A Lifetime-Plus of Music

     Not unlike “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill”, one of the best parts of this experience is really digging into an album I either haven’t heard of at all, or minimally know at best.  Today is no different as I listened to “Car Wheels On A Gravel Road” by Louisiana native Lucinda Williams.  Some may look at this as country music, but it has so many other flavors, including blues, rock and Cajun spice.  To my uneducated ears, her voice comes across as a redneck blend of Sheryl Crow, Suzanne Vega and Bonnie Raitt.  To be clear, that is meant with high praise.  What I love about her most, and especially this album, is her ongoing love affair with Louisiana.  And as much as we have celebrated New Orleans in this blog, her background and this album is much more focused on country, rural Louisiana.  Far from New Orleans, Williams is a native of Lake Charles, clear on the southwest side of the state, and deep in the bayou.  As I have mentioned before, my family lived in Louisiana for ten years after I started college, and although it never was the place where I wanted to plant permanent roots, I have so many positive memories as a young and naïve adult, driving the country roads from town to town.  Whether it was a road trip with Jim or John & Pete, hanging out with Mike and Shane when they visited, time spent searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River with my Dad, casino runs to Gulfport or Biloxi with my Mom, watching my younger sister grow up, or just idle time on a hot summer day or even hotter summer night, I loved the unique and one of a kind culture I never could have imagined in Colorado.  This southern gem captures a lot of that spirit, and it is rated as #98 on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

     This album is a really enjoyable listen, and I truly loved it front to back, but like always there are tracks that stand out.  The title track is the closest to straight country, but a fond reminder of the days of traversing dirt roads.  “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten” is a perfect tribute to the roadside dive bars I was so fascinated by, and the first of many songs to pay homage to Louisiana and the south.  “Concrete And Barbed Wire” is more blues-country, on the softer acoustic side.  As you can imagine, “Lake Charles” is another proud Louisiana moment, with so many geographical references to places I remember well.  “Can’t Let Go” is an edgier blues rocker, and like many songs on this album, the guitar work is stellar.  Williams handles a lot of the guitar on this album herself, and is joined by legends like Steve Earle and Charlie Sexton, and we even see Emmylou Harris join the fun on harmony vocals.  This is a top-notch ensemble of musicians on record here.

     One of the very best songs is “I Think I Lost It”.  What a beautiful chorus with stunning harmonies; this is a really outstanding composition with equal-caliber performances, and the accordion just sinks us deeper into the bayou.  “Jackson” crosses the border into Mississippi, but this southern love affair has no borders.

     For all of those great songs, there is one that stands way above the crowd for me, for two reasons.  First, the song “Joy” is filthy southern country rock, and the riff is almost exactly what it would sound like if Lynyrd Skynyrd played “When The Levee Breaks”.  As great as that sound is, complete with some very Page-esque slide guitar, I stopped in my tracks today when I heard this verse:

     “I’m gonna go to Slidell and look for my joy, Maybe in Slidell I’ll find my joy.”

     Slidell?  Seriously?  I have heard hundreds of songs about The Pelican State, but never until today have I heard a song that calls out Slidell, the relatively subdued New Orleans suburb across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans that my family called home.  This one is a keeper for sure, just like the rest of this great record.  And who knows, maybe someday someone else will look for and find their joy in Slidell.  In Louisiana, anything is possible…

     Today is one of those albums that is historically noted as one of the greatest albums of all time, yet it is one I have never really warmed up to, at least before this experience.  “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” by Lauryn Hill, the vocalist who emerged on the scene with the Fugees.  On several occasions, my son has presented one song or another from this record for my consideration, but not being a R&B connoisseur, I never gave it much consideration.  On my list as the #10 rated album on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, I had to make sure this one got my full attention.

     I will say that giving this album a full and extended consideration, as well as hearing it in the sequential context of all else that I have heard in the world of R&B, hip-hop, soul, funk and reggae have helped me to fully appreciate this record.  This genre will never be my #1 favorite, but true to form, I tend to like the subtle and subdued over the overwrought riffing, of which there is very little on this album.  The production on this record, led by Hill, as well as the songwriting which she also handled, is phenomenal.  She was well-connected across the music industry at this early point in her career, and her talent and skill, along with the collective gifts of many others, created a very well thought out release.

