There Ain't Half Been Some Great Albums: O Quiz

Answer: Small Faces

"Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake" was the criminally under-acclaimed Small Faces' third studio album. Personally, I think it was one of the greatest albums of the 1960s and has stood the test of time far better than some of the group's more widely celebrated contemporaries' stuff. What made the album so good was that although it was partly a concept album, it didn't bash you over the head with it. In fact, the first side was just cracking Small Faces' top tunes. And as every fan of British 1960s rock knows, it doesn't get much better than that.

Side two was a concept piece, but it had such hilarity about it that it avoided the pretensions of many concept albums. To be honest it was all just a barrel of laughs around the old joanna. Professor Stanley Unwin provided many of the laughs with his fabulous gobbledygook.

I am particularly fond of the album since "Lazy Sunday" was the first song I ever took a shine to and apparently demanded my mother play it incessantly when I was a nipper.

Answer: Ice T

"O.G. Original Gangster" was Ice T's fourth studio album. Ice T was undoubtedly one of the seminal artists in the development of hardcore rap and hip-hop, and this album arguably saw him rhyming at his best. The rolling snare drum, rolling bass, and straight-talking raps loaded with charisma won him heaps of fans, even from outside the hip-hop scene.

Not only did Ice T play an important part in rap music, but on "O.G. Original Gangster" he also made huge strides in linking it up with heavy metal on the track "Body Count". He went on to reasonable success with a heavy metal band called Body Count, probably best known for the notorious song "Cop Killer".

Answer: Neil Young

"On the Beach" was Neil Young's fifth solo studio album, and to my ears his best. Much has been said of the album's bleakness and pessimism, and that was exactly what gave it its edge. There was such a woeful lament in some of the songs that Mr. Young verged on an existentialism rarely heard in rock 'n' roll.

Having said that, the album's opener "Walk On" was actually a quite jolly romp. It got darker though, and by the third track, "Revolution Blues", and its tale of the Manson Family's exploits, the world looked a nasty place to be. The second side's first track, the title track, all hope and even bitterness seemed to have gone and desolation was all that was left. The brilliant closer, "Ambulance Blues", was so world-weary you felt like the only thing to do was sing.

Answer: Talvin Singh

"OK" was Talvin Singh's debut album. Despite being critically acclaimed and even winning the much-coveted Mercury Prize, it didn't sell particularly well at the time of its release.

"OK" boasted a range of styles and managed to interweave traditional Indian sounds with electronica in a natural way. It followed in a longstanding tradition among left-field artists in creating atmosphere through sound, but was slightly more accessible than some of his fellow travellers' efforts.

British-born Talvin Singh's family roots are in South Asia and he spent some time studying tabla in India in the 1980s. He eventually turned to Western music and became known for his tabla playing outside of the field of Indian classical music. Since "OK", he has gone on with his solo career and released further solo albums but has also lent his talents to other artists' work. His own stuff includes mainstream albums as well as more arty installation projects.

Answer: Miles Davis

"On the Corner" was an intrepid adventure even for a man fearless of arbitrary musical boundaries, Mr. Miles Davis. Miles had a host of equally bold explorers with him.

The album was almost universally panned at the time but its influence has proved far-reaching and profound. Side one was dominated by the opening track "On the Corner/New York Girl/Thinkin' One Thing and Doin' Another/Vote for Miles" which lasted over twenty minutes. The track seems to have boiled down funk to its bare essentials, shifted it slightly off time, and added the spacious meanderings Miles had long been interested in. To my ears, it was a work of absolute genius, as clever as it was simple in a way abstract expressionist painting was.

The rest of the album carries on in much the same way but with all sorts of things thrown in, such as the tabla and an electric sitar.

Answer: Eric Dolphy

When multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy started his brief career as a bandleader in 1960, he had already featured as a sideman with such jazz heavyweights as Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman.

"Out to Lunch!" was arguably his greatest recording and the one he is best remembered for. Some of the song structures were quite outlandish, but it was not nearly as intimidating as some avant-garde jazz. Also, it can, like all the best pioneering art, be enjoyed on many levels. Personally, I find it rather joyous despite some dark underlying themes.

Dolphy had a phenomenal group of musicians working with him including the great Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, and the peerless Tony Williams on drums.

Answer: Mayhem

"Ordo ad Chao" was considered by many as Norwegian black metal band Mayhem's fourth studio album although 1987's "Deathcrush" and 1997's "Wolf's Lair Abyss" might be thought of as albums by some, despite their brevity.

"Ordo ad Chao" was one of the weirdest albums of all time. The song structures seemed reflect a disjointed, shattered world. The music occasionally fell into place for a frenetic thrash, or a smack around the head. The vocals were otherworldly even by black metal standards. The album saw the return of the Hungarian "singer" Attila Csihar who had provided a sterling vocal performance on the band's other masterpiece "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" back in the early 1990s. What he did on this opus was imbibe himself on the whole history of the planet Earth, and then regurgitate it, sometimes in long spews, sometimes in short spits.

Astounding.

Answer: Minor Threat

"Out of Step" was Minor Threat's only album release before they broke up in 1983. It was short and straight to the point, lasting just over twenty minutes. Having said that, they managed to get through nine songs in that time.

Prior to "Out of Step", Minor Threat had released two eps in 1981 and had unintentionally sparked off a whole movement within the punk subculture: straight edge. The basic tenets of straight edge were abstaining from drinking alcohol or taking recreational drugs, and not being sexually promiscuous. On "Out of Step" singer Ian MacKaye returned to the subject on the title track.

However, to me what made Minor Threat so good had nothing to do with their lifestyle choices but their frantic music and MacKaye's angry shouting.

Answer: Queensr˙che

"Operation: Mindcrime" was Queensr˙che's third studio album. Generally, I tend to think directly political messages and music don't mix, but the Washingtonians metalheads got it just right.

"Operation: Mindcrime" was also a concept album, and might even be considered a rock opera. I have never really worked out the plot, but it certainly helped the album fall into place. What might have helped it work was that it was essentially a dystopian fantasy narrative which could be seen as a comment on contemporary America, so the shift away from time-stamping politics makes it easier to swallow.

What makes it so good however were the performances, above all by vocalist Geoff Tate, and the songwriting.

Answer: Mike Oldfield

"Ommadawn" was Mike Oldfield's third solo studio album. He had already played with several highly-regarded musicians such as Robert Wyatt and Henry Cow, and had even played on the groundbreaking album "June 1, 1974" with Kevin Ayers, John Cale, Nico and Brian Eno.

The original release of "Ommadawn" was rather unimaginatively split into just "Part 1" and "Part 2", but the music therein was anything but uninspired. Mike Oldfield managed to blend traditional British (as in from the geographic region of the British Isles) music with other types of indigenous music as well as state of the art electronic music. Some of it has since dated and at times might sound almost twee, but that says as much about how far we have come in terms of our awareness of music outside the safe confines of what is familiar as it does about what Mike Oldfield was achieving.