Daveportivo's Cultural Evaluation Facility

There are certain situations that no matter how hard you try you simply can't empathise with. As a causcasion male who was a one year old babe when this album came out there's no way I can't possible fully understand just how vital and earth shattering this record sounded in 1988. I just can't put myself in the shoes of an unemployed black twenty something in Cali in the eighties faced with one of the world's most renouned and brutal police regimes. I can't understand the pressures of being in a gang and I never been beaten with a nightstick and hopefully I never will be. It's important to put myself in perspective because this album represents a moment in time, it's a piece of history. Fuck The Police quite simply is a historic document, it wasn't a bolshy claim, it's not Eminem claiming he'd "kill a faggot" to look cool, this was four young men expressing the feelings of an entire generation and a then underclass. This was as real as it gets, the tensions and uncurrents of a oppresion and social unrest would explode by the time that Curt Cobain reached number one. It's not like the N.W.A didn't warn us.

This album is much more than a political statement, and a cultural phenominom. Dr. Dre and Yella's production is utterly sublime, the tracks bounce and crackle perfectly, they feel years ahead of their time and age much better than their peers. Hell this is the sound and the passion that Jay Z is trying to bring back to hip hop in 200-and friggin-9, twenty years after it's release this album is as relevant as ever. Express Yourself is still one of the greatest feel good rap tracks of all time, the title track kicks just as hard as it did the first time you heard it, and the guest spots are still perfect. Snoop Dogg reminds us that once upon a time he used to pull his finger out of his arse and be serious, WC keeps the agressive atomsphere and it's remarkable thinking back that the more laid back tracks were seen as too soft to be singles, but they turend out to be the template for the hip hop of the next twenty years. Ultimately, this albums importance will always over shadow it's critical merits, and rightly so, this album is like stepping into the tardis and stepping out of the streets of L.A. in '88, and it's scary as fuck.

Okay before I start because I'm sure someone will point it out, I am fully aware that I have not used the original artwork, but honestly who cares, that cover is as iconic as they come. So it's incredible the consider these last two albums side by side, on one side of California you had four angry young black men raging against the harsh reality of society and the brutality and biggotry of the police, and just down the road five other young white men are having exactly the opposite experience. While Straight Out Of Compton is the bleak reality, the album that exposes the hypocracy of the 1980s, Appetite For Destruction revels in the worst excess of the decade, for Guns and Roses It's So Easy. Axl has the world at his feet, he has it all drugs, sex rock and roll and he's about to get a hell of alot of money, and he's dissatisfied, it's not enough, where's the challenge. The more I compare the two the more I begin to dislike Appetite... and all it stands for, it's greedy, it's glutony, it's all of the seven deadly sins rolled into one, and you know what? It'd rocks you to your core.

So even though I should detest everything about this record, I can't, I should be saying it's overated, superficial, bloated but I can't because it's too much fun. Take Sweet Child O' Mine just as Axl's god awful syruppy drivel is about to make me slam my head through the nearest wall a sick solo and a killer riff explode out of Slash's guitar. Equally when it seems like Slash is over doing it, turning a track into some bluesy wank fest Axl comes in with the killer hook that's utterly irresistable. By the time Mr. Brownstone rolls around all your critical sensors have been destroyed, it rocks too hard, how can you care about the worries of the world when you could be snorting cocaine of half naked women. See that very sentance should fill me with moral outrage but allas it doesn't, just like Mr. Brownstone this album keeps on knocking, it just won't leave you alone, it's going to numb or brain with riff after riff, hook after hook and mind blowing solo after mind blowing solo until you conceed defeat and simply become another G'n'R junkie.

Okay so this entry is garenteed to raise some eyebrows, and no not because it's Kate Bush, seriously if you don't rate Kate Bush you need to go read someone elses blog about now. No the more discerning reader will be noting that this is a greatest hits complilation, and yes your right that is a cheap way to get someone into a list, but like Girls Aloud in the contemporary list, while Kate's albums have their individual merit it is as a hit maker and a cultural whirlwind that she shaped music and left her legacy. So no one album could do her legacy justice, no one album could give you the whole story, except The Whole Story (yes sorry i apologise for that in advance).

