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

Harvest was awesome to me at about the age of 15, but I've heard so many albums since that do the same thing better, that I almost never listen to it anymore. Even most of Neil's own Neil-and-guitar albums are better than Harvest. *shrug*

harvest is one of the few commercially extremely successful albums i love. not sure if i haven't played it to death but i remember listeing to it in a luxembourg cafe by chance about 15 years ago and it was absolutely perfect. a heart of gold is one of the few songs i used to hate because for it's softness and simple tune when i was young and love now.

69. Herbie Hancock - Sextant (1973) [96 points, 12 votes]

http://i47.tinypic.com/jrb81k.jpg

Sextant is among my top 5 records ever, it's just amazing.

― Tuomas, Tuesday, December 11, 2007 3:33 PM (2 years ago)

Herbie Hancock's 'Sextant' (1973?), sounds like the Aphex Twin

― dave q, Wednesday, August 22, 2001 8:00 PM (8 years ago)

It's interesting to speculate what would've happened if Herbie and Gleeson had continued their collaboration from where it ended on Sextant, instead of Herbie forming the Headhunters. Maybe Herbie's sensibility for funk rhythms and Gleeson's electronic experimentalism could've lead them to techno? "Rain Dance" is pretty much proto-techno already, all it needs is an added drum machine beat.

― Tuomas, Saturday, January 10, 2009 10:18 AM (11 months ago)

I go with Herbie Hancock's ["Rain Dance"] from Sextant. Play that to people and then go ... that was 1973 they just won't believe it.

― phil, Wednesday, August 22, 2001 8:00 PM (8 years ago)

GET IN THERE!

cool!

so far 5 from my ballot have shown up, but I can't see more than 10 others I voted for making it.

I think headhunters will make it but doubt the others will sadly

Oh, Harvest had to be so much higher, it's a lovely thing. It's also responsible for one of the most deliciously excruciating moments of my life, when a work colleague got drunk one Friday evening and started getting all teary-eyed about what a good guy his old man was, then sat up on his barstool and air-guitared and sang 'Old Man' for us all.

That's a touching story, but it doesn't make me like the album any more than I do already. ;)

68. Stevie Wonder - Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974) [97 points, 10 votes]

http://i50.tinypic.com/2s0fko5.jpg

Stevie Wonder's "Fulfillingness First Finale" is the best R&B album ever...

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Sunday, October 19, 2003 3:53 PM (6 years ago)

Fulfillingness' First Finale has always bugged the shit out of me.

― The Reverend, Tuesday, November 20, 2007 8:10 AM (2 years ago)

“When I was at that point where you start getting involved in music, Stevie had that run with Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Fulfillingness’ First Finale and Innervisions, and then Songs in the Key of Life. Those are as brilliant a set of five albums as we’ve ever seen.” — Barack Obama (via Rolling Stone)

― Johnny Fever, Wednesday, June 25, 2008 2:57 PM (1 year ago)

^ awesome set of tributes

Geir + Rev + Obama = comedy gold!

Awesome - my favorite Stevie Wonder album and my #2 vote overall.

x-post.

for a minute there I thought that read Geir + Rev = Obama.

Goodness, no! You'd need, I don't know, a square-root in there somewhere!

haha!

*mind explodes*

Have we finally and truly entered the post-racial era?

67. Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979) [98 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]

http://i45.tinypic.com/5nsyns.jpg

totally classic. not a single second of filler. 'what a day' and 'persuasion' are my personal picks.

― stirmonster (stirmonster), Monday, March 13, 2006 5:14 PM (3 years ago)

have we FINALLY found the mythic "album that everyone on ILX likes"? in the shape of THROBBING GRISTLE?? awesome.

