"The Unforgettable Fire" by U2 (1984)

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Fun Fact:
The album artwork and video for Pride (In the Name of Love) were done by Anton Corbijn, who later directed such nightmare-inducing videos as: Nirvana's Heart-Shaped Box, Rollins Band's Liar, Metallica's Hero of the Day and Bryan Adams' Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?

Key Tracks:
A Sort of Homecoming, Pride (In the Name of Love) and Bad all soar in a fantastic manner. 
Promenade wins too, but it takes a very different path to get there.  ...And there's one other.  I have a very specific list of songs I want played at my wake.  MLK is on that list.

Obvious Filler and Swings-and-Misses:None.  Even 4th of July - the eerie, intentionally odd instrumental that opens the B-side - fits in perfectly with the overall ambience of the record.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately: Recommended Listening (3/4 stars)

Apart from Sunday, Bloody Sunday, U2 was completely off my radar until "The Joshua Tree."  So, whenever I revisit their earlier albums, I am always caught a little off guard because I rediscover the deep magic that band was channeling for their first dozen years or so.  I think it comes from the desparate immediacy that both Bono and The Edge lay bare.  It truly sounds like they both think they'll drown if they don't hit you and hit you hard with something RIGHT NOW.

Because of that need, U2 has always been able to consistenly pull off a feat that seems nearly impossible.  They are able to take subject matter that is either absolutely politicized and angry or deeply emotionally wounded and make it sound flat-out triumphant.  The most jubilant songs on the LP are about some of the most terrible things - the IRA, the assassination of Martin Luther King and heroin addiction.  The record opens with A Sort of Homecoming, which starts out uneven and unsure of itself - uncomfortable in its own skin.  I don't know if that's intentional or serendipitous, but it works out in an amazing way because by the time it ends, it has evolved into something amazing.  Then you get hit with Pride (In the Name of Love).  This may be U2's best example of turning anger in on itself and converting it into defiant, unapologetic joy.  There's also Bad.  Bad is such a phenomenal sing-along that you forget about what you're actually singing along to.

So, is it an album?  Yes.  "The Unforgettable Fire" is what I refer to as a blueprint album.  I can put forth all the ground rules and explanations I want, but the easiest way to demonstrate my notion of "an album" is to just go listen to this one.  The songs sound like nothing else out there, but they are all intrinsically pulled from the same, singular fabric.  There is an anticipation that builds as each track nears its end to hear what direction the next will take.  Such is the pattern for the first nine songs - so much so that I just want to flip the disc over and restart side one because the they are much more concerned with the journey than the destination in the best possible way.  But there are ten tracks on the album.  The last one grounds everything that came before it.  A sort of sequel to Pride (In the Name of Love), MLK showcases Bono at his most compassionate and most vulnerable, and the release/closure it delivers is rarely matched.

The random number generator apparently has some unfinished business. Up next, I revisit the band from my previous entry and weigh in on Van Halen's self-titled debut album.

"Van Halen II" by Van Halen (1979)

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Key Tracks:
You're No Good, Dance the Night Away, and D.O.A.

Obvious Filler and Swings-and-Misses:The third track on an LP usually has to serve as anchor.  Unfortunately, Somebody Get Me a Doctor doesn't even come close.  Spanish Fly doesn't sound like a solo from one of the greatest guitarist of all time; it sounds like an etude played by a beginner classical guitar student.  Bottoms Up! and Outta Love Again start out with a lot of potential, but never get the attention their bassline and guitar licks deserve and end up drifting off into bland obscurity.  Light Up the Sky and Women in Love..... are just plain not good.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately: Above Average (2.5/4 stars) - even when they stumble, they're still Van Halen.

The band sets the tone for their attempt to follow up a classic debut album with a sludgy, mid-tempo cover.  When those instruments started climbing into the cab one by one on Runnin' with the Devil, you knew you were in for something monumental.  You're No Good lets you know almost immediately that you're in for something that is only certain of one thing - it doesn't have the slightest clue what it is.  It's a good version of the song, but it's a step in the opposite direction from everything the first Van Halen album was.  And it is a potent omen.

But then, the boys hit you with something that makes you think you were all wrong.  Dance the Night Away may be the definitive Van Halen song - it's got everything you ever loved about the band (not counting Sammy Hagar).  The guitar solo is over-phased to the point of near-collapse.  The backing vocals are the best vocals, reminding you that Michael Anthony is the "singer" of the band and Dave is the showman.  Dave demonstrates such by being too busy wooing a naif to care what the vocals sound like.  And Alex is banging away with flaming sticks on a set of double-bass drums that look like giant boobs (or so the back cover would lead me to believe).  It's everything you love about Van Halen.

