pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

it's the same year Odelay came out

My thoughts exactly

Cake the absolute worst band, could understand wanting to reassess but there’s not much there except whitened dog turd

Ween stewed genres better.

Cake were a very good band. Ween are one of the worst things to ever happen to music.

Motorcade of Generosity >>> Fashion Nugget, but Cake are underrated in either case.

Okay, I'll take it back— Cake were great musically. The vocals and lyrics were and remain cringe.

Black artists—like dubwise hardcore pioneers Bad Brains or ska-punk eccentrics Fishbone—the walls were closing in from both sides, as they were shut out from both the white world of rock radio and the Black mainstream star-making apparatus that favored slick R&B balladeers, synth-funk loverboys, and fashionable rappers.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/living-colour-vivid

This para seems… off to me

Specifically the snide part from “slick” onwards

shades of "black pop conspiracy"

I haven't heard the adam sandler album but surely it's not actually good is it? they just wanted to do that score?

Adam Sandler album is incredible and a classic

I don't get comedy so I'll take your word for it - as long as it's better than that bill hicks bullshit that used to top every "best comedy albums" list

didn't read the review; can only remember that bit from the sandler album where he puts on his worst "MEXICAN GUY" accent and talks about how he looks at his own asshole in the mirror.

Topping a "best comedy albums" list with Bill Hicks was a way for journalists to claim superiority over all the Dennis Leary fans they knew in High School.

I was curious what would actually end up on top of a list like that, since in 2022 Hicks would be an incredibly unlikely pick, and the only legit-ish list I found was SPIN in 2011 with uhhh Bill Cosby at #1. I'm starting to come around to the hivemind consensus that comedy should be put to an end

adam sandler and the death of comedy coming soon to netflix

I’ve never heard the Sandler album (or even seen those early movie, both of which I know are cult favorites for a crowd a little younger than me), but I thought the review was interesting and well written.

(One of those Lowbrow Reader issues has a long appraisal of Billy Madison… I don’t think I’ll ever “get” Sandler, but it’s interesting to read these appreciative takes by guys who were in high school when he came around)

For years, 2011’s Jack and Jill was shorthand for “the worst film ever made,” and yet it has acquired an admiring cult following for scenes like this [the Dunkaccino scene], which contains the best and most dialed-in line readings I’ve seen from Al Pacino in decades.

This is slightly baffling to me. People actually like that scene?

You guys are absolutely offTM here.

Cosby albums were insanely good, though obviously he is a monster off stage. Maybe the best storyteller in comedy history Bill Hicks albums are super tight and razor sharp even if the actual politics of his "angry libertarian" schtick hasn't aged well. Sandler first album is an absolute master-class in absurd-dumb-funny bullshit and the review nails why its great.

Cosby is the best storyteller, not Hicks (punctuation needed there)

I don’t know what reviewers thought of that sandler album at the time (if they thought it wasn’t funny they were wrong, it’s often pretty hysterical) but they were all off the mark on Billy Madison.

I got a snake, man

"obviously he is a monster off stage" was my only point, just the sick joke of idly wondering who would top such a list and it being basically the worst possible option biographically

obvs it wasn't clear from my post, but I am not actually remotely anti-comedy

rant in e minor had a profound effect on me before i had any sort of politics. the first bit being about how much pro-life people suck.. the total hostility toward advertising… idk the parts i remember fondly hold up lol

I was curious what would actually end up on top of a list like that

A Pryor album would be the safe pick.

Hicks had a really good stage presence. I remember one of his cable specials began with him coming through what looked like a secret door with a wall of flames behind him like he was sneaking out of hell.

Some Adam Sandler movies are funny but that album is fucking awful.

I loved Bill Cosby’s albums when I was a kid, like 6-10. The funniest shit in the world.

Now my favorite comedy album is Dice Clay’s The Day The Laughter Died, which deserves its own 33 1/3 book.

I think I still like bits of Bill Hicks but do not agree that his albums were tight, so much time spent making stupid noises into the microphone and every time he really gets going you cut to uninspired guitar noodling.

so much time spent making stupid noises into the microphone and every time he really gets going you cut to uninspired guitar noodling

Let's leave Zappa out of this

Uhhh there’s a shitload more to the comedy album genre than just “albums released by standup comedians”

Oh yeah, there’s Tenacious D too

With whiney on this one, there’s a ton of stand-up that makes me laugh my ass off, it’s just that a lot of popular comics are actually not funny because most people aren’t that funny

Cosby albums were insanely good, though obviously he is a monster off stage.

otm.

