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

34. Funkadelic - Standing on the Verge of Getting it On (1974) [128 points, 9 votes, 1 first place vote]

http://i48.tinypic.com/1z2fx1v.jpg

Locked in a mortal battle with America... for my favorite first-half-of-the-'70s P-Funk effort. Comparable to Maggot Brain in that the first 2/3 are brilliant ("I'll Stay" is devastating; the title track is one of their best dance songs; "Alice In My Fantasies" is in their hard rock top 3), but it has a better ending ("Jimmy's Got A Little Bit of Bitch In Him" is a hoot and "Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts" is as good as one could hope from a "Maggot Brain" reprise with psych-religious lyrics).

― Stupornaut (natepatrin), Tuesday, March 29, 2005 11:02 AM (4 years ago)

You've got your heavy-ass guitar shit, your weirdo psych-babble, your funkier groove stuff...it's a pretty nice precis of the early-mid Funkadelic sound.

― Zack Richardson (teenagequiet), Monday, October 25, 2004 7:42 PM (5 years ago)

Standing on the Verge - its kinda the apex of their tighter "rock" period (lolz thx Ron Bykowski) and it doesn't have a weak track on it.

― the taint of Macca is strong (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, October 1, 2009 4:26 PM (3 months ago)

I haven't heard that album. I need to!

I haven't either. In fact, my exposure to Funkadelic consists only of Maggot Brain and Free Your Mind. It's long past time for me to be investigating further.

its good rev, way better than maggot brain imo.

where's all the parliament? or was it all buried in the orig 100?

STARSAILOR #1

better than maggot brain!

mothership and funkentelechy (along w/ maggot brain) made the og poll. don't see other parliament albums placing at this point

33. Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run (1975) [128 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote]

http://i50.tinypic.com/2eft7y9.jpg

I fucking love Born to Run to death....the fuckin' break into "at nite we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway american dream"....fuck yeah it's over the top drama queen theatrics and god bless it....it's one of those songs i instantly loved as a child when i heard it.....it made things seem bigger and more important than they really were.....Coldplay's "Clocks" is prolly like that for little kids now.

I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE!

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, January 4, 2005 7:16 PM (5 years ago)

"At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines" gives me goose pimples, for real. And since I've given up the ghost of boring anti-bombast punk purism (a phase which lasted me more or less the couple months in 1994 between hearing Ramones for the first time and hearing London Calling for the first time), I've come to appreciate how well-structured the track is, going beyond just verse-chorus-verse to a perfectly-contained mini-rock-opera that stays completely focused and builds to a completely immaculate peak (the one around the 3-minute-mark, right before the "1-2-3-4/the highway's jammed with broken heroes..."). 9 times out of 10 this personally, for me, beats some snotty kid plonking on the same chords for 2:30, muttering about boredom. Beats it with a tire iron.

― What's this place, Biblevania? (natepatrin), Tuesday, January 4, 2005 7:56 PM (5 years ago)

I hadn't listened to this record in a couple of years, but god, it still sounded great. Actually, I kept getting shivers down my spine when it was playing and it had me close to tears a few times (mostly on "Thunder Road" and "Backstreets.") Listening to this today finally settled an ILM debate for me: Music can never affect me quite as much now as it did when I was a teenager. No record I've heard in the last few years, including Loveless, has had as much affect on me as Born to Run did this morning, and I know it's not just because Born to Run is such a great album. This is a record that got to me when I was young and emotionally vulnerable in a way that I'm not anymore, at the age of 32. I still feel music very deeply and appreciate and enjoy a wider range of music than ever, but music doesn’t completely overpower me the way it did when I was 15. Oh well.

Springsteen is still a big classic, by the way, despite all the incredibly corny lines on Born to Run.

― Mark, Wednesday, January 23, 2002 8:00 PM (7 years ago)

That sleeve, I always thought it was some incredibly fat guy he was leaning on (i.e. facing against Bruce)

haha

The breakdown of my ballot is something like this:

American soul/R&B 9
Jazz 12
Funk 3
African funk/soul 3
Brazilian pop & jazz 8
Disco 3
Afro-Cuban 1
Folk 1

So far Sextant is the only album in my ballot that has showed up. (I would've voted for C'est Chic though, but somehow I missed it on the nomination list.) It's beginning to look like only one or two more will place... :(

mothership and funkentelechy (along w/ maggot brain) made the og poll. don't see other parliament albums placing at this point.

Isn't Chocolate City considered to be the second best Parliament album after Mothership Connection? Though I guess ILX prefers Funkadelic over Parliament, so CC won't probably have a chance anymore.

32. Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970) [128 points, 14 votes]

http://i46.tinypic.com/2e3bkm9.jpg

"Lick My Decals Off, Baby" is my favorite Beefheart record. I think it's the most fully-realized concept, and the band is tighter than a mosquito's ass. "Trout Mask" is wilder, but "Decals" is denser and more focused, while retaining the more wacked out rhythmic ideas of its predecessor. "Doctor Dark," the title track, and "I Wanna Find a Woman Who'll Hold My Big Toe Until I Have to Go" are just tremendous.

