TURN THIS MUTHA OUT! It's the Alternate 1970s Albums Poll on ILX — Results Thread

ha well i was kinda grumbling there but when xtc and magazine don't make it...

*crosses fingers*

nah, ilm does love some arty post-punk (like wire, who conveniently made the first poll) but i'd say not nearly as much as it did, and with a big USA bias. witness how, say, the chameleons fared in the 80's poll.

ilx: hates progressive rock, arty post-punkprog*; loveikes 'imagine' by john lennon

fixed for yr. convenience.

;^)

p-p-pprog...

Personally I am pretty delighted that Imagine only scraped into the bottom of the "second" 100 - OK, I'm sure it's beaten at least half the stuff I voted for and still more records that I don't even know and would love if I did, but comparing that to how I imagine (err) it would fare in the non-ILM world...

I was interested to see where these were ranked on RYM's 70s list:

ZZ Top- Tres Hombres (#440)
Clube de Esquina (#54)
Chic- C'est Chic (Not ranked)
John Lennon- Imagine (#236)
Patti Smith- Horses (#121)
Van Halen (#212)
Fleetwood Mac (#731)

So Imagine fares better here.

you suggesting ilx is boring and mainstream? ;)

Probably just that we won't have a bunch of Italian prog in our top 200.

i did not vote for a single italian album fwiw, although giorgio moroder probably has gotten into this list because you know ilx has a bone-on for all things dance

and maybe because he's quite good, who knows

i expect to see close to the edge and 'red' by king crimson and approximately bugger-all else

Chic- C'est Chic (Not ranked)

Why I avoid RYM in a nutshell.

It's not entirely your fault. If you'd bought any of the 70s albums on cd before 2006, you'd have gotten the piss-poor mismastered crap WB releases from the '80s. Rhino only recently went back to the original versions for their batch of reissues.

― Johnny Fever

I didn't know they were reissued - I have vinyl rips a friend made for me. Guess I can buy 'em now!

Van Halen was jobbed. Great, great album.

93. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo's Factory (1970) [81 points, 11 votes]

http://i50.tinypic.com/fut06x.jpg

Creedence were about the only late-'60s Bay Area band who didn't jam aimlessly. they barely "jammed" at all! two long songs on Cosmo's Factory /= "a tendency"

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Saturday, June 3, 2006 1:39 PM (3 years ago)

I've stated before that Creedence Clearwater Revival is one of my favorite bands. They have one of the best singles runs of any band in the last 50 years. Every Creedence single was a double A-side. "What's your favorite Creedence song?" you might ask. And I would say "Whichever one is currently playing or is about to play next, depending on the physical proximity I have to one or the other."

― kingkongvsgodzilla, Sunday, October 7, 2007 8:31 PM (2 years ago)

CCR kicks the Stones six ways from Saturday because they took mountain and country music as their stepping-off point AS WELL as Chicago blues - CCR annealed it all into a singular, totally unmistakable, champion sound. agreed that Jagger was surely one of the most mythological characters in all rock - CCR never had that mystique, if that's the kind of thing you go for - but i mean seriously, the Stones sound like copyists next to them (Brian Jones: "no other group is as close to the Negro sound as us"). particularly good and interesting copyists, sure, "it's what the Stones got WRONG just as much as what they got RIGHT" etc but with CCR it's totally about what they got right, full stop.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, January 28, 2003 3:47 PM (6 years ago)

too low, one of the great rock records

People always take Creedence for granted.

too much Southern prejudice to consider CCR beyond redneck rock. see also Skynyrd.

"ramble tamble" makes me feel like starting a new country so it can be the national anthem

So far I am not so keen on this poll. Hopefully my disinterest in the lower reaches means that La Dusseldorf have won.

milton placing makes me hope brazil accounts for 5% of the poll at min

i don't expect my number one to make the top 100 any more. but the other more famous record by him will make it, i guess.

So far I am not so keen on this poll.

We're not really damning the canon yet, that's for sure.

will we damn it l8r?

I'd say there's well over 500 albums in the 70s that are comfortably canon-ish. I think the nominations is a great list as is, but I'm all for seeing who gets ranked.

I have the singles comps, and listened to the CCR complete box set all the way through, but it was a chore. Just can't get into them - they were pounded too far into my brain via 70s/80s radio, I can't help but be sick of them.

I missed Creedence but I wish I'd voted for it.

