what was the last 'classic album' you got and were knocked out by?

Yeah agreed on both, just listing LPs, which were still a novelty at this point.

I've been enjoying He Touched Me by Elvis Presley, which was mentioned on the Elvis thread. I wouldn't have guessed a post-1970 Elvis Gospel album could be this good.

The Song Remains The Same was leaving Criterion Channel and I haven't seen it since I was a kid on a crappy VHS transfer. Goddamn it knocked me out!

I was wondering the other day if there are any equivalents to Stop Making Sense in terms of combining a high quality theatrical concept, spectacular band show, and very cool music. The first time I saw it, my father who is not very curious musically and probably never listened to Talking Heads after that, sat next to me and watched the entire show with me.

I'm listening to my first Steely Dan album, their first too. It's ok, I'm still standing.

Finally got a copy of the Andy Irvine & Paul Brady lp cos it finally got a decent remaster.

great album^^^ didn't know about about the new remaster

also very worth hearing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Lines_(Dick_Gaughan_%26_Andy_Irvine_album)

The reissue of The Bridge by Robert Rental and Thomas Leer. Lovely stuff

Andy Irvine & Paul Brady new version is pretty new. I was seeing reviews of the vinyl version 3 or 4 months ago and hoping that it was going to come out on cd too. So it appeared on cd and I couldn't afford to buy it then I got a little windfall last weekend so got it.

The pair are touring in November, apparently rescheduled from January.

JUst seen this too so thought I'd add it. Then read it
https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsandculture/arid-40782783.html

I was wondering the other day if there are any equivalents to Stop Making Sense in terms of combining a high quality theatrical concept, spectacular band show, and very cool music. The first time I saw it, my father who is not very curious musically and probably never listened to Talking Heads after that, sat next to me and watched the entire show with me.

It's really the gold standard. You rarely have a concert film that manages to have a great artist and be a truly great film and feature truly great music. The only other one that comes to mind is Monterey Pop, and that's not even one artist or one setlist.

I'd check out Prince's Sign 'O' the Times which may be on the Criterion Channel. It's more of a serviceable film than a great film (the scripted dramatic elements alone are a bit clunky) but musically it's pretty f-ing great, every bit the equal if not better than Stop Making Sense in that department.

I should add The Last Waltz. Plenty of people like myself have reservations about it, but there are people who have argued that it's better than Stop Making Sense. (FWIW, if Stop Making Sense is an A+ film, I'd call The Last Waltz an A- at best, more likely a B+.)

On a more modest level, perhaps Laurie Anderson's 'Home of the Brave'?

I still haven't seen it, but since so much of her work was conceived with a visual or theatrical component in mind, it's probably essential viewing.

United States Live is my holy grail - I know Christgau loves the soundtrack, but I would love to see a complete film of her legendary BAM production.

me too! fgti has mentioned it before - i think the original full recordings/ films are gone?

massive :(

is it heretical to say Strange Angels is her best? Some of my favorite synth sounds on a Poppy Bush Interzone album.

I would sell a lung for a blu ray of the United States Live footage.

My favourite thing about the Sign O The Times film is that Prince has preciseley two lines of dialogue "Hey Cat why don't you let me take you out tonight?" to which she replies "Fuck off!" and one other where he points at a ring in a mocked-up jewellery shop window and says "Come closer... isn't that nice?". I mean.. the humour of this man! God damn!

"unhalfbricking". Amazing record.

Operation Doomsday

Love - Forever Changes

Wisdom, Mr. Soto.

I can't characterize it yet! Spooky folk? I keep imagining the Walker Brothers at the mike.

I'm finding Herbie Hancock's nventions and Dimensions pretty fascinating. Have had it as part of a box set for a couple of years and not payed much attention to it. Now had it on for a few days and seeing various levels. Interesting for a jazz record with no horns and one real melody instrument.
Has had me wondering how popular it was with mods or at least whatever the group who were makers and shakers in taht scene and may have rejected taht label. Since it came out in 64 it should be more what that scene was into than what it was depicted as, especially with him being a Miles sideman.
Anyway interesting textures etc. & interesting choice of sidemen with 2 Latin players on percussion instruments/drums.

xp interesting, just been listening to a number of podcast interviews with Johnny Echols over the last couple of weeks which has given some background on the development of Love up to Forever Changes taht I wasn't 100% familiar with before. Worth looking around for, & I'm looking forward to his own memoir whic is supposed to underway and hopefully mostly written.

The JOhn Einarson reworking of Arthur Lee's incomplete memoir was pretty interesting too

Johnny Echols is kind of known for his tall tales tbh.

"unhalfbricking". Amazing record.

co-inky: a few days ago i was thinking to myself that unhalfbricking was the only FC record i'd heard, so went and listened to, and ended up *loving*, Fotheringay

Otherly Pastoralism?

