ZZ Top - Tres Hombres

Released - July 1973

Genre - Blues Rock

Producer - Bill Ham

Selected Personnel - Billy Gibbons (Vocals/Guitar); Dusty Hill (Bass/Keyboards/Vocals); Frank Beard (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - La Grange

In perhaps early-to-mid 2009, High Voltage Festival was announced to be taking part in Victoria Park in summer 2010. It was a short-lived thing, only running for 2010 and 2011 before being discontinued (presumably because there were no more ageing rock bands that were still up for playing live). Essentially, it was a festival dedicated to classic rock, prog rock and metal. Needless to say, after spending the last two years or so deepening my love for all things classic rock, and having only recently discovered how much fun going to see music live was via Bad Company, Wishbone Ash and Jethro Tull gigs, all of which I went to see with my rock music spirit guide Jack, it felt like a no-brainer and tickets were booked for the both of us. The headliner on the Saturday night was ZZ Top, a band I'd been aware of partly for the odd song on a Classic Rock Anthems compilation album from when I was a teenager and partly for their legendary cartoonish imagery, being a band led by two old men with chest-length beards in sunglasses and cowboy hats. I liked the songs and I liked the tongue-in-cheek sense of humour their image obviously betrayed, but I'd never gotten round to actually giving them much of my time. The impending deadline of High Voltage seemed a good opportunity to give them more of a shot, and over the subsequent year they became, while far from an obsession (remember that this was the same time I was getting into Tom Waits and I'm unable to be wholeheartedly obsesse by more than one artist at a time), then certainly a regular feature of my listening habits.

Post-High Voltage (and the gig itself was a spectacular show of colourful excess and characteristically cartoonish showmanship) ZZ Top gradually fell out of rotation on my iPod, and these days it's only the odd classic track I listen to that often. Ultimately, they're an enormously fun band but a long way from being particularly exciting or innovative. That's something the band themselves are well aware of, of course - lead vocalist and guitarist Billy Gibbons opened the High Voltage show by declaring "That's right, it's the same three guys right here!" before indicating his guitar and following it up with "And the same three chords right here!", and they don't let their formulaic nature distract from their passion for writing simple, gutsy and memorable pop rock songs. But they never ignited an enormous passion in me after that first year or so. So this blog again provides a nice opportunity to dive back into the work of a band I've not listened to properly for a long time.

One of the most curious things to emerge from that High Voltage gig (which I'll stop going on about in a minute, but it was my first ever festival so it's lodged in my memory) was the revelation that ZZ Top had been championed by none other than Jimi Hendrix in their early days, an anecdote Gibbons recounted before introducing a cover of Hendrix's "Hey, Joe" that I can't remember much of other than that they released a lot of purple smoke for it. It seemed surprising to me and Jack that a band as formulaic and blues-by-numbers as ZZ Top could at one stage have been interesting enough to win the approval of a guitarist as innovative and legendary as Hendrix. ZZ Top are many things - catchy, fun, cool - but innovative is one thing they've never been. Weirdly, even listening to the band's very early records still doesn't display the spirit of quite what Hendrix could have seen in them - albums like 1972's Rio Grande Mud have a couple of good tunes but largely are just predictable, plodding blues rock. But perhaps Hendrix's own reputation for innovation gets in the way of the fact that what he really appreciated in music wasn't necessarily showy virtuoso talent but rather music that was committed and effectively simple.

Rio Grande Mud was followed by 1973's Tres Hombres, their breakthrough album that would become their first Top Ten and establish them as stars. Certainly, the band we see on Tres Hombres may not be the most jaw-droppingly inventive blues rock band of all time, but it's also a band that's willing to put more emphasis on the music itself, a far cry from the shades, cars and girls imagery and synthesiser-inflected dance pop of their 80s peak (even the trademark beards of Gibbons and Hill were absent at this stage). While I'm not familiar with their later 70s work, it's probable that by that time they'd exhausted what they could do with simple blues formulas and felt the need to reinvent themselves as something far more colourful. But on Tres Hombres there's a sense of back-to-roots simplicity, an earthiness and groundedness reminiscent of earlier roots rock bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival. It's not played completely straight, of course, because this is ZZ Top we're talking about - that absurd strangled drawl Gibbons affects on "La Grange" is classic ZZ Top tongue-in-cheek silliness, and the whole thing feels far more like a bunch of guys messing around and having fun than the genuine woes and tales of day-to-day struggle that informed the blues music of their idols. But that sense of fun is what makes ZZ Top so memorable, really.

Essentially, throughout Tres Hombres bassist Dusty Hill and Frank Beard (the only member of the band to not end up growing a chest-length beard) lock into a series of tight, rhythmic grooves, over which Gibbons unleashes a series of punchy blues riffs or sweeping solos. It's never any more inventive than that, but it's done with enough panache to just about get away with it. Gibbons's guitar tone is assuredly cool, a sort of petrol-fueled, chugging snarl, though it's one of my big disappointments with ZZ Top that his vocals are fairly bland and generic. Songs as cartoonish and fun as these would really benefit from a voice with the same amount as growl and snarl in it as Gibbons's guitar, but the vocals are rarely particularly exciting to listen to. Largely, the album succeeds due to the presence of their first hit single "La Grange," a blues-inflected boogie number with an unforgettable riff and one of Gibbons's most entertaining solos. But the album's opening trio of songs is well worthy of praise, too - "Waitin' For The Bus" is a clipped, staccato blues number that keeps things admirably restrained, while "Jesus Just Left Chicago" has a looser groove to it and allows Gibbons some more space to play round with things. "Beer Drinkers And Hell Raisers" picks up the pace once again, being a faster, more urgent song almost like a poor man's "La Grange." The other standout is album closer "Have You Heard?", a song that almost bears a few gospel hallmarks in its choral vocals and sing-along chorus. It feels like perhaps the most unaffected and least tongue-in-cheek song on the album, and one with some genuine feeling behind it, and also boasts some further cool guitar riffing from Gibbons.

There are weak points aplenty, though, sadly - much of the middle of the album either consists of fairly unremarkable blues numbers, or actively wearisome songs like the slow and drawn-out "Hot, Blue And Righteous." And the penultimate track, "Shiek," is a boringly tuneless thing. As you can no doubt tell, I can't bring myself to think of Tres Hombres with much more than a modicum of admiration. I feel like the reinvention of ZZ Top in the 80s, kitsch and stupid as it may have been, injected a lot more pizzazz and colour and fun into their music that is sometimes missing here on their earlier stuff. But there's no denying that when this album gets it right, most notably on "La Grange," it shows a band that have a real talent for simple, uncomplicated and fun hard rock, and it's an interesting insight into the humbler and simpler origins of a band that became famous for outrageous excess and silliness.