I'm going to read this poll as an opportunity to find out about albums I've neglected, b/c if I'm looking for confirmation of my taste I'm sure to be disappointed---there were so many choices that it's kinda amazing anything got more for a couple of votes. Well, I don't know about that. Tres Hombres was my #2, and it got #100, so it takes some consensus to place here.

92. Blondie - Eat to the Beat (1979) [82 points, 9 votes]

http://i50.tinypic.com/289jwjp.jpg

UNION FUCKING CITY BLUE

― Bimble, Sunday, October 14, 2007 4:37 PM (2 years ago)

Eat To The Beat didn't win! I'm going to have to step outside with you guys. This is WRONG.

― Bimble, Saturday, October 6, 2007 3:16 AM (2 years ago)

one of the (possibly) top 5 memories of my whole life is going to my first ever concert which was blondie at edinburgh odeon (january 12th 1980 - these things stay with you forever) on the "eat to the beat" tour and them starting off with "dreaming". much as i was in total awe of debbie, clem burke beating hell out of that drum kit with the arrows on the bass drum (a la "atomic video") completely blew my mind and is possibly responsible for a life long obsession with DRUMS.

― stirmonster, Monday, October 8, 2007 1:54 AM (2 years ago)

(fyi, I will be including Bimble in these postings as often as possible. so much joy!)

Wow, I expected that a lot higher! Bimble OTM. Did it seem too obvious/canonical to people? Really not sure which way the rest of the poll will go now, whether people have deliberately voted for slightly obscure things or whether they've been crowded out completely.

Also Eat to the Beat is a JOY - Union City Blue and especially Atomic were (while not new) exciting reminders to me when young of how music could be shimmering and otherworldly and brilliant catchy pop, all at the same time, just when I was beginning to see a divide between the two

Yes, that really did take me 5 minutes, with all the deleting and undeleting and wishing I could do it better justice. But there it is.

Eat to the Beat is my favorite sounding Blondie album. The first three sound kind of stuffy/boxy, and the ones that followed sounded too glossy. Everything about Eat to the Beat is just really crisp and bright and that probably has as much to do with the recording as it does the songs.

Cosmo's Factory was among the handful of albums I got on eMusic in the last few weeks while I was looking for stuff I didn't had but would probably like, so I'm glad to see that it being on my ballot helped it make the cut. I mean I've been hearing half that album literally my entire life, and the other half is pretty good too.

Hurrah for bimble posts. Im sure he would've loved this poll almost as much as his beloved 80s.

I always kind of think of Eat to the Beat as one of the first albums of the 80s, but I couldn't say why. Maybe it's the cover art, maybe it's because "Dreaming" was the first big anthem-y song Blondie wrote. Whatever the reason, it seems to have less in common with the 70s than it does the 80s.

Part of what's great about the '70s as a decade is that the late '70s did foreshadow a lot of what was great about the early '80s. But it seemed like the last '70s poll was overweighted towards the late '70s and New Wave, so I hope the same thing doesn't happen with this one. So far they've been fairly evenly distributed.

91. Miles Davis - Agharta (1976) [82 points, 10 votes]

http://i48.tinypic.com/rbkzfp.jpg

Agharta and Pangaea totally swept me away like a tidal wave the first time I heard them. These days, I don't have the stamina to listen to them all the way through (though I can still bang my head to Dark Magus no problem). The thing about Agharta and Pangaea is, you gotta try to find the Japanese Sony MasterSound editions, because there's more music on 'em (10 extra minutes on Disc 2 of Agharta, 3-4 extra minutes on Disc 2 of Pangaea). It's mostly entropic stuff, keyboard sounds and percussion rattles, at the end of long pieces. But it really adds much more than I thought it would when I first heard about it, when I was still listening to the American versions. I wish Sony US would put out a 4CD box with the Japanese versions all together, like they recently did with the Blackhawk live stuff.

― Phil Freeman (Phil Freeman), Thursday, June 10, 2004 8:20 AM (5 years ago)

I'm sure Geir would consider Dark Magus and Agharta to be unlistenable too haha.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, November 16, 2006 1:20 PM (3 years ago)

(Surprisingly very little good chatter about Agharta in the ILM archives other than "I prefer Agharta" or "Agharta needs to be remastered.")

had i known one point would make or break so many i probably wouldve bothered doing 36-40, oh wellz

Only four albums were within striking distance of the top 100 with a 1-point vote.

I voted for Dark Magus, but I'd have preferred an option to just vote for Miles Davis in the 70s as a whole, it seems like one long jam in E spread over about 12 albums anyway.

