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

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)

Although partial to a bit of Can, I've never felt my life was any poorer for having no other Krautrock in it.

Same goes for Tom Waits.

Neu is the first on i thought would have placed higher

"one"

39 of those points came from me. Still my favourite of his pre-Brennan work. xposts

Neu is the first one in the list that I really should have voted for, easily my favourite of their albums.

Really glad to see Chic made it, I hope there's a few more disco albums further down the list.

two of mine in a row there. didn't expect Neu!2 to place that much higher on its own, it is the weakest of the three for sure. xp and i thought everyone agreed on this

I disagree...Neu! 2 is my favourite...it's so freewheeling. I love that record a lot; it was my #7 pick.

(I think I might like this poll more than the 80s one...)

Closing Time should be so much higher, its by FAR his best pre-swordfish trilogy lp

actually scratch that, my tired brain somehow confused closing time and small change.
so yes, hoping small change is much higher.

I last minute switched my other Tom Waits vote from Small Change to Blue Valentine, which I regret now.

still think Closing Time is better. Martha, Ol' 55, Rosie, Hope I Don't..., etc...

Which version of Ol' 55 came first? Waits or Eagles? (Not being an Eagles stan, I'm not sure of their chronology.)

I went for Nighthawks - I get tired of the schmaltz. The live boots from the era tell a totally different (and much better) story than the albums.

87. Black Sabbath - Vol. 4 (1972) [85 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]

http://i48.tinypic.com/2dbo309.jpg

I like Vol.4 quite a bit. It was one of the Sabbath albums I didn't have when I was 14, so I haven't heard it nearly as much as Paranoid or Master of Reality. "Wheels of Confusion" is an epic and one of my favorite songs by them. Other than "Changes" and the oddball stoner sound effect track, the rest is ace. "Supernaut" also may be their best title, whatever it means.

― earlnash, Thursday, March 18, 2004 11:36 PM (5 years ago)

Sabbath's album (besides having "Supernaut" and "Snowblind," two of the greatest songs ever) is a concept album about dirtbags from the asshole of England going to L.A. and getting coked up and going insane. It's like the Apocalypse Now of metal, or something.

― Phil Freeman (Phil Freeman), Friday, March 19, 2004 11:20 AM (5 years ago)

I mean COME ON - Volume 4 has a shittier, tinnier, paper-thin sound compared to their previous three albums, the band was clearly falling into a predictable rut in terms of songwriting, nothing particularly new or exciting on the record. And like I said, there's a steep decline in the production quality.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, March 19, 2004 3:13 PM (5 years ago)

vol. 4 was my #1...here's what I wrote in the Best Sabbath Album poll:

as far as IV being the best, I totally agree...challops?

IV > Paranoid: this is kind of hard to justify, except the fact that Paranoid was the first Sabbath album I ever bought, and I liked it, but I was already v. familiar with half the songs, and the other half didn't really jump out at me, giving me a first impression of the album as suffocating and monochromatic...I mean, there's songs on it I love...Planet Caravan, Fairies Wear Boots, Paranoid, War Pigs, and even the songs that didn't really stick with me are hard to argue against, like the opening to Electric Funeral, but put it all together, and...I don't know, just seems a bit too monolithic to me I guess...

IV > Master of Reality: A bit easier, there's like four songs on this album, and only Children of the Grave (the best thing Sabbath ever did) shits on the stuff on IV from anything resembling a great height...I mean the album gets a little closer once I realized that After Forever was the earlier superior original article, and St. Vitus Dance was the rewrite, but still...I'm not exactly sure which three songs are stronger: Sweet Leaf/Children/Into the Void or Supernaut/Snowblind/Cornucopia, but it doesn't matter; without these IV is still within striking distance of a sprwaling druggy masterpiece...

so i'm guessing i single handedly made sure Vol. 4 made the poll?

(come on, Fela...!)

I've wondered this for a while. Which color of the cover is more common: yellow or orange? Pictures online seem to be evenly split between them, but when I had it in my collection, it was the orange version (so I went with that one).

Which version of Ol' 55 came first? Waits or Eagles? (Not being an Eagles stan, I'm not sure of their chronology.)

Waits version was first.

I love the schmaltz. Waits does it so well here.

