Thursday, November 12, 2009

If I were making a Buffy Sainte-Marie best of compilation...

...it would most likely include anywhere from one to three songs from each of her first five albums, maybe four songs total from her career after 1970, and the entirety of Illuminations. If you haven't heard that album yet, fix that problem you have.

Looking over my list of albums I have that came out in its year (yes, I keep lists of my albums by year), I have no problem naming it by far the best of all of them. And we're not talking, say, 1987 here. This is 1969. I have over seventy albums from 1969. It's the year of The Beatles' Abbey Road, Can's Monster Movie, Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Fairport Convention's Unhalfbricking, Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul, John & Yoko's Life With the Lions, Nico's The Marble Index, Pharoah Sanders' Karma, Silver Apples' Contact, Skip Spence's Oar, Dusty Springfield's Dusty in Memphis, the full version of Stockhausen's Hymnen, The Stooges, The Velvet Underground's self-titled, two great Scott Walker albums, and Marva Whitney's It's My Thing, and if I had to I'd give them all up in order to keep Illuminations.

This thought just struck me with urgency for some reason on the verge of going to bed. I hopefully will elaborate later, but if anyone in the dire position of not having heard this album stumbles across this post, for the love of god, listen to Illuminations as soon as possible.

No comments: