Black Sabbath - Paranoid

YOURZ

Heh, this was the shit when I was a lad.  So bad, in fact, I dared not speak the band's name around my conservative Catholic mother.  Status Quo was fine, AC/DC were okay and even KISS got past her.  But I had to rely on friends copies this classic in order to hear it.  

I remember sitting on the front steps of my mate Mick's place after a long summer afternoon, sharing a sneaky cigarette and listening to music on his Dad's quadraphonic system.  This was one of the LPs we'd listen to then and listening now takes me right back there.  

I love that this record still makes me headbang even though I hardly have the long locks of youth to flay around like I used to do.  It is, without a doubt, my favourite type of metal.  And while there have been so many great bands after them and despite Ozzy parading his tragic family in front of television cameras for the world to see, there will only ever be one Black Sabbath. 

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

MINE

So, when I was about 15 or so, there was a group of girls I went to school with and we used to get together every couple of weeks to smoke weed.  We'd meet up at Bernie's place, more often than not, because she used to hold for us (plus we were buying the stuff off her brother) and we'd smoke and eat (her mother was the most amazing baker of pies) and play records.  Mostly her brother's records.  So there was Dark Side of the Moon and Kiss and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

Then many years later there was a TV show called The Osbournes which both delighted and horrified me.  And now there's re-listening to Paranoid, which made me realise, he had an amazing voice, didn't he?  But apart from War Pigs (nearly eight minutes, that takes balls for an opening number) and Paranoid, I don't really know this album at all.  And it's not really my kind of thing.  But we need this in out collection.  Gives us gravitas, I think.

VERDICT: TURN IT DOWN

For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sabbath but there's a bunch of fan sites, too

Pink Floyd - Echoes

YOURZ 

When we first started this project, I wanted to exclude best of CDs.  Mine argued against it mainly because I couldn't, at the time, come up with a satisfactory reason.  She is a girl who likes to know why, dammit all. (Mine says: I wonder why that is? hee hee)

Well, this CD is the best of reasons.  While the individual tracks are outstanding, their context is completely lost.  And Pink Floyd, for all they're known as, are big on context. Floyd releases weren't just a date, they were an event.  Conceptually one of the most ambitious and successful bands in the world, they continue to delight and inspire generations of fans, like very few others bands can do.

But if I've got to do this review, I'm going to have to talk about my favourite Floyd album.  For most, it's a generational thing.  If you're older, like me, it's Dark Side Of The Moon and if you're younger, not like me, it's The Wall.  But not to be difficult, my favourite is neither of these (although both these albums are in my favourites of all time list).  Mine is Wish You Were Here.

I remember buying the album and playing it non-stop, only pausing to turn it over.  I was living by myself in a single room (at the time I was in the defence services - the less said about that the better).  This music took me to places I'd never been before even though I was straight, sober and very, very green.  I loved this album so much.  I still have that copy even though we don't have a record player.  I will never part with it.

As far as Echoes goes, I will take my lead from Mine.

VERDICT: THROW IT OUT and buy the box set

MINE

When the pointy stick landed on this YourZ was a bit surprised to find it in my collection - and I explained it was a radio-industry freebie.  I've mostly ignored this CD because the mere concept of listening to a bunch of Floyd songs NOT in the order they were originally presented - i.e. not on the original albums - seems to me somewhat distasteful.  An opinion I know is shared by the band, whose efforts to stop the single-sale of songs via download has been taking up lots of time in various courts.  I think they won - but who knows?

Anyway, it's kind of strange to listen to Another Brick In The Wall Part 2 when it's not followed by Mother, or to not hear the chinks and chimes of Money following The Great Gig In The Sky.  But what listening to this album made me realise is that I absolutely frakkin' LOVE Pink Floyd.  Me.  The person who turns her nose up at anything remotely prog-rocky in today's music.

Floyd were a large part of my teen years and in fact formed an integral part of my introduction to.... you guessed it... marijuana.  I had a group of friends (Hi Kathy, Joy, Bernie and Cheryl!) and we used to have one afternoon off school each week for sport.  Like we ever raised a sweat.  Anyway our sport consisted of sitting at somebody's house passing the bong, and very often listening to Dark Side Of The Moon.  When we weren't listening to Black Sabbath or Kiss.  Positively stereotypical for the late 70s, don't you think?

But my best Floyd memory is of The Wall and listening to it in the home of a friend (male, not my boyfriend) soon after it was released - late '79.  He put it on the turntable and we lay on his sofa and listened to it.  I think the only thing he said was "Other side?" when side one ended, and all I said was "Yes, please."  I remember walking home afterwards, with the songs reverberating through my head.  So my vote for Echoes shouldn't come as a surprise.

PS I never knew it until we saw a documentary show on the band but Dave Gilmour was a real SORT, wasn't he?  He's aged well, too...

VERDICT: THROW IT OUT and buy the box set

For more information: http://www.pinkfloyd.com/