David Bowie - Diamond Dogs

Released - April 1974

Genre - Glam Rock

Producer - David Bowie

Selected Personnel - David Bowie (Vocals/Guitar/Saxophone/Synthesiser/Mellotron); Earl Slick (Guitar); Mike Garson (Keyboards); Herbie Flowers (Bass); Tony Newman (Drums); Aynsley Dunbar (Drums); Alan Parker (Guitar); Tony Visconti (Strings)

Standout Track - Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)

1974 was a significant year for Bowie, and it kind of had to be. After barely two years indulging the persona, Bowie had "killed off" his Ziggy Stardust alter-ego live onstage, to the shock and surprise of his backing band the Spiders From Mars. Quite why such a move felt necessary is still a mystery to this day, really - it wasn't necessarily from a desire to work with new people, as he recalled both guitarist Mick Ronson and bassist Trevor Bolder (with the notable omission of drummer Mick Woodmansey) for his next project, the tepid and disappointing covers album Pin-Ups. It wasn't necessarily because he wanted to work on a totally different style of music incompatible with the persona, as 1974's Diamond Dogs would show a significant amount of the glam thrash stylings of Aladdin Sane still intact, even without any of the Spiders From Mars. It seems most likely that the simple idea of the Ziggy Stardust persona had taken up too much space in Bowie's mind and needed to be forcibly removed as a sort of scorched earth policy in order to enable him to transform himself, a necessity in order to maintain creatively healthy. That "scorched earth" policy, the chameleon-like ability to totally abandon a hard-won audience, morph into a new persona and adopt a totally different musical style has been a fixture of Bowie's work throughout his career, and Diamond Dogs, while not the first time it had become apparent, was perhaps the most significant. While Bowie's random shifts into different musical styles on his early albums could be seen as an attempt to try and find his voice and to reach a wider audience, 1974 was the first time he consciously tried to distance himself from an approach that had already proved enormously popular in the pursuit of something new.

Of course, it wouldn't be until 1975's Young Americans that that transformation became a total stylistic overhaul, and Diamond Dogs is a sort of bridge between the glam rock of the Ziggy Stardust era and the "plastic soul" of the Young Americans phase, but it's certainly a strange and different enough album to cause dyed-in-the-wool Ziggy fans to raise their eyebrows at it. What strikes the listener most about Diamond Dogs is its cartoonish sense of theatricality - it opens with a hyena-like wail and a spoken-word narration setting the scene in a decaying dystopian future on "Future Legend," while the title track features far more overt storytelling and scene-setting than the more figurative "story" of The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars ever resorted to. The album also features an ambitious and cinematic multi-part song suite in the form of the sublime "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)," all together contributing to the sense that this album was far more conceptual than Ziggy Stardust had been. This all emerges from the genesis of the project, which Bowie initially wanted to be a musical adaptation of George Orwell's 1984, a book he had become obsessed by while touring America to promote Aladdin Sane. Ultimately, Orwell's estate refused to grant Bowie rights to adapt the novel, leaving him with material (most notably the song "1984" itself and "Big Brother") already written that explored themes of isolation in a dilapidated utopia. So as not to waste these musical ideas, Bowie set about tying the songs into his own imagined dystopian future, described in depth on "Future Legend" and "Diamond Dogs." Casting himself as Hallowe'en Jack (still essentially the same kind of figure as Ziggy, but this time the leader of a gang of degenerate proto-punks running wild in a ruined city rather than an alien Messiah), he set about crafting that manages to be cartoonishly imaginative and hauntingly depraved at one and the same time.

Of the Spiders-era musicians, pianist Mike Garson is the only one to be retained (although drummer Aynsley Dunbar is kept on from the Pin-Ups sessions), although it does see Bowie reunite with Tony Visconti for the first time since 1970's The Man Who Sold The World - here, Visconti provides the string arrangements. Faced with the impossible task of replacing guitarist Mick Ronson, the man who had defined so much of Bowie's sound since 1970, he took the surprising decision to take on the lead guitar duties himself, consciously deciding to go for a more raucous, amateurish sound rather than try to replicate the guitar wizardry of Ronson. Although the amateurishness is notable, Bowie proves himself a surprisingly adept guitarist, replacing technical skill with raw power and energy, and the chugging riff of "Diamond Dogs" or the iconic riff of "Rebel Rebel" really show him in a good light as a guitarist. The album's first half pretty much delivers classic after classic - after the brief spoken word of "Future Legend," "Diamond Dogs" is a chugging, playful stomping rocker in the vein of the Rolling Stones, managing to be incongruously feelgood while telling the story of a decaying futuristic society plagued by drug addicts and criminals. While "Rebel Rebel" might be the most iconic and classic track here, it's quite possible that the album's musical highlight is the mini-suite of "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)." On "Sweet Thing" Bowie pushes his voice into totally uncharted territory, sweeping from a terrifying bass intoning the opening "Safe in a city" to a shrill, declamatory wail as the song builds in intensity ("Can't you see that I'm scared but I'm lonely?") "Candidate" sees the whole thing build over scraping strings and Bowie's melasmatic saxophone work into a frenzied, almost tuneless insistence before descending back into the beautiful melody of the "Sweet Thing (Reprise)" which ultimately climaxes in a barrage of discordant noise before finally erupting into the riff of "Rebel Rebel." It's undoubtedly the most ambitious thing Bowie had attempted up to this point, and manages to be both hauntingly beautiful and chaotically terrifying.

"Rebel Rebel" has firmly ensconced itself as one of Bowie's all-time classic, and the raucous, beautiful simplicity of that unforgettable riff is another of his finest moments. The lyrics explore all the identity and authority issues that the glam movement challenged ("Got your mother in a whirl, she don't know if you're a boy or a girl,") though quite how it fits into Bowie's futuristic narrative is anyone's guess. In many ways, it can be seen as Bowie's final farewell to the glam rock movement and all it meant to him, and all he achieved through it. As a glam figurehead Bowie had given freedom of expression to a whole generation of young people, and all that is gloriously summed up in "Rebel Rebel."

