"Bitches Brew" by Miles Davis (April, 1970)

Dad's Take:

Once again, I'm faced with the problem of not having the vocabulary to really discuss jazz.

However, what I can say about this Miles Davis record is that it surprised me. I really like "Kind of Blue" and expected more of the same, but this album has a wilder, sometimes almost uncontrolled feel to it. The sounds are deep and strong. In technical terms, this record is "freaking awesome."

This dream music. It runs all over the place, and just when it's starting to make sense, it takes an unexpected turn. As such, it holds my attention and captures my imagination. It seems to become most interesting when it becomes harder to understand.

Case in point, the title track. At times, it feels like it's trying to figure out where it wants to go, sometimes crawling to a near stop, like it does at around the midpoint, but then it gets big and loud and carries the listener to an exciting place, maybe a dangerous place. And at times it creeps along slowly, almost confusedly, with sounds that don't quite make sense, like a vivid dream.

"Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" starts out sounding like it could be the Doors, but then Miles jumps in and there's no doubt who it is. It begins with almost a noirish feel, then grows into cool jazz, then becomes bigger and wilder as it goes, like a walk into an exciting city. The rhythm becomes hypnotic, and the stuff in the foreground is vivid and varied, taking the listener on a wild ride. I want to see where it takes me, but it turns out there's no real destination, just an interesting trip.

The final piece, "Sanctuary," starts soft and quiet, a welcome cool down from the exhausting wildness that comes before it. It gets bigger, then almost falls asleep at about the midpoint, leading gently to a big, brassy ending.

The version I have includes a bonus track, "Feio," which works well as a gentle coda to the dream. It doesn't feel out of place with the rest of the album, as bonus tracks sometimes do.

The album is long, and the music is big and noisy and often feels out of control. But sometimes it's little and quiet and, well, still feels kind of out of control. But one thing it's not, and that's dull. I listen, amazed that this came from a human mind, presumably while awake and coherent. It's often intense, sometimes almost violent, like a welcome attack on the senses.

I've never heard anything like it, at least not on this scale. It's challenging and sometimes difficult and exhausting. Like a dream, it sometimes feels like it's going to go somewhere but then it never gets there. I mean that in a good way. I'm not really sure what else to say, besides I like it. And it wears me out. But that's a good thing.

Brad's Take:

When I think of Miles Davis, the first thing that comes to mind is how much I love Kind of Blue. I still listen to that record often and that's how I picture Miles Davis now.

And then Bitches Brew came up on our list...

I attempted to listen to and review this album a couple of weeks ago, but it's so completely different than the Miles Davis I am used to so it really threw me for a loop that I wasn't ready for. I decided to hold off and listen to it at another time. I thought maybe I was just not in the mood for experimental jazz music that particular day or something.

So now here I am, giving the album a solid listen, and although I still wish it was like the classic jazz style that's featured on Kind of Blue, I tip my hat to the guy for stepping outside of the box and creating some really wild and interesting free-style jazz music. To me, it sounds like Miles had a lot of energy built up and just wanted to let it all out uncontrollably.

While I commend him for doing his thing, this just isn't for me. I like nice smooth jazz to have on while it's raining outside, or as background music while I'm listening to podcasts or working. This stuff just confuses my ears and actually kind of stresses me out. Maybe that's what is supposed to happen when you listen to this album for the first few times. Maybe it was intentional. Maybe it's an album that gets better over multiple listens. Whatever it is, this review is just based on my first solid listen of it. I may try to listen to it again eventually, but for now, I think I will continue with sticking to Kind of Blue when I want to listen to Miles Davis.

"Deja Vu" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (March, 1970)

Dad's Take:

In case Crosby, Stills & Nash weren't an amazing enough supergroup, they upped their game on their second album by adding Neil Young. The result is one of the truly great records of the period. Of any period. This thing plays like a greatest hits album, only it's not. "Carry On," "Teach Your Children," "Helpless," "Woodstock," "Our House"--it's greater than a greatest hits package.

