The Sonics - Here Are The Sonics!!! (1965), 6/10

Gerry Roslie’s vocals take raw, noisy, rebellious energy further than ever before. The heavy sound of the record is bolstered by distortion and unstoppable energy. Original compositions include some of the best songs on the record “The Witch”, “Psycho”, “Boss Hoss”, and “Strychnine”, the rest are rock and roll covers similar to contemporaries yet decorated with a unique sense of raw energy foreshadowing punk music. While some songs are stronger than others, including covers, the execution is relatively uniform in a positive sense. The band brings a consistent vitality to each track and never lets off the gas. The record is remarkable for its unhinged feeling despite its foundational ties to rock and roll and the British Invasion scene. The pair of rhythmic tension with Lind’s saxophone on a track like “Have Love Will Travel” for example, brings an entirely new approach to music that was being exhausted by repetition at the time. The Sonics accomplished something entirely necessary and refreshing during the mid-sixties by completely shaking up the approach to sound when everything else sounded just about the same, all furthered by a live recording that sounds genuine and intentional. The band’s charismatic, charming youthful playfulness simply adds a decorative flair to an already entertaining album experience. It is unsurprising that the record did not break nationally, as audiences were likely unready for such a change of pace and ethos, but years later it is clear that changes like these ushered in much better music and novel concepts in recording.

Jerry Lee Lewis - "Live" at the Star-Club, Hamburg (1964), 5/10

Jerry Lee Lewis had a knack for energetic performance, and it is palpable in his playing at the Star-Club. This spectacle is like murder on the keys and his command of the crowd is clear. While some of the compositions are better than others, the energy is remarkably consistent and Lewis sounds like a mature musician flaunting his talents, unlike any amateur. Moments like his laughing and playful vocal passages during “Money (That’s What I Want)” make an otherwise normative rock and roll song superbly entertaining and charming. Still, some songs are beyond redemption, or Lewis doesn’t do enough to resurrect their energy, and they end up amounting to nothing more than bland filler. This can also be felt from the band, sometimes they are fully invested in the propulsion of a song and its imagery, sometimes they flounder in reaction to its lack of interest or in reaction to Lewis dwarfing their efforts. His personal life and morally corrupt marriage didn’t do him any favors in terms of his legacy, but this performance helped save his musical reputation from the depths of despair. The placement of microphones directly against the band’s instruments and amongst the audience results in a booming audio experience that matches the group’s energy and the speeding race of an album that is Live at the Star-Club, Hamburg. The only real weakness of the performance is in the writing, making the execution nearly free from criticism; this is exemplified by “Good Golly, Miss Molly” which sounds years ahead of its time for its achieved sound despite a rather simple song structure and arrangement style. Jenkins' drums are particularly strong here along with Lewis’ growling vocals and brisk pace on the keys. Contributing even more to the praise of performance, the playful sway of the music largely overtakes the consistently standardized rock and roll compositions. Simply a masterclass in charismatic live performance.

Buck Owens and His Buckaroos - I've Got a Tiger by the Tail (1965), 3/10

Straightforward country music, even with incorporated rock and roll, can lack the necessary variety. Buck Owen’s album I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail exemplifies the two strains of Bakersfield sound in the ballad and the energetic storytelling we have heard countless times before. The album has a few worthwhile songs, but these are counterbalanced by simply awful songs like “Trouble and Me” and the unbearable “Wham Bam” that manifests the worst parts of country music. Owens himself has much better albums and much more consistently worthwhile projects. Some of these songs are decently entertaining, colorful, or seductively emotional such as the title track, “Let the Sad Times Roll On”, “Fallin’ for You” or the closer “Memphis”. Even this short of an album overstays its welcome, conveying the sameness and played-out tropes of honky tonk music at this stage in its development. This cannot be fully blamed on Owens himself, but he and his band don’t do enough to set themselves apart or provide any meaningful departure from contemporary trends. The first half of the record is a rollercoaster of good and bad, while the second half is consistently poor until its final track, signifying the squandered potential of sound here. The man and his band took a turn for the safe and established rather than testing their limits and expanding the possibilities of country sound and it shows.

X - Los Angeles (1980), 7/10

An incredibly ambitious, successful, and impressive debut punk record from X, a set of songs that are defined by remarkably tight performances mixed with the essential aspect of all great punk albums in superbly punchy lyrics. The vocalist duo backed by ambitious guitar work and extremely in-sync rhythm make Los Angeles one of the best-performed albums of the early eighties punk rock scene. It also has the quite rare quality of increasing in quality from start to finish rather than the much more common quality of declining after singles run their course. Highlights include “Johny Hit and Run Paulene”, “Nausea”, and the entire second half including the unmistakably capturing title track and the closer serving as an example of punk rock at its peak. The songs generally cover a surprisingly dark set of themes including drugs, death, and the dark side of sexuality, all prevalent and at the forefront at the start of the eighties. The closer “The World’s a Mess, It’s in My Kiss” truly captures everything that makes Los Angeles special including a flawless musical performance from all members, the back and forth of the vocal pair, an infectious but intelligent chorus, superb use of dynamics, and an expert use of Bonebrake’s thundering drums accented by Manzarek’s noisy organ work reminiscent of his time with The Doors. The cover of “Soul Kitchen” is a nice touch and shows just how special this group of musicians was together. They are consistently in sync to such a degree that the album sometimes sounds outside of the punk genre. The album is a whirlwind of self-conscious, existential, and philosophically dark punk elevated by exceptional musicality, particularly when considering their peers. One of the more interesting and individual punk rock records ever recorded and absolutely essential for any fan of the genre.

The Rolling Stones - The Rolling Stones (1964), 3/10

The Rolling Stones’ debut album consists of a collection of blues covers as well as three new compositions. This approach to recording mirrors their contemporaries in most ways apart from the band’s focus on a few particularly influential rhythm and blues artists, their heroes. The music itself, due to a combination of the band’s immaturity and the variously sourced material, varies wildly in quality. A song like “Walking the Dog” foreshadows later ingenuity with the fundamental building blocks of music, while “Tell Me (You’re Coming Back)” is simply atrocious on all fronts and borders on unlistenable. The album generally flirts with the space between mediocre interpretations of better artists, at this stage, and botched attempts at creating their own individual sound. Two of the better songs are placed at the front, helping lure us into the experience, before laying out a supremely disappointing remainder with some exceptions being “Carol” and the closer. While this group would produce much better projects in the future, their debut was nothing special and would blend in with the rest of the crowd if not for their different sources of inspiration. This would help them further down the line, of course, but a combination of sloppy presentation and questionable aesthetics stifle any potential impact in the music. There is little meaningful variation, creativity, or polish in execution. Ultimately this sloppy and generic debut is nothing worthy of praise and fails the test of time.

Dusty Springfield - A Girl Called Dusty (1964), 3/10

Dusty Springfield’s debut album is roughly what you could expect from a budding pop artist not yet in her prime: lots of covers with a little extra flair, backed by raw vocal talent where instrumentation takes a back seat to individual charisma. Dusty has enough of this and enough technical ability to make some songs fairly enjoyable, but largely the record fails to provide anything unique, even in delivery. The resulting album drones by quickly enough for its short length yet fails to impress in any significant way. Dusty’s talent can only do so much and despite her emotional delivery some songs are wholly poor. Most of the second half, for instance, falls completely flat on every level. Only “Anyone Who Had a Heart” and the closer “Don’t You Know” come across as worth listening to, even for just one play. The record strategically opens with its strongest two tracks with “Mama Said” and “You Don’t Own Me” before becoming standard and eventually drearily boring, increasingly so as the track list ventures on. There is nothing to note outside of the vocals, making the majority of these songs uninspired covers or completely generic in their entirety. There were more adventurous and interesting things being accomplished by her peers, especially in surrounding countries, so A Girl Called Dusty only foreshadows her later success rather than providing anything worth listening to.

D.W. Griffith - The Birth of a Nation (1915), 1/10

D.W. Griffith’s advancements in cinematography are completely overshadowed by the ridiculous content of this film, and they should be. The film is propaganda, of course, but it attempts to tell a story. This story is pathetically shortsighted and narrow, suitably sourced from Thomas Dixon Jr.’s The Clansman. The film is now a launching point for a discussion of historical importance against technical advancement and integration, an argument that quickly becomes trivial when you ask a simple question: is this film enjoyable? For anyone who answers yes after watching The Birth of a Nation they would be unequivocally psychotic considering modern enlightenment, cultural evolution, contemporary technical advancements, and basic knowledge of story structures. Not to mention that the film itself overstays its welcome within the first few minutes, then persists for three hours of what amounts to silent torture. It is historically significant for its advancements in filmmaking and now will be significant for its importance as an artifact of divisiveness, creating a rift between those focused on production over meaningful artistic expression. Practically nothing in the film can be called artistically meaningful without relying on the film as a precedent for future projects. If The Birth of a Nation was not the first film to incorporate such techniques would Griffith have simply brought these aspects of the process into a later project? While the answer doesn’t matter as a hypothetical, the question reframes the film as simply an artifact and not a work of art. For that reason, it is an abysmal relic of a tragic time in history when men were blinded by shortsightedness and a general lack of perspective or empathy. The influence of the film works further to its detriment, as it was an inspiration for hate and murder. The story is juvenile, the acting poor, the techniques novel but in their infancy, and the screenplay duals as laughably poor and simultaneously disgusting. Not worth even a fraction of its comically lengthy run time.

Alfred Hitchcock - North by Northwest (1959), 7/10

With modern context North by Northwest feels like a superbly compelling narrative structure and sequence packaged in a nostalgic but inconsistently dry film. Still, the script is outstanding and remarkably ahead of its time, and there are plenty of scenes that work so well they are practically undeniably effective. Even the humor and pacing of the auction scene, for example, breathe life into the film just when it is most needed. There is still a lacking tension throughout much of the film until it is almost completed that make it pale in comparison to Hitchcock's great films and the charm of the story, while substantial, is not quite enough to help it match the greats. Another great scene, when the two lovers meet in the forest after the staged shooting, is executed well but still draws attention to its contextual shortcomings. The romantic progression itself is something that the script excels in executing, the initial attraction zig-zagging from unbelievable to pained to yearning back to anger, these aspects make the pair uniquely interesting and give further meaning and life to the story where necessary. For these reasons and for a general charisma flowing from the script effortlessly through Grant, the film is one that reveals further likeability with time and revisitation, similar to the famed director's other works. The climax of the story is largely a success with minute shortcomings stemming from its technical limitations rather than a lack of creativity, effort, or ingenuity. By the end of the experience, three things truly stand out and make the film exceptional: the script, the subversive humor, and the uniqueness of the story's delivery. There are some subtle touches that accentuate these aspects, making otherwise uninteresting sequences entirely compelling, but most scenes are already capturing and are simply elevated by these touches, such as vertical movement while Vandamm proclaims "this matter is best disposed of from a great height...over water". Many of these moments are so natural and now accepted into modern filmmaking that they can easily be lost in the mix, but still substantially aid in immersion and emotive power. While far from perfect, North by Northwest is a great film that inspires due infatuation.