I WAS wrong about: UK '70s
- Nikki Gradual
- nasty, brutish and short
- Posts: 20751
- Joined: 16 Jul 2003, 21:59
- Location: Marineville
- Brother Spoon
- Billy Crystal
- Posts: 9846
- Joined: 17 Jul 2003, 08:02
- Location: at Yankee Stadium
I'm not ashamed to say I am a fan of all of the first five albums Paul McCartney made after the Beatles ('Wild Life' and 'Red rose speedway' included). But perhaps this one is indeed the pick of the bunch. Fluff never sounded as good as this before or after.
I can never decide which is my favorite track, but then 'Back seat of my track' comes on and it all becomes much clearer. As a vocal performance alone up there with anything he did in the Beatles. That scream at 3'45 gets me every single time.
It is now on its second spin, but I still don't know what to say.
If for nothing else, this thread will have been worth it for discovering this one. It's truly a singular vision and I can see this becoming a big favorite for me. Thank you, andymacandy.
(I am also looking forward to the other Roy Harper nomination 'Bullinamingvase'.)
- Brother Spoon
- Billy Crystal
- Posts: 9846
- Joined: 17 Jul 2003, 08:02
- Location: at Yankee Stadium
- Brother Spoon
- Billy Crystal
- Posts: 9846
- Joined: 17 Jul 2003, 08:02
- Location: at Yankee Stadium
- Cédric
- Posts: 15040
- Joined: 20 Jul 2003, 18:21
- Location: Cuba de la Frontera
- Contact:
Something XMas Pieter wrote:
Lo and behold, I was suffering from a headache and Rod Stewart cured what ailed me. The miraculous qualities of this record are indeed hard to overestimate.
This is my last "review" for a while, as I won't be here much next week, but I'll keep listening and resurrect this thread in a short while.
Have a good Christmas, Pieter. I think that we can say that you're ending the year with a top discovery. It's such a great album...
Captain Spaulding wrote:I sent my list already! It´s shit.
I´m so excited.
- Brother Spoon
- Billy Crystal
- Posts: 9846
- Joined: 17 Jul 2003, 08:02
- Location: at Yankee Stadium
Cédric wrote:Something XMas Pieter wrote:
Lo and behold, I was suffering from a headache and Rod Stewart cured what ailed me. The miraculous qualities of this record are indeed hard to overestimate.
This is my last "review" for a while, as I won't be here much next week, but I'll keep listening and resurrect this thread in a short while.
Have a good Christmas, Pieter. I think that we can say that you're ending the year with a top discovery. It's such a great album...
Merry Christmas to you as well, Cédric. See you soon.
- Velvis
- Mellowed down easy
- Posts: 15806
- Joined: 16 Jul 2003, 23:21
- Location: on Grand Street, where the neon madmen climb
- Beno
- Posts: 6582
- Joined: 04 Nov 2004, 22:05
- Location: Gasoline Alley
Cédric wrote:Something XMas Pieter wrote:
Lo and behold, I was suffering from a headache and Rod Stewart cured what ailed me. The miraculous qualities of this record are indeed hard to overestimate.
This is my last "review" for a while, as I won't be here much next week, but I'll keep listening and resurrect this thread in a short while.
Have a good Christmas, Pieter. I think that we can say that you're ending the year with a top discovery. It's such a great album...
It's great to see plaudits for this album, a long time favourite of mine. It really does have everything.
'Gasoline Alley' and 'Never A Dull Moment' are also greaty albums but don't quite reach the stratospheric heights of 'EPTAS'. Because of all the baggage his image carries people forget just how good Rod was in his early solo years.
- The Slider
- Self-Aggrandising Cock
- Posts: 48262
- Joined: 16 Jul 2003, 19:05
- Location: I'm only here for the sneer
- Contact:
Nikki 'humbug' Gradual wrote: I am pretty much convinced that the '70s was just about the best decade in British music. So much talent and wild variety, so many great albums. It was of course a dreadful decade for pop music, but that is an entirely different matter.
You are joking, aren't you?
I'll grant you the first couple of years were a bit directionless, but by the end of 71 with the advent of glam it hit a rich rich vein. There was then the rise of disco - before it became formulaic and still relied on songs - the whole punk and new wave scene and the beginnings of modern synth pop too.
