488. Psychedelic Furs - Talk Talk Talk

Release Date: 1981
Label: CBS

Having listened to this on Friday and I can honestly say I was a little disappointed with the album. Yes it has the band's signature song, 'Pretty in Pink', but it wasn't enough to make an average album good.

Rating: 5/10

465. Judas Priest - British Steel

Release Date: 1980
Label: CBS

It is clear from a lot of these albums, and there are more to come, that we have entered the NWOBHM. Judas Priest are named after the Bob Dylan song on 'John Wesley Harding' and so they get points for that. They also get points for being listenable. Unfortunately that's all I'm giving them as the album isn't very good.

Rating: 6/10

454. Adam and the Ants - Kings of the Wild Frontier

Release Date: 1980
Label: CBS

We start the new decade with a bang! This is a great album, better than I perhaps expected it to be. Highlights included the first two tracks and the title track.

Rating: 7/10

439. The Clash - London Calling

Release Date: 1979
Label: CBS

The Clash were always the band who were most likely to win the war. And they did it by branching away from punk better than anyone except, arguably, the Jam. 'London Calling', their magnus opus is a double-album full of fantastic riffs, basslines, lyrics and some mumbled vocals.

Rating: 10/10

286. Mott the Hoople - Mott

Release Date: 1973
Label: CBS

Every so often a band will come on to the scene, only to be followed by a thousand inferior copycat acts as record labels throw their chequebook around in a panic, worried about missing out on the next big thing. There are also the bands, or people who are made famous on the back of another's success. This is the kind of band Mott the Hoople seem to be. Their hit, All The Young Dudes, sounds so much like David Bowie (it was written by him of course) that it makes you just want to go and listen to 'Hunky Dory'. I really didn't see the point of this being here.

Rating: 4/10

203. Santana - Abraxas

Release Date: 1970
Label: CBS

Santana are a Latin-Rock band from the USA via Mexico. They released an album in 1970 caled Abraxas and I have listened to it once. It wasn't very interesting or memorable.

Rating: 4/10
Favourite Track: Oye Como Va

194. Soft Machine - Third

Release Date: 1970
Label: CBS

Four songs, three of which are instrumental, make up this 75 minute album. Each of these songs is over eighteen minutes long. Soft Machine are not a fan of the two-and-a-half minute pop song. On the strength of this album alone, I am not a fan of Soft Machine. There was probably about twenty-minutes of  this album I enjoyed at most - the saxophone on 'Slightly all the Time' being one of them. The other fifty minutes were tolerable, but I wont be rushing to hear this again.

Rating: 5/10
Favourite Track: Slightly All The Time

131. The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle

Release Date: 1968
Label: CBS

Following on from Scott 2, Odessey (sic) and Oracle is another Baroque-Pop classic. It's another album I've had for a while, having bought it on a whim whilst working at HMV. At first I was disappointed to discover 'She's Not There' wasn't on the album, but then again, it was released as a single four years previously, so I will let them off. It does, however, contain wonderful songs such as 'Time of The Season', 'A Rose For Emily', 'This Will Be Our Year' and 'Friends of Mine'.

Rating: 10/10
Favourite Track: This Will Be Our Year

22. Marty Robbins- Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs

Release Date: 1959
Label: CBS

After a couple of 'poorer' efforts from Miles Davis and Ray Charles, it was nice to listen to something that I could enjoy. Occasionally country music gets a bad reputation, but I've always had a soft spot for the Nashville Blues. If that phrase hasn't been used before, I'm claiming it by the way. I don't know much about Matry Robbins- I don't even know if he's still alive- (I've just checked, he died in 1982)- but I'm fully prepared to explore some more of his work after listening to this record- which is described by allmusic as the 'the single most influential album of Western songs in post-World War II American music'. Of course, one of the problems of listening to a single album by an artist you're otherwise naive towards is that sometimes it's unrewarding because it's not always representive of their other work.

Overall: 8.5/10
Favourite Track: They're Hanging Me Tonight.