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

Steely Dan were the best band of the '70s, fuck aaaaall y'all that disagree, straight up and down

I just realised there's been no mention of Alice Cooper in either of these polls and it makes me want to cry a bit. Love It To Death through Billion Dollar Babies are all 100% classic.

I'm getting to really positively hate proto-punk, punk, post-punk, and krautrock.

^^^testing my resolve never to SB in anger

Except with words that just lie there until you pick them up and they cut your fingers and tunes that sound like they're doing that jazz lite thing until you start following them and they go very strange.

Its not the best place to start though, I'd agree

XP t TUomas again

I love Steely Dan but i've never cared for Aja.

12. Brian Eno - Before and After Science (1977) [187 points, 18 votes]

http://i46.tinypic.com/i4fok4.jpg

I'll defer to alex in mainhattan's "In Praise of..." post.

I hesitated to choose the third Eno album in this series (1973 may yield a 4th one though the second Roxy Music will be a tough contender) but I realised that what I like about Bowie's Low is its strong Eno touch on the mainly instrumental second atmospheric side. Eno on his own (plus guest musicians) in 1977 to my ears still sounds more adventurous and timeless than the dark and brooding Low. Which additionally hasn't got such a classy black and white cover.

Like Low Before and after Science has two totally different sides as the title already suggests. No. 1 is more rhythmic, no.2 is more like a soundscape. An album which stands in-between his earlier avant pop output and his later ambient releases. Two music worlds are juxtaposed and I find the result of this approach still as thrilling as in the late seventies when I listened to it for the first time. To be honest this is the only album I bought in that mostly dreadful decade for me which I still love today. Kiss, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Supertramp, Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons, Genesis and Eloy were the bands I cherished in the first half of my teenage years. None of them stood the test of time. I can date back my obsession with music to the purchase of this Eno record which I bought in a record shop in Duisburg about 15 kilometers from my home town. I think I went there by bicycle after having read a review in Die Zeit which still is the only newspaper (a weekly) I read regularly.

It starts with the wonderful groovy piece No One Receiving. One of the greatest moments of Phil Collins. His reverberating drums give this track a light and almost ballet-like quality. A simple bassline dominates the song which is uncategorisable. Somewhere in between world, jazz, dance and pop. Weird and enchanting.

Backwater is even weirder. The piano is part of the rhythm section. Eno sings surreal lyrics about god knows what. The melody is in the singing, the instruments are following later. And then there is this handclapping. I hear some irony there and it sounds bloody good.

More bass wizardry on Kurt's Rejoinder which features Kurt Schwitters recitating one of his dada poems. Clever collaging.

On Energy Fools the Magician we enter soundscape land. Phil Collins hi-hat sounds like a triangle, Eno's "vibes" like a synthie, his keyboards like a piano, his chorus like a women background choir, Fred Frith's modified guitar (?) like a glockenspiel, only Percy Jones fretless bass sounds like a bass. Around 80 seconds in the bass seems to fall over like when you walk too fast and you lose the equilibrium. But then the music does not turn around, it goes on in its majestic calm way. Disappointed expectations. Altogether only two minutes but in those 125 seconds there is more happening than in the entire output of many musicians.

The next song seems to be the turning point. King Lead's Hat. An anagramm of Talking Heads with whom Eno worked later on, I think. More handclapping accompanies a trashy rhythm. This used to be my least favourite track on the album. It feels a little out of place here sandwiched in between two slow atmospheric pieces as it is very upbeat. When Robert Fripp's guitar solo comes just before the two minute mark my love for this song starts to grow though. This beautiful warm and fuzzy King Crimson sound is so perfect in small doses. Paul Rudolph provides some sudden bass chords which seem to act like a stopper but it goes on. Finally it all goes kind of electronic. Eno doing his "metallics". I hear the sound of champagne bubbles and I get very thirsty.

Side two shoots off (not really ;-)) with Here He Comes. As so often Eno offers us an earcatcher as the first song on a side. A languishing beautiful melody about a boy who "was seven feet high". After a minute the song intensifies itself by getting melancholic and even more beautiful when Eno holds his breath for a second and elongates the syllables by singing "coooomes" and then "bloohoohoohoo". What always astounds me about his voice that on one hand it has this totally asexual almost robotic tinge and then it can get so sentimental.