Only the 60's has the edge as far as I can see.
Complete Ramones Mp3 set on its way
- Brother Spoon
- Billy Crystal
- Posts: 9846
- Joined: 17 Jul 2003, 08:02
- Location: at Yankee Stadium
Oh what the hell, i'm here now anyway.
It's been a long time since I played Nick Drake and it still sounds good. But this is not from the '70s.
When I first heard this, a long time ago, it was my favorite record and I played it non-stop for ages. This may surprise some of you since I don't speak so kindly of David Bowie anymore, but it is true. My (relative)dismissal of his work is not based on principle, but rather on loving his work only to come back to it later and being disappointed that it does not live up to its promise.
To me 'Ziggy Stardust' is perhaps the most perfect pop album ever recorded. Unlike a lot of people though, I don't think creating a perfect pop album is necessarily the best idea to do within music. It certainly requires inspiration, but also and perhaps far more studious effort to crack the code of the pop formula, far more patience to lay down the perfect instrumental and vocal tracks, etc. Perfection in this context has a lot to do with knowing how to control every aspect of the creative process. Within that perspective I can think of a number of other artists who could have done the same thing*, but they didn't and Bowie did.
That is obviously what he set out to do, so I don't have any right to criticise him for it. It's just that in shaping my own set of esthetic criteria, I've held onto to what Ray Davies wrote in the sleevenotes to 'Something Else', that perfection gets boring after a short while. And this is exactly my problem with this album. In achieving something more than human it ends up something less than human. It doesn't seem to breathe.
I am trying to change my opinion of this record now, but really to like it more I would need someone not to tell me how good it is, but rather that it is not perfect after all.
*You could say that the Beatles as a unit were ready to do this after 'Abbey Road' which is certainly their most controlled record. This is then the only reason I'm glad they split up when they did and went on to make sometimes great sometimes horrible but always flawed albums.
I also gave these two a first spin but I have to try them again. I can't say anything coherent about them at all yet.
It's been a long time since I played Nick Drake and it still sounds good. But this is not from the '70s.
When I first heard this, a long time ago, it was my favorite record and I played it non-stop for ages. This may surprise some of you since I don't speak so kindly of David Bowie anymore, but it is true. My (relative)dismissal of his work is not based on principle, but rather on loving his work only to come back to it later and being disappointed that it does not live up to its promise.
To me 'Ziggy Stardust' is perhaps the most perfect pop album ever recorded. Unlike a lot of people though, I don't think creating a perfect pop album is necessarily the best idea to do within music. It certainly requires inspiration, but also and perhaps far more studious effort to crack the code of the pop formula, far more patience to lay down the perfect instrumental and vocal tracks, etc. Perfection in this context has a lot to do with knowing how to control every aspect of the creative process. Within that perspective I can think of a number of other artists who could have done the same thing*, but they didn't and Bowie did.
That is obviously what he set out to do, so I don't have any right to criticise him for it. It's just that in shaping my own set of esthetic criteria, I've held onto to what Ray Davies wrote in the sleevenotes to 'Something Else', that perfection gets boring after a short while. And this is exactly my problem with this album. In achieving something more than human it ends up something less than human. It doesn't seem to breathe.
I am trying to change my opinion of this record now, but really to like it more I would need someone not to tell me how good it is, but rather that it is not perfect after all.
*You could say that the Beatles as a unit were ready to do this after 'Abbey Road' which is certainly their most controlled record. This is then the only reason I'm glad they split up when they did and went on to make sometimes great sometimes horrible but always flawed albums.
I also gave these two a first spin but I have to try them again. I can't say anything coherent about them at all yet.
Last edited by Brother Spoon on 25 Dec 2004, 13:59, edited 1 time in total.
- The Slider
- Self-Aggrandising Cock
- Posts: 48262
- Joined: 16 Jul 2003, 19:05
- Location: I'm only here for the sneer
- Contact:
- The Black Shadow
- King Pest
- Posts: 2940
- Joined: 01 Mar 2004, 16:06
- Location: Terminus
The Sleighder wrote:Something XMas Pieter wrote:
It's been a long time since I played Nick Drake and it still sounds good. But this is not from the '70s.
Play Bryter Later instead then - it is a better album anyway.
