November 2nd
album anniversaries

A roadie’s garbled question about racing-bike gears gave Cream’s second album its title. The music itself was cut in May 1967 at Atlantic Studios in New York over roughly three and a half days, with Felix Pappalardi producing and Tom Dowd engineering.

“Sunshine of Your Love” grew from a riff Jack Bruce wrote after seeing Jimi Hendrix, while “Strange Brew” puts Eric Clapton on lead vocal. Martin Sharp, the Australian artist who designed the cover, also wrote lyrics for “Tales of Brave Ulysses”. The record climbed to No. 5 in the UK and No. 4 in the US.

Compass Point in Nassau, studios in Paris and Miraval in Correns, France all hosted sessions for Bête Noire. Bryan Ferry produced it with Chester Kamen and Patrick Leonard, and Leonard also co-wrote five of the nine songs.

“The Right Stuff” carries a writing credit for Johnny Marr, and David Gilmour is among the guitarists in the credits. “Kiss and Tell” turned up in the film Bright Lights, Big City and became Ferry’s only solo single to reach the US top 40. The album itself reached No. 9 in the UK.

“Got My Mind Set on You”, a James Ray song from 1962, closes Cloud Nine and gave George Harrison his third US number one. The album ended a five-year break from solo records, and Jeff Lynne co-produced it as well as co-writing three of the songs.

The guest list is long. Eric Clapton plays on the title track and “Devil’s Radio”, Elton John adds piano to “Wreck of the Hesperus”, and Ringo Starr shares the drumming with Jim Keltner. “When We Was Fab” became the album’s other big hit. Cloud Nine was the last solo studio album Harrison released in his lifetime.

Most of Roseland NYC Live comes from a single night, 24 July 1997, when Portishead played New York’s Roseland Ballroom with an orchestra behind them. Two songs were taken from other shows: “Sour Times” from The Warfield in San Francisco and “Roads” from the Quart Festival in Kristiansand, Norway.

“Humming” opens the set and “Glory Box” arrives late in the sequence. The orchestra appears in the video credits as the New York Philharmonic, though none of its players were members of that orchestra. The album reached No. 40 in the UK and No. 9 in France.

Dionysus arrived six years after Anastasis and is arranged as two acts rather than a list of songs. Act I moves from “Sea Borne” to “Dance of the Bacchantes”, and Act II ends with “Psychopomp”. Physical copies index each act as a single track.

The album was recorded, mixed and produced at Ker Landelle Studios in Brittany, then mastered at Abbey Road by Geoff Pesche. Brendan Perry is credited with vocals, instrumentation and the cover design, Lisa Gerrard with vocals. The cover shows a skull mask made by the Huichol people of Mexico.

Each of the eleven tracks on El Mal Querer is labelled as a chapter, from “Malamente (Cap.1: Augurio)” to “A Ningún Hombre (Cap.11: Poder)”. Rosalía drew the story from Flamenca, an anonymous 13th-century Occitan novel, and co-produced the album with El Guincho, recording much of it in his Barcelona apartment.

She described the record as the way she understands flamenco today. “Pienso en tu mirá” and “Di mi nombre” were among the singles released around it, and the whole sequence lasts about half an hour. It went on to win the Latin Grammy for Album of the Year.