I decided to use my Mondays to review albums that, for one reason or another, failed for me. That’s sort of the spirit of a Monday, right? I’ll kick off that policy with Steely Dan’s 1972 release, Can’t Buy a Thrill.

Some folks out there may be looking at me like I’m an idiot for suggesting that the album ain’t up to scratch. After all, it’s on Rolling Stone’s top 500 list at number 238 – it made the top 50%. Well, I could say some things about those top (x) album of all time lists… they tend to be shortsighted and focused more on who’s hot now than on who actually made a good album. Both of Tommy Bolin’s solo albums are absolutely amazing, but neither of them made it to a top 500 list. I think both of them are better than this album, but Bolin’s dead and can’t promote his work, so there we are.

Of the ten songs on the album, I only like four, and two of those are flat-out amazing. “Do It Again” and “Reelin’ in the Years” deserve a better fate than this album. If they took “Kings” and “Change of the Guard” with them to start a new album, I’d wish them the best of success. The other six tracks reveal how insecure the very early Steely Dan was with itself. David Palmer, the lead vocalist on “Dirty Work” and “Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me)” is just not right for the songs crafted by Becker and Fagen. He was brought in because Fagen had issues with stage fright and the execs at ABC records were worried that Fagen’s voice wouldn’t be commercial enough. Shows what they know, right?

I remember hearing “Dirty Work” when I was a kid and I took an immediate dislike to it, particularly the vocals. By contrast, I kinda liked the sly wit in “Do It Again” and I thought the vocals were perfect for that little number. Imagine my surprise when I got the boxed set of Steely Dan and hit the former song immediately after enjoying the latter song. I tried to reconcile the paradox, but failed. As a result, I skip right over “Dirty Work.” In a modern context, that means I never bothered to rip that song from the CD to my hard drive. Same thing for five other songs off the album.

As an EP with just the four songs I like, Can’t Buy a Thrill actually works out well. “Kings” seems to foreshadow Watergate in an eerie way and “Change of the Guard” has a good vibe through it that points towards “Time Out of Mind” off of Gaucho. “Reelin’ in the Years” and “Do It Again” are classic rock radio staples, but they remain as fresh to me today as they were when I first heard them. I attribute the quality of the lyrics and songwriting to their staying power. If I had to purchase this album with today’s technology, I’d download individual MP3s of the songs I liked, unless I could find a copy of the CD for less than $4, shipping and handling included. Given S&H prices these days, it looks like a digital download as the best way to go if one insists upon an album-by-album purchase.

Don’t let the lameness of six of the tracks scare you away from buying Steely Dan’s boxed set. Citizen Steely Dan is a great one-stop shop of all of SD’s greatness from 1972-1980. I’ve been very happy with my ownership of that product. I suppose my satisfaction is enhanced by the fact that I only ripped the 48 tracks I like the most and left the other 18 on the CD. Two of the tracks I disregarded were live performances that are nice from an archival perspective, but not eminently listenable. That leaves 16 studio tracks I didn’t care for, and six of those came from this album. By comparison, I only skipped three out of eight from Steely Dan’s second album, 2 of 11 from Pretzel Logic, 3 of 10 from Katy Lied, 2 out of 9 from The Royal Scam, and no skips from the excellent Aja and Gaucho.

But if you’re looking for a thrill in Can’t Buy a Thrill, you’ll find it all right, but the cost may be too high if you have to carry the deadweight on the album. Overall, it’s a sad little 4 on a 1-10 scale. If it was an EP with the four songs I liked off it, that rating would be higher. Listening to it makes me so glad Fagen got over his insecurity and became the voice for Steely Dan.

When I was in China, I wanted to find a CD of guqin music. Why? Well, the answer has to do with Academic Decathlon…

I’m an Academic Decathlon coach for Berkner High School and back in 2006, the main theme was Chinese civilization. Me and my team immersed ourselves in Chinese history, art, and music. Although not all the music CD was stuff I liked – the Beijing Opera piece was particularly cringe-inspiring – the guqin (pronounced goo-chin) pieces were very soothing and lovely. In China, the quqin, a long zither-like instrument, is considered the instrument of the scholar and philosopher, making it appropriate for inspiring calm, collected thought.

So, around Thanksgiving 2006, I was in Beijing and I wandered on in to a Xinhua News Book Store and looked over their wares. There, in the music section, was a triple CD of guqin music. Three and a half hours of serenity, all for 10 yuan, or $1.25 American at the time. I have no idea what the track names are, since they are all in Chinese. It doesn’t matter, though, because I can play this collection straight through without stopping, over and over and over again.

As a collection, it’s not monumental or critical or anything like that. I don’t even know the title of the CD. All I know is that classical Chinese guqin playing is beautiful stuff, especially for a cool, rainy Sunday afternoon when one wants to contemplate things. Overall, I rate my Chinese CD as a happy 8, since that’s a rather auspicious number in Chinese numerology. If you like to chill out, seek for traditional Chinese guqin music, kick back, and read a little Zhuang Zi while you’re at it.

I picked this one up last year at the main Half-Price Books here in Dallas and have been having fun with it ever since. The CD itself is in three parts. The first part is Elvis doing some secular Christmas numbers, including the fun, boisterous “Santa Claus Is Back in Town.” That’s the first six tracks, and they’re perfect for those Christmas parties where people are more concerned with having fun than doing something religious. There’s nothing wrong with that in my opinion, as there is a great cultural agglomeration around Christmas that has more to do with it as an American holiday than as a strictly Christian one. These are for fun and having some holiday cheer.

The next eight tracks are for the Christians observing Christmas. They include four standard Christmas hymns with four other spirituals all done in a deeply reverent style. Those are the ones I’m listening to right now to finish off my Christmas Day festivities. It’s no secret that I’m Christian, and I love taking time to remember the spirit of the season from the perspective of my religion. If you don’t like that sort of thing, this third of the album isn’t for you. If you do like that sort of thing, get thee hence and acquire it. Elvis’ arrangements are classics in their own right and his voice sings out clear and pure with an incredible range and emotion behind it. Yes, there are aspects of the first six of these songs that date them to the 1950s, but I like those aspects. You have to take the music in a larger context and hear that voice of Elvis’. That voice is timeless and is what demands to be listened to, even though on these tracks the singer is not at all concerned with himself, but with his relationship with Jesus and God. His performance on “O Come All Ye Faithful” is beautiful and breathtaking. For me, this is my favorite part of the album, and it’s for private moments of reflection.

The last two gospel songs and the following nine tracks come to us from Elvis circa 1971, 14 years after the first 12 tracks. The remaining nine I haven’t yet described are all Christmas standards like “White Christmas” and “Silver Bells.” While the 1957 secular tracks are playful and even edgy, these recordings are straight-ahead renditions that stay faithful to the conventions surrounding them. That’s not to say they’re not worth hearing: it’s just to say that this is Elvis at a more mature phase of his career and that’s reflected in the way he handles his material. He’s still ever the master craftsman with his performances and just because he’s more serious and straightforward doesn’t take away from his voice and passion. Personally, I like my Christmas songs done in a restrained style: Trans-Siberian Orchestra is all right for a little while, but it can leave me feeling a little bludgeoned after that little while. These arrangements are light and mobile and don’t do anything to offend. They’re fun and make a perfect soundtrack to the season.

On my 1-10 scale, I have to put it at a 9 for people that enjoy the spiritual aspects of the season and a 6 for those that prefer just a soundtrack for parties, and that’s only because you’ll be skipping a third of the album to get those party tunes. If you only want a gospel CD, this one’s a 3 on that scale and you’d be better off cherry-picking the MP3s you want with a digital download. I want it all, so I’m happy with my ranking it at a 9. It’s a great listen, but I tend to not play it all the way through. I’ll pick and choose based on my mood, but every track is one I enjoy in the proper context.

I love music… I’ve got lots and lots of records… so why not? How about an album review a day?

I’ll start with my #1 Desert Island Album: Machine Head by Deep Purple.

From the opening chords of “Highway Star” to the fadeout of “Space Truckin'”, this album has always been a thrill for me to listen to. I’ll always remember getting it in December 1981, back when I was in the 8th grade and had already bought all the Led Zeppelin albums. I got into Deep Purple because a girl whose taste in music I despised said she couldn’t stand Deep Purple, so I had to check them out. I had gotten a greatest hits compilation, Deepest Purple, as an introduction to the band and although three of the seven songs from the US release of Machine Head were on that disc, it was still a thrill to get them all on vinyl, along with the other monster tracks. That the album itself had been recorded in December made it all the more fun to listen to it in the chilly, wet days at the end of the year.

I’m playing “Highway Star” right now, and when I close my eyes, I can imagine the RCA headphones surrounding my ears with the virtuoso sound of the band at its peak. I remember this headphones having rave reviews on WhoisHuman. I don’t have dust pops in the MP3 version, but that’s OK. I remember where they were on that album, so many Decembers ago. “Maybe I’m a Leo” comes up next, with its clever lyric and adagio blues. It’s got a lovely pair of solos from Messers. Blackmore and Lord, which are so welcome to hear instead of the solo-less instrumental tracks that seem to dominate the pop scene today. It’s a real pleasure to hear musicians play off each other and really jam, instead of turning in a photoshopped version of themselves, same every time.

As a live band, Deep Purple are almost always an amazing experience and only a few lineups had a reputation for bad concerts. The reason for Deep Purple’s excellence has been in their craft and talent. While this isn’t a live album, one gets a sense of their performance style as each track progresses. In the studio, they produced sounds that were absolutely reproducible on stage because they eschewed clever gimmicks. It’s just you, the band, their instruments, and the infamous Marshall stacks, all the time, every time. Live, DP were likely as not to play the same solos on their studio releases, so each track is unique and worth comparing one to another.

“Pictures of Home” is winter as a hard rock song, no question about it. Everything about it is cold, with slow violence lurking in the wings. You don’t get this sort of thing on so-called Classic Rock radio formats because the guys in charge of programming them won’t do deep cuts like they should. You’ve got to actually go out and get this stuff for yourself and discover the thrill on your own, or you’ll simply miss out.

And this is an album not to be missed! When I see some of the product that the music industry churns out these days – and it’s been “these days” for about two decades – I want to reach for a sample of what things were like when it wasn’t an industry. It had become a business by the 1970s, true enough. But it wasn’t yet an industry: there was craftsmanship and innovation. There was risk-taking and playing so good that the singer didn’t have to go for the shock value of profanity to interest a listener.

“Never Before” warms up the ears after the chill of “Pictures of Home”, in spite of it being about a love gone wrong. Those with the UK version and the remastered CD will then get the rock-solid honest blues of “When a Blind Man Cries,” a dear favorite of many DP fans.

Side two kicks off with “the chords that conquered America” – “Smoke on the Water.” When DP recorded it, they had no idea at all how big it would be. They almost didn’t record it because they had a policy against doing drug songs, and they thought the title would be construed as a euphemism for smoking dope. But they did it, and there it is, thundering and lumbering along, an anthem that no music industry project has been able to duplicate. It’s not a complicated piece, not by half. But it’s got that riff!

The next track up is “Lazy”, the climax of the album. I love turning up the volume on the Hammond Organ intro to where I can feel the room shake. It’s always an excitement for me. Even though I’ve heard the same solo played hundreds of times in the hundreds of times I’ve listened to this since 1981, I get excited every time. That’s the power of really good music. There are songs I like, but very few that I’m passionate about. “Lazy” is one of them.

The last track is just as awesome as the rest. Where “Highway Star” took us on a tear down the road, “Space Truckin'” launches us into space with a Saturn V-worthy rhythm. It’s a song that I wish was longer than it is on the studio album, and I get my wish granted in the band’s awesome live sets from the period, where it would go on for 20 minutes or longer.

Back in 1998, I said this about Machine Head: “This is the definitive Deep Purple album. It has been my personal favorite album of all time since I first heard it. If it has any flaws, they are the most perfect flaws ever recorded.” Over ten years later, I still feel that way. The music is epic, the photos inside the album cover were loads of fun, and the thrill of putting the needle in the groove of this platter immeasurable. I’ve got several vinyl versions of this, including a picture disc, and two different CDs, the standard Warner Brothers issue and the 25th anniversary remastered edition. Yes, I’m enthusiastic about it and probably not impartial about it, but it’s because the music in it won me over so triumphantly.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a 10 because every single track on it works, and works perfectly. I don’t skip over parts. I don’t want to fast-forward any of it. I want to be there, from start to finish, and catch every note of it.