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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Soundtracks To Our Lives W/E 11/01/03
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Son Of Alice
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Re: Soundtracks To Our Lives W/E 11/01/03
Jan 12, 2003, 14:33
A humdrum week for me. Didn't get to any store, and mostly played stuff I've talked about in these threads over the last couple weeks. Exceptions were one longtime favorite and one recent addition to my list of favorites.

The latter is Black Sabbath's Master Of Reality. Of the first half-dozen Sab-with-Ozzy albums considered to be their best, I've only got Vol 4 and the self-titled one to go, but they'll have to be pretty awesome to overthrow this one. On the first few listens, I had wondered why they hadn't saved the juggernaut that is Children Of The Grave for last, but now the sequencing makes perfect sense. Start with a desperate attempt to escape the horrors of life (Sweet Leaf,) and end with an overwhelming sense of the inevitable (Into The Void.)

The former is Guns 'n Roses Appetite For Destruction. Every time I find myself wondering, Now why is this my favorite album of all time, I put it on and think, Did I even have to ask? To me, what makes it great is precisely that Axl is not wholly convincing as a streetwise sleazeball. When he sings lines like, "I'm a hardcase that's tough to beat," he sounds even more desperate to believe it himself than to persaude us of it. The hard mask keeps slipping off, and the glimpses behind it are what make the album stand out. He may be venomous toward the poor-little-rich-girl of My Michelle and act like a jaded scumbag on It's So Easy, but he shows compassion for the doomed dominatrix of Rocket Queen, and is downright tender on Think About You and Sweet Child O' Mine (which contains the lines "Her hair reminds me of a warm safe place/Where as a child I'd hide." Now compare that to Cope's "The sun in her hair, the sun in her eyes/There's something that makes me want to go back." Hmmm...now it doesn't seem so strange that I put Cope and Axl in the same personal pantheon.) Of course, I have to mention the rhythm section that made this one of the few rawk bands that could groove (especially on Mr. Brownstone) and the molten spurts from Slash and Izzy's guitars, but I'll save the details for the inevitable review.

xxoo
SOA
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Soundtracks To Our Lives W/E 11/01/03 (Fitter Stoke)
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