― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:11 (nineteen years ago) link
Lee Perry's finest hour? JA '77; vocal group, COMPLETELY URGENT AND KEY RECORD - get the 2CD redux version on Blood & Fire, which I think is still available. Deeply spiritual and avant-garde at the same time.
-- Marcello Carlin (marcellocarli...), March 5th, 2003
it sounds like what Brian Wilson would do if he made a roots reggae album.
-- dog latin (doglati...), February 21st, 2003 .
having The Heart Of The Congos as sole reggae album is def pref to The Best of Bob Marley, which is the usual token reggae album.
-- m jemmeson (mjemmeso...), August 21st, 2001.
honestly Heart of the Congos sounds better than just about any Marley I've ever heard.
-- Josh Love (heaveninrowboat...), July 29th, 2004.
one of the best albums ever made, any genre
-- james edwards (jame...), July 20th, 2001
― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:12 (nineteen years ago) link
Absolutely, if you must have only one reggae album, this is the one. Just sublime.
― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:15 (nineteen years ago) link
― 57 7th (calstars), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:16 (nineteen years ago) link
Headhunters wasn't nominated...would have been my #2.
― Keith C (kcraw916), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:16 (nineteen years ago) link
It also works as kind of a moral lesson about the excess. When you're in a rock band, and you get so coked up every night that you start to think that fucking your band members is a good idea, even when they're married to other band members, these are the feelings you end up with.
Classic. Very.
-- Kenan Hebert (mondria...), March 21st, 2003.
Not often emphasized is how deserved its gargantuan success was. "Rumours" is the summit of pop music.
I've been listening to "Mirage" lately and am reminded of how a great band -- Christine's harmonies, the McVie/Fleetwood rhythm section, say, working in tandem -- can give the frothiest of confections unexpected and even subversive undertones ("Book of Love," "Can't Go Back," "Eyes of the World").
-- Alfred Soto (sotoal...), April 11th, 2005.
I was scared and fascinated by the dirty wife-swapping aura surrounding Fleetwood Mac when I was a kid. It made me think my parents were closet swinger perverts when I saw the cover of "Rumours", and even more so the insert photos, in their collection. Just when I had gotten over realizing they were closet drug addicts after finding that Doobie Brothers record with the giant roach photo on the inner sleeve.
-- fritz (fritzwollner5...), November 9th, 2001.
RUMOURS IS THE GREATEST LP EVER RELEASED. FLEETWOOD MAC IS THE GREATEST BAND IN THE WHOLE WORLD!!! STOP DISSING ON THEM!!!!NIKAYLA~
-- Nikayla Crews (frozenlove197...), April 20th, 2004.
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:17 (nineteen years ago) link
Well, I did nominate Sextant, and it was my #1.
― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:19 (nineteen years ago) link
points: 3201st place votes: 2total votes: 7
ORNETTE COLEMAN - DANCING IN YOUR HEAD
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00004STMT.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
Ornette Coleman - Dancing In Your Head
i) It's like minimalism without the rigidity, improv without incoherence.
ii) It's like music as an environment, conceived as a space wherein everyone can'do his own thing' while still feeding the group. Individuality andcohesiveness are not only not opposed but are mutually defining and sustaining.
iii) It's like a super-advanced polyphony - the lines are so independent thatthey're improvised and they still make sense as part of a whole.
iv) It's just the best bass record there is.
v) It's a multilayered groove and a catchy riff.
vi) You can dance to it.
---- Sundar
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:23 (nineteen years ago) link
― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:25 (nineteen years ago) link
I must have some PROG! I demand to have some PROG!
― Keith C (kcraw916), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:25 (nineteen years ago) link
points: 3211st place votes: 1total votes: 12
RICHARD AN LINDA THOMPSON - I WANT TO SEE THE BRIGHT LIGHTS TONIGHT
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000025RLQ.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
Richard And Linda Thompson - I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight
That Richard Thompson remains a relatively obscure figure in theannals of popular music is an injustice that has yet to be corrected. Sure, among music fans his name is known and respected, but trydropping his name outside of ILM or your local record store. "RichardWho?" is the inevitable refrain. "I Want To See The Bright LightsTonight" is Thompson's tour-de-force, consisting of his best set ofsongs, all wrapped in an almost ridiculous, painful sorrow. Whiletracks like "Withered and Died" and "End of the Rainbow" couldn't bemore stark and depressing, the gravity of the lyrics is countervailedby a buoyancy that pervades the music, giving it life and beauty. It's possible the darkness and pessimism of Thompson's music is whatputs people off, but to me that'll always be a mystery. Tragically,"I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight" remains out of print in theU.S.
