Yeah, well while everyone does their top 10/20 of 2013 --- and I'm sure I'll end up doing one, not that anyone cares --- I wanted to share this with you.
These are by no means the greatest or most well-known albums in the world, in fact you may know few if any of them (well you will know some), but they are the albums I return to time and again, that I can play all the way through and not got bored with, and that in many cases formed part of the soundtrack to my growing up. Many have been already reviewed in my journal, so I won't be doing that here, just talking about them and what they mean to me.
Note: None of these are ranked, as they all mean different things to me and I would certainly struggle to choose one above another, so they're listed in no particular order.
First up: the classic that never should have been
Jeff Wayne's musical version of "The War of the Worlds" --- Jeff Wayne --- 1978
Possibly the worst-timed concept album ever, Wayne ran into the same basic apathy with this that another classic, Meat Loaf's "Bat out of Hell", released the previous year, encountered. As the seventies wound down and prepared to move into the next decade, the reign of progressive rock was coming to an end, with Punk Rock lurking around the corner with a bloody broken bottle, grinning with loose teeth and ready to pound what were seen as the overly self-indulgent, pompous bands like Yes, Genesis, ELP at al into submission, and basically tear up the rule book, giving music a much-needed (it says here) kick up the arse.
So a concept album based on a nineteenth century novel and a movie released in the fifties, made up of more or less two continuous pieces of music, was not really what the public were looking for. Jeff Wayne, creator, composer and brain behind this album, had to fight to get backing and convince his label that the album would sell. Drafting in some serious names from both the music and acting community, some of whom are sadly no longer with us, "WotW" has gone on to sell over two and a half million copies in the UK alone, and its iconic cover and theme tune are now instantly recognised all over the world.
Featuring the late great Richard Burton and Phil Lynott, as well as Justin Hayward, Julie Covington and David Essex, the album is, or was, pretty unique in that it both told a story with the narration of Burton's deep, sonorous voice and mixed in music from Wayne and his orchestra, giving the feeling of being a sort of play with a soundtrack. It of course tells the story of HG Wells' famous novel, as Martians invade the Earth and swiftly put the forces of humanity to the rout, eventually being defeated by microscopic bacteria against which they had not been prepared and had no defence.
Although this album does not and did not lend itself to singles, with all the tracks running into one another and linked via Burton's narration, they did manage to release one, which did very well. The opener, the instrumental, "Eve of the war" and Justin Hayward's "Forever autumn" are well known even by those who have never heard the album. But good as these songs are, it's in tracks like the eerie, creepy "Red weed" and Phil Lynott's memorable performance of the mad parson in "The spirit of man" that really stand out, to say nothing of Essex's no-more-sane Artilleryman in the superb "Brave new world".
"War of the Worlds" though is really not an album you listen to piecemeal. It's an experience, a story to be read, in music and voice, and to get the best out of it you really have to listen to it all at one sitting. Kind of treat it like a movie with music. It's an amazing album and although certainly not the first concept album ever written, it's the first I recall that used narration and progressive rock music so well together. Kind of a curse of the first album for Wayne, whose eventual followup, "Spartacus", was largely ignored and who has more or less dined out on "WotW" for the last thirty years, with an updated version released last year.
It's definitely the sort of album I return to every so often, just immerse myself in the music and the story, and remember what it was like back in 1978 when I first heard the opening strains of "The eve of the war".
TRACKLISTING
The coming of the Martians
1. Eve of the war
2. Horsell Common and the heat ray
3. The Artilleryman
4. Forever autumn
5. Thunder Child
Earth under the Martians
1. The Red Weed (Part 1)
2. Parson Nathaniel
3. Th spirit of Man
4. The Red Weed (Part 2)
5. Brave new world
6. Dead London
7. Epilogue (Part 1)
8. Epilogue (Part 2)