Poll: Bandwagonesque v. Nevermind v. Loveless

Shields isn't that fat.

Louis means that he's thinking of how much better Yeats is than any of these guys

He's talking about The Importance of Being Earnest, John.

Louis means that he's thinking of how much better Yeats is than any of these guys

A dreaded sunny day
So let's go where we're wanted
And I meet you at the cemetry gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
But you lose
'Cause weird lover Wilde is on mine

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n0/n922.jpg

^^^Wilde's much more talented uncle

louis doin the lit equivalent of what whiney was accusing cats of upthread

Can't front, MTW is pretty damn anti-Catholic.

Too bad it's hellaciously exciting!

"anyway, loveless wins cuz i like it. and i've never heard the other ones. (well, i've heard nirvana. just not the whole album.)"

Scott, I think we were separated at birth.

And yeah, Goat by Jesus Lizard destroys any of the above. (props to Warmaster as well).

1991 albums better than nevermind

The Electric Eels – God Says Fuck You (Homestead)
Kix – Hot Wire (Atlantic)
Amy Grant – Heart In Motion (A&M)
Malidita Vecindad Y Los Hijos Del 5 Patio – El Circo (Ariola Mexico)
Corina – Corina (Cutting)
Bang Tango – Dancin’ On Coals (Mechanic/MCA)
Sandee – Only Time Will Tell (Fever/Ral/Columbia)
Mylene Farmer – L’Autre (Polygram France)
Anacrusis – Manic Impressions (Metal Blade)
Gazebo – I Like Chopin (Alex)
Mecano – Aidalai (BMG U.S. Latin)
Mano Negra – Amerika Perdida (Virgin France)
Lisa M – Flavor Of The Latin (Sony Discos)
L’Trimm – Groovy (Atlantic)
Fobia – Mundo Feliz (Ariola Mexico)
Cypress Hill – Cypress Hill (Ruffhouse/Columbia)
The Nomads – Sonically Speaking (Sonet)
The Neon Judgement – Are You Real (Play It Again Sam)
Les Negresses Vertes – Famille Nombreuse (Delabel)
Michael Jackson – Dangerous (Epic)
Kik Tracee – No Rules (RCA)
The KLF – The White Room (Arista)
Los Prisioneros – Grandes Exitos (Capitol/EMI Latin)
The Kentucky Headhunters – Electric Barnyard (Mercury)
Junkyard – Sixes, Sevens & Nines (Geffen)
I Start Counting – Catalogue (Mute)
Guns N Roses – Use Your Illusion II (Geffen)
Guns N Roses – Use Your Illusion I (Geffen)
Daddy Freddy – Stress (Chrysalis)

yerself is steam was almost as 'revolutionary' and certainly as good as loveless fwiw

I can definitely see an Anacrusis vs Nirvana thread blooming... ;)

Amy Grant – Heart In Motion (A&M)

Xhuxk we don't see eye to eye on everything but I'm with you here

Did we ever discuss Heart in Motion, J0hn? I have a feeling we did.

I was never convinced that Nevermind was the best record of 1991 until I saw all these lists. I mean, I'm pretty fond of Blue Lines and I've had a lot of fun with some of the others, but it's not even close.

Actually, I reckon Woodface was 1991, and it at least makes me pause

"do you ever think some ppl are fronting with this whole OMG WEEN/BOLT THROWER/COWS IS BETTER THAN NEVERMIND shit nowadays?"

i felt the same way back then though. in 1991, i liked all the stuff on my list better than the stuff i heard on nevermind. i'm just old though. nirvana wasn't a "sea change" for me and they weren't saving me from anything. i listened to tons of cool stuff before they put out a record and after. doesn't mean i think they suck or anything. those are catchy songs! but the one and only time i ever got excited by nevermind was for a brief second when i first heard it at a party and thought it was a new squirrel bait album. then someone told me, no, it was nirvana. and then i thought, well, at least they are squirrel bait fans!

Eh, Nirvana - Nevermind > Amy Grant - Lead Me On > Amy Grant - Heart In Motion. Lead Me On has at least half a dozen great songs on it, Heart In Motion has "Every Heartbeat" and, uh, a bunch of other songs.