And it's all downhill from there.  "Van Halen II" is handily the softest outing the band ever attempted.  Much like Kiss'  disco-driven "Dynasty" which came out three months later, Van Halen seemed to be dropping their heavy roots and trying to reach a broader, FM-radio audience.  But it just doesn't work.  That misstep is compounded by an absolute failure to strike the blues vs. metal balance they caught on the first album.  On "Van Halen II," Eddie forgets that they are less like Deep Purple and much, much more like ZZ Top.

There is one exception.  On D.O.A., the band slithers down into the gutter and wallows in the filth of that trashy punk-metal groove they own more than anybody except for maybe Guns 'N' Roses.  Go listen to D.O.A.  Hands down, it's the best track on the album.  Unfortunately, it's terribly out of place in the context of everything else.  And that seems to be the tale of "Van Halen II."  Nothing matches up.

So, is it an album?  No.  Like I just said, nothing matches up.  Slamming the gritty, heavy D.O.A in between an unimpressive classical instrumental and a song that sounds like it's chorus is sang by the cast of "Jesus Christ Superstar" just doesn't work.  "Van Halen II" is an LP of clear identity crisis.  Fortunately, they figured it out and got it right - it just didn't happen on these recordings.

Up next, we look at the other side of rock in the eighties with "The Unforgettable Fire" by U2.

"Breaking the Chains" by Dokken (1983)

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Key Tracks:
Breaking the Chains (which is awesome) and I Can't See You (which I don't particularly care for) provided top-40-friendly entry points for metal in the early eighties.  Nightrider is a great Priest-influenced heavy metal tune.  Felony and Paris Is Burning are everything you could ever hope for in up-tempo hair metal.

Obvious Filler:
None.  Even Live to Rock (Rock to Live) works within the context of the tracks, even if it is a watered down, my-girlfriend-likes-that-one way to go about it.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately: Recommended Listening (3/4 stars)

Listening to "Breaking the Chains," I remember how important and oft-overlooked Dokken is to the whole hair metal uprising that happened in the mid-eighties.  Quiet Riot had opened the door for metal in the mainstream, but nobody had capitalized on it except Def Leppard.  "Breaking the Chains" came in out in late '83.  Aerosmith was lost in a drug haze.  Van Halen and Motley Crue were still trying to figure out how to work within the new market.  It would be another year before Bon Jovi or RATT released their first album.

But not Dokken.  Let me be clear, "Breaking the Chains" is first and foremost a metal album, with nods to (if not outright steals from) Deep Purple, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.  But Dokken translated it into something else. 

On "Breaking the Chains," along with Def Leppard's "Pyromania" which came out earlier that year, the template was laid for heavy pop music of the next decade or so.  Granted, there was no power ballad (and I am immensely thankful for that) to be found within the ten tracks, but Dokken landed directly on the fulcrum between what was heavy metal at the time and what the kids wanted to hear on their transistor radios and/or MTV.  Let me say this again - "Breaking the Chains" is first and foremost a metal album.  That being said, I don't know if there would have been a Bon Jovi without Dokken.  Don Dokken's Bruce-Dickensonian vocal range (along with Joe Elliott - honestly, Dokken is the American Def Leppard in my opinion, in case you hadn't gathered that already)  along George Lynch's intense channeling of Randy Rhoad's guitar brought all the underground coolness that was happening on both sides of the pond to the fore and dared and pushed anybody who came across it to try for something more.

I have little doubt that C.C. DeVille heard that extended, self-indulgent guitar solo intro on to Paris Is Burning and said to himself, "that's what I wanna do."  I also have little doubt that Bret Michaels heard the lyrics and delivery to Felony and said to himself, "that's what I wanna do."  Don't get me wrong, I love Poison, but they never came close to either one of those dreams - mostly because they're not Dokken.

So, is it an album?  Yes. All of the "albums" discussed so far have stuttered on the closure, and I am always leery of ending a record with a live track.  However, it works perfectly this time around.  Instead of winding down and giving you an out, "Breaking the Chains" ups everything a notch with Lynch's virtuoso intro to Paris Is Burning.  That concept serves as the perfect conclusion to all the grandiosity and posturing that the rest of the LP had set up so beautifully.