------------Keith C
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:30 (nineteen years ago) link
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:33 (nineteen years ago) link
― whenuweremine (whenuweremine), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:38 (nineteen years ago) link
points: 3301st place votes: 2total votes: 11
DAVID BOWIE - HUNKY DORY
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00001OH7O.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
David Bowie – Hunky Dory“Time may change me” sang David Bowie on the cabaret-styled opener to Hunky Dory. But as the album was coming on the heels of his heavy glam rock album The Man Who Sold The World, who could have expected that time would change him so quickly? Bowie exchanged electric guitars with pianos and acoustic guitars, focused even more on his story-telling, and in the end, put out one of his greatest collections of songs he would ever make. Just focusing on the lyrics, Bowie can be found spinning tales about self-proclaimed crazy people (“Kooks”), homosexual desires (“Oh! You Pretty Things”) and giving a Bowie's-eye view of celebrities in “Andy Warhol” and “Song For Bob Dylan.” Bowie even created the greatest Generation X chorus on “Quicksand,” though the song pre-dates that demographic by a couple of decades. Bowie lets loose on “Queen Bitch,” modeled after The Velvet Underground (though it outperforms many of their classics). And hidden among the greatness is the brilliant “Life On Mars,” with its nonsensical yet somehow universal lyrics that speak volumes, and gorgeous orchestrations that swell to orgasmic heights at the song’s close. Hunky Dory’s strengths also come from the little things Bowie added, such as the quaalude-enhanced opening of “Andy Warhol,” the ringing phone at the end of “Life On Mars” (wherein Bowie gives a thumbs-up to that take), and the chanting trolls that close out “The Bewlay Brothers” (okay, maybe the trolls are a figment of my imagination, but after the cavemen line in ‘Life on Mars,” I’m allowed to dream, right?). David Bowie went on to make some of the greatest albums of the 1970s, but for me, he never topped Hunky Dory.
-------------Jonathan Hale
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:41 (nineteen years ago) link
― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:46 (nineteen years ago) link
points: 3371st place votes: 0total votes: 8
THE FALL - DRAGNET
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00012PMQO.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 20:59 (nineteen years ago) link
points: 3371st place votes: 0total votes: 10
NEIL YOUNG - TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000002KCC.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:06 (nineteen years ago) link
Fleetwood Mac go above The Congos because their highest placing was 2nd, compared to 5th. Neil Young and The Fall both had 2nd places, so the total number of votes decides the placing.
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:08 (nineteen years ago) link
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:10 (nineteen years ago) link
Dragnet. No contest.
-- Dr. C (Daveatcrossdee...), October 14th, 2002.
The true heart of the mighty Fall beats in the gnarled, beer n' woodbines sound of Dragnet and the early singles.
-- Dr. C (Daveatcrossdee...), February 12th, 2002.
The lowest of lo-fi and absolutely fantastic! Intense, spooky garage fun, AND has some rarely mentioned Fall classic tracks. The best Fall album IMHO.
-- Dr. C (Daveatcrossdee...), July 10th, 2001 1:00 AM.
It's the absolute essence of The Fall, never bettered.
-- Dr. C (Daveatcrossdee...), July 11th, 2001
Dragnet is real Fallmusik - accept no other (except Room To Live, Hex, Witch Trials)
-- Dr C (Daveatcrossdee...), September 10th, 2001
― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:11 (nineteen years ago) link
(In answer to: Which FALL album do you get first?)
Not a single vote for Dragnet then?
-- Nag! Nag! Nag! (MarquisChaCha...), August 28th, 2003 5:47 AM.
Dragnet
-- Dr. C (Daveatcrossdee...), August 28th, 2003 10:56 AM.
― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:13 (nineteen years ago) link
points: 3381st place votes: 0total votes: 11
STEELY DAN - PRETZEL LOGIC
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00000IPAC.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:18 (nineteen years ago) link
On the Beach is alright, but Tonight's the Night's peerless.
-- otto (ottomanjense...), March 28th, 2004
The only Neil Young album I can love. There's something so dark and tragic yet playful in it. And you can shout along with it brilliantly.
-- Omar (o.muno...), May 2nd, 2001
"Tonight's the Night" is one of the most gloriously, strangely f***ed up records I've ever heard. He just sounds like his hanging on the edge of complete mental collapse. But oddly indifferent to it. Most of his early solo albums have a similar kind of catastrophic feel to them. I think he's great for bad hangovers.
-- Johnathan (blis...), May 2nd, 2001
in answer to 'Name a so-called classic album which you think is a real stinker':every record by Neil Young except Tonight's the Night. -- o.munoz (o.muno...), January 12th, 2001
― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:20 (nineteen years ago) link
― RS, Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:22 (nineteen years ago) link
― polyphonic (polyphonic), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:22 (nineteen years ago) link
― whenuweremine (whenuweremine), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:23 (nineteen years ago) link
-- Baaderonixxx le Jeune (fabfon...), November 19th, 2004.
― whenuweremine (whenuweremine), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:25 (nineteen years ago) link
― billstevejim, Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:26 (nineteen years ago) link
― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:26 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:29 (nineteen years ago) link
Hmm, I'm unfamilar with that Coleman record; I've only listened to his 50s and 60s stuff. I guess I should check it out and tuck my tail between my legs.
― polyphonic (polyphonic), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:30 (nineteen years ago) link
― RS, Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:33 (nineteen years ago) link
Oh well, this will do for now. More tomorrow.
As I put on Pretzel Logic for the 1st time, I was like wtf, but since I'd put the album on repeat while computerizing all afternoon I soon caught myself singing along.
-- Baaderist (fabfon...), February 13th, 2004.
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:35 (nineteen years ago) link
100. V/A - 'Pebbles'
More than worth it, for me, for the original of 'I Want Candy', which for some reason I assumed was a Bow Wow Wow original! D'oh!
Oh, and the Standell's 'Dirty Water' (has there been a better song about Boston, ever??)etc etc
-- Bill E, January 24th, 2002
Got both Vol 1 and Vol 2, and they're both worth every! Single! Penny! Lots of great material throughout, and not knowing most of it beforehand just makes it all that much better.
-- Sean Carruthers, January 24th, 2002
I love *all* this stuff more than just about anything.i sometimes find it difficult to *adjust my ears* if I listen to say 20 minutes of Nuggets stuff followed by something with clean, modern production. Somehow you listen to them in different ways, and get used to a particular range of frequencies, or timbres maybe or just the amount of *detail*
-- Dr. C, January 25th, 2002
99. New York Dolls - s/t As a man whose first records were (45) Ride A White Swan and (33) Slade Alive, and who had only gone to a couple of gigs before going to dozens of punk ones, how can I not love the bridge between them.
-- Martin Skidmore (martin.skidmore...), May 4th, 2002
There's something genuinely expressive about Johnny Thunder's guitar playing. He solos all through the songs – often just distorted extended notes. It bears little relation to the 'acceptable' guitar playing of commercial radio; it's even 'decorative,' fragile, or delicate. It makes all the lyrics of the songs much more melancholy, because they're accompanied by this sporadic, almost contrapuntal, harmony. It doesn't sound like other music. I think the producers tried to make up for it by making these random notes really quiet except in the 'proper' places (at the end of the song usually) but you can still hear them, all the time – it's quite disturbing. I guess he's actually listening to what they sound like.
-- Maryann (tedium200...), June 10th, 2001
*Were* they clever or radical? Johansen was clever, Johnny Thunders was radical even if he wouldn't've known why himself. What did their ultra femininity/ultra masculinity mean? it meant that it was 1973 & time to take rock back off the hippies once & forever. & it still is. (1973 I mean).
-- duane zarakov (pfaiga...), June 10th, 2001
98. David Bowie - "Heroes"
Low is elegant, weird, strange and wonderful, but "Heroes" is all that and more, and is probably the album I've listened to from Bowie the most over the years. "Sons of the Silent Age" may actually be my favorite song by him ever, that weird queasy start, sax and synths and more, the sudden imagistic power of the lyrics -- "they never die, they just go to sleep one day" -- and that sudden break into a twisted tearjerker chorus, a pure spotlight/drama queen moment that feels like the most emotional confession of love ever.
-- Ned Raggett (ne...), June 15th, 2004
Heroes is just as interesting and unusual as Low and yet more accessible.