When I was 16 it was Nevermind for me all the way. Hadn't heard Loveless until years after that, and while it has its mindblowing parts, but that time I was also getting into Flying Saucer Attack and Spacemen 3 and JAMC, etc. so the for me shoegaze thing was about appreciating all these different approaches rather than one monumental album. Around that time I went back to Nevermind by downloading tabs and learning the songs. I read the lyrics to the songs for the first time and it made me appreciate Kurt's songwriting even more than I did originally.

Are there any threads discussing Landmark Albums you thought were just okay because you weren't the right age? Scott's response to Nevermind reminds me of how I acted when Kid A came out.

Heart In Motion has "Every Heartbeat" and, uh, a bunch of other songs.

"Good For Me!" "I Will Remember You"! "Baby Baby"! "Hats"!

Trompe Le Monde is insanely better than most of the records that came out in 1991 or since for that matter.

my brother played me pod by ween when it came out and it blew me away!!! i was really stoned though. that helped. but it excited me and made me laugh and was a memorable listen. i probably haven't heard it since, but that was a memorable moment! i haven't listened to blue lines in years either, but i thought it was great back then. and profound in some new way. though nothing can probably surpass how i felt when i brought the safe from harm twelve inch home and playing it for the first time. before the album came out. that actually did feel like some sort of sea change. in retrospect, it didn't lead to much except maybe some cool portishead singles, but i didn't have to care about that then.

i'm just old though. nirvana wasn't a "sea change" for me and they weren't saving me from anything. i listened to tons of cool stuff before they put out a record and after. doesn't mean i think they suck or anything. those are catchy songs!

Yeah, they're pretty good. I like the album, love "Teen Spirit," always have. But if you'd been listening to loud weird noisy indie guitar bands since at least, say, the first Flipper album or Butthole Surfers EP, it was honestly not that big a deal. Even the pretty pop-melody part of just seemed like something Husker Du/Replacements/Squirrel Bait/Soul Asylum/ Dinosaur Jr/etc. had been doing for the previous seven or so years. Refined, maybe. But refinement isn't the same thing as a sea change.

is it possible that something other than Loveless will win in ilx?

xp Though Teenage Fanclub, fwiw, seemed like a much much much smaller deal. They didn't even seem like a decent powerpop band, as far as I could tell.

And I've just never liked MBV much; they bored me then, bored me now. Always reminded me of Jesus & Mary Chain with the hooks taken out. So despite my list above, my vote here easily goes to Nirvana.

Always reminded me of Jesus & Mary Chain with the hooks taken out.

holy mother of god

i bought that first teenage fanclub album on matador and listened to it all of once. so, i guess i kinda wrote them off. i lumped them in with boo radleys and other bands that were a big deal in the u.k. and were only worshipped here by the bob magazine and magnet. the same people who still listen to new bob mould and robyn hitchcock albums. you know, like jack rabid.

loreena mckennitt "the visit" ftw

FWIW, I think that Teenage Fanclub album gets misunderstood when taken as a power pop album. Yeah, everything they did after it was power pop, and they wanted it to be power pop, and they ripped off power pop to make it, but it's not power pop to my ears. Which is probably why I like it.

Other thing I always come back to is: I bought Never Mind The Bollocks, Confusion Is Sex and Creamed Corn From The Socket of Davis at three different *mall record stores* in New Jersey so the idea of Nevermind suddenly ushering in some sea change has always seemed weird. I mean, I know what happened in its aftermath, but it wasn't like water suddenly came to the desert, at least for me.

do you ever think some ppl are fronting with this whole OMG WEEN/BOLT THROWER/COWS IS BETTER THAN NEVERMIND shit nowadays?

Maybe not frontin. Maybe they just enjoy being quantitatively wrong.

i laughed at "these are without question the three best albums of 1991"

also at scott including 'arc' over 'weld', surely the most contrarian piece of contrarianism on this thread so far. chuck and scott r u doing these off the top of ur head

when i was fourteen (almost ten years later, and in england) pretty much all my friends listened to nirvana, or at least this album. they did not listen to either of the other two albums. probably none of the other albums mentioned in this thread, except use yr illusion i and ii.

from what i can tell, the global advent of emo seems to have given 14-year-olds away from the pulsebeat something else to listen to and latch onto, which is a good thing: and i guess nevermind is historical for them, now, in a way it isn't for me, even though i was six when it came out. i mean, it's historical if you're over 40 or under 20 or so, it seems like. (feel free to quibble with the range here.)

hands up: how many people who have posted on the thread care enough about the question, as posed in the thread title, to actually have voted?

i voted for nirvana just because i didn't want to see the absolutely boring loveless take the win.

important thinking itt

loveless is just as overrated as nevermind is.

