This Is The Thread Where We Praise And Canonize Paul McCartney's "Ram"

*SNICKER*

I tried listening once. It wasn't very good.

Me no understand.

"Get Back" = Great
"Eat at Home" = Stinks?

Me no understand.

"Lady Madonna" = Classic
"Monkberry Moon Delight" = "The nadir in the decomposition of the sixties?"

Me no understand.

Has 'Monkberry Moon Delight' ever been sampled in a hip-hop track? 'Cause it damn well should be.

this record is great, my favorite Macca solo work

Absolutely.

Surely a great album, although he has done several better ones after he broke up Wings again.

Lately I've been wanting to add Big Barn Bed (from Red Rose Speedway) to Ram...it's got the weird catchy pot-smoking Ram vibe so much. I wonder if it was recorded at the same time?

Ah, it was. I thought I remembered a snippet of it on Ram.

i really like "ram".

the album with the bonus song "oh woman oh why" is the one to get, simply cos that song's a really funky stones-y dirge.

Perhaps some will find this interesting, perhaps not...

...but I'm rerecording "Ram" all by myself, track by track. Have a listen!

The Ram Project

Can't listen right now, but nice idea. I haven't ever heard Ram, i should probably track down the original before checking out your version anyway. Oh, and i've read that book, Tim, it's really good.

the 2004 posts are nuts. i don't even like Macca all that much but Ram and his first album are great

yeah that is weird. I don't think the tide has turned on this album in the past few years; as far as I remember it's been considered a classic since the 80's at least. I dont' think it was super well received when it came out but that feeling didn't last long. maybe people were just feeling bad in 2004, what with bush being reelected and the world beginning to suck.

Ram: the choice of the Obama generation.

yeah pretty strange to see spittle-flecked contrarianism on ILM eh

its like the Stevie Wonder c/d thread where the first 100 posts are all people complaining about his sappy balladry

Nice work thus far Davey D!

kudos on all those Dear Boy vocals! damn

Thanks! Just finished "Eat At Home," BTW.

http://www.paulmccartney.com/web/guest/news/-/blogs/paul-and-linda-mccartney-s-legendary-album-ram-set-for-deluxe-reissue?_33_redirect=/web/guest&#p_33#top

RAM will be available across a variety of different formats:

Standard Edition: 1 CD digipak Single disc, digitally remastered 12- track standard edition

Special Edition: 2 CD digipak Remastered album and 8-track bonus audio CD including rarities, b-sides and the hit single, 'Another Day'.

Deluxe Edition Box Set: 4 CD/1 DVD box set & download Remastered album, bonus audio CD, remastered Mono album, Thrillington CD, bonus film DVD, 112 page book, 5 prints in vintage style photographic wallet, 8 full size facsimiles of Paul's original handwritten lyric sheets and mini photographic book of outtakes from the original album cover photo shoot.

Hi-Res: 24bit 96kHz files of the remastered and bonus audio CD, accessed via a download code inserted on a card within the deluxe edition package

Vinyl: 2LP 180gm, gatefold vinyl with download Remastered album, bonus audio disc plus digital download of all 20 tracks

Limited Edition Mono Vinyl: 1LP, Remastered mono album

Digital: RAM will be available for download across a variation of digital configurations including Mastered for iTunes and High Resolution

Right...

Love this album. So many memories of my grandmother's house in the South of France where she had this record (used to belong to my aunt). Of course, being French, she would mishear a lot of lyrics and on "Another Day" (Paul's single from the time) she scanned the chorus as going: "Sau-sage/Sau-sage/Sometimes I feel sau-sage"...

I want that deluxe edition. I love, love, love this record, and did even as a kid. My father had it, and I think I wore out the binding opening and closing the gatefold cover. (Just as so many kids first hear "Yellow Submarine" as their gateway into the Beatles, I got into solo McCartney as a result of "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.")

Sorry I missed on the covers project, totally woulda been into that!

One of my friends suggested a full-LP "Ram" cover band for Halloween one year, which sounds like a dream.

the backlash to the backlash!!!!!

http://www.pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16651-ram/

Is not wrong.

Half the album is listenable but "Uncle Albert" was and remains a piece of shit – and I'm the guy who defends Press to Play.

It's strange how UA/AH got to number one in the USA, but never even got released as a single here.

Also that "Back seat of my car" (which is great), only got to 37 or thereabouts. Were the great UK public really so bored of McCartney then?

^^^ Drunk talk, you'll regret that later

Bought the deluxe version of this with a gift card I had sitting around from Xmas. It sounds terrific, I've always loved this album. (My dad had it when I was a kid, and I remember hearing it a lot in like 1974-75). The accompanying disc with the singles from the same period is great as well, and mastered so well that, e.g., I hear backing harmonies in "Another Day" that I've never heard before, and I've heard that song at least a hundred times.

er xp to Alfred, not Mark G

oh I love "Another Day," which nails the domestic vibe that John kinda misses in "Just Like Starting Over."

#26 on the midweeks.

Too late for me, however, I did this review some while back with only the ancient vinyl original to hand.

I like the 'Uncle Albert' part of UA/AH, but I've never really been keen on the 'Admiral Halsey' part.

I've always had a fondness for Ram, although it's probably my 5th favourite McCartney album overall.

I always thought "Hands across the water" was pretty damn brilliant myself.

this album is amazing front-to-back imho

third best Beatle solo album behind ATMP and Imagine

yeah, Ram is really, really great. I grabbed a bunch of his other solo stuff based on the awesomeness of Ram and was kind of bummed that it's head and shoulders above the rest (there's some decent stuff on McCartney and McCartney II, and a few Wings songs that grab me, but nothing so consistently fantastic as Ram).

