Did somebody say "ETHNIC"???

No? Shim, I'm going insane again. The last time this happened, I ended up in the Crazy Room for 18 years, got out and terrorized my hometown until I was finally blasted out the window by Donald Pleasance.

But I came back!!!! I came back and terrorized a hospital! And then I think I killed Donald Pleasance that time. Then I disappeared for a while so some company could sell Halloween masks that make worms come out of peoples' heads if they're wearing them ... read more

Another really low 7. As opposed to most of the early albums, which would get a high 8. It's not so much that Can suck at this reggae/funk/disco-type music - I just personally don't like this kind of music very much. And I find it a little sad that Can would forsake their smarts for nothing more than a simple 4/4 funk beat, even if it's as dancemerizing as the ten-minute title track or catchy as "Laugh Till You Cry, Live Till You Die." This is the kind of music that Funkadelic, James ... read more

Okay, who's the wise acre that bought Can a Patrick Hernandez album? Did it not occur to you that this finest of improv art bands might become a little too fond of that funkyass disco crap beat? Well, they did. Four of these six songs were recorded in a full-fledged studio, and of those, one sounds like a VU rocker (harmless but unnecessary, in other words) and two are just bad, BAD disco music. Simplistic and stupid, way beneath Can. Luckily they redeem themselves with the rest of the record, ... read more

This was the first Can album I ever heard. Borrowed it from Jeff Robins along with about thirty other albums after I read that the Spin Alternative Record Guide gave it a 10 out of 10. As much as I bitch about that book, it really has helped turn me on to a lot of good music, none of which is Patti Smith's Horses. But at the time, I couldn't get into this crap at all. I was expecting it to be like The Fall, but it was this hippy funk shit! With violins and Steely Dan piano lines and songs that ... read more

Mellow! The most mellow Can vibes yet. Not the Floydian balladry of Soundtracks, but a quieter, more lullabying, less violently Brazilian-flavored version of Can's jig -- even Damo Suzuki sings in a gentle lilt! As rhythmically oriented as always though. Say, did I mention that when I use the word "rhythmic" in regard to Can, I don't just mean the drums? I mean all of it. Half the time, the guitarist and keyboardist just make jiggedy little noises to match the rhythm. Your whole damn ... read more

Can's movie soundtrack music reminds me a lot of Pink Floyd's early soundtrack work -- acid-drenched fuzz guitar lines overtopping melancholy little melodies with bits and pieces of crazyass experimentation every now and again. This features seven songs from five different movies and introduces the second Can lead singer, Damo Suzuki, who is not a whole lot more pleasant on the ears than Mr. Mooney was. Scraggly out-of-tune broken english. Musically a lot of this sounds like Brazilian Os ... read more

This would definitely be my favorite Can CD if there wasn't a really miserable ten-minute pile of noise called "Soup" in the middle. All the other tunes are cool as shit. Like you just fell like putting on dark sunglasses and shaking your head back and forth like a heroin user might before the dark slumber of death rolls over. Really diverse, funky record too - "One More Night" revolves around a gorgeously odd keyboard riff played in 7/4 time, "Sing Swan Song" ... read more

A double-album, with Can in an OVERLY experimental mood. Certainly there are plenty of excellent tunes on here ("Mushroom" was ripped off by the Flaming Lips for "Take Me Ta Mars" years later and "Halleluwah" is about as excitingly funky as an eighteen and a half minute song is going to be), but a full half hour of this release is devoted to avant-noisemaking and what may well be the invention of "Japcore" or whatever that weird Boredoms-type material is ... read more

Apparently Can recorded on a two-track recorder until 1975 so stick that in your corncob pipe all the way to the bank, Michael Jackson. This first album comes from a rock tradition. The first track has that Syd Barrett "Interstellar Overdrive" feel (drivin' drums, stinging distorted guitar, bouncy octave bass, keyboards more making noise than anything else), track B sounds like the Velvet Underground but with beautiful lead fuzztones floppin' thru, song #Three sounds like a cool as ... read more

A reunion! The original five Byrds come back to life! Sounds more like Crosby Stills & Nash than the Byrds though, and not even a very impressive Crosby Stills & Nash album (even though two of the songs are Neil Young covers!). David Crosby contributes by far the two best songs on here, but Roger's "Sweet Mary" is fantastic too. Hell, even Gene has a winner! Still -- the album is way too spotty. Wish they'd spent a little more time coming up with the best possible tracks, ... read more

Yeah, Farther Along the cowpatty-laden trail of shit country albums that nobody gave a fiddly farts about! A bit more enjoyable than the last couple though. Nice predictable country jive. Pretty ballads. A little instrumental bluegrass here and there. An understated (and underimpressive) late period Byrds release. Also features what I consider to be the most annoying song they ever recorded, "America's Great National Pastime."