The album's second half is slightly less consistent, and also points more directly at the direction Bowie would be taking next. While touring America, Bowie had been exposed to two things - the first was drugs and his time in LA contributed to a long-standing cocaine habit that severely impacted his physical and mental health over the next few years, and the second was soul and funk music, a still entirely American scene that came to occupy much of his brain in 1973 and '74. "Rock 'n' Roll With Me" is a bombastic but lovely epic soul ballad, while "1984" is heavily funk-influenced in its insistent, cymbal-heavy drum part and choppy, wah-wah guitar reminiscent of Isaac Hayes' Shaft soundtrack. Sadly, while the guitar of "1984" is undoubtedly cool, it doesn't really have a tune that ever really struck me, and "We Are The Dead," while it has an interesting moodiness to it, I always found similarly forgettable ultimately. Things pick up again though with the album's final full-blown song, the paean to Orwell's dystopian dictator "Big Brother." The song's epic chorus ("Someone to claim us, someone to follow, someone to shame us, some brave Apollo,") with its squaking sax and shimmering synth, is one of the most darkly dramatic moments on the album and segues into the chaotic, looped "Chant Of The Ever-Circling Skeletal Family" which finishes things off in suitably apocalyptic mood.

Altogether, it's certainly the most ambitious record Bowie had recorded up to this date, being far greater in scope and orchestral grandiosity than any of his earlier material. It had just enough of an after-image of Bowie's glam persona to keep old fans entertained without totally alienating them, while also showing that Bowie had the vision, the drive and the raw talent to create an album of true brilliance even without the support of the Spiders. Naturally, it was another big hit, reaching No. 1 in the UK and No. 5 in the US, and primed Bowie fans for the fact that their idol was not somebody who would pander to them, but somebody who would follow his own creative whims, even if it meant forging into totally unknown territory nobody else had anticipated him going in. The next step would be a more concerted effort to muscle into the soul and funk scene, and to attack the American market head-on in the form of the plastic soul of Young Americans. That it might be a move that would alienate fans even further didn't phase Bowie one bit - he had already proven that he was an artist who had what it takes to keep finding new audiences even if old ones would resent his abandoning them.

Track Listing:

All songs written by David Bowie except where noted.

1. Future Legend

2. Diamond Dogs

3. Sweet Thing

4. Candidate

5. Sweet Thing (Reprise)

6. Rebel Rebel

7. Rock 'n' Roll With Me (David Bowie & Warren Peace)

8. We Are The Dead

9. 1984

10. Big Brother

11. Chant Of The Ever-Circling Skeletal Family

Cat Stevens - Buddha And The Chocolate Box

Released - March 1974

Genre - Folk

Producer - Cat Stevens & Paul Samwell-Smith

Selected Personnel - Cat Stevens (Vocals/Guitar/Keyboards/Synthesiser); Alun Davies (Guitar/Vocals); Gerry Conway (Drums/Vocals); Bruce Lynch (Bass)

Standout Track - Sun/C79

In 1973, having come close to exhausting the musical styles and approaches he had relied on so successfully from Mona Bone Jakon through to Catch Bull At Four, Cat Stevens had felt the need for a creative overhaul of sorts. The result had been Foreigner, an album that, by and large, abandoned the folk stylings of his earlier work and drew substantial inspiration from soul and funk music, and even included an eighteen-minute multi-part suite in place of the usual three-minute folk songs he had favoured previously. While Foreigner, at least in my opinion, had achieved really great musical heights and shown a creative resurgence of sorts for an artist who had more or less exhausted a particular formula, its radical difference from what he had done before put off listeners and buyers, and it didn't manage to be a particularly big hit. Buddha And The Chocolate Box, then, perhaps Stevens' final truly great album, is something of a retreat, a return to the tried-and-tested approaches of earlier years in the wake of the apparent failure of his attempt to do something different. In many ways, it's a rather sad thing that he felt the need to retrace his steps in order to regain a popular audience, as had he just stuck to his guns and continued forging into musical territory unknown to him, there is every evidence on Foreigner that he could have continued making really wonderful music. Thankfully, Buddha And The Chocolate Box, while doing nothing to surprise or truly astound long-standing fans, at least showed that he had a few good ideas within him still and, in a couple of places, even managed to deliver a couple of songs that rank among his best.

The album sees a more-or-less full reunion of Stevens' former creative team, with stalwart co-guitarist Alun Davies back alongside drummer Gerry Conway and bassist Bruce Lynch as well as, perhaps most significantly, producer Paul Samwell-Smith, who had helped to shape and direct all of Stevens' most successful albums prior to 1973. The mood and tone is once again one of gentle nostalgia, with catchy, folk-inflected pop songs that instantly hook themselves into the memory with their simple and memorable melodies and refrains. Thematically, Stevens again demonstrates his growing fascination with spirituality, something which first reared its head back on Mona Bone Jakon. Stevens would later explain that the album's title came after a long flight on which he suddenly noticed he was holding a Buddha in one hand and a box of chocolates in the other, and that if the plane crashed he would symbolically have died while caught between the material and the spiritual world. It's not an idea that's directly addressed in many of the songs, but certainly the pseudo-Buddhist ruminations on the impermanence of life on "Oh Very Young" or the paean to the teachings of Jesus on the imaginatively-titled "Jesus" do indicate an ever-increasing yearning for spirituality, and the idea of Buddha And The Chocolate Box as a kind of figurative bridge from the material world to the spiritual is one that would take on even more relevance with Stevens' conversion to Islam a few years later.

"Oh Very Young" was the album's big hit, proving that Stevens was at least correct in his assumption that going back to his folk roots would give him another hit single while Foreigner had failed. It's a pretty piano ballad that explores the universal desire for youth to last forever, and the gradual acclimatisation to the fact that it must give way to something else in order to cross over into Heaven. What follows it is undoubtedly one of the finest songs Stevens ever wrote and recorded, possibly even my very favourite of the lot - "Sun/C79." Lyrically, it's not the most profound or insightful song he ever wrote, being essentially the story of an ageing musician who sits down to tell his son how he met his mother on the road. Simple it may be, but its chorus is one of the most jubilant and triumphant musical moments of Stevens' career, and it still manages to find time for a few truly beautiful sentiments in its exploration of the musician's love for the mother of his child ("A thousand hours I've stared into her eyes, and I still don't know what colour they are.") For this song alone, Buddha And The Chocolate Box is an album that deserves attention.

After the euphoric highs of that song, the album struggles to ever repeat it, but it comes close a couple of times. "Ready" is a fun, upbeat pop song largely defined by the sunny urgency of its acoustic guitar riff, and "King Of Trees" is a lovely piano ballad lent a grand orchestral grandeur via its tubular bell and mellotron parts, that nostalgically retells the story of a mighty tree ultimately cut down in order to build a road, recalling the environmental concerns of some of Stevens' other earlier work like "Where Do The Children Play?" on Tea For The Tillerman. The final two tracks are fairly simple and forgettable fare and end the album on a fairly flat note, but it's impossible to deny that there are some incredible highs on this record. It might not do anything to surprise anyone already familiar with Cat Stevens' other work, but there are some choice moments (principally "Sun/C79" and "King Of Trees") that really jump out and feel unfairly neglected in the grand scheme of his discography.

Sadly, Buddha And The Chocolate Box would be the last album of any real merit that Stevens recorded. 1975's Numbers was an unwise attempt to create a concept album about a world populated by living numbers that struggles to find a single decent tune, while 1977's Izitso saw Stevens taking the bizarre decision to try and record a synthpop album. Other than the pop classic "(Remember The Days Of) The Old School Yard," his last hit single, it's a depressingly tedious album, and not long after that Stevens became a prominent convert to Islam and abandoned the music business in order to pursue his religious life. Many years later he would release his first album of music several decades' time under his new name, Yusuf Islam, entitled An Other Cup, an album I haven't gotten round to listening to yet, but it's something I'm deeply intrigued by and must get round to one of these days. Although the last few years of his work as Cat Stevens saw a decline of his undeniable talent, his collected discography boasts a significant number of truly brilliant albums that showcase him as one of the finest folk singer-songwriters of the early 70s, and that the long-standing quest for spiritual fulfilment that could be traced through all of his albums ultimately led him to a life of faith and devotion that fulfilled him as much as his music did is a fitting and touching ending to the story of his life as a musician.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Cat Stevens.

1. Music

2. Oh Very Young

3. Sun/C79

4. Ghost Town

5. Jesus

6. Ready

7. King Of Trees

8. A Bad Penny

9. Home In The Sky

Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul

Released - September 1969

Genre - Soul

Producer - Al Bell; Marvell Thomas & Allen Jones

Selected Personnel - Isaac Hayes (Vocals/Keyboards); Marvell Thomas (Keyboards); Willie Hall (Drums); James Alexander (Bass); Michael Toles (Guitar); Johnny Allen (String & Horn Arrangements)

Standout Track - Walk On By

You're right, the supposed chronology of this blog is jumping all over the place at the moment. Ostensibly, we're just about into 1974 now, guys, but forgive me for another quick jump backwards. More fool me for only just getting really into a musical scene that had its heyday in the late 60s and early 70s only after I'm supposed to have finished writing about them. Still, here we are in 1969 with an album that helped to translate soul music into something far more ambitious and, dare I say it for fear of creating confusion with a whole separate thing I've already talked about endlessly on this blog, progressive than it had been allowed to be over the previous two decades or so. As I mentioned partially in my review of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, through the 1960s soul musicians like Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin had helped the soul music hit-making factories of Stax, Atlantic and Motown into huge global empires, but the genre had largely been limited to simple, three-minute love songs, just as pop and rock music had up until the mid-60s when people started getting a little more inventive with the form. At Stax Records, one of the most prominent behind-the-scenes creative figures had been Isaac Hayes who, alongside his songwriting partner David Porter, had written some of the label's biggest hits for other artists. In 1967, Stax executive Al Bell encouraged Hayes to try and launch himself as a solo artist and the result was Presenting Isaac Hayes, an album that failed to ignite any critical or commercial success and has therefore largely been forgotten.

Soul music would therefore have been deprived of one of its greatest talents had Stax not run into big trouble in 1968 - their biggest selling artist and standard-bearer, Otis Redding, died in a plane crash, meaning they were suddenly desperately in need of innovative and charismatic new solo artists to fill the void he left behind. Around the same time, Stax split with their partner label Atlantic Records and lost the vast majority of their entire back catalogue of recordings to them, meaning Bell initiated an imperative for a huge number of new albums to be recorded in order to provide the label with enough material to put out. Hayes was reluctant to try and record another solo record, having been poised to resume his position as a behind-the-scenes creative svengali figure, but eventually agreed when Bell promised him he would be granted full creative control this time. Quite what "full creative control" means in this context isn't quite clear, as Hayes isn't granted a producer credit on the album (though Bell is), and actually only wrote one of the album's four songs himself.

But presumably Hayes was granted complete authority over what form those songs would take, and how the sessions would be orchestrated, and it's fair to say that under his guiding hand they're transformed radically into something that soul music hadn't really seen before. I mentioned on What's Going On that Marvin Gaye in 1971 was perhaps the first person to use soul music as an effective medium to express socio-political concerns rather than just to sing about love or sex, and while thematically on Hot Buttered Soul Hayes still sticks close to the romantic formula, he's certainly perhaps the first popular artist to use soul music as an effective medium for genuinely ambitious musical ideas. The three-minute Burt Bacharach and Hal David number "Walk On By," originally a hit for Dionne Warwick, is utterly transformed into a monstrous behemoth of a slow groove jam, driven by pulsating organ and sinewy, fuzzy guitar lines, with gospel-esque backing vocals chorusing Hayes' vocal part back to him. The mood is one of raunchy, effortless cool, with the tight grooves anchored by the Stax house band the Bar-Kays - that opening fanfare of a theme, with the razor-edged guitars over the declamatory organ, really grabs you by the throat and won't let you go for the song's entire running length. Unlike Hayes' next project, the iconic Shaft soundtrack on which the rhythm section would largely take a back seat to the string and horn arrangements, here the odd horn flourish serves as a way of ornamenting or punching out a particular moment, but essentially things are kept simple as Hayes' keyboards interplay with the Bar-Kays irresistible grooves.

"Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" seems to be one of the best-loved tracks on the album, and is the only one to be an original composition by Hayes, but for me it's actually a little less compelling than the mighty opening track. It's a much simpler, less complicated funk jam and only really picks up with Hayes' rolling, jazzy piano solo in the second half. It's a cool song and has enough going on to recommend it, but is just perhaps a little overlong to strike me as a real classic. "One Woman" is perhaps the only moment on the record where Hayes bows to tradition and just allows himself to record a simple, unadorned piano ballad. It's a pretty song and, while it lacks the bombastic epicness of "Walk On By," it also at least knows that a little restraint can go a long way and doesn't feel the need to overembellish its lovely tune and end up outstaying its welcome as the album's two other songs do.