In addition to the big hits, the album contains many gems. At the top of the list for me is the great David Crosby jam, "Almost Cut My Hair." It's practically an anthem for me.

You're not going to go wrong with any songs on this record. Crosby, Stills and Nash are all great musicians and songwriters with amazing harmonies. If they lacked anything on their first album, it might have been a little bit of edginess. Neil Young adds a ton of that with his guitar and voice and just his Neil Youngness.

Everybody has hit full stride in this album. David Crosby contributes the aforementioned "Almost Cut My Hair" and the incredible title track. Stephen Stills shows is writing chops on "Carry On" and "4+20." Grahama Nash contributes two of the group's biggest hits with "Teach Your Children" and "Our House." As for Neil Young, he almost steals the show with songs like "Helpless" and "Country Girl," as well as his guitar work throughout the record. It's not hard to tell whose songs are whose, but all are made even better by the group's contributions.

The album is a great combination of folk harmony and classic rock. This is one of those rare discs that approaches perfection. The only problem is that it's too short. I don't want it to end.

I don't even want to write about it. I just want to listen and dig it.

Brad's Take:

I was excited to dive into another album by these guys. I liked their debut so much that I went out and bought it on vinyl so I could listen to it the way everyone else did back when it was originally released. It sounds great. And now, after listening to this Deja Vu, I might have to go out and find this on wax too.

Everything I loved from their first album is here. The perfect vocal harmonies, the rockin' guitar riffs, the beautiful acoustic guitars, etc. These songs range from energetic to calming, and it doesn't sound at all forced. It feels so natural. It's pretty crazy that these 4 songwriters could mesh so well together and always be on the same pages.

I really enjoyed the addition of Neil Young. "Helpless" is a great song. I liked the piano in it a lot. And now, anytime my brothers are acting helpless, I can sing the chorus to them: "Helpless, helpless, helplessss." Where has this song been my whole life?

There isn't a song on here that I didn't like. The fact that they could totally nail their sophomore record really says something about this band. This truly is a super group, and they knew exactly how to mesh their superpowers together to win.

"Sweet Baby James" by James Taylor (February, 1970)

Dad's Take:

Early seventies music was largely defined by the singer-songwriter, and it's easy to argue that James Taylor was the king of the genre. Sweet Baby James is the first of nine consecutive Top 20 albums for JT, seven of them Top 10.

Building on a base of folk and pop, with a little rock and a touch of country, James Taylor was one of the dominant players on the airwaves of the time. This is the album that introduced him to most people, although it was his second album. "Fire and Rain" was a #3 hit, and "Country Road" also charted in the Top 40. Although not released as a single at the time, "Sweet Baby James" has become one of Taylor's most-beloved tunes.

Those who know Taylor mostly for his hits will have plenty to discover here. The highlight here is, of course, "Fire and Rain," one of the truly great songs in this genre, full of angst and hidden meanings and sorrow and and regret and even a little hope. Try not to sing along. Just try. Even if you don't know the words, chances are you'll try. He even makes the kind of silly traditional song "Oh Susannah" sound deep and important. "Suite for 20 G," which would feel at home on a Crosby Stills & Nash record, is another highlight that you might not know, one I could easily listen to at twice its length. The jam has just started when the song comes to an end, leaving me wanting more.

There are no real surprises here. James Taylor sounds like James Taylor: smart, mellow, melodic soft rock delivered with his velvety voice. Even when he stretches beyond the soft tunes with a song like the bluesy "Steamroller" and "Oh Baby Don't You Loose Your Lip On Me," he still sounds like you expect him to sound.

And that's not a bad thing. The album is a solid effort that sets the tone for much of the first half of the decade. And he didn't stop there. In fact, he's had three albums peak at #4 in the 2000s. Almost everything he's ever done has gone gold or platinum. As far as breakout albums go, Sweet Baby James is tough to beat.

Brad's Take:

Like my old man said, this sounds like James Taylor. And I agree that that's not a bad thing. We haven't reviewed a James Taylor album yet so it's cool that I am finally listening to a complete album of his rather than just whatever song is on in the grocery store.