I couldn't pick a favourite from the two, they're too different (within Drake's catalogue), but BL is obligatory stuff for any music fan IMO.
"What part of andele! don't you understand, you yankee piece of scum?"
- Brother Spoon
- Billy Crystal
- Posts: 9846
- Joined: 17 Jul 2003, 08:02
- Location: at Yankee Stadium
- Cédric
- Posts: 15040
- Joined: 20 Jul 2003, 18:21
- Location: Cuba de la Frontera
- Contact:
-
- slight return
- Posts: 806
- Joined: 10 Oct 2003, 21:52
neverKnoëls wrote:Something XMas Pieter wrote: I also gave these two a first spin but I have to try them again. I can't say anything coherent about them at all yet.
I was about to reply to this by a sarky remark, in the 'Easy, one of them is great and the Genesis one is shite' vein.
But then, in the spirit of the thread, I decided to give Genesis a spin. So I have just heard 'The Battle of Epping Forest', which is the only track from this album available at Neverknows Mansions.
Right.
So, regarding those two albums, my opinion is now:
'Easy, one of them is great and the people responsible for the Genesis one will one day have to answer for their crimes'.
XTC were a great band, but I wouldn’t put them in the same class as Genesis: no, not by a long way. The Battle Of Epping Forest, is easily the weakest song on Selling England By The Pound. I don’t imagine it will make any difference to your personal feelings about Genesis, but if you really wanted to hear the best of that album, you should try Forth Of Fifth, or Cinema Show. Funnily enough, I remember seeing The Sex Pistols on a television pop game show once and they had to guess the intro to the first song from Selling England, which was Dancing With The Moonlight Knight. Their reaction was very similar to yours and they gave the song a good kicking: that didn’t prevent Genesis from being a far better band than The Sex Pistols however.
- Brother Spoon
- Billy Crystal
- Posts: 9846
- Joined: 17 Jul 2003, 08:02
- Location: at Yankee Stadium
- The Black Shadow
- King Pest
- Posts: 2940
- Joined: 01 Mar 2004, 16:06
- Location: Terminus
- Brother Spoon
- Billy Crystal
- Posts: 9846
- Joined: 17 Jul 2003, 08:02
- Location: at Yankee Stadium
OK, I approached this with something of a 'lets get this over with' attitude. I think I get what Led Zeppelin is all about and I don't think it's a good idea. Listening to side one of this reinforced all my opinions on this matter. Side two is better, in that it is more throwaway and therefore less heavy-handed.
But that's the nicest thing I can say about this. Sorry.
To cut to the chase, I want to play this one again because of Colin Moulding's songs, I don't want to play this one again because Andy Partridge sounds like a big baby kicking and screaming for attention. It is a dilemma.
It seems I'm always coming back to the vocals to decide whether or not I really like the albums. That is just to show that the albums all have something going for them (or they wouldn't have been nominated), but I guess some kinds of singing appeal more to me than others. It's like that with this XTC album: it's quite consistent in songwriting and arranging (meaning that it is even in both quality and tone), but depending on who's singing it I either really like it very much or it annoys me a little bit.
Aha, controversy .
I don't know if you've noticed but there are a lot of negative feelings going round when it come to progrock (Is this progrock?). I am aware that I may have said some bad things about Genesis without having heard anything by them. So these albums I'm really trying to approach in a very positive way, to atone for my previous sins.
The first problem once again was the vocals. But on a second listen I caught on that Peter Gabriel sounds a little bit like Nick Saloman of the Bevis frond (I know i've got that backwards). When I listened to it from that angle it started to make a little more sense to me. There is something theatrical about it (Well, duh... -Ed.) that I will probably never really learn to appreciate, but it started to sound a little more human to me.
When it comes to the songs, surprisingly the shorter tracks did little for me, but it was longer tracks like the first one (I forget the name) and 'The Cinema Show' that i did enjoy. Neverknows, 'Battle of Epping Forest' is indeed by far the worst thing on the album. For me it is unbearable also, but it is the only one that's unbearable to me, if that helps you any.
So, in conclusion, I think I can see where it's going, and I'm glad i've heard it now. I'm not so sure that it's an album that I will find myself in the mood for in the future.
- Brother Spoon
- Billy Crystal
- Posts: 9846
- Joined: 17 Jul 2003, 08:02
- Location: at Yankee Stadium