"Banwagonesque" I thought mediocre & derivative when it came out, I never understood why it got all the props it did, didn't understand why I never seemed to read any dissenting opinions about it at the time either. On top of that, my abiding memory of the fucking thing is that if you went out to the indie disco on a fri or sat night, you couldn't avoid hearing it, and it fucking ruined many nights out for as much as a year, due to it being heavily rotated by the local DJs. In retrospect, I wonder if it was the shock troop advance commando attack sorta thing for the wave of tedious nostalgia/retro rock that ruined british guitar music in the wake of britpop. Probably not, but y'know.

"loveless" I like plenty though if I'm reaching for a MBV rekkid, it's almost always going to be "isn't anything" Even though I like it, I think Xhuxk's "Jesus & Mary Chain with the hooks taken out" is kind of apposite and I do think that the mary chan blow MBV into the weeds generally.

"nevermind" I still like a lot, the tunes are still good & strong generally, the performances still propulsive & thrilling if you crank it up. I voted for "Nevermind"

From the stuff listed upthread by Scott & Xhuxk, i like "Blue Lines" about as well as nevermind, "Spideralnd" a little better, though I haven't played it in many years, "Laughing Stock" and "Cypress Hill" nearly as much.

People that vote MBV are like people that convince themselves that Trout Mask Replica is better than Abbey Road

but the thing is dude

ohhh, that first Cypress Hill record is fucking amazing! It's so overlooked. It's got a great vibe, kind of like "Illmatic" does. I think the production is even better than "Low-End Theory."

for comparative purposes whiney maybe start the '68/9 (?) thread with abbey road, trout mask replica, and a donovan album

in the court of the crimson king?

i don't think you're mapping these the same way i am

Loveless is the only one that can hold my attention after many repeated listens over the years.

Always reminded me of Jesus & Mary Chain with the hooks taken out.

That was actually my first impression of Loveless as well, until I realized shortly after that they were trying for something different, more like Cocteau Twins with feedback and fuzz. I was 17-18 when I had this realization, which was 17 years ago.

1991 was just the most musically disillusioning year for me in my entire life. And that had to do with exactly two factors: I was eighteen, and indie bands were streamlining their sound and signing to majors.

Nirvana Nevermind, Metallica Black Album, Voivod Angel Rat, and Ministry Psalm 69 all made me want to strangle the artists involved. Of those four, Angel Rat is the only one I've ever owned.

This is not an attempt to look cool or precocious. It's simply the state of mind I was in at that age that year. Nirvana Bleach (and tour) were big deals for me. Nevermind was a big disappointment.

And fwiw, I didn't get into Loveless until way later and I still think it's a nice listen more than a revelation/masterpiece. Stereolab writes better songs than MBV for crying out loud, and they usually only need one riff and one beat to do it!

1991 was just the most musically disillusioning year for me in my entire life. And that had to do with exactly two factors: I was eighteen, and indie bands were streamlining their sound and signing to majors.

So . . . Bandwagonesque or Loveless, I take it? They were both released on Creation Records, an indie label.

Voivod Angel Rat

This is actually a great album! Can't believe I left it off my list above (which btw was not done from memory; it's from a file on my desktop.) Though I can see how some people who loved all of Voivod's earlier, more convoluted stuff may have heard it as a betrayal. (I like their early stuff, too, but Angel Rat is still easily one of my favorites.)

it's historical if you're over 40 or under 20 or so, it seems like

I don't get this. Wouldn't people now in their 30s be more likely to feel it was a life-changing album, not less? (Though maybe I don't understand what you mean by "historical." I mean, it's obviously a historical album. It'd be idiotic to argue otherwise. I just don't think it's a great one.)

it has to be 'bandwagonesque', I mean, come on, look at who they inspired--the diggers, swiss family orbison, superstar, some people bought some bmx bandits records that may have not--that is quite a legacy.