One of the most colorful characters in the annals of rock & roll, Kim Fowley was, over the course of his decades-long career, a true jack-of-all-trades: singer, songwriter, producer, manager, disc jockey, promoter, and published poet. He was also the catalyst behind much of the pop music to emerge from the Los Angeles area during the 1960s and '70s, guiding several of his associates and protégés to fame and fortune, while remaining himself a shadowy cult figure well outside the margins of the mainstream…
A really weird conceptual mini-masterpiece with lots of period charm. Very few actual "songs" on this outing, most of the tracks are ironic / caustic commentaries on late 60s America. Listen in wonder as Fowley takes the piss out of rock 'n' roll stardom, middle America, the hippie counter-culture, and just about everything else. 100% post-modern a decade before anybody thought up the term.
The Allman Brothers Band's comeback album, and their best blues-based outing since Idlewild South that restored a lot of their reputation. With Tom Dowd running the session, and the group free to make the music they wanted to, they ended up producing this bold, rock-hard album, made up mostly of songs by Dickey Betts (with contributions by new keyboardman Johnny Neel and lead guitarist Warren Haynes), almost every one of them a winner. Apart from the rippling opening number, "Good Clean Fun," which he co-authored, Gregg Allman's contribution is limited to singing and the organ, but the band seem more confident than ever, ripping through numbers like "Low Down Dirty Mean," "Shine It On," and "Let Me Ride" like they were inventing blues-rock here, and the Ornette Coleman-inspired "True Gravity" is their best instrumental since "Jessica".