     Framed around an ongoing theme of a school-room atmosphere, Hill delivers a wide variety of sound and style, accentuating the many influences I noted previously.  I may not love this album quite as much as my son or the general public (to include Rolling Stone), but there are several high points I will focus on here.

     “In Zion” is one of two songs that really reminds me of vintage Stevie Wonder, and features some perfectly inserted flamenco guitar from Carlos Santana.  Hill does a great job of pulling influences from across the spectrum, and she lyrically channels “Light My Fire” by the Doors for “Doo Wop (That Thing)”.  “Final Hour” atmospherically reminds me of “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye, and like many songs, the bass lines on this album are great.  One of my favorites is “When It Hurts So Bad”.

     My absolute favorite original track on the record is “Every Ghetto, Every City” which absolutely pulls from “Living for the City” by Stevie Wonder.  It is the funkiest groove on the album, and a real standout track for me.  The other treasure is a “hidden track” at the end of the album, her take on the 1967 classic “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You”.  The original, performed by Frankie Valli, has oddly become a crowd sing-along at UCF football games, and I love the depth and soul of Hill’s version.  A good song is a good song, and I love hearing alternative takes on classics from our past.

     I truly appreciate my own personal education that came from focusing on this highly regarded album, and like most other times, I know my musical awareness is better for taking the time to learn and appreciate a record I wouldn’t have otherwise likely spent much time on. 

     Today is a challenging blog for me, as I take on the 1990s era run of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page and their Led Zeppelin-esque run of albums and tours.  Following the breakup of Led Zeppelin in 1980, Plant, Page and bass player/keyboardist John Paul Jones all went their separate ways other than the infrequent and usually rough reunion performances.  After watching Page form a duo with Whitesnake singer David Coverdale, Plant essentially claimed that he couldn’t stand to watch Jimmy play with who he considered to be a very poor imitator of himself, so paired up with Page for their first extended work together, beyond limited appearances in concert or in the studio together.  The first outlet for this reunion pairing was “Unplugged” on MTV, aptly renamed “Unledded”, where they combined a live concert with some additional studio tracks in what would eventually be released as the album “No Quarter”.

     The first and most obvious question was where was John Paul Jones, and why wasn’t he involved?  I can understand his reasoning, as I believe this was almost completely Plant’s decision, but the party line was that by just being “Page & Plant”, it wasn’t really a Led Zeppelin reunion so people shouldn’t call it that.  Fair enough, but some unfortunate facts remained.  One, no matter what they called it, the setlist was dominated by Zeppelin tracks.  Two, already missing the greatest drummer in rock history, they didn’t do themselves any favors excluding the remarkably talented John Paul Jones.  They focused on new arrangements and new instruments for this performance, and nobody was better at any of that than Jones.  And third, and perhaps most unfortunately, Page & Plant really handled this entire experience very poorly.  Not only did they fail to take any initiative to least explain to their former bandmate their perspective, their lack of communication was compounded by some really poor attempts at humor.  When asked at an early press conference about Jones’ absence, Plant remarked, “He’s out back parking the car.”  Most rock music fans understand that Page & Plant are the apparent front men and leader of Led Zeppelin, but any real Led Zeppelin fan also understands that John Paul Jones was just as essential to the quality of their music as any of the other three members, and bottom line, he deserved a hell of a lot better treatment than he got here.  As if all of this wasn’t enough, to brashly name the album “No Quarter”, which was his feature song during the days of Led Zeppelin, just came across to me as painfully unaware, insensitive and unnecessary.  If nothing else, he was able to weigh in and at least make his point at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction during the middle of all this, when Jones wryly thanked Robert and Jimmy for “finally remembering his phone number”.  I could go on a lot about this, but it is what it is, so from this point on, I will accept that JPJ was not a part of the experience, and discuss my many pros and cons with their two albums and live experience.