Plus, I like the marimba.

― J, Saturday, April 20, 2002 8:00 PM (7 years ago)

'lick my decals' is most often described as beefheart's best album by people who actually listen to beefheart. but yeah 'trout mask' is usually the one that shows up on the 100 best-of-all-time lists, which is really confusing as it is staggeringly hostile listening. I'm assuming it just gets bonus points for being one of the most single handedly bizarre records to have been released on a major label up to that point in history -- so it left a deeper mark. 'lick my decals' sounded normal in comparison once it came out a year later...

I'd tell anyone to start with 'decals' over 'trout mask'.

― jl, Monday, April 7, 2003 8:22 PM (6 years ago)

I wouldn't. Do you lower yourself slowly into a plunge pool?

i don't know if i really have an explanation for why born to run is my favorite boss album (and my number 1). it just hits me really hard. all those cheesy lines about cars and whatever feel so important and so urgent, and it emotionally moves me more than perhaps any other single album. thunder road is easily one of my favorite songs.

It's only cheesy because loads of people have done it since, but few did it since Chuck Berry till then.

(Not a Bruce fan at all, btw)

31. The Cars - The Cars (1978) [131 points, 13 votes]

http://i45.tinypic.com/2iowb7.jpg

The Cars were very important, if only because they were the first "new wave" band to be embraced by American AOR/classic-rock radio. They were sort of a "gateway drug" for millions AOR/classic- rock fans trapped in the suburbs with nothing but mainstream media for company, not to mention the fact that they subsequently influenced AOR/classic-rock artists themselves. Listen to the mid- '80s recordings of a band like, say, .38 Special. Hear all those clicky, compressed 8th-note rhythm guitar parts? Where do you think a bunch of reconstructed second-string Southern-boogie hair farmers came up with something like that?

― Lee G, Sunday, May 19, 2002 8:00 PM (7 years ago)

"Just What I Needed" has been my least favourite track off the debut since, oh, 1980; but through no fault of The Cars. Rather, blame it on a cover band featuring a friend's older brother on drums. She and I sat in their basement one afternoon for hours and listened to her brother's band attempt "Just What I Needed" 92 times, only to be thwarted every time by the idiot vocalist who apparently had no concept of rhythm, 'cause he'd start singing "...Wasting all my time" a beat too early - EVERY time! Kinda ruined the song for us all, for all time.

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Monday, November 28, 2005 12:42 PM (4 years ago)

there are moments when i think that the cars are one of the more unjustly neglected new wave acts out there. if anything, i think that they're due for a re-evaluation by the corny indie fuXors community any day now.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, November 15, 2004 1:23 AM (5 years ago)

A-little-embarrassed-but-hell-not-really is the best way to communicate your enthusiasm for music. Those 'Born To Run' comments are fantastic!

Oh yeah, I wish I had commentary like that available for ALL of these albums.

Strange thing: lot of records so far from 1970, including a few I was honestly surprised to find out came out in the 70s

Cosmo's Factory
Live at Leeds
Moondance
American Beauty
Yeti
Madcap Laughs
Free Your Mind...
Starsailor
Lick My Decals

Madcap Laughs just squeaked in btw. I think it was released the first week of Janurary, 1970.

or January, even.

It's a cover of Pilot's "January" by Scooby Doo

I gotta say, as an ILM johnny come lately, I've been lurking on this poll and I'm very suprised that the stuff in it wasnt already canonical, in many cases. I havent seen the original poll, but this one seems ... more ILM?

Good albums in the first poll for certain, but (for me) it contained more stuff I say I like, and this one contains more stuff I actually like and listen to regularly.

Original poll results here: ILX 70s album poll - results

Well now that I look back at the original poll results, that's not entirely true. I listen to gobs of those albums regularly too. The 70s were really just an embarrassing chest of riches as far as music goes, especially considering how much we've still managed to leave out.

Aha, thanks for the link! Good to see Low way up in the list (just heard it for the first time recently and was blown away).

I guess a whole decade is impossible to nail down, as much as ILM loves to try!

Fever, do you ever actually sleep?

Good job on all this!

I guess a whole decade is impossible to nail down, as much as ILM loves to try!

Yeah, I feel like it's easier to break the decade in half-- with 70-74 as the tail-end of the '60s, where Country Rock, Prog, Soul, Free Jazz and Hard Rock continued along roads forged from 65-69 (of course with things like Krautrock, Roxy, Stooges, reggae, funk pointing toward the future)--and the 2nd half dominated by punk, disco, new wave, early hip-hop, metal (setting the stage for the 1st half of the 80s.)

Isn't Chocolate City considered to be the second best Parliament album after Mothership Connection? Though I guess ILX prefers Funkadelic over Parliament, so CC won't probably have a chance anymore.

