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

The number 1 will probably be some hoary old rock or post-punk album, can't think of any funk/soul/jazz record that would be popular enough among ILXors to top the list.

― Tuomas, Friday, 8 January 2010 19:12

Dude, it's a 1970s poll. It's all hoary and old!

mega xpost

Whereas in reality it was only a small failure </challops>

I would have no problem with a poll where the artists are eliminated too. If that had been the case here, only oen album in my ballot would have been disqualified.

(Tie) 24. Faust - IV (1974) [151 points, 17 votes]

http://i46.tinypic.com/2d78x13.jpg

Picked it up about a month ago and it just kills me. Was just listening to it this morning - it's still in that phase where every time I listen to it I realize it's even better than I thought the last time I listened to it.

― scott pgwp (pgwp), Friday, January 9, 2009 2:57 PM (11 months ago)

so many people who only own one Faust record own that one, it's total pop...

― Milton Parker, Friday, June 15, 2007 3:38 PM (2 years ago)

(oops, that's actually supposed to be 1973... I forgot to change it before I posted. like it's really a big deal...)

Should have been top 5. Bah.

Aja, Autobahn and Lust For Life didn't make the top 200 of the previous poll, so it'll be a surprise to me if they make the top 25. I just couldn't believe there isn't support for Lust For Life, so I included it.

massive x-post, i didn't see electric warrior and faust iv, i swear!

no order:
hejira
curtis
meddle
fear of music
before and after science
the modern dance
another music in a different kitchen
germfree adolescents
la woman
shiny beast
stranded
rock bottom
rocket to russia
electric warrior
are we not man, we are devo
bridges
master of reality
aja
tusk
faust iv
raincoats
band of gypsys
the köln concert
autobahn
natty dread

xxpost

Should have been higher for sure. Jennifer and Lauft... are kinda like religious experiences. Slightly silly religious experiences. But then these guys saw that the fuckaround could be more beautiful than the solemn statement, and followed that muse to this zenith

All sorts of off-topic, but why not:

the idea that someone would prefer peter green-era fleetwood mac still baffles me

I really, really hate Stevie Nicks. I like Buckingham the guitarist but not Buckingham the singer. I don't like cocaine.

Did you actually vote in this, Louis?

huh?

His ballot came in the last day, I think.

3/4 of the way through, and six from my ballot have made it.

master of reality

This was #61.

10 of mine so far, but 5 of those were in the bottom 20.

I was gonna ask what la woman is, but I realized it's L.A. Woman, heh. What's Bridges?

voted for Faust Tapes instead, because of a fond memory of me ruining a Christmas dinner when I was 15 with it:
Mum 'play us one of your records'
Me 'OK'

Sorry Louis - I thought I remembered someone being sniffy about voting and thought it was you

damn... Stormcock isn't going to make it is it? Should have voted.

lol @ that story

I'm waiting to see 101-120, that's all I'll say IK

13 of mine in so far. I forget if Band On The Run made it, but that'd be 14.

sonofstan's story FTW

sonofstan - I once ruined a parents' dinner party with Isn't Anything

23. Ramones - Rocket to Russia (1977) [152 points, 13 votes]

http://i45.tinypic.com/2i1352v.jpg

In the past I've always upped Rocket To Russia on the ground that it uses the greatest variety of their classic tricks while slowing down the least (with "Here Today Gone Tomorrow" and "I Don't Care" being the only real duds). And I think I still do. But somehow it seems like a combination tape of the best stuff from Leave Home and Road To Ruin would actually contain all of my favorite Ramones songs. Funny how that works.

― Doctor Casino (Doctor Casino), Friday, February 9, 2007 6:49 PM (2 years ago)

Pinefox sez : "Too little interest in songwriting".

To me this is so far wide of the mark that it completely misses what early-Ramones are all about. The analogies with Brill building and early 60's girlpop songcraft has been trotted out so often wrt The Ramones that it's tempting to dismiss it out-of-hand. There is some truth in it though - I can hear the Shangri-La's, say, in I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend or Babysitter. That's not to say that this automatically makes the Ramones good, of course.

But they're better than good - they're masters. Their best songs are great because they are lean and simple - there's nothing that shouldn't be there. Couple this with a simple melodic hook(nothing fancy - 4 chords max. and another 2 for the middle 8) and a propulsive beat, and you have something irresistable. Add some elements of The Ramones 'own world' imagery (pick from : NY street images, retards, 'nam casualties, glue, girls)and you have genius.

