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

Lol, in my opinion Spiral Walls is the worst album by Divine Styler, including the one that came out last month... But I guess it's a different if you're a rap fan or a rock fan, because in my opinion DS is a genuinely unique and interesting rapper and hip-hop producer, who just happened to make a silly and indulgent rock album as his sophomore effort, before he returned to making unique and interesting rap music.

I mean, who would want to listen to some pointless guitar noodlings by him, when you could listen to genuinely freaky and innovative stuff like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1Uzpw7TcT8

And this one rocks much harder than any of his attempts to do proper rock music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALnKSghc8Yc

re:divine styler, Always been on the fence about this track, but I'm feeling it today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQQmnnJ9KFc

Al Stewart - Past Present and Future

Yes a stone cold classic. If you haven't heard the follow-up, Modern Times, do yourself a favour – it's very nearly as good.

McCartney II

Nona Hendryx, Nona

(side A particularly)

houses of the holy & physical graffiti

Joni Mitchell - Hejira

I guess the Leatherface lps are just outside of the pre-90 dateline. Pretty classic though
Was listening to meditations by John Coltrane's expanded Quartet a couple of days back and that is great.
As was the Incredible String Band's 500 Spirits wwhcih I had on the 3 changer with it throughout last week.
& stuck on Nebraska a couple of nights back but took it off the 3 changer to make way for Leatherface.

The thread's ten years old. Should knock the date up to pre-00?

aerosmith - rocks

Yeah that whole 'pre 1990' thing. That was just where my head was at back then.
No idea why I said pre 1990. New thread needed maybe.

Think it's good to have the perspective of time to evaluate an album as classic. Still a good thread.

stereolab - "emperor tomato ketchup"....i dont know why this passed me by when it came out. amazing. the second best stereolab album

1,2 and 4 are the groop at their very best but most of the rest doesn't move me. It's interesting that it's widely considered their best album when it's totally a transitional record I to their tortoise/high llamas jazzy ish phase

Maybe MAQ is the more transition-y album actually... That's where they started to use more "exotic" chords + presence of "fiery yellow"

Good Kid MAAD City

I didn't like Section 80 when it came out and for some reason I skipped GKMC, came back around to it after being impressed with TPAB and oh now I get it

Louis Armstrong - The Big Band Recordings 1930-1932 (JSP 2-disc set)

Technically not an album, but amazingly great. I like this better than the Hot 5s and 7s.

Discharge - Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing

Blood on the tracks

a best of Rotary Connection has really grown on me.

& the Dusty Springfield Where Am I going? set has some extremely tasty stuff oon it.
BUt mainly I think its that Leatherface 3cd Razorblades and Aspirin that is really taking me back to around the time they came out.
I spent a lot of the summer of '90 hitching the UK following bands and it seemed that every time i went to see them I'd wind up at some free festival afterwards. BUt their own gigs were something else. I've really got to dig out the more recent cds I have by them and see if they are as good.

Have you heard Horsebox? I absolutely love that album. I go back to it more often than Mush, even.

I need more Leatherface in my life. punk that sounds like motorhead is my favorite kind of punk

aerosmith - rocks

― dynamicinterface, Wednesday, October 21, 2015 7:23 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's good to see this album mentioned. Hearing Aerosmith's '70s work is an absolute revelation to those who are only really familiar with what they did from the late '80s onwards. Here in the UK, Aerosmith weren't really visible until their best days were long behind them.

I think the 2 cds I have somewhere by Leatherface are The Last and Horsebox, so i do need to find them.
Not sure why I didn't have the earlier stuff, possibly lack of money at the time they came out.

Discharge - Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing

I also heard this for the first time recently and yeah it was great

^^yess, in line with my motorhead comment as well

One of the Sanctuary sets seemed to have most of the essential Discharge material on. Not sure if it's still in print. I noticed the label's Venom set seemed to have a climbing price recently.

The most recent Discharge reissues, on the Captain Oi label, are the ones to get. They come in nice digipaks, and between Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing and Why, you get all their singles and EPs from 1980-84 as bonus tracks.

