The two hundred and sixty-eighth album: #268 War - The World Is a Ghetto
War, at least on their fifth album, trades on lengthy funk jazz tracks. While the first two tracks - Cisco Kid and Where Was You At - are okay funk songs, with the former's riffs working quite well, City, Country, City is a long jam session that seems quite nicely put together but doesn't gain anything from its thirteen minute runtime and boredom starts to set in about eight minutes in. Four Cornered Room, on the other hand, only really kicks off when its lyrics come in and it starts to deliver on that promise.
The cop out response here is that funk isn't quite for me, but I feel like I enjoy a lot of it when it's in concentrated bursts, something I think future genres take in. As it stands, though, I struggle to really appreciate pure jazz and that has carried over into funk. There's a reason I still have a 'Jazz is Dead' postcard up.
The one hundred and seventh classical recording: #235 Franz Schubert - Octet in D Major, D803
There is a blessing in listening to a lot of these recordings in that they don't require you to look for meaning in them. Some do, of course, but the goal of this octet, for example, isn't to tell a story. It's to set a mood, to explore a theme or to show off the abilities of the musicians. It means that for writing, I have less to comment on, but get to just focus on the music. It sounds lovely here, as a lively and upbeat piece that brightened my day
The ninety-eighth comic: #46 Destiny: A Novel in Pictures
While a lot of comics in the early parts of the list are newspaper strips, we're also seeing experiments with the media at this point. Destiny: A Novel in Pictures is a graphic novel at its most basic form: It's completely wordless, using one panel - from lead cuts - per page to tell a story. It's a dire one reflecting social life at the time, a poor woman living a bad life that she's unable to escape, sometimes through fate and sometimes by choice. It feels powerful enough for that even now, in a way that feels unescapable as it did nearly a century later in Scalped.
The art is gorgeous, the black line work creating a contrast that paints an even more bleak world,adding even further to that atmosphere of being inescapapble while being its own stylistic treat. It makes for a sharp work in several ways, and the fact that it's now digitized helps more with being able to enjoy that.
The two hundred and sixty-seventh album: #267 David Bowie - The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
There's a mystique hanging over Bowie's work that comes out strongest in Ziggy Stardust. Ever morphing, his work is incredibly varied and the persona he takes on in this album feels like it's the most enduring example of that. As an album, it brings a good variation of glam rock which, thanks to its opera direction, gets taken in several different directions. As a story, it's not complicated, but its extended hopeful message feels remarkable on its own. And then the character as it's created - not Bowie, but at the same time wanting to be seen as him - works well to set him apart and make the performer seem that bit more alien too.
Despite the musical innovation, what's as amazing is how many different influences Bowie takes in. This isn't doing its own thing or trying to pretend that it does, instead it plays with other influences. Doctor Who is cited as a direct influence, Over the Rainbow from the Wizard of Oz is a clear influence on the outstanding Starman, and it feels like it just expands from there. It's a worthwhile creative endeavor and an album that I will return to.
The ninety-seventh comic: #931 Scalped
Scalped is the story of Dash, a cop returning to his native American tribe to enforce the law there and, increasingly, the other people surrounding him. Through that lens, we get a bleak picture of life on a reservation, filled with alcoholics and drug addicts, where life is cheap when you're not at the top. It's a difficult read, the constant push downwards making for some harrowing tales that doesn't seem like they have a way out. It's well made and, depending on the point of view character, often compelling, but it feels like something to read in small doses, so it can takes its time to find a place and you can take your time to process.
The two hundred and sixty-sixth album: #266 The Temptations - All Directions
I think my issues with these funk albums keep carrying through. The tracks on this album have some good hooks and tie in well when those come through, but Papa Was a Rollin' Stone has parts that get lost in the context of an album, losing the edge when it's surrounded by the lengthy repetitive sounds.
The second side appeals to me more in that sense, even though I know the funk of the first is the reason this album is listed. It has a number of lovely, sensitive ballads that really appeal to me. The First TIme Ever really is that amazing to listen to, for example. It stays an album of mixed influences, but it's clear that what I latched on to wasn't where this music was going.
The one hundred and sixth classical recording: #132 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Violin Concerto no. 5, "Turkish"
There are a lot of Mozart's pieces to get through, clustered around this era, and I can see why they're so genre-defining - sure, there doesn't seem to have been as much competition in these days, but there's a beauty in the sound that comes through, always feeling somewhat ethereal and magical, played big for this piece but small enough to avoid being that bombastic. It doesn't necessarily have the most memorable phrases, but it's a lovely small piece.
The two hundred and sixty-fifth album: #265 Alice Cooper - School's Out
One of the weird things about bands like Alice Cooper, which were outrageous at the time, is how shock rock doesn't have that impact anymore. So much of it seems to have come from rumour and hearsay, while the music itself is tamer than that. Are there some edgy lyrics on School's Out? Sure. Is the title track going in hard? Absolutely. But the jazzy Blue Turk is none of that and is a nice, subdued rock song. Underneath the theatrics, there is a solid album here that draws from a lot of different influences, moving between hard rock, classic rock and glam rock to create a solid set of tracks that hold up far better than their reputation may suggest
The two hundred and sixty-fourth album: #264 Roxy Music - Roxy Music
On a cold and dark day like today, with the snow fading and turning into ice, Roxy Music's loud and upbeat British glam rock feels pretty incongruous. They're nice songs, sure, nothing that necessarily stands out as anything amazing. Some of it is off putting for a while, but there's thought put into the sounds that makes them work. It's not comfort listening, the changes in direction makes sure of that, but there's so much more going on in places that you wonder what's going on. At the core there are some good, standard rock songs - parts of this really could come from an early sixties rock album- but it's been added to, with unconventional intros and intermissions, so the occasional changes in instrument don't stand out as much.
It's probably Brian Eno's signature that's in there, pushing the music beyond its rock roots, and that influence is one I know will stretch beyond this. Focusing on that though ignores the good rock songs in there, the variation that comes in, and everything else in there. Part of why it's hard to place is because it feels this album experiments, still, with new styles in a way that I think I'll see pay off in later albums.
The one hundred and fifth classical recording: #951 Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians
There are few pieces that use vocals as an instrument, a repetitive lyrical sound that the performers even modulate the volume of through moving their microphones as they perform. That sound and the ongoing marimbas create the base of a hypnotic sound, then manipulated by other instruments as they come in and out until it returns to that same base. It's interesting, different from what game before, something I can imagine as part of a video game soundtrack, giving it such a different feel from the standard classical pieces on the list. There's something hypnotic about it, more than anything I feel I could just sit here and listen to it.
We've already heard of Steve Reich with Different Trains, a piece that stood out for its innovation, and I can see how this originated that work. In fact, this is the one work that is also ons ome popular music lists, and it has its place as a work that both draws on the differences in popular music of the day and passed it on to later artists.
It's a beautiful piece, different but in a way that works really well.