WNEW | Where Rock Lives

Time to Celebrate: WNEW's 1000th Post!

We've reached a milestone here at WNEW.com - our 1000th post. In a little under nine months, since our launch in April 2008, we've brought you a thousand posts on all things rock 'n roll, old and new, and other stuff we felt like posting. By way of a look back, here are some of our favorite things from the first 1000 posts:

• Interview gems featuring Scott Muni, Dave Herman and other favorite voices from the WNEW-FM archives, talking to the top artists of the day like Robert Plant, Mick Jagger, The Who, Stevie Wonder and David Bowie.
• Festival coverage from venues far and wide, from Tennessee to Oregon, Colorado to Michigan and even New Jersey.
• Incredible studio sessions with legends like Richie Havens, Phil Lesh, Bela Fleck, Warren Haynes, Donna Jean and more.
• Performances and interviews with newer artists like the Rumble Strips, Noah and the Whale, Illinois, Kings of Leon, Michael Franti, Chris Barron, Vampire Weekend, Grace Potter and many more.
• Rock commentary of the highest order from our outstanding roster of writers: J.A. Bartlett, Alex Young, Fusion 45, Bill Melville, Paul Rhodes, Kevin Phillips, Chris Clancy, our hardworking Archivist, big winner Mari S. (go Cards!) and the rest of the many awesome contributors we've had so far.

There have been a lot of great moments captured in these first 1000 posts - here's a look at the posts you've clicked on the most:

• Mike Gordon Fans Flames of Phish Reunion (w/Audio)
• Live Dead: Phil Lesh & Jackie Greene Visit the WNEW Studio
• Warren Haynes Visits WNEW Studio for Acoustic Session
• Cardinals (w/Ryan Adams) Rock Houston: Setlist, Photos
• Chopping Block: The Cure
• Kanye's Bonnaroo Troubles
• All Points West Festival: Photo Show
• WNEW Archived Interview: Mick Jagger 1979

Thank you kind reader for hanging in there with us throughout our early days. We've had a great time bringing you these posts and we've particularly enjoyed the conversations (and controversies - sorry Cure fans!) that have resulted. We hope you'll still be with us when we hit our 10,000th post - this time I promise I'll bring cake.

The Chopping Block: The Clash

I know, I know. London Calling is untouchable, the best album by 'the only band that matters.’ The accolades for this 19-song album go on and on, with even the famously grumpy Robert Christgau giving it an A-plus. And it only adds to the greatness of London Calling that the Clash insisted it be sold for the same price as a single LP.

Still, it is a double album, and all double albums, even ones as supposedly perfect as this one, have their share of chaff.

Enough reverence. Let’s go after this one with extreme prejudice:

I’m going to start out by killing the title track because, in my humble opinion, it sucks. In her review of the 2004 anniversary edition of London Calling, Pitchfork's Amanda Petrusich characterized the Mick Jones' stacato guitar punches as ‘little nails into our skulls.’ I think she meant it as a compliment; I’d like to use it as an insult. Also, I find myself unable to take it seriously ever since the twerps over at the National Broadcasting Corporation used it as the theme song for their coverage of the 2008 Wimbledon tournament. Oh, and did I mention this song sucks?

Their cover of Brand New Cadillac, originally done by British rocker Vince Taylor, ain’t bad. But there’s no way I’m starting this album with a cover, even though 'The Black Leather Rebel' is all but forgotten these days. Chop.

Song number three is Jimmy Jazz and, though it starts off slow and sleepy, I’ll allow its low-key charm, despite the fact that the late, great Joe Strummer seems unable to decide whether to spell the main character’s name ‘J-A-Zee-Zee’ or ‘J-A-Zed-Zed.’

I wouldn’t want to touch the dizzy, frantic Hateful, which is about the conflicted relationship of a drug addict to his dealer. Rudie Can’t Fail is another good one, horn-filled and altogether happy-sounding, unless you stop to listen to the lyrics, which are about living up to adult responsibility. Bummer.

Spanish Bombs might be the best song on the album, even though the chorus is indistinguishable from the verses (except for Topper Headon’s awesome drum fills). It’s also kind of depressing, from a lyrical standpoint, being about various human rights atrocities committed during the Spanish Civil War.

The Right Profile is interesting, in that it’s about the overdosing death of Hollywood pretty boy Montgomery Clift. But damn, it’s a chore to sit through, as those sassy horns go on forever. Chop.

Lost in the Supermarket is a stone classic, thanks to the affecting lead vocal by Mick Jones (though it was written by Strummer). It’ supposed to be about consumerism or something, but who cares? If you don’t smile for the line, ‘I wasn’t born so much as I fell out,’ you need to lighten up. Clampdown isn’t quite as good but it’s still a strong entry. It stays.

Bassist Paul Simonon –- he’s the guy smashing his guitar on the cover –- takes the lead vocal on the reggae-inspired The Guns of Brixton, probably because he wrote it. You can hear the nervousness in his voice, which is kind of endearing. (According to legend, a CBS exec wandered into the recording booth as the vocal was being cut.)

After a false take and some studio chatter, Wrong ‘Em Boyo starts in earnest. Meh. Chop.

Death or Glory may not be the best song on the album, but it certainly is the most inspiring. Over what might be the Clash’s best-ever guitar riff (yes, I’m aware of Should I Stay or Should I Go), Strummer serves up a litany of glorified failures and near misses, only to face them all down with a vow ‘to fight a long time.’ It’s been said that producer Guy Stevens threw a chair while listening to the band bang out this anthem.

Corporate advertising broadside Koka Kola is an extended burp. We can lose it with no problem.

The Card Cheat covers familiar territory –- failing with dignity –- but it sounds positively epic, thanks to Jones’ gospel-tinged piano licks. Whoever decided it should fade out is a moron. Lover’s Rock is just about the only Clash song I can think of that might sound appropriate in a chewing gum commercial. That’s not a good thing. Chop.

Four Horsemen might have sounded good back on side one, but buried here on side four, it sounds superfluous. Come to think of it, so does I’m Not Down.

Revolution Rock has some nice, dirty horns and Strummer exhorting listeners to ‘smash your seats and rock to this brand new beat.’ Too bad it’s about three minutes too long. Chop.

I’d have to be an idiot to chop closer Train in Vain, one of the best straight pop songs of the 1980s (despite being released in December 1979).

Ladies and Gentlemen, the new and improved London Calling:

Jimmy Jazz, Hateful, Rudie Can’t Fail, Spanish Bombs, Lost in the Supermarket, Clampdown, The Guns of Brixton, Death or Glory, The Card Cheat, Train in Vain.