The final and longest track, an 18-minute cover of Jimmy Webb's "By The Time I Get To Phoenix," doesn't so much extend its welcome as not even make itself welcome for the first nine minutes, at which point it becomes brilliant. Essentially, Hayes decides to kick things off with an extended spoken word vocal part over a sustained organ note, which sort of starts out interesting but quickly gets far too self-indulgent for its own good as Hayes spends a good few minutes basically saying "I'm about to sing "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" by Jimmy Webb, who is a great songwriter," then another few minutes saying "Here is an account in my own words of what I think the narrator of the song had been through prior to the line that actually starts the song." Eventually, the song finally begins and, just as Hayes promised, it's excellent - a slow, moody ballad redolent with heartbreak and longing as it tells the story of a man who's finally had enough of his lover and sets off to start afresh but can't shake thoughts of her. It builds to a magnificent climax of swirling strings and brash horns as Johnny Allen's orchestral arrangements finally find an opportunity to steal the show from the Bar-Kays' playing.

Of the wealth of new material Stax put out in 1969 to combat their major upheaval, Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul was by far the most exciting, promising as it did an exciting new future for soul music where it was able to do so much more and be so much more ambitious than in the radio-friendly pop song formula it had followed for so long. Hayes was established as a new leader in soul music and would soon be able to really capitalise on that reputation on a grand scale via his work on Shaft. It's an imperfect album and, for all that its ambition and grandiose sense of scale is to be commended, it's only on "Walk On By" that a decision to extend a song to a mammoth jam feels 100% justified rather than ever so slightly over-indulgent, but there's not a song here that's totally not worth any respect or attention either, every single one ultimately achieves a substantial amount of greatness in its own way even if it takes a while to get there, or eventually wears it out. Certainly, for me it's been another strong indicator that the history of soul music is a far more exciting and diverse and surprising thing to delve into than all the Motown Greatest Hits compilations might lead you to believe. For many years I've assumed that it's largely populated by little more than those aforementioned three minute love songs, and now I feel like I'm at the beginning of a whole new voyage into new territory, which is an exciting thing to feel. For that alone, whether it's overlong or not, Hot Buttered Soul feels like an album worthy of recommending highly.

Track Listing:

1. Walk On By (Burt Bacharach & Hal David)

2. Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic (Isaac Hayes & Al Bell)

3. One Woman (Charles Chalmers & Sandra Rhodes)

4. By The Time I Get To Phoenix (Jimmy Webb)

Brian Eno - Here Come The Warm Jets

Released - January 1974

Genre - Art Rock

Producer - Brian Eno

Selected Personnel - Brian Eno (Vocals/Synthesiser/Guitar/Keyboards/Treatments); Chris Spedding (Guitar); Phil Manzanera (Guitar); Bill MacCormick (Bass); Robert Fripp (Guitar); Paul Rudolph (Guitar); John Wetton (Bass); Andy Mackay (Keyboards/Saxophone); Paul Thompson (Percussion)

Standout Track - Baby's On Fire

I tried to hate this album for such a long time. Around late 2009, the same time I was discovering Tom Waits at uni, my friends Jack and Adam decided that Brian Eno was their new godhead, and hungrily devoured everything he ever did. Whenever they played bits of it, I was left completely cold by it (I remember in particular hearing the yelped cries of "Oh God" that permeate "Dead Finks Don't Talk" and thinking it was "stupid," which is a particularly odd complaint for me to make considering my general taste in music and what I do for a living). Eventually, they made me sit through two separate documentaries on Eno's life and music (and I remember finding it odd that two completely different documentaries on the subject came out at the same time, but that's a mystery yet to be solved) which I actually found fascinating, and before long I was listening along with them. Today when I listen to Eno I find it really hard to identify what it was I objected to in the first place, as pretty much everything about his music speaks so specifically to my sensibilities of what makes music good, but I suppose it was just my being difficult in the face of an unfamiliar artist, which I tend to do every now and then.

Today, what strikes me as most fascinating about Eno's work is the fact that he is an artist whose guiding principle is never "What will sell?" or even "What musical idea am I trying to express?" as he attempted on frequent occasions to implement obstacles to get in the way of certain ideas, and to incorporate accidents and unplanned free-associative moments in his work to obstruct any overarching sense of intention. Rather, his maxim seems to me to be "What will sound interesting?" It feels like the principal link between his rock output and his glacial ambient soundscapes later on in his career - all of them emerge from a desire to treat and sculpt sound in a way that renders it alien and transformative. In the wake of his departure from Roxy Music over musical differences with bandleader Bryan Ferry, Eno's first project was the proto-ambient sonic experiment with Robert Fripp, (No Pussyfooting), but it would be another few years before Eno truly began to drift away from typical rock music and towards ambient wholesale. While (No Pussyfooting) was a hastily recorded and little-publicised affair, the first major concern in the wake of leaving Roxy Music was to continue what he started there in trying to apply sonic treatments and experimental recording techniques to traditional rock music to see what could be achieved.

The end result is one of the weirdest-sounding rock albums ever recorded. It veers madly from cartoonishly ridiculous to psychotically menacing, to, occasionally, pleasantly serene, but always with the same sense of freewheeling inventiveness. Eno recruited together a collection of musicians that reads like a who's who of the art rock scene at the time, from King Crimson's Robert Fripp and John Wetton to Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay. Eno apparently specifically felt that these musicians would be musically incompatible, and their playing together would therefore create unusual accidents in the studio that could be worked with into something interesting. Once collected together, Eno would communicate his ideas to the musicians via dance or mime in an attempt to encourage them to think differently about the music than they usually would. It's the same sort of lateral approach that would inspire the creation of his Oblique Strategies cards with artist Peter Schmidt, and that would help to radically reinvent David Bowie's music when they worked together in the late 70s. Eno contributes instrumental performances himself, but his biggest role on the album is in the distortions and treatments he applies to the performances of the musicians to render them alien and strange, from the heavily distorted guitars of "Needles In The Camel's Eye" or "Here Come The Warm Jets" to the squealing sound applied to the synthesisers of "The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch." As for his vocal contributions, the lyrics largely emerged from trying to make sense out of nonsense sounds Eno would improvise along to the backing tracks, meaning there's a kind of freewheeling, word salad style to the vocals that renders them all the more strange and difficult to grasp onto as anything concrete.