90. Ian Dury - New Boots and Panties!! (1977) [83 points, 6 votes]

http://i45.tinypic.com/1zcjzt1.jpg

What I was saying about Dury as an influence on UK punk was his celebration of London and London/Cockney dialect - I suspect that the Pistols and the rest might have Americanised themselves on the lines of Richard Hell and the Heartbreakers without his model to follow. (And, yeah, I suppose he is indirectly responsible for Oi!) Considering its jazz/funk influence New Boots is a pretty savage record at times.

― Soukesian (Soukesian), Tuesday, June 27, 2006 3:00 PM (3 years ago)

I still don't understand how this could be, since the first Ian Dury album came AFTER the first Pistols album, not before, right? (Or are you saying Johnny Rotten was a fan of Kilburn and the High Roads, which might make more sense? Did Dury even use a Cockney accent in that band?) I've always assumed that the big Brit-accent influence on the Pistols was Slade, though I could be totally wrong.

― xhuxk (xheddy), Sunday, July 9, 2006 2:21 PM (3 years ago)

Dury's accent was 100% authentic, and he used it in everything he did.

― Soukesian (Soukesian), Sunday, July 9, 2006 3:10 PM (3 years ago)

New Boots And Panties was out 2-3 months before Never Mind The Bollocks.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Monday, July 10, 2006 4:11 AM (3 years ago)

Didn't vote for it, but very glad it's there.

As an American, I have no idea what it's like to be a Londoner. But New Boots sort of framed my perception of it from about the age of 21 (after I'd already heated up and then cooled down on the Pistols). Bullocks seems like a statement record. New Boots just seems like Dury saying "Hey, I recorded this. Do whatever you want to with it." And I kind of appreciate that more.

Surprised I didn't vote for this what with all the publicity surrounding the Dury film just now.

xpost
Suspect that this may have been higher if the poll had been in a month or two with the Dury biopic coming out shortly.

It wouldn't have made it at all if I didn't vote for it with my #4 (that wasn't calculatory, though... I probably would've voted it that high regardless).

89. Neu! - Neu! 2 (1973) [83 points, 10 votes]

http://i46.tinypic.com/301ly7t.jpg

"neu 2, they're having too much fun on the second side. they should get back to their serious krautrocking. none of this "rock" shit. this is my sincere belief here. i'm very sincere in this. (giggles) they sound like little richard practically. like, the guitar sound. i'n just waiting for someone to do some early fifties "rock" yell thing. neu i is fine. it's serious enough. it doesn't have that rock and roll bullshit. it is krautrock enough."

jon williams on acid, ladies and gentlemen.

― Ian Johnson (orion), Friday, March 26, 2004 1:57 AM (5 years ago)

I couldn't live without the second side of 'Neu! 2'. I love 'Hallo Eccentrico!'

Mind, I also love putting Laibach's first album on at parties.

― Sasha (sgh), Tuesday, June 15, 2004 8:44 PM (5 years ago)

Regarding side 2 of Neu! 2, if only they'd gotten someone like Lee Perry to remix the single instead.

― Fastnbulbous, Sunday, June 1, 2008 11:23 AM (1 year ago)

I guess everyone just assumed this was a given and can't be bothered to add commentary, right? (I've got nothing to say about it myself.)

I'll echo your Dury comment (I too found Dury after the Pistols and love and listen to it much more), but I got nothing on Neu.

Neu! 2 is the first of mine to place. Honestly thought it would be higher - I can only assume that La Dusseldorf took all the krautrock votes... right? Right, guys?

My ballot was blessedly Kraut free.

88. Tom Waits - Closing Time (1973) [84 points, 6 votes]

http://i46.tinypic.com/se838i.jpg

Consider that circa Closing Time, Asylum/David Geffen thought that they had another Billy Joel on their hands. Incredible.

I love Tom Waits more than life itself.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Sunday, November 30, 2003 8:00 PM (6 years ago)

[Re: C/D?] I'd say neither, but considerably less classic than lost of people claim.

I like some of his stuff, but the trouble is that between every nice ballad once in a while he tends to put some of those absolutely unlistenable Captain Beefheart influenced, well, dunno what I'd call them but songs they aren't, that is for certain.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Saturday, October 16, 2004 5:59 PM (5 years ago)

For all the flailing and flaming of his subsequent work, the artifice is much more pronounced on his early albums but luckily so is the charm quotient so it doesn't seem like a total goof unless you're predisposed not to buy into his poses.

― tremendoid, Tuesday, September 7, 2004 10:39 AM (5 years ago)