Up next, we stay in that pop-metal mode by delivering some Spanish Fly to all the Beautiful Girls with "Van Halen II."

"London Town" by Paul McCartney & Wings (1978)

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Key Tracks:
London Town, Backwards Traveller and With a Little Luck are all near-Beatles tunes.  Deliver Your Children is a great song without any precendence or previous success to compare with - it's just Mac being Mac.

Obvious Filler:
Cafe on the Left Bank is 100% NOT The Beatles.  Cuff Link is pure 70's instrumental schlock.  Girlfriend is pure 70's schlock where I can't even tell if Paul or Linda is carrying the lead vocals.  Morse Moose and the Grey Goose is not filler, but it is an amazing, yet terrible swing-and-a-miss.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately: Average (2/4 stars)

Random, absurd lyrics:
- "The ocean's a sea of snow."  I get that the ocean's a sea.  That may be one of the most self-evident lyrics ever written.  However, I have visited the ocean and can confirm that it's not snow - not even marine snow.

- "I should be worried but they say you're okay for a bomb."  Huh?  You should ALWAYS be worried when there's a bomb involved, Paul.

- "There was a lead guitarist in Epping Forest and all he ever wanted was to blow."  I'm trying to keep my observations at a PG-13 level, so... no comment.

- "Right on down at the bottom of the sea; tell me are you receiving me?  My name is Morse Moose and I'm calling you."  What's up with Paul's oceanic fixation?  That's two oceanic lyrics on one LP, not to mention Yellow Sumbarine and Octupus's Garden.  Sheesh.


Paul McCartney's post-Beatle recordings tend to aggravate, confound and disappoint me in equal measure.  With Wings in particular, he seemed to be trying to recapture the lightining in a bottle that he stumbled across in the sixties.  But his wife and some random guitar player didn't come close to replacing John and George.  Paul's songs were always the most easily accessible - they had timeless, monumental melodies.  However, the lyrics rarely held up. In addition, those lyrics tended to be the least coherent and downright weirdest of the group.  (Sorry, John.)  Get Back is a prime example of that perpetual McCartney melody vs. lyric tetherball match.  All of these tendencies were accentuated in his seventies recordings - usually to the most adverse effect.  Compounding this problem, I heard Paul say in an interview once that he tries to write a new song every day.  That philosophy seems to water down his output dramatically. 

I really think Paul is unabashedly ripping off everyone (including himself in his younger days) on "London Town".  The title track desperately wants to be a Beatles song.  That trend continues throughout the LP with ever-diminishing returns.

Here are a few examples:

Cafe on the Left Bank strives to be a poignent vignette.  However, it is everything that A Day in the Life is NOT.  The story behind A Day in the Life is well-known.  Paul and John had been writing separately and each had half-a-song - unfinished and no clear idea as to where to go with it.  When they compared notes and put it all together with George Martin at the helm, the result was amazing.  Cafe on the Left Bank is less than that original half-a-song, written almost a decade later and without John or bunch of pianos hitting an E chord to counterbalance it.

Famous Groupies is clearly NOT Rocky Raccoon, but Paul doesn't seem to get that. 

If that weren't bad enough, he starts appropriating sounds from artists who were blatantly chasing the Fab Four back in the sixties, rather than trying to lead a new charge.  I'm Carrying and Don't Let It Bring You Down both sound like songs Paul Simon feverishly rejected.  I'm almost positive that I'm Carrying is the same up-tuned chord progression as The Sounds of Silence.  Name and Address is yet another unveiled attempt to be somebody else - this time it's Elvis Presley.  (Paul would carry the Elvis wannabe torch for decades with only marginal success.)

So, is it an album?  No.  This thing is all over the place.  It feels like all the worst parts of The White Album patchworked together into something that wants to look like a tapestry but really feels more like an amalgum of disperate parts.  It's like putting jelly on a tuna sandwich.

Up next, we hit the hair rock scene from the early eighties with "Breaking the Chains" by Dokken.   Let me just say, "breakin' the chai-yee-ains!!!!"  Oh, and let me also say, "George Lynch!"  Now, what did I do with my AquaNet?