The Chopping Block: Bob Dylan

Every Sunday Chris Clancy takes an irreverent look at the double albums of yore, mercilessly cutting them down to size...

Jimmy Guterman and Owen O’Donnell, from their 1991 book, The Worst Rock and Roll Records of All Time:

The breakup of the Beatles, shortly before this album's release, signaled the end of the sixties; Self-Portrait suggested the end of Bob Dylan.

Dave Marsh, describing Dylan’s Self Portrait in The Rolling Stone Record Guide (1979 edition):

Almost certainly the worst double set ever done by a major artist.

Greil Marcus, in his June 1970 review of Self Portrait for Rolling Stone:

What is this shit?

Oh, come on. Is Self Portrait really as bad as all that? In light of other memorable music missteps (Neil Young’s 1983 rockabilly farce Everybody’s Rockin’, Garth Brooks’s 1999 alter ego trip The Life of Chris Gaines) is Bob Dylan's 1970 double album really as woeful as its reputation?

Yes, actually. So much so, in fact, that this week’s Chopping Block will be less a matter of cutting the mediocre tracks away from the classics than seeing what we can pull from the wreckage of this debacle:

‘All the tired horses in the sun/How’m I supposed to get any riding done?’ is the only line heard on the opener All the Tired Horses. It’s sung by three female backup singers, over and over, while strings rise and fall and a churchy-sounding organ rings out.

To illustrate just how shocking this is, take everything Bob Dylan is best known for: impressive guitar picking, arresting lyrics, rock and roll attitude. Got it? Okay, now think of the opposite of that. That’s All the Tired Horses. It might work as kitsch (it found its way onto the soundtrack to Blow, for what that’s worth), and it might even sound kind of cool popping up between Sun Ra songs on your iPod, but, for a Bob Dylan album opener, it’s a chop.

Nope, I take that back. Never underestimate the value of kitsch. Let's keep it.

Folk ballad Alberta #1 is next and, in the wake of All the Tired Horses, it doesn’t sound too bad, like maybe an outtake from John Wesley Harding. Let’s keep it for now, even though it’s a cover, one of many on this album.

What, did Dylan invite Perry Como for a guest vocal turn? Because that’s exactly what I’ve Forgotten More Than You’ll Ever Know sounds like. Not that it's bad, exactly –- it was a hit for country act The Davis Sisters way back in 1953 –- but Dylan has no business, none, singing this song. Chop.

The Chopping Block: Stevie Wonder

Every Sunday Chris Clancy takes an irreverent look at the double albums of yore, mercilessly cutting them down to size...

Aren’t we about due for a Stevie Wonder revival?

Okay, judging by the sales (and download) figures of his most recent greatest hits compilation, Number 1’s, the old hits are still managing to find new ears. But has anyone else made as big an impact on popular music in the last three decades? Has anyone else so consistently made his contemporaries sound like musical midgets?

Because, really, one listen to Stevie Wonder’s 1976 double album, Songs in the Key of Life ought to shut down all other pretenders. Within its grooves are the future of rock in the 1980s, hip-hop in the 1990s, and pop in the 2000s.

(Alas, influence has its pitfalls: Wonder is largely to blame for that thing that Christina Aguilera, Beyonce Knowles, and all these 'American Idol' finalists do these days – you know, where they try to sing around a note to come off all soulful, often to the detriment of the song itself.)

But never mind influence. Songs in the Key of Life is not just one of the best double albums ever made, it’s one of the best albums ever made, right up there with the usual suspects (Pet Sounds, Abbey Road, What’s Going On, or Wonder's own Innervisions and Talking Book). Future generations need to hear this.

Having said all that, there’s just got to be a clunker or two somewhere on here:

Grab your Bill Cosby sweater for opener Love’s in Need of Love Today, which starts with the West Angeles Church of God Choir easing Wonder into a plea for universal peace and brotherhood. As far as openers go, it’s perfect.

Have a Talk With God features some serious electronic grit. (Trivia: Snoop Dogg sampled this song for his Conversations.) And it may just have you checking the liner notes to see what year it was recorded. Seriously, take away the vocals and harmonica and it could be a Portishead song.

Village Ghetto Land is next. It’s another message song, rife with arresting images: broken glass, rusted cars, children with sores on their hands. Meanwhile, the instrumentation sounds like something pulled from the Amadeus soundtrack. When people talk about Stevie Wonder being a composer, they’re talking about songs like this.

Jazz-rock instrumental Contusion is so slick and sophisticated, it makes Steely Dan sound like the New York Dolls. (Trivia: Michael Sembello, who would later find chart success with Maniac, can be heard on guitar.) Still, it needs some vocals, and maybe a few killer horn lines.

Hey, maybe Wonder was saving that for Sir Duke, his tribute to the heroes of jazz: Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and ‘the king of all,’ Duke Ellington. Let’s keep this one, since it hit #1 on the Billboard pop charts.

I Wish, the other #1 hit, follows. Funky as all get-out, Wonder is his liveliest yet as he lists his many boyhood glories. But again, the images bare the wounds of inner city poverty: getting nothing for Christmas, graffiti, and hanging out with ‘those hoodlum friends of mine.’ (Trivia: Hollywood movie star Will Smith sampled this for his song, Wild Wild West. Please do not blame Stevie Wonder for this.)

Chopping Block: Wilco

Every Sunday Chris Clancy takes an irreverent look at the double albums of yore, mercilessly cutting them down to size...

After the 1994 dissolution of Uncle Tupelo, principal songwriters Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy parted ways to form two distinct bands: Farrar with Son Volt – whose debut album, Trace, caught on big with the rock community, even seeing some action on the mainstream charts with a They Might Be Giants rip called Drown – and Tweedy with Wilco, whose roughshod A.M. caught on with hardly anyone.

But in 1996, Wilco broke through with Being There, a two-disc set so ambitious (comparisons to such legendary twofers as Exile on Main St. and London Calling came fast and furious, and not without reason) that people started rethinking their stance on who might be the more talented of the two alt-country songwriters.

'The 19 tracks on Being There are spread across two CDs, a sound aesthetic decision,' wrote Greg Kot in his review for Rolling Stone. 'Each disc functions as a self-contained entity digestible in a single 40-minute sitting.'

Nice try, but let’s be clear on one thing: Being There is a double album in the grand tradition, and, as such, it qualifies for the merciless editing of the Chopping Block:

Being There starts with a bracing tribal drum intro, which quickly becomes Misunderstood, a navel-gazing self-love ballad that gradually builds into an interminable white noise nightmare. 'I’d like to thank you for all for nothing at all,' Tweedy shrieks somewhere toward the end. If you’re over eighteen and find that this song speaks to you, turn off the stereo and grow up.