-- wetmink (minksof...), June 15th, 2004 7:09 PM.
Heroes is the only Bowie album I've ever gotten deeply and emotionally attached to.
- Girolamo Savonarola (gsav@smb.net), June 26th, 2003 11:12 PM.
97. Kate Bush - 'The Kick Inside'I do still have a bit of a thing for KB, and, last year, listened to the first three LPs for the first time in ages. The Kick Inside won that particular battle easily though, strangely, I've no desire to listen to 2/3rds of it ever again.
-- Michael Jones (tourajsig...), February 8th, 2002
My favorite is "The Kick Inside"... but then again I love Laura Nyro.
-- Sean (saturns...), January 22nd, 2003 7:06 PM.
Go with her debut, "The Kick Inside". My favorite, and the least freakish (my favorite AND the least freakish??).
-- Sean (saturns...), April 8th, 2003
96. Bruce Springsteen - 'Darkness On The Edge Of Town'What an opening couplet:
I got a sixty-nine Chevy with a 396Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor
-- Mark (mar...), July 15th, 2002
The stuff that's good on Darkness is good in some really interesting ways. I think he came into his own there, figured out more what worked for him and what didn't. He kept the big anthems, but he also finally figured out the quiet end -- it's the first album that anticipates Nebraska, especially the title track. And even the anthems got more pointed and pared down. Like, "poor man wanna be rich/ rich man wanna be king/ and a king ain't satisfied until he rules everything/ I wanna go out tonight, I wanna find out what I got" -- I mean, that's a great fucking lyric, especially joined to the jumping-out-of-his-skin throb of the song. It combines dawning political consciousness with adolescent will to power, and suggests without even meaning to the roots of fascism. And it locates all that in small-town Midwestern we-gotta-get-out-of-this-place cockiness, just barely covering up for a growing certainty that he ain't going nowhwere. (Which is kind of the theme of the whole album, I think, even more than "Born to Run" -- on Born to Run there still seemed to be some kind of idea that all that mythic shit would add up to something, but "Darkness" kind of put an end to that.)
Also, for all its cheesiness, I love "Candy's Room" just for the pure horny build and release of it. ("Prove It All Night," on the other hand, never really gets going -- he makes it sound way too much like work.)
-- spittle (ptu...), July 21st, 2004
If anyone asks "what historical moment would you like to have seen", sometimes I think that being present at the first studio playback of the completed "Racing" would be my real answer. I can't imagine what it must've been like to have finished that song, I picture everyone collapsing afterward. It's a song to put on when the only option in life seems to be staring into space and flicking a lit cigarette into the dustbin for every bad decision you've ever made, half in hope that maybe your house will burn down with you still in it. The delivery of the "Callin' out around the world" line is the finest recorded vocal in the history of music. Or one of them, anyway. ("Badlands" - that's more all-purpose put-on-any-time for me, mainly because I can tune out the words if I want to and train the beady rational-crit half of my brain onto the sonics. IMHO "Badlands" is the most intensely political song ever recorded because it would say the same thing even if I couldn't understand the words or even if there WERE no words. (In distorted symbolic form, what it seems to be saying sonically is "Whatever happened to the Vagrants? Does Leslie West ever step out of his limo to buy a hot dog from them? And why are THEY reduced to selling hotdogs when Lou Reed isn't?" ) The social analysis of the song is built into the structure and playing and arrangement and sound etc., whereas most artists attempt to prove they see beyond their own noses by taking stock forms and then singing lists of famous names and appalling historical tragedies over the result.
-- dave q (scrape10...), July 15th, 2002
― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:42 (nineteen years ago) link
― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 22:58 (nineteen years ago) link
― rs, Tuesday, 19 April 2005 23:08 (nineteen years ago) link
― whenuweremine (whenuweremine), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 23:15 (nineteen years ago) link
― Stupornaut (natepatrin), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 23:17 (nineteen years ago) link
i only had one album vote and that was for the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. I was more about the singles.
― gspm (gspm), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 23:22 (nineteen years ago) link
― peepee (peepee), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 23:27 (nineteen years ago) link
!
!!
Now I finally understand the importance of the sleigh bells on "Charlie Freak." Thank you!
― Joseph McCombs (Joseph McCombs), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 00:36 (nineteen years ago) link
Some great selections so far. My only genuine WTF moment was with 'My Aim Is True' - that album is pish! Oh Alright, the singles are good.
