The thirty-sixth comic: #700 Great Teacher Onizuka

This was a bit of an odd manga. The basic premise doesn't sound too bad - a graduate from a fifth tier university loafs around all day, mostly without a job, until he wanders into being a substitute teacher. He then decides to make that his calling, although he's not exactly a standard teacher, isn't great at imparting normal lessons, but turns out to be amazing at dealing with trouble classes and troubled students.

Then the oddities set in, with some Japanese touches and a lot of fan service. There are plenty of voluptous students, as well as mothers and teachers that the teacher is impressed by. He avoids getting entangled with students - although more because it would cost him his job than because he actually feels he shouldn't - but is fairly perverted. There is a feeling that the bad boy (he was in a gang before) was meant to be something the teen boy readers should identify with, but I felt it was off putting. The gang elements mean that breaking through to the students went in an interesting way, one that I wouldn't want to see in real life, but make sense in the comic's context. It just is surrounded by some things I don't enjoy as much.

Through that, the story annoyed me as often as it connected, and I just didn't see the point in why would want to continue reading. It just isn't much fun.

The two hundred and ninety-fourth song: Up Around The Bend - Creedence Clearwater Revival

In what sounds like clear country rock, this is more wholesome music than we hear from most rock bands, especially with the harder guitar sounds used here. It sounds like it's about people having a good time. It's not too complicated, but it's the contrast that makes this song appear here, even if it isn't amazing.

The two hundred and ninety-fifth song: Layla - Derek & The Dominos

Here's the contrast to that, in a way, with a heavy, recognisable guitar focus that I feel a lot were inspired by later. There is a lot of raw emotion in this declaration of love, apparently inspired by Eric Clapton's future wife, then still married to George Harrison. There's a lot of that coming through in the music, in part because of the way the track is build up between the different instruments and with all the overdubbing. It has so many layers on which it works - the music, the lyrics, the meaning - and it deserves to sound as grandiose as it does. Not counting the second half though - while the piano sounds fine and big, on the whole it's a bit tacked on and unnecessary.

The two hundred and ninety-sixth song: War Pigs - Black Sabbath

The promise of Led Zeppelin has come true. We enter the 1970s and metal arrives. An angry anthem, there's a strong anti-war message here that feels powerfully underlined by the heavily tuned, dark guitars. It's a sound I'm partial to and here it strikes you hard. It would have been harder at the time, as this is the first time we've really heard this sound for the list. It's been hinted at, but it's now pushed through as we move past the friendly rock from the Beatles and the happier mood of the sixties to the conflicts in the seventies.

The two hundred and ninety-seventh song: When the Revolution Comes - The Last Poets

It's a pretty big whiplash in tone. My first worry was where to place this, but it seems to be a precursor to rap - a spoken word song with a basic backing track - a poem read out over a beat. The revolutionary message of course comes across strongly, the lyrics making it clear where they see things going, but the shock of the change in sound is weird and it feels like the genre isn't developed far enough yet to be good musically. Lyrically, though, it works.

The two hundred and ninety-eighth song: Band of Gold - Freda Payne

A poppy song about heartbreak, this goes back to more what we'd expect from the charts. A sotry about a woman whose marriage basically strands on her wedding night. It's good to hear some soul and the lyrics are deeper than othe rlove songs, with quite a lot to discover in there for you.

The two hundred and ninety-ninth song: Love the One You’re With - Stephen Stills

A nice folk song, there's a positive message in here that may sound trite and go against all of Hollywood's advice, but you get a nice, harmonious song that swings and really just feels good. It could be a maudlin song, but it's upbeat, happy and encouraging and pushes folk to be more uptempo than I associate it with.

The three hundredth song: Fire & Rain - James Taylor

Speaking of emotion pouring out through an album, the sadness and depression James Taylor went through during the writing of this song somes through in the performance. It's hard to say why, but there's a sadness in his voice that defines your mood even when the music steps up. It stays incredibly focused and knowing the backstory makes that clearer. It's an incredibly touching song and even if you don't know the exact circumstances, the specific emotion also feels recognisable and the support from that works, somehow.

The three hundred and first song: Ain’t No Mountain High Enough - Diana Ross

Let's end on a high, though, and that's what you get from Diana Ross. I barely need to explain it, really, but there's something exciting and uplifting about this love song, its promise to find her lover no matter want and support him. It's got a big and infectious refrain, the spoken word versions good for setting the scene but really just preparing the large, sweeping sections.

The seventieth album: #70 The Rolling Stones - Aftermath

My version of Aftermath starts with a song I've praised before (and reminisced as I remembered the shows I watched with it), Paint It Black, and goes up and down from there. Stupid Girl is hard and loud (with a troubling message, but perhaps a sign of the time and culture). Then we get Lady Jane, slower, more sensitive, and more baroque rather than hard. Hearing this come from the same group, on the same album, feels like quite a change. One that makes sense from their blues roots, it's a different direction for the music to go into.

