain Hop. The song begins with John Paul Jones on electric piano and it’s yet another Zeppelin riff that latches itself onto your mind and refuses to let go. Plant is exceptional here. Four Sticks comes next but for me it’s always been the one track on this album that doesn’t seem to quite fit. Based around a riff that continues from start to finish with not much else going on, the song ends up feeling repetitive. Everything is righted with the next song, Going To California which is one of the best songs in the Led Zeppelin catalogue. The song doesn’t feature Bonham at all, instead going down the folk route the band had previously visited in The Battle Of Evermore. The song is absolutely beautiful and doesn’t need a catchy riff to stay in your head. The blend of Plant on vocals with Page on guitar and Jones on mandolin is exquisite, resulting in one of the best songs on the album.

When The Levee Breaks is the final track and I don’t think the band could have picked a better song to end on. Anchored by Bonham’s incredible drumming, which was recorded at the bottom of a stairwell at Headley Grande in Hampshire, which is where the band recorded a lot of the album. The unique sound of the drums were created by the natural reverb located at the bottom of the stairwell. That combined with the vocals, guitar, bass and harmonica create one hell of a song and one of the greatest songs of all time, period. I also consider it the best Led Zeppelin track by a country mile, and that’s saying something because their entire catalogue is full of so many gems.

Overall Led Zeppelin IV is a masterpiece even though I’m not a massive fan of Stairway To Heaven, at least compared to the hype surrounding it. When looking at their whole catalogue this is probably their most consistent album from start to finish and at eight songs in length it really hits the spot quickly. There’s no messing around, it’s to the point. The band would go on to reproduce the greatness found on this album on their 1975 album Physical Graffiti, which will be the focus of a future CLASSIC ALBUM SERIES article without a doubt, but Led Zeppelin IV really sums the band up perfectly. Catchy riffs, screaming vocals, beautiful playing and exciting ideas. It’s a must have for any record collection.

The Hell With Concept Albums! Parliament Did a Concept Series

by Tim Kinley in Hear, Culture Sonar: http://www.culturesonar.com/parliament-concept-series/ 

In the post-Sgt. Pepper era of popular music, the conversation regarding the most pivotal concept albums usually directs itself to the arena of classic rock bands, such as The Who’s Tommy and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

Overlooked in that same conversation are R&B and Soul masterpieces such as Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? and Sly & the Family Stone’s Stand. While musicians such as Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield would also further the conceptual aspect on vinyl, no artist took the thematic approach as far as George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic in the second half of the 1970’s.

Developing a concept alongside an ever-evolving, intergalactic storyline, the P-Funk crew fueled the imagination much in the same way that the revolutionary instrumentation of Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, Garry Shider, Jerome Brailey, and the recently departed Junie Morrison fed our quest for rhythmic liberation.

This analysis of the Parliament albums released between 1975 and 1980 attempts to shine the Flash Light on the grand, far-reaching concepts that made these albums the untouchable landmarks that they are today. 

Chocolate City (1975)

Parliament’s conceptual approach begins with their second release for Casablanca Records, the label that the band signed with a year earlier. Portraying African-Americans in situations that white folks would least expect (a through-line in all subsequent Parliament albums), Chocolate City envisions black folks in all facets of the U.S. government. From the White House on down.

While only the title track embraces the overall concept, the idea informs for the remaining eight tracks, energetically and emotionally. Imagine if you will, Muhammad Ali welcoming all visitors (who possess a James Brown pass), Reverend Ike as Secretary of the Treasury, Richard Pryor as Minister of Education, and Aretha Franklin as the First Lady.

It’s a far-reaching vision powered by the ridiculous grooves of Collins, Worrell and the rest of the Funk Mob. Did someone slip this album to Barack Obama in his eighth grade social studies class? You decide. 

Mothership Connection (1975)

Originally titled Landing In The Ghetto, Mothership Connection descended upon the planet in December of 1975 and launched Parliament’s cosmic mythology. George Clinton now transports Black folks to outer space while embarking on the mission - relayed through the slick talking interplanetary representative Star Child the long haired sucker - to drop THE BOMB on a Funkless existence.