Sweet Baby James doesn't pack much of a punch like the Simon and Garfunkel album that we reviewed just before this did, but I can still enjoy this. It's a lot more stripped down and bouncy, and should probably be listened to in a field of flowers.

The bluesy "Steamroller" is a nice change of pace. It definitely has the punch I was missing. When the full band popped in about a minute into the song, I got really excited because moments before that, I was thinking to myself, "Man, I wish this song wasn't just him on a guitar. It needs some drums and bass." And then that's when all the other instruments came in.

"Fire and Rain" is a classic song, and it's probably the one I've heard the most by him. Like my dad said, it's a song that you can't help but sing along with. It's completely true. I'm going to have "I've seen fire and I've seen rain" stuck in my head for awhile today.

By the time I got to "Suite for 20 G," I was feeling a little restless and eager for the album to be over. But this song got me excited again. It goes from a standard James Taylor sounding song and then it gets to the halfway point and becomes a big funky jam with horns and a contagious bass riff. There wasn't anything else like this that on the album which is kind of a bummer. 

The story behind the titling of the song "Suite for 20 G" is pretty entertaining. James was promised $20,000 once the album was finished and delivered. He needed one more song so he strung together three unfinished songs into a "suite," and completed the album.

All in all, Sweet Baby James was a mostly enjoyable listen. His vocal range is very monotonous across the entire thing, which can get a little boring, but the actual songs were good and some of them were really enjoyable.

"Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon & Garfunkel (January, 1970)

Dad's Take:

If there were cracks in the relationship between Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel while this album was being recorded, you wouldn't know it by the harmonious sound of the record. But Simon was concentrating on music while Garfunkel was building an acting career, and this album, which resulted in two Grammys and hours and hours of airplay would turn out to be their last.

The title song was a megahit, topping charts around the world, but it's not the only hit on the record. "The Boxer" was also a huge success. Two other songs, "Cecilia" and "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)" were successful enough to make most groups happy, but seem like minor successes when compared to the other two.

"Bridge Over Troubled Water" is one of those instant classic songs, one of those recordings that seems superhuman. The beautiful track, the ethereal vocals, and the meaningful lyrics combine into a song that defies mortality. Hard to believe that Art Garfunkel really didn't want to sing it, thinking it should be performed by Paul Simon. The song is so nearly perfect that considering anything different than what they gave us is almost impossible.

Next up is "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)," which can be seen as the beginning of Simon's obsession with world music. It's among my favorite Simon & Garfunkel songs, despite not being an original composition. That's followed by "Cecilia," a faster song that was almost inescapable on 1970 radio. Not among my favorites, it is another classic. Three songs in and this is feeling like a greatest hits album.

The next two songs aren't known as well. The Everly-Brothers-like "Keep The Customer Satisfied" is a fun song, a big production that reminds me a little of Simon's "Kodachrome," which would become a big hit in 1973. Then we get another sweet ballad, "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright, a samba featuring Art Garfunkel, before the next big hit, "The Boxer."

It took more than 100 hours in several studios to record "The Boxer." The result is astounding, another classic song that everybody knows.

The rest of the album features songs that are not as well known, but are certainly worth listening to. There's not a bad song on the album. "Baby Driver" is an enjoyable upbeat story song with fun harmonies. "The Only Living Boy in New York," "Why Don't You Write Me," the live Every Brothers cover of "Bye Bye Love," and the closer, "Song For The Asking," along with the side's opener, "The Boxer," combine into one of the truly great album sides, something that is missed on CD or when listened to from computer files.

This is one of those records that anybody who is interested in folk rock and in harmonies and song writing and singing and, well, just music, should know. No album will be loved by everyone, but there are some records that are just good to know, whether you love it or not. This is one of those.

You have to hand it to Simon & Garfunkel. They might have recorded only five albums, but every one of them is great, and they went out big. This is a nearly perfect record.

Brad's Take:

Sometimes when you go into an album you've never heard before, especially from an era that you're not very familiar with, you don't really know what to expect, and that can be kind of intimidating. When I hit the play button and jumped into Bridge Over Troubled Water, I was immediately into it.