Things rebound extremely quickly with the dreamy country shuffle of Far Away. 'I long to hold you in my arms and sway,' is the kind of line that Willie Nelson or George Jones would appreciate. And that’s about the highest praise I can give.

Next up is a pair of rockers in Monday, which sounds like The River-era Bruce Springsteen plus some fantastic horn lines, and Outtasite (Outta Mind), the best Replacements song Paul Westerberg never wrote.

The songwriting gets serious again with Forget the Flowers, the kind of great kiss-off tune that Bob Dylan used to write in his sleep back in 1964. Red-Eyed and Blue is almost as good.

Another rocker is next with I Got You (At the End of the Century), though this one is a singalong from the very first line. One imagines the band anticipating serious crowd participation on its upcoming tours, and good for them. Still, like most of Wilco’s output since the creation of this album, there’s a whole bunch of fun little touches throughout: Check out those handclaps during the bridge.

What’s the World Got in Store might be too cute, what with the banjo (an instrument that, in a rock and roll context, doesn’t mean anything to 21st century ears aside from, 'Ooh, look at me, I’m playing a banjo') and the noticeably unenthusiastic backup vocals courtesy of the underrated Jay Bennet. “I’m not trying to knock you out,” Tweedy informs us. Good thing.

Things get serious, again, with mid-tempo rocker Hotel Arizona, though that distortion on Tweedy’s vocal doesn’t do much (unlike that cool harpsichord solo). Say You Miss Me is a mid-tempo love ballad, and a purty one at that, the kind of tune that justifies the existence of the pretentious 'alt-country' label.

Here we are, halfway through, and Wilco’s batting .800. Not bad at all.

Disc two kicks off with Sunken Treasure, and, oh God, here we go again. Another six-minute-plus moper that goes nowhere. The only difference between this and fellow Chicagoan Billy Corgan’s bilious, self-aggrandizing diatribes is the acoustic guitar. Chop.

We’re back on track with Someday Soon. Follower Outta Mind (Outta Sight) is the same song as disc one’s Outta Sight (Outta Mind), except the intro sounds exactly like the opening theme to Sesame Street. Let’s chalk it up to the birth of Tweedy’s son around the same time.

Then we get the introspective majesty of Someone Else’s Song. Stealing someone else’s song is nothing new – heck, copping to the fact that you’re stealing someone else’s song is nothing new (check out Neil Young’s Borrowed Tune) – but here, the very act of stealing is integral to the song, as a resigned Jeff Tweedy sighs, 'I can’t tell you anything/You don’t already know.'

Kingpin starts just as downhearted, but then the band kicks in, and we’re treated to a pretty nice groove. Too bad the lyrics come off like two-bit Beck, as Tweedy offers rudimentary, nonsensical rhymes like, 'Dimetapp and spinal tap / City maps and handclaps.' Yawn.

Tweedy channels Keith Richards for Was I In Your Dreams?, an album filler if there ever was one. A more arresting question, not to mention a better melody, is presented on the country cabaret of Why Would You Want to Live?

The Lonely 1 begins with a lilting Jesse Green fiddle solo, and only gets lovelier from there, thanks to Tweedy’s resigned vocals propping up what amount to a music fan’s notes. It’s a fitting closer, a whole lot better than the loose-limbed, cough-laden jam that is Dreamer in My Dreams.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the new and improved Being There:

Far, Far Away, Monday, Outtasite (Outta Mind), Forget the Flowers, Red-Eyed and Blue, I Got You (At the End of the Century), Hotel Arizona, Say You Miss Me, Someday Soon, Someone Else's Song, Why Would You Wanna Live?, The Lonely 1.

Horrified at what Chris cut? Let your voice be heard below or sift through Chopping Blocks past...

Chopping Block: Fleetwood Mac

After almost 30 years, it all makes sense: If Fleetwood Mac is the record of a band coming together, and Rumors is the record of a band falling apart, then surely the next album would be the record of a band picking up the pieces and moving on.

But with those previous two albums selling around 25 million copies, record execs did not want Fleetwood Mac to move on. Music critics impressed with the band’s quality track record did not want to move on. And rock fans infatuated with their radio-ready gems definitely did not want to move on. Yes, everybody was in agreement: The Mac ought to release Rumors II.

Instead, in October 1979 we got Tusk, a two-years-in-the-making, half-a-million-dollars-over-budget, digitally mixed and cocaine-fueled two-record experiment.

Record execs scratched their heads. Music critics shrugged. And after snatching up a relatively measly two million copies, rock fans moved on, abandoning the album at #4 on the charts while making the dunderheaded love ballads of REO Speedwagon’s High Infidelity the biggest-selling album of the early Eighties, at least until Thriller came along.

'Less a collection of finished songs than a mosaic of pop-rock fragments by individual performers,' wrote Rolling Stone scribe Stephen Holden in his December 1979 review of Tusk. 'Semiprogrammatic and nonliterary, it ushers out the Seventies with a long, melancholy sigh.'

Lord only knows what semiprogrammatic is supposed to mean, but come on, there’s just got to be a Rumors II buried somewhere in this album's 'nonliterary,' fussily produced gobbledygook, right? Let's find out:

We start with Christine McVie's Over & Over, which seems overly mellow, even by Fleetwood Mac standards. That said, you can tell right away all that money went into production, as each instrument sounds as if it were being played on a cloud.

Follower The Ledge is another matter. A two-minute shot of rockabilly lite featuring a cheap guitar riff played on what sounds like a very expensive guitar, it was allegedly recorded in Lindsey Buckingham’s home studio, with Buckingham playing every instrument except percussion. Seems like an awful lot of trouble (we’re talking Brian Wilson levels of trouble) for such a trifle, especially when one stops to consider it's just too weird a song for anyone's regular rotation.

Chopping Block: U2

Seriously, U2, you’re going to start your 1988 double album, Rattle and Hum, with a cover of a Beatles song? And not one of the good ones –- we’re not talking Let It Be or Strawberry Fields Forever –- but Helter Skelter, Paul McCartney’s spoof of Steppenwolf-style hard rock? Seriously?

Bad enough they choose to cover Helter Skelter (then carry it out with all the nuance and discernment of a high school talent show runner-up, complete with repeated flubbing of the line, ‘You may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer’) but what’s all this about stealing the song back from Charles Manson? Sure, Manson may have mentioned it when talking about the coming apocalyptic war between the races, but dude is out of his mind. Why give him the credit?

