Rock N Roll Nigger

Patti Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter and poet. She was influential in the birth of punk rock with her 1975 debut album Horses, produced by John Cale amidst some tension. The album fused punk rock and spoken poetry and begins with a cover of Van Morrison's "Gloria", and Smith's opening words: "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine." The austere cover photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe has become one of rock's classic images. Called "Godmother of Punk" she integrated the beat poetry performance style with three-chord rock. Her allusions introduced American teens to 19th century French poetry, while her "unladylike" language defied the disco era. Smith is most widely known for the song "Because the Night", which was co-written with Bruce Springsteen. Before the release of her fourth album, Wave (1979), Smith met Fred "Sonic" Smith, former guitar player for Detroit rock band MC5, who adored poetry as much as she did. In August 2005 Smith gave a literary lecture about the poems of Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake. Patti Smith has been a great source of inspiration for Michael Stipe of R.E.M. Listening to her album Horses when he was 15 made a huge impact on him. In 2004, Shirley Manson of Garbage told about Patti's influence on her at Rolling Stone's issue "The Immortals: 100 Greatest Artists of All Time", in which Patti Smith was counted number 47. The Smiths members Morrissey and Johnny Marr shared an appreciation for Patti's Horses. In 2004, Sonic Youth released an album called Hidros 3 (to Patti Smith). U2 also cites Patti Smith as influence. From March 28 to June 22, 2008 the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris hosted a major exhibition of the visual work of Patti Smith, Land 250, drawn from pieces created between 1967 and 2007. A live album by Patti Smith and Kevin Shields, The Coral Sea was released in July 2008. Top/ Produced by Jimmy Iovine, Easter (Arista Records, 1978) is regarded as Patti Smith Group's commercial breakthrough, owing to the success of the single, "Because the Night" (co-written by Bruce Springsteen and Smith). Bottom/ Land (1975-2002) is a two disc compilation album by Patti Smith, released on Arista Records. Land contains a collection of recordings from her 8 previous albums on the first disc, along with B-sides and unreleased songs on the second disc. Dedicated to the memory of Patti Smith Group keyboardist Richard Sohl.

Blitzkrieg Pop

Bottom/ Candy-O (Elektra, 1979) is the second studio album by American rock band The Cars. The cover was painted by famed Playboy artist Alberto Vargas based on a dance step called the "rose petal" where the woman's hand was stretched demurely across the forehead and eyes like a petal. The Cars emerged from the early New Wave music scene in the late 1970s. They were at the forefront in merging 1970s guitar-oriented rock with the new synth-oriented pop that was then becoming popular and which would flower in the early 1980s. Major hits include "Just What I Needed", "Good Times Roll", "Shake It Up", "You Might Think" and "Magic". Singer and rhythm guitarist Ric Ocasek was the sole lyricist and main songwriter for the band. Their most successful single, "Drive", gained particular notability when it was used in a video of the Ethiopian famine, introduced by David Bowie at the 1985 Live Aid concert at
Wembley Stadium in London.

Welcome To The Machine

Bottom/ After many successive album covers with Roger Dean, English progressive rock band Yes instead commissioned Hipgnosis (known for designing album covers for Pink Floyd) to create the artwork for Going For The One (Atlantic, 1977). Yes's return at the height of the punk movement was an unexpectedly successful one. Top/ Billed "The English guys with the big fiddles" in the U.S., Electric Light Orchestra, a.k.a ELO, released their first No. 1 album in the UK, Discovery (Jet Records), in 1979. Typically consisting of pop songs with heavily classical overtones, the LP contained five hit songs including "Shine a Little Love" and "The Diary of Horace Wimp", many of which were heavily influenced by disco.

Real To Real Cacophony

Simple Minds's debut album, Life in a Day (Zoom, 1979), took a cue from fellow Post-punk forebears Magazine, and was somewhat self-consciously derivative of the late-70s punk boom, with AOR crossover potential not unlike that of The Cars. While still categorisable as 'rock', Simple Minds' second release, Real to Real Cacophony, had a darker edge. A rock band from Scotland, Simple Minds had its greatest worldwide popularity from the mid-1980s to the early-1990s. Over the years, Simple Minds have secured a string of successful hit singles, the best known being its number one worldwide hit single "Don't You (Forget About Me)"

Loving The Alien

Bottom/ David Bowie's album Heathen (ISO, 2001) includes a cover version of "I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship" by the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. Middle/ Crop circles mark the ground of Remasters (Atlantic, 1990), a compilation album of remastered material by the English rock group Led Zeppelin. Top/ The Fountain: Music from the Motion Picture (Nonesuch, 2006) features collaborations between composer Clint Mansell, the San Francisco-based string quartet Kronos Quartet, who had previously performed for the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack, and Scottish post-rock band Mogwai. The Fountain is a 2006 American science fiction/fantasy film directed by Darren Aronofsky. The film takes place in three interweaving narratives that encompass the age of the Spanish conquistadors, the near-future period and a journey through deep space in an ecospheric starship.