Julie with... ("her open blouse is gazing up into the empty sky") is the longest song on the album. Six minutes and twenty seconds starting slowly in a dreamy way. We are drifting on a calm sea. The first resolution (or dénouement) comes after two minutes. More drifting and a second resolution after four minutes. The gorgeous cruise resumes. I wish I had been there.

Piano time. A tiny theme. By this River is tenderness pure. The proof that beauty is simple. Eno's singing inevitably turns into humming. Words fail. The song was used in the German movie on RAF terrorism Die innere Sicherheit by Christian Petzold whenever the daughter of the terrorist couple left the doomed family to find herself. In Portugal on the beach for example. A young, innocent girl dreaming of a normal world outside of the hiding and the lying. It's a great film and an even greater song.

Through Hollow Lands is the track of this record that haunted me most in the late 70s. An instrumental which I taped in a loop on a C90 cassette. I listened to it for meditation purposes. Impossible to ever get bored by it. As there is hardly anything happening in it. No highs, no lows, just an incredible serenity. I never arrived to the point where my thoughts stopped. Patience has never been my stronghold.

Eno closes the album with Spider and I. Synthie plains going slightly towards the heavy. It's not bad but by far not the best on this stunning album. Which probably would be my island disc if I had to choose one Eno record. As it comprises the Eno before and after the accident. A watershed album with the watershed right in the middle.

― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Tuesday, August 16, 2005 4:03 PM (4 years ago)

I'm getting to really positively hate proto-punk, punk, post-punk, and krautrock.

― _Rudipherous

I'm with you on the last two. There is some of the former two I still enjoy.

Think I had this as my number 2 or 3. Second side is the best thing he's ever done.

very pretty album, probably my third favorite eno after another green world and on land

uh i know i've learnt this the hard way myself but how the fuck can you hate on an entire genre

not even genre - entire multi-genre/genre-defying swathes of varied and frequently interesting music

It was #200 in the first poll, so this is turning out pretty unpredictable. Great album.

both iggy pop albums, tusk, fear of music, curtis, rock bottom, and god knows what else

I've never really cared for punk/proto-punk either, though post-punk has some okay stuff. The two most important things for me in music are rhythm and sound, and almost all punk I've heard is very uninteresting rhythmically and sound-wise. I've never understood how a crappy low-fi sound could actually be considered good, or how "attitude" or whatever you have could compensate for not having any skills.

not even genre - entire multi-genre/genre-defying swathes of varied and frequently interesting music

It's not so much the music itself but its status (though I do have little inclination to listen to any more of most of it at this point).

geir? xpost

It's a generalization. My experience of 25 years (I didn't here much of either before I was an early teen) of listening to music in those genres has led me to say, "Not my thing." There are of course exceptions, but I'm predisposed to dislike things that fall under that umbrella. There are a handful of artists I do like in each and hundreds (or more) I have no time for. Such is life.

xx-post to lj.

yeah well say that next time both of you

Sorry I dared to use shorthand on a messageboard. Way to fly off the handle!

11. XTC - Drums and Wires (1979) [188 points, 15 votes, 2 first place votes]

http://i46.tinypic.com/11r92sx.jpg

I picked up Drums and Wires a few days ago, and I'm glad I made one more attempt with XTC. I don't know what happened in the 3 years between Drums and Wires and English Settlement, but if "Complicated Game" were to get into a schoolyard fight with a song like "Senses Working Overtime" (which I like, even), the latter would get bloodied and then have to watch his girlfriend make out with "Complicated Game".

Great song, great album.

― Z S, Monday, July 16, 2007 8:01 PM (2 years ago)

Best thing about XTC that people tend not to talk about: the performances tend to be amazing. Particularly around Drums and Wires: not only is Partridge a distinctive and engaging vocalist (the stutters and snorts on like “Scissor Man” and “Outside World” come out so well you almost don’t notice how odd they are), but as a band they just tear and swing, all casual, through some pretty acrobatic shifts (again, “Scissor Man”). (If they’d been playing something dark and heavy, my guess is that rock fans would look back at them as gods; but when you play giddy pop, people tend to read skill as just a given, or even a detriment.) The instrumental hot-performances faded away when they went into their pastoral studio-pop phase, obviously, but Partridge’s vox stayed as keen as ever.

― nabiscothingy, Monday, June 28, 2004 11:39 AM (5 years ago)

BOOOOOOM ok poll forgiven, not a single peep outta me about voting patterns/conspiracies from here on

I love Before & After Science so much

and there's my #1!

if there's a cooler way to close out your rock album than Outside World -> Scissor Man -> Complicated Game i haven't heard it

Before & After Science really should have been on my list. I thought all of his that I'd have voted for were in the first poll.

