I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
My plan (amended).
- 1 record per week & at least 2 complete listens.
- A quick blog post for each, highlighting the important details and a quick background story.
- No rating scale - just an effort to expand my appreciation of diverse forms of music.
Album # 453
Album Title: Strictly Business
Artist: EPMD
Released: June, 1988
My age at release: 22
How familiar was I with it before this week: Not at all
Song I am putting on my Spotify Mix: Strictly Business
Great Lyric:
"The rhythmatic style, keeps the rhyme flowin'
Good friends already bitin', without you knowin'
Can't understand, why your body's gettin' weaker
Then you realize it's the voice from the speaker
The mind become delirious, situation serious
Don't get ill, go and get curious."
(It's My Thing)
There is a Canadian documentary series currently streaming on Netflix called Hip-Hop Evolution. A shingles diagnosis last summer kept me housebound for three days and provided a perfect opportunity for binging television programs. Season One was a fascinating journey into the history of hip-hop as the first rhythmic rappers emerged from the borough of South Bronx in New York City. By the conclusion of the final episode, my appreciation and understanding of this art form had grown exponentially.
A consequence of my recently enhanced admiration of the genre was an enthusiastic approach to Strictly Business by EPMD. Previously, when hip-hop records have appeared on The 500, my attitude has been cautious curiosity. After all, I'm a 54 year old white male who grew up in two communities that were, for the most part, racially and culturally homogeneous. Case in point, when attending the elementary grades in Kingsville, Ontario, in the late 70s, an Indian boy named Ranjeeth Sethi was the only person of colour in the entire school. In high school, his father was the chemistry teacher and the only staff member who looked different from every other adult. So, as a guy who grew up immersed in the world of rock, new wave and punk performed by artists who looked like us and, for the most part, shared our background, I hesitanted to take a stand or voice an opinion about hip-hop music, until recently.
Strictly Business is the debut record from EPMD (Erick and Parrish Making Dollars). The band, a duo from Brentwood, New York, features emcees Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith who worked on the record with DJ K La Boss. The album was not commercially successful when it was released, peaking at #80 on the charts but has since earned gold certification (500,000 units sold) and has garnered significant critical attention, including its addition to the list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
The beats are playful, funky and fun with samples from many classic records from a variety of genres -- Jungle Boogie by Kool & the Gang, Fly like an Eagle from the Steve Miller Band and the Eric Clapton version of Bob Marley's reggae hit I Shot the Sherriff to name a few.
Listen to the first 30 seconds of the opening track Strictly Business and you will know immediately if this for you. Personally, the sound is right up my alley and I've streamed it on Spotify repeatedly all week, including three listens today. Perhaps, my decision to watch Hip-Hop Evolution has broadened my appreciation for this genre but I suspect the terrific music would have won me over anyway. Check it out!
I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
My plan (amended).
- 1 record per week & at least 2 complete listens.
- A quick blog post for each, highlighting the important details and a quick background story.
- No rating scale - just an effort to expand my appreciation of diverse forms of music.
Album # 454
Album Title: Love it to Death
Artist: Alice Cooper
Released: March, 1971
My age at release: 5
How familiar was I with it before this week: A little
Song I am putting on my Spotify Mix: Is It My Body? (Suggested by educator Matthew Oldridge on Twitter)
Great Lyric:
"
Lines form on my face and hands.
Lines form from the ups and downs.
I'm in the middle without any plans,
I'm a boy and I'm a man.
I'm eighteen!"
It was a weekday evening in 1974 when I first heard the name Alice Cooper. I was getting a ride home from a night attending after attending Cub Scouts. I was wedged in the backseat of a parent volunteer's car when the kid next to me started talking about watching Alice Cooper on television.
"Who's she?" I asked naively.
"He's a man!" he shot back scornfully. "Everybody knows that!"
In retrospect, I guarantee that kid had an older brother who had tipped him to the Cooper persona. I'm also sure the kid grew up to be a pretentious hipster, sipping unnecessarily hoppy craft-beer through his "ironic" Van Dyke beard while misquoting Che Guevara and extolling the virtues of a vegetarian ecofeminism.
I was a casual Alice Cooper fan until 1980 and the release of the album Flush the Fashion. It was a record on which Cooper made a foray into the new wave/pop-punk sound and it coincided with a time in my life when I secured my first part-time job and had disposable income to build my record collection.
In early 1985, I went through an "Alice Cooper phase" after a chum, Jim, let me borrow his extensive collection. I taped everything he had from the back-catalogue, including this album, but spent most of that spring listening to Welcome to my Nightmare, which is still my favourite record from the Cooper discography. It contains the song Only Women Bleed, an incredibly underrated ballad with a message that is frequently misunderstood. On first blush, it can be misconstrued as misogynistic when, in truth, Cooper was sympathetic to the plight of a woman in an abusive relationship. At first, I was really surprised that Love it to Death and not Nightmare made this list.