(Multi-xp)

I'd say all the run of Richard Thompson era FC was worth hearing, definitely all of teh Sandy Denny era which mainly overlaps though she comes back for 2 lps later. But all that era with Hutchings and Thompson including the first lp which has Judy Dyble on and may be more psychedelic.
I'd also checck out the lps by hutchings when he moved on to other projects. The first 3 Steeleye Span which are pretty psychedelc reworkings of traditional material, then the Albion band material starting with No Roses and the Battle of The Field. & if you can get a chance to hear the early live recordings with Richard & Linda Thompson onboard they're pretty great too.
Richard & Linda Thompson the 1st 3 especially Bright Lights & Pour Down Like Silver as well as the recordings from the 1975 tour which were released much much later. All great.

thx for the recs, Stevolende. have Bright Lights and Pour Down like Silver, but have never listened to Steeleye Span or any of the other stuff you mentioned.

& if you really like that stuff you can check out the Trees, Woods Band, Pentangle, Jefferson Airplane, Great Society, Folque, Ougenweide and a few others. Incredible String Band also good but maybe a different direction since early stuff all acoustic and possibly a bit more hand over one ear folky though even then there have been some rock covers of a couple of their songs.

Richard Thompson's memoir was good. & Clinton Heylin's books on the band are informative if you can get over him

"I was wondering the other day if there are any equivalents to Stop Making Sense in terms of combining a high quality theatrical concept, spectacular band show, and very cool music. The first time I saw it, my father who is not very curious musically and probably never listened to Talking Heads after that, sat next to me and watched the entire show with me."

I was going to say Laurie Anderson's Home of the Brave, which feels as if it was greenlit because of the success of Stop Making Sense, but Maresn3st beat me. Beat the crap out of me. Anderson didn't have the same kind of wide appeal, though. For some reason I've always thought of REM as the next "mainstream US indie band with popular and critical appeal" after Talking Heads, but I have the impression that they weren't interested in theatrical live performance. And Talking Heads emerged at a different point in history, when Woody Allen films were popular and everybody in the United States was middle-aged and cared passionately about wind power and solar power etc. People were willing to watch a bunch of quirky students dance in place on an empty stage while playing mutated funk music at the beginning of the 1980s. The rest of the 1980s did away with all that. If Talking Heads had formed in 1984 they would have been denounced as communists. Their one and only album would have been produced by Stephen Hague.

I think the problem is that the next big thing in concert productions after Sense was e.g. Peter Gabriel's Secret World Live, which fits the brief - it was really something - but it was conducted a more impersonal scale, with everybody jamming to a click track, scheduled to the second, a la Pink Floyd's The Wall. Gabriel belonged to a different kind of theatrical tradition. Sadly neither Shed Seven nor Meanswear had the budget to express themselves fully in a live setting.

On topic, Never Mind the Bollocks, many years ago. I assumed it was going to be tuneless buzzing monotonous rubbish but it sounded like metal. Wracking my brains I'm struck by how few classic albums blew me away when I first heard them. Probably because they were already familiar on account of them being big-sellers. And also because very few albums are consistently good, because music is hard, and forty minutes of concentrated music is hard. Led Zeppelin's first four albums impressed me because here in the UK they didn't release singles, and despite being massive at the time their music doesn't get played on the radio or TV very often, so those albums still sounded fresh.

Talking Heads emerged at a different point in history, when Woody Allen films were popular and everybody in the United States was middle-aged and cared passionately about wind power and solar power etc. (…) The rest of the 1980s did away with all that. If Talking Heads had formed in 1984 they would have been denounced as communists.

Uh…(??)

didn't the recent talking heads stage show get rave reviews? is there a recording of that?

Far East Family Band - Parallel World

Holy hell this is killer.

Xp I assume you mean ‘American Utopia’, yes there’s a movie and I think it’s the equal of SMS.

Over on the main Laurie thread, somebody refers to talking with somebody who should know who seemingly confirms that the original full-length reels of live United States no longer exist, and that Anderson's a tough self-critic, maybe esp. that era (also see the archived Norton Lecture which I refer to on the same thread as "My Life As A Capitalist Tool," for her confusing, unexpected involvement with 80s investors, from record biz and elsewhere)
TCM's Juneteenth schedule incl. one of if not the earliest landmark concert films, Jazz On A Summer's Day(1959) with theatricality in part planned, in part accidental (the storyline about two lovahs who go to the show, didn't come together at all), and no fucking narration or interviews, hallelujah, just Willis Conover's occasional foghorn IDs of the performers, direction by Bert Stern, a Mad Man and wizard of commercial photography, making his first and only film, with Aram Avakian, who I think took his innovative, then-startling edits to or at least influenced xpost Monterey Pop and Woodstock--mostly, he and Stern played it pretty straight, but this kind of thing freaked out some of the moldy figs of film as well as jazz (also bringing in non-jazzers like Big Maybelle and omg Chuck Berry, who def. holds his one with sets by Louis Armstrong ect.):