Take "Glad to see you Go" from Leave Home - straight into a Beach Boys/Eddie Cochrane morphed melody and just listen to the way that the song shifts gear slightly on lines 3 and 4 of the verse as Tommy closes the high-hat a touch under the chords and melody. The shift into the chorus is sublime and the sheer rush as it comes back to the last verse from the middle 8 ("I need somebody good, I need a miracle") is like a ride in the space shuttle - on the outside.

Take "Rockaway Beach" - another point on the curve linking "Summer in the City", " Dancing in the Street" and "Baby on more Time". Again - great chorus, great lyrics ("Chewin out a rhythm on my bubblegum") and a sense of PLACE. In less than 3 minutes you feel exactly what it's like to be a teenager in baking hot NY - and you feel it every single time you hear it. That's great songwriting, Pinefox.

Rockaway, Glad..., Listen to My Heart, 53rd and 3rd, You Should Never Have Opened That Door are equals of "Please, Please Me", "California Girls", "My Generation" ..... the list goes on....if you can look past the "punk" thing which is really a red herring as far as The Ramones are concerned.

I guess it all depends on what you look for in a song - they're not Burt or Jimmy Webb, but they tell a story, crank up the adrenaline, and make their own world for 3 mins for EVERY SINGLE TRACK on the first 4 albums. That's classic.

― Dr. C, Sunday, July 15, 2001 8:00 PM (8 years ago)

^ this isn't specifically related to the album in question, but it's long been one of my favorite things ever written on ILM.

Shit, I haven't heard Faust - just realised that my story might be really lame

(Tuomas: Sorry! I forgot Mongo Santamaria was on the noms list.)

That's okay, Afro-Indio is hardly a proper "Afro-Cuban" album anyway, more like a fusion of that and jazz-funk and disco.

That Dr. C post should be in the liner notes of those Ramones albums.

^^^truth.

I should add to my Faust story that I only has about 20 records at that point, and I'd only bought the Faust record because Virgin put it out for 49p - records were very expensive then, so every purchase was weighed over weeks of saving. That was pretty much my first ever impulse buy.

22. Can - Soon Over Babluma (1974) [152 points, 16 votes]

http://i46.tinypic.com/21afdqw.jpg

I like "Soon Over Babaluma" much more than any of the later records.

Outside the title track, most of the music is much more busy fusion than the stripped minimal sound on their earlier albums. Damo is gone, but the vocals are better on this one than later on when they started trying to write songs, otherwards it is mostly instrumental.

Michael Karoli gets down on a violin on one track which mingles in nicely with these weird soundscapes that Irmin Schmidt coaxes out of an Alpha 77 (whatever that is).

― earlnash, Thursday, February 27, 2003 8:50 AM (6 years ago)

Didn't Simon Reynolds describe this track as something like the mandible clicks of the insect world? Well, insects are small and that's what Soon Over Babaluma sounds like to me - small, bringing everything down to the ground if not burrowing directly into it. If 1970s Miles kicks up clouds of voodoo smoke, Can concentrate on the dirt underneath the Dark Magus' feet.

― Kevin John Bozelka, Wednesday, May 30, 2007 11:47 PM (2 years ago)

Actually my fave Can, more than Tago Mago or Future Days (which were in the other one)

What's Bridges?
the soul/funk album by gil scott-heron & brian jackson. i discovered it recently. it's phantastic.

I don't think The Royal Scam is a lock, but it beat Katy Lied in at least one Steely Dan albums poll (and was #2 on my ballot), so I wouldn't be shocked to see it in the top 20.

21. Harmonia - Deluxe (1975) [155 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote]

http://i49.tinypic.com/16isayt.jpg

I prefer "Deluxe" to the first album. The tracks seem less collaborative - the first three track are obviously the Michael Rother tracks and the final three are pure Cluster. However the title track is better than anything on Michael Rother's solo albums by a mile - and Brian Eno obviously thought so too or wouldn't have expended so much energy trying to recreate the feel of this track on "Julie With...". Talking of Eno ripoffs, the track "Monza" (which is the "Neu-like motorik stomp" on the album) basically is "Red Sails" from "Lodger" sans Bowie's vocals. "Monza" is also the best Neu! track not to be found on a Neu! album. And that's not all! "Notre Dame" and "Kekse" are better than most Cluster tracks - in Cluster's sweet and sunny mode not the sturm und drang stuff.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, January 6, 2005 9:25 AM (5 years ago)

De Luxe is pretty great. The first half is all chill and austere and then Neu! style it recapitulates those themes in the second half with chuggachugga motorik aggression.

