First 10 - Golden Age Captain America

I really really wanted to like Golden Age Captain America comics. I've always been a fan of the Cap, and I don't mind reading old-timey comics. The problem with the old-timey Captain America comics is that they generally fall into the realm of thinly veiled war propaganda. It's not that I didn't support the troops in WWII and it's not that I don't enjoy watching the star-spangled man punch Hitler in the face (something he does on a lot of covers, but not so much in the actual comics), it's just that I don't need to be sold on the war at home for a war that has been over since before my father was born.

The early Captain America comics were pretty standard Golden Age fare. I know that Stan Lee got his start with these comics, but he wasn't yet the Silver Age marvel that we all know and love. Basically, Golden Age Captain America shows shades of the things I would eventually love about the series, but they don't fully manifest themselves here.

The most satisfying parts of the first 10 Golden Age Captain America comics were the things that held over into his reanimation in the Silver Age. This includes his origins in the super soldier program, his nemesis relationship with Red Skull, and his costume, which has changed surprisingly little over the years (the shield, of course, has changed, and I prefer the new one). Anyway, I didn't enjoy Golden Age Captain America nearly as much as I wanted to. I'm sure I'll read this series eventually, but it won't be next on my list. Here's where it falls in the standings.

1. Batman
2. Amazing Spider-Man
3. Fantastic Four
4. Booster Gold
5. The Punisher
6. Golden Age Green Lantern
7. The Avengers
8. Golden Age Captain America
9. Golden Age Blue Beetle
10. Aquaman

The Breeders - Head to Toe

This three track 10" EP features two covers and one original track by Josephine Wiggs. The Josephine Wiggs track, "Head to Toe," opens the album with a garage rock squonk. This is as primitive as The Breeders have ever sounded, and it's an interesting little jag.

The cover of "Shocker in Gloomtown," a Guided by Voices track, is fairly nondescript. It's a decent cover, but it's over before you knew it began.

Sebadoh's "Freed Pig" rounds out the album with layers upon layers of fuzz. It's a nice track, but by the time this EP was done, I found myself wishing I was listening to Pod or Last Splash. Head to Toe is a pretty good EP, but is really only necessary for Breeders completists. For the rest of us, the band's studio output should more than suffice.

Bread - The Best of Bread

Bread is one of the greatest soft rock bands in history. There's really something special about that 1970's AM Radio sound, and Bread rocks it softly as well as anyone ever has.

My two favorite Bread tunes are "If" and "Baby I'm A Want You," and they're both included on this compilation. Side A of this album is filled with Bread's softer material, and they actually rock it out a little on the B-Side. Most notably, Bread churns out an honest-to-goodness Skynyrd-esque rocker in "Mother Freedom," which proves that they aren't just wussies who are afraid to really rock it out (a common perception of soft rock that I have been trying to stifle for years). Although Bread can crank out the rock, I prefer their more sensitive material. I just can't get enough of that wispy 1970's sound. Just go and listen to "If" and try to tell me it isn't awesome.

David Bowie - Changesonebowie

Changesonebowie is a straightforward compilation of David Bowie hits. It takes no chances and only includes songs you already know, even if you don't know that you know anything about David Bowie. While it was an important release in its day, there are several more exhaustive Bowie compilations. Not least of these is Changesbowie, which compiles both this record and its counterpart Changestwobowie. Anyway, if you want a small sampling of Bowie's greatness, this is a decent record to own, but just know that there's better to be had.

David Bowie - Heroes 12" Promo Single

This white label 12" promo has two cuts of the same track. The A-side has the full 6 minute cut of "Heroes" and the B-side has a radio edit which is half that length. The radio edit sounds slightly different than the original cut, and I'm not just talking about the fact that it's a full three minutes shorter. It sounds different for reasons I can't put my finger on.

There's really nothing I can say about this single that I haven't said about the album it was taken from. This entry is mainly just a space filler to show that I own this record. This blog is as much a personal record of my music collection as it is a public service where you can read what some guy you've never met thinks about albums that were made before he was born.

David Bowie - Heroes

Having struck upon something brilliant with Low, Bowie and Eno decided to not mess with success. Heroes is another record with vocals on one side and experimental electronic instrumentals on the other. While it follows in the mold laid out by Low, I would argue that Heroes improves on the formula.

