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Monday, October 31, 2016

The Who - Who's Next


Who's Next is the fifth studio album by English rock band The Who. It developed from the aborted Lifehouse project, a multi-media rock opera written by the group's Pete Townshend as a follow-up to the band's 1969 album Tommy. The project was cancelled due to its complexity and conflicts with Kit Lambert, the band's manager, but Townshend was persuaded to record the songs as a straightforward studio album.
The Who recorded Who's Next with assistance from recording engineer Glyn Johns. After producing the song "Won't Get Fooled Again" in the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, they relocated to Olympic Studios to record and mix most of the album's remaining songs. They made prominent use of the synthesizer on the album, particularly on "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Baba O'Riley", which were both released as singles. The cover photo was shot by Ethan Russell and made reference to the monolith in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, as it featured group members having urinated against a concrete piling protruding from a slag heap.
Who's Next was an immediate success when it was released on 14 August 1971. It has since been viewed by critics as the Who's best record and one of the greatest albums of all time. It was reissued on CD several times with additional songs originally intended for Lifehouse.
Track Listing
  1. Baba O' Riley
  2. Bargain
  3. Love Ain't for Keepin'
  4. My Wife
  5. The Song is Over
  6. Getting in Tune
  7. Going Mobile
  8. Behind Blue Eyes
  9. Won't Get Fooled Again
 
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The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band


Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released on 1 June 1967, it was an immediate commercial and critical success, spending 27 weeks at the top of the albums chart in the United Kingdom and 15 weeks at number one in the United States. Time magazine declared it "a historic departure in the progress of music" and the New Statesman praised its elevation of pop to the level of fine art. It won four Grammy Awards in 1968, including Album of the Year, the first rock LP to receive this honour.
In August 1966, the Beatles permanently retired from touring and began a three-month holiday from recording. During a return flight to London in November, Paul McCartney had an idea for a song involving an Edwardian era military band that would eventually form the impetus of the Sgt. Pepper concept. Sessions for what was to become the Beatles' eighth studio album began on 24 November in Abbey Road Studio Two with two compositions inspired from their youth, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", but after pressure from EMI, the songs were released as a double A-side single and were not included on the album.
Sgt. Pepper is regarded by musicologists as an early concept album that advanced the use of extended form in popular music while continuing the artistic maturation seen on the Beatles' preceding releases. It has been described as one of the first art rock LPs, aiding the development of progressive rock, and credited with marking the beginning of the Album Era. An important work of British psychedelia, the album incorporates a range of stylistic influences, including vaudeville, circus, music hall, avant-garde, and Western and Indian classical music. In 2003, the Library of Congress placed Sgt. Pepper in the National Recording Registry, honouring the work as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". That same year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it number one in its list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". As of 2011, it has sold more than 32 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums in history. Professor Kevin J. Dettmar, writing in the Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, described it as "the most important and influential rock and roll album ever recorded".
Track Listing
  1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
  2. With a Little Help from my Friends
  3. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
  4. Getting Better
  5. Fixing a Hole
  6. She's Leaving Home
  7. Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!
  8. Within You Without You
  9. When I'm Sixy-Four
  10. Lovely Rita
  11. Good Morning Good Morning
  12. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band(reprise)
  13. A Day in the Life
 