     All of that said, it was still a big milestone for me and a generation of Zeppelin fans who grew up too late and missed the peak of the band.  The “Unplugged” performance and the resulting album had some great moments, and some misses.  First off, not unlike in the late 1970s, Plant’s voice still had its moments of weakness, and the overall vocal performance here is not great.  They recorded five original tracks that were inspired by their many trips to Morocco and elsewhere in the Middle East, and although none of the songs are that great, the incorporation of new musicians from a different culture added a lot to the arrangement.  This is where the real high point comes in, as they rearranged several Led Zeppelin tracks to include an Egyptian orchestra and drum ensemble, as well as the beautiful voice of Najma Ahktar who accompanied them on “The Battle of Evermore”.  This exotic sound added greatly to several tracks, with two of the very best being “Four Sticks” and “The Battle of Evermore”.  The drum ensemble was so intense and influential, it completely reshaped a song that had never been a favorite of mine into an absolute crusher.  As good as those and many other songs were, the expanded arrangement for “Kashmir”, complete with the strings and drums, was even more remarkable and truly the highlight of the entire performance.

     Following the release of “No Quarter”, Page & Plant took that show on tour, and I was able to see it performed live in Orlando at the arena in March of 1995.  I went with my coworker and friend John, and it was every bit as exciting as I hoped it would be.  I was recently pleased to discover the entire show is somehow on YouTube, even as a rudimentary recording.  To hear Jimmy Page & Robert Plant play an entire set of Zeppelin songs, including “The Wanton Song”, “Bring It On Home”, a rare live performance of “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” and of course, the set-closing “Kashmir”… it was a night I will never forget.  I even remember milling around in the parking lot after the show, trying to teach some “young” guys the opening chords to “The Rain Song”.  Once a Zeppelin, always a Zeppelin fan.

     Riding the wave of momentum of this successful venture, and the induction of Led Zeppelin into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Page and Plant decided they wanted to record a full album of original songs.  Recording as a four-piece with Charlie Jones (at least it was someone named Jones) on bass, and Michael Lee on drums, they recorded a somewhat subdued and unusual album.  The title of the album was “Walking Into Clarksdale”, which refers to Clarksdale, Mississippi, the notional home of Delta blues music in America.  I have listened to this album several times over the years, including today, and try as I do, I just don’t care for it very much.  The production is somewhat muffled to me, Plant’s voice still shows sign of strain, there are practically no signature Jimmy Page riffs, and the rhythm section, quite frankly, is not John Paul Jones and John Bonham.  The drums are high energy but somewhat simplistic, with a very boxy sound, and most importantly, most of the songs just aren’t that compelling.

     There are three songs I will highlight for some consideration.  “Most High” is my favorite song on the album, and not surprisingly, it is the closest to a classic Zeppelin tune.  It runs a bit long in the end, but overall it is a pretty strong track.  “Please Read The Letter” is a good song, but you might recognize it better when Plant re-recorded it a decade later with Alison Krauss.  “House of Love” is another track that reappears on a subsequent Plant album, but this version is better, and it is probably my second favorite song on the album.  The rest of the album are songs that have moments of interest, but mostly grind and plod along without much appeal.  The album did not really take off, and after one more tour to support this record, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page went their separate ways, with minimal professional interaction since other than one amazing night in 2007.

     As you can see, I have a lot of feelings and thoughts on this overall project, and thus why I combined the two albums into one blog after originally planning to listen only to “Walking Into Clarksdale”.  For whatever reason, neither album is available on most streaming services, but as always, that can be overcome, and I have both CDs anyway.   As a starved Led Zeppelin fan, it satiated a big need for their music and presence in my early adult life, but I was also quick to recognize the limitations of them performing without their two bandmates; one by choice, and one by tragedy.  I’m ultimately glad they separated paths as a duo, and although I would have preferred a full-fledged Led Zeppelin reunion, that just wasn’t in the cards… at least not in 1998.

     There have been many film soundtrack albums that have made my list, and virtually all of them are there because they were the #1 selling album of the year.  “Titanic” is no exception, as the soundtrack for this film was a massive success, selling almost 30 million copies and being the #1 selling album of 1998.  What is remarkable about this particular release is that aside from the massive hit “My Heart Will Go On”, featuring Celine Dion, the rest of the album is truly just the instrumental score to the film.  That is how big of a hit this movie was, and listening to it today took me back to that moment in time.