The second song is called Van Diemen’s Land, an electric folk song written and sung by The Edge. One is tempted to characterize this tune as ‘Dylanesque,’ but that would do a grave disservice to the mellifluous vocal stylings of Bob Dylan. Hell yes, we’re chopping this one.

All right, no more fooling around. Song three is Desire, a jangly, Bo Diddley beat-backed burst of sex and drugs-fueled melodrama. Bono struts, shouts and pouts his way through it like the lovechild of Bruce Springsteen and Tina Turner, carrying on about needles and spoons and love or money, money, moneymoneymoneymoney. Oddly enough, it all sounds pretty good.

Hawkmoon 269 is next, and it’s right around this time that the listener might start to wonder how the hell this band got so huge with lyrics this crummy. Bono spends six and a half minutes needing somebody’s love ‘like a desert needs rain,’ ‘like sweet soul music,’ ‘like the heat needs the sun,’ (huh?) while the band works the three chords it’s been assigned. (A gospel choir joins in around the five-minute mark, but let’s face it, you’ve probably already pushed the skip button.) This is what we in the business call ‘album filler,’ the kind of lazily-conceived junk you don’t usually hear on double albums 'til side three.

Holy crap, it gets worse with All Along the Watchtower. Wow, guys, first a Beatles cover and now a Bob Dylan cover? You professional musicians have such eclectic tastes in music. Way to take a risk.

Am I being too hard on U2? This was 1988, after all, a time when George Michael and the Dirty Dancing soundtrack ruled the airwaves. Maybe covering Dylan carried some revolutionary cache back then. Still, it’s a cover, and an uninteresting one at that. Let’s chop it.

Then we’re served the notoriously overblown, New Voices of Freedom-backed, Madison Square Garden version of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. It would have been great to witness this live, and the recording might have sounded good as a ‘previously unreleased’ track on a box set, but on a proper album? Absolutely not.

That’s followed by a 38-second snippet of the Harlem street musicians Satan and Adam performing something called Freedom for My People. Sadly, it may be the best moment on Rattle and Hum so far.

Silver and Gold, a live version of a Joshua Tree leftover, is next. A handful of versions of this tune had been floating around since the late 1980s, one of them featuring Rolling Stones Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood on guitars. Things move along nicely until 3:45, when Bono starts bugging the audience about apartheid in South Africa. Let’s keep it, warts and all.

A live version of the Martin Luther King, Jr. valentine Pride (In the Name of Love) follows. Only now is U2’s power as a live act apparent. Too bad no one told Bono that Dr. King was shot at six o’clock in the evening on April 4, 1968, thus making the line ‘Early morning, April 4 / Shot rings out in the Memphis sky’ just a wee bit factually erroneous.

Billie Holiday tribute Angel in Harlem is next, and its overall wistful feeling comes as a huge relief. The horns are a nice touch, too. Love Rescue Me is supposedly a collaboration with Bob Dylan, but the basic structure sounds like Elvis Presley circa 1956, and Bono -– in full bluster mode –- takes every damn one of the song’s six verses. Rattle and Hum commits its share of sins, but perhaps none are worse than giving Bob Dylan nothing to do but sing backup. Sure, Dylan was going through a considerable low energy period in 1988 (looking around for everyone from George Harrison to Jerry Garcia to bail him out) but Love Rescue Me remains a testament to the runaway collective ego of U2 post-Joshua Tree. We should probably keep it for posterity.

At least Bono had the sense to shut up for a couple of verses of When Love Comes to Town, allowing B.B. King to stage a late-career comeback that is still unfolding. Even King’s beloved Lucille is given some airtime, making for one of the few true guitar solos on the whole album. A keeper, for sure.

Track 13 is Heartland, another Joshua Tree studio leftover. It’s a bit on the atmospheric side but it’s still one of the more successful songs on the album. God, Pt. 2 is yet another exercise in artistic presumption, as the lyrics crib John Lennon’s God while shoehorning a threat to unauthorized Lennon biographer Albert Goldman. But let’s keep it, since Larry Mullen, Jr.’s distorted drums sound kind of cool, hinting at the direction U2 would take on the far, far superior Achtung, Baby.

After a snippet of Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner (sorry, guys, the Stones already did that on their 1982 live album, Still Life), we get a live version of the overtly political Bullet the Blue Sky. Again, U2’s live prowess is on display, as the band sounds tight and invested, but then Bono has to go and ruin it with a lecture about televangelists and rain and Hill Street Blues. Truthfully, he sounds like Neil Diamond on the first night of a three-night stand at the Greek. Chop.

All I Want Is You brings things to a confusing close. It starts like one of those songs you teach your girlfriend to play on guitar and ends like Van Morrison’s Celtic blues masterpiece Cyprus Avenue, a collision of strings and percussion and unresolved emotion. The album’s fourth and final single, All I Want Is You hit #2 on the Australian charts, #4 on the British charts, and #83 on the North American charts. One more reason to be proud to be an American.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the new and improved Rattle and Hum:

Desire, Silver and Gold, Pride (In the Name of Love), Angel of Harlem, Love Rescue Me, When Love Comes to Town, Heartland, God, Pt. 2, All I Want Is You.

Chopping Block: The Rolling Stones

Does the best album by the World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band equal the Best Rock and Roll Album Of All-Time?

Pretty much, yeah.

Exile on Main St. earned lukewarm reviews upon its initial release (my 1979 Rolling Stone Album Guide gives it just three stars) but over the years it has quietly earned the reputation of best Rolling Stones album, narrowly beating out masterpieces like Sticky Fingers, Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed. Which makes it one of the best, if not the best, rock and roll album of all time.

But maybe our revisionist sense of history has gone too far. What was it that earned the Stone’s only double album shrugs from the music community in 1972? Were the Stones ahead of their time? Were their experiments misunderstood?

Or was the album, with 18 songs stretched over two records, just too damn long?

“We didn't start off intending to make a double album,’ Keith Richards once said of Exile. “We just went down to the south of France to make an album, and by the time we’d finished we said, ‘We want to put it all out.’ The point is that the Stones had reached a point where we no longer had to do what we were told to do.”

I know what I would have told them: Lose Ventilator Blues.

I also would have said: More than most double album openers, Rocks Off is a worthy opener, not just because it’s a good-to-great song on its own merits – a blast of swinging horns matched to one of the weariest takes on groupie sex ever written – but because it’s immediate. Not unlike past classics Satisfaction, Street Fighting Man and Brown Sugar, to name but a few, Rocks Off begins with a guitar riff played so confidently that a serious, sit-down-and-shut-up listen is all but demanded. Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson once cited the line, ‘The sunshine bores the daylights out of me’ as an example of rock poetry. He’s right.

