Chula's Albums - The Early Years
 

Having been born in 1960 and with a sister 3 years older than me my younger years were spent with a steady diet of The Beatles, Beach Boys, Motown, and all of the other stuff that AM radio was playing throughout the mid 60s. I consider the very late 60s up through the first half of the 70s or so to be the formative years of my own musical growth. In this thread I'm going to re-visit the albums that had the biggest impact on me during those years.


Back when I was nine I would spend weekends with my dad and step-mom. There was a bowling alley and arcade place close to their house that was really popular with the local kids and I'd spend a lot of time hanging there with my sisters. They had a really big and loud jukebox which played the pop hits of the day non-stop. One night I'm hanging there and all of a sudden I hear DA-DA DA-DA DUM DA-DA-DUM DA-DA-DUM DA-DA-DUM DA-DA-DUM DA-DA-DUM DA-DA-DUM!!!! First just a distorted guitar. And then a rumbling bass guitar joined in. Suddenly this banshee wild man started wailing on about what this woman needed way down inside. And finally those canon like snare hits signaled the entrance of the heaviest drums I'd ever heard.

I was gobsmacked and immediately ran to see who the band was and what the song was. Needless to say it got played a number more times that night while I sat there mesmorized by the power and absolute heaviness of it all. Nine years old and I think my head was mini-banging by the final play of the evening.

Within days I owned Led Zeppelin 1 and shortly after, Led Zeppelin 2, and played them non-stop, with my older sister constantly telling me to "turn it down!" And all while I was smiling, knowing that I'd finally found MY music.

Thus began a 45 year love affair with my favorite all time band.

Wait… you like Led Zeppelin?

I've subscribed and will be reading.

Excellent. This is what we want to read. Great idea for a journal, will definitely be following this.

Great start. Looking forward to some non Zep stuff, cause everyone knows they are great. :beer:

Going to be posting up other classics in here?

Congrats on making a journal. I like your Led Zeppelin reviews. I know your a big fan of them, so I think you should review all their albums. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on IV and Houses of the Holy. But well done anyway mate.

Snapshot: 1970

Something that's crucial to remember about back then was that there was only one way really to discover the new rock music that was coming out - word of mouth. There was no internet, no MTV, no advertising on television, nothing in mainstream newspapers or magazines, and underground FM radio was still very much in its infancy.

I found this album through a buddy at school. His older brother had bought it so we went over when he wasn't home and checked it out.


I don't give a crap what anyone else says, the early stuff these guys were doing was the real precursor to a lot of the stripped down punk that came along in the late 70s. Bare bones, aggressive, and driving rock and roll with tons of attitude - this stuff simply kicked ass. And they put the bass guitar even more up front than The Who did.

I have vivid memories of me and my friend bouncing off of the walls to this album.

Off to a rocking good start Chula mah man.

Hey, I'm just joining in on the "I'll be reading this" announcements. Cheers.

The first three albums that you've posted are some of the first that I reviewed in my journal and that Grand Funk Railroad album is pretty damn the business.

During the second half of the 60s there's were literally hundreds of bands that formed in the wake of The Beatles. Most of these never realized much success while still others did achieve minor fame and plodded along pretty nicely for a while.

But then there were those who soaked up everything that was going on from 67 on, got some good gigging experience, maybe released an album or two of decent, but unoriginal songs and then BAM! found their own unique niche and then expertly mined it for lots of gold.

I can't think of a better example of this than......


I've heard no better explanation for AC than from Alice himself:

"We realized that there were no villains in rock and roll. Everything was hippies, peace and love, and flower power. A lot of Peter Pans and no Captain Hook. I had the face for it, I had the look for it… and we were definitely not hippies."

While you were proud to talk openly about bands like Zeppelin and Grand Funk with your friends, it was a bit different with this album. And you definitely didn't turn up songs like Dead Babies when you were listening at home. This was scary and depraved stuff.

And I loved it!

I went through a huge Alice Cooper phase. Love it.

I was fortunate growing up near Boston. Because of the large number of surrounding colleges there were tons of young people who reached out to support the biggest FM station of that time - WBCN. They were truly one of the first AOR stations in the country and prided themselves on breaking new bands to the greater Boston area. Zeppelin gives tons of props to WBCN for helping them explode in New England since the station had been spinning LZ1 well before it was officially released. (Peter Wolf, lead singer of J. Geils was the nightime DJ at WBCN at that time).

So anyway, WBCN's signal finally found its way to our little town 50 miles north of Boston and every kid I knew would tune in at night to hear the next new rock band.