     As a child growing up, my love of history and fascination with the story of the sinking of the Titanic were notable, and this was probably reinforced by the Denver ties to famous Titanic survivor Molly Brown, portrayed by Kathy Bates in the film.  By the time that this film that was written, directed and produced by James Cameron was released in 1997, I had seen several documentaries and read several books on the topic.  At first, I was cynical about the fictionalization and Hollywood glamourization of this tragedy, but I will fully acknowledge that like most, I was impressed and captivated by the mood and story, even if it was only partially accurate in its portrayal. The cinematography and magnitude of this production by Cameron and cast and crew were unprecedented, as was the success it realized across multiple mediums.  What stuck with me most, beyond the tragic love story of Jack and Rose, was the larger reality that life, even at its most grand and positive moment, is capable of turning on a single event that we may have no control over.  In a few short hours, over 1,500 people lost their lives at the end of what had likely been some of the most amazing days they had ever known.  Life is that fragile and that precious, no matter how much wealth or material items you have in the world.

     The entire album, which was composed by James Horner, centers around a few main haunting melodies that are revisited throughout the score, including the centerpiece single that is “My Heart Will Go On”.  Not all of it stands out, but once you hear those unmistakable notes, you are at once transported back to when you saw this movie, and what it meant to you.  Many of the greatest films in Hollywood history are almost as well known for their theme music, and this album certainly meets that standard. 

     “My Heart Will Go On” won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, and it stands with “I Will Always Love You” as the two most definitive movie songs of the decade.  Even more so than Whitney Houston, while Celine Dion has had a remarkably successful career, this song will always stand as her greatest performance.

     I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I listened to this album today, but I appreciate the flashback to a remarkable cinematic and musical performance, and I appreciate yet another reminder of the power of music to make you feel.  It is a wonderful gift, regardless of the emotions are evoked.

     Some albums require several listens for me to fully immerse myself in their sound and learn the songs, while others are so familiar that I could probably write the blog without a single listen, even if I wouldn’t take that shortcut.  Today’s album is one I have listened to many, many times, as we return to The Sundays for their third, and sadly, final album, “Static and Silence”.  In summary, it is another record I truly love, just as I enjoyed “Blind”.  The sound of this album is a bit more experimental this time, with a greater incorporation of strings and horns, but it is once again twelve great songs built around the creative guitar of David Gavurin and his wife Harriet Wheeler and her beautiful vocals.

     To fully enjoy today’s ride with “Static and Silence”, I escaped to the rural pines, ridges and ultimately plains, southeast of my hometown in Colorado.  All three areas I call home now are essentially on the border of empty space and congested urban action, and I love that a simple and single turn can leave me virtually alone among the empty spaces still left to be savored in 2022.

     There are two categories of songs on this album… ones that I like, and ones that I love.  I enjoy the entire record, but will devote my attention to the songs that have stuck with me vividly since this album was released.  The record opens with their second commercially single, “Summertime”.  Joyous and bouncy, this song is a perfect mood-setter for the coming summer season as the sun shines bright in the spring sky.

     The second song, “Homeward”, is a melancholy song of loss, and the acoustic guitars of Gavurin are so pure and pristine.  Wheeler is also amazing on this song; it truly is a gorgeous and wonderfully simple song. 

     Perhaps no other song matched my location for this album better than “Folk Song”, celebrating the beauty and isolation of nature.  Life moves way too fast and there is never enough time to enjoy these simple pleasures of the planet we call home, but this song is an excellent reminder that in many cases, less is more.

     Probably my favorite aspect of Gavurin’s guitar is when he builds a song around one or two chords that are nearly identical except for one or two strings and notes.  That approach helped to shape “God Made Me” on “Blind”, and my two favorite songs on this album also are similar in structure.  The fifth song of the album is “When I’m Thinking About You”.  The guitar work is stunning, the strings are so perfectly inserted, Harriet Wheeler once again delivers a truly angelic performance in this tune about missing the one you love, and if that isn’t enough, there is a piano interlude that is just remarkably sweet and powerful within this sweet song.

     Using a similar approach with an electric guitar opening riff that melts into an acoustic and string-based masterpiece, “Cry” is the other song from this record that is on another level.  It is another gutting song of loss, but the mood and story endorse the emotion of loss while offering hope and beauty in the words and lyrics.  The electric guitar re-emerges for a jolting and brief chord-based moment, and this song builds to such a wonderfully dramatic climax.

     Fittingly so, the last song I will single out is effectively the title track, even if it technically is not.  “Monochrome”, as well as the term “Static and Silence”, which is in the song, are all in reference to the wonder and amazement felt by Wheeler and millions of others as they watched the first moon landing in 1969 as a young girl.  The pure innocence and unscarred beauty of the lunar surface became a place everyone felt a part of, and even to this day, I also remain a passionate follower of space exploration and the hope that we have more of this magic to anticipate above the sometimes painful and complicated reality we endure on Earth.  The contrasting beauty of the moon is even captured in image, featured in prominent isolation with a deep blue background on the album’s cover.

     “Monochrome” is the perfect ending to a nearly-perfect album, with its gentle and wondrous tone, and even more suitable for closing out their brief but nearly-perfect career.  Despite their remarkable talents, they retired to a life of apparent domestic bliss, raising their family in anonymity and peace in England.  They have resisted all offers and opportunities to reform and perform or record, at least for public consumption, so they remain somewhat of a lost treasure for myself and others who so enjoyed their run of magical music in the 1990s.

     A truly unexpected and wonderful surprise with today’s album, which was the 7^th of 10 albums my son selected to add to my list.  I had no clue what genre or style of music I was getting when I started up “Fantasma” by Cornelius, although my first guess based on the time-stamp was a hip-hop artist.  Much to my surprise, Cornelius is a Japanese act that is almost impossible to classify, although progressive, artistic alternative rock might be a starting point.  Cornelius is essentially a one-man musical act, known also as Keigo Oyamada.  Comparisons I read that seemed pretty accurate placed Cornelius with “Pet Sounds” & ”Smile”-era Brian Wilson and Beck, with their complete creative control and expansive sound integration.  This record is amazing and beautiful, and I’m so grateful for the day I spent obsessing over this album.

     There are also similarities with “OK Computer” which I recently listened to by Radiohead, although if I had to choose a favorite of the two, I would definitely pick this one.  The record opens with “Mic Check”, and for all of its electronic dabbling, the ultimate melody that emerges just past the two-minute mark is a gorgeous preview of what is to come on this record. 

     As I listened to the second song, without looking at the song title, it reminded me of a chemically enhanced version of something I might hear on a ride at Disneyworld.  How perfect then when I looked at the title of “Micro Disneycal World Tour”.  Yep, that one certainly fits.

     One of my favorite elements of the sound of Cornelius is that even though it is very synth and electric sound heavy, there are songs where the guitar and drums rock their way to the front.  “New Music Machine” is one of those tracks, and it really rocks while delivering a fantastically blended chorus.

     I enjoyed all of the album, but the next segment of songs that really blew my mind starts with “Star Fruits Surf Rider”.  This astral, cosmic, and unbelievable sound just carries me away, and I could listen to this song in perpetuity.  It flows into this quirky pop song that is “Chapter 8 “Seashore and Horizon””.  This is also one of the songs that ties me directly with Radiohead, as the abrasive guitar note at the end is remarkably similar to the end of “Karma Police”, and just as that song eventually takes us into an up-tempo rocker, we get the all-out rock song that is “Free Fall” here.  The guitar and drums so intensely the pace of this song, and it is a fuzzed and distorted masterpiece that somehow pulls in more wonderfully paired harmony vocals.

     The title song, the all-too-brief “Fantasma”, sounds as if it was directly lifted from a Beach Boys harmony session.  The last two songs that stand out above the rest for me are the lush and soft track that is “Lazy”, with an irresistible two-note guitar riff, and the final track, the oddly performed “Typewrite Lesson”.  Not only is this similar in style to “Fitter Happier”, the social commentary of the sequence of acronyms somehow takes me back to “7 O’clock News / Silent Night” by Simon & Garfunkel.  This song, as it were, is a production masterpiece, and certainly leaves you thinking and piecing thoughts together as it concludes.

     As I immersed myself fully in a record I had never even heard of before today, it just begs the question, what else is out there that I haven’t heard yet?  I will never get to all of it, but this experience and today’s goldrush of sound only serves to amplify and intensify my desire to take in as much music as the world can offer me in my limited time left to enjoy it.  Each day is a gift… make the most of it.

     Today presented another challenging listen, with the third album from Radiohead, “OK Computer”.  Moving away from their relatively simpler rock sound, this highly regarded record is considered an important transition as they expanded their sound notably into the abstract.  My friend Mike recommended that I should also listen to “The Bends”, the record that precedes this one, which I will do, but it was this selection that first surfaced on my list as the #42 rated album on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.  Radiohead is in the same category as Dylan, Lennon and Springsteen where Rolling Stone is concerned, as they are constantly and repeatedly singled out as one of the greatest bands of all time.  I have always struggled to fully understand that assessment, so I knew I couldn’t rush to judgment on this album.

