This Is The Thread Where We Praise And Canonize Paul McCartney's "Ram"

"Fluff, sure, but darn catchy fluff!" - Roger Catlin, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996.

"Brimming with melodies and intriguing ideas!" - William Ruhlmann, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.

"Most of the songs are so lightweight they float away even as Paulie layers them down with caprices!" - Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.

"There are some nice moments...It's like watching someone juggle five guitars!" - Playboy, 9-71.

"wailing sentimentality!" - Billboard, 1971.

"I don't see how someone can play it and take in all that stuff and say 'I don't like it!" - Paul McCartney

?!

Jody say it ain't so! It's a decent record. I don't LOVE it or anything, but it's ok. I got a vinyl copy for free. "Too Many People" is a great song.

'Heart of the Country' is a nice jazzy thing that if it had been on the White Album and had some input from the other beatles would have been 10x better.

Paul's 'wigging out' moments like around 3'20 of 'Too Many People' are fucking deadly.

Haha. Yuppers.

I think I said this on another thread once, but I can only listen to Paul in moderation. I like many of his songs on the White Album, but if you listen to them all in a row, you'd be dead by Blackbird > Rocky Racoon.

Too Many People
3 Legs
Ram On
Dear Boy
Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
Smile Away
Heart of the Country
Monkberry Moon Delight
Eat at Home
Long Haired Lady
Ram On (Reprise)
The Back Seat of My Car

*SNICKER*

I tried listening once. It wasn't very good.

Me no understand.

"Get Back" = Great
"Eat at Home" = Stinks?

Me no understand.

"Lady Madonna" = Classic
"Monkberry Moon Delight" = "The nadir in the decomposition of the sixties?"

Me no understand.

Has 'Monkberry Moon Delight' ever been sampled in a hip-hop track? 'Cause it damn well should be.

this record is great, my favorite Macca solo work

Absolutely.

Surely a great album, although he has done several better ones after he broke up Wings again.

Lately I've been wanting to add Big Barn Bed (from Red Rose Speedway) to Ram...it's got the weird catchy pot-smoking Ram vibe so much. I wonder if it was recorded at the same time?

Ah, it was. I thought I remembered a snippet of it on Ram.

i really like "ram".

the album with the bonus song "oh woman oh why" is the one to get, simply cos that song's a really funky stones-y dirge.

Perhaps some will find this interesting, perhaps not...

...but I'm rerecording "Ram" all by myself, track by track. Have a listen!

The Ram Project

Can't listen right now, but nice idea. I haven't ever heard Ram, i should probably track down the original before checking out your version anyway. Oh, and i've read that book, Tim, it's really good.

the 2004 posts are nuts. i don't even like Macca all that much but Ram and his first album are great

yeah that is weird. I don't think the tide has turned on this album in the past few years; as far as I remember it's been considered a classic since the 80's at least. I dont' think it was super well received when it came out but that feeling didn't last long. maybe people were just feeling bad in 2004, what with bush being reelected and the world beginning to suck.

Ram: the choice of the Obama generation.

yeah pretty strange to see spittle-flecked contrarianism on ILM eh

its like the Stevie Wonder c/d thread where the first 100 posts are all people complaining about his sappy balladry

Nice work thus far Davey D!

kudos on all those Dear Boy vocals! damn

Thanks! Just finished "Eat At Home," BTW.

http://www.paulmccartney.com/web/guest/news/-/blogs/paul-and-linda-mccartney-s-legendary-album-ram-set-for-deluxe-reissue?_33_redirect=/web/guest&#p_33#top

RAM will be available across a variety of different formats:

Standard Edition: 1 CD digipak Single disc, digitally remastered 12- track standard edition

Special Edition: 2 CD digipak Remastered album and 8-track bonus audio CD including rarities, b-sides and the hit single, 'Another Day'.

Deluxe Edition Box Set: 4 CD/1 DVD box set & download Remastered album, bonus audio CD, remastered Mono album, Thrillington CD, bonus film DVD, 112 page book, 5 prints in vintage style photographic wallet, 8 full size facsimiles of Paul's original handwritten lyric sheets and mini photographic book of outtakes from the original album cover photo shoot.

Hi-Res: 24bit 96kHz files of the remastered and bonus audio CD, accessed via a download code inserted on a card within the deluxe edition package

Vinyl: 2LP 180gm, gatefold vinyl with download Remastered album, bonus audio disc plus digital download of all 20 tracks

Limited Edition Mono Vinyl: 1LP, Remastered mono album

Digital: RAM will be available for download across a variation of digital configurations including Mastered for iTunes and High Resolution

Right...

Love this album. So many memories of my grandmother's house in the South of France where she had this record (used to belong to my aunt). Of course, being French, she would mishear a lot of lyrics and on "Another Day" (Paul's single from the time) she scanned the chorus as going: "Sau-sage/Sau-sage/Sometimes I feel sau-sage"...

His b-sides during this period run good to great

ufo don't forget to listen to "another day", as well, which was a non-album single recorded in the ram sessions and released as his first post-beatles single. it's track 1 on the second disc of one of the remastered versions. it fits right into the Ram ethos and sounds great

"Monkberry whatever" irritates the hell out of me - like a bad Cookie Monster impression.

joyless opinion

also wtf you don't like "dear boy" without qualification? macca haters get out

COOKIE

^Never gets old.

i intend to keep doing it, in an effort to prove that it cannot get old!

I cannot fathom disliking the production on Ram.

the divisive recording where some listeners -- but not all -- distinctly hear "COOKIE!" repeated on every other beat throughout the entire album

Only John said "Cookie" ("Hold On") - when he does it, it was great. Paul just drives it into the ground.

"Dear Boy" is all right. Honestly, Macca hater? That's like the GOP with their cult-like "RINO" paranoia, this isn't some doctrinal purity test.

If confirmed for the McCartney Supreme Court, will you agree to uphold the sanctity of “ram on”?

welcome, ufo, you're in for many treats, however deep you dive.

this album just rules. imho one of paul's most consistent set of songs, and the combination of the kind of country-rock bedrock with all the different slightly offbeat choices in arrangement and production REALLY works for me. would never have compared it to The White Album before, but that totally clicks.

My little sister and I quote bits of this album at each other like it's fucking Withnail & I

"Weee-a-leedle be a gypsy gadaround" is a weird thing for people to overhear in the supermarket

TOO MANY REACHIN FOR A PIECE OF CAKE

"monkberry moon delight" is my favorite solo paul song. clearly i am the only one who grasps the true essence of paul.

“Monkberry” was my entry point for RAM. I won’t stan for it now, but it’s an essential piece of an essential album so

Also wtf, the mix and production are perfect! It’s not supposed to be an Eagles record - it’s deliberately RAMshackle.

Some folks go so far as to say that Paul invented indie-pop with RAM. I dunno about that. If he did, he did it by accident (he once said something to the effect that the critics ruined RAM for him and that fans made him love it again, which suggests that he wasn’t as sure in his vision for it as it might seem).

I just wish he had other records I could enjoy as much as I do this one. I like my Paul rough & scrappy.

I bet Linda did too.

"monkberry moon delight" is my favorite solo paul song. clearly i am the only one who grasps the true essence of paul.

Best song on RAM

When was the Cookie Monster first seen on American tv?

Wiki says he was in the very first episode of Sesame Street, November 10, 1969, trying to eat a letter "W." Apparently he got his name sometime in the 1969-1970 season, and "C is for Cookie" in 1971-1972. Similar "eating" Muppet characters, with non-cookie themes, appeared in Jim Henson TV spots developed in 1966, with the first one making air in 1967.

AM OFTEN MAKING AIR AFTER EATING COOKIE

sounds like paul imagining what smile was supposed to be like, and not landing too far off

yeah this was exactly my thought about most of the album. also not too far off the vibe of the weird post-smile late 60s beach boys albums & but certainly more fully realised than those

and thanks karl for the "another day" mention, would have certainly forgotten to check it out otherwise

my piano was boldly outspoken in attempts to repeat its refrain

didn't mean to be so aggro about this but if you're like "i, a person who likes the beatles and has thoughts about paul mccartney, only like two of the songs on his excellent album ram without qualification," afaic you are trying not to like it. free yourself

i listen to RAM more than any other Beatles/solo release. it's very hard for me to not feel charmed and inspired by a happy family man living out on a farm making loopy macca music.