Rock The Casbah

Bottom/ While La Mano Negra ("The Black Hand") was a supposed secret and violent Anarchist organization in Spain in the end of the 19th century, Mano Negra was a French band fronted by Manu Chao. Puta's Fever (Virgin) was released in 1989. Their music mixed a number of styles: punk rock (influenced by The Clash), reggae, ska and Latin music (with a brass section). The band had been among the pioneers of world music fusion and are a direct influence on countless bands in Europe and South America. Top/ Single "King of Bongo" by Mano Negra. The mix of African, Latin and other rhythms is often called mestizo or patchanka (which is the name of one of Mano Negra's albums).

Don't Dream It, Be It

Bottom/ The Captain and Me (Warner Bros., 1973) is the third studio album by American rock band The Doobie Brothers, and features the killer tracks "Long Train Runnin'" and "China Grove". Top/ Atlantic Crossing is Rod Stewart's sixth album, released in 1975, and peaking at #9 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart. The title indicated Stewart's new commercial and artistic direction, a double pun on both his crossing over to Warner Brothers and on his departure to escape the tax structure of the United Kingdom for the sunnier pastures of the jet-set life in Los Angeles. Stewart jettisoned his association with Ronnie Wood and the stable of musicians who had been his core collaborators on his classic run of albums fusing soul and folk on Mercury Records, including Every Picture Tells A Story (1971) and Never A Dull Moment (1972). Atlantic Crossing inaugurated the next phase of Stewart's career, that of a glamorous front-rank rock personality. Stewart would confirm this new direction by the end of year with the announcement of his exit from The Faces, a band of mates rather than hired hands, and as the decade progressed by embracing popular trends in hard rock and disco more fitfully.

Burning Of The Midnight Lamp

Bottom/ The cover art of Axis: Bold as Love (Reprise, 1967), the second album by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, depicts Hendrix and his Experience bandmates as the various forms of Vishnu, incorporating a painting of them by Roger Law. Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) is considered one of the greatest and most influential guitarists in rock music history. Carlos Santana has suggested that Hendrix's music may have been influenced by his American-Indian heritage. Top/ Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop (Epic, 1989, with Terry Bozzio and Tony Hymas) shows Beck largely trading in his jazz fusion sound for an instrumental album rock feel. Ranked the 14th on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", Jeff Beck is one of three noted guitarists — the others being Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page — to have recorded with The Yardbirds. Hendrix considered guitarist Jeff Beck a close friend.

Rock 'n' Roll Damnation

Bottom/ Powerage is the fifth studio album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC, released in May 1978 on Atlantic Records. It is also AC/DC's fourth international studio album. All songs were written by Angus Young, Malcolm Young, and Bon Scott. Powerage marked the studio debut of bassist Cliff Williams. It was the band's last Bon Scott-era studio release to feature production work by Harry Vanda and George Young. AC/DC have sold more than 200 million albums worldwide. Back in Black has sold an estimated 42 million units worldwide and 22 million in the US alone, making it the fifth highest-selling album ever in the US. Top/ Flash and the Pan was an Australian New Wave group (essentially an ongoing studio project) formed in the late 1970s by Harry Vanda and George Young, both formerly members of the Easybeats. George Young is also an older brother to Angus Young and Malcolm Young of rock'n'roll overlords AC/DC. Until the release of "Waiting for a Train" in 1983 they had been a one-hit wonder in the UK, which was a coincidence as the expression 'a flash in the pan' denotes something that is only briefly popular. The duo gained further exposure through the track from their debut album, "Walking in the Rain", which was covered by Grace Jones. That debut album was called Flash and the Pan (Ensign) and released in 1978. On the cover of its UK release (shown above), a mushroom cloud is seen in the background.

