Epic - Legacy

Released in November 1976, the Jackson brothers' eleventh studio album was a turning point. For the first time, the band, which was slowing down a little, was no longer hosted by Motown, to which it was so deeply attached, but by CBS and its Epic subsidiary. Although four years earlier Michael had begun his solo career on Berry Gordy's label with Got to Be There, the standoff between Motown and the Jackson family, both financial and artistic, led to a thunderous divorce. Only Jermaine (who married the Motown boss's daughter and is replaced here by Randy Jackson, the youngest of the siblings) stayed with Berry Gordy, who was also able to keep hold of the Jackson 5 brand. Hence this 1976 début under the name The Jacksons. To mark all these changes, production was entrusted to the pair Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the brains of Philadelphia soul, the precursor genre to disco that made early-70s America dance, dousing it in silk and champagne. Only the Jackson brothers were no longer novices or obedient little soldiers. They wanted to assert their own artistic choices more and more. This all made for a rather heterogeneous record, clearly marked by soul and groove, but whose real essence is rather hard to discern, caught as it is between the Jacksons' own choices and the hedonistic wills of Gamble and Huff. The latter wrote half of the songs, and Michael made his entrance by composing his very first track, Blues Away. At 18, his voice has a new assurance and marks a clean break from his character of Little Michael. Alongside The Jacksons, MFSB, the Sigma Sound Studios band led by Gamble and Huff, provides a polished score with strings (as necessary) and some very sensual rhythms. It's something of a slalom run, though not at all unpleasant, between a soul that borders on pop (Enjoy yourself) and a rhythm'n'blues that is casting an eye towards disco (Show You The Way to Go). The album would strike gold in the charts, of course, but it did not yet give a hint of the worldwide success that Michael would enjoy, three years later, solo, with Off The Wall  © Marc Zisman / Qobuz

Ah, 1990s Seattle, the birthplace of grunge and dumping ground where indie rock, punk, metal, noise pop and many more cross paths. A golden age where the long-haired were transformed into beautiful losers, electric guitar-wielding poets with checked flannel shirts and tatty second-hand jeans. Only a few flawlessly talented survivors remain from this blessed time. Pearl Jam is the prime example. Gigaton, their March 2020 album is their best work in two decades and garnered some well-deserved critical acclaim. Accustomed to stadium performances, the band could easily have turned on autopilot, but they have nevertheless continued to innovate. The band has not forgotten, however, that a lot of its success is owed to its intense stage performances as well as its first album, the cult and unparalleled, Ten. It is again the famous Ten that we return to here in 2020. While the album itself was reissued in four different versions in 2009, the album allows led to the recording of their legendary MTV Unplugged on the 16th of March 1992. At the time, Pearl Jam had only this album on their repertoire as well as the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe’s film Singles on which three of the band members played. Around three days after having finished their American tour, the five musicians headed to New York to record an acoustic show that has since become legend. In seven songs, Pearl Jam had viewers on their knees. With a rare intensity, the performance exposed in plain sight Eddie Vedder’s incredible voice. Shy and uncomfortable, he utters some rare hesitant sentences before suddenly transforming into an incredible and unforgettable frontman the moment the first lines of Oceans are sung. The rest belongs to history. Aside from State of Love and Trust, taken from Singles, the rest of the concert allows one to appreciate part of Ten in a new light with the harrowing Black, the more spirited Even Flow and the single Alive. The show lasts around 36 minutes and leaves the listener in a state of bewilderment, floating between intense pleasure and frustration. It took another ten years and the release of another largely acoustic concert, Live at Benaroya Hall, to experience the band’s unplugged expertise from afar. Worse still, MTV Unplugged never saw an official release until 2019 and an ultra-limited vinyl pressing for Record Store Day. One year later, this reissue (and its new mixing realised by Nick DiDia) arrives with relief. A blessing. © Chief Brody/Qobuz

Ozzy Osbourne's 1981 solo debut Blizzard of Ozz was a masterpiece of neo-classical metal that, along with Van Halen's first album, became a cornerstone of '80s metal guitar. Upon its release, there was considerable doubt that Ozzy could become a viable solo attraction. Blizzard of Ozz demonstrated not only his ear for melody, but also an unfailing instinct for assembling top-notch backing bands. Onetime Quiet Riot guitarist Randy Rhoads was a startling discovery, arriving here as a unique, fully formed talent. Rhoads was just as responsible as Osbourne -- perhaps even more so -- for the album's musical direction, and his application of classical guitar techniques and scales rewrote the rulebook just as radically as Eddie Van Halen had. Rhoads could hold his own as a flashy soloist, but his detailed, ambitious compositions and arrangements revealed his true depth, as well as creating a sense of doomy, sinister elegance built on Ritchie Blackmore's minor-key innovations. All of this may seem to downplay the importance of Ozzy himself, which shouldn't be the case at all. The music is a thoroughly convincing match for his lyrical obsession with the dark side (which was never an embrace, as many conservative watchdogs assumed); so, despite its collaborative nature, it's unequivocally stamped with Ozzy's personality. What's more, the band is far more versatile and subtle than Sabbath, freeing Ozzy from his habit of singing in unison with the guitar (and proving that he had an excellent grasp of how to frame his limited voice). Nothing short of revelatory, Blizzard of Ozz deservedly made Ozzy a star, and it set new standards for musical virtuosity in the realm of heavy metal. © Steve Huey /TiVo

Surfing with the Alien belongs to its era like Are You Experienced? belongs to its own -- perhaps it doesn't transcend its time the way the Jimi Hendrix Experience's 1967 debut does, but Joe Satriani's 1987 breakthrough can be seen as the gold standard for guitar playing of the mid- to late '80s, an album that captures everything that was good about the glory days of shred. Certainly, Satriani was unique among his peers in that his playing was so fluid that his technical skills never seemed like showboating -- something that was somewhat true of his 1986 debut, Not of This Earth, but on Surfing with the Alien he married this dexterity to a true sense of melodic songcraft, a gift that helped him be that rare thing: a guitar virtuoso who ordinary listeners enjoyed. Nowhere is this more true than on "Always with Me, Always with You," a genuine ballad -- not beefed up with muscular power chords but rather sighing gently with its melody -- but this knack was also evident on the ZZ Top homage "Satch Boogie" and the title track itself, both of which turned into rock radio hits. This melodic facility, plus his fondness for a good old-fashioned three-chord rock, separated Satriani from his shredding peers in 1987, many of whom were quite literally his students. But he was no throwback: he equaled his former students Steve Vai and Kirk Hammett in sweep picking and fretboard acrobatics and he had a sparkling, spacy quality to some of his songs -- particularly the closing stretch of the Middle Eastern-flavored "Lords of Karma," the twinkling "Midnight," and "Echo" -- that was thoroughly modern for 1987. The production of Surfing with the Alien is also thoroughly of its year -- stiff drumbeats, sparkling productions -- so much so that it can seem a bit like a relic from another era, but it's fine that it doesn't transcend its time: it captures the best of its era and is still impressive in that regard. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo