Month: April 2012

Record #88: The Cars – Candy-O (1979)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

The astute among you will notice that I’m posting the back cover of this album as opposed to the legendary, lusty front (if you want to see it that much, you know how to use Google). As a man who has tried to follow the teachings of the man who said “whoever looks at a woman lustfully has committed adultery with her in his heart,” it’s always been difficult for me trying to divorce this record from its cover. But that difficulty isn’t unwarranted: the record went platinum in record time, largely because of the pinup sprawled on its cover.

But that success reinforces the question: is the music any good?

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Record #87: The Cars – The Cars (1978)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

The Cars’ debut album is the closest that mainstream radio rock has ever gotten to perfection. The first three tracks are some of the greatest singles in pop music (Let The Good Times Roll, My Best Friend’s Girl, Just What I Needed), and I say that completely without exaggeration. And unlike other great album opening trifectas, the rest of the album doesn’t slip into forgetability (I’m looking at you, Joshua Tree). Rather, the non-single tracks showcase frontman Ric Ocasek’s ability to balance his avant-garde leanings with a delicious pop sensibility (see: I’m In Touch With Your World), and the results are pure pop bliss.

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Record #86: The Carpenters – Close To You (1970)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

At the surface, it seems the most fitting description of this album (and the Carpenters’ career at large) is “Pleasant. Not much else.” The siblings’ tight harmonies and lush arrangements create an atmosphere that is easy on the ears, without any of that weird experimentation that the Beatles and Beach Boys and Byrds and just about every other hope for good pop music in the 60s dabbled in. But the closer, Another Song, is a riotous jazz improvisation, with no vocals at all. Clearly, there must be more deeper down in the album.

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Record #85: The Byrds – Fifth Dimension (1966)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

A lot happened between Turn! Turn! Turn! and Fifth Dimension. The primary songwriter left, Bob Dylan betrayed folk music, and the Beatles released Rain, which some argue was the first proper psychedelic song. The Byrds must have heard that single (and famously, John Coltrane’s India) and perked up, because on their third album (which was released before Revolver), the group adapts their California folk rock to accommodate seemingly unnatural source material (Mr. Spaceman, Eight Miles High), untraditional chord changes (What’s Happening?!?!), and what would later be referred to by music critics with the term “guitar freakouts” (I See You).

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Record #84: The Byrds – Turn! Turn! Turn! (1965)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I have to admit: I know just about nothing about the Byrds (I literally just now found out that Gram Parsons was a member at one point). And to keep this post from sounding like an encyclopedia article, I opened the Wikipedia page briefly to check on date and city of origin. And that surprised me a little. Given their importance in the music scene in the 1960s, I half expected them to be from the U.K.

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Record #82: Buddy Holly/The Crickets – 20 Golden Greats (1978)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

There are two things worth noting right off the bat with this record: 1) while released in 1978, the songs were recorded twenty years earlier, and 2) a number of these songs were already familiar to me, despite never making a conscious effort to listen to Buddy Holly. But that’s to be expected. As the liner notes state, in eighteen months, Buddy Holly recorded nine number one singles. As a songwriter and recording musician, that’s astounding. Granted, the music industry (a pre-Beatles industry, notably) was a tad different in those days, but over fifty years on, those songs still endure, and thanks to the occasional rockabilly revival, they remain ageless. Even besides the mega-hits like Rave On, Oh, Boy! and the eternal Everyday, the material here never shows its age. In their sixth decade, they still bleed youth.

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Record #79: Bruce Springsteen – Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

According to tradition, after the release of 1975’s Born to Run and the superstardom and legal battles that ensued, The Boss spent some time soul searching, trying to find himself, as he put it, “stripped away [of] all of your celebrity and left…with all your essence.” What resulted was an album free of commercial ambition (or singles) and the super-ensemble that raced through his breakthrough. In its place was a collection of songs that is at once intensely personal and endlessly relatable. After all, who hasn’t woken up with an urge to get in a car and drive until your weariness and cynicism disappear from your rear view mirror? And while it’s admittedly much darker than the anthem-filled Born To Run (and also, free of saxophone), there is a peace in the album’s escapism that transcends its darkness and brings a sort of lightness to it.

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