Greetings, fellow music lovers, and thank you for visiting Greg's Music Shoppe! I have listed some of my favorite groups and albums below, along with links to album reviews and discographies, plus links to related websites. You can do a search for your favorites in CDnow's archives by artist or song title. You can choose to check out music categories other than my specialty, which is Rock/Pop. I have also provided links to Rolling Stone and The Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame. Happy shopping, and thanks for visiting...
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- 4 Stars - Excellent - "...Their masterpiece... Sprawling and often obscure, it's the nearest they got to being cool... it iconised America in the same way Selling England By The Pound did their home country..." -Q Magazine 11/96, p.64
"...the years 1974-5 were the years of both their greatest triumph and their most dramatic loss. Gabriel's pre-eminence in the press - not something he himself had wanted, but an inevitable consequence of his outlandish performances - was beginning to be too much for a group which had always considered itself a democracy. Two further things happened which widened the gap between him and the rest of the group: he was offered an opportunity to work with "Exorcist" director William Friedkin as scriptwriter, and needed to spend time with his wife Jill following the problematic birth of their first child. However, in November he re-joined the group in the studio where they'd been writing the music for what was to become the line-up's masterpiece and Gabriel's swansong: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. It was the ultimate concept album: a double LP-long surrealist tale of a Puerto Rican youth - Rael - dragged into a netherworld beneath Manhattan to experience a series of bizarre adventures and some kind of inscrutable mystical epiphany. The group went on to perform the entire album to over 100 audiences worldwide (including the LA Shrine gig preserved on the Archive), many of whom, thanks to record company release cycles, had never even heard the album, and were perhaps expecting to hear their favourites. Despite this, it is a tour which has legitimately gone down in rock music history."
The Official Moody Blues Website
- 4 Stars - Excellent - New Musical Express (3/20/93, p.33)
- 8 - Excellent - "...although everything your punk rock elder brother said was undeniably true, it doesn't take a great mental leap to... pronounce this album a super-sensory classic..." -Rolling Stone (5/24/73, pg.57)
Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London, England between June 1972 and January 1973, The Dark Side Of The Moon was a benchmark record. It turned the musical world on its ear with a hitherto unseen combination of sounds, and changed things considerably for Pink Floyd. The pyramid-like prism refracting the thin white light into a rainbow became synonymous with the band, as did the album, a collection of epics steeped in Roger Waters' lyrics of paranoia, alienation and schizophrenia.For this project, Pink Floyd resurrected older and unfinished numbers, some of which came from the multitude of [film] soundtracks the band members had previously worked on... To bring the songs into a clearer light, Floyd and their long-time engineer, Alan Parsons, used a multitude of sound effects--from stereophonically-projected footsteps and planes flying overhead ("On The Run") to a roomful of ringing clocks ("Time").The band brought in female singers to sweeten the harmonies throughout the album. Gospel singer Clare Torry was given a solo, albeit lyric-less, turn on Richard Wright's "The Great Gig In The Sky," shrieking, sobbing and sighing in orgasmic waves. Floyd also enlisted Dick Parry's saxophone on "Us And Them" and "Money," which became the group's first American Top 40 hit. Further adding to the record's mystique, barely audible spoken passages were sprinkled throughout--a result of hours interviewing random Abbey Road occupants about their views on insanity, violence and death.The combination of creative and technological concepts must have struck a nerve; The Dark Side Of The Moon remained on Billboard's albums chart for an astounding fourteen years. It made Pink Floyd a household name, elevating them to the level of the Rolling Stones and The Who in the rock pantheon. Maybe most important, this record found Roger Waters for the first time using the group as a tool for his own concepts and personal views, foreshadowing conflicts that would come to a head in the band's future works.
The Pink Floyd Archives
"...what they have given up in rawness and razzle-dazzle they have gained in depth of vision and musical maturity. Every cut on the album has something to offer..."