No-one knew at the time that "METAL" was lurking right around the corner...........



I'm shutting my trap now since it's all been said here a million times already. And there's no need to post any song clips. This one is part of everyone's DNA, whether they know it or not.

The hammond organ. Not sure who did it first but the sound of one of these plugged into an overdriven amp became the trademark of quite a few of the bands of this era. The first time I got into it was with this album which I got turned onto by one of my sister's guy friends. The other thing with Heep was the unique vocals which would later become a staple with a lot of the NWBHV bands that would surface towards the end of the 70s.

Heep's next two albums were their peak but this one came first for me. This is one of those that listening to it now it's easy to go "meh". But when it first hit the scene it was pretty damn groundbreaking.




The slide guitar on this blew my mind at the time! So freaking heavy.

Six albums in and all six are high up on my lists, I'm still waiting for an album that isn't on my list:p:

btw how can you select two songs from Look at Yourself and not include "Shadows of Grief".

At this point I'm pretty sure it ain't gonna happen.

Quick sidebar: In the late 70s my band Trilogy did a lot of gigs with another local band named Strider's Wrath. They had a hammond organ and a leslie. We'd always help each other with setup and breakdown.

That organ and rotating speaker are two of the heaviest (weight-wise) pieces of gear ever made!

Great great band. Great great songs. Don't remember where this one came from but it left a huge impression. It's 45 years later and I still have their "best of" in my iTunes.

Another one that was discovered via FM radio. There's a ton of albums that are defined by one song. This is truly one of them.


One the of the best pure rock songs of all time. (hyperbole alert on high)

I'd wager that anyone who was in the 10-15 year old age bracket back in the spring of 1972 can pretty much remember the first time they heard Smoke on the Water from Machine Head. All the cliches about that song are true. It was played over and over again on the radio and within a couple of months everyone one who owned an electric guitar would be hammering away at the riff endlessly.

Loved when they did this on Two and a Half Men. Was a major flashback to me sitting in my own bedroom back in the day.



Eventually FM radio bailed on the studio version and began playing an edited down live version which rocked so much harder and really displayed the power of Deep Purple.

As soon as this album was released people pretty much stopped listening to Machine Head - which is unfortunate because it's a great record. But it really does get overshadowed in every regard by arguably the greatest live rock album of all time...


This record firmly established Deep Purple as part of the hard rock big three along with Sabbath and Zeppelin. And it's no wonder why!

"America's first heavy metal band."

"The USA's answer to Led Zeppelin."

When it was first reviewed these are a couple of the comments that were made about this disc.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you......


Session ace Ronnie Montrose was already a highly regarded axeslinger from his work with Edgar Winter but it was this LP that made him a true God among guitar players. Montrose came out of nowhere and spread like wildfire with the rock crowd of the day. Killer players, killer songs, and a killer sound. Loud, heavy, fast, unrelenting, and balls to the wall aggressive. Listen to this album and then think about the stuff that came out of the New Wave of Heavy Metal later in the decade. Bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden definitely aped a lot from Montrose.

A young Ted Templeton produced Montrose and together they really hit it out of the park. Interesting to note that 5 years later he would take everything he learned on this record and apply it to the debut album from the then unknown Van Halen.

Montrose songs have been covered by numerous rock artists and they were a big staple for bar bands during the 70s. One of the songs I played on my first ever gig was Rock Candy. It's amazing how well this stuff still stands up today.

Wonder if Eddie Van Halen took inspiration for his whammy bar dives from the intro of this? And check out a very young Sammy Hagar on vocals.

^^^Hell Yeah!^^^

One of my favorite albums of all time. Every song on that album still stands strong today, and I've done my share of learning/forgetting, then relearning quite few of them. "Make It Last" gets a regular spot on my playlist rotations. Have you checked out his other solo stuff?

Thanks for the tip. I'll check them out.

Led Zeppelin goes soft...........

The reviews for Zep's third album were even more brutal than what they'd gotten on the first two. The band had taken a break from the non-stop touring and spent time in the English countryside writing the songs for III around campfires. The result was a very diverse album that hinted at what was to come....



Soft? Uhm, OK.

III is the stuff, man. My favourite Zep album. Of those I've heard, anyway. That reminds me of how I should totally listen to more Led Zeppelin.

Get the f*ck on it maggot!

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WzrDBWcU85...l%2Bjacket.jpg

"A lad, insane."

What to do for an encore.......