Tres Hombres would be followed by a series of albums of diminishing returns. 1975's semi-live album Fandango! features the brilliant "Tush" but is mostly mind-numbingly tedious, and I've never bothered listening to their even less popular late 70s albums. But the 80s, unlike its effect on so many other classic rock acts from the 70s, were kind to ZZ Top and gave them a new lease of life in the form of an audience that really gelled with their light-hearted sense of fun. As good as Tres Hombres is in places, the best was yet to come.

Track Listing:

1. Waitin' For The Bus (Billy Gibbons & Dusty Hill)

2. Jesus Just Left Chicago (Billy Gibbons; Dusty Hill & Frank Beard)

3. Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers (Billy Gibbons; Dusty Hill & Frank Beard)

4. Master Of Sparks (Billy Gibbons)

5. Hot, Blue And Righteous (Billy Gibbons)

6. Move Me On Down The Line (Billy Gibbons & Dusty Hill)

7. Precious And Grace (Billy Gibbons; Dusty Hill & Frank Beard)

8. La Grange (Billy Gibbons; Dusty Hill & Frank Beard)

9. Shiek (Billy Gibbons & Dusty Hill)

10. Have You Heard? (Billy Gibbons & Dusty Hill)

The Who - Quadrophenia

Released - October 1973

Genre - Hard Rock

Producer - The Who, Kit Lambert & Glyn Johns

Selected Personnel - Roger Daltrey (Vocals/Percussion); Pete Townshend (Guitar/Synthesiser/Piano/Vocals); John Entwistle (Bass/Horns/Vocals); Keith Moon (Drums/Percussion/Vocals)

Standout Track - Love, Reign O'er Me

The Who are obviously great. It would be stupid of me to not admit that they're great. They left an indelible mark on the world of rock music and recorded some amazing stuff in their time, and are firmly ensconced as one of the all-time legends of classic rock. But none of that means they should be above and beyond any criticism, and for me, they've always fallen ever so slightly short of true greatness and have never managed to inspire me with enough awe and inspiration to dive fully into their discography beyond a few of the more obvious records. The double whammy of 1971's Who's Next and 1973's Quadrophenia is a good example. The band that made Who's Next could so easily have been perhaps the greatest rock band of all time. If that had somehow been the only thing they'd ever recorded I might not even have a bad word to say about them, it's an exemplary album. But what worked so well about Who's Next was its simplicity, its coherence and consistency. Principal songwriter and de facto bandleader Pete Townshend strikes me as someone who gets carried away with his own grand conceptual visions too often - 1969's rock opera Tommy had flashes of brilliance and is a hugely significant album, but suffers as result of its being overlong and trying to cram in too many less than stellar songs in order to fully flesh out Townshend's story and structure. What's always frustrated me about Quadrophenia (which is still a better album than Tommy in pretty much every way) is that with Who's Next Townshend hit upon a format that catapulted the Who to legendary status - when they focused their creative efforts into shorter records comprised of simple, unrelated rock songs not in thrall to a grand concept, they were unstoppable (even taking into account that Who's Next only emerged from the failure of Townshend's attempt to make a second rock opera called Lifehouse). But rather than really learn from this and try to do something similar, Townshend decided to return to the idea of the grand, bombastic rock opera and the result is an album that's overlong and crams in too much filler material in order to adequately tell its story. If you cut about half an hour from it, Quadrophenia would be almost as good as Who's Next. As it is, it's a great album but one that can't help but frustrate me somewhat.

I should point out, of course, that I have absolutely no problems with grand, bombastic, complex and conceptual musical projects in general - a lot of my favourite music would fit that category. But what has always struck a chord with me most about the Who is the songs of theirs that really hit you in the gut and excite you, it's never their conceptual ideas or structural ambitions. I just feel that a simpler record like Who's Next was a much better showcase of what they could do. Anyway, with my obligatory reservations out of the way, let's talk properly about the album itself. I've not seen the celebrated film of Quadrophenia, but the album's narrative is one that's never captured me in quite the same way as Tommy's has, which admittedly boasts a more interesting concept at the heart of it despite its other failings. Quadrophenia is essentially the story of Jimmy, a young man diagnosed with a four-way multiple personality disorder who embraces the music and style of Mod culture in order to fill the gap after he is abandoned by his family, before feeling increasingly abandoned even by his Mod heroes. It's not quite got the hook of Tommy's blind, deaf and dumb prophet figure, and perhaps it's chiefly down to the fact that I've never got that invested in the story that much of the material here just feels like uninspired filler in order to tell key bits of the story. Still, Quadrophenia central multiple personality concept does allow Townshend to structure the record far more ingeniously than on his last effort at a rock opera.

Each of Jimmy's personalities, supposedly each one modelled on a member of the band itself, has a corresponding theme that recurs throughout the album ("Helpless Dancer" for Roger Daltrey, "Is It Me?" for John Entwistle, "Bell Boy" for Keith Moon and "Love, Reign O'er Me" for Townshend himself), with the two instrumental tracks that almost bookend the album, "Quadrophenia" and "The Rock" masterfully weaving between the four different themes and ultimately combining them all together into one gloriously arranged medley at the end of the latter track. It's certainly fair to say that Townshend goes to far greater lengths to really explore the idea of composing a unified piece of work and structuring it accordingly. But there's still plenty of stuff here that could really have ended up left off the final cut if he hadn't been so slavishly devoted to filling out the story - songs like "I'm One," "Is It In My Head?" or "Sea And Sand" have rarely done much to excite me or even to lodge themselves in my head for long after I've finished listening them.