Rip This Joint is the twin of Rocks Off, every bit as immediate in the execution (the Stones probably should have listed Little Richard as the composer, seeing as its his basic sound, style and execution that they’re copping here) but with friendlier lyrics: rocking out as a means of salvation.

Let’s go ahead and cut their spooky cover of Slim Harpo’s Shake Your Hips, though, because now it sounds like the Rolling Stones are thinking about getting through this two-record set on guitar riffs alone. But then the doleful Casino Boogie lacks even a guitar riff, and while weariness and ennui are probably the point – not only of this song but of the entire album – it’s a bit soon to be making these kind of demands on the listener, who ostensibly picked up Exile on Main St. because they want to hear some rock and roll, not this ‘grotesque music, million dollar sad.’

Tumbling Dice is, of course, a keeper, truly one of the four or five greatest Rolling Stones songs ever. Word is the band blew through reels and reels of analog tape trying to capture that ultra-loose, down-home shuffle (initial rehearsals for this tune date back to the Sticky Fingers sessions, two years before), but the final feeling one is left with, as Clydie King and Vanetta Fields’ gospel-tinged backup vocals gradually fade, is a strange, wistful melancholy.

The second quarter of this album represents the pinnacle of what was then known as 'roots rock,' and is now known as 'Americana,' 'No Depression,' or 'alt-country.' Call it what you want, but on the four songs of side two – Sweet Virginia, Torn and Frayed, Sweet Black Angel and Loving Cup – England’s Biggest Hitmakers proved themselves superior practitioners of roots rock than any band of that time (the Band, the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Grateful Dead).

To whit: Sweet Virginia is a druggy tale, wherein Mick Jagger and his merry band of pranksters implore their “honey child” to “scrape that shit right off your shoe.” Let’s hope that’s a metaphor. Torn and Frayed is a hard country tune about a wandering musician whose coat has “seen much better days” but whose guitar will “steal your heart away.” Never before had Jagger/Richards produced a song of such subtlety. Gram Parsons pal Al Perkins plays slide guitar.

Sweet Black Angel is that rarest of Stones work: a political song. It tells the story of American Socialist and civil rights activist Angela Davis who, in late 1971, was facing murder charges for the death of California judge Harold Haley (the shotgun Haley was killed with had been registered in Davis’s name). But while this backstory is all in the past, that acoustic guitar line and Mick’s country-rastaman vocals are timeless.

Then we get Loving Cup, which breaks up all those messy guitars with a sparkling piano intro, courtesy of the great Nicky Hopkins.

Kicking off side three is the wildly overrated Happy, featuring Keith Richards on vocals. Even in the relatively small pantheon of Keith-sung Stones tunes (You Got the Silver, Before They Make Me Run, Little T&A), this is fair to middlin’ stuff. Still, I’d rather not try and defend myself from the scores of Keith-worshipers out there ready to claim this is the only song that ever mattered. I’ll allow it.

Turd on the Run is next, with its crawdaddy harmonica lines, brush drums and furious guitar work. Okay, the title’s none too charming, but it comes and goes like a cool breeze, and Mick is rapping as much as singing.

A mid-tempo complaint about nothing so much as needing a nap, Ventilator Blues is a buzzkill. Chop. Electric-piano-led gospel exercise I Just Want to See His Face is reportedly Tom Waits’ favorite Rolling Stones song, so we’ll keep it. Side three ends with the slightly overlong bedroom blues Let It Loose, featuring Dr. John on backup vocals and piano. It can stay (Trivia: The Rolling Stones have never performed this song live).

Concert warhorse All Down the Line, one of Steven Tyler’s favorite Stones songs, is next, providing a much-needed shot of salvation to the proceedings. Check out Bill Wyman’s nifty little bass fill after that opening line, marvel at Keith’s guitar solo, perhaps his best after Sympathy For the Devil, and turn it up as Mick and his backup singers implore you to “Be my little baby for awhile.”

Pretty cool vocal distortion on Robert Johnson cover Stop Breaking Down, but so what? This song drags, so much so that it’s official 4:34 running time seems like a misprint. And nobody seems to be doing anything, other than staying inside a groove drained of all funk and spontaneity. Let’s cut this one.

Starting with some simple piano chords courtesy of Fifth Beatle Billy Preston, Shine a Light starts off modestly. But maybe that’s the point, for during its 4:17 running time we get to hear multiple organs, a small gospel choir, a Mick Taylor guitar solo and drums by somebody named Jimmy Miller. (He also played drums on You Can't Always Get What You Want.) Word for word, Shine a Light is pretty much Mick Jagger’s finest moment as a songwriter: That comparison of the flies on his beloved’s face to “angels beating all their wings in time” is worthy of Shakespeare. Too bad the ending cuts off abruptly.

Exile on Main St. ends with Soul Survivor, which in itself is not bad but almost always leads to Stones fatigue since it doesn’t introduce anything new. Gospel backup vocals, dirty guitars, et cetera. Let’s cut it, just to be on the safe side.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the new and improved Exile on Main St.:

Rocks Off, Rip This Joint, Tumbling Dice, Sweet Virginia, Torn and Frayed, Sweet Black Angel, Loving Cup, Happy, Turd on the Run, I Just Want to See His Face, Let It Loose, All Down the Line, Shine A Light.

Chopping Block: Bob Dylan & The Band

When it comes to double albums, Bob Dylan & the Band’s The Basement Tapes is a weird one. First off, it was never meant to be a double album, or even an album at all.

In the summer of 1967, living in ‘Big Pink,’ a rented house located in West Saugerties, N.Y., Bob Dylan was recovering from a motorcycle accident (not to mention the sky-high pressures of being a reluctant generational spokesman) and writing a few dozen songs to keep himself amused.

Many of these songs turned up as bootlegs, as well as Music From Big Pink, the Band’s 1968 debut. But when 24 of the best songs were officially released, eight years later, Dylanophiles the world over regarded The Basement Tapes as nothing short of a treasure trove, evidence of the fascinating collaboration between rock’s greatest songwriter and one of the most influential folk-rock bands of the 1960s.

(Ever wonder when and where obnoxious Boomer nostalgia first occurred? My bet would be in September of 1975, in Rolling Stone writer Paul Nelson’s breathless, bordering-on-nonsensical review of The Basement Tapes.)