My argument for Heroes' superiority lies in the strength of its vocal side. The instrumentals are a wash. I honestly don't know what makes one ambient track better than another. The title track on Heroes is among the very best songs Bowie has ever written. There's something so enchanting about the rhythm of the song as well as the little nuanced instrumental parts hidden in the background. Also, I really like "Sons of the Silent Age" because it sounds a bit like a throwback to Bowie's earlier material. "Joe the Lion" and "Blackout" are romping rockers, which Bowie has never done enough of. The A-side of Heroes is just better than the A-Side of Low. As for the B-side, I'll leave that for people who know anything about ambient electronica, because I don't.

David Bowie - Low

Low is the first part of a beautiful friendship between David Bowie and Brian Eno. When I first dropped the needle on this record, I thought, "This sounds like early Roxy Music." It wasn't until I did a little research that I found out that I was right on the money.

The first half of this album is a sort of post-glam experimental rock, and the back half is populated by ambient electronica typical of Eno. While Diamond Dogs found Bowie wandering a bit, he hits on something solid with Low. Every track has a purpose, and although I tend to prefer his Ziggy Stardust output, you can't argue with how solid and driven this album sounds. This is one of many times in which Bowie successfully reinvented himself, and as his reinventions go, this is one of the better ones. It's certainly better than his 1980's pantsuit years.

David Bowie - Diamond Dogs

Diamond Dogs marks the end of an era. Before he cut this record, Bowie fired the Spiders from Mars and dropped his Ziggy Stardust persona. Unsurprisingly, Diamond Dogs sounds like a transitional album. As such, it's significantly less stable than its predecessors.

There are definitely some tracks worth hearing on Diamond Dogs. Most notably, the title track, "Sweet Thing," and "Rebel Rebel," are worthy of Bowie's earlier work. Unfortunately, there are a few disappointments on this album as well. I found "1984" tedious and "Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family" odd for oddness' sake. Although it suffers from unevenness, Diamond Dogs is still worth owning, provided you already own Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust.

David Bowie - Pin Ups

This album tends to turn critics a number of different shades of angry purple. After Bowie had taken two gigantic steps forward with Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars and one very small step backward with Aladdin Sane, he seemingly catapulted himself a zillion steps backward on Pin Ups. I tend to not agree, but I'm one of those weirdos who wouldn't have freaked out when Dylan went electric.

Anyway, Pin Ups is good for what it is. The liner notes explain that this album features David Bowie covering some of the artists that influenced his work. It's an interesting idea, and can't be compared to Bowie's other albums because it was never intended to be. There are a couple odd choices on the album, such as the bafflingly bad cover of The Easybeats' "Friday on My Mind" (the original is a great song and highly recommended to those who have never heard it).

While there may be a few covers that fall a bit flat, the cover of The Pretty Things' "Rosalyn" is simply superb. It certainly passed the "will my two-year old daughter dance to this?" test. Anyway, for those of you who simply can't abide Bowie stepping back into the 60's right when he was reinventing and redefining the 70's, you can skip Pin Ups. For those of you who are a little more open minded, there are some good things happening on this album.

David Bowie - Aladdin Sane

On Aladdin Sane, Bowie takes a turn for the weird, which is really saying something given how odd he had been up to this point in his career. You need look no further than the title track for evidence of this album's weirdness. It has a sort of Schoenbergian complexity and lack of harmonic beauty. While Aladdin Sane occasionally breaks into glorious simplicity, as it does on "Jean Genie," there are moments of pure frustration of this album.

While you certainly can't fault Bowie for his sonically diverse approach to this album, the overall effect just isn't good enough to place Aladdin Sane on the level of the two albums that preceded it. That being said, the cover art for this album is among the greatest ever made.

David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

This is classic Bowie. While his other albums may have slightly stronger sets of songs (Hunky Dory in particular), Bowie pulls off his androgynous alien persona better on this album than any other.

Perhaps most notable is the title track and its unforgettable opening riff. The song is grandiose, theatrical, and completely awesome. It rocks without ever cranking the amp up to 11, and is decadent without approaching the absurd. Equally amazing is "Suffragette City," a song my two year old daughter rocks out to whenever I put it on. Not bad for a 40-year-old song.

