JUBILANT ANGELS CRY RIVERS OF LIQUID GOLD FROM THE FUCKING HEAVENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BLEEEEEEEEEEEUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGH!!!!!!!!!

Aheh.

1)Rush, Presto: This must vie with Power Windows to be the least-discussed Rush album; the reason I personally forgot the entirety of this album is pretty simple: it doesn’t have a single great song on it. By the seventh or eighth relisten I had decided there were five or six decent songs, but no classics, none. “Show Don’t Tell,” the teen suicide (!) song “The Pass” and the title track are probably best (“If I could wave my magic wand…”), usually getting by on an adequate chorus hook. They get some energy going on in “Red Tide” and “Scars” if you want some of that. “Available Light” is a passable closer. Maybe “Chain Lightning” too with its “crazy” riff. I didn’t like “Superconductor” much, and have already forgotten again how it goes. The band doesn’t fuck up once–none of these songs are embarrassments. The playing is strong and professional, the production is light on 80s synths and Neil’s lyrics don’t have any “Tai Shan” type poetasters in them. But in all seriousness, unless I randomly select this album to relisten to, it’ll probably just be permanently mentally “shelved” again.

2)Jethro Tull, Under Wraps: I never forgot “Radio Free Moscow” which has a lovely little rising chorus hook, or “Heat,” which explodes into a HILARIOUS rush of synthesizer arpeggios that sounds like Tull (of all people) trying to do the World Aerobics Championship and being dead fucking serious about it. There’s also the mildly catchy, acoustic guitar-sporting “Under Wraps #2” and if I’m being nice, “Astronomy” can stay too. So because of four decent songs, this isn’t the worst Jethro Tull album, because that’s four more than Rock Island, Catfish Rising or Roots To Branches. It’s just the worst SOUNDING Jethro Tull album. Do you know who Peter-John Vettese is? He’s a rainbow-suspenders-wearing, Brillo-headed nerd whose glasses make Trevor Horn’s look like contact lenses (go look up pics of him from back then, they’re howlers) and Ian Anderson hired him to do all the synthesizers on this much-hated album. Yet when I actually dredged up the few reviews of this that have actually been written, he’s barely mentioned, and the album is almost all synths, “Under Wraps #2” aside. Everyone just blames Ian Anderson for everything. Very amusing–but not as amusing as the idea of MARTIN BARRE considering this his favorite Tull album! Good lord. Anyway, I’d be willing to forgive all the icky synths if the songs were good, but they’re mostly painfully forgettable, and the REAL problem with the album is....there’s fifteen of them. FIFTEEN. BY BEVERLY CLEARY.

3)Love, Love: One of the hardest rocking albums of 1966 and just about the most exuberant (certainly more so than A Quick One!)–these guys were admittedly a bit derivative and swiped a few melodies, but they had the SPIRIT of about five normal bands put together! The songs I always liked from this were the strutting Bacharach-David cover “My Little Red Book,” the “House Of The Rising Sun” knockoff (a good knockoff, though!) “Signed D. C.” about their ex-drummer’s drug habit, and the weird, moribund ballad “A Message To Pretty” where Arthur Lee sounds like he’s imitating the vocal mannerisms of a sulking 12 year old boy, but with an adult voice. I forgot a lot of exuberant Who Sings My Generation-type rockers, though, and I don’t know why–“Can’t Explain,” “My Flash On You,” “No Matter What You Do,” and a respectable “Hey Joe” runthrough are all quite noteworthy, Byrds janglers played with the power of the Who or Stones. Oh and “Mushroom Clouds” towards the end, for something softer. But hey–NOBODY talks about this album, only the two 1967 albums are ever discussed by anybody, but I swear that between this, Fifth Dimension, Pet Sounds and Freak Out!, 1966 was a golden year for Los Angeles rock albums. Go hear it!

4)Guided By Voices, Isolation Drills: I’ve listened to “The Brides Have Hit Glass” quite a few times lately, a deep cut I’ve gone back to from time to time. That’s the best song here. “Chasing Heather Crazy” and “Run Wild” were the other two tracks I remembered from this one. After seven or eight listens I think I can defend “Fair Touching,” “Twilight Campfighter,” “Unspirited,” “Privately” and the obvious “Glad Girls”, if I really felt like it. I dunno, I’ll probably just stick to “The Brides Have Hit Glass” from here on out, this is kind of a nondescript, plain Guided By Voices album–just power pop as usual, maybe with a slightly better production than the lo-fi stuff they did for years, but I’ve never thought that much mattered unless we’re talking “Teenage FBI.” This is probably why I forgot the album over the years. It is no Bee Thousand or Under The Bushes, Under The Stars.

5)The Byrds, The Notorious Byrd Brothers: A pleasant surprise–the first incarnation of the band was collapsing into a heap of shit by 1968 with David Crosby leaving (and replaced with a horse on the album cover!) and Michael Clarke about to go bye bye too, but the disintegration seems to have made the band get frantic and crazy and try a lot of kooky shit in addition to their usual jingle jangle. The songs are quick and slight and may give the false impression that the album was slapped together because the band was falling apart, but pretty much all the first half is good. The two beautiful songs are the Goffin-King cover “Goin’ Back” and the lovely “Get To You,” which I really should have revisited more over the years, but there’s a lot of good dreamy slush on this album that I forgot, like “Natural Harmony,” “Tribal Gathering,” “Draft Morning,” “Dolphin’s Smile” and “Change Is Now,” plus the energetic 60s horns on the opener “Artificial Energy.” I even like the silly wind whistling synth noise used for “Space Odyssey.” Bonus tracks, you get “Triad,” but it’s a shade below the Jefferson Airplane version, and…well, “Moog Raga” is sort of interesting for the time, but I think we can all thank God that McGuinn didn’t get to do an entire side of electronic music like he wanted to. Two minutes of this is plenty! I’m genuinely surprised I forgot about this album–it’s not a big classic like Mr. Tambourine Man, Fifth Dimension or Younger Than Yesterday but it’s good! Afterwards, though…