Aretha Franklin has long been my all time favorite vocalist. There just is no one else even close. When she sang the heaven's opened up. Her voice a window to her soul. Somehow you can hear ever single sell in her body coming together and pushing those big notes out. She was and always will be the undistributed Queen of Soul. That being said. This is the album that gave her that title. There is no other recording that I am aware of that equals the depth and heart of this record. as much of a fan of Aretha's that I was, I never had an album. I had her box set and numerous singles on various compilations. For some reason, I thought it was all told there, in the hits. Thanks again to this ...

Admittedly, I am embarrassed, as a guitarist to say that I have spent very little time with the Hendrix catalog. My Hendrix knowledge primarily has come from his greatest hits. Based on that, I was not a fan. I appreciated what he did and how connected he was to his instrument and how far he pushed it. It was still dated, raw and chaotic for my taste. In doing this project, the first albums we came to was Are You Experienced followed by Electric Ladyland, my opinion was largely left unchanged. However, my appreciation was deepened. Just by the look of this album, I figured this was going to be my least favorite. It just looked like it was going to be even more acid rocky. I was quite wrong. ...

I can say this, this is not my favorite Young album. Never was. There are plenty of great moments, The Needle and the Damage Done, Old Man, Harvest, Heart of Gold and the opener, Out on the weekend, which kicks off the whole album with the line, "Think I'll pack it in and buy a pick up." All are some of his finest moments ever put to record. I think the opening line sums up Neil perfectly. This is a guy who does what he does because he has no other choice. If he didn't create, he would surly explode, but he could care less about the whole rock star thing. He certainly doesn't care much for labels, critics or even fans. He is an artist and he creates what he creates, you can come along for ...

This is punk. It's always hard to judge punk from a musical perspective. Punk is visceral, emotional, political, but seldom musical. The Clash are a little different. They could actually play their instruments. They had some knowledge of music and musical history. What's more, they knew a few other genres besides just punk and rock. This is still pretty close to ground zero for punk. I'm not even sure it had a name yet, but it was close. The Ramones debut came out less than a year before this and Never Mind the Bullocks wasn't out for a few more months after this. You can actually hear a bit of an evolution of the genre listening to these 3 albums back to back. Let me get back to ...

I have a little project for everyone. Over the next week or so listen to these albums by Bob Dylan and The Beatles. These are arguable the greatest pop artists of all time. The songwriting alone is so great, so genius that you may not recover from the experience unscathed. As you listen take notice and pay attention to all the details. The songwriting, the performances. Notice how strong the melodies are and how abundant. Catchy hooks in the vocal, the guitar and even the bass and drums. Lines that stick in your head and heart. Listen to the lyrics. How intelligent. The elegant turn of phrase, the maturity of the rhymes. Listen to the production, the choice of instruments, the use of ...

As far as songwriters go in popular music, there is Bob Dylan, Lennon and McCartney and Paul Simon and then there's everyone else. This album kicks off with the title track. If that was the only thing that Lennon ever wrote, he would probably still be in that first statement. It's that big of a song and that big of a statement. It's really a song about communism and total anarchy when you get down to it, but it's so sweet people don't see it that way. That is really powerful songwriting.Of course the title track was not a revelation for me when listening to this album. Embarrassingly, I had not ever listened to this album from start to finish before this exorcise. So what did I come away ...

First a note about Zeppelin. If you scoured the internet for lists of the greatest rock bands ever you could distill it down to a few.. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, AC/DC (yes AC/DC) and Led Zeppelin. For sure the top 3 are The Beatles, The Stones and Zep. Depending on the list, the day of the week and which sun is in the 7th house any of those could be in the number one spot. Which album of Zeppelin's is their best also changes on a regular bases. I certainly didn't need to listen to this album to write this, but I did anyway. Mainly because part of the project is revisiting things that I haven't heard in years. One thing stoof out to me that I don't think I ever noticed ...

I am pretty sure no one needs to listen to this album to know how great Otis Redding is. But let me say that Otis died when he was 26 years old. He certainly sounds much older and maturer than that. In the 9 short years that he was active, Otis built a reputation for being one of the greatest singers of all time. Q magazine ranked him number 4, after Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and Elvis... nuff said. He is also my favorite male singer, Aretha still has the top spot on my favorites of all time. The one thing that Otis had over the others on the list is that Otis was also a song writer. A pretty good one too. Dock of the Bay, Try a Little Tenderness, Respect to name a few. In addition he ...

This didn't require any effort at all. I know every little sound on this album. Been listening to it since it came out and it was played in heavy rotation on my turntable growing up. Going back and listening to it now shows exactly why AC/DC survived as long as they did. Their music is absolutely timeless. Any of these songs could have been on their first or their last album. AC/DC through 40 some odd years, never changed, evolved or grew in any way at all. They just kept doing the same thing year after year, album after album. But their sound was so great and universal and their grooves inescapable that it didn't matter. Almost everybody can listen to this album and get into it. It isn't ...