While the album features several songs about relationships, they are not love songs. Not musically, for the most part, but also in a lot of the lyrics. There are songs about power struggles, about finding a place in the world, about more raw sexual encounters and generally the more real questions that often come up. It's more personal - even if a lot of it is satirical or taking things on from other people or works. The revolutionary spirit of the time shows through here, as does the aggressive tone, and in a way this feels like the Stones might have invented something slightly different and created that path forward that kept them going for a long time. Not as inventive as the Beatles, maybe, but on a creative course that lasted for longer.

The sixty-ninth album: #69 The Mothers of Invention - Freak Out!

For an album focused on lyrics in a lot of places, The Mothers of Invention don't sound that good on their debut album. Frank Zappa's solos sound fine, but a lot of the harmonies sound mostly shouty. Who Are The Brain Police? is the first song where this really connects, although in a way where the weird effects and sounds make for a coherent intersting whole rather than shouting played over decent, but not always ambitious rock, with some odd touches thrown in. Go Cry On Somebody Ele's Shoulder is where the album hits lyrically, the doo wop sounds clearly suited to the performers while having sharp lyrics that undercut standard love songs. It feels like a well crafted mockery.

Onbce you get into Trouble Every Day, the second half of the double album, it has established this sound and it comes together better, with a decent track and good, effective lyrics. It's also the lead in for the more experimental section, with Help I'm A Rock feeling avant garde and a precursor of the experimentation that's about to come, and pushing things furtehr than the Beatles are doing around this time. It feels like it opens new possibilities not thought of before, which is exciting on its own. It Can't Happen Here, a semi-part of it, enforces that with its a capella start, sounding like a track where the music dropped out but, as you'd expect, creating its own song in a way that sounds like rock more than other a capella groups would do. It creates an album that needed to grow on me, but once it did it sounded amazing and really impressed me with how weird it would get.

The sixty-eighth album: #68 Paul Revere & The Raiders - Midnight Ride

For most of the songs, Midnight Ride feels fairly conventional for its era, rock songs with some harmonies and a clear country bend in places. There's quite a bit of (early) Beatles, with some harder songs like, in fact, Kicks, that having more of a Stones influence. Stepping Stone is a clear and fairly well known example of that.

Those songs are part of what saves the album. Leading the B-side is All I Really Need Is You, a song with its own different sound, experimental and more interesting to listen to. It's that, and some of the songs that follow, thart really create something distinct here that make the album a standout for me. Not all the tracks held up after that, but the few experiments are what saved the album for me. It's still not the best and ultimately feels like a forgettable album.

The thirty-seventh book: #37 Julie; Or, the New Eloise - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

More letters. And Rousseau's style doesn't work for me. While Clarissa had the letters written in distinct voices, I didn't get any of that reading about Julie. There are several different characters writing letters, but half the time I got lost who was who, because nobody was addressing anyone else and it all seemed the same. Add to that that a lot of the letters don't really have such interesting content - rather than talking about events and feelings, it seems like it's all about housekeeping, how their perfect life is nicely staying at home and how they have the same routine and how great that is. In other words, this is a story on how to live your life, hiding as a novel, and I didn't like it.

The sixty-seventh album: #67 The Mamas & The Papas - If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears

Listening to this album, I hear shades of the Beach Boys' harmonies, with female vocals adding to a 'hippy' feel of the album. There are times where this sounds really good, and there are some good songs on the album. The covers are adjusted to their sound, but I'm not sure that always works for me. For example, "Do You Wanna Dance" is robbed from the energy that makes the original listenable, not giving me much to work with and boring me far more. I see how they want to go for the orchestral sound, but it's a bit too slow and doesn't enhance the song for me.

Songs written for their own voice work better, but still don't feel inspiring or give me much confidence. But, I mean, then we get to California Dreamin, where (as we discussed in a past songs entry) it all comes together and does work. The harmonies sound good, the lyrics work and the message comes across well. It grabs you more, in part, I think, because it's more confident. It leads into a few more songs that work like that where the energy is there, but it's a mixed bag and on the whole, that leads to the album falling down for me.

The thirty-sixth book: #36 Rasselas - Samuel Johnson

How much can I say abou this? Rasselas is prince of Abyssinia and, bored with life in a valley, goes out to see the world - mostly Egypt. He travels, has some adventures and mostly talk about philosophy.

Unlike Candide, it's written straight, and where the former included some real life events and happening, even if the timeline doesn't work out, all of Rasselas' visits are fictitious, without anything else to back it up. It makes it feel inconsequential, and with the stories not really feeling inspiring, I'm not sure I really saw the point of it.