― steve hise, Thursday, January 6, 2005 12:47 PM (5 years ago)

Just listening to Deluxe for the first time.

Jeeeeeeeesus.

― my opinionation (Hamildan), Wednesday, January 6, 2010 11:39 AM (2 days ago)

wow the kraut contingent is out in full force on this poll

Well, for 3 out of the last 4 spots anyway.

starting to worry my #1 won't make it at all...

Suddenly there's a lot of krautrock in this list and Neu 75 is still to come surely? Deluxe is a stunning album really glad to see that so high.

I've never heard Soon Over Babluma, I didn't think there was that much love for it.

i don't like neu 75 at all. it's very repetitive and annoying.

20. Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band - Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band (1976) [161 points, 10 votes]

http://i50.tinypic.com/o05mk2.jpg

Disco rarely got more musically or lyrically sophisticated than on this self-titled debut album. Long before he took up the role of Kid Creole with the Coconuts, wordsmith August Darnell cushioned small, perfect truths--singer Cory Daye promises to get her "equivalency diploma" in love in "I'll Play the Fool"--in knowingly retro sounds. Stylish, honest, and completely one of a kind.

― Poops McGee, Thursday, February 14, 2002 8:00 PM (7 years ago)

I read an interview with Donald Fagen where he says "Glamour Profession" was written after listening to Dr Buzzard for a week.

― dave q, Thursday, February 14, 2002 8:00 PM (7 years ago)

Dr. Buzzard's is not only very pleasurable, I think it is "important", although more from the standpoint of theory than from that of actual influence. For me, Dr. Buzzard's was one of the really original artists in African-American music in the mid-70s, along with Parliament/Funkadelic and Afrika Bambaata and other forebears of rap. Its music is a glimpse of a road not taken in African-American music -- an attempt to do music that reflects the identity of a Black community that is composed of cosmopolitan strivers, polyglot syncretists, rather than the paranoid, self-limiting, "thug" culture that has become the focus of hip-hop (which I am not attacking, by the way). It is the pop music that Stanley Crouch would want if he ever got his head out of his butt. And, like Prince but unlike a whole lot of other African-American music, then and since, it is hyper-aware of the entire African-American musical tradition and the many points of intersection and influence between that tradition and European musics. And, like Parliament and unlike a whole lot of other African-American music, it is playful and subversive about race and politics (listen to "Soraya" or "Once There Was A Colored Girl").

All of that does not make it "better" or "more valid" or whatever compared to types of music that are actually popular and commercially successful. What it does provide is sort of the musical equivalent of a type of science-fiction novel: What would the world look like if we just tightened (or loosened) this one screw a bit . . . ? Kid Creole, of course, came from the same place, but pretty systematically limited its ambition to making funny party music. Dr. Buzzard's was party music, often funny, with something serious to say and do.

― Vornado (Vornado), Monday, January 10, 2005 10:30 AM (4 years ago)

That has just made my day!

well we're in the top 20 and i still have no idea what's "left to come" other than 2 or 3 records so i'd say this poll was at least some type of success

I told you guys the top half would be a lot more schizo than the bottom half!

Dr Buzzard was my number two all we need now is for Curtis to take this poll.

I'm surprised Sparks haven't made the list, is Propaganda in with a shot? I think they had two in my top six.

Swell Maps will make this, y/n?

19. Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star (1973) [162 points, 12 votes]

http://i47.tinypic.com/27y0dac.jpg

always felt that the flaming lips ripped off this album for "soft bulletin". that drum sound, especially. there are passages on this album i can easily hear the lips playing (end of "zen archer" esp). anyone else hear it?

― johnnyo, Thursday, October 15, 2009 4:51 PM (2 months ago)

i think his weird stuff is his best. and it's really not that weird. it's all just your subconcious trying to tell you to be afraid. it's just him twidling a few knobs here and there on top of some mightily impressive songs. there are some jokey bits, but they're really not that annoying in the least.

― JasonD (JasonD), Tuesday, April 22, 2003 10:45 AM (6 years ago)

Yeah but AWaTSis indeed the fucking weirdass album to end all fucking weirdass albums. I love it to death all the way through but it's asking a lot to expect more than 1% of ILM to love it start to finish.

― fizzcaraldo (Justin M), Tuesday, June 8, 2004 10:36 PM (5 years ago)

yes!! that was my #3 and i've completely fallen in love with it over the past 3 or 4 months. just one of the most fun and glorious albums to listen to all in one go