86. Hawkwind - Space Ritual (1973) [85 points, 11 votes]

http://i47.tinypic.com/dh4zc.jpg

it's the perfect gateway drug. once it's in your system, you want more like it. and then, before you know it, you are on to the hard stuff and spending your rent money on peruvian flutepsych boots. and it's all downhill from there.

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, July 28, 2005 9:51 PM (4 years ago)

praising it would be redundant as its greatness is self-evident.

― el sabor de gene (yournullfame), Thursday, July 28, 2005 11:13 PM (4 years ago)

As for me I should probably own Space Ritual but I don't. Someone needs to write a beginner's book of Hawkwind because they only have about 6 billion things to choose from. I still remember dancing in a club to a track of theirs in 1990, though. It was fantastic but of course it could be one of any of the billion songs to choose from...it's a bit overwhelming for a novice. I bet they have even more releases than The Fall.

― Hydrochloric Shaved Weirds (Bimble...), Saturday, July 30, 2005 6:06 AM (4 years ago)

I don't care if it's the musical equivalent of liking Doctor Who, it is utter and total classic and I now feel compelled to go out and buy every record they've ever made.

― kate, Friday, November 1, 2002 10:49 AM (7 years ago)

So classic. I could live inside that record for a week.

Hawkwind is a total blind spot in my music cache. Seward says it's the perfect gateway drug, so I may as well begin with this one, huh? I'm typically wary of live albums, but okay.

only know hawkwind from their appearances on dj mixes (Prins Thomas, et al). really should check them out. almost saw them a few weeks ago, but went to PiL instead.

This album is so, so good. Like Scott's quote says, "a perfect gateway drug," but sadly I've found it is also drug-like in that other Hawkwind albums are good, but just don't have that same kick.

I recently relistened to all three Neu albums, and Neu!2 definitely excited me the most. The second side made me giddy considering Rother, Dinger, and Plank's ballsiness to actually release their tape manipulations on an LP at that time. Also, "Super 16" is awesome kung fu movie theme music. I'm glad it's on the list; it doesn't need to be higher, and in a perfect world we would all dance to "Cassetto".

i too think that the atmosphere of "nighthawks" has never been bettered on any tom waits album i know. his banter is great. the whole thing has a natural, organic live flow. hopefully it will place.

concerning neu! i don't really need more than the first album. actually "hallogallo", "negativland" and "weißensee" are the only neu! tracks i could not live without.

my Waits vote was Blue Valentine, but I guess there's not much chance of that showing up, is there?

85. Aerosmith - Rocks (1976) [86 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]

http://i48.tinypic.com/1ep89d.jpg

Years before 'Metal Box' or 'Y' or "Police and Thieves" or 'Cut'. (Perry's whinnies and vomit noises are more varied than Levene's bandsaw) and a WAYYY better beat than 'On the Corner'. Not 'dubmetal' because everything is really fast. "Rats in the Cellar", dig the way the bass fuzzes out at odd moments. Police sirens and percussive swishes and swooshes, like Scientist, and sounds close enough to a melodica at the end. "Nobody's Fault" is Book-of-Revelations stuff complete with stoopid earthquake pun, is that 'dread' or what? "Combination", druggy delirium (sings about how he's too skinny to wear even tight jeans), with sloppy/precise dropped beats and howling noises buried deep in the soupy, heavy-gravitational Jupiter's-moons mix. "Combination" has such a weird structure (starts halfway through the 'main riff' which appears in various dismembered forms on the song's lurching path) that it sounds spliced together from various tapes and then all mixed down onto a one-track just like the best Black Ark stuff. Attack-less notes poke out of nowhere, waver a bit and disappear back into the murk, as do voices, or voices that sound like guitars or vice versa, every sound in the background has an indeterminate origin process-wise, like what IS that thing at the end of "Back in the Saddle"? Apparently a 27-string bass, could just as well be a tuba or an exploding meth lab. Their early stuff was murky and didn't rock much, later stuff 'rocked' (but what the fuck didn't back then?) but all the hazy cataracts were removed from the production leaving the dull workmanlike hall-of-fame shit these clam chowderheads are famous for but on this album they fucking nailed it. Drop your cred and go for it!

― dave q, Sunday, April 14, 2002 8:00 PM (7 years ago)

OK, I can't get enough of this album. For every reason listed above, and more. It's like they were the most natural amalgam of funk, stones swagger, zep thud without the fairies and crowley. So there they are at the 70s end of "the" continuum - strains of 50s chess chicago blues, the rave up, the garage rock snear, yet somehow always managing to sidestep the excess of 70s rock. the bravado is there, but the nonsense and the indulgence is nowhere to be seen, musically speaking.