No Problem Orchestra

Bottom/ Street is the 1991 album from Nina Hagen, released on Mercury. The singles from the album, produced by Zeus B. Held, included "Blumen Fur Die Damen" and "Berlin (Is Dufte!)". Nina Hagen (born Catharina Hagen on March 11, 1955) is a singer from Berlin, Germany. At age four, she began to study ballet, and was considered an opera prodigy by the time she was nine. Top/ Back in Germany by mid-1977, Hagen formed the Nina Hagen Band in West Berlin's Kreuzberg district. In 1978 they released their self-titled debut album on CBS, which included the single "TV-Glotzer" (a cover of "White Punks on Dope" by The Tubes, though with entirely different German lyrics), and "Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo", about West Berlin's then-notorious Zoologischer Garten station. The album gained significant attention throughout Germany and abroad, both for its hard rock sound and for Hagen's theatrical vocals, far different from the straightforward singing of her East German recordings. Meanwhile, Hagen's public persona was steadily creating media uproar and she became infamous for an appearance on an Austrian talk show called Club 2, in which she described masturbation techniques. In 1982, Hagen released her first English-language album: NunSexMonkRock, a dissonant mix of punk, funk, reggae, and opera. She then went on a world tour with the No Problem Orchestra. Middle/ In 1983, Nina Hagen released the album Angstlos. By this time, Hagen's public appearances were becoming stranger and frequently included discussions of God, UFOs, her social and political beliefs, animal rights and vivisection, and claims of alien sightings. The English version of Angstlos, Fearless, generated two major club hits in America, "Zarah" (a cover of the Zarah Leander song "Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen") and the disco / punk / opera song, "New York New York". Her 1985 album Nina Hagen In Ekstasy fared less well, but did generate club hits including a cover of the 1969 hit single "Spirit In The Sky". It also featured a 1979 recording of her hardcore punk take on Frank Sinatra's My Way, which had been one of her signature live tunes in previous years. In 1999, she played the role of Celia Peachum in The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weil and Berthold Brecht, alongside Max Raabe. Her most recent album, Journey to The Snow Queen, is more of an audio book- she reads the Snow Queen fairy tale with Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker in the background. In 2005 Nina Hagen headlined the Drop Dead Festival in New York City. Musical styles typically featured at Drop Dead include post-punk, deathrock, synthpunk, psychobilly, punk, experimental, gothic rock, horror
punk, dark cabaret and more.

Rock 'n' Roll With Me

Two classic cover paintings by cult artist Guy Peellaert of Rock Dreams fame Top/ Album Diamond Dogs (RCA, 1974) by David Bowie merges the novel 1984 by George Orwell and Bowie's own vision of a post-apocalyptic world. Back of the gatefold LP cover discloses Bowie's body as a lying dog's. Bottom/ The Rolling Stones' It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (Atlantic, 1974) would mark Jagger and Richards' first effort as producers under their pseudonym "The Glimmer Twins".

The Nest That Sailed The Sky

Bottom/ The giant, helium-filled pig seen on the cover of Pink Floyd's Animals (Harvest, 1977) was actually flown over Battersea Power Station in London for the photo shoot (under the direction of Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis). Top/ The cover photo for OVO by Peter Gabriel (Real World, 2000), a soundtrack for the Millenium Dome Show in London, mirrors the track "The Nest That Sailed the Sky" found inside. Other fairytale-like songtitles on OVO include "The Tower That Ate People" and "The Hand That Sold Shadows".

Let It Shine

Bottom/ Borboletta (CBS, 1974) is one of Santana's jazz-funk-oriented albums, along with Caravanserai, Welcome, with Alice Coltrane, Love Devotion Surrender, with John McLaughlin, and Illuminations, with Alice Coltrane, Jack DeJohnette and Jules Broussard. The record was released in a shiny blue sleeve displaying a butterfly, and suiting the general mood perfectly. Top/ Album Amigos (Columbia, 1976) also by Santana contains the tracks "Let It Shine" and "Europa (Earth's Cry Heaven's Smile)".

