It was fun listening to "Wishing Well"; brings me back to when it was on the radio at the time.
I thought as an album that it was all kind of samey, and since stuff like this isn't really my favorite genre I ended up skipping halfway through a number of the tracks. I give it a 3 - I'm not about to buy the record, but none of it would cause me to change to a different radio station.
Oh come on, do I really have to listen to this? I feel I have spent enough time listening to this record and seeing the video on MTV back in the day to be able to say I have heard it before I died.
2 stars - I recognize its technical quality and danceability, but I would get my coffee to go if I were someplace and they started playing this record.
Yay for this record - I've always loved "A Forest." Weirdly though, the only record I ever had by The Cure was that singles comp "Staring at the Sea," so much of this was new to me.
Fun record - I love rhythmically compelling songs with obscure lyrics and music that sounds like the soundtrack to a creepy movie. Probably won't listen to the whole thing very often, but there are some top-notch tracks here.
I couldn't get into this; it just didn't make me enthusiastic about listening to the whole thing because these days this kind of American folk rock isn't very interesting to me. Admittedly I've never gotten into any Neil Young since I was super into "After the Gold Rush" when I was in 9th grade. So this is well done for what it is, I think, just not for me these days.
If it were playing in a coffee shop I wouldn't leave to get away from it, but I'd probably complain about the place afterwards like "well yeah the espresso drinks are good but the last time I was there all they were playing was all this sleepy Neil Young stuff."
Three stars
Hot Rats! Riotous funk-jazz weirdness; the only Frank Zappa record I still listen to regularly. "Peaches en Regalia" started running through my head the minute I saw this cover this morning. I love that the only vocals on this record are by Captain Beefheart.
Best track: The Gumbo Variations, which should have been twice as long
If I heard this in a coffee shop I'd stick around to hear the whole thing unless I'd just played it myself recently; there's a limited amount of Zappa that I can do these days.
Five stars
Well, this was inevitable, might's well get it over with.
Yep, "Sgt Peppers" is an incredibly important record that inspired countless important bands in later years.
But do I ever want to listen to it again? No. (Aw come on, even "Day in the Life"? NO.) This record came out when I was nine years old and has been on constant rotation ever since - so yes, I have heard it, thank you.
I wasn't expecting to like this record this much!
I've been hearing forever how great Wu-Tang was, but have never been into this kind of stuff enough to check it out. Not something I'd play in a car with open windows because of some of the lyrics and spoken word stuff, but otherwise I really enjoyed it.
Four stars
When this record popped up yesterday morning I was like "oh yeah Sebadoh, I remember them" but my next thought was "have I ever actually heard any of this or do I just know about it from reading about it in Puncture or whatever at the time?"
So ok - this is along the lines of things I like, indie rock. I'd give it more stars if it was a little more innovative. It didn't really speak to me for some reason.
Three stars because it's competent, tuneful, but for me unexciting.
I somehow had managed to never hear of this band, so I was intrigued. I love the cover.
The best tracks reminded me a little of Sparks, that over-the-top dramatic kind of stuff. I can see that one or two of them would be fun popping up in the right sort of radio set, and Neil Hannon has a great voice. I'll bet if you liked this at the time, you probably REALLY liked it. Most of it was just a little too goofy for me, but I can see why it was included in this list.
3 stars
This is fun stuff - songs that those of us around at the time will remember from the radio: "Time after Time," "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," etc.
3 stars because while it was never my favorite thing at the time, it evokes a fond reaction of "aww yeah, Cyndi Lauper"
The fast songs were annoying but ok if you like music like this, I guess. But the slow songs were intolerable, like I couldn't get more than 30 seconds in before having to skip to the next track.
Woo, Parliament! - this record is fun. I decided to listen to it while doing some weights and crunches and such but ended up mostly dancing instead.
Lyrics to "Handcuffs" didn't age particularly well, but otherwise there's not a dull moment on this record.