I downloaded Horsebox after seeing it mentioned upthread, never even having heard of Leatherface, and holy fukk mind blown. Thx.

"Meet The Residents"

I downloaded Horsebox after seeing it mentioned upthread, never even having heard of Leatherface, and holy fukk mind blown. Thx.
― rip van wanko, Sunday, October 25, 2015 1:24 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Glad to hear it! I really think that album is something special. Even the guitar tones, the snare drum sound, the way the vocals are mixed in, etc. all sound pretty idiosyncratic to me, just subtly different enough to give the whole thing a distinctive feeling. That combined with the lyrics, which often have a kind of impressionistic, free-associative aspect to them, take what might otherwise be a (very very good) meat-and-potatoes sentimental punk rock record and give it this blurry, dreamlike quality that I find really wonderful.

And yeah now that brimstead mentions it, "sentimental Motorhead" might be as good a capsule summary of the Leatherface sound as any.

Pancho and Lefty by Townes Van Zandt. Holy mackerel I cannot believe it took me 43 years to get into this guy. This is one of the great songs of all time, and now there is plenty more to uh, enjoy. (He's kinda grim, but whoah what a talent)

I had my own belated discovery of Townes a couple of years back. I found The Late Great Townes van Zandt, the album that "Pancho and Lefty" is from, a little hit and miss, but I highly recommend his *other* album from 1972, High Low and In Between.

I'd recommend the Texas Troubadour set which is most of TVZ's early stuff. Pretty good throughout.
I don't know him beyond that though.
I know that there is a documentary on him that's considered classic too.

Live at the Old Quarter is a fantastic TVZ set

the whole run from our mother the mountain through late great townes van zandt is incredible

live at the old quarter is fantastic too

The Texas Troubadour box set goes up to Flyin' Shoes and Live Songs from 1973 and is consistently good as far as I can remember.
Not sure of anything after that. But that might be the most economic way of getting taht early material. THink it was going reasonably cheaply online.

Trying to think when I actually picked up my copy, and can only think that I bought it at the same time as another box set with the same title. That other one was the Proper Ernest Tubb set. I think that was just concidence.

As reported at the time, I got my (unplayed) copy for £1.50 in a charity shop... uh as reported by me on ILX, that is, not as reported on the national news or anything.

somehow missed this until today but Ulver's "Nattens Madrigal" is truly a masterpiece. i'm embarrassed now to think of all the black metal that i've loved for years that is so derivative of this.

Bitches Brew

the AE_LIVE 'official' 2014 soundboard recordings.. i think they achieved something special here

on a cartrip we listened to

The Kinks "Arthur, or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire"
Joni Mitchell "Court and Spark"

and

Donovan "Barabajagal"

and it was really interesting to talk in the car together about what it meant to feel that in each case these artists were "at the peak of their powers" or whatever, because of course there's not one measurable thing called intensity that we can just track, and the clichéd narratives of rise n fall that the kinks are making fun of sneak in the side door when we want to believe that people develop, peak, and fade in some predictable way when art/life isn't like that, and then there's the question of artists as part of a team w producers, engineers, audiences/scenes etc. versus the Lone Genius Songwriter idea (fits Joni well, Donovan poorly, Ray Davies kinda). I dunno. Classic albums, man.

court and spark

womack & womack - love wars

interesting - will give this a go. "baby i'm scared of you" is an all-time classic for sure.

Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives. I had heard Automatic Writing before and it didn't do it for me, but this is great. I love its sense of humour.

Several over Xmas including Kinks, Coltrane, Zappa, Buzzcocks but I think I'll plunk for Ten Years After's s/t.
The jazz elements are just so creamy and right. Sound incredibly hip.
Don't know why it's taken me so long to get that 1st lp since I've loved the Spoonful since my early teens. Had it on the MFP World of Blues Power or at least my family did.

I had heard it several times before but finally bought a reissue of THE SONICS - HERE ARE THE SONICS. This album merits more love, I'm not sure anyone rocked as hard as them in 1965 and it seems like a very influential album for the subsequent 10+ years of punk and garage insurgence.