So what makes Kate Bush so special? Well if I have to answer that question for you you've probably never heard a Kate Bush record. Her music is querky, it refuses to be defined by the rigid boundaries of eighties pop, she's like a musical orgasm, she's sound constantly on edge, her music will suddenly pulse unpredictably. It won't stay in one place, one minute she's singing softly the next she leaps forward and grabs you by the balls, and before you know what's hit you she's on the other side of the room twirling around singing devinely. She was much more than a simple oddity, she was the female Bowie, she was a revolutionary, she burst open the door(along with Grace Jones) for the women of the next twenty years . While the boys were busy making lame synth pop, she was experimenting, she was redefining art pop. Bjork, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, and countless others from Girls Alouds Biology to the wonderful Joanna Newsom in some part owe there exsistance to this spectacular lady, underestimate her at you peril.

So the I've placed the least loved of all The Smiths albums and collections at number twelve. You may point out my lists are supposed to rate albums on critical quality, influence, cultural relevance and to a lesser extent popularity; so why is Meat Is Murder the album that some would argue has none of the above factors make the list? Because this is my list, and I want to make a big ballsy statement. After all that is what Meat Is Murder is all about, just look at the title and the album artwork. This is an album with balls, giant water melon sized balls, it has nothing to hide and nothing to fear. This is a group of artists at the top of their game saying there going to do what they like and they are damn sure going to say whatever's on their minds.

Take one listen to album opener Barbarism Begins At Home it's a walking contradiction. Morrissey rages about the foolhardy practice of beating children as a method of reforming their character traits or sexual preferences. It's in your face, it pulls no punches. Morrissey's forked tongue delivers deliciously powerful wittism;

"A crack on the head is what you get for asking,

So after that statement your full of emotion and rage, you agree, disagree whatever, so what next? Wait the track isn't over, no Marr and Rourke drop into a full anglo-disco stomp groove-athon, no I'm not joking, this full Play That Funky Music White Boy mode. It's remarkable, it's melodrama at it's finest, it's not cliche at all in this instance to say we've gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. This is an album full of jauxtaposition on one side the bouncy grooves and side splitting silliness of Nowhere Fast, and on the other Morrissey's two most serious chilling slices of indignant rage, Meat Is Murder and How Soon Is Now. This album is everything the naysayers hate about the Smiths in one package, and it's absolutely brilliant. Easily the Smiths most nagging, moral and preachy album but even the most ardent hater couldn't deny the beauty of these few lines "Oh Shut Your Mouth, How Can You Say, I Go About Things The Wrong Way, I Am Human And I Need To Be Loved, Just Like Everyone Else Does".

So after the touching and heartfelt Meat Is Murder is an album that says "Fuck that shit". Ride The Lightning, were it a person would proably run up to Meat Is Murder and punch it straight in the face, before downing a bottle of vodka, and going on a never ending spree of crime and destruction. Ride The Lightning doesn't exactly cocern itself with themes like homosexuality, vegitarism, the human condition, socail pressure or class antagonism. No this is an album that talks about fighting fire with fire, it talks about being strapped in the electric chair and feeling the rush of electricity as it frys your brain. Infact if albums were films Meat Is Murder would be Milk and Ride The Lightening would be Evil Dead II. There both utterly brilliant, in totally different ways.

Okay enough silly comparisions lets get down to the music, and I could complain about how James seems to be on a mission to steal every last inch of Ozzy Osborne's shtick but honestly who would care? Because after all this album is about one thing and one thing only; The electric guitar. More specifically the electric guitar turned up to 11, 000! Seriouly put the title track on you itunes right now (if you don't have it then shame on you) and just listen first to strutting thrusting guitar line (I can just picture Kirk lifting his guitar up and down in the Maiden styly), then listen to the mind blowing solo that emerges from the riff, and then suddenly when you think it's over, and all is safe, of course it bloody isn't we're not even half way there. Kirk goes spiraling off the into the heavens with the most ridiculously frantic fretwork imaginable. And that ladies and gentlemen was just one track, just one. This is the album that brought you Ride The Lightening, For Whom The Bell Tolls, Creeping Death, Trade Under Ice and Fade To Black. While this isn't regarded as Metallica's best album (no prize for guessing what coming along later), it is regarded by many as their favourite Metallica album, and you'll be damn hard pressed to find a more fun way to spend forty seven minutes than jumping up and down to this evil hell spawn.