I really thought Roxy Music might appear in the list somewhere, Stranded deserves a place for sure.

complicated game is one of maybe the 5 most kickass closing tracks in the entire oeuvre of....xtc

(that's saying a LOT)

Nice to see this on here. One of the last things I cut off my ballot.

See? You like post-punk after all. Everyone is happy

And the only albums that remain are now the Top 10. I'll pick the listing back up on Monday for the final reveal!

100. ZZ Top - Tres Hombres (1973) [80 points, 7 votes]
99. Milton Nascimento & Lô Borges - Clube de Esquina (1972) [80 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
98. Chic - C'est Chic (1978) [80 points, 14 votes]
97. John Lennon - Imagine (1971) [80 points, 15 votes]
96. Patti Smith - Horses (1975) [80 points, 17 votes]
95. Van Halen - Van Halen (1978) [81 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote]
94. Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac (1975) [81 points, 8 votes]
93. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo's Factory (1970) [81 points, 11 votes]
92. Blondie - Eat to the Beat (1979) [82 points, 9 votes]
91. Miles Davis - Agharta (1976) [82 points, 10 votes]
90. Ian Dury - New Boots and Panties!! (1977) [83 points, 6 votes]
89. Neu! - Neu! 2 (1973) [83 points, 10 votes]
88. Tom Waits - Closing Time (1973) [84 points, 6 votes]
87. Black Sabbath - Vol. 4 (1972) [85 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
86. Hawkwind - Space Ritual (1973) [85 points, 11 votes]
85. Aerosmith - Rocks (1976) [86 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
84. Tubeway Army - Replicas (1979) [86 points, 9 votes]
83. Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak (1976) [86 points, 11 votes]
82. The Who - Live at Leeds (1970) [87 points, 6 votes]
81. Comus - First Utterance (1971) [87 points, 9 votes]
80. Van Morrison - Veedon Fleece (1974) [88 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
79. Electric Light Orchestra - Out of the Blue (1977) [90 points, 10 votes]
78. Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle (1973) [92 points, 9 votes]
77. Flamin' Groovies - Shake Some Action (1976) [92 points, 10 votes]
76. Pere Ubu - Datapanik in the Year Zero EP (1978) [93 points, 6 votes]
75. ABBA - Arrival (1976) [93 points, 8 votes]
74. David Bowie - Lodger (1979) [93 points, 12 votes]
73. Cluster - Zuckerzeit (1974) [93 points, 14 votes]
72. Pere Ubu - Dub Housing (1978) [94 points, 12 votes]
71. The Rolling Stones - Some Girls (1978) [95 points, 13 votes]
70. Neil Young - Harvest (1972) [96 points, 9 votes]
69. Herbie Hancock - Sextant (1973) [96 points, 12 votes]
68. Stevie Wonder - Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974) [97 points, 10 votes]
67. Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979) [98 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
(Tie) 65. Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) [99 points, 9 votes]
(Tie) 65. Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark (1974) [99 points, 9 votes]
64. The Pop Group - Y (1979) [99 points, 10 votes]
63. Al Green - The Belle Album (1977) [100 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
62. Steely Dan - Katy Lied (1975) [100 points, 9 votes]
61. Black Sabbath - Master of Reality (1971) [100 points, 11 votes]
60. Various Artists - No New York (1978) [101 points, 10 votes]
59. The Specials - The Specials (1979) [102 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
58. John Cale - Fear (1974) [104 points, 11 votes]
57. Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson (1971) [106 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
56. King Crimson - Red (1974) [109 points, 12 votes]
55. Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978) [110 points, 12 votes]
54. Funkadelic - One Nation Under a Groove (1978) [110 points, 13 votes]
53. Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) [111 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
52. Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger (1975) [111 points, 12 votes]
51. Van Morrison - Moondance (1970) [111 points, 13 votes]
(Tie) 49. The Who - Who's Next (1971) [112 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
(Tie) 49. Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Armed Forces (1979) [112 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
48. David Bowie - Aladdin Sane (1973) [113 points, 11 votes]
47. Harmonia - Musik von Harmonia (1974) [113 points, 13 votes]
46. Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick (1977) [116 points, 9 votes]
(Tie) 44. Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Zuma (1975) [116 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
(Tie) 44. James Brown - The Payback (1973) [116 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
43. Grateful Dead - American Beauty (1970) [119 points, 9 votes]
42. Amon Düül II - Yeti (1970) [120 points, 12 votes]
41. New York Dolls - Too Much Too Soon (1974) [121 points, 4 votes, 2 first place votes]
40. Syd Barrett - The Madcap Laughs (1970) [121 points, 9 votes]
39. Funkadelic - Free Your Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow (1970) [124 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
38. Miles Davis - Get Up With It (1974) [124 points, 12 votes]
37. This Heat - This Heat (1979) [125 points, 10 votes]
36. T.Rex - The Slider (1972) [127 points, 13 votes]
35. Tim Buckley - Starsailor (1970) [127 points, 13 votes, 1 first place vote]
34. Funkadelic - Standing on the Verge of Getting it On (1974) [128 points, 9 votes, 1 first place vote]
33. Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run (1975) [128 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote]
32. Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970) [128 points, 14 votes]
31. The Cars - The Cars (1978) [131 points, 13 votes]
30. Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story (1971) [140 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
29. Fela Kuti & Afrika 70 - Zombie (1977) [141 points, 13 votes, 1 first place vote]
28. Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti (1975) [146 points, 14 votes]
27. Talking Heads - 77 (1977) [147 points, 15 votes]
26. Led Zeppelin - III (1970) [149 points, 11 votes]
(Tie) 24. T.Rex - Electric Warrior (1971) [151 points, 17 votes]
(Tie) 24. Faust - IV (1973) [151 points, 17 votes]
23. Ramones - Rocket to Russia (1977) [152 points, 13 votes]
22. Can - Soon Over Babaluma (1974) [152 points, 16 votes]
21. Harmonia - Deluxe (1975) [155 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote]
20. Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band - Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band (1976) [161 points, 10 votes]
19. Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star (1973) [162 points, 12 votes]
18. Lou Reed - Transformer (1972) [164 points, 16 votes]
17. Joni Mitchell - Hejira (1976) [165 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
16. The Raincoats - The Raincoats (1979) [168 points, 12 votes, 1 first place vote]
15. Steely Dan - The Royal Scam (1976) [176 points, 11 votes, 2 first place votes]
14. Steely Dan - Aja (1977) [177 points, 16 votes]
13. Neu! - Neu! 75 (1975) [187 points, 17 votes]
12. Brian Eno - Before and After Science (1977) [187 points, 18 votes]
11. XTC - Drums and Wires (1979) [188 points, 15 votes, 2 first place votes]

this got left off my list too, but i'm glad it made it (if only for lj's sake).

xps

Really happy to see XTC here. It deserves it's place just for the bassline on Helicopter.

Are you going all the way to #1 tonight, Johnny?

X-Ray Spex ftw!

um, xp

lets take a break for some pointless top 10 guessing imo

xxp I'll pick the listing back up on Monday for the final reveal!

More rock music... But at least this means Curtis should be the token black artist in the top 10, which is nice. Or is it possible he wouldn't have made the top 100 at all? I don't think it is.

If Curtis is in the top 10, it's not as a token. It's because he was fucking awesome.

Why monday and not tomorrow? or even tonight?

*plays Complicated Game extremely loudly*

(well, you have to otherwise you can't hear the first bit)

This poll is somehow turning out to be a mix of predictable disappointments and pleasant surprises for me, probably more of the latter...

I'm still hoping for Burning Spear but I have no idea how realistic that hope is.

*wonders how long it will take family to tell him to turn it down*

and "Complicated Game" is pure genius, i gotta say.

xps

haha...

if they do please post in chatz about it
xp

Here's a thing - Before & After Science is the only one to have picked up more votes than the #96, Horses

Why monday and not tomorrow? or even tonight?

Because I'm tired of looking through the archives for quotable bits today. Also, more ilxors are around on weekdays, and I'd hate to bury the top 10 on a Saturday afternoon.

You're right, he is awesome. And it is cool that he'll (most likely) make the top 10, I wasn't expecting that! That will compensate for the nice-but-overrated What's Going On making it to #10 in the original poll, while the true best soul album of all time (i.e. Curtis) didn't even place.

(xxx-post)

starting to look over my ballot and quietly mourn for all the albums I was still hanging onto hope that they might place. really bummed that no Little Feat album made the list (and there were four on my ballot).