Wings/70s Paul poll

[toomanyhatz]

I do like his actual odd things (not the things that he does thinking they'll be odd). That's why "Kreen-Akrore" and "Loup" were on my list. Both really strange things, but not self-consciously so.

I don't find that particularly interesting, though, either. Maybe I like stuff to be self-consciously weird. I like the weirdness to have a justification. Not sure what's going on there.

[toomanyhatz]

Speaking of which, listening to Red Rose Speedway now and really enjoying it. I think in a way it's a more successful, band version of what he was trying to do with McCartney. It's got that casual "stoner rock" vibe which, when it's done too lazily, can be really embarrassing. I think the songs are pretty slight, but in a casual way rather than a "you're not even trying" way that he occasionally falls prey to.

"Maybe I'm Amazed" is a billion times better than "My Love," of course, but I think RRS compares pretty favorably the rest of the way.

[Quaco]

Speaking of which, listening to Red Rose Speedway now and really enjoying it. I think in a way it's a more successful, band version of what he was trying to do with McCartney. It's got that casual "stoner rock" vibe which, when it's done too lazily, can be really embarrassing. I think the songs are pretty slight, but in a casual way rather than a "you're not even trying" way that he occasionally falls prey to.

"Maybe I'm Amazed" is a billion times better than "My Love," of course, but I think RRS compares pretty favorably the rest of the way.

Have you tried the 2-disc version? I don't think it would have worked, but there was some interesting stuff being proposed. I have been trying to devise my ultimate single-disc RRS ever since!

[toomanyhatz]

Never owned it as a kid, and haven't listened to it much.

I haven't heard At the Speed of Sound much either, but when I do I'm glad of it. When I listen to RRS I wonder how it is it passed me by. It's certainly a contender for the best Wings album.

[Carl's Son]

I really like RRS. It got a critical mauling at the time and doesn't seem to have received anything much in the way of critical rehabilitation (in the music press/general consensus as apposed to people like like us just saying it now). Probably not helped by it's big hit being shit.

The point I made before about him being happy and not writing break up songs doesn't really explain why he didn't do more of the empathetic character studies he was so good at in The Beatles and in their immediate aftermath(Another Day).

[Bent Fabric]

...Macca isn't that good an actor otherwise he'd act like less of a dick

You'll notice that Ringo, John and George each get "a scene" in A Hard Day's Night.

This was deliberate.

As for Macca?

He was certainly written in sufficiently (grandfather, etc.), but the word from on high (I think Lester may actually say this somewhere) was that Paul's showcase was left on the cutting room floor because it was excruciatingly bad ("He tried to hard" was the general review of his performances on camera).

Similarly, he is absent from the spoken word bits on The Dark Side of the Moon because his replies were just far too deliberate and hammy.

No knock on his innate musical gifts, but...yep.

[trans-chigley express]

I haven't heard At the Speed of Sound much either, but when I do I'm glad of it. When I listen to RRS I wonder how it is it passed me by. It's certainly a contender for the best Wings album.

At the Speed of Sound really is poor. I bought the 2CD reissue in the hope it was worth reappraisal but it was even worse than I remember, yet the three tracks on it I like I like a lot. The rest is absolute dreck. Venus and Mars is miles better and London Town is much better too.

RRS I've never cared much for but I'm willing to buy try again if it's reissued. Wildlife and Back To The Egg are two others I've never liked much either. So there are only 3 out of the 7 Wings albums that I like, that's not a good hit rate.

[The Modernist]

Surely I'm not the only person who plays these records in 2018.

I would say history and time have been far kinder to this music than anyone could have ever expected during the "Why won't my divorced parents get back together?" post "Beatles band" fan trauma of the era.

40-45 years later, this stuff (for me)absolutely bursts out of the car radio in a way that the more familiar likes of "Day Tripper" probably CAN'T.

.

I pretty much feel the opposite to everything said here. Macca's huge success in the 70s just seems a bit bizarre now, a kind of aberration and I find the idea of anyone sitting down to look forward to 'London Town' say in 2018 so hard to imagine that I don't know what else to say..
Funny music isn't it?