― Tuomas, Friday, January 8, 2010 2:01 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

choc city was down ballot for me, motor booty affair was top 5

yay standing on the verge made it, that was my no1. (no. its not better than Maggot Brain, on a par yes, its an Eddie Hazel album, he wrote most of it, so it's the eddie fans fave, Tuomas will hate it)

Maybe Parliament - Osmium will place? (nah sadly it wont)

Funkentelechy is regarded as the best after Mothership btw.

funkentelechy is my all-time favorite album of any decade

I've been such a huge fan of Funkadelic for a long time, but I neglected them in my ballot. I guess I took 'em for granted, especially after a 5 hour (not kidding) P-Funk performance in '96 wrung me out to the point where I couldn't listen to them for about a decade. Nice to see them represented though. This was the first thing I wrote for my site: Funkadelic: The Afro-Alien Diaspora. Repeat after Bootsy: I pledge allegiance to the funk, the whole funk,and nothing but the funk, so help me James, Sly and George, Amen!"

I voted for Chocolate City tbh

and me....so maybe it'll show up

Chocolate City was pretty much an obscure Parliament album until last year when people took notice for a reason I cant think of....
Its always been my 3rd fave though , if you can be arsed searching through ILM you will see me saying it years ago. I recommend CC thoroughly.

xp

Clones might make it. It's their pop album and is great too

Chocolate City got my vote too, it's my third favourite after the two in the first 70's list.

It's strange that I own nine Funkadelic albums from the 70's and out of the three I'm missing two of them are in this poll.

"Chocolate City was pretty much an obscure Parliament album until last year when people took notice for a reason I cant think of...."

They still call it the White House
But that's a temporary condition, too.

Check out the deluxe version of The Cars. Disc 2 has demos of They Won't See You, Take What You Want, Wake Me Up and You Just Can't Push Me that are full of progtastic guitar solos.

The breakdown of my ballot is something like this:

American soul/R&B 9
Jazz 12
Funk 3
African funk/soul 3
Brazilian pop & jazz 8
Disco 3
Afro-Cuban 1
Folk 1

Why does Finns never want to rock? :-(

Ha, well the breakdown of my admittedly curtailed ballot:

Prog 10
Jazz-prog 1
Southern rock 2
Proggy art-pop 2
Krautrock 1
Brit post-punk 7
Spoken-word comedy with song 1

(Several of my "prog" votes are really "proggy art-pop", if you make that distinction.)

I tried to count up my genres, but got stuck on where to categorise too many of them. I can tell you that there are 11 krautrock records (and at least another 4 records with Germans on).

Several of my Brit post-punks are proggy art-pop! :D

(Specialist aside: Was there any Afro-Cuban music on the nominations list? Everything I nominated was Puerto Rican or NuYorican salsa, which may build on an Afro-Cuban base, but I resent the idea that Puerto Rican salsa somehow reduces to "Afro-Cuban." It has its own distinctive sound.)

"Chocolate City was pretty much an obscure Parliament album until last year when people took notice for a reason I cant think of...."

"...it's time. It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. And I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day." New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, January 16, 2006

30. Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story (1971) [140 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]

http://i45.tinypic.com/35lzzua.jpg

Every Picture was the FutureSex/LoveSounds of its day, people! (where jeff beck = timbaland lol)

― all yoga attacks are fire based (rogermexico.), Sunday, December 6, 2009 11:56 PM

The bass playing on "Maggie May" is sooo bad, so show-offy, so obviously played by a guitarist who thinks bass playing is "easy", that it puts me off the song completely. A shame, because I agree that Rod had some great stuff in this era.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Monday, November 15, 2004 6:41 AM (5 years ago)

I really like this song, but reading the comments about the drumming, I'm just like WTF? Part of the reason I've always liked this song is that the drumming sounds so amateurish. It sounds like something I could play, including all the fills, and I'm a terrible drummer. Is this a case of something sounding easy but being really hard, or is his drumming better on other songs, or am I just wrong?

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, November 15, 2004 11:06 AM (5 years ago)

so what we've established is that "maggie mae" is punk rock.

― amateur!!st, Monday, November 15, 2004 2:23 PM (5 years ago)

I'm currently answering an email from someone who wrote to my site demanding to know why I don't like Zappa. I don't hate him, just think he really needed to pare down the wankery. Anyone voted some Zappa?

My breakdown -- this has a lot to do with the initial poll featuring most of my soul, punk and post-punk, but neglecting reggae.

18 reggae
4 post-punk
3 pre-punk
3 kosmische
3 avant rock
2 soul
2 jazz fusion
1 punk
1 afrobeat
1 glam
1 brazilian
1 classic rock

i had totally given up on Lick My Decals Off, Baby placing after the first fifteen or so were posted. did not expect to see it at 32! underrated and underplayed record for sure.

an attempt at a genre breakdown:

kraut 8
non german prog rock 9
jazz 8
folk 4
straight up pop and/or rock 9
modern classical 1
adult jazz-rock 1

hey i'm up to 7 of 40 now w/ zuma, the cars, born to run

still holding out hope for my #1, i think it's got a good chance, but i think i may have to give up on Rush and The Soft Boys at this point