And then I can just picture little Westerberg and Malkmus listening to this and going "oh yeah".

― Brooker Buckingham (Brooker B), Thursday, May 18, 2006 8:47 PM (3 years ago)

Never properly listened to 'Rocks' until I replayed it today and it just clicked - whatever was going up their nose back them sure did come out in some kick ass songs ...

― BlackIronPrison, Friday, May 29, 2009 4:26 PM (7 months ago)

well it's personal story time with JD, this may get depressing so be warned, skip past it if stories that end sad are gonna feel like a waste of your time. the first night I hung out with my now-departed-because-he-killed-himself friend Rozz, we met up at a party - we knew about each other from around, there'd been an effort at one point to get us to meet & then we'd seen each other at the Cabaret Voltaire show at the Palace so we had a yeah-you kinda familiarity. The party got dull and we'd been talking about music so we went back to the apartment where me & mom & my sister were all living after my mom had finally gotten us out of house-where-everybody-gets-his-ass-kicked. the whole new apartment scene had this the-box-is-only-temporary feel to it. I'm seventeen, Rozz is like 24 I think, and we break open the only bottle of wine in the place and speaking in whispers to not wake up anybody we start going through my records. most of my good records were still back at my stepdad's house but I was really getting into Aerosmith which was a fuck-your-values,-peer-group kinda deal 'cause my friends were snobs about music and I was getting into metal. Rozz sees Rocks and says "Oooooh, let's play this!" and I'm like "are you serious? because I am totally serious that that album is like all-time great" and he's like "oh yes, God, they're just SO great" and I knew he was for real and got that teenage feeling you get when you know you're talking to somebody who feels music like you do. so we played the album & spilled wine & smoked cigarettes & lip-synched the "pleeeeeeeaaaaaase"s in "Sick As A Dog" and now it's a fond memory of a guy for whom the pain turned out to be just too much so that is why that song gets the extra kick that makes me vote for it but I like to think I would have voted for it anyway, wish friends didn't have to die, the end.

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Sunday, September 20, 2009 8:43 PM (3 months ago)

I like Rocks fine, it's probably even my favorite Aerosmith album front to back. But it should not be ten places higher than Van Halen's debut imo.

well, if there's a Kraut block vote, as Emil.y hoped above, I hope too, that there a Ladbroke Grove freak ticket that means the Pink Fairies will be represented alongside 'awkwind.

If only I'd ordered my ballot :)

Of course I probably voted for the wrong Pink Fairies album, votes could be split.

Great stuff - the Aerosmith, ZZ Top, Neu! and Blondie ones all narrowly missed places on my ballot so it's nice to see them. Not heard so far: Hawkwind and Miles.

vol 4 should be orange!

too many amazing classics coming up fairly low here...

vol 4 should be orange!

Good to know! It definitely looks better that way.

I like Rocks fine, it's probably even my favorite Aerosmith album front to back. But it should not be ten places higher than Van Halen's debut imo.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, January 4, 2010 2:29 PM (18 minutes ago)

I know; it should be 20 or thirty places higher at least!

:P

I actually didn't even put Rocks on my ballot, but it is the only Aerosmith album that I ever bothered to own (on a cassette that I no longer have in my possession for some reason).

84. Tubeway Army - Replicas (1979) [86 points, 9 votes]

http://i50.tinypic.com/kbeg0j.jpg

the tubeway army albums and the pleasure principle are awesome and completely unassailable classics.

― latebloomer, Saturday, July 5, 2008 1:48 AM (1 year ago)

The first three Gary Numan albums are quite good. He had a cool sound with the funky drums, buzzy guitars, synths and scifi schtik. If they didn't come out so close together, I would say that Ric Ocasek probably listened to some Tubeway Army.

― earlnash, Thursday, November 21, 2002 7:29 PM (7 years ago)

"Are Friends Electric" is pretty great, and a couple of others are alright. I find his singing off-putting overall. If you're not well acquainted with the genre, it sounds badly dated now. Some hilarious song titles though, as Mark S pointed out the other day.

― Patrick, Wednesday, May 9, 2001 8:00 PM (8 years ago)