As it was with Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars straddles the line between glam and pop, alternately appeasing and indulging both. As much as he is a master of songwriting, David Bowie is a master of genre, and that is nowhere more apparent than it is here.

David Bowie - Hunky Dory

While Space Oddity and The Man Who Sold the World were nice slices of vintage 1970's Bowie, they didn't have the hit potential of Hunky Dory. This is where Bowie managed to strike a balance between his general weirdness and solid rock and roll that appeals to both androgynous beings from outer space as well as the general populous. Many of Bowie's best songs from the 70's are on this album. "Changes," "Oh! You Pretty Things," "Life on Mars?" and "Kooks" are all fantastic, and those are just highlights from Side 1.

Hunky Dory takes the psychedelic folk of Bowie's earlier work and adds hefty dose of pop to the mix, which makes for a tasty glam concoction which is neither too heavy nor too light in its cosmic or sexual themes. If you've ever wondered what glam was all about, this is as good a starting place as anything in the T. Rex or Roxy Music stable. Pound for pound this is probably my all-time favorite David Bowie album.

David Bowie - The Man Who Sold the World

Record cover aficionados will probably know The Man Who Sold the World more for the cover in which Bowie is wearing a dress and lounging seductively on a settee than this one in which he is performing a fairly impressive kick. I bought this alternate cover edition because it came with a poster featuring the cover art, and that selfsame poster hung on all the walls of every crappy bachelor apartment I ever lived in.

The Man Who Sold the World is an interesting listen from start to finish. There isn't a lot of greatest hits compilation fodder on this album, but it still forms a very cohesive whole. The Man Who Sold the World rocks harder in general than every other Bowie album up to this point. Just look at that high leg kick again. Bowie is totally rocking it out. I really liked "Running Gun Blues" and "All the Madmen," but they're just the tracks that stood out to me. That doesn't mean they're necessarily the best this album has to offer. I can't think of another album that is as generally great as this one that doesn't offer any true standout tracks. This is a moneyball album. It's chocked full of high VORP low salary players and manages to make it into the playoffs while seemingly coming out of nowhere.

David Bowie - Space Oddity

This is the real birth of David Bowie as I know and love him. This album really shows Bowie growing into his glam persona and the concept of glam really solidifying as a musical genre (and when I say glam, if you think of hair metal I will punch you in the ear. The two are only linked by the fact that Quiet Riot covered a Slade song against their will. Other than that, the two genres are unrelated).

The best song on this album is the title track. Its outer space theme really sets the tone for Bowie's eventual turn as Ziggy Stardust, his androgynous space travelling stage persona. Throughout the rest of the album, there are a number of musical genres working together. Everything from folk to psychedelia is thrown into the mix (does Motley Crue sound like either folk or psychedelia? Nope, didn't think so. Glam and hair metal are as unrelated as speed metal and country). Everything after the title track, which opens the album, blends together into a semi-forgettable glam mash, but it still makes for a decent listen and a landmark turn in Bowie's career. There are certainly more amazing albums in the David Bowie discography, but that's less of a knock on Space Oddity than an indication of the heights Bowie would eventually reach. For the record, I'll take Space Oddity over anything Bowie did in the 80's. 

Boomtown Rats - The Fine Art of Surfacing

So it's been a while since I last updated this blog. That was mainly due to the fact that both of my vintage receivers are crapping out on me. My Marantz 2252B has a bad speaker relay which causes one of the channels to cut out. My Pioneer AX-15 is developing a nasty hum, which drives me crazy. Anyway, I bought my very first T-amp, a Lepai, which is working well so far and may be the temporary solution to all my problems (I really need to get the Marantz fixed. It sounds like freaking butter when it's working properly). So I'm back listening to my vinyl and loving it.

The Fine Art of Surfacing is the first thing I listened to with my new setup. Here's the thing about this album: "I Don't Like Mondays" is so amazing and strange, both in its origins and intent, that it overshadows everything else on this album. Sure, there are a lot of great and/or interesting songs ("Someone's Looking at You" and "Having my Picture Taken" in particular) on this album, but I ultimately don't remember them when the needle hits the return track. "I Don't Like Mondays" and its story of a young psychopath is all you need to know about this album. Now that school shootings are a near weekly occurrence  it seems a shame that we can't at least turn each tragedy into art as well as Bob Geldof did here.