Ha ha this is what I get for telling someone "I like The Mekons more than Bob Dylan" yesterday. What can I say, everything by him has always sounded kind of samey to me, and then he takes out the harmonica, etc etc.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the first couple tracks on this record, acoustic things that I wasn't very familiar with. But it stopped being fun around the halfway point, with a number of tracks like "Mr. Tambourine Man" that I've already heard enough times for an entire lifetime. There was also the issue that somebody in the Youtube comments brought up, that the mixing wasn't great on the electric songs so the singing was obscured by the music, fairly average blues-rock stuff.
tldr: while the first half of the record had me thinking "this is more interesting than I thought it was going to be, I'm going to give it three stars," by the midpoint it started dragging and ends with a two. Not entirely Bob's fault, but he's got a Nobel so he probably won't mind this too much.
I've heard Elliot Smith tracks here and there on the freeform/college-type stations that I tend to listen to, but haven't ever listened to an entire record of his. So I appreciated the nudge today.
I really like his voice, and there's something about the instrumentation that I also like - kind of subtle but interesting at the same time. I don't know if I'll buy this record, but I liked all of it - so, 4/5.
So I feel very strongly that what made The Smiths as good as they were was the music, not the vocals, and this record reinforces that opinion. Plus he's turned out to be kind of politically terrible, which I can't help but be influenced by. So yeah, obviously not a big fan here.
However, despite all the negativity in the previous paragraph, this really wasn't as irritating as I feared it might be. So, 2/5.
This is the first record that I've gotten on this project that was a new, wonderful discovery. I had no idea who Coldcut was, but when I saw that this record had both Mark E. Smith and Queen Latifah on it, my first reaction was "wait, what?" and then I immediately put it on.
Here we have some dance-y music incorporating lots of sampled speech and sounds, which was weirder and more interesting to me than a lot of the stuff in that genre that got airplay here in the US. (I somehow managed to miss getting into the whole techno thing, so I don't have many referents there.)
So, this was very fun; while many of the records I've been fed so far in this project have taken a bit of an effort to get through, I was sorry when this one ended. If I ever find a copy, I'll buy it. Until then, at least I have Youtube -- 5/5
So of course I've heard individual tracks off this record, but it's mainly been in the context of those end-of-year "best 1,000 songs since 1960" type radio shows, sandwiched between Oasis and Janis Joplin or whatever. It's completely different to listen to the whole album and really pay attention to it. Lauryn Hill's voice is both strong and beautiful (I like this version of "Killing Me Softly" better than the original), and the way the three of them work together makes every track imaginative and forceful.
5/5 stars for this one. The generator is turning me into a hip-hop fan!
(I have to add that I'm happy to have finally heard the track that was sampled on that song that then ended up being redone as The Gilla Band's "Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage")
There was a time when The Residents were my favorite thing in all the world. I've seen both them and Snakefinger live multiple times, was in the Residents Usenet group, used to tell my kid that his Christmas presents were from Santa Dog... I'm sure I could think of more examples of my complete Residents-induced derangement at the time.
So I was wondering why I had to dig this record up on YouTube; I know I had a copy of it at some point. Then I listened to it, and realized that other than "Constantinople," the vocals are rather consistently irritating, aren't they. I don't know why the 1001 guy chose this particular record for the book, since there are better ones from that period like Meet the Residents, Fingerprince, and Intermission from the Mole Trilogy; any of those would have gotten 5 stars from me.
I guess the question here is "what rating do I give for a record that I don't particularly like by a band that has been important to me and that I still love other stuff by?" Which I hereby call the "Pablo Honey rule."
With that in mind, I'm giving Duck Stab/Buster and Glen a 3/5.
If you can believe it, I've never heard this whole record before, just tracks like "I Wanna Be Your Dog" on the radio.
Most of this is fun loud garage/proto-punk stuff with great fuzzy guitar bits, which I love. I was mildly baffled at first by the 10-minute psychedelic track at the end of the first side that had with Iggy singing about his usual subject matter over sitar and Hindu chanting, but let's remember that this was recorded in 1969, not 1979. The second side is great - turn it up louder. Even louder.
Thank you 1001 albums generator, it was lots of fun listening to this today. An excellent break from the standard Christmas Eve day playlist.
5/5
These singers are wonderful - this is a cool choice for a Christmas record. But....