It's an album that keeps the listener guessing even after the tenth listen, and is never anything but fascinating even in its less strong moments. The album opener has an almost hard rock intensity to it via Phil Manzanera's roaring guitar riff over which Eno's warbling voice bleats out nonsense, while the strongest moment on the whole album comes with the terrifying "Baby's On Fire." While Eno's nasal, strangled delivery narrates some vague, incoherent stuff about burning babies, the throbbing and deafening bass builds a palpable sense of menace before Fripp lets loose perhaps the most incendiary, brilliant and furious guitar solo in music history, and undoubtedly the finest thing Fripp himself ever recorded, sadly not on a King Crimson record. "Cindy Tells Me" is a fun 50s pastiche with its tinkling piano and cooing backing vocals, and "On Some Faraway Beach," with its languid piano part, grandiose synths and choral vocals, is perhaps the closest Eno gets to a moment of calm prettiness on the album, though the pounding drums make even that strange and unfamiliar.

"Dead Finks Don't Talk" is another of Eno's crowning glories, a pompous, ludicrous masterpiece that sees him narrating nonsensical rhymes in a flat monotone ("Oh cheeky cheeky, oh nauhty sneaky. You're so perceptive and I wonder if you knew") over a rhythmic, militaristic drumbeat. Those aforementioned bleating "Oh God" moments make it all the weirder, and Eno even finds time for a piss-take of Bryan Ferry's warbling, crooning vocal style on the line "As you make your way up there." "Some Of Them Are Old" is a slight dip, but acts as a nice repose before the bombastic instrumental finale of "Here Come The Warm Jets," where a heavily distorted "snake guitar" (a guitar compressed by Eno to sound like a "tuned jet") plays a triumphant theme.

Even years after first hearing it, and having listened to countless weird, pompous and nonsensical prog and art-rock albums, I struggle to think of a record more deliriously and delightfully weird than Here Come The Warm Jets. It's easy to think of Eno as a sort of cold, calculated sculptor of sound when presented with his vast body of ambient work, but his early rock albums are a real testament to the spirit of invention and spontaneity and free-associative nonsense that drives so much of his attitude towards art and music. The album was critically well-received, although Eno was always destined to never become a true popular sensation in his own right in the way that Roxy Music would with their future strings of hit singles. Within a few years, Eno's interest in rock music would wane in favour of purer sonic experiments in his ambient works, while by today much of his involvement with more popular music is only as a producer or co-writer for huge pop acts like U2 and Coldplay. The next step was a similar album entitled Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), which contains a couple of great songs in "Third Uncle" and "The True Wheel," but has never struck me as having the same sense of musical accomplishment or true invention as this record. It would be 1975 when Eno next delivered something truly immortal.

Track Listing:

1. Needles In The Camel's Eye (Brian Eno & Phil Manzanera)

2. The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch (Brian Eno)

3. Baby's On Fire (Brian Eno)

4. Cindy Tells Me (Brian Eno & Phil Manzanera)

5. Driving Me Backwards (Brian Eno)

6. On Some Faraway Beach (Brian Eno)

7. Blank Frank (Brian Eno & Robert Fripp)

8. Dead Finks Don't Talk (Brian Eno, arranged by Paul Thompson, Busta Jones, Nick Judd & Brian Eno)

9. Some Of Them Are Old (Brian Eno)

10. Here Come The Warm Jets (Brian Eno)

Bad Company - Bad Company

Released - June 1974

Genre - Hard Rock

Producer - Bad Company

Selected Personnel - Paul Rodgers (Vocals/Guitar/Piano); Mick Ralphs (Guitar/Keyboards); Simon Kirke (Drums); Boz Burrell (Bass)

Standout Track - Bad Company

Bad Company's eponymous 1974 debut album is one of those records to which I really owe my longstanding love of classic rock albums. I missed out on pretty much all that was actually going on in music in the 90s, and it's something that friends of mine occasionally wonder over - how I could have grown up in that decade without ever hearing of Nirvana, or why I only ever got round to listening to Radiohead this year. The simple answer is, I had no need to listen to whatever music was on the radio or in the charts when I could listen to my step-dad Rob's albums at home, and Bad Company was one that was on almost constant rotation. The sound of barnstorming opener "Can't Get Enough" is still evocative enough to take me back to London in the mid-90s and various mock wrestling nights we would indulge in while it played, because that was how we entertained ourselves back then. Bad Company are essentially one of the ultimates in ballsy, brash, powerful rock music with bucketloads of charisma and charm that's simply great enough to not need much sense of innovation or craft or intelligence. Who needs it?

Bad Company emerged from the debris of what was left of Free in 1973. In the wake of the band's final album Heartbreaker that year, it was clear that they couldn't continue, most notably due to guitarist Paul Kossoff's substance abuse, deteriorating mental state and unreliability onstage. Lead vocalist Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke felt it was a shame to abandon the idea of being in a rock band altogether as they were really onto something as songwriting duo, but that to continue Free without Kossoff simply wouldn't be the same thing. Around the same time, guitarist Mick Ralphs left Mott the Hoople due to musical differences with band leader and lead vocalist Ian Hunter. On Mott, the band's followup to the David Bowie-produced All The Young Dudes, Hunter had continued to follow the more whimsical, glam rock direction Bowie had sent them down and there was very little opportunity for the simpler, earthier blues rock Ralphs produced, so he soon called it a day. (Mott would continue with Bowie's former guitarist, Mick Ronson). These twin circumstances soon came together and it was immediately obvious that they would work well together. With the rather unusual addition of Boz Burrell on bass, the former bassist and vocalist for King Crimson on their Islands album (a more different rock band to Bad Company than King Crimson is difficult to imagine), Bad Company was born.