I haven't checked the credits lately but isn't the first and last Macca album until TOW to feature session men? Does he play that terrific bass lick in "Too Many People"?

Paul plays everything on this record, except for some random shit (vox/keybds) credited to Linda. He recorded it at home.

for someone so often pilloried for his sentiment and cloyingly obvious lyrics, it's funny how much of this album's lyrics are elliptical proto-nonsense. nothing is expressed in a very straightforward matter, everything is buried in a lot of goofy stoner imagery

matter manner

but Hugh McCracken, Dave Spinozza, etc are in the credits.

Paul plays everything on this record, except for some random shit (vox/keybds) credited to Linda. He recorded it at home.

Yeah, no. He recorded it at CBS Studios in New York, with Denny Seiwell on drums, the guitar guys listed above by Alfred, and orchestra overdubs arranged by George Martin.

In the book in the deluxe edition, Seiwell says he got a call from his booking place about an audition, showed up to discover Paul and Linda in some craphole studio with just a drum set, and Paul asked him to play various beats -- straight rock, a shuffle, something funky, etc. All unaccompanied. He just wanted to hear the dude play.

hmm maybe I was thinking of McCartney I

sounds like paul imagining what smile was supposed to be like, and not landing too far off

yeah this was exactly my thought about most of the album. also not too far off the vibe of the weird post-smile late 60s beach boys albums & but certainly more fully realised than those

and thanks karl for the "another day" mention, would have certainly forgotten to check it out otherwise

my piano was boldly outspoken in attempts to repeat its refrain

didn't mean to be so aggro about this but if you're like "i, a person who likes the beatles and has thoughts about paul mccartney, only like two of the songs on his excellent album ram without qualification," afaic you are trying not to like it. free yourself

i listen to RAM more than any other Beatles/solo release. it's very hard for me to not feel charmed and inspired by a happy family man living out on a farm making loopy macca music.

Some folks go so far as to say that Paul invented indie-pop with RAM. I dunno about that.

How about Paul invented Elephant 6?

Bees are buzzing about my sweet delectable baby
Birds are humming about their big surprise
Who’s your favorite person, dear phenomenal lady?
I belong to the girl with the flashing eyes

I wanna horse
I wanna sheep

Another Day and Oh Woman, Oh Why are so rad

didn't mean to be so aggro about this but if you're like "i, a person who likes the beatles and has thoughts about paul mccartney, only like two of the songs on his excellent album ram without qualification," afaic you are trying not to like it. free yourself

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Saturday, December 11, 2021 12:35 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Quoting without further comments

First time I heard this album I couldn't sleep the night because bits from it kept circling round my head

I know it's tongue-in-cheek, but in all seriousness, I don't like disliking music. It brings me no pleasure in having less music to enjoy, especially from someone who's already had a hand in creating so much of my favorite music. I give everything many chances because I don't believe in dismissing any work on the first try, or even the second or third time around. If people see a lot in something, I want to see what they're seeing too.

I've played Ram and really all of Paul's music many times - I still hold on to a lot of it "just in case" and that includes a copy of Ram. Even the worst stuff has something brilliant - a hook, the singing, a great bass line, etc. - and sometimes that feels like a saving grace but a lot of times it's frustrating coming from someone who's capable of delivering the whole package. I'm glad you guys love Ram, it amazes me that it's got a devoted following that swears by it, but honestly, I've never been able to sit through the whole thing without getting massively irritated half the time. I mean, Adam Sandler has his fans too, I can accept that without liking his shit. Meanwhile, I get a lot more out of Band on the Run, Run Devil Run and Memory Almost Full (which tbh I rejiggered with four cuts from Chaos & Creation but that's another story). I like Ram more than a lot of other Wings/McCartney albums, but I just don't see it being this landmark achievement of any kind. Calling it ground zero for indie pop always seemed like an enormous stretch, one that ignores a lot of music from the previous decade.

I guess that should be "I dislike Ram less than a lot of the Wings/McCartney albums"

It got dropped during some recent phone upgrade but for about 12 years my iPhone ringtone was the ukulele intro to “Ram On.”

One of the things I found listening to all the 70s McCartney releases was that the musical quality didn't correspond with any other aspect. You couldn't say, "He's only good when he:
- rocks (or does ballads)
- is serious (or is whimsical)
- is autobiographical (or writes characters)
- sounds familiar (or experiments)
- does rock and pop (or does other genres)"
...because he's done both good and bad material of all sorts. The one thing that unites the bad songs for me is a certain self-conscious attention to effects, like we can see Paul looking over the song with an arched eyebrow, thinking, "This is really gonna get 'em!"

Sure but there’s something about McCartney’s sheer skill as a performer and songwriter that almost always elevates the song above whatever conceit he’s concocted (this is super obvious in Get Back where his farting around on the soundstage is almost always interesting).

I think in part that’s why his work is so easy to go back to and re-examine. The conceit is transparent—“I’m going to do Tin Pan Alley/Buddy Holly//Little Richard/Elvis Costello here!”—but the execution is almost always more interesting in some way, even if not always mind-blowingly so.

Back on topic, I find “Hey Diddle” to be an absolute ear-worm. The sweet blend of Linda’s vocals with Paul’s, the third grade concert recorder interlude, the lilt in Linda’s voice on the line “Ah but don’t you fear/The next time around/She’ll be there.” Even if it wasn’t on the record proper, this thing just feels like the apotheosis of the Ram aesthetic.

'hey diddle; is indeed great, love this record but hadn't listened to unreleased cuts. 'rode all night' is downright weird