CLASSIC ALBUMS: The Breeders - Last Splash (1993)

1. New Year
2. Cannonball
3. Invisible Man
4. No Aloha
5. Roi
6. Do You Love Me Now ?
7. Flipside
8. I Just Wanna Get Along
9. Mad Lucas
10. Divine Hammer
11. S.O.S.
12. Hag
13. Saints
14. Drivin' On 9
15. Roi (reprise)

This is certainly one of the classic indie albums of the 1990's, the second studio album by The Breeders, featuring Kim Deal in the best of her post-Pixies incarnations. This album is most famous for its second track, the gorgeous indie classic Cannonball, which is definitely the best track on the album. But Last Splash isn't a one-track pony either. As a matter of fact, there isn't a bad track on it.

Cannonball is one of the more core commercial tracks, but there are also a few other very catchy songs on the album. I Just Wanna Get Along (very MC5 in parts), Divine Hammer and Flipside are among the best of these, although the others are pretty good also.

There are also a number of excellent weirder or heavier mood pieces, which grow on you with repeated listens. Roi is my favourite of these, although I quite liked Do You Love Me Now?, New Year, S.O.S., Invisible Man (very Jesus & Mary Chain) and No Aloha.

Even my least favourite tracks on the album such as Mad Lucas, Drivin' On 9 and Hag are pretty decent tracks. Overall, a very good album.

CLASSIC ALBUMS: The Cult - Pure Cult

I’m sitting here, listening to a very good album by The Cult - Pure Cult: The Singles 1984-1995. It’s a cracking album, pretty much the best material released by the band, with the exception of some of their best album tracks, such as “The Hollow Man”. All the top singles are here, from the earliest classics such as “Resurrection Joe”, “She Sells Sanctuary”, “Rain” and “Revolution”, through “Lil’ Devil”, “Wild Flower” and “Love Removal Machine”, to later material such as “Star”, “In the Clouds” and “Coming Down (Drug Tongue)”.

The early material by the band was indie rock, with punkish origins, but from the mid-’80s onwards, the band reinvented themselves as a raunchy rock band in the mold of AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. This gives almost a feeling of listening to two completely different bands as we work our way through this album, something I find curiously refreshing.

Overall, this is an excellent retrospective of the bands singles releases. Great foot-stomping, raunchy, full-blooded R&B based blues rock. A highly recommended album!

CLASSIC ALBUMS - Silk Degrees by Boz Scaggs (1976)

Original album 1976 (Columbia Records)

Remastered Audio CD (24 Feb 2007)

Three extra live tracks

Number of Discs: 1

Label: Sony Music CMG

 

 

Track listing:

1. What Can I Say (3:02)
2. Georgia (3:56)
3. Jump Street (5:13)
4. What Do You Want The Girl To Do (3:51)
5. Harbor Lights (5:59)
6. Lowdown (5:17)
7. It's Over (2:52)
8. Love Me Tomorrow (3:17)
9. Lido Shuffle (3:43)
10. We're All Alone (4:14)
11. What Can I Say (Live Version) (3:29)
12. Jump Street (Live Version) (5:08)
13. It's Over (Live Version) (3:37)

Two of the greatest feel-good, easy listening albums of all time are Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Boz Scaggs' Silk Degrees, both of which came out within a year or two of each other in the mid-1970's, an era which was a fertile period for such music.

Boz Scaggs is a highly talented and versatile, but sadly very underrated guitarist and musician, who worked with the Steve Miller Band in the late-1960s. When he went solo in the early 70s, he made the switch from r'n'b to producing his own strand of smooth, silky jazz-funk, a genre which was enjoying some considerable commercial success at that time. He set up stall with a bunch of excellent session musicians (most of whom were to go on to later form the acclaimed band Toto), a combination which was to prove, along with his own undeniable talent, the main driving force behind the polished, classy quality of his albums.

Scaggs produced his first two solo albums back in the 60s (1965 and 1969), but both of these were commercially unsuccessful. He moved to Columbia records at the beginning of the 1970s, and his first four albums with them all entered the charts, but were not exactly raging smash hits, except for Slow Dancer (1974), which went Gold. It wasn't until his fifth Columbia album, Silk Degrees, that his solo career went stratospheric.

The mid-to-late-1970s was by far his most successful period, during which he had no less than four hit albums, one Gold and three Platinum-selling smash hits. Down Two Then Left (1977) and Middle Man (1980) both went Platinum, and Hits! (1980) went Gold. But it was the 1976 smash-hit Silk Degrees that has proven to be the most enduring of all of them. This one went five times Multi-Platinum, reached #2 and spent 115 weeks on the US Billboard Charts, and was the album which skyrocketed Scaggs to the top of the "absolutely must listen to" musical league.

There are so many good tracks on this album, which produced no less than four successful chart singles over 1976-1977 - the sublime "What Can I Say?" (my personal favourite on the album), the sultry "Lowdown" (my third-favourite), the catchy floor-filler "Lido Shuffle" (my fourth-favourite) and the even more catchy "It's Over" (my second-favourite). But I also rate "Georgia" pretty highly, as were a couple of excellent ballads, "Harbor Lights" and "We're All Alone", the second of which which was to be a massive US and UK hit cover single for Rita Coolidge in 1977.

"We're All Alone" was also covered by Frankie Valli and The Walker Brothers during 1976, and Bruce Murray, The Three Degrees and country & western singer LaCosta in 1977, which means that there were at least half a dozen different cover versions of the song circulating the various charts in the US, UK and Europe during 1976-1977, and none of them were actually by original artist Boz Scaggs! Scaggs only released "We're All Alone" as a B-Side to "Lido Shuffle" in 1977.

I originally bought Silk Degrees on vinyl way back in the early 1980's, and more recently also bought the remastered 2007 CD edition (the one I'm reviewing now), which contains three extra bonus tracks, live versions of "What Can I Say?", "Jump Street" and "It's Over", all of which are also excellent, and show just what a force Scaggs and his group must have been on tour.

I can listen to this amazing album over and over and over again, and I never get fed up with it. If you are a fan of soulful, silky-smooth jazz-funk, and you've never heard Silk Degrees, you are missing one of the true classics of the genre. Do yourself a huge favour, go out and buy this great album, pour yourself a cool drink, and just sit back and let the music flow over you.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...