That glittering appraisal still holds true, though it helps if you’re already a Dylan fan. If you happen to be one of those people who just doesn’t ‘get’ Bob Dylan, who can’t stand the sound of his voice and thinks his lyrics are claptrap, The Basement Tapes isn’t likely to change your mind.

Unless, maybe, you just hit the highlights:

Opener Odds and Ends is the perfect starter, an energetic swell of punchy guitars, manic drums and barrelhouse piano backing Dylan at his silliest (opening line: I plan it all and take my place / You break your promise all over the place). Clocking in at 1:47, it’s little more than a promise of fun to follow.

Second song Orange Juice Blues (Blues for Breakfast) features the Band’s Richard Manuel on vocals. Not to damn this song with faint praise or anything, but Manuel is just about as good a singer as Dylan. Let’s keep it. Million Dollar Bash is another sampling of Dylan the comedian (I looked at my watch / I looked at my wrist / I punched myself in the face with my fist), though this one also features a very pretty refrain and some calliope-like organ trills.

Back to the Band: Yazoo Street Scandal boasts a gangsta bass line, the better to serve the lyrics, which may or may not be about a guy whose girlfriend introduces him to a witch who creates a 40-day flood. ‘Old, weird America,’ indeed.

Goin’ To Acapulco was well regarded upon its release, mostly because it wasn’t available in any kind of bootleg form. It’s all right when judged on its own terms, though it sounds a whole lot like the superior Tears of Rage. Plus, Dylan seems to be singing out of his normal range, which kind of makes your ears hurt after a couple minutes. And that guitar solo during the fadeout sounds like crap. This might be nitpicking, but I’m going to cut Goin’ To Acapulco for these reasons.

There’s a serviceable little pop tune at the heart of Katie’s Been Gone, but here it sounds under-rehearsed, as Manuel strains to hit the high notes while the band barely keeps it together. Chop. Lo and Behold! is next, and Dylan (on vocals) still sounds like he’s having the time of his life. It’s quite possible that, on this tune, the guy is consciously trying to make each verse sound dumber than the last one.

When a five-disc bootleg titled The Genuine Basement Tapes -- featuring the hundred or so songs Dylan & The Band recorded during this period -- surfaced in 1992, it was obvious that Robbie Robertson, who arranged and produced the The Basement Tapes, had included a disproportionate share of Band-written songs, perhaps to make the collaboration appear more equal. He’s almost forgiven with Bessie Smith, written and sung by the Band (Dylan can be heard on backup vocals), because it just might be the best song on the entire collection.

Clothes Line Saga follows. It ain’t much more than shaggy dog tale about watching clothes dry, plus it sounds like it was recorded at around four in the morning. We can drop it without much regret. Drunken sing-along Apple Suckling Tree has its charms, though, probably because there’s about ten words to the whole thing. That’s Dylan on piano, by the way.

Please Mrs. Henry is more Dylan nonsense, and this time even he seems to know it, seeing as he cracks up about three quarters of the way in. Joke’s getting a little old, Bob. Chop. The first half finishes strong -- really strong -- with Tears of Rage, a gorgeous lament about an independent, headstrong daughter. Both lyrically and musically, it crushes the Beatles’ She’s Leaving Home, recorded that same year.

Like most two record sets, the second half of The Basement Tapes is the weaker twin. Too Much of Nothing might start off bluesy and cool, but some ill-advised chord changes ruin the whole thing before the first verse is out. Chop. Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread is yet more Dylan-led silliness (sample lyric: ‘Slap that drummer with a pie that smells’). Chop-chop.

The second half justifies itself with Ain’t No More Cane, another awesome Band number, even though it’s a cover of a traditional number written sometime around the turn of the century. Dylan’s nowhere to be heard, and that’s just fine, since the Band infuses this clean, catchy tune with just the right zydeco touch.

The poet returns for Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood), which is one of those songs you’re absolutely certain is a cover of some ancient blues tune until you read the liner notes and find that Dylan wrote it. Let’s keep it. Ruben Remus (lyrics by Robertson, vocals by Richard Manuel) is a barely-in-tune clunker. Let’s lose it.

Even in this ramshackle, home-recorded setting, Tiny Montgomery sounds terrible (I don’t know if the recording is to blame, but Dylan sounds like he’s three sheets to the wind). You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere is an all-smiles winner, though its placement here seems weird: Shouldn’t this be the one to end the album? It sure as heckfire beats Don’t Ya Tell Henry, which is barroom crud except for some inventive piano work by Garth Hudson.

Nothing Was Delivered finds Dylan in serious mode, though he seems to be feeling generous enough to advise the listener, ‘Take care of yourself, get plenty of rest.’ Come to think of it, this too would make for a good closer to this album.

No such luck. Open the Door, Homer (Is anyone keeping track of how great these song titles are?) is next, and it’s about as negligible as classic era-Bob Dylan can get. Long Distance Operator is the last shot of actual rock and roll on the record, what with some nice harmonica accents on top of a boogie-woogie piano riff.

We finish up with This Wheel’s On Fire, which is one Dylan’s best known songs, thanks to that godawful cover that was the theme to British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. It’s a decent closer, I guess.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the new and improved The Basement Tapes:

Odds and Ends, Orange Juice Blues (Blues for Breakfast), Million Dollar Bash, Yazoo Street Scandal, Lo and Behold!, Bessie Smith, Apple Suckling Tree, Tears of Rage, Ain’t No More Cane, Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood), You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere, Nothing Was Delivered, Long Distance Operator, This Wheel’s On Fire.

Chopping Block: The Cure

Having grown up as part of the first New Wave, alongside such now legendary acts as Public Image Ltd., Blondie and Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure worked the 'gloom and doom' angle for all it was worth, as albums like Boys Don’t Cry, Faith and Pornography found universal critical favor (they’re credited with pretty much founding the genre known as Goth Rock) and an international, hopelessly devoted fan base.

Yes, chances are excellent that, if you grew up in the eighties, you knew someone who was totally in love with Cure frontman Robert Smith. That freshman-year roommate who transferred after six weeks? He was probably really into the Cure. Those pale kids who hung around Hot Topic all day? Cure fans. That chick who sat behind you in biology class, the one you thought was an exchange student from Transylvania? Cure.

The reasons for this devotion are difficult to define, but it’s a safe bet that their 1987 double album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me played a big part. As Pitchfork scribe Nitsuh Abebe wrote in 2006, 'In order to get people to dress like you – to make a whole world out of your music – you have to offer them a whole world, one that encompasses all of their moods, every waking moment of their days. The 18 tracks of Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me’s double-LP do exactly that.'