But where Quadrophenia really excels, aside from those two instrumental tracks and their structural ingenuity, is in the places where it reminds you how great the Who were at simple and effective rock songs. Daltrey's vocal performance is as committed and gutsy as it was on Who's Next, but pushes it even further in places to really prove him a legendary vocalist, something that was only visible in brief glimmers on Tommy and earlier albums like My Generation. On the climactic "Love, Reign O'er Me" in particular, Daltrey lets out a whole host of wails and roars that send chills down the spine. Townshend is again ever-present throughout the whole thing, contributing the majority of the instrumental parts, but it's in his spiky, vicious guitar style that he really lets his presence be felt. I mentioned in my review for Tommy that I was surprised by the Who's early albums how tame they felt in comparison to the band's legendary reputation for their destructive and violent live performances, and it's perhaps on Quadrophenia that that sense of raw power and edge comes across the strongest, to the extent that even bassist Entwistle and drummer Moon really make themselves heard. In a lot of rock bands, it's easy to overlook the significance of a rhythm section and give too much attention to the more showy contributions of a guitarist or a keyboardist or a singer, but Quadrophenia has always been one of the albums that really forces you to pay attention to every single musical contribution.

Nowhere is that more true than on the blistering almost-opener that is "The Real Me." Coming after the calming sound collage of "I Am The Sea," its frantic bass and drum playing, along with Townshend's twanging guitar riff and Daltrey's passionate vocals, make it one of the most punchy, memorable and simply great rock songs in the Who's repertoire. "The Punk And The Godfather" is another great rocker that grabs you by the throat with its slashing guitar and Daltrey's screams of "I'm the punk in the gutter." The album's first half is brought to a close by another insistent rocker, the driving "I've Had Enough" which starts with a pounding rock arrangement and, after a brief cameo from the "Love, Reign O'er Me" theme closes with a more light-hearted country twang. The second half kicks off with the brilliant "5:15," a song that pushes Entwistle's funky horn arrangements to the fore as they decorate the core guitar riff and pouding piano. The other standouts from the second half include the angry "Doctor Jimmy," which in its extended running time also incorporates the melancholy and sweetly romantic "Is It Me?" theme. I've also got to mention "Bell Boy" which, while it's far from my favourite song on the album, does contain one of its most fun moments in Keith Moon's spoken vocal part over its propulsive rhythm ("I've got a good job and I'm newly born..."). And then, as Townshend had done so well with "Won't Get Fooled Again," the album rounds things off (after the instrumental reprise of all four themes on "The Rock") with an absolute classic. The stirringly dramatic piano part and immediately classic vocal melody of "Love, Reign O'er Me" immediately lodged themselves forever in my memory the minute I first heard them (as part of a greatest hits compilation, long before I became familiar with any individual Who album) and it's long been perhaps my very favourite Who song, along with "Baba O'Riley." As I said earlier, Daltrey gives the finest vocal performance of his career, roaring out the chorus as the music fills out and the melody ascends.

Following on the heels of two albums that had quickly become legendary, Quadrophenia was another huge hit for the Who, and years later would spawn a successful film in 1979. The next stage for the band after its release was an ambitious US tour that was beset by problems (including a legendary gig where Moon collapsed and a random audience member who could play the drums a little was dragged up to play for the last few songs). After that, the band would work on the film adaptation of Tommy, after which they would record two more albums before Moon's untimely death in 1975. The general consensus from that point onwards is that the quality irreparably slid. As you can probably tell from this review, my attitude towards the Who as a band is one that's beset with reservations and frustrations, and I've never been able to summon the interest to listen to much more. Quadrophenia is undeniably a great album, and has a number of absolutely classic songs, and all the hallmarks of something truly immortal. But there's so much material on it that does so little for me that I can't bring myself to love it unreservedly. And, while there are other songs by the band that I like, my brief forays into their less well-known albums have always left me cold. My Generation has the great title track but little else that I enjoyed, while The Who Sell Out has "I Can See For Miles" and nothing else that excites me. I also gave 1982's It's Hard a shot off the back of the brilliant "Eminence Front" but, other than that song and the almost-as-good "I've Known No War," it does little but confirm how far they had fallen by the early 80s. For me, the Who will always be a band who were capable of brilliance but always seemed to lack the consistency to really get me obsessed by them in the way that other bands did. Unless I ever get round to listening to The Who By Numbers or Who Are You? I imagine that the three albums I've reviewed already on this blog will be the only three that ever truly find their way into their affections. I mean, I've done a lot of moaning about consistency and the like on this review. But I'll sum it up with the same caveat with which I started it - at the end of the day, the Who are undeniably great.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Pete Townshend.

1. I Am The Sea

2. The Real Me

3. Quadrophenia

4. Cut My Hair

5. The Punk And The Godfather

6. I'm One

7. The Dirty Jobs

8. Helpless Dancer

9. Is It In My Head?

10. I've Had Enough

11. 5:15

12. Sea And Sand

13. Drowned

14. Bell Boy

15. Doctor Jimmy

16. The Rock

17. Love, Reign O'er Me

Tom Waits - Closing Time

Released - March 1973

Genre - Jazz

Producer - Jerry Yester

Selected Personnel - Tom Waits (Vocals/Piano/Guitar); Delbert Bennett (Trumpet); Shep Cooke (Guitar/Backing Vocals); Peter Klimes (Guitar); Bill Plummer (Bass); John Seiter (Drums/Backing Vocals); Jesse Ehrlich (Cello); Tony Terran (Trumpet)

Standout Track - Ol' '55

For me, perhaps the most significant album of 1973, amid all the brash sound and colour of glam rock and prog was this quiet, unassuming little collection of folk and jazz tunes, in that it marked the debut of the artist who came to have a stronger grasp on my imagination and my heart and my mind than any other I've ever discovered. Never before or since has an artist fascinated and obsessed me quite so much (although Bowie, Springsteen and Eno all came close). For well over a year, Tom Waits was more or less exclusively all I listened to as I hungrily devoured his entire discography, and has remained a constant in my listening habits ever since, and a pinnacle of artistic imagination and musical innovation. It might be something of a surprise, then, that his arrival on the music scene was so quiet and understated as this lovely album. It would be very easy to listen to Closing Time and dismiss Waits as just another folk singer-songwriter of the West Coast scene, but the independent spirit and depth of character is there if you look hard enough.