― electrogrouse (haitch), Tuesday, March 14, 2006 7:16 AM (3 years ago)

Well it is their pop album

― Rotatey Diskers With Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, March 14, 2006 7:17 AM (3 years ago)

(Used the super-rare Fetish version of the cover just for fun!)

at last! an album i *might* have voted for (but didn't, because i haven't heard it) (this will be rectified)

There's your jazz and funk you guys.

shocked...SHOCKED!...to go back to my ballot and realize that this hadn't made the final cut! Great album.

was my first place vote, figured it would be much higher!

lol xxp

I voted for this excellent record. My ballot was unordered which is maybe not very strategic but once I got down to 40 it felt ridiculous to pretend one album was better than another.

One album is always better than another. A scenario to imagine for those who have difficulty with this -- in the next five seconds, all your top 40 albums are going to disappear forever, never to be heard again, save for the one you grab. Repeat as necessary.

(Tie) 65. Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) [99 points, 9 votes]

http://i50.tinypic.com/2hp1tog.jpg

[T]he downside to much of post-Meddle Pink Floyd is that the songs are generally more interesting when they were still kicking them around on stage before going in to "properly" record them. Everyone owes it to themselves to track down a 1972 bootleg of DSOTM when it was still called "Eclipse." Radically different in places and occasionally more interesting.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, June 15, 2005 11:44 PM (4 years ago)

The Coldplay of the '70s!

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, June 16, 2005 5:26 AM (4 years ago)

i wouldn't consider a top 100 of the seventies complete without pink floyd. dark side of the moon has to be the one.

― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Saturday, April 23, 2005 1:27 PM (4 years ago)

somehow that confuses me

the album with more votes should win any tie, shouldn't it? i can't imagine the other joint-65 getting only 9 votes. DSOTM is beloved of a few ilxors, but it's REALLY beloved

(predictable response time) This is the other top 100?

OK, now there's two albums I really detest here.

I used to hate it, but I enjoy it in a, er, blue moon. I still enjoy this too though: http://www.mr-agreeable.net/story.lasso?section=Reaper&id=51

Pretty astonished "20 Jazz Funk Greats " didn't place on the first poll – I thought that thing had its own church here.

xxp Whats the other one, sonofstan?

gonna guess 'imagine'

(Tie) 65. Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark (1974) [99 points, 9 votes]

http://i47.tinypic.com/4sbjmv.jpg

Both For the Roses and Court and Spark are arguably better than Blue.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, August 29, 2003 9:49 AM (6 years ago)

She's got so much stuff going on in each song, so good, like if Kate Bush was a creepy old lady who made you eat dusty circus peanuts when you visited her house as opposed to K8 who would, I don't know, let you paint her dog or something.

― kind-hearted, sensitive keytar player (Abbott), Monday, July 6, 2009 3:09 PM (5 months ago)

Lyrically she is much more than the fay hippie she's been portrayed as. She's got a great gift of observation re. people and relationships, which I guess puts her in the 'mature' category... Also, that kind of hippie outlook, she started out with, gave her a great perspective on the end of that dream during the 70s, as fantastically displayed on her classic trilogy: Court & Spark, Hissing of Summer Lawns and Hejira

― Fabrice (Fabfunk), Friday, August 29, 2003 4:02 AM (6 years ago)

*mind explodes*

― Electric Universe (wherever that is) (acoleuthic), Tuesday, 5 January 2010 22:58 (Yesterday) Bookmark

RE: DSOM

The Coldplay of the '70s!

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, June 16, 2005 5:26 AM (4 years ago)

That's like some serious frickin' zen koan shit being thrown there.

64. The Pop Group - Y (1979) [99 points, 10 votes]

http://i47.tinypic.com/280qzwk.jpg

Strikes me that Y is a bit more accessible (however fleetingly) given the comparatively spacious production, the seemingly more varied instrumentation and the fact that guitarist Gareth Sanger actually coughs up an honest to goodness riff on occaision. There's also stubborn albeit skewed elements of jazz and dub to Y which make it just a tad easier to digest than the thorny, blackened No New York.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, September 20, 2005 2:39 PM (4 years ago)

'y' contains two of my all time favourite songs - 'thief of fire' and 'we are time' but it has a couple of weak moments.