But unlike previous P-Funk albums, this particular project would be bolstered by a live stage extravaganza that represented uncharted territory for an African-American band. The grand visual spectacle would include the landing of one the greatest stage props in rock history: The Mothership.

Designed by renowned lighting/stage designer Jules Fisher (who performed similar magic for Kiss, David Bowie, and The Rolling Stones), this theatrical innovation combined with the band’s first million selling single “Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)” propelled this album to platinum status. 

The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein (1976)

Released during the fall of 1976 (while Mothership Connection was still on the album charts), the follow-up introduces the outer-wordly Dr. Funkenstein to the Parliament mythos. A cool ghoul with a bump transplant, Star Child’s father is a disco fiend with a monster sound, poised to Funkatize this galaxy and beyond, aided and abetted by his Children of Production.

This project also sports one of the most bizarre album covers ever released by a platinum selling Black musical act, showcasing all of the doctor’s clones within the Mothership itself, thoroughly proving that everything is on the one when your Funkin’ for fun! Ya dig!? 

Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome (1977)

 Another grand stocking-stuffer for Funkateers worldwide, Funkentelechy encapsulates the narrative in just six songs that take the entire Funk genre in a completely fresh direction. Enter the arch nemesis Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk, an un-funky wallflower who will never dance, the physical embodiment of the con job perpetuated by the Placebo Syndrome, which Sir Nose spreads throughout the galaxy. It is because of this intergalactic threat that Dr. Funkenstein arms Star Child with a state-of-the-art weapon: THE BOP GUN!!!

Shooting Sir Nose with the Bop Gun results in our archenemy giving up the Funk in a Flash of Light, in turn spawning the smash hit “Flash Light”. This chapter is thoroughly explained in an 8-page comic illustrated by in house P-Funk illustrator Overton Loyd who also drew the poster of Sir Nose that is included with the album. 

Motor Booty Affair (1978)

Emerging from the aquatic depths on Nov. 20, 1978, MBA takes Parliament in a new direction: the undersea world of Atlantis, a world now populated by … you guessed … black folks, and poised to be raised to the surface. Sir Nose now states that he can’t swim (and won’t sweat for that matter), since he remains D’Voidoffunk. He has now teamed up with the Bumpnoxious Rumpofsteelskin to once again, sydromize the planet.

In retaliation, Dr. Funkenstein commands Star Child to gather the baddest master-Funkers from throughout the galaxy, dancing down Bimini Road to the Emerald City doing the Aqua Boogie. Easily the most fully realized concept album in the Parliament discography, this album sports one of the most elaborate packaging efforts of the era, featuring a gatefold that contains a pop up display of Atlantis along with stand-up cut-outs of MBA characters such as Mr. Wiggles, Octave Pussy, Rita Mermaid, and Howard Codsell. Also released in picture disc format. 

Gloryhallastoopid (1979)

 The last Parliament album of the 1970s sees Mr. Wiggles from the Motor Booty Affair using the rhythms of Pyschoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop to rearrange the molecular structure of Rumpofsteelskin’s “Don’t Try It!” megatons. Sounds a bit convoluted? Ridiculous? Preposterous? Yes, it does. Even by P-Funk standards. That’s because Dr. Funkenstein is now taking credit for the original Big Bang (you know … the one that started the universe!).

This latest installment also sees Sir Nose organizing a nefarious collection of intergalactic villains known as the Unfunkables. Their objective? To turn Star Child into an ass (literally) in front of all the Party People currently throwing down at the Jam Station by way of the Black Hole. A nonsensical Funk fantasy that has everything: assendectomies, flea powder, bootleg T-shirts, P.C.P., alien burgers, and even a guest appearance by Robin Williams. In the end, however, all that fuss was us! 

Trombipulation (1980)

The Parliament saga surprisingly comes to a quiet end with the arrival of a new decade as Sir Nose fulfills his ultimate dream - taking over the Funk Mob. New revelations are revealed in the New Doo Review, combining a clever mix of Egyptology, Congolese-inspired hairstyles, cro-nasal sapiens, and physical manipulation of elephant trunks. Have we encountered the missing link or the missing stink? After you finish dancing to this climatic party platter, you’ll have to figure that out by yourself.