Label Guide: Rhino Records
Since Rhino has one of the most daunting back catalogs in the business, we thought we’d skim 35 essential records off the top, from the twisted techno of Aphex Twin to the cigarette-stained storytelling of one of our favorite songwriters of all time, Tom Waits…
Only the Best
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Now that Unknown Pleasures, Closer, and Still have been given the deluxe two-disc reissue treatment which coincided with a movie, Control, and followed, throughout the previous 20 years, the Substance and Permanent compilations, the Heart and Soul box set, a couple live discs, a BBC disc, tribute sneakers, a tribute Zune, and tribute bands (few of which performed actual covers) there might as well be an official point of introduction with a straightforward title. Just happening to coincide with the release of Grant Gee's eponymous documentary, The Best of Joy Division is a 14-track, 55-minute grab bag of scattered tracks from the band's discography. It is impossible to call these the best, or even the highlights, when the band recorded no obvious lowlights and (only in a relative sense) a handful of midlights. Not including alternate mixes or demos that have floated out in various forms, Joy Division recorded short of 50 songs, none of which would be completely unjustifiable on a single-disc summary. Beyond the no-brainers "Love Will Tear Us Apart," "She's Lost Control," "Transmission," and "Atmosphere," the program doesn't lean in any one direction, pulling fairly evenly from the two proper albums while offering seven tracks that were compiled originally for Substance. It is kind of strange, however, that the somewhat slight instrumental "Incubation" was chosen over "Atrocity Exhibition" and "A Means to an End," and that there is nothing from An Ideal for Living (the band's first release, a four-track EP), especially when there were 25 minutes of available space on the disc. While this is one of many ways to become acquainted with a body of work that adds up to some of the most tense, precise, and powerful rock music made, the best solution is to get as much as possible at once and submit. ~ Andy Kellman
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As a major architect of early hip-hop, Afrika Bambaataa is perhaps more deserving of a respectable compilation treatment than anyone. And while his considerable influence has largely been brushed aside by a rap world that sadly ignores far too many of its innovators, Looking for the Perfect Beat may help to change that. Whatever your opinion on the shelf life of his music, Bambaataa was an innovator of the highest order. While many rappers would be content to sample and name check James Brown ad nauseam, Bambaataa collaborated with the Godfather of Soul himself on the sharp "Unity Part 1 (The Third Coming)." The amazing double-punch of "Planet Rock" and "Looking for the Perfect Beat" serve as the centerpiece of this disc, while "Zulu Nation Throwdown" sits as a perfect opening track, in its time initiating a back-to-roots aesthetic that was years ahead of the Afrocentric rap explosion of the late '80s. Looking for the Perfect Beat also nicely augments the rsum of producer Arthur Baker, a trailblazing dance remixer of the early '80s. ~ John Duffy
Herrrrrrrrrrrrre’s Johnny
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PiL managed to avoid boundaries for the first four years of their existence, and Metal Box is undoubtedly the apex. It's a hallmark of uncompromising, challenging post-punk, hardly sounding like anything of the past, present, or future. Sure, there were touchstones that got their imaginations running -- the bizarreness of Captain Beefheart, the open and rhythmic spaces of Can, and the dense pulses of Lee Perry's productions fueled their creative fires -- but what they achieved with their second record is a completely unique hour of avant-garde noise. Originally packaged in a film canister as a trio of 12" records played at 45 rpm, the bass and treble are pegged at 11 throughout, with nary a tinge of midrange to be found. It's all scrapes and throbs (dubscrapes?), supplanted by John Lydon's caterwauling about such subjects as his dying mother, resentment, and murder. Guitarist Keith Levene splatters silvery, violent, percussive shards of metallic scrapes onto the canvas, much like a one-armed Jackson Pollock. Jah Wobble and Richard Dudanski lay down a molasses-thick rhythmic foundation throughout that's just as funky as Can's Czukay/Leibezeit and Chic's Edwards/Rodgers. It's alien dance music. Metal Box might not be recognized as a groundbreaking record with the same reverence as Never Mind the Bollocks, and you certainly can't trace numerous waves of bands who wouldn't have existed without it like the Sex Pistols record. But like a virus, its tones have sent miasmic reverberations through a much broader scope of artists and genres. [Metal Box was issued in the States in 1980 with different artwork and cheaper packaging under the title Second Edition; the track sequence differs as well. The U.K. reissue of Metal Box on CD boasts better sound quality than the Second Edition CD.]
