A look at notable LPs released this month 50 years ago.
Parliament - Up for the Down Stroke
George Clinton's one-time R&B vocal group starts its transition into pure funk, with bassist Bootsy Collins laying down the groove on long tunes featuring chant-like choruses, including the hit title track.
This is Clinton's first album on Casablanca, and hints at what's soon to come, as he merges Parliament with his more psychedelic, experimental project, Funkadelic, to create an entirely new sound.
The Roxy Music singer's second solo LP finds him covering more classic tunes with varying degrees of success.
Your enjoyment of the LP depends on your love of Ferry's cool and often campy delivery. A soul man he's not, but that doesn't stop him from attempting Dobie Gray's "The 'In' Crowd" and Ike Turner's "Fingerpoppin'."
Ferry's version of Dylan's "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," however, sounds suitably sinister. But other tunes, Joe South's Elvis-covered "Walk a Mile in My Shoes," for example, just sound strange, given Ferry's idiosyncratic diction.
What seemed funny, or edgy, at the height of glam now comes across mostly as silly and overly self-conscious.
Short-handed as Neil's downer album, this one features lots of bleak imagery and three songs with the word "Blues" in the titles.
Of these, I find "Ambulance Blues" and "Vampire Blues" dull and Neil's Manson exploitation tune, "Revolution Blues," tasteless. The spare and brooding title track, meanwhile, is more interesting, and reminds me of John Lennon's output circa Plastic Ono Band.
"Walk On," on the other hand, is a great single, and the country-ish album opener, "Sea About the Sky," is gorgeous.
One of Stevie's string of 1970s masterpieces, this one is home to the funky "Boogie on Reggae Woman," the scathing (and funky) "You Haven't Done Nothin,'" and the beautiful ballad, "Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away." That's enough to add it to your collection right there.
Speaking of Stevie, this catching-up-with-the-times LP from Old Blue Eyes features the Voice on "You Are the Sunshine of My Life," which is great, but which also inexplicably fades out to the sound of Frank chanting "Light my fire, light my fire..." Creepy.
Elsewhere, Sinatra sings Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," Jim Croce's "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" and the Tony Orlando and Dawn hit, "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Around the Old Oak Tree."
Like the Bryan Ferry album above, your enjoyment of this one will depend on how you feel about the singer and on your tolerance for cheese.
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