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The Beatles - Abbey Road


Abbey Road is the eleventh studio album by English rock band the Beatles, released on 26 September 1969 by Apple Records. The recording sessions for the album were the last in which all four Beatles participated. Although Let It Be was the final album that the Beatles completed before the band's dissolution in April 1970, most of the album had been recorded before the Abbey Road sessions began. A double A-side single from the album, "Something"/"Come Together", released in October, topped the Billboard chart in the US.
Abbey Road is a rock album that incorporates genres such as blues, pop and progressive rock, and it makes prominent use of the Moog synthesizer and the Leslie speaker. Side two contains a medley of song fragments edited together to form a single piece. The album was recorded amid a more collegial atmosphere than the Get Back/Let It Be sessions earlier in the year, but there were still frequent confrontations within the band, particularly over Paul McCartney's song "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", one of four tracks on which John Lennon did not perform. He had privately left the group by the time the album was released and McCartney publicly quit the following year.
Although Abbey Road was an immediate commercial success and reached number one in the UK and US, it initially received mixed reviews, some critics describing its music as inauthentic and bemoaning the production's artificial effects. Many critics now view the album as the Beatles' best and rank it as one of the greatest albums of all time. In particular, George Harrison's contributions, "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun", are considered to be among the best songs he wrote for the group. The album's cover features the four band members walking across a zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios and has become one of the most famous and imitated images in the history of recorded music. As of 2011, Abbey Road remains one of the Beatles' best-selling albums.
Track Listing
  1. Come Together
  2. Something
  3. Maxwell's Silver Hammer
  4. Oh! Darling
  5. Octopus's Garden
  6. I Want You(She's so Heavy)
  7. Here Comes the Sun
  8. Because
  9. You Never Give me Your Money
  10. Sun King
  11. Mean Mr. Mustard
  12. Polythene Pam
  13. She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
  14. Golden Slumbers
  15. Carry that Weight
  16. The End
  17. Her Majesty
 
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Friday, October 28, 2016

100 Greatest Rock Guitar Solos

The dramatic, amplified electric guitar solo has become a characteristic part of rock music. Guitar solos are a defining feature of the rock genre of heavy metal, in which most songs feature a solo. Metal solos often showcase the virtuosity of the guitarists, especially in metal styles that use shred guitar techniques for rapid playing of scales and arpeggios. Since the 1960s, electric guitarists have often altered the timbre of their guitar adding electronic guitar effects such as reverb, distortion, delay, and chorus to make the sound fuller and add harmonic overtones. Other effects used in solos include the wah pedal and the talk box.
Rock bands often have two guitarists, designated "lead" and "rhythm", with the “lead” player performing the solos and instrumental melody lines while the "rhythm" player accompanies with chords or riffs (there are some cases where the two guitarists will share the lead role). Most examples of rock music are based around songs in traditional forms. The main formal features are verses, choruses, and bridges. The guitar solo is usually the most significant instrumental section of a mainstream rock song. In other rock-related genres, such as pop and dance music, the synthesizer usually plays this role.

Listing and Download
  1. Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven
  2. Van Halen - Eruption
  3. Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird
  4. Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
  5. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - All Along the Watchtower
  6. Guns N' Roses - November Rain
  7. Metallica - One
  8. Eagles - Hotel California
  9. Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train
  10. Cream - Crossroads
  11. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Voodoo Chile
  12. Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode
  13. Stevie Ray Vaughan - Texas Flood
  14. Derek And The Dominoes - Layla
  15. Pantera - Floods
  16. Led Zeppelin - Heartbreaker
  17. Eric Johnson - Cliffs of Dover
  18. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Little Wing
  19. Deep Purple - Highway Star
  20. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
  21. Pink Floyd - Time
  22. Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing
  23. Rage Against the Machine - Bulls on Parade
  24. Metallica - Fade to Black
  25. Jethro Tull - Aqualung
  26. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
  27. Stevie Ray Vaughan - Pride and Joy
  28. Ozzy Osbourne - Mr. Crowley
  29. Steve Vai - For the Love of God
  30. Joe Satriani - Surfing with the Alien
  31. Ted Nugent - Stranglehold
  32. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Machine Gun
  33. B.B. King - The Trill is Gone
  34. Radiohead - Paranoid Android
  35. Pantera - Cemetery Gates
  36. Yngwie Malmsteen - Black Star
  37. Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine
  38. Led Zeppelin - Whole Lotta Love
  39. Neil Young - Cortez the Killer
  40. Steely Dan - Reelin' in the Years
  41. Queen - Brighton Rock
  42. The Beatles - While my Guitar Gently Weeps
  43. ZZ Top - Sharp Dressed Man
  44. Pearl Jam - Alive
  45. The Doors - Light my Fire
  46. Van Halen - Hot for Teacher
  47. The Allman Brothers Band - Jessica
  48. The Rolling Stones - Sympathy for the Devil
  49. Santana - Europa
  50. Kiss - Shock Me
  51. Metallica - Master of Puppets
  52. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Star Spangled Banner
  53. Led Zeppelin - Since I've been Loving You
  54. The Smashing Pumpkins - Geek U.S.A.
  55. Joe Satriani - Satch Boogie
  56. Black Sabbath - War Pigs
  57. Pantera - Walk
  58. Eric Clapton - Cocaine
  59. The Kinks - You Really Got Me
  60. Frank Zappa - Black Napkins
  61. Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears
  62. Pink Floyd - Money
  63. Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun
  64. Prince - Little Red Corvette
  65. Nirvana - In Bloom
  66. The Allman Brothers Band - Blue Sky
  67. Michael Jackson - Beat It
  68. Yes - Starship Trooper
  69. The Beatles - And Your Bird Can Sing
  70. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Purple Haze
  71. Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
  72. Aerosmith - Walk This Way
  73. Phish - Stash
  74. Deep Purple - Lazy
  75. The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again
  76. Neil Young - Cinnamon Girl
  77. Alice in Chains - Man in the Box
  78. Grateful Dead - Truckin'
  79. Van Halen - Mean Street
  80. AC/DC - You Shook Me All Night Long
  81. Velvet Underground - Sweet Jane
  82. King Crimson - 21st Century Schizoid Man
  83. Stevie Ray Vaughan - Scuttle Buttin'
  84. Sublime - Santeria
  85. David Bowie - Moonage Daydream
  86. The Allman Brothers Band - Whipping Post
  87. Living Colour - Cult of Personality
  88. Steely Dan - Kid Charlemagne
  89. Rage Against the Machine - Killing in the Name
  90. Eric Clapton - Let it Rain
  91. Creedence Clearwater Revival - I Heard it Through the Grapevine
  92. Stray Cats - Stay Cat Strut
  93. The Doors - The End
  94. Rush - Working Man
  95. Pearl Jam - Yellow Ledbetter
  96. The Rolling Stones - Honky Tonk Woman
  97. The Smashing Pumpkins - Cherub Rock
  98. Dream Theater - Under a Glass Moon
  99. Jeff Beck - Cause We've Ended as Lovers
  100. Janes Addiction - Three Days