How can you deny these vocals? Both of them sing beautifully together. Whether it's quietly sung or when they're belting it out, they sound amazing.

The title track is especially gorgeous. Not just vocally, but also musically. I love the slow, really quiet stripped down beginning of the song, and how it builds and builds and builds into this huge dramatic ending. It's really powerful, and definitely one that I will go back to again.

Another song I loved right off the bat was "Keep The Customer Satisfied." It's a very fun and upbeat tune. Musically, it's very early-Beatles-esque. I especially love when the horns come in strong at the end of the song. So good! When you compare this song to "Bridge Over Troubled Water," you can see the full range Paul and Art have together, creatively. Whether it's slow or upbeat, they nail it.


One thing I love about this album is although they're technically a folk group, they layer all these different instruments over the finger-picked acoustic guitars, and the songs sound so much more full and exciting. The pop and rock elements really make Simon and Garfunkel's folk music stand out. I'm not sure if that was their co-producer's doing or if Paul Simon had it all figured out in his head that the songs would sound this way, but whoever is responsible deserves a Grammy. Oh wait, they got two Grammy awards for this album. Boom!

Basically, this album encompasses all of the genres that were popular at this time, but they spice it up with great production, songwriting, lyrics, and beautiful vocal harmonies throughout the entire record. Some songs are slow, some are fast, but somehow they are all perfect.

"On Her Majesty's Secret Service" by John Barry (January, 1970)

Dad's Take:

It's been a while since we had a soundtrack on our list.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the soundtrack to the James Bond film of that name, with music composed by John Barry, who won quite a few awards for his movie scores, but not for this one. I've never listened to this before, and don't think I've seen the movie, and frankly, I don't have very high expectations. But let's see how it goes.

The album begins with Louis Armstrong singing "We Have All The Time In The World." You can't really go wrong with Satchmo. I think this is his only appearance on the album. If he was on it more, I'd be feeling much better about it.

After Satchmo, we move on to the cleverly titles "This Never Happened To The Other Feller," a big brassy tune that's what you'd expect from a Bond film, including bots and pieces of other Bond music. OK, it's fun, but as you'd expect from a movie score, it feels like a bunch of stitched-together fragments, more than a single tune. Yeah, it's good, but I miss Louis Armstrong.

"Try" is a nice slow tune that sounds like a good number to dance to. Then we're back to more big Bond sounds, followed by an odd little Christmas song performed by Danish singer Nina. And then, nor surprise, we're back to the brassy Bond sounds for the rest of the album. There are very good bits in here, like "Gumbold's Safe." And, the album ends on a high note, with the exciting "Bobsled Chase," which has some interesting things going on in the music. And then it's suddenly over.

Overall, the arrangements are interesting, and the music is fun. The album is good for what it is. Barry's talents kept him very busy, and it's easy to see why. Maybe if I knew the movie better, the score would be more meaningful, but this just doesn't do much for me. I'm not that into movie scores as albums. This one is pretty good, just not my bag.

Brad's Take:

I was never the guy who got very into James Bond films. I think I've only seen one or two of them. As a kid though, playing Goldeneye64 on the Nintendo 64 video game system was something my friends and I did very often, and continue to do sometimes. So when I saw this soundtrack come up on our list, I had no excitement or anything towards it. But this isn't about James Bond and the movie the score comes from. It's just about the music, right?

I'm not too well-versed in classical music, which I think we can classify most of this album as, but I enjoy listening to it from time to time. Especially while I'm at work, which I am right now. (Don't tell my boss.) The instrumental tracks are pretty exciting. The big horns and string sections make it sound really cool and epic. Music from a James Bond movie shouldn't be any other way though.

With that said, I don't feel like this score is anything special. Why would they pick this soundtrack over any other one? And why is it considered such a classic? Maybe I need to listen to more of this kind of music in order to fully understand. Despite my ignorance, John Barry's compositions are very nice to listen to. They aren't overly lengthy. They don't linger or move too slowly.

Some of the songs on here don't really fit the "classical music" label though. "Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown?" sounds like it would be better suited on The Sound of Music, as it sounds like it's a teacher singing to a bunch of children while they all sing along on the choruses. It seems very out of place squeezed between a bunch of classical instrumentals. That's what you get for listening to a soundtrack though. Not everything is going to make sense like a cohesive album would. This is more or less a compilation.

"We Have All The Time In The World/James Bond Theme" is another song that doesn't fit with the others. It sounds like it's taken straight from the '80s with its big boomy drums and synthesizers, which is odd since this soundtrack came out in 1970. I thought that particular track was fantastic! It was a fun twist in the otherwise bland-ish orchestrations of the majority of the soundtrack.


I recognized a few of the songs from the video game that my friends and I used to always play so that was nostalgic and fun to listen to, and that '80s sounding song was pretty awesome. Overall though, this was just nice background music for while I was working, but wasn't anything too exciting to me. I'd like to go back and read the little blurb about this soundtrack in the book that we are pulling all of these albums from and read the author's reasoning as to why this is included as a "classic album" because I don't really buy it. Maybe if I was familiar with the film it would be a different story.

"Tea for the Tillerman" by Cat Stevens (November, 1970)

Brad's Take:

Cat Stevens is a name I've heard since I can remember, but I never actually sat down and listened to his music. I've heard a slew of cover versions of his hit "Wild World" (which is featured on this album) so I was interested in checking this out.

Tea for the Tillerman comes loaded with mid-tempo, acoustic-based, singer-songwriter, and other hyphenated adjective tunes all written by Mr. Stevens. Even though these songs are late 60s acoustic jams, they don't sound like the overdone acoustic folk music that was coming out in an over-abundance around then. Cat brings a refreshing twist into his songwriting. He sounds like he's having fun and not taking himself too seriously, which I find appealing. It doesn't sound like there's an ego behind his music like a lot of his peers.

There isn't really much else I can say about this album. I can see why it made an impact on people's ears back in 1970, and why it still resonates today. You can tell there's a special fun little spark in Cat Stevens' songs that wasn't really in very many others around that era, when everyone was trying to out-cool each other.

Dad's Take:

If you were to hop in the Wayback Machine and set the dials for my early teens, you might see me with a pre-Walkman portable cassette player from Radio Shack, listening to a copy of Tea for the Tillerman copied from an LP I borrowed from my local library. This album got fairly heavy rotation from me in those days, one of the albums most likely to be played between Beach Boys binges.

With the popular "Hard-Headed Woman" and the mega-hit "Wild World," how could this album miss? Add to that everybody's favorite teen-angst tune, the moving-from-both-sides-of-the-conversation (as I know now) "Father and Son," and you have a sure classic.

The non-hits are no slouch either. Cat Stevens was a fine songwriter, and a welcome relief to the acid rock and crazy experimentation of the time. "Sad Lisa," "Where Do the Children Play," and several other songs are ambitious, smart, and loaded with meaning without sounding pretentious or trite. "Into White" is one of my favorite Cat Stevens album tracks. 

If the album has a fault, it's that there's a sameness to many of the songs. While the songs go well together, they go maybe a little too well together. Most of the songs are a similar tempo and cover similar lyrical territory. Cohesiveness is a good thing in an album, but it's nice sometimes to have some bigger differences across the record.

That's pretty minor, though, in the case of Tea for the Tillerman. The album is full of what Stevens does best, mid-tempo tunes full of more-or-less subtle spiritual themes. If there's a sameness, at least it's a pleasant formula.

I have no real excuse for not having listened to this for many years. It was nice to return to, and has aged well. Probably better than this listener has.

"Trout Mask Replica" by Captain Beefheart (June, 1969)

Brad's Take: 

Another excruciatingly epic, experimental, cacophony of an album to add to our list...