Even worse for jazzophiles is Bert Stern’s refusal to pay due reverence to his musical subjects. How dare he obscure Thelonious Monk’s rendition of “Blue Monk” behind footage of and announcements for the America’s Cup yacht race, introduce “Loose Walk” with Sonny Stitt in mid-solo, or lay an interview between Elaine Lorillard and radio reporter Donna Larsen over George Shearing’s “George in Brazil?” These objections, though, are questions of degree as Jazz on a Summer’s Day succeeds not just by capturing great jazz performers for posterity but by representing jazz in new and vibrant contexts. Stern’s “impression of jazz …was something downstairs in a dark room. [Jazz on a Summer’s Day] brought jazz out in the sun and it was different.” First and foremost is Stern’s election to shoot the film in vibrant colours, a decision inspired by seeing The Red Shoes a decade earlier (“the first color movie that used color instead of it being in colour”). By day, Stern captures the dappled sun on rippling ocean waves, while at night he turns his cameras into the stage lights and bathes his musicians in saturated red auras. Secondly, Stern attends to the juxtaposition of rich and poor in old-money Newport’s Jazz Festival. Yacht races and elderly citizens contrast with buses full of African-American attendees, shirtless children pushing strollers in adult heels, and beer-fuelled house parties spilling out onto roofs. And Stern merges these contrasting images into wonderful knots: a roving jalopy full of Yale students playing Dixieland, Nathan Gershman playing Bach on the cello in a smoky practice room, and Anita O’Day stealing the show with her up-tempo vocals and scat while poshly dressed for tea in white gloves and a wide, feathered hat

To its credit, Jazz on a Summer’s Day offers no moralizing interviews on the meaning of jazz, the problems of race or class or generation, or the promise of music to remedy or aggravate these ills. To the extent that Stern looks for answers, he does so by “poking around” with tight close-ups of the performers, with lingering views of their audiences, and with the possible transcendences that the music might offer to the otherwise banal life outside the Festival’s grounds. Stern finds a prosperous, stable, and progressing America in the desegregated acts and audiences of the Jazz Festival (particularly in Terry Gibbs sharing the vibes with Dinah Washington during “All of Me” and Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden’s cavalier rendition of “Rockin’ Chair”), in young white girls screaming for a somewhat subdued Chuck Berry, and in Mahalia Jackson’s heart-melting statement to the watching crowd, “You make me feel like I’m a star.” Above all, there is a breezy leisure to Summer’s Day, notwithstanding a few consternated faces of older residents apparently feeling a bit under siege. Young and old, black and white, observe the Festival patiently, bobbing their heads, puffing on pipes, and eating popsicles. The pace feels natural, in keeping with the cool ocean tide pools that lay serenely along the coast and the lively ocean sprays of yachts and ferries. In Jazz on a Summer’s Day, Stern reveals the secret of jazz, taking it out of monochrome nightclubs to breathe free in the world outside and to be made all the more glamourous in this new expanse.

Summer of Soul is about on this level overall, despite being a bit too pushy/obvious with the modern-day editorials.

Also, Stern and Avakian got there during a precursor to theee Sixties: the texture and tumult of rock and blues and social subtexts with older jazz stars at peak and Jimmy Giuffre 3 easing in there w the subtle shades of stoner aromatics, made more bold by the Chico Hamilton Quintet.

Not free jazz, but JG3 watercolors, CHQ oils.

terry callier - occasional rain. wow.

Oh, man. What Color is Love is a stone classic.

The Pretty Things and Philippe DeBarge - Rock St Trop

only here for the terry callier mention. if you want even more of that period: https://www.discogs.com/master/90954-Terry-Callier-First-Light-Chicago-1969-71

"trick all your time away" is his best song, btw.

thanks. i was inspired to check it out because of the new charles stepney demos comp.

is there no thread for charles stepney? for shame!

When John Hassell died someone recommended Possible Musics; oof that’s fantastic, especially Delta Rain Dream. It’s a shame he didn’t get as much credit for Houses In Motion as he should’ve.

What Color Is Love is all time... need to put on Occasional Rain again. His voice is the epitome of comfort/reassurance to me. Love the dude

what color is love is next on my list, certainly. and i might as well complete the stepney trilogy with i just can't help myself while i'm at it

occasional rain was my entry point, too + i think it's undervalued. if not quite as good as what color is love, it's close.

No idea why but I had never given ‘In The Court Of The Crimson King’ a listen until today.

I’ve known the album art since my teens, and remember King Crimson being referred to as an ‘influence’ by many bands I enjoy in NME / guitar mags back in the 90’s. I’ve even had phases of listening to Rush and Yes over the years but skipped KC probably on the basis of reading an interview with Robert Fripp about Fripptronics in my early teens and thinking it didn’t sound very punk.

Turns out I’ve been missing out, what a spectacular album. ‘I talk to the Wind’ especially, right up my street.

The recent 40 year anniversary remix/master of ITCOTCK was like listening to it new again. Felt like it had been recorded last week.

Tbf that is what I have been listening to, it sounds so good.

The best thing I've heard in the past year is 1974's "Anima latina" by Lucio Battisti. If you've never heard it, he was an Italian singer-songwriter inspired by the Brazilian/tropicalia music of the time to make something similar, and he was wildly creatively successful at it. Think Milton Nascimento and Lo Borges meets Italian prog. Gorgeous stuff. Bowie dug it too.