Category: Reviews – Classics
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Rancid – st (7″ EP)
At this stage of their career, it’s almost impossible to envision Rancid as anything other than the four-piece ska/punk powerhouse which has been responsible for songs like “Roots Radicals,” “Ruby Soho,” “Bloodclot,” “Fall Back Down” and “Last One To Die”; they are that punk-identified pop institution. At this point in their career, the band is…
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Tangerine Dream – The Blue Years Studio Albums 1985-1987
I’ve only recently gotten into Tangerine Dream via their excellent soundtrack for the ‘Wages of Fear’ remake ‘Sorcerer’. So I really enjoyed reviewing this boxset. ‘The Blue Years’ is a value-for-money four-CD set comprising four albums released by Tangerine Dream between 1985 and 1987, a prolific period. The first, ‘Le Parc’, is excellent and includes…
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The Traveling Wilburys – Volume 1 (Picture Disc reissue LP)
The term “classic” gets thrown around a lot and, often, where the term isn’t actually deserved. A true, genuine-article classic is a thing that sets an enduring impression and standard to which others aspire, and/or would claim to be of a similar lineage; it’s an important portrait of a moment. The Traveling Wilburys’ first album…
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Urge Overkill – Saturation LP (reissue)
Quick history lesson: By 1992, Urge Overkill had already established itself both in the fairly unforgiving Chicago music scene and on the North American college radio circuit with the help of albums like Americruiser and The Supersonic Storybook. Not only that, the band has cut a fairly striking and peerless image; unlike so many other…
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Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards – Viking LP (reissue)
If the idea that a classic album is defined as ‘one which holds personal meaning for a listener’ can be taken as factual, then I can say confidently that Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards’ sophomore album, Viking, is one of the most important albums of my life; for me, it is a personal classic. I remember, for…
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Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards – s/t LP (reissue)
Those who remember that time period when all those Southern California punk bands who broke through in the early nineties got huge (like the Offspring, Green Day, NOFX and Rancid) remember what a big deal it was when Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards released their first album in 2001. Granted, they were not the first…
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Dead Kennedys – Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables LP
How does one qualify an album which is almost universally considered a lynchpin release for the musical genre it occupies and has incited a seemingly endless stream of arguments and upheaval on personal, political and social levels IN ADDITION TO causing a host of legal battles among the men responsible for creating and releasing it?…
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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Into The Great Wide Open (vinyl reissue)
Abraham Lincoln once said (to a delegation from the National Union League who were urging him to be their presidential candidate) that, “It is never wise to swap horses in mid-stream”. After the popular breakthrough that his solo album made in 1989, Tom Petty clearly took that adage to heart when it came time to…
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Tom Petty – Full Moon Fever LP
There’s no way to say for sure if the reason Tom Petty elected to launch his solo career with Full Moon Fever was because the singer felt like he had a surplus of songs that he didn’t want to bring to the Heartbreakers, or if he was just trying to make a point. If it…