Some folks go so far as to say that Paul invented indie-pop with RAM. I dunno about that.

How about Paul invented Elephant 6?

Bees are buzzing about my sweet delectable baby
Birds are humming about their big surprise
Who’s your favorite person, dear phenomenal lady?
I belong to the girl with the flashing eyes

I wanna horse
I wanna sheep

Another Day and Oh Woman, Oh Why are so rad

didn't mean to be so aggro about this but if you're like "i, a person who likes the beatles and has thoughts about paul mccartney, only like two of the songs on his excellent album ram without qualification," afaic you are trying not to like it. free yourself

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Saturday, December 11, 2021 12:35 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Quoting without further comments

First time I heard this album I couldn't sleep the night because bits from it kept circling round my head

I know it's tongue-in-cheek, but in all seriousness, I don't like disliking music. It brings me no pleasure in having less music to enjoy, especially from someone who's already had a hand in creating so much of my favorite music. I give everything many chances because I don't believe in dismissing any work on the first try, or even the second or third time around. If people see a lot in something, I want to see what they're seeing too.

I've played Ram and really all of Paul's music many times - I still hold on to a lot of it "just in case" and that includes a copy of Ram. Even the worst stuff has something brilliant - a hook, the singing, a great bass line, etc. - and sometimes that feels like a saving grace but a lot of times it's frustrating coming from someone who's capable of delivering the whole package. I'm glad you guys love Ram, it amazes me that it's got a devoted following that swears by it, but honestly, I've never been able to sit through the whole thing without getting massively irritated half the time. I mean, Adam Sandler has his fans too, I can accept that without liking his shit. Meanwhile, I get a lot more out of Band on the Run, Run Devil Run and Memory Almost Full (which tbh I rejiggered with four cuts from Chaos & Creation but that's another story). I like Ram more than a lot of other Wings/McCartney albums, but I just don't see it being this landmark achievement of any kind. Calling it ground zero for indie pop always seemed like an enormous stretch, one that ignores a lot of music from the previous decade.

I guess that should be "I dislike Ram less than a lot of the Wings/McCartney albums"

It got dropped during some recent phone upgrade but for about 12 years my iPhone ringtone was the ukulele intro to “Ram On.”

One of the things I found listening to all the 70s McCartney releases was that the musical quality didn't correspond with any other aspect. You couldn't say, "He's only good when he:
- rocks (or does ballads)
- is serious (or is whimsical)
- is autobiographical (or writes characters)
- sounds familiar (or experiments)
- does rock and pop (or does other genres)"
...because he's done both good and bad material of all sorts. The one thing that unites the bad songs for me is a certain self-conscious attention to effects, like we can see Paul looking over the song with an arched eyebrow, thinking, "This is really gonna get 'em!"

Sure but there’s something about McCartney’s sheer skill as a performer and songwriter that almost always elevates the song above whatever conceit he’s concocted (this is super obvious in Get Back where his farting around on the soundstage is almost always interesting).

I think in part that’s why his work is so easy to go back to and re-examine. The conceit is transparent—“I’m going to do Tin Pan Alley/Buddy Holly//Little Richard/Elvis Costello here!”—but the execution is almost always more interesting in some way, even if not always mind-blowingly so.

Back on topic, I find “Hey Diddle” to be an absolute ear-worm. The sweet blend of Linda’s vocals with Paul’s, the third grade concert recorder interlude, the lilt in Linda’s voice on the line “Ah but don’t you fear/The next time around/She’ll be there.” Even if it wasn’t on the record proper, this thing just feels like the apotheosis of the Ram aesthetic.

'hey diddle; is indeed great, love this record but hadn't listened to unreleased cuts. 'rode all night' is downright weird