Great Album

November 1: MTV Unplugged Live in NY by Nirvana was released in 1994

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

nirvana-unplugged-in-new-york-cover

This is not easy listening, it’s uneasy listening!

MTV Unplugged in New York is a live album by the American rock band Nirvana. It features an acoustic performance taped at Sony Music Studios in New York City on November 18, 1993 for the television series MTV Unplugged. The show was directed by Beth McCarthy and first aired on the cable television network MTV on December 14, 1993. As opposed to traditional practice on the television series, Nirvana played a set list composed of mainly lesser-known material and cover versions of songs by The Vaselines, David Bowie, Meat Puppets (during which they were joined by two members of the group onstage) and Lead Belly.

Rolling Stone ranked MTV Unplugged in New York at #311 in its list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”

The album start with About a Girl:

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September 26: Emmylou Harris released Wrecking Ball in 1995

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

wrecking ball

“Wrecking Ball is a leftfield masterpiece, the most wide-ranging, innovative, and daring record in a career built on such notions. Rich in atmosphere and haunting in its dark complexity…The fixed point remains Harris’ voice, which leaps into each and every one of these diverse compositions — culled from the pens of Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Earle, and others — with utter fearlessness, as if this were the album she’d been waiting her entire life to make. Maybe it is.”
– Jason Ankeny (Allmusic)

Wrecking Ball is the eighteenth studio album by Emmylou Harris, released on September 26, 1995 throughElektra Records. Moving away from the traditional acoustic sound for which she had become known, Harris collaborated with rock producer Daniel Lanois and engineer Mark Howard. The album has been noted for atmospheric feel, and featured guest performances by Steve Earle, Larry Mullen, Jr., Lucinda Williams and Neil Young, who wrote the title song.

I saw Emmylou Harris live for the first time this summer, it made me go back and listen to all her albums again, with added interest and new-found love of her music. Not that I had ever lost it, but it felt fresh and deeper after the show in Oslo.

Wrecking Ball is my favourite Harris album, and I rank it among the 30 best albums ever made.

Emmylou Harris talks about Sweet Old World and sings the song with Neil Young:

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September 25: Ryan Adams released Gold in 2001

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

Ryan-Adams-Gold

“All the songs had to work completely and honestly by themselves on acoustic guitar or on piano. If they didn’t, they weren’t worth putting on the record.”
~Ryan Adams (about ‘Gold’)

“[Gold is] me not buying my own bullshit for two seconds.”
~Ryan Adams

New York, New York:

From Wikipedia:

Released September 25, 2001
Recorded The Sound Factory
(Hollywood, California)
Genre Rock, alternative country
Length 70:26
Label Lost Highway
Producer Ethan Johns

 

Gold is the second studio album by Ryan Adams, released September 25, 2001 on Lost Highway Records. The album remains Adams’ best-selling album, certifying gold in the UK and going on to sell 364,000 copies in the U.S. and 812,000 worldwide. Adams noted that “with Gold, I was trying to prove something to myself. I wanted to invent a modern classic.”

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September 20: Nick Cave released Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus in 2004

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

abattoir-blues--the-lyre-of-orpheus

I’ve always had an obligation to creation, above all.
~Nick Cave

People think I’m a miserable sod but it’s only because I get asked such bloody miserable questions.
~Nick Cave

Everything’s dissolving, babe, according to plan
The sky is on fire, the dead are heaped across the land
I went to bed last night and my
moral code got jammed
I woke up this morning with a Frappucino in my hand
~Nick Cave (Abattoir Blues)

Get ready for Love:

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August 17: The Band released Stage Fright in 1970

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

the band stage fright

See the man with the stage fright
Just standin’ up there to give it all his might.
And he got caught in the spotlight,
But when we get to the end
He wants to start all over again.

August 17: The Band released Stage Fright in 1970

Stage Fright is the third studio album by The Band. Much more of a rock album than its predecessors, it was a departure from their previous two efforts in that its tone was darker and featured less of the harmony vocal blend that had been a centerpiece of those two albums. It also included the last two recordings by The Band of new songs credited to pianist Richard Manuel; both were co-written with guitarist Robbie Robertson, who would continue to be the group’s dominant lyricist until the group disbanded in 1976. Nonetheless, the tradition of switching instruments that had begun on the previous album continued here, with each musician contributing instrumental parts on at least two different instruments.

Engineered by an up-and-coming Todd Rundgren, and produced by the group themselves for the first time, the album was recorded at the Woodstock Playhouse in their homebase of Woodstock, New York.

Stage Fright (from The Last Waltz):

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August 6: The Beatles released “Help!” in 1965

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

The_Beatles-Help_-Frontal

.. a big step forward, exploring doubt, loneliness, alienation, adult sexual longing, acoustic guitars, electric piano, bongos, castanets, and the finest George songs known to man. … Help! was utterly ruined in its U.S. version, which cut half the songs and added worthless orchestral soundtrack filler, so it’s always been underrated. But Help! is the first chapter in the astounding creative takeoff the Beatles were just beginning: the soulful bereavement of “Ticket to Ride,” the impossibly erotic gentleness of “Tell Me What You See,” the desperate falsetto and electric punch of “You’re Going to Lose That Girl.”
~rollingstone.com

…. the album’s masterpiece is McCartney’s brooding, deceptively simple chamber-pop ballad “Yesterday.” …  it’s compositionally complex, one of the first major pop songs to draw directly from classical music, juxtaposing acoustic guitar with a string quartet, shifting from minor to major chords. It set the stage for one of the most groundbreaking and innovative periods in The Beatles’ career, not to mention pop music in general.
~Mark Kemp (pastemagazine.com)

Help! – from a 6-song set filmed for British television in August of 1965:

From Wikipedia:

Released 6 August 1965
Recorded 15–19 February, 13 April, 10 May& 14–17 June 1965,
EMI Studios, London
Genre Rock
Length 34:20
Label Parlophone
Producer George Martin

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