I first encountered Waits back in 2007, when my brother, Barney, played me a now-famous recording of him singing perhaps his best-loved song, "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen)" on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977. Barney spoke effusively about the incredible sense of ravaged dignity and simple profundity in the song. I listened to Waits's ragged, gravel-soaked voice and immediately disliked it, telling Barney I hated it and had no interest in him. A year later I found an old copy of Waits's 1980 masterpiece Heartattack And Vine and bought it for Barney's birthday. A year after that I went to see Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus, which stars Waits as the Devil, and suddenly became fascinated by him. That a musician who commanded such respect and admiration in my brother for being a songwriter of incredible depth and beaurty could also portray a character with such wit and colour and an innate sense of beatnik cool caused me to suddenly become deeply interested in what Waits represented, and to go and get hold of some of his records. I got hold of his first two records, thinking it made sense to start chronologically, as well as the aforementioned Heartattack And Vine and perhaps his best-known album, 1985's Rain Dogs. Like many coming to Waits for the first time, his voice had initially had something of a distancing effect for me, so his early records ultimately proved the perfect place to start. On Closing Time, that ragged bellow is totally absent, with the voice instead being one of nasal, reedy clarity, almost Dylan-esque in places. It meant that by the time I got to the albums where Waits's voice has become truly guttural, I had already fallen in love with everything his music represented, and suddenly that voice became an integral part of what I enjoyed about him rather than something alienating. I'm not necessarily saying that Closing Time is the perfect place for everybody to start with Waits, as it's a long way from the style of music he would become best-loved for, but it worked for me.

Over the following year or so, I delved further and further into Waits's work. It's difficult for me to say exactly why it is that he became so important to me - perhaps I had never before found an artist who so perfectly managed to bridge the gap between noble beauty and cartoonish weirdness that generally informed so many of my tastes in music, film, comedy, everything - I love to be moved by art and I love to be surprised by it, and Waits at his best was able to do both better than anybody else I had ever found. I won't go into too much detail about the breadth of Waits's career here, as there'll be plenty of time to talk about his other work as this blog marches onwards, so I'll focus on what role Closing Time has in the grand scheme of things.

By 1973, Waits had fostered a small community around himself in LA's folk scene. Initially based in San Diego, he used to travel up to LA and perform covers of Dylan songs as well as his own compositions at the Troubadour club, before eventually relocating to the city itself to try and give more of his time to it, recording a series of demos with manager Herb Cohen in 1971 (these demos would eventually be released as the two-volume The Early Years compilation, against Waits's wishes). He eventually caught the eye of David Geffen, head of Asylum Records who had signed artists like the Eagles and Joni Mitchell. Geffen quickly signed Waits and helped him to record Closing Time with producer Jerry Yester of the Lovin' Spoonful. What is so remarkable about Closing Time is just how unremarkable it is (which is to say nothing of its quality, which is truly brilliant, but only of its musical influences and styles). While Yester was keen to mould Waits into a folk singer of the likes of Mitchell or Neil Young, Waits determinedly steered the album towards a more traditional jazz style. Throughout the 60s, he has been essentially unimpressed by many of the developments in rock music and had generally turned to older jazz music of the Tin Pan Alley traditions - simple, piano-based ballads rather than upbeat folk rock numbers. While to a casual listener there is little on Closing Time that is truly surprising - these are traditional folk and jazz songs and show little in terms of radical musical innovation - they do give a fascinating insight into Waits's sense of character. He had no interest in painting himself as some sort of iconic young rebel, but rather chose to settle into the character of the old-fashioned troubadour, sitting at the piano wreathed in smoke and singing songs that sounded decades old. The songs might not have been too radical, but the spirit behind them was one of dogged determination to avoid current conventions, even if it meant reviving styles of music that had essentially fallen out of favour.

Lyrically, on Closing Time Waits already demonstrates the two ideas that would fuel the majority of his songwriting even to this day. In songs like "Ol' '55" there is the sense of a true-life sketch celebrating everyday, normal people. It's a song that depicts a guy driving home from seeing his lover late at night in a beaten-up old car and has a glorious sense of everyday escapism similar to the kinds of everyman idealism that Bruce Springsteen exemplified over on the East Coast. But while Springsteen chose to tell his stories of the average man on the street via upbeat, guitar-based rock music, Waits again clung to tradition and told his stories via simple piano-based folk tunes. Later in the 70s, Waits would establish himself as perhaps the ultimate example of a songwriter who expressed the everyday trials and lives of drunks and deadbeats and drifters, finding the beauty in their simple day-to-day routines in the tradition of his beat-era heroes like Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac. On the other hand, songs like "Martha" express the imagination that would also fire a huge amount of Waits's writing. While it's steeped in the same sort of everyday poetry that fuels "Ol' '55" (it's the story of an old man calling up a long-lost love and confessing to her that he has loved her his whole life despite both of them having been married since), it does give an insight into Waits's ability to imagine himself into characters. Rather than following the mould of most rock music and telling stories of young dreamers, Waits steps effortlessly into the shoes of an old man whose entire life, with all its regrets and disappointments, is behind him. Perhaps the closest match for Waits at the time in terms of imaginative, old-fashioned songwriting is Randy Newman, who, on albums like Sail Away, is able to draw imaginative sketches of disparate characters in old-fashioned, jazzy arrangements. But even on Sail Away there's a sense of hip, ironic cool that Waits entirely eschews here in favour of sincere romanticism.

The tunes themselves are simply masterful - considering Waits would become legendary for making music that is difficult and challenging and unconventional, on his early records he demonstrates just how good he is at writing a melody that is unforgettable and beautiful. Overall, in terms of the battle between Waits and Yester over the stylistic direction of the record, Waits wins out - there are a few more folk-based tunes, the best being "Ol' '55" itself, which remains one of my very favourite Tom Waits songs. The minute I first heard its effortlessly beautiful piano chords I knew this would be an artist I would love, and its soaring chorus is one of his best. Many of the other more folk-oriented tracks, such as "I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You" or the country twang of "Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards)" are pretty enough but pale in comparison to the album's jazzier moments. The shuffling drums, stand-up bass and trumpet parts beautifully compliment jazz tunes like "Midnight Lullaby" and the gorgeous "Grapefruit Moon," and pretty much the entire last two thirds of the album is classic song after classic song.

The aforementioned "Martha" is a real masterpiece, the sense of broken loss that bleeds through the lyrics reinforced by Yester's wonderful string arrangements, and "Rosie" is one of the more stirring country-folk tunes on the album. "Lonely" is such a simple and mournful tune, with such a stark arrangement, that it easily manages to be the saddest moment on the album (even despite the presence of "Martha") and really recalls the Broadway songwriting traditions of Tin Pan Alley. The upbeat and jazzy "Ice Cream Man," propelled by its bass and drum parts, is one of the few moments that the whole band really get to have fun together, and then there's the instrumental title track. One of the final songs recorded for the album, the whole thing was done in one take and sees Waits provide slow, mellow piano accompaniment to Tony Terran's beautiful trumpet melody. Yester recalls the extended moment of quiet that followed the end of the recording session, and it's a moment you can really feel as it dies away - it's a stunningly wonderful piece of music that leaves your heart warmed and fades into a beautiful quietness.