The fifty-sixth TV show: #438 Northern Exposure

We've only jumped around this in the first three seasons, as we're planning on watching this for a while longer. The show takes a while to get running, and that put me off for a bit - the first season isn't that strong, until it starts taking off in some later episodes. It mostly shows its potential in the dream sequences that start earlier - they subvert what's otherwise a pretty standard fish out of water story that I feel got dull rather quickly. I know the beats - the doctor who, in this case, is assigned to a small Alaskan town, doesn't want to be there, but has to stay. The people around him try to include him while life keeps going on around them, and they break down their shell. It takes a while to get past that, and early on it made me unsympathetic towards the show - I get the beats, but they don't impress me.

The show gets a lot better when it lets itself go weird. There are several reasons - the characters become more outlandish, where it's more fun (something Rob Morrow starts doing early enough, but the show and writing need to adjust to), the plots go stranger (especially when Adam, the mysterious man in the wood starts showing up) but even more when we see them in different situations. Most interesting are episodes like the last of season 3, where the cast of the show shows up as different characters during the founding of Cicely, where the show takes place.

So yeah, the first season clearly doesn't show what makes the show great, possibly with the exception of the finale and a few segments here and there, but when it's less fish out of water and more weird town and happening, it's where the show really shines.

The two hundred and eighty-sixth song: Is It Because I’m Black? - Syl Johnson

It feels difficult on a song with such a specific message, because the lyrics have such a specific message you don't want to undercut. Here, it's a slow blues song that during the extended musical riffs fail to inspire, more often boring me. They're the ponts where I keep waiting to return to the lyrics, where a more powerful point is made on how society isn't allowing him to move on. It's even more powerful considering his own history, with some of the most sampled songs that generally don't get credited.

The two hundred and eighty-seventh song: I Want to Take You Higher - Sly & The Family Stone

Although we supposedly stay in the same genre, this song has a lot more energy and body to it. It swings along and even though it relies on repetition, there are more changes in the music, several performers and a sound that comes together better. Sure, it's shallow, but it's a better listen.

The two hundred and eighty-eighth song: The Court of the Crimson King - King Crimson

Moving to the other side of the pond, we get a larger rock number, from one of the bands that seemed to have taking inspiration from the Beatles and Brian Wilson in this era (it is hard to escape them). Prog rock is moving on here, in a song that creates a fantasy setting and tells a strange story and basically creates its own world. But even without these lyrics, the song creates its own scene. We get the big musical sections, dominated by the keyboard, and the acoustics where the lyrics come in. It flows into each other and alternates quite nicely, with an interlude dominated by the flute breaking up the pattern and a two minute coda at the end that fits thematically but at the same time seems to be its own song. It's an amazing performance and feat and I'm looking forward to covering this album in the future.

The two hundred and eighty-ninth song: Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin

The improvised, middle section of this song feels like it dominates here, and while they may have considered it necessary, it feels unneeded here. The song for me only kicks off after this section, three and a half minutes in, when the riff has a chance to push ahead and sound good, while the start seems sloppier and doesn't work as well. It's that end where the music actually starts to sound good and cohesive, as well as more polished.

The two hundred and ninetieth song: I Wanna Be Your Dog - The Stooges

Remember how we started off this set with funk? I barely do, rock music dominates so much at the moment. There are hints of punk and hard rock coming in again, and the lyrics of this song follow that too - a dirtier feel that feels so much less elevated than where prog rock is going. It's also loud and heavily distorted in places - made to sound, clearly, like the equipment couldn't handle any of it. It works, but lacks a bit of energy sometimes. But still, the sleigh bells are there.

The two hundred and ninety-first song: Kick Out the Jams - The MC5

A live recording with swearing and a loud crowd, something has changed again. We've got more hard rock, more punk, and as much anger as before, but this time following a more melodic direction than I feel other loud songs have done. You can feel showmanship in the loudness, still trying to tell its story. It's counter culture expressed in music, following the mood of its time. Musically, it's a direction I'm okay with anyway, but it really sounds good for me here.

The two hundred and ninety-second song: I Want You Back - The Jackson 5

Time for a mood whiplash. We're getting a sweet love song sang by an eleven year old Michael Jackson, whose voice does draw the attention, while the music sounds good but is in service to his voice. It sounds good and makes for a decent soundtrack, but can come across as a bit forgetable as well. The many vocal gymnastics don't necessarily mean much, even if they are impressive.

The two hundred and ninety-third song: The Thrill Is Gone- B.B. King

So we end the sixties, the decade of the rise of rock and the fall of its first strands and icons, with a slow blues number. Blues has been our reliable companion since near the start of the list, a gentle sound guiding us through as we have this end-of-love song here. Here it's buoyed by a larger string section and more impressive instruments, creating more than just a blues song and creating something larger to listen to. As an older performer - his previous list song was in 1953 - it's calmer and clearly with less anger than the younger bands of the time. It still has wall of sound larger orchestraction elements, but everything feels nicely constrained here.