For me, I've always seen Bad Company as (with no disrespect to the incredible talent of Paul Kossoff) the crystallisation of everything that Free could have been. While they achieved intermittent brilliance with classic tracks like "All Right Now" or "The Stealer," Free were often reliant on more laid-black, folk-tinged blues numbers and only really seemed to truly come alive when going more all-out on the hard rock side of things. With Bad Company, Rodgers and co. immediately grab the listener by the scruff of the neck and go all-out with colourful, characterful rock music. Even on the quieter and more down-tempo songs, there's still a stronger sense of character and fun than on Free's more middling material. Rodgers, as ever, is on fine form vocally, with the gutsy, bluesy power of his voice injecting every song with immense charisma, while Ralphs' guitar playing has a kind of earthy, raw power to it that suits proceedings perfectly. He doesn't have the wiry, unpredictable nervous energy of Kossoff, but Bad Company is a band far more about stolid rockers rather than fiery explosive moments, so Ralphs is a perfect fit. "Can't Get Enough" is a classic song of rollicking, party-esque rock, with its sing-along chorus and Ralphs' gloriously simple riff. "Rock Steady" is a more menacing, slow track but one that builds to a raucous climax via Rodgers' angry vocal performance. The band's cover of Mott's "Ready For Love," penned by Ralphs and originally featured on All The Young Dudes, is a very different version. Rodgers' vocals are far more powerful than the reedier Ian Hunter, and Ralphs' guitar here has a stronger, more grounded feel to it than the sharper edges of the Mott version. Both have things to recommend them, but for me it's the Bad Company version that will always remain definitive.

The title track perhaps narrowly edges out "Can't Get Enough" as my favourite track of the album, largely because it plays a bit more interesting with its dynamics and pulls off a classic Bad Company trick, of starting as a quiet, introspective piano ballad and soon exploding into a powerful hard rocker, its unforgettable melody being belted out with great passion by Rodgers while Ralphs lays down another great riff. "Movin' On" is the other upbeat rocker on the album, and is great fun but doesn't do a huge amount to differentiate itself from something like "Can't Get Enough." "The Way I Choose" and "Seagull" are both more mellow ballads. The acoustic "Seagull" is decent enough, but on "The Way I Choose" the band prove that they really have a knack for selling a ballad that Free lacked. Predictably, it's largely due to Rodgers' committed and passionate vocals that they manage to pull the song off, but the melody of its chorus is undeniably pretty and emotive.

Overall, it's impossible to pretend that Bad Company marks the debut of a band who were particularly inventive or radical or thoughtful in their approach to rock music, but it does showcase a band who were able to grab rock music by the throat and do it with a panache and a commitment that few other artists ever managed, and who would, for a short time, be one of the definitive classic rock acts in the world. Over the next couple of years, Bad Company, along with the likes of label-mates Led Zeppelin, would rule the roost of British hard rock, before sliding into decline in the late 70s and becoming truly awful in the early 80s. Oddly enough, I'm actually a huge fan of their late-80s and 90s work, partly because much of it is produced by the uncle of my friend Helen Thomas (Terry Thomas was also the lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter of the obscure rock band Charlie, who will crop up on this blog before too long). You won't find many Bad Company fans that will attest to it, but this band released three classic albums in the 70s and then three more over a decade later.

Track Listing:

1. Can't Get Enough (Mick Ralphs)

2. Rock Steady (Paul Rodgers)

3. Ready For Love (Mick Ralphs)

4. Don't Let Me Down (Paul Rodgers & Mick Ralphs)

5. Bad Company (Paul Rodgers & Simon Kirke)

6. The Way I Choose (Paul Rodgers)

7. Movin' On (Mick Ralphs)

8. Seagull (Paul Rodgers & Mick Ralphs)

Marvin Gaye - What's Going On

Released - May 1971

Genre - Soul

Producer - Marvin Gaye

Selected Personnel - Marvin Gaye (Vocals); Wild Bill Moore (Saxophone); Johnny Griffith (Keyboards); Earl Van Dyke (Keyboards); Joe Messina (Guitar); Robert White (Guitar); James Jamerson (Bass); Bob Babbitt (Bass); Chet Forest (Drums); David Van De Pitte (Orchestral Arrangements)

Standout Track - Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)

I'm unusually apprehensive, or at the least daunted, by including this album on the list. That's for two main reasons - the first one being the inherent difficulty of writing a review of something that you're less familiar with. As long-term readers of this blog will know (I think there are perhaps two of them), I'm basically a fan of rock, art rock and folk, and those general genres tend to shape the vast majority of my listening habits. As I've detailed on a couple of recent reviews, I came to realise this year that I really enjoyed classic funk music, and ended up listening to Isaac Hayes's Shaft soundtrack before long. Researching Hayes' background more, I realised I knew very little about the world of soul music he belonged to and should try to invest some more time in it. Of course, I was ostensibly familiar with soul thanks to the more well-known songs of the likes of Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Etta James, Al Green and so on, but they were all artists I was only familiar with in a "Greatest Hits" sense, and I felt it was time I tried to dig a little deeper. As such, it's daunting trying to write a review that belongs to a world of music I'm far less familiar with than the rock music I know the ins and outs of. But I can, at the very least, talk about what I like, even if I don't know its exhaustive history. The second reason for my apprehension is the simple fact that, even after listening to Gaye's What's Going On several times, I wasn't convinced I loved it all that much. It has about three or four undeniably brilliant songs, but a lot of stuff that I felt was essentially treading water between them. Ultimately, I decided I loved its high points too much to ignore it, and it's also of enormous historical significance in the music world, so it's worth saying a few words about it, but as far as I'm concerned it remains a tad more uneven than its reputation would have you believe.

By 1970, Marvin Gaye, who had been a mainstay of the classic soul label Motown since 1961, had started to achieve major success thanks to the huge sales of his 1968 single "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," but his personal life was in immense crisis. Emotionally crippled by financial troubles, drug dependency, the long-term illness of his singing partner Tammi Terrell, and the collapse of his marriage to Anna Gordy, Gaye claimed his success did nothing to please him, and simply made him feel like a puppet for Motown boss Berry Gordy, who simply kept a tight hold on him to continue producing simple love songs. All this frustration drove Gaye to try and radically shake up his music, with the end result being that What's Going On would be the first album he produced himself, hoping to shape it more according to his own musical vision rather than the whims of a producer or record executive. Gaye was also keen to try and do something different from the collections of love songs that had characterised his output and, indeed, most of soul and pop music up to that point, but to make a record that said something of substance. Around the same time, Renaldo Benson of the Four Tops and Motown songwriter Al Cleveland came to him with a new song they'd written based on an act of police brutality Benson had witnessed on tour. Gaye agreed to record the song if he could rewrite it slightly and add some of his own lyrics, and the end result would be "What's Going On," perhaps the most direct and passionate piece of social commentary in soul music at the time, perhaps in music in general. "What's Going On" became the jumping-off point for what would become a conceptual song-cycle, which explored the very loose story of a Vietnam soldier returning home to the USA and despairing totally of the poverty, drug abuse, violence and war he sees around him.

