BEST EPISODE OF CLASSIC ALBUMS

the mixing board stuff is always classic

otm

Also Fagan & Becker highlighting Michael McDonald's "Peg" vox.

lol daniel lanois at the mixing board with bono saying "look i know you want to talk right now but just be quiet and listen" was classique

A really badass bonus feature on the DVD would be a ROM feature where you were given a mixing board for one of the songs and got to play around with it like they do.

Is the Grateful Dead episode actually the Anthem of the Sun to American Beauty DVD? Do they sometimes cover wide swaths of an artist's career, rather than just one album? I think that the Anthem to Beauty DVD is in this series. The short interview with the artist that painted the cover for Anthem of the Sun is so great, he stares bug-eyed at the camera and talks about watching the Dead on New Year's on hallucinogens and having a vision of the band as a 6 headed hydra. There's some cool live footage and also snippets from their appearance on Playboy after Dark. Classic!

Also Fagan & Becker highlighting Michael McDonald's "Peg" vox.

How the fuck did they sit so stone-faced through it?

i thought they chuckled

no, Becker had a hairball stuck in his throat.

What do you expect--they're Steely Dan for god's sake.

the aja one wins

thread prompted me to find this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SCZv7786KY

motorhead, followed by the sex pistols. i liked the steely dan one, though they're terrifyingly anal.

fast eddie seems like such a nice fellow.

Going through the alternate guitar solos for "Peg" was pretty uncomfortable for Becker, Fagan, and the viewer.

I like the hilarious bonus section where Lemmy describes getting fired from Hawkwind.

its very sweet. he said he would've never quit hawkwind. he loved it.

All in 3-D. Foreign movie.

Love The Band and The Bollocks episodes. Love how at the end of the bonus guitar lesson when Steve Jones says "Wait, I'm showing you how to play 'Anarchy'!" and stops playing and cradles his guitar protectively.

Pity no Bowie album yet though. I believe another series of classic albums documentaries did "Ziggy Stardust" though.

wait this is a show

And, you know, I'd love to see "Selling England By The Pound" too, but at least I will get a "mini documentary" on that one when the remaster is being released next spring. The producer and engineer will not be around for that though (shame, really, that Genesis didn't bring people like David Henschel and Hugh Padgam around for those remaster interviews. Would have loved getting their views)

the aja one wins

is anyone else a little bothered by the repeated recorded-for-the-show band footage? i mean, it's fine and all, but not a patch on the original recording, and it seems like it's just there to pad out the running time. i seriously can't imagine that Fagan didn't have more to say about aja.

Love this show - wish I'd caught more than a half-dozen eps. (Only ones I remember: Kiss Alive, Ace of Spades, Joshua Tree, Nevermind, Rumours, Metallica.) Very informative - the entire procedure of record-making fascnates me, even as regards albums I have no use for, namely Metallica and U2.

Like snoball said, altho the Motorhead episode was tremendously entertaining, Fleetwood Mac takes it. The tech details themselves were excellent, of course, but the multiple-breakups backstory added an emotional element that the other episodes lacked. Oddly moving (and maybe a little self-serving) bit: Mick Fleetwood's assertion that he was as miserable as the other four, suffering relationship problems of his own.

Well actually I said that the Pink Floyd one takes it because of the tech detail. Especially the bits with Alan Parsons at the mixing desk. But you're right that the Fleetwood Mac one is up there too, not only for the information on recording an album in an expensive LA recording studio in the 70's, but the feeling of "how the hell did these people produce an album when they all hated each other?". I think it's John McVie who recounts an argument where he said to Lindsey Buckingham "I think you'd better leave" meaning leave the room but LB thought JM meant leave the band and then did.

thread prompted me to find this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SCZv7786KY

oh my god. that is astounding. i always knew he was a tremendous drummer, but holy shit.

The Pink Floyd one was pretty good, but if you want to talk about filler, try watching 20 minutes of London commuters placing one foot in front of the other to the tune of "Us & Them".

