MUSIC
The Greatest Rock/Pop Albums You’ve Never Heard Of
Classic albums that should have become classics but didn’t. In my opinion anyway
Everyone has their favourite pop/rock albums. Often they include the standards we all know and love— Sgt Peppers, Exile on Main Street, Born To Run, Rumours, Pet Sounds, Bat Out of Hell etc. etc. Sometimes, though, you fall in love with an album that doesn’t quite make it in the charts and you have no clue why it never joined the standards.
These are my non-classic classic rock/pop albums of all time.
Down By The Jetty — Dr. Feelgood
Canvey is a reclaimed island in the Thames Estuary, around 30 miles east of London. It’s at sea level and therefore surrounded by a 20ft high concrete barrier to keep the sea out. It hosts some of the UK’s major oil and gas refineries.
Along the industrialised north and south banks of the River Thames, from East London to Canvey Island and the North Sea, the ’60s and ’70 saw the pubs and clubs rocking with the sound of English pub-rock — based on US R&B but with a much harder grittier edge. The first out of the blocks were the Rolling Stones but more followed. In 1975 the debut album of a Canvey pub-rock band hit the record stores.
Dr Feelgood were led by lead guitarist and songwriter, Wilco Johnson. Johnson gave the band their distinctive aggressive menacing sound with his robotic stage movements and choppy riff-heavy guitar that made Keith Richards’ riffs sound angelic by comparison. Coupled with lead singer Lee Brilleaux’s voice sounding like he’d recently gargled on broken glass, this was more punk than the punks who followed later in the decade.
Down By The Jetty was my greatest album since the previous greatest album I’d bought, Band On The Run I think. Anyway, I think the greatest album since Macca’s sold about ten copies, one to me and nine to Wilco Johnson’s mum although the Feelgoods later had major UK successes.
Either I’m mad or the great British record-buying public is. Here they are with the first track off the album live. What do you think? Am I crazy?
Man, I love that guitar sound.
Heat Treatment — Graham Parker and The Rumour
Former petrol pump attendant and singer-songwriter Graham Parker arrived on the British music scene with an aggressive English brand of Dylan/Springsteen-esque rock.
Rolling Stone praised the “sheer attack” of his 2nd album, Heat Treatment, and Pazz & Jop, the UK’s prestigious music critics’ poll, placed it as the second-best album of 1976 behind Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key of Life. Despite this, the album peaked at just 58 in his home country and a miserable 169 in the USA.
Parker was so incensed by what he considered to be the inept marketing of his albums by his record company, Mercury, he later wrote a song called Mercury Poisoning.
“I gotta dinosaur for a representative It’s got a small brain and refuses to learn”
Ouch. In the meantime, take a listen to a live version of the incredible title track from Heat Treatment and the energy of the band. How on Earth was this album not a late ‘70s classic? Did Parker have a point about Mercury? Or is there something wrong with my hearing?
Goodbye Jumbo — World Party
Goodbye Jumbo was the 2nd studio album from the English rock band, World Party. It was released in 1990. World Party was in reality Kurt Wallinger, a former member of The Waterboys, and various musicians he drafted in for the album.
As with Heat Treatment, the music critics were effusive, likening the album to The Beatles and Wallinger’s voice and sound as “Lennonisms”. They said the album was a “winning opus” and “displays an ambition as broad as the emotional range of its music.” It was named album of the year by the UK’s Q music magazine and nominated for a Grammy music award.
Despite this, Goodbye Jumbo struggled to №36 in the UK album charts and №73 in the US.
Listen to the minor hit single from the album, Put The Message In a Box, and try to work out why this song and the album did not become rock/pop standards because I can’t.
Down By The Old Mainstream — Golden Smog
Golden Smog was a sort of superband with various members of other US bands, such as Soul Asylum and Wilco, dipping in and out of things. They used pseudonyms when playing for Golden Smog so maybe this affected the reception for Down By The Old Mainstream in 1995.
It did get to №14 in the US album charts, which is OK-ish. It got nowhere outside the USA, not even charting in the UK where their brand of rock should have gone down well. I only found it through a Spotify recommendation based on listening to Wilco.
So enjoy V, the first track from Down By The Old Mainstream. Sublime excellence like everything else on the album, especially Glad and Sorry, a wonderfully melancholic cover of an old Faces song.
The Animal Years — Josh Ritter
Josh Ritter is a singer-songwriter from Idaho USA who has a folk-rock/Americana style with a touch of Dylan and Johnny Cash thrown in. Ritter, with his band The Royal City Band, has released ten studio albums to date without achieving any mainstream breakout.
Much of Ritter’s success has come in the UK and Ireland where his fourth album, The Animal Years, was released in March 2006, three weeks before the release in his own country. It’s a modern classic. And it didn’t chart. Anywhere.
I really don’t get why Ritter isn’t considered the 2000s heir to Dylan, Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell, but what do I know? I’ve only been playing and listening to rock/folk/pop for sixty years.
Long Player Late Bloomer — Ron Sexsmith
Another critically acclaimed folk-rock singer-songwriter with a host of music awards and 17 studio albums which don’t often register with the music-buying public. Sexsmith is from Ontario, Canada and blessed with a melodious McCartney-esque voice and ability to write beautiful melodies and lyrics.
Long Player Late Bloomer was released in 2011 and nominated for a number of music awards. The recording of the album was filmed to document Sexsmith’s big break into the mainstream with this album, such was the anticipation. It spent just three weeks in the UK charts peaking at №48 and one week in the US charts at №37. I don’t think it bothered the Canadian charts at all.
I can find no explanation as to why this album wasn’t number 1 for several weeks around the world. Listen to this track, Believe It When I See It, and you’ll be asking the same question.
Rebel Sweetheart — The Wallflowers
I include the Wallflowers’ Bringing Down The Horses amongst the great rock/pop albums but it was a №1 in the USA and a platinum seller so is up there with the usual classic albums even though it stalled at №58 in the UK.
Like World Party, the Wallflowers is essentially a solo project by one musician, in this case Jakob Dylan, Bob Dylan’s youngest son. As much as I love Bringing Down The Horses and despite the fact that 2005’s Rebel Sweetheart does pretty much the same thing, Rebel Sweetheart does it even better.
And yet, Rebel Sweetheart got no further than №40 in Dylan’s home country and nowhere anywhere else. OK, №81 in Italy. I don’t get it.
Let’s all listen to a track from the album to remind ourselves that Rebel Sweetheart is a classic rock album, even if no one else thought so. Here’s track 3, The Beautiful Side of Somewhere, a song I sometimes play on repeat for an hour. Or more.
I actually prefer Junior’s music.
The greatest albums you’ve never heard of
Which classic unknown rock/pop/ folk albums would you add to this list? I’m guessing there are several I’ve never heard of and would love to hear.
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