Album Reviews

This month, AnalogPlanet launches The Rear View Mirror, an ongoing series extensively reviewing notable albums from the past. Entries, which will be posted at least once a month, are limited to one album per artist per year. And what better way to launch it than with a 50th anniversary review of Yoko Ono’s Fly?

In May of 1913, just one year before the start of the first World War, Igor Stravinsky premiered his third ballet with the Ballets Russes in Paris: Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring). The premiere would go down in history for a number of reasons, primarily due to the unruly Parisian audience that descended into what could be referred to as a riot. What was so scandalous about the Rite? Stravinsky, along with choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, wanted to evoke a picture of Russia from the distant, pagan past. A story of an ancient pagan rite where a young maiden would be chosen to dance herself to death to appease the ancestors and secure a bountiful harvest. The music, while stylistically not a huge departure from Stravinsky’s two previous and successful Parisian ballets, was dissonant, brutal, and rhythmically disorienting. Likewise, Nijinsky’s choreography was rigid, and was meant to mimic the flat, two-dimensional style of prehistoric paintings. The audience that night was not having it, but their uproar helped launch the Rite into infamy, helping it to become one of the most talked about and often performed works of the 20th century.

Note: The SACD review appeared here May of 2004. A new LP, mastered by Steve Hoffman has just been issued. Hoffman used the original 15ips Pye stereo master mixes played back on a vintage (1964)vacuum tubed Ampex MX-35. Enjoy!

Shortly after their 1970 sophomore album Fun House’s release, Detroit proto-punk legends the Stooges played the Goose Lake Festival in Jackson, Michigan, 80 miles west of Detroit. Intended to be a Midwest Woodstock of sorts, with acts like the Small Faces, Jethro Tull, and Chicago (among many more) the 3-day festival drew 200,000 attendees over a stifling weekend. The environment became tense; in this LP’s liner notes, Jaan Uhelszki writes of 500 people attending the Open City LSD bad trip rescue tent, with countless others also being stoned on PCP masquerading as cocaine. Still, the festival itself was well-organized. Bands played on a rotating stage, were limited to 45-minute sets without exception, and a six-foot fence and trench blocked performer/crowd interaction.

One of the most underrated of all ‘60s bands, the puppy-dog earnest The Lovin’ Spoonful sounds better and better as the 20th Century fades from view. This was their 3rd album, issued late in 1966 and the first containing all originals, many of which are stamped indelibly into the brains of Baby Boomers. The band combined folk, rock, jugband, country and of course, the influence of The Beatles.

As you know, digital is "perfect", so it shall remain a mystery why Part 1 of the Rolling Stones Box Set feature originally published on musicangle.com in 2011 got lost in the conversion to analogplanet.com. Part II made it. The omission was discovered recently when a reader asked about the recent ABKCO individual clear vinyl reissues. He was told to read the two part story because according to ABKCO, the new clear vinyl reissues were sourced from the files that produced the box set's excellent results, but of course Part 1 was nowhere to be found on the site. So belatedly, here it is.-Ed.

American Decca's inept handling of The Who (and to a lesser degree the band's inability to produce frothy pop fare) prevented The Who from breaking in the Unites States until Tommy --and even then it was the pure force of the music and the nascent FM “underground radio” scene that spelled success, with little help from the label.