     It wasn’t an easy listen at first, not that I expected it to be, and the matter was likely complicated by the fact that the first two songs, “Airbag” and “Paranoid Android” are my two least favorite songs on the album.  However, things began to fall into place with the spacy guitar riff that opens “Subterranean Homesick Alien”.  This may be my favorite song on the record, and it really is a beautiful, if somewhat complex sound.  The next song, “Exit Music (For A Film)”, was precisely that, as it was used for the closing credits in the 1996 version of “Romeo + Juliet”.  It is a haunting acoustic track that fits the purpose very well for that tragic story.  “Let Down” reminds me a bit of “Fall On Me” by R.E.M. at first, but the sound is all their own.  It is another melancholy melody with a really appealing descending riff, and the vocals by Thom Yorke really shine.  “Karma Police” is another excellent and powerful song, and my favorite part is the wonderfully abrasive and repetitive guitar grind that closes out the track.  This song ending, leading into the bizarre mid-album mood-setter “Fitter Happier”, which is an odd embrace of emerging technology, helps to define the tone of this record.  The musical abrasiveness resumes with the seemingly out of place opening for “Electioneering”, which concludes my run of favorites on this record.  I don’t necessarily love “Climbing Up the Walls”, but the unusual string ending is another jarring moment on this record.  “No Surprises” opens with a Velvet Underground-ish happy riff, which is once again belied by the sad melody that fills in around the framework.  “Lucky” was a song they had previously recorded before the rest of the album, and you can tell it helped to shape their expectations on “OK Computer”, and the record concludes with the galactic slow-release that is “The Tourist”.  As the song fades to end with just drums and bass, there is a perfectly inserted bell ring that announces the conclusion of this highly unique, but ultimately impressive record.

     I know there will be at least one more Radiohead album, courtesy of Rolling Stone, but hopefully it proves to be as eye and ear-opening as this record was for me.  If I had to describe this record, it is as if someone took the template designed by Pink Floyd on “Welcome to the Machine” and updated it for the dramatic voice of British new age.  Another meaningful new step for me today, and I look forward to further deciphering the mystery of Radiohead down the road.

     Today’s album was a more deliberate consideration.  One, because it is a double album release with nearly two hours of music, and secondly, after not really warming up that much to the first album from The Notorious B.I.G., and knowing how important he is to my son as a hip-hop afficionado, I had to make sure I fully absorbed this album.  The good news for me, as well as my son, was that I enjoyed “Life After Death” much more than “Ready to Die”.  I certainly don’t celebrate the concept or the fact that this album was released 16 days after Biggie was murdered in Los Angeles, but it is the musical expansion that I was hoping to find on this release.  “Life After Death” is the #179 rated album on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

     As intended, this album is a notable diversification of sound, including the featuring of many guest artists.  The album opens with a continuation from the last album, and the themes of violence, sex and drugs remain rampant on this record as well.  After the macabre opening of “Life After Death (Intro)” and “Somebody’s Gotta Die”, we encounter a lighter mood with his major hit, “Hypnotize”.  This song was my first extended introduction to Biggie, and it remains a favorite, even though I may have found a few others I like even better on this record.  “Biggie Biggie Biggie, can’t you see, Sometimes your words just hypnotize me.  And I just love your flashy ways, Guess that’s why they broke and you’re so paid.”

     My least favorite song on this album is a trash piece from a trash human, R. Kelly.  I won’t waste time on the song title, but it’s awful, just like he is.  Thankfully, the rest of the album is much stronger, with some other really great tracks.  Just like I loved it on his arch-rival Tupac’s album “All Eyez On Me”, the R&B feel of many of these songs is a welcome buoyancy to the morose themes that frequently resurface.  I don’t love his turn to host Jay-Z, but that is more a statement on my ongoing annoyance with Jay-Z.

     “Mo Money Mo Problems” is a notable hit from this record, and one of the most visible appearances from Puff Daddy.  It is a great upbeat track that really takes off when the funkier and smoother side of Biggie emerges when he takes control of the mike.