For all its beauty and quality, Closing Time, despite being critically well-received, went more or less unnoticed at the time, and it was only via covers by the likes of the Eagles and Tim Buckley that any of these songs got much attention at the time. Perhaps Waits simply wasn't contemporary enough to capture the imagination of the general public - he was neither a cool young rock musician like Springsteen nor a forward-looking musical visionary. He appeared to be just a curious throwback to outdated jazz music. Waits didn't let the lack of sales bother him - he knew the kind of music he loved, and the kind of character he wanted to play. He would never be a typical rock musician, and he revelled in the roleplaying of being the strange, romantic beatnik. By the end of the 70s, the lack of industry attention would eventually begin to drive him to frustration, being one of many factors that would contribute to his turning to more radical styles of music, but for the foreseeable future he saw no reason to stop making music in the traditions he loved, and that sense of character would only deepen further in the coming years.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Tom Waits.

1. Ol' '55

2. I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You

3. Virginia Avenue

4. Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards)

5. Midnight Lullaby

6. Martha

7. Rosie

8. Lonely

9. Ice Cream Man

10. Little Trip To Heaven (On The Wings Of Your Love)

11. Grapefruit Moon

12. Closing Time

Steely Dan - Countdown To Ecstasy

Released - July 1973

Genre - Jazz Rock

Producer - Gary Katz

Selected Personnel - Donald Fagen (Piano/Keyboards/Vocals); Walter Becker (Bass/Harmonica); Denny Dias (Guitar); Jeff "Skunk" Baxter (Guitar/Pedal Steel Guitar); Rick Derringer (Slide Guitar); Jim Hodder (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - My Old School

I came to Steely Dan's sophomore album Countdown To Ecstasy after already becoming familiar with the two records that are perhaps to this day regarded as their best, debut Can't Buy A Thrill and their third album Pretzel Logic (1977's Aja is a good contender for the top spot too, both personally and by global consensus, but for my money it doesn't quite beat those two). As such, it was inevitable that I would end up being slightly disappointed with it. Generally, if I feel I'm likely to be interested in listening to an artist's whole discography then I always try to listen to it more or less chronologically rather than starting with the most critically adored records before moving onto the "lesser" ones as it sets up an inevitable downward trajectory for your enjoyment. For a long time, I felt that Countdown To Ecstasy was just more of the same hip, precisely engineered jazz-inflected pop rock but without any of the brilliant, catchy tunes that elevated the two albums I already knew. But it's one of those records that requires a little patience, a little digging to find that there are real virtues to be found beneath its lack of a standout tune (besides the immensely catchy "My Old School," which is easily the most memorable and enjoyable melody on offer).

It's an interesting album in a couple of ways in terms of the band's broader history. As I discussed in my review of Can't Buy A Thrill, Steely Dan were a curious outfit in that they were effectively a musical duo masquerading as a band. In 1973, this legacy would not yet have quite taken hold, although the signs of it were already there. Already lead songwriters and band leaders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's penchant for drafting in hosts of session players to flesh out the performances of the key band was in evidence, but on Countdown To Ecstasy, unlike any other album they would produce together, they were uniquely writing for a live band. In the wake of the success of Can't Buy A Thrill, Steely Dan had undertaken a series of tours, despite Becker and Fagen's lack of interest in live performance. As such, the songs featured on their second album are the only Steely Dan songs to have been written specifically with the live element in mind. It doesn't have a huge impact on the music, but, as the shorter track listing will testify, the songs here do place much greater emphasis on instrumental interludes, jazz-influenced soloing and extended jams than they did previously, all ideas which the band could really play with in a live environment.

The most obvious songs to have been sculpted with this in mind are the great opener "Bodhisattva," "Your Gold Teeth" and "Show Biz Kids." "Bodhisattva" is perhaps the jazziest song the band had written so far, where the shuffling, bop-style drum part is the backdrop for a series of intertwining, tangled guitar solos from Denny Dias and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter. Whereas "Bodhisattva" is basically just a song framed around a number of instrumental explorations, "Your Gold Teeth" is far more structured, but still features several prominent instrumental sections favouring improvisation. "Show Biz Kids," meanwhile, is an effortlessly cool blues vamp on a single chord, with the repeated choral chants of "They've blown a life's wages" anchoring Fagen's biting character assassination of materialistic, commercially minded social strata, and a slide guitar solo by Rick Derringer becomes ever more frantic and tortuous.

I also mentioned in my last Steely Dan review how refreshing it is that Becker and Fagen tend to write material far less overly reliant on the guitar than most other contemporary rock bands. In stark contrast to the use of the instrument on Can't Buy A Thrill, here they put it front and centre, with the solos in "Bodhisattva," "Your Gold Teeth" and "Show Biz Kids" being particularly prominent, but then there's the final section of "The Boston Rag" as well. For most of its length, "The Boston Rag" is a slow, almost plodding affair, but then in its closing minutes things are stripped back to a simple piano chord sequence, over which perhaps the most fearsome, angry guitar solo in Steely Dan's discography is unleashed.

It's not all jazzy instrumentals and solos, though - while there aren't many instantly memorable pop tunes here, things never disappear into true jazz fusion improvised jam territory, and is always kept tied to a simple, radio-friendly song structure, nowhere more so than on the simply joyous "My Old School," whose jazzy piano and jubilant horn section makes it one of the band's most enjoyable numbers (and, yes, there are some brilliant moments of guitar magic in there once again). The final two songs see a dip in quality as both the pop hooks and the exhilerating solos are abandoned in favour of a couple of fairly forgettable pop songs of the quality of some of the more middling material on Can't Buy A Thrill.

Lyrically, Becker and Fagen continue their wry, counter-cultural preoccupations from their first album. The focus, by and large, is on materialism, with pretty much every song finding a fresh way to skewer a society obsessed with purchasing power - from the cynical dismissal of the material possessions of the "Show Biz Kids," to the idea of whether LA razor boys have any principles or opinions beyond their own belongings. "Bodhisattva" explores the idea of west coast excess in the context of Eastern mysticism, an idea which the album's title picks up on as well, articulating the idea of trying to rationalise and apply rules to a spiritual concept. Essentially, Becker and Fagen continue to draw on the literary legacy of the beat poets like William S. Burroughs who first inspired the band's name, giving character sketches of decadent low-lives through music that is deceptively upbeat, catchy and cheerful for all its tales of bleak hopelessness and pathetic materialism.

