And it’s about to collapse on all your friends. At 80 minutes, it’s as insurmountable, grimy, intimidating, and flat-out awesome as the monolithic tenement building on its cover. Physical Graffiti is not the hardest or most influential Zeppelin album. In the throes of a crippling bout with depression, it’s clear what was on Ian Curtis’ mind in his final hours. Musically, it formed the foundation for Joy Division’s cold, caustic creepiness, at times echoing their sound so strikingly it could be mistaken for Unknown Pleasures. Against minimal, mechanical instrumentation, Pop’s delivery is suitably passionless, as he dryly sing/speaks in a deep, unfeeling croak. Set to music written primarily by Bowie during the Station to Station sessions, Pop’s lyrics are often reflective and sentimental-“Dum Dum Boys” pines for his Stooges bandmates, while “Tiny Girls” and “Mass Production” lament stupid love-and when they’re not, they’re bitter and scathingly sarcastic (“Nightclubbing,” “Funtime”). The Idiot presents what is probably Iggy Pop’s darkest release, and rightfully so, given the period of his life during which it was recorded. After a self-imposed exile in a West Coast mental institution, Pop put in a call to David Bowie, as the two had been intending to hook up for years, and a few days later, they’d boarded a plane to Paris, and then to romantic Berlin where they would finish work on The Idiot. It would take four years, several jailings, and countless beatings before he would get back on his feet to launch his solo career. –Chris DahlenĪfter the release of the Stooges’ final album, 1973’s Raw Power, Iggy Pop bottomed out. The melancholy that buoys his classic “Sea Song” doesn’t block the exquisite melody, which assuages regrets before they can even creep in, and as Wyatt croaks his fascination for the strange real-life lover that he was about to marry, he settles for tapping the beat on a single, handheld drum. With no need to keep up a working band, Wyatt surrounds himself with his best Canterbury colleagues-there are cameos by Fred Frith and Mike Oldfield, as well as regular support from fellow Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper-and, bound to the studio, he invented the next phase of his career. It’s impossible not to hear the stretched-out time of convalescence in its drones and long melodies as Wyatt devotes himself to keyboards, whittling at his synths as quizzically as he hones his lyrics, which gnarl with surreal wordplay but temper the brilliantly grounded wit that flashed across his earlier work. Rock Bottom was in the planning stages when Robert Wyatt survived a fall from a fourth-floor window, a tumble that left him confined to a wheelchair and ended his career as British art-rock’s most endearingly maverick drummer. Listen: Neil Young: “After the Gold Rush” Unlike so many of his sun-dazed contemporaries, Young had the right kind of eyes to see the high-water mark, and After the Gold Rush is the departure point on his essential decade-long journey away from the fallout of the 1960s. Holed up in his Topanga Canyon home writing a soundtrack for a never-made Dean Stockwell–scripted film, Young invited his friends to join him on alien-abduction ballads, preachy Skynyrd-provoking jams, and lovesick nocturnal country-blues. One of his few efforts that can’t be considered either the product of Crazy Horse feedback Neil or sensitive-hayseed Neil, Gold Rush is also one of Young’s most consistent records. Young, who was just hitting his stride as the decade turned over, kicking off a run of 11 great albums in 10 years with After the Gold Rush. What were the most popular tunes of the first year of the sixties? Here are Billboard magazine’s Top Hot 100 songs of 1960! (Also check out ’60s Gold and Pure 60’s: The #1 Hits to revisit some of your favorite singles of the decade!) Chart Sweep: Billboard Hot 100 of 1960 (video)Įvery record to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart during 1960.After the gold rush of 1960s California rock, most of its main players spent the ’70s slowly hippie-twirling towards irrelevance and rehab resorts.
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