Listen to an album you've never heard by an artist you never listen to and then tell us about it!

Long Distance Operator and Yazoo Street Scandal off the Basement Tapes are both pretty funky, but that's the Band i guess

…Which brings up Planet Waves… “Tough Mama” (and others) are hella funky

I wouldn't really call John Wesley Harding funky, but a lot of the songs on there have pretty tight grooves for such a stripped down, acoustic-leaning album.

xp here's a few 1959 tracks I like that I didn't see on there

Ronnie Dawson - Rockin' Bones
Jeff Daniels - Switch Blade Sam
Little Richard - She Knows How To Rock
Jackie DeShannon - Trouble
Esquerita - She Left Me Crying

Jordan, would love to read a thread where you listen to Dylan albums. You frequently come at classic albums from interesting angles.

Would love to hear what you think of the next the next record - if you like Maggie's Farm, you probably will also like Tombstone Blues.

Long Distance Operator and Yazoo Street Scandal off the Basement Tapes are both pretty funky, but that's the Band i guess

Yeah those are great, especially the latter. Super New Orleans feel. I guess that's why everyone loves Levon Helm. Never heard them before, the Band are another huge blind spot for me.

xp haha thank you, maybe I will (or I'll just keep going here).

Thanks Jordan/CP! - have added those to the end (except the Little Richard as it's an archive release, he was in one of his evangelical preacher phases in '59 and I'm still trying to go by recording date if possible)

Btw re: Bringing It All Back Home, I meant to add that Mr. Tambourine Man is clearly the worst song on the record. :)

:-0

aww, I love Mr. Tambourine Man

gonna listen to Malesch now, I've heard of Agitation Free but they've always been on the to-do list

jordan, you ever hear the byrds' version?

Sorry! No I haven't, I'll put it on after this 90 minute Charles Lloyd album.

Btw re: Bringing It All Back Home, I meant to add that Mr. Tambourine Man is clearly the worst song on the record. :)

― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Tuesday, March 26, 2024 3:33 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I take it back, no more Dylan takes from Jordan ;)

one thing I really do want is stuff that sounds like the first track on the debut Ash Ra Tempel album

I haven't heard any! I can't even tell how they made it. Let us know if you find anything comparable.

Re drum and bass albums, people in this thread could make a tremendous mistake, OR they could go straight to the best album of all time (Grooverider’s Hardstep Selection Volume II):

https://on.soundcloud.com/Gp3GBuadpiSuQioDA

Nabozo, keep going with Galaxie 500 i think they just get stronger as they go.
― scott seward, Tuesday, March 26, 2024 5:32 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks. I hear slightly different influences on the second album: some jangle, The Cure, twee jams, prettiness alla Durutti Column, a lot of things that the term "slowcore" obfuscates. It's like a time capsule. Snowstorm is a beauty. At times I have to pretend I don't hear the vocals, the melodic lines are not so varied, but overall it works a charm.

I love hearing Jordan enjoying Dylan’s funkiness. I’ve come to realize that that almost everyone influenced by him leaves off that part of his style.

Martina McBride, Wild Angels and Evolution: dull and duller (or maybe it was duller and dull).

Re drum and bass albums, people in this thread could make a tremendous mistake

I had no idea listening to a single album one time was such a fraught experience.

I don't think I've ever listened to that Grooverider record, Tim, will be doing that today ty. :)

i'm listening to nektar's remember the future via randomly skimming this thread. these guys sure did hear the yes album, but no complaints about 35 minutes of totally decent prog.

i love nektar. they could jam up a storm.

over the years i have determined that this is my fave by them. double album where they recorded live in the studio. no overdubs. they shred. engineered by dieter dierks. it sounds so good.

https://www.discogs.com/master/25991-Nektar-Sounds-Like-This

a double live in the studio heavy prog album made in two days. more people should try it.

putting this on now--let's fuckin' rock

I had no idea listening to a single album one time was such a fraught experience

I was kidding of course, but on a slightly serious note I think choice matters a bit more when a single album is likely to act as a stand-in for a person’s initial experience and understanding of a genre.

For instance Kemistry and Storm’s DJ Kicks is a good d&b DJ mix for early 1999 but substantially less good than pretty much every preceding K&S DJ mix (none of which were released commercially, sadly) for the basic reason that the entire scene was busily effacing almost everything good about the music at that point.

OTOH if the objective is to find out what happened to d&b at the end of the nineties then it is the perfect choice.

I’m listening to Orbital for the first time (In Sides) and am both charmed and wondering what the heck took me so long.

yeah i came to orbital late too. i don't know why i thought they were...something else. cheesier? not serious? but i had the wrong idea about them for some reason. better late than never!

In fairness they can be pretty cheesy at times, though not on In Sides.

a double live in the studio heavy prog album made in two days. more people should try it.