Gaye's production skills and conceptual vision for the album are really impressive - he manages to take nine disparate songs, all of which he has a hand in composing but which all share a number of different co-writers, and manages to organise them into a coherent narrative that works like an orchestral suite, with songs segueing seamlessly into one another, and musical themes and motifs (like the principal themes of both the title track and "Mercy Mercy Me") recurring throughout. The arrangement skills of David Van De Pitte are to be congratulated here, of course, in creating a lush aural soundscape for the various pieces that ties it together into one grandiose whole, but Gaye's careful handle on organising the many components of it demonstrates his ability at being so much more than a simple singer of love songs.

The album's first half, in particular, from "What's Going On" up to "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)," has the feel of an orchestral suite, with all the main themes being carried by the strings and the rhythm section made up of Motown's studio band the Funk Brothers kept low in the mix, while it's Gaye's own clear, soulful and passionate vocals that soars over everything and really strikes the listener most. "What's Going On" itself is an instant classic, its lush string sounds and Gaye's double-tracked, call-and-response vocals conveying not a message of despair and anger at the problems in the world as would be so easy to do, but pleaing for a message of love and social responsibility, simply posing questions rather than angrily railing against the establishment. It's a tone that could easily tip over into sentimentality and prechiness, and sadly there are a couple of moments on What's Going On that do that, most notably a moment on the faintly tedious "Save The Children" where Gaye belts out the words "Save the babies!" with not a hint of irony, which it's difficult not to be cynical about. But by and large, the sense of social activism and political commentary that Gaye injects into proceedings is one of gentle bemusement and sorrow rather than self-conscious sweetness, and it's all the stronger for it.

The only other song on the first side that really does something for me is "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)," another classic, lilting melody enlivened by the saxophone work of Wild Bill Moore. "What's Happening Brother" is decent but seems too much to be an inferior reworking of "What's Going On" itself, and "Flyin' High In The Friendly Sky" has a mysterious, soaring quality but lacks a tune that really sticks in your head. The two songs that follow are either tedious and sentimental  ("Save The Children") or simply too brief to be memorable ("God Is Love.") The second side of the album, consisting of only three slightly lengthier songs, fares better in terms of consistency - "Right On" is an extended funk jam that gives the Funk Brothers a little more to do and space to flex out, while also boasting some acrobatic and fluttering flute work. "Wholy Holy" is another bit of meandering about between songs, and then things finish with the brilliant "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)," a song that tackles more directly the ideas of urban poverty and struggle that are only briefly hinted at on the title track. Driven by the stark, pulsating bass work of Bob Babbitt, the strings and orchestral lushness are stripped away to the background to keep the focus to a minimal, percussive track with a bluesy menace to it, over which Gaye scats and sings of the urban misery that first prompted Benson and Cleveland to pen the song that kicked everything off. It's easily the most emotive and powerful track on the album, and the only one, along with "What's Going On" that really manages to communicate a powerful emotional response.

What's Going On was enormously significant in that it was the first time somebody in soul music had chosen to talk about something more significant, or wider in scope, than romance. Protest music in general had only recently gained traction thanks to the likes of activist musicians like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, but Marvin Gaye was the first person to turn around and decide that soul music was in a position where it needed to acknowledge the wider problems in the world as well as folk. That he also did it out of a decisive need to take control of his life and career to make himself into more than just a puppeteer's hitmaker makes it all the more powerful and evocative a record - for all its political stances and grand moralising, it is in fact a deeply personal record for the feelings of frustration and despair that Gaye poured into its composition and recording. It still strikes me as an imperfect album - one that achieves some really incredible highs at points but that struggles to maintain momentum between them or to deliver a consistent range of great songs, but for its superlative moments and its vaulting significance, it deserves to be listened to and respected.

Track Listing:

1. What's Going On (Al Cleveland, Marvin Gaye & Renaldo Benson)

2. What's Happening Brother (James Nyx & Marvin Gaye)

3. Flyin' High In The Friendly Sky (Marvin Gaye, Anna Gordy Gaye & Elgie Stover)

4. Save The Children (Al Cleveland, Marvin Gaye & Renaldo Benson)

5. God Is Love (Marvin Gaye, Anna Gordy Gaye, Elgie Stover & James Nyx)

6. Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) (Marvin Gaye)

7. Right On (Earl DeRouen & Marvin Gaye)

8. Wholy Holy (Al Cleveland, Marvin Gaye & Renaldo Benson)

9. Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) (Marvin Gaye & James Nyx)

Isaac Hayes - Shaft

Released - July 1971

Genre - Funk

Producer - Isaac Hayes

Selected Personnel - Isaac Hayes (Vocals/Keyboards); Lester Snell (Keyboards); James Alexander (Bass); Charles Pitts (Guitar); Michael Toles (Guitar); Willie Hall (Drums); Gary Jones (Conga Drums); Richard Davis (Trumpet); John Fonville (Flute)

Standout Track - Theme From Shaft

I talked briefly on my recent review of Funkadelic's Maggot Brain about my slowly dawning interest in funk music, which was a sort of nascent curiosity for many years that I finally got round to indulging more recently. As it turns out, funk is a genre that's quickly captured my imagination more than most, largely due to its enormous sense of cartoonish fun and the frequent sense of genuine deranged lunacy that shines through a lot of it (I've been focusing most of my attention on Parliament-Funkadelic, which manages, despite all the prog I've listened to over the years, to be perhaps the maddest music I've ever had the pleasure of listening to). Like I said on that earlier review, most of my attempts to dip my toes into unfamiliar genres lead me to end up fairly unmoved and to scurry back to the familiar territory of rock, prog, pop and folk where I know I'm comfortable. The last couple of months, however, have seen my interest in the genre really develop and I've been doing my best to become more familiar with some of its major players. It wasn't long, then, before I ended up giving Isaac Hayes' iconic soundtrack to the MGM blaxploitation film Shaft a listen - a huge, sprawling album that plays as much with soul music traditions as with out-and-out funk, it's nonetheless a staple of the genre whose title track has gone down in musical history and that demonstrates a huge range of musical knowledge and capability on the part of Hayes himself. Its inclusion on this list was uncertain for a while, in that my immediate response to the record was that it was overlong and contained a lot of fairly tedious instrumental filler material, which is still true. But the strength of its better tracks continued to hook me back in and to develop a genuine affection for it even in its slower and more drawn-out moments, and it's also far too iconic to not warrant a tip of the hat on this blog.