     Probably my overall favorite track on this album is “Going Back to Cali”.  To be clear, this is not the same song as LL Cool J performs, which I also love, but it is Biggie letting us know, somewhat prophetically, that an east coast rapper has a place on the west coast as well.  I find it to be one of the hardest hitting and powerful beats on the album, and throughout all of the collaborations, I like hearing Biggie front and center here.  The next song “Ten Crack Commandments” is another powerhouse, and I love the sampling of Chuck D doing his countdown.

     After several listens and a lot of contemplation, I can report out very favorably on this second and last full album created by Biggie Smalls, AKA The Notorious B.I.G.  He is a cultural icon in the world of hip-hop, and his tragic loss just serves to further reinforce the pointlessness of the violence across this musical genre and our larger society.

     A very different kind of vibe today, as we melt into some low-fi R&B with the debut album from Erykah Badu, “Baduizm”.  Well received, this album is the #89 rated album on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.  My first reaction was that she reminded me of an up-and-coming act I saw last year in concert, but then I read about a comparison to Billie Holiday, and there is a lot of similarity there as well.

     As we listened yesterday, it was instantly evident this is great music to relax to, and I would definitely consider this evening mood music.  As I read up on the production and creation of this record, it doesn’t surprise me that she collaborated with Questlove and The Roots on some of the music, and she also had done some work with D’Angelo.  All of that noted, Erykah was the primary creative force on this album as co-songwriter, producer and singer and other instruments as well.

     There were four singles released from the album, and they picked some good ones.  My absolute favorite is the saucy track, “Appletree”.  It is a great blend of attitude and melody.  “On & On” is ultra-chill, and a perfect relaxation song.  The same could be said for “Otherside of the Game”, which is one of the tracks featuring Questlove and The Roots.  “Next Lifetime” is a seductive slow-jam that really showcases her depth and vocal range, and is a great example of feminine strength, beauty and talent.

     Some of the tracks on the back end of the album cross the R&B threshold for me, where it pivots from low-key to high-end riffing, and as is usually the case, that is not my favorite element of this genre.  If I’m here for relaxation and peace, the riffing just feels out of place and disruptive, even as it comes from amazing vocalists like Badu.  I recognize the apparent hypocrisy of this mindset when I also thrive on the vocal histrionics of singers like early Robert Plant, but I guess the difference is that I don’t put on “Immigrant Song” to lower my pulse and blood pressure.

     Overall, just a great album and a record I really enjoyed, particularly knowing I probably never would have taken the time to listen to this if it were not for this experience.

     A very different kind of vibe today, as we melt into some low-fi R&B with the debut album from Erykah Badu, “Baduizm”.  Well received, this album is the #89 rated album on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.  My first reaction was that she reminded me of an up-and-coming act I saw last year in concert, but then I read about a comparison to Billie Holiday, and there is a lot of similarity there as well.

     As we listened yesterday, it was instantly evident this is great music to relax to, and I would definitely consider this evening mood music.  As I read up on the production and creation of this record, it doesn’t surprise me that she collaborated with Questlove and The Roots on some of the music, and she also had done some work with D’Angelo.  All of that noted, Erykah was the primary creative force on this album as co-songwriter, producer and singer and other instruments as well.

     There were four singles released from the album, and they picked some good ones.  My absolute favorite is the saucy track, “Appletree”.  It is a great blend of attitude and melody.  “On & On” is ultra-chill, and a perfect relaxation song.  The same could be said for “Otherside of the Game”, which is one of the tracks featuring Questlove and The Roots.  “Next Lifetime” is a seductive slow-jam that really showcases her depth and vocal range, and is a great example of feminine strength, beauty and talent.

     Some of the tracks on the back end of the album cross the R&B threshold for me, where it pivots from low-key to high-end riffing, and as is usually the case, that is not my favorite element of this genre.  If I’m here for relaxation and peace, the riffing just feels out of place and disruptive, even as it comes from amazing vocalists like Badu.  I recognize the apparent hypocrisy of this mindset when I also thrive on the vocal histrionics of singers like early Robert Plant, but I guess the difference is that I don’t put on “Immigrant Song” to lower my pulse and blood pressure.

     Overall, just a great album and a record I really enjoyed, particularly knowing I probably never would have taken the time to listen to this if it were not for this experience.