And "The Cosby Show" still holds up

Monty Python’s LPs hold up better than just about any comedy records I can think of

“Oh, Yangtze. Oh, beautiful river…”

Monty Python’s original albums were a bit spotty, but The Final Ripoff compilation is one of the greatest albums of all time. I can recite the cheese shop bit by heart.

I have as much Monty Python memorized as any 50-year-old white guy, but the only album of theirs I ever owned was Matching Tie & Handkerchief, which was extremely annoying to listen to:

The album's original LP edition is particularly notable in that it was mastered with two concentric grooves on side two, so that different material would be played depending on where the stylus was put down on the record's surface. For this reason it is sometimes referred to as a "three-sided" record. The cutting was carried out by George "Porky" Peckham, who became known for etching messages into runout grooves. This was the first of many Python albums to bear one of these so-called "Porky Prime Cuts" – a brief message on Side 2 which reads: "PORKY – RAY ADVENTURE". To further confuse the listener, both sides of the record label were labelled "FREE RECORD Given away with the Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief – Side 2" – only the matrix numbers identify which are the first and second sides.[3] The album did not have a track listing, so that this feature would come as a complete surprise to listeners, who might on a subsequent listening hear material they had never heard before, creating genuine confusion.

Since the record had two concentric grooves, they were spaced considerably apart, halving the length of the playing time. Subsequent editions of the vinyl incorporated both grooves sequentially as separate tracks, eliminating the double groove. Likewise with promotional copies for radio stations, as they were banded for airplay. However, when Virgin reissued the album in the UK in 1985, the double groove was retained, but with the "Great Actors" sketch cut from the end of Side 1 and moved onto the start of the second side which previously began with "The Background to History". This meant the two B-sides no longer had equal length, resulting in a long silence following the "Phone-In" sketch at the end of the second Side B.

"three sided albums: classic or dud?"

but seriously, that is expert status - who is the brunt of the joke at that point? silliness. confusion comedy will always win in my book.

Maybe I'm being picky (and nothing at all against the particular artists being discussed), but I was a little irritated by the discussion of "bespoke R&B"(??) in this podcast excerpt.

The point being made is that R&B is "evolving" because "therapy and mental health and identity have all bled into this new class of R&B singers"; whereas "a lot of women in R&B have been relegated to either being sexpots or lovelorn or grieving." I think that's reductive (even with the acknowledgement that "there’s incredible R&B made to that end"), and I'm not sure that "owning every part of your identity" is really "a new era" for R&B...

so that this feature would come as a complete surprise to listeners, who might on a subsequent listening hear material they had never heard before, creating genuine confusion.

On a Simpsons DVD commentary showrunner David Mirkin (I think) talks about this album, and how he thought he was losing his shit due to suddenly hearing completely different material. He later learned that the inspiration for it came from British horse racing records, which were apparently a thing, and where the outcome of a race would be different depending on which groove the needle hit.

He later learned that the inspiration for it came from British horse racing records, which were apparently a thing, and where the outcome of a race would be different depending on which groove the needle hit.

Me and my love for the puzzle plate tradition to thread

Locked Grooves: Classic or Dud

Maybe I'm being picky (and nothing at all against the particular artists being discussed), but I was a little irritated by the discussion of "bespoke R&B"(??) in this podcast excerpt.

The point being made is that R&B is "evolving" because "therapy and mental health and identity have all bled into this new class of R&B singers"; whereas "a lot of women in R&B have been relegated to either being sexpots or lovelorn or grieving." I think that's reductive (even with the acknowledgement that "there’s incredible R&B made to that end"), and I'm not sure that "owning every part of your identity" is really "a new era" for R&B...

― Wet Legume (morrisp), Thursday, December 8, 2022 1:10 PM (two hours ago)

Yeah, if nothing else, it's insultingly ahistorical.

And personally, the idea that therapy & mental health diagnoses are the best vehicle for self-understanding is becoming extremely ripe for unpacking/pushback/some kind of questioning, though obvs this would be a terrible thread (maybe board) for that discussion.

It's like Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, and Erykah Badu, among others, didn't exist.

This Sinatra review by Sodomsky is soooo darn good. I hope someone does a retrospective copy edit and catches a few missing words that trip up the reader (one is in the paragraph just before the “III”, and the other is in the next paragraph… if any Conde Nasties are reading this).

xxp holy fucking shit. not big into their podcast but I'll delete it out of my list now thank you for the heads up!

xp For the record - these omitted words have now been added :)

I keep saying it: Sodomsky's their best staff writer.

Yeah, he's great

I read many of Sodomsky's reviews even if the artists don't particularly interest me.

“Progressive” pop? Yeah, I don’t care for that