Last time, it was Frank Zappa's "classic" Uncle Meat. I hated 99% of that album. But now we get to forcefully sit through a double-LP of Don Van Vliet's madness, otherwise known as Captain Beefheart. And wouldn't 'cha know it? Don's pal Frank Zappa produced this album. It only makes sense that Zappa would want to get behind this project.

I actually find this album to be a lot easier to get through than Uncle Meat. It's hard to pinpoint why or what makes it "better" (i'm using that term very loosely) but it's a little bit less obnoxious, I feel like. His lyrics are more like him just reading his looney poetry, but I kinda like it, I think .

Just like Frank Zappa's album we reviewed before, Trout Mask Replica contains a whole mess of different genres and sounds. "China Pig", for example, is a guitar-only blues track that I actually found very enjoyable. It's got Captain Beefheart's quirks, for sure, but looking deeper, it's a great track that takes me back to when we were reviewing Muddy Waters and similar blues/jazz stuff.

This album also has stuff that sounds like post-punk/hardcore stuff that I've actually enjoyed for quite a while ."My Human Gets Me Blues" has these interesting guitar riffs in some weird time signature, which doesn't sound too far from more modern bands, like Blood Brothers or At The Drive-In, if they had been around in the late 60s. I can dig it.

The good songs are very few and far between. Very. But when little gems popped up, it made me forgive the bad ones. I wouldn't call this a good album, but it's surely not absolutely terrible, like his friend Frank Zappa's was to me.

Phew, I survived!

Dad's Take:

In every art form, there are artists who the experts claim to understand although they are difficult for the uneducated to make sense of. In my field, literature, people like James Joyce and William Faulkner come to mind. In rock and roll, Captain Beefheart has to be near the top of the list of those kinds of artists, and Trout Mask Replica is his best known work. 

Over the past several months, I've sampled this album in bits and pieces, to prepare myself for listening to the whole thing. I don't know if I'm quite prepared for this review yet, but we need to move on.

Much of this album is cacophonic. It sounds wild and unstructured, like people who can't play broke into a studio and had at it. And there's the genius of this album, I supposed. Every weird sound, every note, was meticulously planned. The album took eight months to rehearse. It's hard to make sense of, especially on the first listen, but it's not as free-form as it sounds. Or so we're supposed to believe. Mix the rough music with beat-style poetry and you get an album that is sometimes entertaining, sometimes perplexing, and sometimes annoying.

Once you get over the shock, it's mostly listenable, although I still prefer it in smaller bites than trying to get through the whole thing in one sitting like I am for this review. Songs like "Ella Guru" or "Moonlight In Vermont" present a jazzy, bluesy sound full of musical and vocal play. Play is fun, right? The more you listen, the more it starts to almost make aural sense, until they throw something in to break the reason you thought you were finding.

Some bits, like "China Pig" and "Well," sound like old low-fi blues recordings. Those tend to be the most listenable for me. In fact, "Well" is kind of cool. Or maybe I just feel some relief because it's a vocals-only song, giving me some relief from the music.Same with "Orange Claw Hammer," a fun and odd little pirate chanty. Maybe I shouldn't mention that it's odd. That's kind of understood on this record.

Much of the wordplay on many of the tracks is fun, even when it's ridiculous. "Old Fart At Play" is a prime example. The last song, "Veteran's Day Poppy" is also kind of not as annoying as much of the rest, and for sequential moments at a time quite enjoyable.

This is like some of those modern paintings that look like meaningless splashes of color on a canvas, but when you take the time to really examine them, you can find beauty. These are sound poems, and the Captain knew exactly what he wanted on his canvas. If I don't get it or if I find much of it unenjoyable, so what? Who says art always has to be enjoyable? But why does it have to be so long? And why does it have to hurt my head and make me feel stressed?

So maybe I'll never really understand why this album is so close to the top of so many Greatest Albums lists. I'll leave "getting it" to the experts and the cognescenti. But, hey, I enjoy a William Faulkner novel here and there, and can appreciate James Joyce. Maybe if I listen enough, I'll get it. It's just that, well, I don't know if I care that much about understanding it, when there are so many albums to discover out there, so much that I'll really like.