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"a night at the opera" for the live footage of freddie singing backing vocals for "'39" dressed in a jester's leotard alone

Has NMTB won yet?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I don't think any of the top albums should have beat nirvana.

i for one am not interested of the inner workings of nirvana in the studio, unless it involves jack endino

pff!

I know you voted for Floyd rather than F.Mac, snoball - I only meant I agreed with your assessment of the Motorhead episode. But I phrased it poorly, so that's my fault, and it's all irrelvent now anyways.

xxxxpost

I Netflixed the Zappa episode and just finished watching it. I've four episodes of this series so far and they're all surprisingly good.

About 45 minutes of extras on the FZ DVD also.

I've SEEN four episodes...

just watched the rumours one and it was rad

have there been any more since? it's the AJA one for me all the way. always wonder what the 'other' guitarists make of that bit with PEG on it.

which bit was being linked to from you tube upthread? it's been removed now.

The 'Rio' one is great!

yea i definitely need to see more of these, DLing the Aja one now

The 'Rio' one is great!

^^^^ on this.

Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road was slept on.

Who's Next is awesome, esp for Entwhistle playing the French horn.

Daltrey dissecting/isolating Moon's drumming at 1:34 possibly my favorite moment in the whole series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLMc6J9h3mU

I enjoyed watching pretty much all of the ones I've seen, but the one that has always stuck in my mind is Hysteria, funnily enough.

I wanted so much to like the Grateful Dead episode but I hate hearing robert hunter talk. HATE. Also when Lesh said something like, 'I wanted it to sound like a thousand lotus petals opening' I shot myself in the face.

Fleetwood Mac was another one. Love that album so much, but as soon as Buckingham pulled the guitar over and started doing eyes-closed, white-man-overbite to his own song I had to bail. And Stevie "it was so haaaard it was like being in the aaaaarmy' like oh spare me you rich assholes

Search: The Band self titled, Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon, The Who Who's Next, Def Leppard Hysteria, Black Sabbath Paranoid...and I thought the Purps one was pretty cool too, when they talked about trying to get back to the sound van from the room they were recording in that massive mansion.

The Sabbath one kept that very cool aura of superstition, care of old Bill I'm sure, you know that whole thing that 'something' happened during the recording of that album where every song just seemed to come together whenever they were the room together.

Priest one is funny mainly just because Halford always sounds like he's reading advertising copy, or something, I don't know what it is about him but I always get the lols whenever he starts talking. 'Heavy metal? Well it's that sound? It's really heavy? And it just really sounds, like metal?" Looool I love him so much.

Motorhead one is hilarious. Filthy is so weird.

Oooh and I love, LOVE the Sex Pistols one. Thought it represented the idea of the sex pistols as a bonafide band really well, or at least what they could have been.

sorry, I'll stop now.

last two posts both otm

Hah, yes, David Fricke is required

Also required - totally unexpected appearance from an unrelated musician. I'd forgotten that the Steely Dan episode has Ian Dury in it. Also bonus points if you can get Bono to say how your album has "really influenced" him.

Motorhead episode is such a pisser, i hate that they’re all gone now ;_;

David Fricke really, really looks like a Peter Bagge drawing.

The Dark Side of the Moon episode is worthwhile. Remarkable how well I remember all of the tunes though it's been decades since I listened to the album.

The Elton one had a lot of scenes of producers pulling sliders up and down on the boards, the great heart of any great Classic

There was a show I thought was in this series that covered Anthem of the Sun and possibly the first Grateful Dead lp.

oh right, thought it covered more than one lp its Anthem to Beauty not just American Beauty

This here's a write-in vote for Rio

also liked the catch a fire episode because it was a genuine revelation that the amazing organ and guitar parts of that album came courtesy of cornpone alabamans

Also required - totally unexpected appearance from an unrelated musician. I'd forgotten that the Steely Dan episode has Ian Dury in it. Also bonus points if you can get Bono to say how your album has "really influenced" him.

Which is the one that has the guy from Disturbed in it? Was he in the Songs from the Big Chair doc? (Was that Classic Albums canon or just some doc?) Anyway, I know Disturbed covered Tears for Fears, but no one cares what that guy has to say about it.

Some of the lesser ones, like the Judas Priest one, still have great stuff in it, like the revelation the album was recorded in Ringo's house and whichever song sounded like it had a marching army in it, that was just them rattling his silverware drawer.

Just watched Transformer, Key of Life, Catch a Fire, and So episodes recently. Transformer's highlight was of course the Herbie Flowers bassline, which I had seen years ago and didn't realize was from this show. Key of Life could have been twice as long- maddeningly, it spends more time showing the reassembled band standing around than playing. The behind the boards stuff was some of the best of any of the episodes I've seen so far.

whichever song sounded like it had a marching army in it, that was just them rattling his silverware drawer.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, November 29, 2020 3:34 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

one of my favorite details from classic albums! i think it was "metal gods"?

Transformer's highlight was of course the Herbie Flowers bassline, which I had seen years ago and didn't realize was from this show.

The parts where they get Lou to sing the songs with acoustic guitar are absolutely hilarious, Lou can't get anything right - the singing, the phrasing, the timing, the guitar playing, the words.

/pvmic

Look, how can you blame him? With all the time he no doubt spent practicing the Tai Chi he probably had next to nothing left to work on that other kind of thing.

The three that I've liked most are The Band (probably my favorite), Steely Dan's Aja and maybe John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band.

Plastic Ono Band has the obvious disadvantage of Lennon being gone, but there's a lot of little things they do very well, like Ringo's role in album (with Voorman emphasizing "Ringo has taste, that's why he's a great drummer" and even Ringo dropping his usual aw-shucks modesty to show that he knows exactly what he's doing behind the kit). The most priceless info IMHO is when Arthur Janov explains how Lennon came up with "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."

As much as I enjoy Aja, it's not among my very favorite Steely Dan albums but Fagen and Becker are hilarious (not a given - their liner notes' attempt at humor usually fell flat) and thanks to the way Aja was made, there's plenty of good material for a doc. The “Deacon Blues” exchange was probably the funniest moment for me of any Classic Albums episode: “Those were the days when I was singing like Jerry Lewis. Remember that?” “Yes, that was a very fertile period for you.”

Thought the Suede episode was amazing, especially seeing as I never liked Coming Up much after the giddy heights of the Bernard Butler era. Made me have a bit of a rethink all round.

I think I've only ever seen the one about Peter Gabriel's So (unless that wasn't actually this series?)

ok - it was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Albums

Which is the one that has the guy from Disturbed in it? Was he in the Songs from the Big Chair doc? (Was that Classic Albums canon or just some doc?) Anyway, I know Disturbed covered Tears for Fears, but no one cares what that guy has to say about it.

The Songs from the Big Chair episode was great, some interesting stories and in-studio breakdowns of the songs. Can't remember if the Disturbed guy was in it, but if he was, it would have been a small part

The other thing I took from the "Transforner" episode was that Lou himself did not consider it a classic album, so he was not exactly the most engaged of participants.

Because he thought it was more of a Bowie/Ronno thing that corrupted the purity of his vision?

And then later Ronno beat him out in the picker sweepstakes for The Rolling Thunder Revue.

It's possible he thought it was too much of a Bowie/Ronno thing, not about purity of vision tbh. I think his closing comments were, "It's just an album" *shrug*

Lou's attitude to any album being singled out for praise would probably be: "Why, what's wrong with [other Lou Reed album]?"

Ha, yes, exactly!

The Bat Out of Hell episode is so great. I could watch Meat Loaf, Steinman and Rundgren talk for hours.

love the opening with jim playing piano in a sick af cape