#^d 2015-09-21 #^h Music Week

Music: Current count 25544 [25500] rated (+44), 434 [436] unrated (-2).

I haven't played any Hatology records since last week's Rhapsody Streamnotes, although I expect I will before October's installment -- I'm still updating my checklist, and there's still lots to do (plus I'm finding a few older Hat Art releases). The only Hat A this week (and it's a full A) is Horace Tapscott's The Dark Tree, the latest reissue of a pair of albums I've long treasured.

My latest tangent as been 1970s pop/rock. As I was checking out the new Giorgio Moroder Michael Tatum recommended, I noticed that Moroder's 1977 album From Here to Eternity was on a list Pitchfork had assembled of The Top 100 Albums of the 1970s. As usual, I was tempted to fill in all the holes, and doubly so for Moroder -- as background for the new one, and because it's an album I used to own but somehow hadn't listed in the database. (I was on Casablanca's mailing list for a while in the late 1970s.)

Turns out that I had previously graded 85/100 albums -- the '70s were my decade, after all. My homework: Nick Drake, T. Rex, Neu!, Can, Saturday Night Fever, Pop Group, Suicide, Specials, Tim Buckley, Cluster, Faust, Van Halen, Nilsson, Throbbing Gristle, King Crimson -- someone at Pitchfork is really into Krautrock. I knocked about half of those off this week. Their list exhibits some unsurprising biases -- among pop/rock entries, 42 Brits but only 8 Afro-Americans, same as the number of Krautrock albums -- but did include 5 jazz albums (4 Miles Davis + 1 Herbie Hancock). There was a severe dry spell in the mid-1970s: only 9 albums for 1974-76. Unlike many lists, they weren't shy about picking 2nd, 3rd, or 4th albums by favorites: 4 each for David Bowie, Miles Davis, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd; 3 for Can, Brian Eno, Iggy and/or the Stooges; 2 for The Clash, Elvis Costello, Nick Drake, King Crimson, Kraftwerk, Fela Kuti, Ramones, Talking Heads, Neil Young. Still, I can't complain about the overall quality (unlike many recent lists): they picked 10 A+ albums, another 25 A albums, 25 more A-, and only 7 albums B or lower (only Van Halen much lower).

On the other hand, some missing artists: Captain Beefheart, Ornette Coleman, Derek and the Dominos, Nick Lowe, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Marley, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Van Morrison, Mott the Hoople, New York Dolls, Parliament, Pere Ubu, John Prine, Bonnie Raitt, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Steely Dan, Donna Summer, Bill Withers. I was tempted to offer an alternative list, but it could easily be as long.

By the way, the new Moroder album is unique in his catalog: it's like a compilation of productions for other singers as opposed to the robotized disco albums he released under his own name. At least Moroder's old Casablanca records are on Rhapsody (but not, alas, his 1969 That's Bubblegum). I tried assembling a playlist to match Casablanca's disco sampler Get Up and Boogie, but came up short by half.

All the new jazz I had this week was three high-B+ HMs until I gave Ochion Jewell a couple extra spins. Although he may be more impressed that he got Lionel Loueke to play on two tracks, the secret ingredient is the pianist and drummer from Dawn of Midi, offering many surprises. Preoccupied as I've been elsewhere, there's quite a bit of new jazz in the queue.

New records rated this week:

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

Old records rated this week:

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week: