Next up: Zack, Sunday 21st June
Marcel's notes:
I was in a dilemma over what to choose next but, in the spirit of Classic Albums Club, I thought it would be good if we listened to another genre - we’ve had Britpop and rap recently, so here’s a seminal heavy metal album. Steppenwolf coined the phrase ‘heavy metal’ in 1968, the year that Black Sabbath was formed. They were originally called the Polka Tulk Blues Band and then Earth before settling on their edgier title, which would appeal to disillusioned teenagers growing up in a bombed-out post-war Birmingham and beyond. They were misunderstood by many (i.e. parents) at the time who felt the music was ‘satanic’ - in fact it is the sound of a young generation growing up in difficult, depressing and unsure times. Many of the songs are actually anti-war (War Pigs, Electric Funeral) and anti-drugs (Hand of Doom) and the band are credited with penning the first Christian metal song. Their eponymous first album raised eyebrows and established a cult following, but Paranoid is the record that most later heavy rock/metal bands, from GNR to Metallica to QOTSA, reference as the birth of the genre. Years later at a heavy metal festival Geezer Butler, the band’s bassist and lyricist, said he couldn’t relate to a lot of later heavy metal - ‘we were essentially a blues rock band who decided to go a bit heavier and louder, we didn’t even know what heavy metal was.’ You can very much hear their hippie blues roots on the album, particularly on the surprisingly subtle Planet Caravan. The guitar work on the album is a revelation for the time and that is despite or because of Tony Iommi’s injury. In his last day working at a sheet metal factory at the age of 17 he chopped off the top of his middle and ring fingers on his right hand, which was his fretting hand. He was told at the hospital that he would never play again but, determined not to give in, he fashioned prosthetics for the end of his fingers made from melted-down Fairy liquid bottles, and the rest is history. This album needs several very stiff drinks and the volume turned up as high as you dare.
Paul's notes:
I love politics, sport and music. So a man who in 1970 tried to be a pro US Footballer then wrote a deeply political album with beautiful music ticks every box for me.
What’s Going On is a ‘concept album’. Written from the point of view of a soldier coming back from Vietnam, each song segues into each other in a cycle, ending with a reprise of the title song.
Marvin Gaye has a voice I would die to have. But he also became, with this album, an artist who really mattered.
You’ll hear a mix of Jazz, Gospel and even classical music influences added to laid-back soul (aided, it is said, by heaps of marijuana and scotch).
And the words...as you listen to them think about how much what he said about injustice 50 years ago could still apply today
“Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what's going on”
Paddy's notes:
My school mate Dave's older brother has a lot to answer for in terms of my late teenage music choices (and indeed into most of my twenties and beyond...). While most of our fellow sixth formers were listening to U2 or the Cure, Dave and I were dipping in to his brother's blues, reggae and soul collection and branching out from there. I couldn't understand why others couldn't see that Free and Cream were simply miles better than anything since, or why anyone would listen to UB40 when Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer offered so much more. The Wailers featured heavily in our listening, but Exodus would have been dismissed as too commercial and easy to listen to. But as I've grown older, I've listened to it - and come to love it - more and more. From the crescendo-ing opening of Natural Mystic to the feel-good singalong One Love, the album is as close to perfect as I can imagine - a fantastic rhythm section supporting a sublime Marley. Time Magazine called it the best album of the 20th century. I'm not arguing.