Content tagged 'Make it a Double'

Though it’s probably the least commercial of Chicago’s first five studio records, CHICAGO III still climbed the album chart (reaching Number Two) and stands today as another example of the band’s ambition and creative power. For one, it was their third studio double album in two years, and was once again full to bursting with fresh takes on members’ classical, jazz and rock influences. Chicago had been on the road for about a year before entering the studio, and the lyrics they were writing revealed the strain of their experiences. Robert Lamm’s cynicism with the music industry is immediately

When Tori Amos toured behind her solo debut LITTLE EARTHQUAKES back in 1992, she performed alone, at a piano — a lone figure on a dimly lighted stage singing extraordinary songs with minimal accompaniment. Fast-forward seven years, to her 1999 album TO VENUS AND BACK, a double-disc set featuring one CD of new songs and one of live recordings. The studio disc was awash in the sounds of trip-hop and electronica, which had crested out of the underground and been absorbed and appropriated into more commercial environs, but which were still jarring to hear as the music through which Amos would

Make It a Double: Prince, 1999 By 1982, anyone with ears could tell that Prince was special—DIRTY MIND (1980) and CONTROVERSY (1981) moved the needle from lascivious to downright filthy, both in lyrical content and groove, and a single like "I Wanna Be Your Lover" (1979) proved he could make a radio hit if his muse insisted upon it. But it can be argued that Prince truly became Prince—at least, the Prince that audiences grew to love and obsess over—with 1999. 1999 was Prince's first Top 10 album, yielding his first Top 10 singles, in the amazing "Little Red Corvette" and "Delirious," plus

The best prog records present listeners with an immersive experience. Think of Pink Floyd's DARK SIDE OF THE MOON—few people, if any, put on that album to listen to, say, "Money," then pack it up and put it away afterward. No, when you sit down to listen to DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, you sit down to listen to the whole thing (perhaps accompanied by a viewing of THE WIZARD OF OZ, though that's not required). Same thing with Emerson, Lake & Palmer's BRAIN SALAD SURGERY, Rush's 2112 and Side One of Yes' CLOSE TO THE EDGE, among others. These epics beckon you in and then pour themselves out before you

Because they created ZEN ARCADE, one of the great double albums in rock history (certainly one of the greats in punk rock, where double albums are as common as Bigfoot sightings), Hüsker Dü's other double album, 1987's WAREHOUSE: SONGS AND STORIES, often gets dissed, rather unfairly, and often by the band themselves. This is unfortunate, as WAREHOUSE contains a generous sampling of the band's fuzzed-out sonics, covert pop leanings and crushing delivery—one final blast of everything great about them, before it all fell in on itself. Certainly, the record had a troubled gestation. Nearly a

Few bands were as outside their element in the studio, as were the Grateful Dead. For all the praise their best studio work receives (for records like WORKINGMAN'S DEAD, AMERICAN BEAUTY and TERRAPIN STATION), so many of their best songs sound moribund in their studio incarnations. "Eyes of the World" (from WAKE OF THE FLOOD) or the immortal tandem of "Help on the Way!"/"Slipknot" and "Franklin's Tower" (from BLUES FOR ALLAH) are great examples of songs that seemed like clay figures in their studio versions, only to be given life on the stage. WORKINGMAN'S DEAD and AMERICAN BEAUTY had short

What to do after you make an inescapable album—one that spent nearly eight months at Number One, sold a kajillion copies and basically made you the biggest band in the U.S., if not the world? You make one that sounds just like it, right? That's what most folks would do—it's understandable. Take another scoop from the same well. Another bite of the same veggie burger. Another hike up the same hill overlooking Laurel Canyon. Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham would have none of that. For the follow-up to 1977's RUMOURS, he subjected his bandmates to all manner of sonic whackery, from drumming on

It stands to reason that a band with the audacity to release a double album as its debut would likewise have the audacity to follow that debut … with another double album. That was early Chicago, though. With no fewer than five songwriters in the band, one might expect there to be a bounty of material from which to select for recording. What stands out on their second record, though, is not the number of songs, nor their length, but the range of material—similar to the range on the first album, but this time around the compositions are deeper, more resonant. Take James Pankow's seven-part

Double albums provided cultural touchstones in the ‘60s and ‘70s, from the Beatles’ White Album to Dylan’s BLONDE ON BLONDE; from the Who’s TOMMY and the Stones’ EXILE ON MAIN ST. to Stevie Wonder’s SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE and Pink Floyd’s THE WALL. The ‘80s had a smattering of doubles that remain highly regarded—the Clash’s LONDON CALLING (released in 1979 in the UK, 1980 in the US), Minutemen’s DOUBLE NICKELS ON THE DIME and Hüsker Dü’s ZEN ARCADE come immediately to mind, which is odd, considering punk’s usual reliance on brevity. Seriously, you’d think Rush or Dire Straits or some other

The return of guitarist John Frusciante to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1998 was a fortuitous development for the band, and kicked off a creative and popular resurgence that saw them making some of their best music and selling it to more listeners than ever. What emerged from this period was a trio of albums (now referred to as their “California trilogy”) that found the band developing its sound away from the purely cracking, funk-influenced likes of “Give It Away,” “Knock Me Down” and “Suck My Kiss,” into an expansive mélange of rock riffs and vocal harmonies that made them occasionally sound