Saturday, September 29, 2007

My Favorite Albums for September 2007


This is a fantastic collection of music from Jean-Luc Godard's films. Where else can you get on one disk music by Martial Solal, Michel Legrand, Georges Delerue, Paul Misraki, Antoine Duhamel, Gabriel Yared, plus the great pop (and very rare) song from La Chinoise "Mao Mao" by Claude Channes? It's fascinating to hear this album all the way through. Godard hooked himself up with the great film composers of his era - and also included is a little booklet with interviews with the above composers commenting on what it was like working with Godard.


Billy Nicholls is a complete mystery to me, and somehow he made one of the best British albums in 1967. Signed to Andrew Loog Oldham's record label Immediate, Nicholls wrote some uber-fantastic psych-pop songs with the great Small Faces serving as his backup band with the additional help from John Paul Jones. Oldham produced this masterpiece in what I think maybe one of his great recordings. For sure it meets up with his Stones recordings. With respect to Nicholls, I have heard that he's a buddy of The Who, and to this day he still works for the band.


Roy Wood is a lunatic. For those who don't know, Wood was a member and main songwriter for the great British 60's band The Move, and then went on to form (and made only one album with them) Electric Light Orchestra. He left them and put together Wizzard (Phil Spector on speed), and then "Roy Wood Wizzo Band." This album reminds me of later-day Prince, if that's possible. Wood plays a zillion instruments and when you think it's going to be a regular groove thing, he throws in a sitar in the mix.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That Roy Wood album cover is so bad! Maybe it's so bad that it's good - no, it's just awful! But later-day Prince, well that sounds intriguing.

Tosh Berman said...

Roy Wood has a series of bad graphics for his album covers, photos, etc. But his music is incredible. I would start off with The Move and then onward. "Wizzard's Brew" is total chaos. It's like Phil Spector produced it while waiting in court... Great album!