I guess for some people, no matter how many times they hear "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" in a given season they're still always filled with warm nostalgia for childhood Christmas mornings, and can't wait to hear it again. Aw, and now here's Frosty! They love that song!
But honestly, me? I really would be glad to never hear about Frosty again. And now it's the end of the season, when I'm looking forward to not hearing any of it for another 11 months. (Plus, Phil Spector, eew.)
They should have given me this record on December 1; I might have given it a 3 then.
2/5
There are a few tracks on this record that I've always liked, especially "[I Don't Want to Go to] Chelsea." Catchy tunes, cleverly rhymed lyrics.
There are a couple duds, though, and the subject matter is pretty repetitive. And I'm a little sick of "Radio, Radio."
Despite those complaints, I seem to be tapping my foot anyway - the beat is pretty irresistible. I'm leaning around 3.5 for this one, but I think I'll bump it up to 4 because I really do like "[I Don't Want to Go to] Chelsea."
Much of this record is great - the intense music - the guitar, the bass!, and Morrissey's often heartbreaking lyrics.
What I was most looking forward to on this record was "How Soon is Now," though, which I swear was on the US version of this record, but it isn't on the version linked here since it wasn't on the original UK release. Too bad, I really like that song.
Despite my disappointment about not getting to hear "How Soon is Now," I've given this a 4/5, since it really is quite good.
First time hearing this record; The Flaming Lips is one of those bands that I've heard on the radio periodically but never grabbed my attention enough to get me to buy one of their records.
The music on this album is interesting - unexpectedly symphonic. A couple tracks struck me as a little too sweet-sounding, but I can see how repeated listens could make them work in context with the rest of it.
The singer has an interesting voice that sounds a lot like Neil Young to me - but it's like Neil Young did some kind of multi-year ecstatic retreat and then stumbled out into the light, inspired to have a completely different kind of sound.
4/5 that could convert to 5/5 after listening to it some more
This record is all about "Peace Frog" for me, since it's one of only a handful of Doors songs that I still really like. So that was fun to hear again: "bloody red sun of fantastic LA"! I used to go to LA a lot for work, and I'd think of that song. But sure, it's also good to hear "Roadhouse Blues" and "Waiting for the Sun" from time to time, and even the songs that don't grab me as much are redeemed by the guitar and keyboards.
So: while I was much more inclined to listen to the Doors when I was 18 years old, today I ended up enjoying "Morrison Hotel" as a whole more than I thought I was going to.
3/5 though because for me it's mainly just about that one song
When I opened this up this morning I yelled "YES!"
Confession: since I wasn't really into punk at the time, I've only recently been catching up on the stuff that came out in the 80s while I was listening to New Wave and my old prog records. So, I've only had a copy of this record for a couple of years, and have come to really like it. It's great for driving around - just an all-around propulsive record, consistently good. My favorite track is "Jesus and Tequila," but the whole thing is great, 5/5
I love qawwali music, so I was really pleased (and surprised) when this one came up. I knew a couple of tracks already from another Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan record that I've got that I think is a comp, not sure because it's been ages since I played it! Must do that more often.
4/5 because while I wouldn't play it all the time, it's really wonderful and mesmerizing music.
When this record came out I was very anti-Elastica. But I think I was in my Coil phase at the time, so you don't want to have to trust then-me's judgment about Elastica.
So, my impression 30 years on? I still find it pretty annoying, like most of these songs felt like blander versions of other bands' similar music. Technically they did a fine job, but by the time I was 2/3 of the way through I started wishing it would end.
But "Stutter"'s good, and a couple of the other tracks were ok too. So, 3/5
There are a couple of Elliott Smith songs that I hear now and then and really like, but sadly none of them are on this record.
I can tell that this is good for the genre, but I feel like it's more calm and ballad-y than I usually like. If we could give half points I'd say 3.5, but I think based on this one listen that I'll give it a 3.
I like the background music on a lot of this - the opening doomy-sounding electronics made me think that maybe this'll be another nice hip-hop surprise. But the vocals were kind of an annoying distraction for me. I'd be interested in hearing a remix of this as a purely instrumental album.
I know my opinion is affected by what Kanye is like these days, and it's certainly not uniformly terrible. But I can't get past a 2 on this one.
