Pretzel Logic, Steely Dan, 1974

There are two good songs on this album -- "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" and "Pretzel Logic" (which is the name of the "over a long time ago" song).

The rest of it is too surface, too glossy, doesn't have the cutting quality you expect from Steely Dan. The playing and production are sophisticated, but there’s something missing. Passion, humor, something. I feel the monkey in your soul? WTF?

Walls and Bridges, John Lennon, 1974

Sad to say this is awful.  Some of it sounds phoned in and some is just devoid of inspiration.

Radio City, Big Star, 1974

I had underrated this album. It’s more than "September Gurls" and "Back of a Car." It’s a genuine revelation. The big revelations this time are “Life Is White” and “Way Out West.” The album is remarkably consistent in musical tone and emotional tone. It looks ahead to Mitch Easter and Scott Miller and all the jangle-poppers but what distinguishes it as of its time is that the vocals are buried in the mix.

I think part of why the album didn’t click with me before is I was listening to it with impatient, punk-conditioned ears. It requires a bit of adjusting to its pace.

And how can I not mention William Eggleston’s cover, with its super-saturated red and the sex position posters cut off at the edge of the frame. The way it ignores the band and ostensibly, has no content whatever. Eggleston wasn’t famous yet in 1974.

The Big Star documentary, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, is going to be screened at SXSW as a work-in-progress.

Too Much Too Soon, New York Dolls, 1974

Wow, they inhabit a different WORLD from Pink Floyd. One I’d much rather live in.

Diamond Dogs, David Bowie, 1974

Where do I start with how wonderful this album is? I only knew the singles "Diamond Dogs" and "Rebel Rebel" before this, had never listened to any of the lyrics.  Diamond Dogs is the biggest and best surprise to come out of this project so far for me. Dogs is a great album that belongs in the first rank of Bowie’s work. He deliberately made it dark, difficult, unpleasant, offputting, and insulting to the audience (“this ain’t rock and roll, this is genocide!” as a rote crowd cheers).

Chris O' Leary, in his awesome Bowie blog Pushing Ahead of the Dame, says that Dogs contains the remnants of three failed Bowie projects:

Diamond Dogs is a salvage job, a compilation of scraps from stillborn Bowie projects. There are remnants of a Ziggy Stardust musical (“Rebel Rebel” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me”), pieces of a barely comprehensible Oliver Twist-by-JG Ballard scenario (“Diamond Dogs,” “Future Legend” and “Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family”), and fragments of Bowie’s grandest failed ambition, a musical of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: “We Are the Dead,” “Big Brother” and, of course, “1984″ itself.   Link

Knowing this takes nothing away from the album's brilliance.  The pieces go together very well musically and thematically.

I especially like side two ("Rock 'n' Roll with Me," "We Are the Dead," "1984," "Big Brother," and "Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family").  "Chant" is a great song to blast, with its sarcastic chants of “brother” that make me think of Big Brother’s zombies worshipping him.