It's worth noting also that Countdown To Ecstasy is the first Steely Dan album to feature Fagen performing all lead vocal duties himself. Despite his shyness about singing live, Becker and producer Gary Katz pushed him to take over full vocal duties as his voice had so much more character than co-lead-vocalist David Palmer. While Fagen's voice is an acquired taste, it's a great improvement to have him as the sole voice on the record. Palmer's clean, too-perfect voice comes nowhere near the kind of snarl and cynicism and tongue-in-cheek snideness to properly tell the stories Becker and Fagen have set down. Still, Fagen's adoption of the full-time lead vocalist role was one more step on the road towards abandoning live performance, as it gave them yet another reason to avoid touring.

Countdown To Ecstasy has become critically well-thought-of but failed to secure any big hits or great success for Steely Dan at the time, but with a little patience its excellence soon reveals itself. It's an album that has pointedly chosen to avoid, for the most part, any attempt to write a hit pop song and to push some more unusual jazz stylings to the forefront, and it achieves some great things in places as a result of its more idiosyncratic streak. Soon after its release, Becker and Fagen would take the executive decision to not tour any more so that they could put even more focus and care and precision into the crafting of their studio recordings, and before long Steely Dan would cease functioning as a real band at all, rather becoming a musical pallette for the two of them to continue fine-tuning the jazz-rock soundscapes in their minds. The following year's Pretzel Logic would see them continue to push jazz styles forward while also writing more concise pop songs to make an album that perhaps came closest to achieving a fusion of the two styles they excelled at.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.

1. Bodhisattva

2. Razor Boy

3. The Boston Rag

4. Your Gold Teeth

5. Show Biz Kids

6. My Old School

7. Pearl Of The Quarter

8. King Of The World

Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

Released - July 1971

Genre - Funk

Producer - George Clinton

Selected Personnel - Eddie Hazel (Guitar); Tawl Ross (Guitar); Bernie Worrell (Keyboards); Billy Bass Nelson (Bass); Tiki Fulwood (Drums); George Clinton (Vocals); Fuzzy Haskins (Vocals); Calvin Simon (Vocals); Grady Thomas (Vocals); Ray Davis (Vocals); Garry Shider (Vocals)

Standout Track - Maggot Brain

Every now and again, sheer restlessness might drive us to change our listening habits. It doesn't happen to me particularly often, and on the occasions it does, it'll often work out that I end up regretting breaking away from the more familiar musical territories I tend to stay within - my brief dalliance with the Smiths merely confirmed my suspicions that I had no idea what the fuss was about, and only this week I gave Neutral Milk Hotel a go and was stunned to find so little to enjoy in an album that is beloved by so many people I respect. And then there are the occasions where you discover something you have no idea why you didn't find it sooner. That's the case with Funkadelic's incredible Maggot Brain, which belongs to a musical world I've investigated very little over the last few years. Admittedly, it was always going to be something that appealed to me - while I don't know much about the world of funk music itself and haven't listened to much as yet, it's a musical genre that's had a huge influence on a lot of music I do love (take, for instance, Bowie's borrowing of funk styles to create his "plastic soul" phase for 1975's Young Americans, or the fact that funk ultimately morphed into disco music as exemplified by the likes of Chic, one of my all-time favourite bands). Plus, there was the fact that Funkadelic in particular borrowed heavily from the traditions of the psychedelic rock movement of the late 60s, most notably Jimi Hendrix and others I was already a big fan of. So, yes, of course I was always going to love this album and it was only a matter of time before I found it. But listening to it for the first time did feel very much like dipping my toes into a world that, while ostensibly familiar, was actually a far more extensive thing that I had never fully embraced before, and that I look forward to listening to more of (I've already got hold of a couple of other Funkadelic and Parliament albums to set me off, and am excited to see where it leads me).

One of the biggest surprises of Maggot Brain concerned my own preconception that funk is principally built around upbeat, party atmospheres, an idea I suppose I had picked up from the fact that disco music grew out of funk and psychedelic soul and is very much concerned with party vibes. And, while several of the songs on this record do demonstrate a great deal of colour and fun, there is also a surprising and pervading sense of danger and despair to a lot of the music here, most notably on that mind-blowingly good title track, which we'll come to. Even on the more upbeat and light-hearted tracks, like the brilliant "Can You Get To That," the slickness and glitzy shimmer of disco is a long way off, and there is a far greater sense that we're listening to the raw and loose grooves of a group of musicians cutting loose and having fun rather than a polished pop act. The general loose vibe and freewheeling, occasionally lo-fi nature of the music here is all courtesy of bandleader George Clinton, who orchestrates proceedings, guides the band and co-writes the majority of the songs, although his own instrumental contributions are zero. In that way, Clinton fulfils a similar role to that of the old-fashioned jazz band leaders like Miles Davis or Charles Mingus, who might not always be a constant anchor or striking presence within the music itself, and might be doing no more than guiding the rest of the band through a lengthy improvisation, but would anchor and steer the music courtesy of their own approach and innate sense of where to lead the music.

Clinton came to lead Funkadelic after a contractual dispute arose between him and his former record label Revilot over the use of the name "The Parliaments." The Parliaments had been a doo-wop style soul vocal group that Clinton had formed in the late 50s and, as soul music had developed during the 60s, adopting more psychedelic influences and birthing funk music itself, pioneered by the likes of Sly and the Family Stone, so too did the Parliaments. By the end of the 60s, Clinton found himself increasingly interested in adopting more psychedelic rock elements into the music he was orchestrating and added an instrumental backing band to the Parliaments. When Revilot refused to allow him the rights to the name, Clinton relaunched the new ten-person ensemble as a band in its own right, named Funkadelic. This relaunch meant that by the mid-70s, after reacquiring the rights to the name, he would find himself leading two bands consisting of more or less the same lineup, a sort of branding exercise that enabled him to experiment in two differing styles of funk music via the twin outlets of Funkadelic and Parliament. Quite how that turned out for him I've no idea as yet - I've yet to get much further within their respective discographies. For the time being, though, the relaunch as Funkadelic enabled him to push musical boundaries as much as he wanted with the band without fear of alienating fans. This was a new project, and one that could follow his own vision.