Through the 1960s, Isaac Hayes had been one of the chief songwriters (along with his songwriting partner Dave Porter) and producers for Stax Records, one of the major labels for soul music at the time along with Motown and Atlantic Records. Stax had achieved success through the decade via artists like Booker T. & The M.G's and most notably the music of legendary soul singer Otis Redding. Redding's tragic death in 1967 left a gap to be filled in Stax's output, and Hayes was soon able to prove himself as a truly great musician in his own right as well as simply a staff songwriter and producer. With his unforgettably smooth bass vocals (perhaps now best-known for being the voice of Chef in South Park), Hayes set about in the late 60s trying to transform soul into something new. Whereas previously it had existed in the three-minute love songs of Redding or Aretha Franklin, on his 1969 album Hot Buttered Soul Hayes transformed soul music into something far grander and more excessive with its extended ten-minute jams and slow, meandering musical explorations. In the wake of this, Hayes was perhaps one of the most forward-thinking and progressive soul musicians of the era, and not long after he was propositioned to write the soundtrack for what would become easily the best-known and most legendary blaxploitation film ever, Gordon Parks and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Shaft, the story of a black private detective attempting to track down a mobster's daughter.

I've not seen the film itself, and undoubtedly much of Hayes' soundtrack is clearly tooled to work as incidental music rather than to really shine as a piece of music in its own right. Some of those incidental tracks work better than others - "Early Sunday Morning" has a kind of slow, lazy sexiness to it that really works, while something like "Walk From Regio's" or the anodyne "Ellie's Love Theme" are far more forgettable, throwaway things that no doubt work perfectly well establishing a mood on film but do little to excite on a record. Hayes is careful to approach the soundtrack not as a showcase for his own talent, but to structure it carefully to best suit the needs of the film. So, while he contributed keyboards and organ and vocals (on only three tracks, sadly, given the amazing appeal of his unique voice), his own musical contributions are rarely the principle focus, with most of the heavy lifting either being done by the Bar-Kays, an R&B band on the Stax label, or by the funky string and horn arrangements, orchestrated by Hayes himself and Johnny Allen. The mood of the album veers from the slow, down-tempo love themes of "Early Sunday Morning" or "A Friend's Place" more redolent of Hayes' ealier soul music, and more upbeat funk numbers like "Be Yourself" or the behemoth of "Do Your Thing." Of course, the standout track by far is the legendary "Theme From Shaft," a song that anticipates all the staples of disco music long before it became a true phenomenon in itself. With its choppy wah-wah guitar and trembling cymbals, all underpinning the flourishes of the horn section, it's an immediately unforgettable classic that forges the sound of Philly Soul and dozens of other derivative movements, while Hayes' eventual vocal entry and call-and-response interaction with the backing singers ("Who's the black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks?" "Shaft!" "You're damn right.") is joyfully kitsch and brash.

"Be Yourself" is another great track, with its happy-go-lucky bouncy horn melody and propulsive rhythm picking up the pace from the surrounding more down-tempo numbers. "Soulsville" stands out too for being another of the three tracks on the record to feature vocals, but in truth it's not much more than a simple soul ballad telling the story of life in the ghetto, but the horn arrangements and Hayes' vocals sell it. After "Soulsville" there's another slight dip into forgettable incidental music, but it's pulled back from the brink by the presence of the mighty "Do Your Thing." Technically the third and final vocal song on the album, although the vast majority of its running time is taken up with a fast, sprawling funk jam by the Bar-Kays. Hayes kicks things off with the slow, ominous vocal melody before handing things over to the band, who manage to sustain the full twenty-minute piece without ever dropping off into tedious meandering. Guitarists Charles Pitts and Michael Toles, who, other than the classic wah-wah riff on the title track, don't get to do all that much on this record, really let themselves go on "Do Your Thing" with some torrid solos before a choral, chanted vocal part comes back in near the end and slowly winds the thing down to a close. A brief reprise of the main theme wraps things up in the form of "The End Theme," and the curtain closes on this uneven but ultimately remarkable album.

The Shaft soundtrack did great business, becoming Stax's best-selling record of all time, while "Theme From Shaft" won the Oscar for Best Original Song. Hayes' role as a legendary figure in soul and funk music was assured, and he would go on to capitalise on it with further iconic albums like 1971's Black Moses. For me, I can't get away from the fact that Shaft, due to its cinematic intentions, is frustratingly uneven and features too much by-the-numbers filler to really work as an album in its own right. That's perhaps an unfair complaint to make of a soundtrack album in that it was never conceived to work as an album in its own right, but it does keep me from loving it wholeheartedly. Still, when it's on form it's unforgettable, most notably on the title theme and on "Do Your Thing," and a number of the more characterful instrumental numbers really do a great job of creating and sustaining a mood as well. Hayes ably demonstrates his talent as a composer and arranger, crafting a musical soundscape that runs the gamut of a whole range of moods and musical styles and pulls them all off magnificently. If the album release had chosen to omit some of the more tedious tracks that were more obviously incidental bits of filler and to make a shorter album of just the more standout, attention-grabbing tracks then it could be a truly great collection of brilliant soul and funk tunes, but as it is it's just shy of being genuinely fantastic.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Isaac Hayes.

1. Theme From Shaft

2. Bumpy's Lament

3. Walk From Regio's

4. Ellie's Love Theme

5. Shaft's Cab Ride

6. Cafe Regio's

7. Early Sunday Morning

8. Be Yourself

9. A Friend's Place

10. Soulsville

11. No Name Bar

12. Bumpy's Blues

13. Shaft Strikes Again

14. Do Your Thing

15. The End Theme