― scott seward, Wednesday,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_Worldwide

Is barefoot jerry considered prog?

no. progressive country rock.

Fair enough

That Grooverider mix does indeed rule, ty. Also it's way more syncopated and less 2-steppy that I expected given 'hardstep'.

Maybe I'm confusing hardstep with jump up? I love the energy and basslines on the DJ Aphrodite radio set, I've come back to it a bunch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxWjgEJgd9Q

I listened to the AR & The Machines record recommended. I enjoyed it when it was spacey and droney, but it kept going back to a bit of 70s blues rock guitar and it would take me out of it. I enjoyed it but don’t think I’d go back again.

Totally get that the boogie guitar pushed you out of the space -- that's what pulled me in though, seeing how the German sense of cosmic grew out of the Anglo sense of cosmic at the time.

echo is more solid space. the double album that he put out a year later.

i was thinking about doing the new beyonce but holy hell billionaire statement albums are friggin' looooooong. so long. like as long as texas. as long as peak oil capitalism and as long as it takes to drill all the oil you will need to make all the 200 gram vinyl copies of this thing. jesus. plus, you know, half cornball stump speeches and half okay r&b. its like homework. i think little kids would love the fun stuff on it though. they should make a 30 minute little kids version. for me.

Yeah, it's 78 minutes, like it's still 1996 and they're trying to maximize the amount of music that can fit on a CD (the new Church album is 73 minutes... i thought everyone stopped doing this. are CD's back??)
"Cowboy Carter" wasn't as country as i was expecting, but it went out of it's way to head off any criticism that it wasn't country enough (and that whole digression about "what even is genre?" was a bit hokey). In retrospect, i think it lost me when the second song was a cover of Blackbird, complete with foot-tapping.

Jordan, that DJ Aphrodite mix above was a fun way to start this morning, but i kept wishing he wouldn't get on the mic so often because it kept interrupting the vibe. Will try the Grooverider next.

i was thinking about doing the new beyonce but holy hell billionaire statement albums are friggin' looooooong. so long. like as long as texas. as long as peak oil capitalism and as long as it takes to drill all the oil you will need to make all the 200 gram vinyl copies of this thing. jesus. plus, you know, half cornball stump speeches and half okay r&b. its like homework. i think little kids would love the fun stuff on it though. they should make a 30 minute little kids version. for me.

Never expect somebody to encapsulate my thoughts so perfectly, but... this sounds right. Feels wearying before I even start. And I know some of it will be fine to great, but, hard to work up the gumption to take this kinda thing in sometimes.

I'll just keep playing this new Playboi Carti/Camila Cabello track over and over again. Gives a lot more than it asks. Alphonse Pierre called it "some good ol’ fashioned expensive nonsense" and that sounds about right.

Decided to apply this challenge to 1969, my birth year. I looked at various "albums from 1969" lists until I found one I didn't know: Almendra, the debut album by the Argentine psychedelic band of the same name. It's great! Not a million miles away from other Latin American rock of the same era, but drawing on some Argentine folk and cultural forms. A lot of it is kind of dreamy, but some of it really rocks. Like this track, which is fantastic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg2EdtBguc4

Grateful Dead - Workingman's Dead
Honestly I'd never really heard them. They're not so much of a UK thing so they were hardly turning up on the radio. Anyway this was completely tedious, I was skipping through to the next track by side 2. People who haven't heard The Band think they sound like this, and are pleasantly surprised to find they don't. This is why I always avoided drugs. Maybe it's not a good album to start with? Therefore I moved on to...

Aoxomoxoa
Not much better, this band is not for me I now realise. Too much dum-diddle-dum-dum-diddle-dum-dum. And the 8-minute droney vocal thing would have worked better in the hands of Yoko Ono. No doubt I should be listening to Dick's Pick's Vol. 137 or whatever instead, but you know what I think I'll pass.

I tried listening to Aoxomoxoa once and had much the same reaction.

It's not fair to drugs to blame them for Grateful Dead

Everywhere I've lived in the US there has been a weekly Grateful Dead radio show being broadcast -- either the syndicated "Grateful Dead Hour" or something similar but locally-produced. Catching one of these shows is the only time I've ever heard the band and it always seems to me like the worst music. I understand they have a huge cult following but it's mystifying that these radio shows exist, and have done so for decades.

I have literally never heard the Grateful Dead played on the radio. I've also never had a conversation about the Grateful Dead with anyone. Never known anyone to own one of their albums. Yes, US and UK, chalk and cheese basically.

I'll just keep playing this new Playboi Carti/Camila Cabello track over and over again. Gives a lot more than it asks. Alphonse Pierre called it "some good ol’ fashioned expensive nonsense" and that sounds about right.

― mr.raffles, Friday, March 29, 2024 8:03 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

mr raffles listen to whole lotta red challenge