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

Answer: Slayer

"Reign in Blood" was Slayer's third studio album and a huge watershed in heavy metal and beyond.

I can still recall hearing it for the first time as soon as it came out and it was a sort of epiphany. It was like what people must have felt when they first saw an aeroplane leave the ground, or when man first understood how to make fire. It really was that big on a personal level.

The funny thing is that even today when I listen to "Reign in Blood", it still sparks that reaction in me, despite the fact that I have heard all sorts of apparently much more extreme pieces of music since then.

Possibly the most intense popular musical experience ever recorded, "Reign in Blood" is very high on my list of top albums of all time.

Answer: Willie Nelson

When Willie Nelson released "Red Headed Stranger" he had been recording for about twenty years and had even gone through a brief retirement from music. It was his first big hit as an album, arguably thanks to the story which linked the whole thing together. It sported a sparse sound which created a rare intimacy.

Country greats have always been known for individual songs and live performances rather than cohesive albums, so "Red Headed Stranger" really flew the flag high for the genre.

Willie Nelson didn't really follow up on the success of the idea, and since this milestone album very few country artists have really gone for the idea of an album as anything other than an almost random collection of songs.

Answer: Roland Kirk

When Roland Kirk recorded "Rip, Rig and Panic", he had been recording as a band leader for around ten years and had released at least ten albums. He was something of an eccentric performer who was recognizable for having several instruments hung around his neck, and sometimes playing more than more than one at the same time. Never should it be thought that he was a mere gimmick artist though, since his depth of knowledge, skill and visionary playing are what made him a jazz great, not his quirkiness.

"Rip, Rig and Panic" was a delightful album, jam-packed with everything you could have desired from a 1960s jazz album. Roland would have shone whatever, but having the visionary Jaki Byard on piano, the versatile Richard Davis on bass, and one of the greatest drummers of all time, Mr Elvin Jones, on drums, he could hardly have gone wrong.

Answer: Robert Wyatt

"Rock Bottom" was Robert Wyatt's second solo studio album. He wrote a lot of it in Venice and as an inhabitant of the Serenissima, I would be tempted to say you can hear the influence.

"Rock Bottom" is one of my favourite albums of all time but when people ask me to say something about it, I am lost for words. I don't even know how to define what sort of music Robert Wyatt was making, and that is probably what made it so good.

What is easy to say is that Robert Wyatt was doing something deeply personal but at the same wonderfully frivolous and playful. Much (but not all) of his oeuvre has been that way, and without wanting to belittle the fabulous music he has made since "Rock Bottom", he at least never bettered it.

Answer: Ramones

"Road to Ruin" was the fourth Ramones studio album and came out a year after they had released two fantastic albums in the same year.

"Road to Ruin" was the first Ramones album I ever heard and I was immediately besotted. I totally got it, and it has never worn thin. If I may attempt to be objective, I do think that the album's shift away from the formula, however brilliant, of the first trio of albums was brilliantly-timed and well-executed. There was a lot more depth to the songs and sound on "Road to Ruin" and it became apparent that the group were more than snotty New Yorkers poking fun at pop music. In fact, their thing was actually as much an ode to, or at least a pastiche of, the music they grew up listening to as geeks in middle-class Queens, New York.

Answer: Accept

"Restless and Wild" was Accept's fourth studio album and a seminal metal album, in particular for the opening track "Fast as a Shark". I recall hearing it on the radio and having no idea what had just hit me. It was the first time many young metal fans such as myself had heard such intense, fast double bass drumming. The man behind the kit was Stefan Kaufmann who earnt himself a small place in music history.

The rest of the album was nothing to sneer at either, although most of the other tracks were more firmly grounded in traditional heavy metal. Not so the album's closer, "Princess Of The Dawn". The song created such a dark foreboding atmosphere so simply that it soon became a fans' favourite. I reckon it was the band's best moment, although I have read interviews in which the man behind the exotic Eastern guitar sound, Wolf Hoffmann, has disparaged it.

Answer: Super Furry Animals

"Radiator" was Super Furry Animals' second studio album and came out a year after their debut, "Fuzzy Logic".

The group made a career out of a natural eclecticism and although it didn't always work, when it did it was magic. Personally, I think "Radiator" started off weakly and the first part of the album got lost in strange production and a mess of ideas. However, when it settled down on "She's Got Spies", it got into a groove which ranged from garage rock to classic pop via space rock and something quite subtle and deep.

For a while in the 1990s, Wales seemed to be the hippest place for music in the Western world with veterans like Manic Street Preachers, arena rockers-to-be The Stereophonics, the poptastic Catatonia, our heroes Super Furry Animals, and one of the best bands of the era, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, all making waves. Even Sir Tom Jones was having a comeback.

Answer: Tom Waits

"Rain Dogs" was Tom Waits' eighth studio album. It was the second album displaying a shift in style for Tom Waits. Prior to the previous album, "Swordfishtrombones", he had been peddling a weird noir jazz which was highly entertaining but quite silly in retrospect. The shift in style into something more experimental, multi-instrumental, and generally eclectic was very brave, but essential if he were to actually make his mark as a serious artist. He took the plunge into something much more European sounding, less bawdy more Brecht, but managed to make it all very American. Quite a feat.

This new lease of life for Tom Waits released from maudlin piano songs seemed to have opened up a torrent of ideas, personas, and spurred him onto a mad phase of irrepressible songwriting. As predictable as that might have eventually become, back in 1985 Tom Waits was the man of the moment, and I reckon this is the album to best get a gist of it.

Answer: Bad Brains

"Rock For Light" was Bad Brains' first vinyl album release, although they had already released a cassette-only album on the highly-influential ROIR label the previous year. "Rock For Light" actually contained several tracks from the eponymous debut re-recorded. Ric Ocasek from The Cars was the producer, and although it might seem odd that a relatively unknown punk band from Washington, D.C. should get such a big name behind the mixing desk, Ocasek often championed small fry.

The album itself was a game changer if ever there was one. Apart from the fact that Bad Brains were playing hardcore punk one minute and reggae the next, what really stood out was how fast and intense the hardcore was. Vocalist H.R.'s phrasing was something unique, as was Dr. Know's guitar-playing, and the rhythm section provided by bassist Darryl Jenifer and drummer Earl Hudson was tighter than security at Fort Knox.

Answer: Carcass

The brilliantly-titled "Reek of Putrefaction" was Carcass's debut album and to my ears their greatest. The group were really dissatisfied with the production as it was so muddy, but I am quite fond of that sound and think that their later releases, which were much sharper, had less personality. I daresay that is just be nostalgia on my part though. I saw the group several times at the time and was always amazed at how they got such a thick sound.

Carcass, who essentially spawned within the weird overlap of punk and metal in the UK, were almost like gurus of everything extreme in both scenes. They knocked all that together and then added the most ridiculous song titles such as "Genital Grinder", "Regurgitation of Giblets", "Vomited Anal Tract", "Foeticide", and "Manifestation of Verrucose Urethra" thereby creating the missing link between hardcore punk, extreme metal and video nasties in a way which was totally fitting for the time.