Guns N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction


Appetite for Destruction is the debut studio album by American hard rock band Guns N' Roses. It was released on July 21, 1987, by Geffen Records to massive commercial success. It topped the Billboard 200 and became the best-selling debut album as well as the 11th best-selling album in the United States. With about 30 million copies sold worldwide, it is also one of the best-selling recordsever. Although critics were ambivalent toward the album when it was first released, Appetite for Destruction has since received retrospective acclaim and been viewed as one of the greatest albums of all time.
Axl Rose stated that many of the songs on the album were written while the band was performing on the Los Angeles club circuit, and a number of songs that would be featured on later Guns N' Roses albums were considered for Appetite for Destruction, such as "Back Off Bitch", "You Could Be Mine", "November Rain" and "Don't Cry". It is said that the reason for not putting "November Rain" on it was because they had already agreed to put "Sweet Child 'O Mine" on it and thus already had a ballad on the album (however, both Use Your Illusion albums would contain more than one ballad).
The band started searching for someone to produce their debut, mostly recommendations made by Geffen executive Tom Zutaut. Demos were recorded under both Manny Charlton and Spencer Proffer, with some work made with the latter being issued in the EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide. One of the interviewed prospects was Kiss' Paul Stanley, rejected after insisting on changes to Steven Adler's drum setup and the songs. The band considered Robert John Lange, but he proved too expensive to hire. Eventually Mike Clink, who had produced several Triumph records, was chosen, for being the first to record the band exactly the way they wanted.
Track Listing
  1. Welcome to the Jungle
  2. It's So Easy
  3. Nightrain
  4. Out Ta Get Me
  5. Mr. Brownstone
  6. Paradise City
  7. My Michelle
  8. Think About You
  9. Sweet Child O' Mine
  10. You're Crazy
  11. Anything Goes
  12. Rocket Queen
 