Are you listening to this crap? Haven't they written all these songs already? Jim's songs are boring and Skip's are pighumpingly sloppy C/W footsquish. "Kathleen's Song" is beautiful, but the others aren't fit to be tied.

Untitled? UNRELEASED would have been a nicer gesture. This is a double album - one disc is countrified pukey live versions of old Byrds classics (including a 5-million year "Eight Miles High" blues jam!) and the other is the crummiest pile of songs they've given us ever yet to now. Just SHITTY! Country and hackneyed and trite and ripoffs of other songs and sung by non-McGuinns and unrecognizable as Byrds material and slow and bland and unmelodic and predicatable and not worth your ... read more

Too much straight country music for Ol' Prind, but it's still not as bland as the classic Sweetheart Of The Rodeo LP. Plus, it's interesting to hear the other new band members sing lead - their voices aren't bad at all! Especially compared to Roger trying to sound like a goshdundun Southerner. Urgh!

A music war!

And yes, of course there's a Dylan cover, and yes of course it's probably the best song on here. Although "Jesus Is Just Alright" later became a classic by the Doobie ... read more

See now, THIS is country rock. And GOOD country rock! Sure it's twangy and all, but it's very tight, the new guitarist TOTALLY cooks a meal of tasty licks and delightful pussychops on his axe of grimy dirt and Mr. Jim Roger McGuinn XI sings his quivering little sensitive voice to the limits of Ft. Benning. How can you sound rednecky when Mr. McGuinn is at the helm of the ship? A: You cain't.

This is a completely different band than the one that did the classic early records, so there's no ... read more

Pft. Whatever. Critics countrywide raved and still rave about this "masterpiece" of country rock, but to me it just sounds like a bunch of adequately played country cover tunes. There's maybe two tunes I'd say are part of the "roots of country rock" - the two awesome Dylan covers. The rest? Pft. Whatever. Supposedly it was going to be a "history of rock and roll" album, but Gram Parson convinced Jim McGuinn to puss out and release a redneck album instead. So I had ... read more

Low 8. If you love the first four, you're gonna want this one too because it's still full of lovely McGuinntones designed to make you smile and meditate. That's actually the overriding mood here - one of peace, calm and meditation. Very pretty, soothing calm meditation with phenomenal vocal harmonies. Unfortunately, the non-calm tunes that kinda suck out loud. The crappy white soul one with horns, the "Take Five" ripoff, the bland country number... But the ones that sound like The ... read more

Another outstanding 28-minute opus from the Byrds. How did all them '60s rockers get away with recording such dinkyass albums anyway? For the record, all four of these first Byrds albums pretty much get 10s from me. They're all just fantastic - maybe one weak song on each one.

So this one. Well, more diversity and yet the same Byrdsisms just like the last album! Some odder three-part harmonies here of the sort you would later hear in Crosby Stills & Nash. A couple of country-tinged moments ... read more

Gene Clark of "If You're Gone," "Set You Free This Time" and "The World Turns All Around Her Fame" has flown the coop (HAR HAR!) and left the nest (HAR HAR!) due to career stress, so the remaining four are trying to branch out and progress in their musical arts. This means fewer examples of stunning vocal harmony but a higher percentage of original compositions, ranging from white boy soul to John Coltrane-inspired avant psychedelic guitar theatrics to depressing ... read more

Ditto what I said for the first album (except for the word "pisswad"). Nearly every song on here is aurally uplifting to the point of near-religious revelation. I'm not sure how these guys got pegged as "folk rock" (Dylan covers and harmony vocals, I guess?), but they demolish that tag to pieces. These are no Mamas and Papas we're discussing here. The Byrds, in this reviewer's opinion, had a sound that even demolished the Beatles' sound to pieces. And okay, yes, more than ... read more