Which albums would you take to a desert island?
To celebrate my 50th birthday I made myself a compilation CD of Life's Essentials - what have I learned in 50 years from the great university of music? Here are the details of the collection.
Darkness and fire. The Faust legend in a rock-and-roll setting...a great modern tragic drama...
The following notes on this album were written a few years ago and shouldn't be revised now. What follows is just a high-speed chase through the album from a 'tragic drama' perspective (including a couple of cross-references to Shakespeare, of course). The album is a challenging critique of the American Dream, full of biblical imagery and full of questions about the 'protestant work ethic' (work hard, boy, you'll get your reward in heaven).
Bruce sings these songs from a first-person ('I') point of view, but this album is really about 'Everyman' - everybody. With a bit of good fortune, things turn out well, but things can also go badly for anybody.
Both sides of women's liberation?
Joni Mitchell's jazzy and highly-literate snapshot of the liberating power of music
takes us from the savannah of Africa
to the manicured lawns of suburban California.
Steely Dan's ninth album - in memory of Walter Becker.
After two albums early in the new millennium there was always hope that Donald Fagen and Walter Becker would keep going and write more, but those hopes ended in 2017 when Becker died. In retrospect, it is quite clear to see that this album was consciously written as a poignant finale. They closed down the business and this was the letter of resignation; indeed, everything must go.