1970-1979 WTF - The Hard 'n' Heavy 'n' Loud + Krautrock, Arty, Noisy, Weird, Funky, Punky Shit - Albums Poll! - VOTING THREAD! Closes Mar 8th 11.59 PM UK Time - All ILXORS/LURKERS WELCOME

haha I knew he was lurking
xposts obviously

Didn't even notice the modern lovers album was nominated and nobodys spoken about it. You should be campaigning for it (and any other albums people want to place)

Remember the 80s poll where people complained albums were too low but they hadn't campaigned for it (or in some cases hadn't voted)?

Ned's review of Chrome - The Visitation

Exhibiting a truly gone sense of rock and roll -- even without Creed, who wouldn't join until the following album -- Chrome here aren't quite the monster industrial/punk forebears of legend, but the original quartet still has something weird and wigged going for it. One of the best comments this reviewer ever heard about The Visitation was that it was early Brian Eno meets Santana, a judgment that best captures the strange mix going on. To be sure, Visitation isn't as laden with Latin funk as the latter, but Edge tries some odd percussion here and there, sometimes approaching Can's level of avant-garde groove. Guitarist Lambdin throws in a fair amount of reasonable enough soloing as well throughout, squelchy and heavily flanged guitar being the result when not offering up basic rhythm. It's good for what it is; there's certainly much worse out there. As for Eno, the opening song -- with a sudden musical rush building to the a capella title line, "How many years too soon?!" delivered in shrill, squealed nerd harmonies -- is hardly the Doobie Brothers. Strange electronic burps and shades and random drop-ins color the often sci-fi-tinged songs, so things are off in general, just not quite as frenetically so as later albums, with the exception of the thoroughly fried "My Time to Live." The higher vocals generally stay a bit calmer after the opening -- whichever singer it is, Lambdin or bassist Spain, has nowhere near as nails-on-chalkboard screechy warbling as, say, Geddy Lee, just possessed of a higher register and with reasonable control. The other lead singer sounds like a breathless Jagger imitator, which like the guitar playing is reasonable without being too distinct. In general, the four members sound like they want to do more than what the end result turned out to be, but the seeds were being sown nonetheless.

Alien Soundtracks

With Creed recruited to replace original member Mike Low (though allegedly Edge initially turned Creed down after the latter appeared wearing a pirate outfit or something similar), Chrome started kicking into high gear at last. While Spain and Lambdin weren't out of the picture yet, cowriting half the songs with Edge, Creed's mind-melting guitar swiftly took prominence, turning a wiggy band into a total headtrip. Rather than just aiming at acid-rock styling, Creed stuffed his fretbending into an evil, compressed aggro-sound, at once psychedelic and totally in-your-face. Edge equals the activity by stepping into the vocal role himself, sounding like Iggy on a live wire with occasional attempts at weird, wailed crooning, while his electronics and drumming starts sounding a lot more vicious and totally scuzzed as well. It's not the short sharp shock of punk rock per se -- it just sounds like the title puts it, alien, sounds and TV samples firing out of nowhere and throwing the listener off balance. That many numbers are constructed out of short fragments adds to the weird overlay. Even the quieter numbers like "All Data Lost" play around with echo and drone to create disturbing results. The songs themselves allegedly were recorded as the soundtrack to a live sex show, which probably goes a long way towards explaining the sex and sci-fi combination of much of the lyrics. Not to mention the titles -- to quote some at random: "Nova Feedback," "Magnetic Dwarf Reptile," and the truly hilarious "Pigmies in Zee Dark" (there's some creepy crooning on this one) and "Slip It to the Android." The artwork adds to the weird effect -- a hand-colored late fifties 'cool' living room and busty babe setup with the band's and album name hand-scrawled in usual Chrome fashion over it, plus huge disembodied eyes and lips that make everything really disturbing. Overall, the combination of screwy sound and art on a budget placed Chrome as something like West Coast cousins of early Pere Ubu and Destroy All Monsters -- not a bad place to be.

Half Machine Lip Moves

With Lambdin out and Spain barely there at all, everything rapidly became an Edge/Creed show in the realm of Chrome by the time of Half Machine Lip Moves. The basic tropes having been established -- aggressive but cryptic performance and production, jump cuts between and in songs, judicious use of sampling and production craziness, and an overall air of looming science fiction apocalypse and doom -- all Edge and Creed had to do was perfect it. Starting with the fragmented assault of "TV as Eyes," which rapidly descends into heavily treated, conversational snippets from TV and deep, droning keyboards, Half Machine sounds like a weird broadcast from thousands of miles away where rock is treated as an exotic musical form. Creed fully gets to shine here, his pitched-up/pitched-down guitars as good an example of psychedelic assault as anything. Sprawled all over the beeps and murmurs of the songs, not to mention Edge's still self-created drumming and Iggy-ish vocal interjections, the guitars make everything sound utterly disturbed. If not as obsessed with tempo shifts and oddity as, say, Faust, Half Machine is still pretty close to that band's level of Krautrock playfulness and explosion. Two of the relative saner numbers are practically power pop, at least in Chrome terms. "March of the Chrome Police (A Cold Clamey Bombing)" has Edge sneering an actual vocal hook over a brisk beat, even while Creed gets progressively more fried on the guitar, and rumbling echoed laughter and barks erupt in the mix. "You've Been Duplicated," meanwhile, also has something of a vocal hook, only buried under so many levels of distortion that it might as well be a malfunctioning keyboard being played among the clattering percussion and other sounds. A suitably strange cover shot of a fully head-bandaged mannequin seemingly floating in space completes the package.

Nice reviews, Ned!

I love the Modern Lovers album, but it's been a mainstay in the canon for at least 20 years (it's 69th overall at http://www.acclaimedmusic.net/ and 89th on RYM). It was 15th in the original 70s poll here. It's in my ballot but much lower due to its relative lack of hard/heavy/loudness. Similarly, Bowie's Ziggy, GO4, Buzzcocks (though somehow Singles Going Steady was not nominated), PiL, Joy Division and Television always do well and I don't see much need for campaigning (though don't let me stop anyone!)

Blue Phantom sounds cool. I've seen some people say they're Italian, probably because it was issued on an Italian label, but I believe they're French. "Microchaos" completely plagiarizes "I Wanna Be Your Dog," and there's lots of Black Sabbath bits everywhere. Fun stuff.

The thing with not campaigning for well known albums does mean sometimes albums get forgotten until the results roll out. I want to avoid all that by making sure everyone boosts the albums they want to see place.
Obviously the lesser known stuff is what needs the most boostering.

I had hoped Elvis Telecom might have posted here about Heldon but I guess he doesn't do polls.

Man Cope's Head Heritage site has a decent rundown of th e first four Chrome albums. I shd go link to it sometime today

this? http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/albumofthemonth/chromeology

Does anyone follow the Counterbalance pieces on PopMatters?

Television - http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/138331-television-marquee-moon/
Joy Division - http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/152678-/
Funhouse - http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/158737-stooges/
Raw Power - http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/161036-stooges-raw-power/

Cope's mention of Chrome's unreleased Ultra Soundtrack, originally commissioned for a live San Francisco porn show sounds interesting. Anyone have it?

not me

ok the Counterbalance on Fun House has thrown me into a simmering rage. What a smarmy self-congratulatory waste of bandwidth

new board description

Ha, I never listened to London Calling (beyond a couple of songs) before. Not at all what I expected! I see now that it's not on the list, though.

think it got vetoed because it came out 80s in the USA but vetoed from 80s poll as it was out in 79 in the UK .
haha

ILM always lead the backlash against The Clash I think.

infact on ILX I think post-punk has always been more popular than punk.

xp Yeah good times, I believe Klinger is the older one who slightly less offensively ignorant, but both were pretty bad on the Fun House entry. But somehow their bumbling back-and-forth discussions fascinate me, and the fact that they're going through the whole Acclaimed music list and show now intention of stopping at any point. Of course at this rate it'll be years before they have the chance to be stupified by Amon Duul and such.

All I could think of was Klinger from M.A.S.H. reviewing it

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51M-3eSRhaL._AA300_.jpg

Richard Hell & the Voidoids - Blank Generation (Sire, 1977)
Possibly the only album from the core CBGB's scene that's underrated. It didn't make either ILM 70s polls, nor Pitchfork's, Rolling Stone, was only 663 among RYM's 70's albums. It did fare better on Acclaimed music at 170 of 70's, 540 overall. But it's one of my top 100 all-time favorite albums. In the Please Kill Me oral history, many claimed Television was at their best before Richard Hell left. There is something to be said for creative tension, but usually I think it was for the best, as Marquee Moon is perfect to my ears. It made sense when Hell went on to join the sloppy Heartbreakers. It seemed ironic to me that when Hell formed the Voidoids with two guitarists - Robert Quine and Ivan Julian, Blank Generation ended up sounding like a kind of companion album to Television's. Obviously Quine's brilliant style, while as virtuosic as Verlaine, was also more angular and spastic, a little more influence from Beefheart's Magic Band. And while Hell's original poetic inspirations and aspirations were similar to Verlaine's, his lyrics are much more witty and crass, his vocal delivery a hundred times more unhinged. It's enough to make one wonder what it would have been like if Hell stayed in Television, but to hear old songs like "Love Comes In Spurts" and "Blank Generation," (which, from what I heard from old Television demos and bootlegs still needed some work) it's enough to hear them finally hatched by Hell and the Voidoids in their final, perfect incarnations. It blows my mind that some thought Blank Generation was a disappointment at the time. Possibly because those in the scene were jaded after hearing many of the songs for years, thinking the album was a year or two late to arrive, with Hell and the band already starting to fall apart due to the usual drug-related b.s. But from where I stand I can't imagine changing anything that could improve it.

yeah thats a great album. I bought the cd years ago (late 90s?) and about 3 months after that news came out of a remastered and expanded version that was to be released.

RYM Top Punk Albums of the 1970s

So what happened? There's been no expanded version released since the 1990 issue as far as I know.

http://www.vinylsurrender.com/Graphics/AlbumCovers2/Sparks%20-%20Kimono%20My%20House.jpg

Sparks - Kimono My House (1974)
I can't say enough great things about this album. One of my ever-evolving-top-3 of the 70s for sure. Very glammy, seemingly all over the place, but definitely rocking even though it devolves into simply drums and synthesizers multiple times. I'm really that much of Sparks guy (and there are certainly many of them on ILM...those Sparks threads can be intimidating) because I couldn't really get into any Sparks albums after this one, but it doesn't really matter because I'm not sure they would have improved upon this one anyway.

http://youtu.be/QAzESJ62irI

http://youtu.be/1UbkDzp5LuY

Oh yeah, and the previous Sparks album A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing is fucking incredible too. Love these two records.

http://youtu.be/dnnk4sJ-JnA

http://youtu.be/tnqzRyOLwM4

So what happened? There's been no expanded version released since the 1990 issue as far as I know.

the cd I bought was an american import in Tower.So I guess whatever came out after was a proper UK release

Cope's mention of Chrome's unreleased Ultra Soundtrack, originally commissioned for a live San Francisco porn show sounds interesting. Anyone have it?

― Fastnbulbous, Monday, February 25, 2013 12:44 PM (3 hours ago)

part if not all of this became alien soundtracks iirc

yeah 2000 it came out. I guess it was remastered rather than expanded
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blank-Generation-Richard-Hell-Voidoids/dp/B000005JB1/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361827958&sr=8-1

Which reminds me i need to pick up the marquee moon with extra tracks. I kept waiting for it to come down to a fiver in Fopp as I bought the old cd twice (only cd i ever had that snapped had to replace it)

That Richard Hell album rules.

Better than that Simple Minds shit you usually listen to Turrican! No worries of richard hell recording a song like belfast child ;)

What's 'Belfast Child'? I don't know what you're talking about! :P

Simple Minds split up in 1983 and then another band formed in their place, also called Simple Minds, who were fucking crap. I think you're confusing one band with the other :P

no the original band were still alive and kicking after that. fucking hate them with a passion like in the same way tad says new jersey folk hate bon jovi

or at least he says he hates them.

Great stuff on Richard Hell Fastnbulbous. That album was def making my ballot but I might give it another blast this week and consider moving it up. I agree that it's underrated compared to the rest of the scene it sprang from.

Not sure the Modern lovers debut needs much campaigning, sure it'll place high regardless. It's not consistently heavy or weird or anything, through 'She Cracked' rocks pretty hard.

I'll pick something more under represented and make a case for that once I get my ballot together.

So Richard Hell is underrated now? back when I first heard of it (early 90s) it seemed like Blank Generation was up in the top tier of punk debuts, just behind the Clash, Ramones and Television (& definitely cooler than the Pistols.) Maybe Hell's stock was up then because of Dim Stars?

Underrated in general or underrated just on ILM?

or maybe he wasn't as rated as highly outside of the us? Maybe marcello, mike t-diva or grouty can answer that

(from a before 1990 perspective)

It's maybe just a UK thing. Growing up I never heard off 'Blank Generation' or saw it featured in best of lists. I suppose he gets credit now here for being the first punk (though I disagree). That was certainly the argument made in that history of rock thing the BBC aired a few years back. I bought the album years ago just because I thought the cover looked cool and I liked the titles of the songs. None of my friends has heard of or were familiar with him as I remember.

http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/nme_writers.htm , http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/nme_readers.htm nothing in top 100s from 85 or 93 or the readers top 100

I certainly knew of him in the 90s so maybe his UK rep was non-existent until the 90s/00s reissues?

Lets face it UK music press preferred UK punk bands mostly

I suppose he gets credit now here for being the first punk (though I disagree).

would like to understand the basis of this disagreement tbh

I suppose it's not a flat out disagree, he was certainly a big influence musically and definitely in terms of image. I just think its a stretch to consider any one individual to be the first.

I mean I can see just as much influence in someone like Klaus Dinger of Neu!