-Rolling Stone 9/30/71, p.42
4 Stars - Excellent - "Considered by many to be the band's best, 1971's Who's next was their only Number 1 album..."
-Q Magazine 1/96, p.158
Who's next* contains music Pete Townshend originally developed for a more ambitious project, another rock opera called LIFEHOUSE. When Townshend finally gave up on LIFEHOUSE, he re-channeled that material into an album many fans consider The Who's masterpiece. Among the highlights on Who's next are the defiant rock anthem "Won't Get Fooled Again" (featuring particularly rambunctious rhythm work from Moon and Entwistle) and the elegiac "Behind Blue Eyes." Who's next is renowned for its heavy use of synthesizers, and lead singer Roger Daltry was at the top of his form on this album. Although Townshend authored more intricate musical compositions like those on Tommy and Quadrophenia, this collection of ballads and rockers stands out as The Who at their finest. The album cover is interesting. It features a concrete monolith which the group has apparently just urinated on. If the concrete monolith represents man in the industrial age, then I wonder if the Who are making a comment on how they feel about the "establishment" of the time? They certainly leave no doubt about it in their music! The album's title seems to challenge all of the blokes out there to follow suite with the band... rock on!
thewho.net
The following is an excerpt from the official Genesiswebsite:
Rock/Pop
Jazz/Blues
World/New Age
Urban/Electronic
Country/Folk
Classical
The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
- 4 Stars - Excellent - "...Weird, sad, belligerent, funny, surrealist epic..." -Q Magazine (12/94, pp.162-3)
Genesis Websites
Genesis-web.com:The official Genesis website.
Genesis: Jan Peterson gives us a short history of the group from conception to 1997.
The Genesis Webring:Over 100 websites about Genesis.
More Genesis Links:A few more thrown in for good measure.
Days Of Future Passed
Days Of Future Passed is the Moody Blues' true contribution to rock history: the most cohesive integration of rock songs with orchestral music ever produced. Asked by Deram Records to create a rock reworking of Dvorak's "New World" Symphony, the band instead wrote their own symphony, a song cycle that describes the emotions that accompany each part of the day, from dawn ("Dawn Is A Feeling") to midday ("Peak Hour"), to night (the classic "Nights In White Satin"). The songs are connected by lush orchestral passages in which the basic musical themes are reworked. Meanwhile, the Moody Blues had already begun to sound like their own orchestra, using the signature Mellotron string sounds of Mike Pinder; soaring flute and soprano saxophone solos by Ray Thomas; melodic bass lines by John Lodge; tympani and Eastern percussion sounds of Graeme Edge; the raspy lead-guitar riffs and sitar of Justin Hayward; and the group's haunting, multi-layered harmonies. Tony Clarke, the band's producer, said it best: "Their versatility never ceases to amaze me from album to album. In fact, to me, they will always be the smallest symphony orchestra in the world."* Although Days Of Future Passed was the cornerstone the Moody Blues built their music on, future albums would explore new musical ground and differrent themes, as the sound evolved quickly - the symphony orchestra being replaced completely by the Mellotron in the next LP, In Search Of The Lost Chord. From 1967 to 1972 the Moody Blues released seven albums during a period of rapid and sometimes violent change in British and American society, and each album reflected the times. However, In Search Of The Lost Chord is most closely associated with the spirit of the late sixties and early seventies, complete with references to Dr. Timothy Leary in the lyrics, a mantra, and instructions on how to meditate. The artwork for each album's cover was intricate and colorful, and reflected the times as much as the music. The cover to In Search Of The Lost Chord, for example, shows the cycle from life to death to life, reincarnation being one of the Eastern philosophies that the Moody Blues, the Beatles, and many other musical groups were embracing during the late sixties and early seventies. The cover to Days Of Future Passed is full of little pictures within pictures which show other cycles, like lunar cycles and the cycle of (or the evolution of) Man.
*From the liner notes of In Search Of The Lost Chord
Moody Blues Websites
The Index of Moody Blues Resources on the Internet
The Dark Side Of The Moon
"...The sound is lush and multi-layered while remaining clear and well-structured....a fine album with a textural and conceptual richness that not only invites, but demands involvement....the excellence of a superb performance..."Q Magazine (10/94, p.137)
Pink Floyd Websites
The WWWall: The Great Wall Of Links
Who's next
"...intelligently-conceived, superbly-performed, brilliantly produced, and sometimes even exciting rock'n'roll..."
-Rolling Stone 9/2/71, p.42
*That lower-case "n" is not a typo... check the cover, my dear Mr. Watson, and see for yourself!
The Who Websites
The Who Webring
Chris's Who Links:The only Who links page you really need!
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