As I mentioned, the music on Maggot Brain (Funkadelic's third studio album) is brilliantly unhinged and dangerous and unsettling even as it manages to be fun and cartoonish and stupid. "Can You Get To That" is probably as genuinely upbeat as things get, being a hugely enjoyable gospel-tinged pop song with joyful choral vocals, as well as a ludicrously and hilariously low male vocal at a few points that really send up its own sense of positivity. "Hit It And Quit It" is fun too, but, via a more aggressive, dirty guitar riff (as well as a particularly fiery solo from Eddie Hazel), comes across as a little angrier despite the upbeat "doo-doo" vocals. "You And Your Folks, Me And My Folks" is a slow, menacing funk groove with an unsettling, echoing reverb on its thudding bass part and militaristic drum beat, with its lyrics addressing social equality across wealth divides. "Super Stupid" is perhaps the most directly influenced by Hendrix's psychedelic rock, and is mainly an opportunity for Hazel to show off some pyrotechnic guitar soloing over a buzzing organ part and a frenetic rhythm section. Sadly, the album trails off by the end - "Back In Our Minds" is kind of fun, and has an enjoyable, spoon-like percussive sound that sets it apart but doesn't do much to really entertain the listener, and "Wars Of Armageddon" is an overlong, overly simple funk jam whose use of sound effects from crying babies to gibberish vocals to fart sounds and sirens quickly becomes annoying rather than engagingly kitsch.

I've deliberately held off on talking about the title track, because it really is one of those songs that has to be talked about in a class of its own. I've only been listening to this album for the past month or so, and already "Maggot Brain" has passed into my all-time favourite songs. It's just undeniably good, and is the ultimate proof that, while Clinton orchestrates and steers the music, the real star of this record is guitarist Eddie Hazel. His angry, incendiary solos on songs like "Hit It And Quit It" and "Super Stupid" are standout moments, and "Maggot Brain" is the moment where he ensures his place in rock history. For those who don't know the song at all, it is no more than a ten minute guitar solo. Not once does it pick up pace and turn into a virtuosic, frenetic showcase for his speed or power. It's just a slow, stately, devastatingly brilliant expression of despair, set to the quiet, almost inaudible slow acoustic guitar riff and lightly brushed drum part that underscores the whole thing. Even without knowing the story behind the song, it's agonisingly difficult to listen to - desperation and grief and sadness seeps through the entire thing, in the pained and tortuous effects Hazel applies to his playing. At the beginning Clinton recites a short verse about the need to "rise above" adversity or else "drown in [your] own shit," and other than that there's no indication of any kind of meaning, aside from Clinton's whispered "Maggot brain" near the song's end. Supposedly, Clinton came up with the idea for the song after finding his brother's dead body in his apartment, his head beginning to rot (hence "maggot brain.") When the time came for Hazel to record his solo, Clinton requested that he play it as if his mother had just died. That sense of grief, of both Clinton's real loss and Hazel's imagined one, is palpable on the finished product and it's a jaw-droppingly brilliant piece of music, and a real kick in the teeth for people, like me, who have always assumed that funk music is more about danceability and fun than about real emotional weight.

It's a shame that the band that recorded Maggot Brain, which is obviously a group of musicians very comfortable playing together and able to create music that is as edgy and exciting as it is fun and danceable, didn't last longer. Both Hazel and bassist Billy Bass Nelson quit, while second guitarist Tawl Ross was unavailable due to drug problems. The lineup shifted as the band ploughed onwards, eventually merging with Clinton's revived Parliament to become the premier funk band of the mid-to-late 70s. I've hugely enjoyed dipping my toes into a world of music I've long been curious about but have never before found the time to really invest in, so it's highly possible that as I delve further into the discographies of both these bands and their peers that there'll be more on the achievements of Clinton and his various associated acts. For now, though, do yourselves a favour and listen to "Maggot Brain." Then listen to the rest of the album. But mainly, just listen to that title track. Make sure you don't do it while you're feeling really optimistic and hopeful about something, because it will spoil it.

Track Listing:

1. Maggot Brain (Eddie Hazel & George Clinton)

2. Can You Get To That (George Clinton & Ernie Harris)

3. Hit It And Quit It (George Clinton, Billy Bass Nelson & Garry Shider)

4. You And Your Folks, Me And My Folks (George Clinton, Judie Jones & Bernie Worrell)

5. Super Stupid (George Clinton, Eddie Hazel, Billie Bass Nelson & Tawl Ross)

6. Back In Our Minds (Fuzzy Haskins)

7. Wars Of Armageddon (George Clinton, Tiki Fulwood, Tawl Ross & Bernie Worrell)

Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure

Released - March 1973

Producer - Chris Thomas; John Anthony & Roxy Music

Selected Personnel - Bryan Ferry (Vocals/Piano/Mellotron/Harmonica); Brian Eno (Synthesiser/Backing Vocals); Andy Mackay (Oboe/Saxophone/Organ); Phil Manzanera (Guitar); John Porter (Bass); Paul Thompson (Drums)

Standout Track - In Every Dream Home A Heartache

In the wake of the success of their non-album single "Virginia Plain" in 1972 (a song nowhere near as good as most of the material on their debut album Roxy Music, but which did have the significant achievement of redirecting more public attention towards that classic record), Roxy Music suddenly found themselves at the forefront of the UK glam rock scene, and this in itself posed a dilemma for the band. Glam rock was, at its heart, a fairly straightforward genre, one that revelled in pomp and excess and glitzy theatricality but that had largely simple, straightforward, easily danceable rock music at its core. Bowie was gradually finding ways to inject further intelligence and broader musical diversity into the essence of glam rock, but it wouldn't be until later in the decade that he really proved himself as a musical auteur of truly staggering imagination. On Roxy Music, the band had been able to really inject their personality into the music and create a record of as much kitsch, quirky colour and eccentricity as they wanted. Faced with the prospect of becoming major stars, there was the question of whether to tone down some of their avant-garde artistic ambitions and try to make more straightforward rock music or not.