You've just written and released a masterpiece. A game changer. You are suddenly a world wide mega-superstar. Everyone is watching and waiting for your next play.

No pressure.

Hard to imagine what David Bowie had going through his mind while working on the songs that would make up Aladdin Sane. How the hell do you follow up something like Ziggy Stardust?

Plain and simple. You don't.

While boasting a few of his greatest songs (Panic in Detroit, Cracked Actor, The Jean Genie), Aladdin Sane was somewhat doomed from the get go. You can almost hear Bowie trying too hard on this album. Having so many guest artists didn't work at all. The second and last tracks are a mess because of the forced piano. Great playing but just doesn't fit IMO.

That being said, and not judging it alongside Ziggy, it's a mandatory album for anyone wanting to experience Bowie's "thing". Taken on its own merits it's a great disc.

Home Town Heroes: Take One


When Dream On exploded onto the scene is was a total revelation to find out that it was from a home town band! I'd actually seen Aerosmith two years earlier playing at an amusement park but they didn't leave much of a mark at the time. Their debut LP on the other hand was an instant classic. Take The Stones and Zeppelin and put them into a blender and this is what you get.

Home Town Heroes: Take Two


My first arena concert. J. Geils Band at the Boston Garden. I'm 14 and the 18 year old neighbor friend of mine (we both played guitar) convinced my mom to let me go. Boston is a long ride from my home town so of course, she's worried. We get to the Garden, it's festival seating, and it's madness. Me and my neighbor get separated. The lights go down and I'm wandering around this huge f*cking arena absolutely clueless.

"Hey, Don!"

Out of the 18,000 people jamming the place a group of my older sister's friends spotted me. I hung with them the whole night and they drove me home.

My poor neighbor spent the entire evening looking for me, and thinking my mom was going to f*cking kill him for losing her son. Ahhh, the memories.

Another Boston killer band! (screw the MTV years - this was the real sh*t)

No "Dream On" vid for Aerosmith probably one of the best power ballads ever written?

Good to see you mentioning J.Geils Band hell I always loved that band.

Too cliche. Ya, J. Geils was the sh*t. Forgot to mention that they had the entire Boston Garden up on their feet dancing the entire night.

And now for something complete different.....


I don't remember how I came about getting this album but whoa, what a trip at the time. Who the hell were these guys and how could they sound so out there and heavy at the same time. This was some dark and crazy sh*t. I mean there'd been progressive music before this (Procol Harum and The Moody Blues mainly) but ITCOTCK tossed those guys under the bus and rewrote the entire prog rock book. And with the debut album!

^I don't rate it at all, but maybe that's because I listened to this album for the first time a couple of months ago.

Honestly that and Aladdin Sane are easily my two favorite albums you've covered in here - ITCOTCK used to be an all-time favorite, but I still really enjoy it, and Aladdin Sane might be better than Ziggy for me.

Imagine what it was like listening to it back in 1970 as a 10 year old!

I'm going to give it another listen next time I come back around to the letter I.

"When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh and act like a fool"


Nevermind Tommy or Quadraphenia, this is the best album the Who ever recorded IMO. Not many albums contain two classic rock anthems. And even without those the rest of the album is stellar.

My first experience with this was Baba O'riley on the radio. The sequenced synthesizer intro was unlike anything else I'd ever heard before. Love how Townsend holds the guitar back for nearly two minutes before crashing in with those power chords. Great economical solo too.

Was many year later when I read that these lines were Townsend's perspective on Woodstock.

Out here in the fields
Teenage Wasteland
They're all wasted!

Townsend hated the experience of playing at it.

Heroin, be the death of me
Heroin, it's my wife and it's my life
Because a mainer to my vein
Leads to a center in my head
And then I'm better off than dead



Another one courtesy of a friend of my older sister. The initial appeal of this for me was the duel guitars of Hunter and Wagner. Reed's voice and lyrics took a while to get use to but eventually I "got it". Some pretty deep sh*t is buried within these songs. One of the definitive live albums of mid 70s for sure.

Lou Reed has an awful voice, but he's a great singer because he knows how to use it well. I think Nico's best vocal performances are on The VU & Nico because her tracks are juxtaposed to Reed's :D.

Bingo! I feel the same way about Tom Petty and Neil Young.

I always felt that the problem with Who's Next is that it felt like an album that had been chopped out of something else and that thing was the Lifehouse project, but I could listen to "Bargain" all day and I always dug the Tubes' cover of "Baba O'Reilly";) .