Anyway.......GET DRAGNET!!
― Dr. C (Dr. C), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 06:22 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 07:10 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 07:15 (nineteen years ago) link
points: 3391st place votes: 0total votes: 11
ROXY MUSIC - ROXY MUSIC
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0000256KG.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 08:15 (nineteen years ago) link
But somehow for a long time I had a problem to connect the pop singer Ferry to the more experimental and challenging band Roxy Music which was lauded in music critics circles. And I didn't understand what was so special about them. I don't remember the name of the first song by them I ever listened to and it didn't mark me at all but I know that it was in my philosophy class at school around 1979 (our teacher was young). The class was about existentialism and the teacher said that this song was new wave.
ihttp://musik.antville.org/images/roxymusic/Let's come back to my album of 1972. The cover is the first in a series of sexily dressed women covers. Mauvais goût but in an interesting way. All the women on the first five albums of Roxy Music have in common that they have a stupid artificial expression on their face and that from my point of view their faces are ugly in their false and unapproachable coolness. I suppose that is intended. This is part of the game. It is not the cover that is supposed to turn anyone on. It is just an eye-catcher. A false package if you want. Inside there is one of the most ear-catching records of the seventies. At least it turned me on but it took a long time.
There is a party going on. People talking, tinkling glasses. A seemingly average rock song starts with a kind of bar piano line. Ferry sings forgettable lyrics about the sweetest queen he has ever seen. With his staccato intonation he sounds like the blueprint for David Byrne in the Talking Heads. Phil Manzanera tries to be Jimi Hendrix and he almost succeeds. And suddenly the song takes a turn. The saxophone becomes freestyle, there is some guitar distortion, the piano becomes atonal, the song morphs into a free jazz session. It slows down at the end like as if the record player is plugged off and the speed is slowing down. A nice drum solo and a fireworks noise finish the song.
A lyrical classical oboe theme starts Ladytron. A song for romantic candle-light dinners. But beware this one speeds up. Never trust the beginning of a Roxy Music song. Eno adds some electronic spices to this.
My favourite song is no.3 If There Is Something. The first 90 seconds constitute about the most boring country rock ballad I have ever heard. But when Andy Mackay's sax and later oboe join in and play a new theme everything changes. Suddenly we are in melodramatic land. Ferry sings vibrato as if he had swallowed one gallon of his own tears:
I would do anything for you. I would climb mountai-ai-ai-ns. I would swim all the oceans blue.
The theme is repeated by the piano and varied upon. It is really fascinating how the guitar also merges in. All instruments seem to fuse into one. The oboe is reaching heights where no man has ever been. Ferry almost drowns in his tears now. How can a voice sound so desperate from deep inside? The last minute is a tad boring again with the over and over repeated line When you were young but the four minutes in between 1'30'' and 5'30'' are about the most exciting four minutes in any piece of rock I know.
Marginal note: I just read here in the AMG that there is a probably even superior 12 minute (!) live version of this song performed at the John Peel radio show in January 1972. I really need this now.
The next song is Virginia Plain and I think I'll finish now as everyone will know this anyway. As sparkling as rock music can get. I have to add that there is no weak song on this album. That there are two small rock mini-operas The Bob (Medley) and Sea Breeze which piss on Supper's Ready or anything released by The Who in this field. 2 H.B. and the beginning of The Bob foreshadow ambient. And there is Would You Believe? which anticipates the dreadful Rocky Horror Picture Show without its one-dimensionality. The end is Bitters End, the party is over, the girl is gone and has found another and Bryan asks
will someone find me?
This was a party as it should be. It was fun but it was a disappointment as well. A good pretext for another party, don't you think?
P.S. This has been published before on my blog but I didn't get the feedback I wanted to get. That's why I have recycled it here.
-- alex in mainhattan (alex6...), February 25th, 2005.
or read the thread: In praise of... the 1st Roxy Music album
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 08:19 (nineteen years ago) link
points: 3451st place votes: 0total votes: 11
ROXY MUSIC - FOR YOUR PLEASURE
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0000256KE.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
― hobart paving (hobart paving), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 08:30 (nineteen years ago) link
― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 08:35 (nineteen years ago) link
(I got "Stranded" for a pound in Fopp. Havent played it yet)
― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 08:35 (nineteen years ago) link
You jammy get.
― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 08:39 (nineteen years ago) link