Of course, by the late 70s (after a brief hiatus for frontman Bryan Ferry to focus on a solo career), they would more or less have completely committed to the path of being an unabashed pop group (and a great one at that), but for a few more years they continued trying to tread the fine line between making simple rock tunes that would appeal to the masses while also indulging their imaginations to create something to appeal to the artistically minded. It's easy to say that this was a simple duality embodied by Ferry and fey music wizard Brian Eno, and perhaps a little reductive to do so. Nonetheless, on the band's second album the tensions between the two would come to the point where Eno had to leave Roxy Music behind him and forge on alone. But the band didn't immediately abandon all their artistic leanings and continued making unusual, challenging albums without him before 1979's Manifesto truly announced them as purveyors of slick, disco-inflected pop music. So the "Ferry the popstar versus Eno the artist" model is not entirely accurate, but it's an interesting dynamic that renders a lot of the material on For Your Pleasure all the more fascinating.

As a self-styled "non-musician," Eno's role within the band was largely in applying various sonic treatments and effects to the other musicians' performances in order to create that otherworldly ambience that had rendered their debut album so colourful and strange. Whereas that album had provided a number of extended opportunities for him to flex these muscles, on For Your Pleasure the band shifted ever so slightly to being a more focused showcase for Ferry's songwriting, and the opportunities for Eno to experiment were far more limited. The extended outro of the brilliant "In Every Dream Home A Heartache" allowed for plenty of looping and phasing, as did the lengthy jam of "The Bogus Man," while "Editions Of You" grants him a deliriously weird and discordant VCS3 synth solo, but in general this was very much an album where Ferry tried to wrest control from Eno.

And, judging purely from the material here, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's easy to wonder what kind of music Roxy Music would have gone on to create if it had continued being an equal collaboration between Ferry the songwriter and Eno the sonic experimenter, but the truth is that the songs Ferry delivers here are of genuinely astounding quality, and don't necessarily need layers of bizarre synth treatments to render them interesting. Ultimately, it was a split that enabled the two artists to excel at the things they wanted to excel at, and this great album is a great final salute to the brilliance of what they were able to achieve when they really clicked together.

Tonally, it treads a line between the kitsch, cartoony sense of fun that dominated most of Roxy Music, while also delving further into some of the moody, ominous sense of unease and disquiet that they had only briefly flirted with on "Chance Meeting." The classic opener "Do The Strand," one of the iconic Roxy Music anthems, is very much in the former mould, with its driving insistent rhythms and Ferry's fun-loving croon. The chiming of Ferry's piano anchors it, but it's brought to life by Phil Manzanera's wailing guitar and Andy Mackay's squawking sax. "Editions Of You" is very much in the same vein, but cuts a little looser, providing broader canvases for breakneck solos from Manzanera and Eno. The genuinely lovely "Beauty Queen" is a slower, more ballad-like exploration of the same kind of upbeat, colourful tone, and one of the most simple and enjoyable songs Ferry wrote, with its sultry, instantly memorable melody. Towards the end it picks up pace with a roaring guitar solo from Manzanera. But most of the rest of the album is of a darker and moodier tone. (One particular anecdote that articulates the Ferry-Eno rivalry well tells of a gig at which Ferry was desperately trying to sing "Beauty Queen" unaccompanied at the keyboards but the crowd kept bellowing for Eno to do something, so he quietly left the stage to let Ferry have their attention. It had the opposite effect, provoking them to bellow even louder for his return).

"Strictly Confidential" feels a little like an inferior revisit of "Chance Meeting," with its simple, disquieting melody over the discordant, distorted cry of guitar and the low hum of sax. "In Every Dream Home A Heartache," meanwhile, is perhaps the finest thing Roxy Music ever did. It's a song I encountered years before I actually knew what it was, thanks to it playing in the background once while visiting my friend Jack (he of the "getting Joz into prog" fame). The classic moment where Ferry mumbles "I blew up your body...but you blew my mind" before the band kicks into an explosive instrumental outro stuck out as particularly mind-blowing, and I stupidly forgot to ask who the song was by. A couple of years later, when I'd got round to listening to Roxy Music via totally different avenues, I was richly rewarded to rediscover the song I'd first been struck by long before and had buried somewhere in my mind. The majority of the song is an ominous, almost tuneless ode to an inflatable sex doll over a buzzing, humming, shifting keyboard part. On the aforementioned lyric (still perhaps one of the coolest moments in music history), Manzanera's incendiary guitar part transforms the song into one of the most transcendent, brilliantly unnerving things in any band's discography.

The greatness of the album's first half means the second half has a lot to live up to, and it has to be said that it doesn't quite manage it. "The Bogus Man" is a slow but insistent jam built on a simple bass riff from John Porter, over which Ferry contributes his trademark croon, and Mackay squawks and squeals away on sax and woodwinds, while Eno is able to have some fun playing with the sound of Manzanera's guitar and his own synths. But it's a little too long to really hold attention for its full length. "Grey Lagoons" is just a rather forgettable and standard Roxy Music number, and the closing title track is again a bit too drawn-out to be a classic. But the music housed on the first half of For Your Pleasure is of such astounding brilliance that it even manages to just about eclipse their sensational debut, and perhaps secures itself as the band's finest work.

The album was similarly enthusiastically received by the critics and the fans at the time, and consolidated Roxy Music's position at the forefront of the art rock scene at the time, but, as has been mentioned, it was inevitable that the band would not continue in the same vein. Both Eno and Ferry have looked back on their split as an amicable affair, and have continued to sporadically collaborate with each other since, but it was clear that the two were moving in different directions musically. By the 80s, Ferry would still be with Roxy Music but would be making slick sophistipop music, while Eno would be sculpting ambient soundscapes. So it was that the two went their separate ways. As said, Roxy Music didn't suddenly transform into an opportunity for Ferry to write unabashed pop music and continued for a few years in making bold and exciting and colourful art rock. For my money, their followup later in 1973, entitled Stranded, is one of their weaker records and struggles to find any really great tunes or do anything particularly different to what they'd done before. But 1974's Country Life, while not exactly ground-breaking, would see them feeling confident and exciting once again and delivering a record that really envigorates and energises the listener, while Stranded just feels fairly drab. Eno, meanwhile, first set about really indulging all those sonic experiments he longed to try and do more with by making the proto-ambient soundscapes of (No Pussyfooting) with Robert Fripp, before embarking on a solo career in 1974 that would see him making rock music so unusual and self-consciously experimental that it made Roxy Music look positively pedestrian.

For Your Pleasure is by no means the last time Roxy Music did something truly great, but it does perhaps represent them at their true creative and artistic peak.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Bryan Ferry.

1. Do The Strand

2. Beauty Queen

3. Strictly Confidential

4. Editions Of You

5. In Every Dream Home A Heartache

6. The Bogus Man

7. Grey Lagoons

8. For Your Pleasure