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Pink Floyd - The Wall


The Wall is the eleventh studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released as a double album on 30 November 1979 by Harvest Records in the United Kingdom and by Columbia Records in the United States. It is the last studio album released with the line-up of guitarist David Gilmour, bass guitarist and lyricist Roger Waters, keyboardist Richard Wright, and drummer Nick Masonbefore Wright was fired from the band. It was supported by a tour with elaborate theatrical effects, and adapted into a 1982 feature film, Pink Floyd – The Wall. The album features the band's only single to top various charts, "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2".
As with Pink Floyd's prior three albums, The Wall is a concept album, exploring themes of abandonment and personal isolation. It is a rock opera that follows Pink, a character whom Waters modeled after himself and the band's original leader, Syd Barrett. Pink's life begins with the loss of his father during the Second World War and continues with abuse from his schoolteachers, an overprotective mother, and the breakdown of his marriage; all contribute to his eventual self-imposed isolation from society, represented by a metaphorical wall. Waters conceived the album during Pink Floyd's 1977 In the Flesh Tour, when his frustration with the audience became so acute that he spat on the audience. The album features a harsher and more theatrical style than Pink Floyd's previous albums. Wright was unceremoniously fired from the band by Waters during its production but remained as a salaried musician, performing with Pink Floyd during the Wall tour.
The album was one of the best selling of 1980, and by 1999 it had sold over 23 million RIAA-certified units (11.5 million albums), making it the third highest certified album in the United States. Rolling Stone placed The Wall at number 87 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
The Wall is a rock opera that explores abandonment and isolation, symbolised by a metaphorical wall. The songs create an approximate storyline of events in the life of the protagonist, Pink, a character based on Syd Barrett as well as Roger Waters, whose father was killed during the Second World War. Pink is oppressed by his overprotective mother, and tormented at school by tyrannical, abusive teachers. All of these traumas become metaphorical "bricks in the wall". The protagonist eventually becomes a rock star, his relationships marred by infidelity, drug use, and outbursts of violence. As his marriage crumbles, he finishes building his wall, completing his isolation from human contact

Track Listing
Side 1
  1. In The Flesh
  2. Thin Ice
  3. Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1)
  4. The Happiest Day of our Lives
  5. Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)
  6. Mother
  7. Goodbye Blue Sky
  8. Empty Spaces
  9. Young Lust
  10. One of my Turns
  11. Don't Leave Now
  12. Another Brick in the Wall (Part 3)
  13. Goodbye Cruel World
Side 2
  1. Hey You
  2. Is There Anybody Out There?
  3. Nobody Home
  4. Vera
  5. Bring The Boys Back Home
  6. Comfortably Numb
  7. The Show Must Go On
  8. In The Flesh
  9. Run Like Hell
  10. Waiting For The Worms
  11. Stop
  12. The Trial
  13. Outside The Wall
 
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Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon


The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth album by the English rock band Pink Floyd. Originally released on 1 March 1973, on the label Harvest, it built on ideas explored in the band's earlier recordings and live shows, but departs from instrumental thematic by founding member Syd Barrett. The album explores themes including conflict, greed, the passage of time, and mental illness, the latter partly inspired by Barrett's deteriorating mental state.
Developed during live performances, an early version was premiered several months before recording began; new material was recorded in two sessions in 1972 and 1973 at Abbey Road in London. The group used some advanced recording techniques at the time, including multitrack recording and tape loopsAnalogue synthesizers were prominent in several tracks, and snippets from recorded interviews with Pink Floyd's road crew and others provided philosophical quotations throughout. Engineer Alan Parsons was responsible for many distinctively notable sonic aspects and the recruitment of non-lexical singer Clare Torry. The album's iconic sleeve, designed by Storm Thorgerson, depicts a prism dispersing light into colour and represents the band's lighting, the record's thematic material, and keyboardist Richard Wright's "simple and bold" design request.
The Dark Side of the Moon was an immediate success; it topped the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart for a week and remained in the chart for 741 weeks from 1973 to 1988. With an estimated 45 million copies sold, it is Pink Floyd's most commercially successful album and one of the best-selling worldwide. It has been remastered and re-released twice, and covered in its entirety by several other acts. It produced two singles, "Money" and "Us and Them", and is the band's most popular album among fans and critics, and has been ranked as one of the greatest albums of all time.

Track Listing
  1. Speak to Me
  2. Breathe
  3. On the Run
  4. Time
  5. The Great Gig in the Sky
  6. Money
  7. Us and Them
  8. Any Colour You Like
  9. Brain Damage
  10. Eclipse
 
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Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon