Aren't albums recorded during heavy drug use, exile, divorce and mid-life crisis usually damn good listens?

hahaha

Along that line, I also should point out that the kind of albums I'm talking about can't be produced by groups whose entire mien is drug abuse, no matter how good (Spacemen 3) or bad (Libertines) they are. I'll shut up. You guys know what I'm talking about... They have to be aberrations.

Busted.

(I'll check later)

p.s. I guess Busted won't be doing that song with Ronnie Wood then?

The album he recorded post-smack, Crying Time, is one of his best.

Anyway, RC was a hideous alkie post-H so the theory still doesn't hold.

Ray was capable of producing great music right until the end--I watched him do it a few years back--but he'd lost his instincts and on some level he ceased to care. Can a pile of China White bring that back? I think it has more to do with the weariness of age more than anything.

POST SMACKEROO GREAT RAY CHARLES

Let's Go Get Stoned (I believe this was recorded post-H, pretty funny)
No use Crying
Goin' Down Slow
I Don't Need No Doctor
Just A Girl I Used to Know (yes, the George Jones song)
Somebody Ought to Write A Book About It
She's Funny That Way
How Deep is the Ocean
Love Walked In
I'll Be Seeing You
Gee Baby Ain't I Good to You
Never Say Naw
When I Stop Dreaming
I'll be Your Servant
I Didn't Know What Time It Was
We Can Make It
Ring of Fire (yep, and totally bizarre)
My First Night Alone Without You
Just A Man

OK, that's into the early seventies. I can go on.

These are my faves:

Joni Mitchell - Blue
TV Personalities - The Painted Word
Beck - Sea Change

OTM. I also think that the stories surrounding great albums always tend to take on legendary proportions, so whatever the artist was going through at the time tends to get exaggerated. If they make an album that's unusually dark or emotional, then fans tend to think they must have been going through some incredibly difficult period in their lives, and it since it contributes to the mythos of the work that rumor tends to spread. No one ever thinks that maybe they just decided they wanted to make a darker album.

In general, I like these "wasted" albums (Tonight's The Night, Sister Lovers, etc) but sometimes I wonder if the overall feel of them is more calculated than we think. Neil Young has lawys said that the recording of Tonight's The Night was consciously an attempt to get "out on the edge", ie just wasted enough to truly understand the junkie outlook. That album's definitely out there (drunk, high, depressed) but it's definitely that way on purpose.

also worth considering--a lot of these albums might have artists who are out of it, but they usually have someone (a producer most likely) who's managing things. Like Jim Dickinson on Sister Lovers--he may be as much responsible for the overall feel of the record. He egged Chilton on, but also was able to stand back and shape the record in a way that Chilton himself (in his wasted state) probably couldn't. Same deal with david briggs and neil young, perhaps.

I guess Bobby Womack was pretty coked-out during "Safety Zone" recording, it's a pretty confused and manic record I enjoy.

Spence's "Oar"--did he have access to any drugs in Nashville, or did he bring them down with him on his motorcycle? Or was he clean, and that's why it's so fucked-up sounding?

The Sun artists were all on speed, I suppose, and Roscoe Gordon, whose RPM sides I've been enjoying recently, sounds like he was drunk. Ace Cannon, on the Hi Records single "Drunk," sounds as if he might've been tippling a bit.

I've been into this '76 Elvis recording of "Hurt" too, and he sounds completely out of his head--it's one of his best recordings.

*really*?? isn't 'too high' anti-drugs?

I think the final word on Shoot the Lights Out is that the songs were written some years before the album was recorded, but they were splitting up during the actual recording of the album, so there's some noticeable tension. The nature off all their songs didn't really help either haha

You're right about the post-'65 stuff; the albums he did for Atlantic between 1977 and 1980 are mostly great. Fave track: "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning."

No, "I'll Be Your Servant" never on CD. The boxed set missed a lot of the highlights from the ABC years, what else is new.

I have everything he cut for ABC and there's a lot of great stuff not on CD.

Another killer-diller: "Something's Wrong," a single I believe written by Percy Mayfield.

Slow, creepy, bone-chilling.