Love it to Death grew on me over the multiple listens I gave it this week. It is a record with a connection to my hometown of London, Ontario, as it was produced by former Fanshawe College educator, Juno Award winner and Order of Canada recipient, the late Jack Richardson.
The second track on the record, I'm Eighteen, was the first hit single for the band and is one of Cooper's best known tracks. However, I can't hear it anymore without thinking about an episode from the television dramedy Freaks and Geeks when guidance counsellor Mr. Rosso sings it to his students in order to "connect with them".
I encourage you to listen to this record. It is considered a foundational record in the development of the heavy metal sound in the 1970s. I also recommend listening to this episode of The 500 Podcast with special guest, the legendary Shep Gordon. He is Alice Cooper's longtime manager and was the subject of the fascinating 2013 documentary Supermensch. His first-hand insights into the creation or this record are riveting.
I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
My plan (amended).
- 1 record per week & at least 2 complete listens.
- A quick blog post for each, highlighting the important details and a quick background story.
- No rating scale - just an effort to expand my appreciation of diverse forms of music.
Album # 455
Album Title: How Will the Wolf Survive?
Artist: Los Lobos
Released: October, 1984
My age at release: 19
How familiar was I with it: Not at all
Song I am putting on my Spotify Mix: Will the Wolf Survive?
Great Lyric:
"
Drifting by the roadside
Climbs a strong and aging face
Wants to make some honest pay
Losing to the rainstorm
He's got two strong legs to guide him
Two strong arms keep him alive
Will the wolf survive?
This journey through The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time has inspired me to post over 80 times this year. It's helped me as a writer and I've discovered some incredible music, including this entry How Will the Wolf Survive? by Los Lobos. Like many my age, Los Lobos was a band that appeared on my radar when they hit the popular music charts with the song La Bamba. It was a remake of the 1958 song by Ritchie Valens and appeared on the soundtrack to the film of the same name.
It was the summer of 1987 when the film and song were released and I was life-guarding at Thames Pool in London, Ontario, one of many outdoor swimming facility run by our Parks and Recreation Department. Being a lifeguard seemed incredibly cool and I'd hoped I would get a job at a beach on Lake Erie or Huron. I pictured myself, positioned majestically atop a lifeguard tower, shirtless and bronze-skinned, surrounded by a landscape of bikini-clad beauties. At the pool, the reality was hours of boredom, standing on a concrete deck surrounded by screaming children. I did get a hell of a tan though.
During swimming sessions, daily from 1:00 - 4:30 and 6:00 - 8:00, we would pipe the local hit-radio station through a half-dozen speakers lining the outside of the pool-house. In retrospect, the Top 40 was reasonably entertaining and quite diverse but, by summer's end, I'd had my fill of Whitesnake, U2, Bon Jovi, Genesis, Whitney Houston and definitely the song La Bamba.
I pigeon-holed Los Lobos as a band that did Mexican folk songs. They do - but, that barely scratches the surface of the complex variety of styles they explore on this terrific record. This is a band that is difficult to quantify. They have been called Chicano Rock, Roots Rock, Latino Rock, Tex Mex, Country Rock, Americana, Brown Eyed Soul, Heartland Rock and even Cowpunk. How Will the Wolf Survive? contains influences from R&B, Blues, Zydeco and traditional Mexican Folk music. It is one of those records, like Queen's A Night at the Opera, that switches genre with every song. Much like the weather in San Diego - if you don't like it, just wait and it will change.
The title track addresses issues faced by Mexican immigrants in the United States and is as poignant today as it was when it was penned in the early 80s. I'm glad this journey led me to this record. I see this band in an entirely different light and now, 32 years later, I might not mind hearing La Bamba again - but probably not.
A consequence of my recently enhanced admiration of the genre was an enthusiastic approach to Strictly Business by EPMD. Previously, when hip-hop records have appeared on The 500, my attitude has been cautious curiosity. After all, I'm a 54 year old white male who grew up in two communities that were, for the most part, racially and culturally homogeneous. Case in point, when attending the elementary grades in Kingsville, Ontario, in the late 70s, an Indian boy named Ranjeeth Sethi was the only person of colour in the entire school. In high school, his father was the chemistry teacher and the only staff member who looked different from every other adult. So, as a guy who grew up immersed in the world of rock, new wave and punk performed by artists who looked like us and, for the most part, shared our background, I hesitanted to take a stand or voice an opinion about hip-hop music, until recently. 
