REM -- Green

  I can't say I'm a huge REM fan, their early work is pretty good, but this period for the band marks the beginning of the end, in my eyes.  Yes yes they did get way more success, recognition and became the mainstream, but they started to lose that The Cure meets Husker Du quality to their music.  I found the riffs cheesy and the vocals annoying.  I wouldn't call it straight up bad, just mediocre.

Billy Preston -- Organ Transplant

  A mix of originals and covers specially arranged by Sly Stone.  Although you'd think it'd be good, Preston and Stone working together, unfortunately it is not, it's basically elevator Muzak, I couldn't believe my ears -- what a disappointment.  Plus it's one of those hunk of junk Pickwick compilations, which they re-worked an old album, Wildest Organ In Town!, dropped a couple tunes and gave it a new name!  Oh well that's how it goes ... sometimes ...

Sly And The Family Stone -- There's a Riot Goin' On

  Sly's answer to Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On.  Unlike the happy party time Soul sounds of his previous efforts, Sly slips into a dark lonely place, playing some deep Funk.  The album itself sounds muffled due to so many dub, over-dubs and re-dubs, making it clear that Sly preferred to work alone, otherwise it has a Brian Wilson quality to the production, the sounds of a man figuring it out with his own wits, politically charged, making his own flag, telling it like it is, the TRUTH .... RUTH!

Lena Horne

  So after having a wonderful visit from my best buds and touring the local landscape for junk shops aka cheap records, I had to sink my depressed head into "the sound of silence."  But what better way to cheer yourself up with, what the back of the album says, "arguably the greatest entertainer" of all-time!!!!  Forget the Beatles, the Stones, I now have the greatest!  With a review like that I was damn ready to sell my whole collection and play Lena Horne back to back for the rest of my life! 

  All sarcasm aside, my girlfriend picked this one, for some odd reason I kept thinking Mary Poppins style Disney music ... but the fact that she picked it and is showing interest in records, I had to buy it by default.  Perfect pick when you have grandma over for dinner and want to skip out on listening to her Kenny G CDs all night long!!!

Minor Threat -- Complete Discography

  At this point in music Punk Rock became so glamorized and soaked in drug culture ... there wasn't any place left to go ... except for New Wave or worse.  It took some working class kids to bring Rock music back to reality ... like Minor Threat.

 I remember when I was in my teens, a Minor Threat video hit our little Punk scene in my Dirty Old Town ... that thing musta gotten bootlegged and passed around more than the last dirty needle at a junkies convention -- Ha!  Even though the music sounds really aggressive, especially to my parents at the time, there really isn't anything bad in a Minor Threat record, it's way better for kids to grow up on this stuff than let's say ... hmmmmm ... anything else.  It's funny to think about everyone I knew was growing up on Hardcore Punk.  Soon enough it'll be played on Classic Rock stations everywhere tagged as the songs we grew up with ...

Nina Hagen -- NunSexMonkRock

  What's this?? The sound of total madness, possibly the soundtrack of a schizophrenic mind or Regan from the Exorcist??  I'd say yes!  NunSexMonkRock is one wonky-ass record, a real Punk Operatic Electro mash of the crazies.  I get the fact that it's art for arts sake, and that it is nothing less than pure feeling, no one could make such a bananahead album without coming from a visceral mind frame.  This release is virtually unlistenable, unless you have the volume turned way down while you are doing the dishes.  Although there is one exception, Born In Xixa, it sounds like The Cramps meet Trout Mask Beefheart, with some deeply strange lyrics about a European American junkie farmers planning a reunion of freedom ... it's the only saving grace that keeps this record in my collection, well ... maybe the cover too!!  As to the meaning behind NunSexMonkRock, who knows and who cares ... we can't take these things too literally, especially when dealing with a possible crazy person!

Funny Footnote: Why does almost everyone I know in Montreal own this album???  Hmmmmm ....

Dead Kennedys -- Bedtime For Democracy

  The fourth and final Dead Kennedys release is their worst, but still stands as a Punk Rock classic from a notorious band.  I'm not a huge fan of the Kennedys's crossover to Hardcore, the music itself does not suit them, I always thought they should have stuck with what they were good at, the Surf Punk sound -- that was their musical innovation.  Biafra's ego on Bedtime is pumped up to the max, although that's his shtick, but it's hard to buy the social commentary coming from the dude who wrote Chickensh*t Conformist while conforming to Hardcore which is where the scene had shifted.  Anyway there was almost the makings of something great but it got drowned in profane idealism and shameless self-promotion.