what was the last 'classic album' you got and were knocked out by?

Check your local library! Thats pretty much the only way I've gotten to hear a lot of those super pricey Miles box sets.

Word. However, sometimes the album itself is all you need as umpteen takes on each track really fries my interest.

contenderizer, search "Spirit of Vampyros Lesbos", electronic tribute that is faithful to the original but fresh and contemporary!

Fingers Inc - Another Side

So classic why is it out of print?

A mist sensual album

most

contenderizer, search "Spirit of Vampyros Lesbos", electronic tribute that is faithful to the original but fresh and contemporary!

― Deremiah Was a Bullfrog (u s steel)

thx for the heads up, looks cool. expected more pop-leaning trip hop for some reason, as this sort of music was an influence on that style. thievery corp, early portishead, that kind of thing.

hey trip: thanks for the USofA recommendation! "all you see of yesterday are shadows in your mind / shadows on the pavement but no bodies do you find" goddam.

Hell yeah!
I found an original pressing of it in the (rare!) brown paper bag and got it for a good price, too (12 bucks, maybe?) right after I started collecting vinyl when I was 18.

The Joe Byrd and The Field Hippies record (The American Metaphysical Circus) really does feel like a sequel (different female lead singer and other personnel changes iirc) but it's not up to the same standard. Still very much worth hearing, tho

coo

van morrison - 'veedon fleece'

Velvet Underground - Loaded

Actually I got this several months back, but I've been listening to it a lot lately. The first song is so bad and atypical that it kind of throws you for a loop, but the rest of the album holds up with their other work just fine.

Boo! "Who Loves the Sun" is awesome.

It's like a bad joke - I guess if you like bad jokes it's okay.

I picked up 'Veedon Fleece' a good few months back and was blown away. Until then I entirely disregarded Van Morrison aside of 'Astral Weeks' and 'Moondance'. On the back of enjoying 'Veedon Fleece' I picked up 'Tupelo Honey' which was ok, the early live record which I half liked and 'Common One' which was suprisingly good, especially the longer tracks. Still, I find myself drawn to Van's hypnotic stuff the most, 'Astral Weeks' has always floored me. The big suprise on 'Veedon Fleece' was "You Don't Pull No Punches' which is up there with the best on 'Astral Weeks'. I did hear good things about 'Saint Dominic's Preview' but the last I checked it was still to be reissued.

I'm a big fan of Moondance, Tupelo Honey, and St. Dominic's Preview, but I haven't been able to get into Astral Weeks that much. I guess I prefer the country/R&B Van to the folk/jazz Van. My impression of Veedon Fleece is that it's more like Astral Weeks, so I haven't checked that one out yet.

Yup, that's the two divides illustrated right there so far as Van Morrison fans go.

st dominic's is great -- it's maybe the best mix of van styles. poppy stuff, jazzy stuff, country stuff, long hypnotic tracks like listen to the lion and independence day...

Yeah, I agree. I would say St. Dominic's kind of straddles the border between the two Vans.

That's what I've heard about it. Ominously missing from Van's reissue series.

It's not that hard to find on vinyl at reasonable prices, if you do vinyl. I got it at a record fair for about $10, IIRC.

Good stuff. I absolutely do do vinyl. I'll have a look. I went through a period of listening to Van a while back and kind of lost my way. This seems like a good motive to get back in.

Who loves the sun is great.

totally

Never understood the hate for "Who Loves The Sun." I first heard it about a month after I first heard White Light/White Heat and, well, it's pretty obvious that it's the same band, telling a similar kind of story. Never really heard much of a difference. It wasn't until decades later that I had any idea there were Loaded (and primarily "Sun") haters.

There's a track on the Yule/VU "Squeeze" album that has the exact same odd chord change as "Who Loves The Sun," and I sometimes wonder if Yule wrote or helped with the latter, as it's a kind of un-Lou melodic trick. Though probably Yule just stole the chord change, but you never know.

This one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jy1uiE2yEs

I guess "Who Loves the Sun" falls in that vein of deceptively sweet, naive Lou Reed songs, stuff like "Sunday Morning". It's not unprecedented within the VU songbook - Lou wrote many gentle, sweet, naive melodic songs. But usually with those other songs, there's a darker more complex world lurking beneath the gentle surface. The problem I have with "Who Loves the Sun" is there is nothing there beneath the surface: It's sunny, but I'm sad because you broke my heart. It goes way past naive and into childish.

I think you are over-thinking/over-caring about the lyrics. Why can't the lyrics be nothing more than descriptive language to accompany the mood of the song? Why should the lyrics go deeper than the surface? (especially when the rest of the song's sound doesn't call for deeper meaning and complexity)

Why do simple, fun, carefree, lackadaisical lyrics appall you? Why don't these "childish" kinds of lyrics hold a candle to what you might call "adult" lyrics? (fyi more often than not zen-adults are simple, fun and carefree. zen-adults > non-zen-adults)

And finally, why care too much or think too much about lyrics in the first place? (Don't answer that. This is just a hypothetical question illustrating my opinion)

I'm listening to Todd Rundgren's "A Wizard, A True Star" for the first time. Everything so far is knocking me out. Why haven't I heard this before?

^shit is amazing. also a good album to impress record store clerks with. (if that's a thing you should strife for is questionable)

"that's Todd Rundgren right" "YOU KNOW THIS!?!?!?" *smug grin*

Is it his best album? I only knew that one song that gets played everywhere beforehand.

'something/ anything?' by Todd is also a winner so i'm told by the Todd massive.

more interesting Todd chat here btw
Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star

cheers

'Secrets of the Beehive'.
Was never interested in Japan that much + only knew Sylvian's contemporary output by the time ('Manafon' and 'Blemish') and one day filed randomly through an otherwise forgettable 'The 100 X albums of all Y' book.

I had literally never heard or read about it anywhere before (which I still find a bit surprising, it just doesn't seem to be a typical part of these lists, at least here in Germany), got hold of it and almost instantly fell deep, deep in love.

'something/ anything?' by Todd is also a winner so i'm told by the Todd massive.

Yeah, that's probably his real "opus" album. A lot of people complain that it's too long or whatever and has a lot of juvinile stuff like "Slut" or "You Left Me Sore", but at least it is pretty entertaining. How exactly do you hate on a song called "Piss Aaron"

A Wizard, A True Star is his best. I cant imagine him ever making a better album than that.

when I used "lackadaisical" in my last post it didn't mean what I thought it meant

I think you are over-thinking/over-caring about the lyrics

FWIW, I'm also not too crazy about the music - it sounds like cod-psychedelia that was already dated by 1970.

"who loves the sun" isn't the best vu song by any stretch but still it has something about it. a naiveté, a carelessness. like a song for children. it's straight to the heart and i find that charming. i don't care for the lyrics and dated is an epithet which in this context definitely is a red herring. if i think about it dated is an adjective which does not make sense in an objective way. when something sounds dated it sounds dated for you but not in general. the datedness factor arrives only when you have listened too often to the same kind of music in the past. but really good music like the beatles for example never sounds dated. what is the antagonism of dated? fresh? the beatles always sound fresh to my ears. and vu too.

Beach Boys - Sunflower
Serge Gainsbourg - Aux Armes Et Caetera
Joe Higgs - Life of Contradiction
Southern Journeys Volume 8: Velvet Voices

"Who loves the sun" is the only VU song I would ever put on a mix cd. I like some of the other songs on Loaded but I don't really like VU at all. As for whether the psych-pop sound was literally dated or not doesn't make a difference to me. I wasn't alive in 1970. Either way WLtS never sounds dated in my ears. Though it will get bored of it just like any other pop song

Pop will get bored of itself.

'something/ anything?' by Todd is also a winner so i'm told by the Todd massive.

I have a feeling I may know the 'Todd Massive'.

I have only just recently heard Luomo's Present Lover, and my gosh it sounds incredibly fresh for a six-and-a-half year old album.

^^ Yes. I remember how big a deal that album was when it came out, and how it totally lived up to the hype imho. Deserves canonical classic status.

Led Zeppelin I, II, III and Houses of the Holy

Kind of pissed off the Luomo hype passed me by. I must have heard some stuff around the time and just not been grabbed. I know I had an electro version of Tessio on a DJ mix at the time, but didn't know what it was.

Actually that mix was brilliant - really fast electro like they did in the early-mid '00s that I'd kind of forgotten existed as the style became more mid-tempo throughout the decade. It was an ilxor who called himself dj xii who made it.

Sly & The Family Stone - Fresh

I thought Greatest Hits was the last great Sly Stone record, but I was wrong.