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

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

i gather i would possibly like that record a lot

it's weird because stylistically he gets real similar to zappa on that record but zappa's never really clicked for me and yet i love todd

I've got 4 of 7 so far. Soon is my 2nd favorite Can album but it just missed my top 40. It also didn't make the top 200 last time, so a genuinely nice surprise. The album had been underrated for a long time, nice to see it finally get props.

I voted for A Wizard, A True Star

Wow, I wonder if that means Something/Anything is shut out? I'm going to re-listen to it now. I just saw the phrase today, "you're a wizard, a true star" in the latest Bruce Sterling book The Caryatids. Was it floating around before Rundgren used it for the title?

something/anything is good but it suffers from 'might have been better cut down to a single album' syndrome imo

it feels more like just a buncha songs than a unified art-pop statement like wizard is

Wizard was my #3. Secret Treaties by Blue Oyster Cult was my #2, which I really don't think is going to make it, but hopefully my #1 will.

18. Lou Reed - Transformer (1972) [164 points, 16 votes]

http://i46.tinypic.com/103bj40.jpg

Am I right in assuming Transformer is Lou Reed's best selling album due to the "hit" status of "Walk on the Wild Side"? I wonder how many people bought this and were totally turned off on Lou Reed for a good long while if not forever.
If I bought this when I was 14 instead of The Velvet Underground & Nico I would've thought, "Fuck this Lou Reed guy, he sucks."
I mean it almost makes me think that NOW.

Also, anyone else first hear "Walk on the Wild Side" as the Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch song?

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Monday, October 4, 2004 3:59 AM (5 years ago)

Most of the songs on Lou Reed's "Transformer" have either gay themes ("Make Up") or at least gay subtexts; the production itself (queeny Bowie harmonies, strings) is quite campy.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, February 16, 2005 9:09 AM (4 years ago)

My parents used to play that one all the time, and I guess that i can never escape it. They used to play it on sundays, I can still remember listening to that song in the wintertime while my toes got cold 'cause my socks always got wet from the snow. I still think that 'Vicious' rocks, though, and even though it's a love/hate relationship, that record can never really be touched.

― Jay Kid (Jay K), Friday, December 19, 2003 4:35 PM (6 years ago)

17. Joni Mitchell - Hejira (1976) [165 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]

http://i47.tinypic.com/10g04qt.jpg

My favorite Joni album is Hejira, I think. Lots of very peculiar voice/arrangement interplay, loping rhythms, beautiful bass parts.... There's really no album like it. I agree the album benefits from a cohesiveness, in sound, in theme.

It's not perfect. "Furry Sings the Blues" always sounded like a retread to me--the one ringer. But "Amelia," yes--this might be her best song. "Song for Sharon" also is beautiful.

Joni Mitchell has so many qualities (and so much myth) that are likely to set alarm bells ringing in ILMs heads--including mine-- but she is incredible, just totally incredible.

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, August 1, 2003 10:10 AM (6 years ago)

hejira was the first album i ever heard of joni somewhen around 1984 and it made me a fan. it is like a calmer, more mature and less overtly emotional version of blue, her other masterpiece. it doesn't set the shivers down my spine like blue but it has got this relaxed atmosphere with occasional emotional outbursts like amelia which make a perfect record.

― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Sunday, August 3, 2003 8:58 AM (6 years ago)

I actually think that Hejira might be the greatest album ever made. A perfect fusion of poetry, soulfulness, sound and meaning. It's so personal and so universal. I can really live in that record.

'Song for Sharon' is the centerpiece, so eloquent, inspired throughout. Then there's 'Amelia', the heart-pounding 'Black Crow', 'A strange Boy' where every messed-up artistic young guy can dream of being seduced by Joni, and the title track which pretty much encapsulates it all.
'It was the hexagram of the heavens
It was the strings of my guitar....'

― Pete S, Wednesday, December 3, 2003 7:00 PM (6 years ago)

I've really got my hopes up for Bill Fay's last persecution now, but maybe my first place was the only vote it got and i'm fooling myself