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Despite the various members' attempts to tarnish its memory with everything from half-assed reunion tours, professions of love for American AOR bands and appearances in commercials for British butter companies, Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols continues to conjure the heady days of a genre-defining zeitgeist that was sonically corrosive and improbably influential. While the Sex Pistols' role in the cultural landscape that was late '70s Britain under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has been well documented (especially in director Julien Temple's documentary, The Filth and the Fury), the band's only true long-form musical document still remains resonant three decades after its release.
more »Remember how the Rolling Stones and the Beatles began their careers revamping American R&B and reselling it to the colonies over here? The Sex Pistols' aural synergy was derived from such American antecedents as '50s-styled gutter glam (cf. New York Dolls, the outfit that Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren represented for a brief time); the stripped-down musicianship of the New York scene (cf. the Ramones); and crass controversy (cf. Alice Cooper), all imbued with the subtlety of a caged wolverine being poked with a stick. Armed with limited singing ability and caustic lyrics, John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon articulated fearless contempt as the rest of the band — guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook and bassist Glen Matlock (who would be replaced by John "Sid Vicious" Beverley) — shored him up with a rock noise that was cocky, rough-hewn, and at times shambolic.
By virtue of being uncompromising in its attack (sonically, lyrically), "God Save The Queen" might be the most effective protest song ever written about inefficient governments. "Bodies," the harrowing song centered around a girl who had an abortion is still chilling years later, with Rotten dropping such quaint bon mots as "bloody fucking mess" and "I'm not an animal," while the band churns urgently behind him. Equal parts timeless and time-lapsed, Never Mind The Bollocks remains a blueprint for disenfranchised rockers whose heart and souls identify more with Johnny Thunders and the protagonist character Howard Beale from the 1976 film Network ("I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!") than whoever is playing the Quaker Oats stage at this summer's Warped Tour.
Listeners over the age of 40 like to mewl about the dearth of "real punk rock," decades after the Pistols' heyday. Listen to Bollocks now, and you'll clearly witness how prescient (accidentally or otherwise) the band were when it came to their own demise. Consider "Seventeen" with its "I'm a lazy sod" refrain; the "we don't care" nihilist battle cry of "Pretty Vacant"; and the entirety of "No Feelings" ("For nobody else, except for myself"). Factor in how culture has turned on itself with the internet delivering everything at your fingertips — if you only knew what you actually wanted — and voila! Welcome to the entitlement generation! Of course, said gen's parents probably weren't hip to the Pistols' burn-the-village m.o., choosing to replace their mangled copies of Eagles Greatest Hits instead. (Bollocks was certified gold in America a decade after its release.) But you don't need a barge of unsold copies of Good Charlotte's last record dumped on your front porch to remind you that history belongs to those who dare.
Metal On Metal
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Many had left Black Sabbath for dead at the dawn of the '80s, and with good reason -- the band's last few albums were not even close to their early classics, and original singer Ozzy Osbourne had just split from the band. But the Sabs had found a worthy replacement in former Elf and Rainbow singer Ronnie James Dio, and bounced back to issue their finest album since the early '70s, 1980's Heaven and Hell. The band sounds reborn and re-energized throughout. Several tracks easily rank among Sabbath's all-time best, such as the vicious album opener, "Neon Knights," the moody, mid-paced epic "Children of the Sea," and the title track, which features one of Tony Iommi 's best guitar riffs. With Heaven and Hell, Black Sabbath were obviously back in business. Unfortunately, the Dio-led version of the band would only record one more studio album before splitting up (although Dio would return briefly in the early '90s). One of Sabbath's finest records. ~ Greg Prato
Genuine Eccentrics
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Tom Waits began his career at the end, portraying a washed-up saloon singer with a barrel full of a broken hearts and tip jar stuffed with dreams — at the ripe old age of 24. A little bit Sinatra and a little bit Kristofferson, couched in an early '70s orchestral soft-rock milieu, Waits' debut demonstrates a precocious mastery of songwriting conventions that would form the basis for his later innovations.
