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FAIR WARNING (Album of the Day)
Van Halen's 4th studio album for Warner Bros., FAIR WARNING, displays a darker side of the legendary hard rock quartet. While it's produced by old hand Ted Templeman and includes the usual radio-friendly singles (“Unchained,” “So This Is Love?”), the 1981 collection sees Eddie Van Halen's guitar work becoming more complex and involved, and frontman David Lee Roth's lyrics becoming tougher and grittier (as titles like "Mean Street" and "Dirty Movies" suggest). It was a focused attack that said “the party's over,” though even with its serious tone, it still made the Top 10 and sold more than 2 million copies. FAIR WARNING is well worth revisiting for fans whose taste for pop-metal leans toward the metal side - as Allmusic puts it, the set “showcases the coiled power of Van Halen better than any other album.”
FIRST TAKE (Album of the Day)
Soul music's heyday was near an end, jazz was creeping into the mainstream and singer-songwriters like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell had just launched their careers when Roberta Flack issued her debut. All of those influences can be heard on FIRST TAKE; opener “Compared To What” shows she can belt 'em out like Aretha, and though none of the eight selections are self-penned, choices like Leonard Cohen's “Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye” reflect her taste for intimate, confessional material. But the jazz influence may be the strongest, with noted producer Joel Dorn at the helm and master instrumentalists like bassist Ron Carter in the band. And when jazz buff Clint Eastwood put FIRST TAKE's “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in his film, Play Misty For Me, it soared up the Billboard singles chart, reaching #1 this week in 1972.
CITY TO CITY (Album of the Day)
Born on this day in 1947, Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty had tasted success as part of The Humblebums in the late 1960s, and in Stealers Wheel (“Stuck In The Middle With You”) a couple of years later, but it was CITY TO CITY that truly put him on the musical map. The 1978 solo album features the song most associated with the multi-talented performer, “Baker Street,” a tale of discomfort with the music industry's star-making machinery that paradoxically became a No.2 U.S. single. With another hit in “Right Down the Line,” the collection went to No.1 on the U.S. album chart, eventually going Platinum. Any good best-of will include those two highlights - but maybe not the wonderful “Whatever's Written In My Heart,” “Mattie's Rag” or “Home And Dry.” CITY TO CITY shines from start to finish with outstanding pop craftsmanship.
SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION (Album of the Day)
In the aftermath of their breakthrough collection VIOLATOR, Depeche Mode might have been tempted to follow its sonic template, but instead, the U.K. band opted to try something different for SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION. Working with producer Flood, the foursome rented a villa in Madrid to work up material and try a more visceral approach to recording, utilizing live drums, aggressive guitars and unusual instrument processing. The resulting ten songs, including singles “In Your Room,” “I Feel You” and “Walking In My Shoes,” have the power of then-omnipresent grunge rock while retaining Depeche's distinctive synth/dance sound. This reinvention was successful commercially as well as artistically, and SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION hit No.1 on the U.S. album chart on this day in 1993.
FAR BEYOND DRIVEN (Album of the Day)
Among the greatest metal bands of the 1990s, Pantera reinvented the genre with a series of dark, intense albums for Atco Records. Guitarist Dimebag Darrell, vocalist Phil Anselmo, bassist Rex Brown and drummer Vinnie Paul were an unstoppable force on record and on tour, and their take-no-prisoners approach paid off on this day in 1994, when FAR BEYOND DRIVEN entered the U.S. album chart at No.1. The set's muscular but nuanced production brings out the best in its dozen tracks, which include “I'm Broken,” “Strength Beyond Strength,” “Becoming” and an assured version of Black Sabbath's “Planet Caravan.” Coursing with grinding riffs and bone-crunching rhythms, the Platinum-certified FAR BEYOND DRIVEN remains a heavy metal landmark.
THIS NOTE’S FOR YOU (Album of the Day)
Released in 1988, THIS NOTE’S FOR YOU was Neil Young’s first album back at Reprise Records after several years with Geffen – and it’s arguably the best of the genre explorations he made that decade. Inspired by the success of a blues mini-set he’d been doing on tour the preceding year, Young brought a set of R&B-influenced songs to the studio along with a band including a six-piece horn section (who would’ve been known as The Bluenotes were it not for Harold Melvin’s objections). If the music was roots-oriented, the lyrics were of-the-moment, with the commercialization of rock a prominent theme; the title track’s parody of sponsorship prompted MTV to ban it before later naming it Video of the Year. If you’ve ever been inspired by the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s passion, then THIS NOTE’S FOR YOU.
GEE WHIZ (Album of the Day)
As the daughter of music great Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas was destined for the charts - and reached them in 1960 with Top Ten hit “Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes).” Penned by the singer herself at age 15, she described it as “young-sounding, romantic and it expressed what a lot of people wanted to say at that age” and it became the title track of the performer’s debut album for Atlantic Records. Alongside standards and covers of recent releases by The Drifters and The Five Satins, the 1961 collection included follow-up single “A Love Of My Own” and a couple more Carla originals (plus one by her dad). Cut in Memphis and Nashville with producer Chips Moman at the helm for five tracks, GEE WHIZ is a delectable pop prelude to the Southern soul for which Thomas would later be known.
RAMONES (Album of the Day)
On this day in 1976, the Ramones released their eponymous debut. As befits the first true punk album, it was utterly devoid of pretension; recorded in a little over a week for a little over $6000, its 14 tracks buzz by in a little under half an hour. Though such simple, fast and fun songs as “Blitzkrieg Bop,” “Beat On The Brat” and “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” would inspire legions of followers, the Queens quartet also paid tribute to the '60s pop-rock that inspired them with a cover of Chris Montez's “Let's Dance” and the Searchers-esque jangle of their own “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.” RAMONES didn't make the Billboard Top 100 on original release - it got to #111 - but the set went on to be cited by Rolling Stone and Spin as one of the Top 100 alternative albums of all time.
SUNDOWN (Album of the Day)
If 1974's SUNDOWN was the only album in Gordon Lightfoot's catalog, his place in the singer-songwriter pantheon would still be secure. Its ten masterfully crafted originals include a pair of Top 10 hits: “Carefree Highway” and the chart-topping title track, and the collection as a whole reached the No.1 spot in both the U.S and Canada. Recorded in Toronto with producer Lenny Waronker, the predominantly acoustic set shows Lightfoot at the peak of his folk powers, though the performer also broadens his sound with hints of R&B and rock (in the form of percussion from Derek and the Dominos drummer Jim Gordon, as well as a little Moog accompaniment). Gordon Lightfoot passed away a year ago today, and we'll remember him with his most successful album, the superb SUNDOWN.
PRESENCE (Album of the Day)
Without the keyboard and acoustic textures of their most recent albums, Led Zeppelin's seventh studio set, PRESENCE, was a return to the elemental blues-based rock of their debut. That was less by design than necessity; when the quartet went to Munich, Germany to record the album, Robert Plant was recovering from a car accident (he was in a wheelchair for the sessions), and like the band's first album, it was cut quickly. Even under duress, Led Zeppelin could still deliver great songs like “Nobody's Fault But Mine” and the epic “Achilles Last Stand,” and Jimmy Page's solos here rank among his very best. Thanks to this resilience, PRESENCE soared to the top of the Billboard chart in 1976, eventually going triple-Platinum in the U.S.