Ok, here's the next installment of my top 50. Admittedly, the music in this post is largely quite different to the music in the previous post, and some of it, you still probably won't have heard of, although it'll be a lot more like what I guess you'll have been expecting on this thread.
47. The Hoax – Humdinger (1997)Here is an album I bought at a blues festival. I just remember this amazing electric blues band being on stage, playing in a manner that it just seemed that was just so carefree and so brilliant, with their guitarists just firing off these amazing solos at seemingly arbitrary points in the songs, and yet still managing to make that one of the things that made them so incredible. It turns out it was part of a reunion tour, after ten years of doing other things. They even did a cover of Come Together which grooved so hard that it was unreal. As a live band, the feel was totally electric.
And you know what, the album is exactly the same, only I can make out what the singer is singing (I was quite far back and things were a bit jumbled, and the five pints of mild didn’t help either). The songs still have these totally obnoxious solos being belted out at arbitrary points in a way that just makes the songs truly wonderful. It’s not a particularly weird album, but it is an incredibly fun one, and when I listen to it, all productivity goes out the window (unless you count over-exuberant air guitar as productive).
There is nothing I do not love about this album, and would heartily recommend it to anyone who likes all out insane on the groove front. The cover of Superstition on this album is also brilliant, with wah-guitar as the clavinet part and the bass feeling a lot more solid than it does on the original. This is most definite a highlight of my music collection.
Reccomended Tracks: High Expectations, Superstition
46. Rush – A Farewell To Kings (1977)Rush is a band I do enjoy a lot. Ideally, I’d have liked to include Hemispheres and had this album and that counting as a double, which would push this a lot higher, but to be fair, I love this album enough for it to have made this list on its own merit.
I do find that the way Cygnus X1 ends is a little sudden, which is why I’d have loved to have carried it on through Hemispheres, which would have completed it, but this song has some wonderful moments too. I particularly love the track Xanadu for its feel and just the way it feels so impressive, even in the acoustic sections. Closer To The Heart and the title track are also wonderful, and really quite beautiful to my mind too.
I remember when I was getting into this album, I mentioned it to my father’s girlfriend, and she remembered (back in the day) buying the vinyl of this, and she too waxed lyrical about how the first song had this wonderful introduction which went on and on. This was most definitely an album I had not expected her to own or even to like, but it was just good to talk about it. I really like this album, and I think it is a masterpiece.
Recommended Tracks: Xanadu, A Farewell To Kings
45. Steve Hackett – Voyage Of The Acolyte (1975)This album is often regarded as the best album Genesis never made, and I can fully see why. A lot of it consisted of ideas that Hackett couldn’t get into actual Genesis albums, and fortunately, they ended up being used here. I remember my stepfather giving me a copy of this album, and it took me ages to get into it. Originally, only Ace Of Wands clicked, and I felt the rest was a little uneventful in comparison, although Ace was absolutely stellar. Eventually, the rest did also click, I think about the same sort of time I started to appreciate more acoustic and classical sides to music, and I am now convinced that the album is indeed fantastic.
The aforementioned Ace Of Wands begins the album in an absolute guitar-driven time-switch feast with Mike Rutherford doing Mike Rutherford things on the bass. There is a lot of acoustic work throughout the rest of this album, as well as a few silly moments (A Tower Struck Down, here’s looking at you), but then Shadow Of The Hierophant comes on. This last song, which thankfully, Hackett has begun playing live again, is mostly very acoustic, with occasional bursts of extreme grandiosity, building to a wonderful little section of fanfare-like melody which ends, allowing the finale to begin. The finale does one thing and one thing only. It builds. At the point it is now epic enough to be considered a really good finish, it keeps building. It gets to the point it is the most insane thing on the album, and it keeps building. The drums pretty much start soloing, it keeps building. Bass pedals kick in. The room is now shaking (certainly if played live, the room is rumbling so much it no longer makes sense), and the music keeps building.
It seems like a shame Shadow Of The Hierophant was left off Foxtrot, although to be fair, it just wouldn’t be right to have something on there which would have the potential to rival the end of Supper’s Ready just through sheer, mind-numbing pomp. By no means do I consider this quality a bad thing, if anything, it’s the main strength here.
Recommended Tracks: Ace Of Wands, Shadow Of The Hierophant