But for those of us who just want to listen to some good music, there’s our Chopping Block:

Opener The Kiss is a wah-wah pedal enthusiast’s wet dream. And not much more. Still, it engages the listener on a certain gut level, perhaps because of the charming line, 'I wish you were dead.' Second song Catch starts off shaky – you might be feeling a desire to punch front man Robert Smith as he warbles along to a chorus that hasn’t yet been established – but it turns out to be a cute little pop song (I used to sometimes try to catch her/But never even caught her name). I’ll allow it.

Torture sounds like a sequel to The Kiss, all syncopated bass and atmospheric synths. A bit premature to be repeating ourselves already, isn’t it, gentlemen? Chop.

You might want to fire up the bong for If Only Tonight We Could Sleep, which boasts a rather awesome sitar intro. Then things get considerably more upbeat with the punchy horns of Why Can’t I Be You? It’s a bona fide college rock classic, pulling off the nifty trick of being a love song that’s completely self-involved.

How Beautiful You Are keeps the energy level high, and features some nice accordion and fiddle work. It’s a shame this band is so often reduced to Robert Smith’s persona; the musicianship has always been expertly fluid.

Let’s ditch The Snakepit, six-and-a-half minutes of bass guitar tuned way down and some spoken word nonsense that adds up to a blatant Joy Division rip-off. But then we get the swift, rollicking come-on Hey You! followed by the instantly memorable Just Like Heaven, which is a cornerstone of college rock. Everybody loves this damn song: It’s been covered by everyone from country chanteuse Katie Melua to grunge group Dinosaur Jr.

Follower All I Want fails because its lyrics beg uncomfortable questions: 'All I want/ Is to hold you like a dog.' Seriously, that’s all you want? Why not just get a dog, then?

Let’s keep Hot Hot Hot!!! which has a bombastic, Queen-like charm, due to its swervy, idiotically catchy chorus. Only in the 1980s could a rock band get away with a song like this. One More Time has another one of those long intros, this time with chiming, Byrds-like electric guitars and what sounds like a pan flute solo. And Smith actually takes the singing down a few notches, providing welcome relief. Beautiful.

Like Cockatoos is one of those difficult experiments (watch out for falling rainmakers) that only seem to turn up on two-record sets. Chop. Icing Sugar is just as atmospheric but sounds better, thanks to the percussion skills of newbie Boris Williams. Follower The Perfect Girl is about as pop as the Cure ever got (at least until 1992’s Friday I’m in Love). This is one your mom might enjoy.

'For how much longer can I howl into this wind?' Smith howls on A Thousand Hours. Two more songs, by my count.

Shiver and Shake features a shivering, shaking guitar riff that goes well with Smith’s aggressive lyrics ('I want to smash you helpless/Down on the floor/Smash you until you’re not here anymore'). Let’s keep it. We’ll lose the down-and-dirty Fight, since the chorus is a repeat of Hot Hot Hot!!! drained of its sense of fun.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the new and improved Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me:

The Kiss, Catch, If Only Tonight We Could Sleep, Why Can’t I Be You?, How Beautiful You Are, Hey You!, Just Like Heaven, Hot Hot Hot!!!, One More Time, Icing Sugar, The Perfect Girl, Shiver and Shake.

Next on the Chopping Block: Bob Dylan and the Band’s The Basement Tapes.

Chopping Block: Bruce Springsteen

Having risen from the 'new Dylan' of 1973 to the 'future of rock and roll' in just four albums, Bruce Springsteen opened the 1980s with The River, a two-record set that, paradoxically, showcased a new facet of his abilities: economy.

Not that anyone was complaining, but through the ‘70s, Springsteen took a kitchen sink approach to recording, either weighing his tunes down with frantic wordplay (Blinded by the Light, For You) or building them up into extended, multi-layered pop operas (Rosalita, Jungleland). But The River is one lean, mean, crowd-pleasing machine, with a slew of three-minute sucker punches that are just about as catchy as anything by Bruce’s boyhood idols – Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bobby Fuller, Elvis Presley.

And that’s what makes this week’s Chopping Block such a fool’s errand:

We start things off with The Ties that Bind, and right away Springsteen’s new appreciation for all things short and sweet is evident. (The chorus can be most accurately written as The ties that bi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-ind / Now you can’t brea-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay -eak/The ties that bind.) Never before had Springsteen written a song so fun to sing along to. Brilliant, yes, important, yes, but never this much fun.

If anything, Sherry Darling ratchets up the fun quotient, what with the spontaneous cheering and applause. Of course, Springsteen’s lyrics touch on political and economic strife, but deep down it’s just a funny little tune about a guy who can’t stand his mother-in-law. Another keeper.

You’d think a Bruce Springsteen song called Jackson Cage would be important and thought-provoking, maybe remarking on hope in a hopeless world, that sort of thing. And you’d be right. But it also rocks pretty hard for its 3:03 running time. Follower Two Hearts is also great, the kind of song that makes you wonder why you don’t listen to this album more often. And it’s a head-spinning 2:46 long.

Have I made my point yet? Good. Because things slow way down on Independence Day. This song was left off of Darkness on the Edge of Town, probably because it sounds an awful lot like Racing in the Street. Which is a good thing. Oh, and the lyrics are heartbreaking.

Hungry Heart is next, the album’s lead single and Springsteen’s first in a long line of ‘80s hits.

(Trivia: Hungry Heart was the result of Joey Ramone asking Bruce to write a radio-ready tune for his band, and Bruce – who in years past had penned hits for Patti Smith and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – happily obliged. But when Columbia Records producer Jon Landau heard it, he convinced Bruce to keep the song. That’s why Hungry Heart by Bruce Springsteen went all the way up to #5 on the Billboard Pop charts while The Ramones’ next single, We Want the Airwaves, stalled at #50 on something called the Club Play Singles chart.)

Follower Out in the Street is another great one, with its story of a guy just happy to be alive in a five o’clock world. Crush on You might be even better, since chicks are more inclined to dig it. You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch) sounds like a cover of an old Buddy Holly chestnut, which means it’s totally awesome.

With a frilly organ intro, I Wanna Marry You starts exactly as you’d imagine. But before that first verse is finished it has become something deeper. (To say I’ll make your dreams come true would be wrong / But maybe, darling, I could help them along.) And then we end the album’s first half with the title track, a mid-tempo dirge about the narrator of Thunder Road, ten years later. Pretty depressing stuff, but also great. Keep it.