"Free-for-All" by Ted Nugent (1976)

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Key Tracks:
The title track finds a really sweet groove and hangs with it until you can't help but boogie along.  Writing on the Wall is also really groovy, albeit a good bit slower.  It should probably be called Stranglehold (Part 2) because it gets that same sort of sparse, jammy vibe with a droning bassline and a long, echoing guitar solo.  And then there's Hammerdown. With its fast, highly technical guitar work, operatic vocal delivery and a couple of tempo changes, the song moves out of the hard rock world and straight into heavy metal - and it's awesome.

Obvious Filler:
Dog Eat Dog is about as vanilla, mid-tempo rock as it can get; it sounds like the generic output you'd get if all the elements of classic radio rock were input into a computer program.  Obviously, somebody disagreed because Dog Eat Dog was the only single released from "Free-for-All."  Together is the LP's sole ballad, and a terrible one at that.  It only serves to prove that you shouldn't let the rhythm section write songs for you.  Light My Way only serves to prove that you shouldn't let the lead singer you're about to kick out of the band write songs for you either.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
Above Average (2.5/4 stars).  Even though there's a lot of filler, Uncle Ted's guitar holds up through all of it and makes the tracks easy to digest.

I suspect there was a lot of pressure on the Nuge to follow up his debut album.  Unfortunately, I don't think he let this one cook long enough and it's painfully apparent.  The jacket doesn't even list the tracks in the correct order (in two separate places), which makes me think the whole thing was slapped together and rushed out, probably at the urging of the record company.  It makes me wonder what Ted thinks of this record compared to his others - especially since it sounds so much like somebody's hurried cash grab.

First of all, there's the songwriting.  Nugent only wrote about two-thirds of the tracks and (with the exception of Dog Eat Dog) they're all good songs.  However, most of the B-side was written by other members of the band and none of them are really interesting or sound much like Ted Nugent songs. 

Then there's the vocalist issue.  Derrick St. Holmes quit in the middle of the "Free-for-All" sessions.  Rather than re-record those tracks, we're left with three lead singers on the LP - Ted Nugent (on the title track only), St. Holmes and... um... well... Meat Loaf (yes, that Meat Loaf) doing a mediocre Derrick St. Holmes impression.  However, there are glimpses of The Loaf unleashed.  Hammerdown, in particular, serves as a good precursor to the "Bat out of Hell" recordings he would begin soon afterward.

So, is it an album?  No.  The stitches mentioned above show through badly.  Also, the experience never feels like a journey.  To me, that's key for "an album."  If the music doesn't start you in one place and leave you in another when it's all over, then it's just a bunch of music.  That's what happens on "Free-for-All."  There are some really good tracks individually, but the experience just stagnates - it never goes anywhere.

Up next, we break free from the "dude rock" theme of the last few reviews, but keep the dial tuned to classic rock with "London Town" by Paul McCartney & Wings.

"Bad to the Bone" by George Thorogood & The Destroyers (1982)

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Key Tracks:
Back to Wentzville is a great, straight-up blues tune.  Nobody but Me and No Particular Place to Go show Thorogood's true colors.  Bad to the Bone.  Songs get overplayed for a reason... I'lll explain a little later on.

Obvious Filler:
G.T. ends the album with an acoustic cover of a song made famous by Johnny Cash - Wanted Man - and it almost derails the whole outing.  Fortunately, the means justify the end.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately: Recommended Listening (3/4 stars)

On the "Bad to the Bone" sessions, Thorogood reaches for some kind of a cross between Muddy Waters and Bruce Springsteen.  What confounds me is that he seems to be actively working against a much closer association - The Ramones.

If you take away the saxophone (which I would strongly recommend for every track) and replace it with Thorogood's all-too-scarce guitar solos, you're left with a record full of rockabilly punk tracks - they're short, punchy, heavy and to-the-point - deperately trying to be garage recordings from the sixties.  If you don't believe me, just listen to Thorogood's covers of Nobody but Me and No Particular Place to Go.  Both are as punk as punk gets.

But like I said earlier, he seems to be reaching for something else.  When he covers John Lee Hooker's New Boogie Chillun (complete with sax and organ), Lonesome George tips his whole hand.  He never breaks free of the twelve-bar structure or the riffology requisite for any bluesman worth his salt; but then again, he never really seems to try to.  Even the ballads are held together by nothing more than whiskey-soaked vocals, scotch tape and good intentions.

And then there's the title track.  Like I said before, songs get overplayed for a reason.  Bad to the Bone is just that - the roaring slide guitar swallows every other part of the song whenever it checks in.  And stuttering is always cool - just ask BTO. The lyrics feel like they were picked up on the cheap at a Bo Diddley yard sale. The combined payoff from all those factors is monumental.  But don't think for a second that the LP exists solely to push this song.  It is a layered, outrageous experience that only lets up when it needs to catch its breath before pushing even harder on the next track.

So, is it an album?
Yes.  The similarity of the tracks pulls everything together and there is a distinct balance struck among them.  With the exception of the closer, each song feels like a natural progression from the one before as well as a natural segue to the next.

Up next - my random number generator must be tooling around in a 1979 Firebird, playing mailbox baseball and whistling at chicks because it has decided to follow up "Bad to the Bone" with "Free-for-All" by Ted Nugent.

"The Grand Illusion" by Styx (1977)

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Key Tracks:Tommy Shaw's synth-heavy pop opus  Fooling Yourself, Dennis DeYoung's guitar-heavy prog opus Castle Walls, and the comfortable medium that became one of the band's greatest hits - Come Sail Away.

Obvious Filler:The closing track - The Grand Finale - is really just a poor excuse for a reprise of some of the record's strongest tracks - Superstar, Come Sail Away and The Grand Illusion.  The band would have been much better served to just end with the penultimate track - Castle Walls - or to come up with something else instead.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately: Recommended Listening (3/4 stars)

The term prog-pop seems like an oxymoron - mostly because the two appear inherently incongruent on the surface.  I can't think of another band that appeals to both markets so easily - maybe because Styx seems to work best when the band it at odds with itself.  Tommy Shaw's grandiose guitar overtures perfectly counterbalance Dennis DeYoung's synth-heavy prog explorations.  Either on its own would be overbearing.  However, the two together forge a sound unlike anything else.  Hearing Fooling Yourself or Castle Walls in a vacuum would seem heavy-handed.  But, lisening them offset one another is totally different experience.

Conveniently, this harmonious dissonance reaches its apex on the opening track of the record's B-side - which also happens to be the only song not written by Shaw or DeYoung.  Each furiously vies for top billing on Miss America, and - thankfully - neither comes out victorious.  The result seems at first markedly uneven, but ends up being the heaviest and (strangely) most balanced track on the LP.

So, is it an album?  Yes.  The aforementioned Shaw-guitar/DeYoung-synth conflict actually adds a degree of consistency to the effort, with DeYoung's synths holding everything together by a nose.  The album is further cemented by lyrics that deal primarily with the onus of fame - despite contributions from three different lyricists.

Up next, "Bad to the Bone" by George Thorogood (1982).

"Killing Me Softly" by Roberta Flack (1973)

Premise & Ground Rules of Revisiting Vinyl



Key Tracks:
Killing Me Softly with His Song, Jesse and I'm the Girl are what people expected to hear when they bought this record.  Suzanne is also an interesting exploration.

Obvious Filler:
None, but there are a few marvelous swings-and-misses.  Let me clarify.  A filler track is a track that was added simply to fill time and has no artistic dedication.  A swing-and-a-miss is a track where the artist was obviously reaching for something but didn't make it (often in spectacular fashion).

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
Above Average (2.5/4 stars)

On this record, there's never any attempt to hide the fact that its richest asset is the title track.  So, understandably, that's how it all kicks off.  Everybody knows Killing Me Softly with His Song because everybody should - it's one of the most powerful vocal performances of the seventies.  The unabashed vulnerability of Roberta's delivery is a fragile treasure.  That vulnerability deepens with track two - the Janis Ian cover Jesse.  It's just as exposed, but it feels more substantial and somehow more raw - possibly because it forgoes the cheesy synth of the previous track and replaces it with a traditional string arrangement.  Jesse feels like it could have been recorded in the forties (or any other decade thereafter) and has a timeless quality to it.  And in those moments, Roberta Flack is unmatched.  She is phenomenal when she lays bare her soul.

Unfortunately, that is also a hindrance in some scenarios.  The next track, No Tears (In The End), is an uptempo, bombastic R&B number.  It calls for a Gladys delivery, if not a full-on Aretha.  But Roberta Flack never plays anything that way.  Her voice far too restrained for what the song demands, especially when it's competing with horns and a proto-funk rythm section. 

She does regain her footing on I'm the Girl, but sadly, that's the last torch song on the LP.  The B side starts by repeating the misguided R&B pattern with another great song by a great R&B songwriter falling short due to an incongruous vocal.  Then everything takes a slide.  Flack seems to be trying to capture the pop zeitgeist at the time with the remaining tracks.  All of the lounge-sound stereotypes of the seventies make an appearance on When You Smile and Conversation Love.  (By the way, Conversation Love is the only track which gets its lyrics printed on the album cover for some reason I have yet to discern because they are not good lyrics.  "Throw sad reflections to the wind where they belong / Surprising things will rise to the top."  Huh?)  But somehow, Flack does manage to strike a perfect balance of the two very distinct pop sounds she is recording between - the psychedelia of the late sixties and the disco of the mid-late seventies - with the closing track, Suzanne.  Even more astounding, she does it with a nine-minute-plus cover of a Leonard Cohen song.  That is no small feat.

So, is it an album? 
No.  It's not because of the seven different arrangers she brought in for the eight song LP.  It's not because the title track was recorded and mixed completely separate from everything else.  It's not because it was recorded over a two-year period.  It's because of a clear lack of identity.  On "Killing Me Softly," Roberta Flack tries to bounce from chanteuse to soul queen to pop diva while only ever seeming truly comfortable in one of those roles.

Up next, "The Grand Illusion" by Styx (1977).

Introduction & Ground Rules

"Digital music killed the album!"  That's what the internet prophets seem to scream on a regular basis.  Albums are portrayed as a lost art in the MP3 era.  But the more I hear that argument, the more I question it.

Has the digital revolution altered basic fundamental musical output at its core?  Are the memories of those older works skewed by nostalgia?  Has the musical landscaped evolved (or reverted back to the fifties/early sixties, depending on how you look at it) into nothing more than insular nuggets of three minute gold, or did we give undue weight to songs that didn't deserve it and tune out all the junk, fluff and filler because the LP format forced us to do so?

Often, my favorite songs are the deep cuts and the too-long-for-radio anthems.  However, I also think there are whole lot of tracks that exist only because there was groove space left on the vinyl.  I have a nagging suspicion that the album is not a lost art at all.  Rather, I think it may be something which was never that common to begin with and that technology is simply shining a light on that issue.

It all boils down to this - did providing us with the ability to pick and choose which specific tracks we want to hear/purchase come at the cost of a larger overall experience?

I'm not sure.  So, over the course of the next year I plan to randomly select a hundred releases from my collection and listen to them with one question in mind: "Is it an album?"  I'm not counting how many great tracks it has; I'm not  checking singles or record sales; I'm not exploring the music's cultural significance or place in history.  I may talk about all those things, but ulimately, I'm trying to determine whether or not it sounds like a cohesive effort made by people working toward a similar goal and capturing a specific moment in an arc that makes some sort of emotional sense - that is what separates an album from a collection of songs that happened to be released at the same time.


GROUND RULES

No musical genre is off limits.

Release must be of album length - at least 25 minutes.  Dual release LPs with EPs on each side by different artists will not be considered.

Original release date had to be between 1965 and 1990.  Before 1965 or so (and for a while after in some cases), singles and albums were two different entities - songs slated to be singles were intentionally kept off albums in order to increase sales.  And after 1990, compact discs had become a commonplace format to both artists and consumers.  Listening to music without the ability to skip, shuffle or program songs is a critical part of the question I'm asking.

Greatest hits, compilations and soundtracks don't count.  With few exceptions (Queen's "Flash Gordon" jumps immediately to mind), these releases are primarily constructed in an altogether different fashion and for different purposes than other recordings, often by individuals other than the artists themselves.  Even though the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack paints a very vivid, well-developed picture, it's not an album and it's not trying to be.

Live releases count.  A good live recording should be a snapshot of an emotion and a feel.  If done correctly, it can make for a very cohessive album.  "Kiss Alive" and "Johnny Cash at San Quentin" are both albums in the truest sense, due to (rather than in spite of) the fact that the material originated from live performances.

Multi-record releases count with a qualifier.  On these efforts, a cohesive vision tends to get sacrificed in lieu of artistic exploration.  The results can range from inconsistent mess to hit-and-miss grab bag to something downright phenomenal.  When considering these recordings, I'll look at each side as an individual suite and see how well it gels, and then the work as a whole to determine if it's a "double album" or just a bunch of disjointed tracks.


So, that's my plan.  Up first on Thursday, "Killing Me Softly" by the Roberta Flack (1973).