more »"I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love with You" is a barroom first-sight romance ("I turn around to look at you, you light a cigarette/I wish I had the guts to bum one, but we've never met") with a twist at the end worthy of a seasoned Nashville pro: the dreaded deed in the title only happens once she's walked out the door. "Old Shoes (and Picture Postcards)" is a king-of-the-road farewell song with a jaunty shuffle rhythm and singalong chorus; "Midnight Lullaby" is windowsill wooing told in slurred, lascivious nursery rhymes as a trumpet player serenades in the back alleys below. In "Ol' '55," the weatherbeaten protagonist revs away in his trusty clunker; in "Martha," he desperately dials an old flame four decades after their glory years. "We were all so young and foolish," he declares with drunken aplomb. "Now we are mature." For all its formalism, Closing Time isn't without quirks: Waits invents words at will ("lickety-splitly") and, in "Ice Cream Man," offers up the sleaziest reinvention of a childhood icon since the evil clown. But in skipping prematurely to an imagined old age, Waits managed to outfox time. These songs feel as gorgeously musty and familiar today as they did when he unpacked them from his magical trunk for the first time.
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Producer Ted Templeman was a bit of a surprising choice given his firmly mainstream production credits, with the Doobie Brothers already under his belt and Van Halen lurking in the near future. As it turned out, such a combination led to a better-working fusion than might be expected, making one wonder why in the world Clear Spot wasn't more of a commercial success than it was. The sound is great throughout, and the feeling is of the coolest bar-band in town, not to mention one that could eat all the patrons for breakfast if it felt like it. Fans of the fully all-out side of Beefheart might find the end result not fully up to snuff as a result, but those less concerned with pushing back all borders all the time will enjoy his unexpected blend of everything tempered with a new accessibility. "Nowadays a Woman's Got to Hit a Man," besides having a brilliant title, shows the balance perfectly -- Van Vliet serves up his rough asides with all his expected wit and sass, while the Magic Band trade off notes here and there just so. At the same time, the track is strong blues-rock that doesn't pander, with a particularly fierce solo thanks to Zoot Horn Rollo. "My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains" is a great love song, the softer arrangement saved from being too off by Beefheart's delivery. Other winners include the title track, a sharp combination of an off-kilter arrangement for a straightforward melody, the great shaggy-dog story of "Golden Birdies," and "Big Eyed Beans from Venus," a fantastically strange piece of aggression.
![Violator [digital version] album cover](http://images.emusic.com/music/images/album/117/472/11747244/300x300.jpg)
Stone Cold Classics
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History is kind to its monoliths: Stonehenge, the Great Pyramids, Psychocandy. The Jesus and Mary Chain's debut became an alt-rock touchstone the day it was released in 1985, an immediate influence on the band's contemporaries — among them My Bloody Valentine, whose 1991 LP Loveless looms even larger over a generation of art-of-noise guitarists. But who wants to sit around and compare the size of other guys' monuments? Psychocandy is venerated for its attitude as much as its sound, the product of scrawny, sullen brothers from East Kilbride, Scotland, who gave fuck-all about the present or future but absolutely worshiped rock 'n' roll's past.
more »That's as good an explanation as any for Psychocandy opener "Just Like Honey," whose girl-group vocal melody and drumbeat — lifted directly from the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" — make it sound like a prayer to God, Phil Spector and Lou Reed: "Please make me cool." Prior to Psychocandy, Jim and William Reid had released a series of noisy indie singles and staged 20-minute shows played with their backs to the audience, so it wasn't too much of a surprise that JAMC would suck you in with creepy romanticism right before it spits in your eye with the earsplitting feedback of a motorbike-obsessed song called "The Living End." Welcome to the Reid brothers' personal buzzsaw, 14 short songs that are cruel companions to your treble control knob when the amplifiers squeal into the dog-whistle spectrum of hearing. It can be a harrowing experience when the relentless static of "In a Hole" threatens to give you a three-minute migraine.
But just in case you didn't read the album's title, Psychocandy has some awfully sweet stuff buried under its layers of noise. Few bands have been as primal and tender as JAMC on "The Hardest Walk" and "Cut Dead," back-to-back songs that reveal a serious penchant for the strung-out hymns of the Velvet Underground. Absurdly, "Sowing Seeds" uses the same Ronettes drumbeat stolen by "Just Like Honey," suggesting either inability on the part of drummer Bobby Gillespie (who went on to later fame with Primal Scream) or a complete lack of conscience. It's more likely the latter. If posed a question about their influences circa Psychocandy, the Reid brothers probably would've cited themselves. Yet it's doubtful the Reids would have guessed they'd have so many disciples in the decades to come.
Iconic Indie Rock
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When My Bloody Valentine's Loveless arrived in late 1991, it was shockingly fresh, an overwhelming, densely beautiful record that seemed to bear almost no relation to anything that had come before it. Within months, baby bands started springing up that had clearly been inspired by Loveless to make music along the same lines; MBV's torrential live performances only added to their legend, and so did the recorded silence that followed the album (punctuated only by a few superb remixes that bandleader Kevin Shields has done for bands like Mogwai and Primal Scream, and a cover of Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time in the World"). When the band returned to performing in 2008, they repeated their Loveless-era set, underscoring the idea that their watershed album was a unique artifact.
more »In fact, Loveless was the convergence of a bunch of streams of music: the raw, frothing torrents of late-'80s and early-'90s underground rock, the cult of massive noise that had developed in composition circles, the will to push the guitar into new realms of expressiveness that came from hermetic folkies as much as rock 'n' roll showboaters, the ongoing revolution in electronic dance music (and the way other rock groups were trying to figure out how to integrate its innovations), and the early-'70s German bands who had replaced the familiar forms of pop songs with hypnotic drones and rhythms, among others. Its roots go all the way back to the earliest experiments by musicians and composers who found that studios and recording tape made it possible to come up with sounds no instrument had ever made before.
The sound of Loveless is so massive and impressive that it can be hard to notice the songs beneath it, as distinctive as they'd be on their own: the jet-engine tone of Shields' guitar all but obliterates his and Bilinda Butcher's voices at times. The longer you listen to the album, though, the easier it is to notice the component parts of its barrage, and to hear echoes of musical history in them.
Lower East Side Lashings
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When Talking Heads' fourth album appeared in 1980, nobody had ever made an album like it — and nothing much like it has been heard since: a startling, chattering amalgamation of Afrobeat, downtown NYC avant-garde sounds, the hard funk that had evolved alongside disco, snarling rock 'n' roll, and the cadences of frothing-at-the-mouth radio preachers. Expanding their lineup to include lacerating guitarist Adrian Belew, Labelle singer Nona Hendryx and producer/conceptualist Brian Eno, the band built these songs from the groove up, with liberating results. "Born Under Punches" is magnificent information overload, seemingly six different songs accidentally falling into synch; "Once In a Lifetime" is half prophecy, half midlife crisis, and all dancefloor-packer.
Guitar Heroes & Raucous Rock ‘n’ Rollers
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While the Stooges had a few obvious points of influence -- the swagger of the early Rolling Stones, the horny pound of the Troggs, the fuzztone sneer of a thousand teenage garage bands, and the Velvet Underground's experimental eagerness to leap into the void -- they didn't really sound like anyone else around when their first album hit the streets in 1969. It's hard to say if Ron Asheton, Scott Asheton, Dave Alexander, and the man then known as Iggy Stooge were capable of making anything more sophisticated than this, but if they were, they weren't letting on, and the best moments of this record document the blithering inarticulate fury of the post-adolescent id. Ron Asheton's guitar runs (fortified with bracing use of fuzztone and wah-wah) are so brutal and concise they achieve a nave genius, while Scott Asheton's proto-Bo Diddley drums and Dave Alexander's solid bass stomp these tunes into submission with a force that inspires awe. And Iggy's vividly blank vocals fill the "so what?" shrug of a thousand teenagers with a wealth of palpable arrogance and wondrous confusion. One of the problems with being a trailblazing pioneer is making yourself understood to others, and while John Cale seemed sympathetic to what the band was doing, he didn't appear to quite get it, and as a result he made a physically powerful band sound a bit sluggish on tape. But "1969," "I Wanna Be Your Dog," "Real Cool Time," "No Fun," and other classic rippers are on board, and one listen reveals why they became clarion calls in the punk rock revolution. Part of the fun of The Stooges is, then as now, the band managed the difficult feat of sounding ahead of their time and entirely out of their time, all at once. ~ Mark Deming
