Day 0851 - Homework

 Daft Punk "Homework" (1997) 

DP grew from the ashes of the guitar-based band 'Darling'.  One critic slagged them off as "Daft, punky trash" which at least set up Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter with a name for their subsequent band.

The duo moved away from guitars and into synthesizers, drum machines and samplers.  The duo released singles "Da Funk" and "Rolling and Scratching", they went back into the studio to record some more singles but came away with enough material to constitute an album.

The band leaned reasonably heavily on funk sounds, nice deep bass grooves and catchy wah-wah synth hooks.   The tracks definitely follow the dance music format of slowly building on repetitive loops, but the music is catchy, memorable and creative beyond that.

 

Day 0642 - Playing With Fire

Spacemen 3 "Playing With Fire" (1989)

I honestly don't have much to report on this one.   A band folding in the aural assault of the Stooges with psychedelia, drone, and the harsh industrial machine-rock of Suicide.  The music is largely abrasive ambience and swirly shoe-gazey psychedelia, with some beefy fuzzed out guitars making an occasional appearance.

I didn't hate it, but won't be rushing to revisit it.   A couple of the members went on to form the band Spiritualized, whom I've heard of, but haven't heard.  I notice that 2 or 3 of their albums are in the list, so I'll get to them.

Day 0622 - Tracy Chapman

Tracy Chapman "Tracy Chapman" (1988)

Chapman was introduced to the media at the time when they were invited to a showcase by Natalie Merchant from 10,000 Maniacs.   Tracy also played at this showcase, and by all accounts, she impressed.   Once she had recorded this debut album, she was given a chance to play a concert for Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday which further helped to get her music quickly out in the public eye/ear.

It's a pretty strong selection of songs.  To my tastes, it works best when the band/studio side of things is pared back, leaving the songs to rely more on Chapman's guitar and voice (or just her voice in the case of the effective acapella track "Behind the Wall").

The songs range from passionate folk and protests to more country sounds and just overall really good 'singer-songrwriter' stuff.

Day 0591 - Sign o' the Times

Prince "Sign o' the Times " (1987)

 
Prince had been working on a double album with the Revolution "Dream Factory", and a solo album that he'd planned to release under the feminine pseudonym 'Camille'.  He ended up disbanding the Revolution and scrapping the Camille album.  Combining the material from these projects with some new songs he planned a triple album "Crystal Ball".   This was vetoed by the record company who baulked at releasing that much material simultaneously, and Prince was left to cherry-pick tracks for a single album.

You'd think that choosing from such a large pool of songs this would be a 'home run' of an album.  Instead, I feel as though the songs being drawn from 3 disparate projects over a number of years led to a bit of a lack of cohesion across the material.

There are plenty of good moments here, and Prince explores every genre that he'd investigated up till that point (and then some), but as a whole it just doesn't quite hit the spot for me the way that '1999' or 'Purple Rain' did.

Day 0538 - Purple Rain

Prince & the Revolution "Purple Rain" (1984) - got it

Prince set aside his sleazy synth-funk to put forward his pop opus, "Purple Rain".  This soundtrack to Prince's semi-autbiographical film of the same name would go on to become the third highest selling soundtrack (such as it was) of all time.

Prince lays down some catchy tunes with his usual ear for skilled and effective musical arrangements, overlaid with his wild, desperate vocals.  This was Prince's shot at the bigtime so he even set about cleaning up his sex-heavy lyrics... mostly.  He couldn't help himself, so the beautiful, melodic "Darling Nikki" features reference to masturbating with a magazine and (apparently) helped kickstart the "Parental Advisory" stickers that Al Gore's wife and her 'good taste' crusaders spearheaded.

Interestingly, the title track was originally aimed to be a country song, and a duet with Stevie Nicks.  She said that Prince sent her a 10 minute instrumental demo with a request for her to write lyrics, but she balked at the task.  It was eventually reworked as the epic psychedelic gospel pop rock track that it is.

Day 0134 - The Beatles (AKA 'The White Album')

The Beatles "The Beatles" (AKA 'The White Album") (1968) - got it

The band were not on best terms by this point, and were clearly heading off more and more in their own creative directions here.  They still had enough input on each other's music that it still sounds like a band.

Lennon and McCartney deliver some great cuts between them such as "Julia", "Happiness is a Warm Gun", "Helter Skelter", "Back in the USSR" etc etc, with "Sexy Sadie" being shameless ripped off by Radiohead a few years later for 'Karma Police'.
Ringo contributed a song too, but the real star songwriting-wise is George with the beautiful 'while my guitar gently weeps' and 'long long long' that really sounds like it could have been released last week... possibly because a few bands are still copying/being influenced by that sound at the moment.

The band mostly eschew their former psychedelic and baroque pop sensibilities (outside of a few tracks) for a more stripped down blues and rock sound.

Basically you know it's a good collection of songs when everyone is trying to use/copy/reference them; the most famous example probably being Danger Mouse's "the Grey Album" which combines this album with Jay-Z's "Black Album".