Finally, after eleven brilliant songs that combine the hooky with the meaningful, Point Blank is an almost welcome misfire, a weird marriage of cocktail lounge piano, screechy organs and boring lyrical content.

We’re back to rock and roll genius with Cadillac Ranch, and this one’s got no deeper meaning than its raucous celebration of James Dean, Junior Johnson and gas guzzlers ‘tearing up the highway like a big old dinosaur.’ I’m a Rocker is another classic, as Bruce and the E Street Band channel Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.

Fade Away is, in the words of Steve Van Zandt, a 'lost little gem,' and he’s right. It might have stalled on the pop charts (it was the album’s second single, reaching #20 before going under), but it’s a great slow number. Keep it.

Like Independence Day and The River, Stolen Car is vintage Bruce. It's a story song about a man driving a – you guessed it – stolen car in the hopes of getting caught before he’s swallowed by the darkness around him. (No one else in the world writes songs like this, by the way. Those who want more of this kind of thing should pick up a Raymond Carver short story.) It was also used to nice effect in the Stallone flick, Copland.

Ramrod features some goofy double entendres and a haymaker of a sax solo by Clarence Clemons. It may not be the best song on the album, but that roller rink organ riff (think Chris Montez’s Let’s Dance) is hypnotic. As much as I’d like to chop something, there’s no way I could get rid of this one. Follower The Price You Pay is a moving mid-tempo ballad about living with regret. Yet another keeper. Eight-and-half-minute Drive All Night is one of Bruce’s all-time greatest moments as a singer.

This masterful, life affirming two-record set ends with Wreck on the Highway. Inspired by Roy Acuff’s song of the same name, it’s about a man who has witnessed a car accident on his way home from work and can’t shake the image of ‘blood and glass all over.’ A harrowing closer, to be sure, and an effective statement about just how precarious life is. Rock songs are rarely, if ever, this poignant.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we might as well leave The River alone. (Even Point Blank isn’t bad enough to stand as the album’s only duff track.) I should have known who I was tangling with.

Next on the Chopping Block: The Cure’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.

Chopping Block: Elton John

Like the Beatles, Elton John had a talent for recognizing his moment in history. With four platinum albums under his belt, he seized his moment and put out Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, a two-record set that beefed up his sound, raised his profile and tightened his hold on the American and British publics.

Within a month of its release, in October 1973, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road went gold. Just over a year later, it went platinum. It has since gone platinum six more times, becoming the best-selling album of Elton John’s career, the one album to have if you have only one.

So I guess you could say it worked out okay for everyone involved. Still, there’s a whole bunch of tunes on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road that we ought to say goodbye to:

It is with great relish that I hereby cut opener Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding. No doubt the boys in the band all thought it would be hilarious to open this set with six minutes of pop Wagner, complete with synthesizer wind and disco drum accents, before easing the listener into the mediocrity that is Love Lies Bleeding but, like most jokes, there’s no reason you need to hear it more than once. If that.

Follower Candle in the Wind is trickier: Lyricist Bernie Taupin’s tribute to Marilyn Monroe, who had died just 11 years before, the lyrics are schoolboy crush corny, and Elton John sings them like he’s reading the Yellow Pages. Still, it’s an undeniable classic, a hit when it first came out (though it was never released as a single), again as a live version in 1987, and once more in 1997 when Taupin changed the lyrics for Princess Diana’s funeral.

Bennie and the Jets is less tricky because it’s great, one of the few Elton John tunes you can crank on the radio with the windows down, and (almost) no one’s going to think you’re a dork for cranking Elton John on the radio with the windows down. Surely it’s about something –there are electric boots and a mohair suit, and the third verse says something about fighting parents in the street – but mostly it’s an excellent example of one of rock’s ironclad rules: Stuttering always sounds good.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is another classic, I guess, a goopy story song of a young man escaping his penthouse prison and moving back to the country. Whatever. Leave it be. Songs without titles almost uniformly suck, but This Song Has No Title is pretty good, restrained where GYBR is awash in strings and wordless vocals. These two songs go well together; no need to break them up.

Okay, we’re definitely on a roll: Grey Seal is yet another strong entry, a fast number about disillusionment with some impressive drum work from longtime band member Nigel Olsson.

Things come to grinding halt with Jamaica Jerk-Off, a reggae-lite ditty that’s meant to be an annoying charmer ala Crocodile Rock. But reggae singing is beyond Sir Elton, and that minstrel gibberish in the background doesn’t make it any more authentic. Steer well clear.

Elton redeems himself on follower I’ve Seen that Movie Too, doing everything short of a Humphrey Bogart imitation to sound like the jaded, jilted lover that Taupin’s lyrics demand. And that backwards guitar, courtesy of Davey Johnstone, is the kind of effect that probably shouldn’t work but does. You can bet young Billy Joel was taking notes.

Side three begins with Sweet Painted Lady, another politically reprehensible tune that it romanticizes prostitution to almost absurd effect: "Getting paid / for being laid / I guess that’s the name of the game." Chop. Follower The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909-34) is an exercise in pretension. Brace yourself for that second-to-last line, "He found faith in danger / A lifestyle he lived by."

Dirty Little Girl is infamous because it’s disgusting on multiple levels. ("Someone grab that bitch by the ears / Rub her down, scrub her back, turn her inside out") It’s also the best song on the album, and Elton sings it with the spirit of the recently converted.

All the Young Girls Love Alice is nearly as good: A Stonesy rocker about a "16-year-old yo-yo" who gives it away, the best part of this one comes in the chorus, wherein everything stops so you’re free to marvel at the multi-layered vocal. If you think Elton John is only good for MOR schmaltz, you need to hear this one.

Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock ‘n Roll) comes on like Get Happy!-era Elvis Costello, but then Elton has to go and ruin it with an uber-cheesy organ solo. Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting follows, and it sounds great even though radio stations have been playing it repeatedly since 1973 (Trivia: Bassist John Entwistle’s last studio work with the Who was on their 1991 cover of this tune, for the tribute, Two Rooms).

And that’s really the last great moment of this twofer. Roy Rogers is offensive not because of the lyrics but because of Elton’s outrageous cowboy accent. Social Disease sounds like a leftover from Honky Chateau. Let’s keep closer Harmony, since it’s only 2:46 long and ends the album on a mellow note.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the new and improved Goodbye Yellow Brick Road:

Candle in the Wind, Bennie and the Jets, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, This Song Has No Title, Grey Seal, I’ve Seen That Movie Too, Dirty Little Girl, All the Young Girls Love Alice, Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting, Harmony.

Next on the Chopping Block: Bruce Springsteen’s The River.