Canonic Albums by Artists Who You Love and Revere But For Some Reason This One Bypasses You Almost Completely

blissblogger

Well-known member
hate to say it but ‘Solid Air’, I got totally stuck on ‘Sunday’s Child’, and then moved on to ‘Bless the Weather’, bits of ‘Inside Out’, ‘One World’, and then moved out of JM orbit (at least for now).


Surrealistic Pillow (GET THEE TO BAXTER’S!)


Ziggy Stardust (a true bypass, have no opinion on it musically whatsoever, I think it’s for other kids, other scenes, other threads, other stuffy brightly lit pavilions. there’s just such a strong sense of communion between star and fans with that one that I feel I can’t break in. I’m left outside the big top only catching shadows, but maybe that’s ok.)

stupefied by Solid Air feelings. Inside Out is the one I can never get into.

Agree re Surrealistic (except for "Today" and whichever single it is on that album - "White Rabbit"?) being markedly less compelling than Baxter's, from the cover to the Grace songs.

And yes re. Ziggy. Just seems completely locked in whatever that moment was. The Ziggy played guitar one is neatly epic and 'Suffragette City' grooves, but what is it - meaning any individual part thereof and the Whole Thing - about? Haven't a clue. Not sure how anyone had a clue, back in the day when there was no internet with fan sites doing ultra-detailed exegesis and annotation. Why was pretending to be an imaginary rock band any kind of interesting thing to do?
 

the ig

Well-known member
pillow - also ‘somebody to love’ and ‘she has funny cars’, but Baxter’s not just grace (tho she great on it of course, ‘rejoyce’ etc) but the kaukonen-cassady-dryden axis at peak - a muso engine for sure but disruptive, eruptive, exultant. an unwieldy acid-rock wildride where everything somehow works, even the naff bits!
 
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the ig

Well-known member
i think it's one of those Prince albums of which they are many (most in fact) where there's the single or singles, and then one other fab track, and then it's "huh?". In the case of Around the World, it's redeemed by "Pop Life" which is wonderful but every else is either Bangles-ish (Beret, the other single) or filler.

But i think similar thoughts about 1999, Controversy, Parade, Lovesexy....

The killer Prince ones for me are Dirty Mind, Purple, Sign...
ah but 1999‘s the one innit (with Dirty Mind)

more clubby, dj-friendly with longer tracks, 2x12” for better sound

more bass‘n’space, edible sour-sweet synths, still with pop nous all the way

fine semi-forgotten singles ‘automatic’ ‘let’s pretend we’re married’

top-drawer album tracks ‘all the critics…’ ‘lady cab driver’ ‘something in the water…’

a fine p-funk rip-off ‘dmsr’ (but which is also better live)

okay, also couple shite candelabra-ed ballads, and the two big singles are well played-out, but it’s the most fun one to dig into for gems imo.
 
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sus

Well-known member
Except for "A Day In The Life" and maybe "Within You, Without You" Sgt Peppers is a truly repellent album. Shitty circus music that makes a strong argument against British people being allowed to take drugs.
I'd even throw a nod toward "She's Leaving Home" on pure potential except I have no idea what they were thinking on that harp track.
 

sus

Well-known member
I've gone on dedicated stints, listening while reading music mag coverage from the era of release + retrospectively from those who were alive + on the scene for it. Really trying to get a sense of the cultural mood, how it would've felt to live through it. Absolutely no luck or progress, can't understand it
 

the ig

Well-known member
Notorious Byrd Brothers

No good reason why I don’t get this album, except perhaps all my boomer elders kept telling me ‘it’s just PLUM for you’ in my teens when I told them I was into ‘Forever Changes’, ‘Strange Days’ and so forth, and that put me on the spot too much and I stiffened against it.

Or maybe cos it’s a bit short and titbity, but i LOVE perhaps even shorter and titbitier albums by the Beach Boys, eg ‘Friends’ and ‘Wild Honey’, (from the same time actually and similarly culturally placed as NBB), so dunno.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
@blissblogger that assessment of Beatles album structure extend even to, say, Abbey Road?

it's not really an "assessment", more like an unavoidable byproduct of having first heard all the Best Bits separately in a fantastic almost unbroken sequence of excellence on those particular compilations

but Abbey Road.... feel the first side is fairly awesome and feels logically strung together, but then there's that second side

some of the effect of e.g. Revolver not making sense I think is hearing all these things first as CDs, so it's one long slab, without that actually crucial 'pause' caused by the division into side 1 and side 2

also, album sides used to be internally structured - usually you'd have the weirder / longer / more expansive song at the end of a side, the single or killer opening cut at the start. (there are exceptions of course).

side 2 traditionally starts well, with accessible / exciting tunes (often a single) and then gets ropey as the least impressive things made during the session get thrown in at track 4 side 2.

hearing things conceived as double-sided LPs, as CDs, all that collapses (and there might be bonus crap shoved in at the end, further diminishing any sense of finale)
 
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blissblogger

Well-known member
Notorious Byrd Brothers

No good reason why I don’t get this album, except perhaps all my boomer elders kept telling me ‘it’s just PLUM for you’ in my teens when I told them I was into ‘Forever Changes’, ‘Strange Days’ and so forth, and that put me on the spot too much and I stiffened against it.

Or maybe cos it’s a bit short and titbity, but i LOVE perhaps even shorter and titbitier albums by the Beach Boys, eg ‘Friends’ and ‘Wild Honey’, (from the same time actually and similarly culturally placed as NBB), so dunno.

used to feel the same way - grown to love some of the tracks - but yeah it doesn't quite hang together, certainly not like Younger Than Yesterday
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Velvet Underground - White Light, White Heat
title track and Sister Ray are obviously untouchable highest-level Reed/Cale VU genius. Here She Comes Now is a classic Reed ballad.

the rest...well I love it all, but I can see how ymmv on the combined 13 minutes of basically fucking around that is The Gift/Lady Godiva's operation, and I Heard Her Call My Name is excellent VU noise rock but it doesn't really stand out from any other VU noise rock

it's a less accessible record than Nico or the 3rd LP (Loaded I'd barely call a VU album either way), their harshest noisiest studio LP for sure
 

the ig

Well-known member
some of macca’s best stuff on sgt peppers tho: the lovely meandering verse melody on ‘she’s leaving home’, ‘fixing a hole’ (which gets being stoned as a lightening, a lyric mood, ie when it works), ‘a day in the life’ which is epochal, one of the songs of the era (& a genuine collaboration with Lennon) ‘getting better’ also somehow, the splashy-fresh-wet harmonies of the chorus over the bullish energy of the verse (but the whole thing’s an excuse for a vocal arrangement pretty much).
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I like Sunday Morning, Venus in Furs, Run Run Run and the Black Angel Of Death or whatever it's called

And all tomorrow's parrrteeez
 
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