― stirmonster (stirmonster), Tuesday, September 20, 2005 3:31 PM (4 years ago)

Maybe I'm projecting, but it seems to be an album that music snobs use to outdo each other in bouts of oneupsmanship. "Oh, you don't have Y on disc, eh? You're missing out, man!" "No, I actually have it on vinyl, if you must know!"

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:04 PM (4 years ago)

court and spark should be higher! so so so so so good.

63. Al Green - The Belle Album (1977) [100 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]

http://i49.tinypic.com/1222sf5.jpg

the oft-maligned "The Belle Album" - the transitional one - is quite good.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Monday, April 7, 2003 10:45 AM (6 years ago)

"Belle Album" as far as I can tell has never been maligned. I have the orig. old Hi LP of it--I feel safe in asserting that it's Green's greatest album.

― Jess Hill (jesshill), Monday, April 7, 2003 11:39 AM (6 years ago)

al green is the ramones of soul, bitches. all his songs sound damn near the same but are perhaps more brilliant because of this. can i copyright this analogy? ha

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Sunday, June 5, 2005 3:14 PM (4 years ago)

The Belle Album is...wonderful way of dealing with born-again-ism ("it's you I want but Him that I need"...the holy trinity love triangle)..."Feels Like Summer" couldn't be a more appropriate song title, and "Dream", well, if I ever get hitched (ILM Poster In Unmarried SHOCKER!) that will be "our" song...(if I can sell it, which I'm sure I can)...

― henry s, Monday, December 31, 2007 11:29 AM (2 years ago)

Speaking as the guy who had this as his #1 pick, this should be much much higher. It's my default answer to the desert island disc conundrum. I also consider it one of the half dozen or so greatest pieces of religious art ever made - one of the very few that effectively communicates the sensation of religious ecstasy. I'm glad that at least by placing it at #1, I made sure it placed.

Also I enthusiastically endorse the Green/Ramones analogy, since they're tied as my favorite recording artists of the 70s.

I'm nearly ashamed to say that all the Al Green I have is the Greatest Hits album. I'm definitely about to expand my familiarity with him, and The Belle Album seems like a fine place to begin.

If you at all put off by ostensive displays of religiousity, you might want to try I'm Still in Love with You first. That said, one the things that makes Belle such a great piece of religious art is because it's so much of a piece with everything else Green ever did. Unlike gospel, for example, this can't be mistaken as religious hysteria, and it's not a collective experience at all - it's Green's personal, idiosyncratic embrace of the Lord - made on Green's own perverse terms. It's like Green is alone in his own private universe with his Lord, and sorry babe, but no one else is invited. It's way it's essentially the narrative climax of the entire saga of Southern Soul - religious ecstasy gets folded back into the language of seduction, of secular cockmanship. He resolves the sex/manna/self/collective/relgion tensions that motivated soul by eliminating all meaningful distinctions between the multiple dichotomies that had generated the form.

If you *are* at all...

it's wayBelle is essentially...

Belle (the title track) is a near perfect song.

The story of Al Green through the 70s is one I want to read -- is there a good book?

i've never heard the Belle Album, but if it's so religiously charged why does AMG call it "the last secular work he would make for many years"?

I don't want to gum-up this thread with a YouTube video, but the songBelle is here.

It's not a gospel work, so I won't begrudge somebody calling it a secular album, even if it can largely be understood as somebody's expression of their Christian fervor to a secular ear. And certainly not every song directly relates to that experience mind you - nothing about Georgia Boy communicates much beyond the obvious. Also, AMG doesn't know that the hell it's talking about - Truth n Time is his last secular studio album until the 90s, and the secular Live in Tokyo was released in 82, so I don't know how they arrive at that judgment.