Hello Earth

Bottom/ Kate Bush herself has called The Dreaming (EMI, 1982)
her "I've gone mad album". The iconic album cover depicts a scene described in the lyrics to the song "Houdini". In the picture shown, Bush is acting as Houdini's wife, holding a key in her mouth which she is about to pass on to Houdini. Many were baffled by the dense soundscapes Bush had created, and some critics accused the album of being over-produced. Bush was in her early twenties when making the album and tended to look outside herself for sources of inspiration. She drew on old crime films ("There Goes A Tenner"), a documentary about the war in Vietnam ("Pull Out The Pin"), the plight of Indigenous Australians ("The Dreaming"), the life of Houdini ("Houdini") and Stanley Kubrick's film of Stephen King's novel The Shining ("Get Out Of My House"). "Leave It Open" speaks of the need to acknowledge and express the darker sides of one's personality within the greater context of maintaining an open mind.
Top/ "Cloudbusting" is taken from the album Hounds Of Love (1985) by Kate Bush, considered by many to be her masterpiece.

F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.

Bottom/ Produced by Rick Rubin, the album Blood Sugar Sex Magik (Warner Bros., 1991) by L.A. alternative rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers has sold over seven million copies in the United States alone. The album's subject matter incorporated sexual innuendos and references to drugs and death as well as themes of lust and exuberance. Blood Sugar Sex Magik produced many hits for the band, including "Give It Away", "Under the Bridge", "Suck My Kiss", and "Breaking the Girl". All photography, paintings and art direction for Blood Sugar Sex Magik were credited to filmmaker Gus Van Sant
Top/ "Something Changed" (Island, 1996) is the fourth and final single taken from the album Different Class by British pop band
Pulp, released with two different sleeves (a "boy" and "girl"
version). This is the Girl CD.

Empire State Human

Bottom/ "10:15 Saturday Night" is a single from Three Imaginary Boys (Fiction, 1979), the debut album by English alternative rock band The Cure. Three Imaginary Boys was later re-released in the United States with a slightly different song line-up as Boys Don't Cry. The band has performed as an encore "Three Imaginary Boys", "Fire in Cairo", "Boys Don't Cry", "Jumping Someone Else's Train", "Grinding Halt", "10:15 Saturday Night" and "Killing an Arab" on the recent 2008 '4 Tour'.
Top/ Originally an avant-garde all male synthesizer-based group from Sheffield, UK, The Human League started off with two experimental studio albums, Reproduction (Virgin, 1979) and Travelogue (1980), before skyrocketing to mainstream fame with the release of the influential, multi-million selling single "Don't You Want Me" a year later. Reproduction features the single "Empire State Human". By this time, The Human League's role as UK electronic pioneers was usurped by Gary Numan and his single "Are 'Friends' Electric?".

Metallic K.O.

Raw Power (Columbia) is a 1973 album by American protopunk group The Stooges. The third studio album by The Stooges, Raw Power was largely ignored upon its release, and the group broke up in obscurity a few years later. However, it was embraced by a small, rabid fanbase that included many younger musicians who would go on to help create punk rock in the mid-1970s, making Raw Power one of the most important protopunk documents. The Stooges had formed near Detroit, Michigan in the late 1960s. Their first two albums, The Stooges (1969) and Fun House (1970) were similarly unsuccessful, and the group broke up. Singer Iggy Pop had been signed as a solo artist to MainMan Management, who also handled British singer David Bowie. The band was in disarray; they had officially broken up, Dave Alexander was fighting alcoholism, and Pop's heroin addiction was escalating prior to Bowie's intervention. However, Pop was determined for a reformation. Signed to Columbia Records, he was sent to London to write and record their album with his new collaborator, guitarist James Williamson. Pop insisted that his fellow ex-Stooges Ron Asheton and Scott Asheton participate in the recording sessions. Pop produced and mixed the album by himself. When MainMan informed Pop that if Raw Power were not remixed by Bowie, the album would not be released, Pop agreed, but insisted that his own mix for "Search And Destroy" be retained. Despite its weak initial reception, the reputation of Raw Power grew tremendously in subsequent years, and the album's volume and ferocity became benchmarks against which later albums were measured. In 2003, the album was ranked number 125 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain from the grunge band Nirvana wrote in his Journals numerous times that this was his favorite album of all time. Johnny Marr of The Smiths has also stated Raw Power as his favorite album. Henry Rollins has the words "Search and Destroy" tattooed across his shoulder blades. In 1997 Columbia Records invited Iggy Pop to remaster the entire album for re-release on CD. The album's songs have been frequently covered. Prominent versions include the Dictators', Red Hot Chili Peppers', The Dead Boys', Def Leppard's cover of "Search and Destroy"; Guns N' Roses' cover of "Raw Power" (title track) on The Spaghetti Incident? and Ewan McGregor covering "Gimme Danger" for the film Velvet Goldmine, a movie telling the story of a character based around David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust during the 1970s glam rock era. "Gimme Danger" was also covered by Frank Black for the game Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2.

Shadow Magnet

Bottom & Top/ Produced with Rick Rubin, De-Loused in the Comatorium (Universal, 2003) is the first LP and concept album by the American progressive rock band The Mars Volta. Based on a short story by lead singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala, and sound manipulation artist Jeremy Michael Ward, it is the hour-long tale of Cerpin Taxt, a man who tries to kill himself by overdosing on rat poison. The attempt lands him in a week-long coma during which he experiences visions of humanity and his own psyche. Upon waking, he is dissatisfied with the real world and jumps to his death. The music contained in De-Loused is distinguished by its enigmatic lyrics, jazz rhythms, odd time signatures, and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's frenetic guitar riffs, which are often harshly dissonant. "Drunkship of Lanterns" was named the 91st best guitar song of all-time by Rolling Stone. Middle/ Duality (4AD) is a collaborative album by Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke released in 1998. It was Lisa Gerrard's first post-Dead Can Dance album. The beginning of the song "Shadow Magnet" will sound familiar to many because it influenced, in part, the music at the beginning of the Gladiator soundtrack (music by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard). The track "Nadir (Synchronicity)"
was initially intended for use at the end of that film.

Titanium Exposé

Goo (DGC, 1990) is an album by alternative rock band Sonic Youth. The cover is a Raymond Pettibon illustration based on a paparazzi photo of Maureen Hindley and her first husband David Smith, witnesses in the case of serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, driving to the trial in 1966. Scorching tracks abound, including "Tunic (Song for Karen)", written and sung by Kim Gordon, about singer Karen Carpenter and her anorexia. The album also features "Mote", "Mildred Pierce" and the single "Kool Thing", on which Chuck D
from the rap group Public Enemy guested.

Novocaine For The Soul

Bottom/ Counting Crows is a rock band originating from Berkeley, California. The group gained popularity in 1994 following the release of its debut album August and Everything After, which featured the hit single "Mr. Jones." The band's influences include Van Morrison, R.E.M., Nirvana, Bob Dylan, and The Band. This Desert Life (Geffen, 1999) is their third studio album. The cover art is by noted comic book artist Dave McKean, best known for his work with Neil Gaiman. Top/ Blinking Lights and Other Revelations (Vagrant, 2005) is a double album by the band Eels. It was described by frontman Mark Oliver Everett (more commonly known as E), as an album about "God and all the questions related to the subject of God. It's also about hanging on to my remaining shreds of sanity and the blue sky that comes the day after a terrible storm, and it's a love letter to life itself, in all its beautiful, horrible glory." Blinking Lights include some intensely personal songs, instrumental pastiches, and straightforward pop, which results in a broad, soul searching album. The sleeve and liner notes are composed of typewritten lyrics and family photos, implying the personal nature of the album.

Picture This

Bottom/ New York City-based punk blues band Yeah Yeah Yeahs took their name from modern New York City vernacular. Debut album Fever To Tell (Interscope, 2003) Top/ Blondie's fifth studio album Autoamerican (Chrysalis, 1980) contains "Rapture," the first ever rap song to reach number one on the singles chart in the U.S.

Simple Headphone Mind

Bottom/ Called "one of the most fiercely independent and original groups of the Nineties", Stereolab were one of the first bands to be termed "post-rock". Their primary musical influence is 1970s krautrock, which they combine with lounge, 1960s pop, and experimental music. Cybele's Reverie is a 1996 EP released on Duophonic. Top/ Orbus Terrarum is an album by The Orb released on Island Records in 1995. Unlike previous albums by The Orb, Orbus Terrarum featured more "earthbound" and "organic" sounds instead of the trippy science fiction themed music they had previously written.

Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn

Bottom/ Album Tattoo You (Rolling Stones/Virgin, 1981) by the Rolling Stones features "Start Me Up", widely considered one of their most infectious songs. Top/ Soundtrack to the 1975 award-winning period film Barry Lyndon by director Stanley Kubrick. The film's period setting allowed Kubrick to indulge his penchant for classical music, and the film score uses pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, Giovanni Paisiello, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Franz Schubert. The score also includes Irish folk music performed by The Chieftains. The piece most associated with the film is the main title music, George Frideric Handel's stately Sarabande from the Suite in D minor HWV 437, originally for solo harpsichord.