First time listening to a Madonna album from start to finish. Every song was fine; didn't skip any. The production is immaculate (arguably to the point of sterility). But the choices, in arranging and mixing, are questionable throughout. The songs consistently lack urgency or excitement. Often elements that might draw the listener in are too low in the mix, while banal elements are featured very prominently. It must be said that the songs featuring acoustic guitar sound very 90s-pop in a way I would never have guessed Madonna songs could sound. The overall result is an album that is best suited to playing as background music, perhaps while having drinks with friends, or while doing household chores. This is a fate we could never have imagined for Madonna: to be ordinary.
No thank you.
It's actually well produced and seems good bybthe standards of its genre, but there's no freakin way. Uh uh. Yuck.
To quote Homer Simpson: BORrrrrrRINNNG! It's ok, but just ... boring. Not that hard to sit through, but ... just -- why? A few of the songs are better, a few are decidedly not good. I thought the best song was Elevation, and it has some truly banal / cliched lyrics. How does this album make it onto this list?
Since the 1980s, so for 40 years, I have periodically interacted with this classic hard rock album, with its iconic cover art and compelling lead single, Good Times Bad Times. The result has always been the same: underwhelmed(edness). There are really good moments, Jimmy Page is obviously very good at playing guitar, but ... eh. Only one song is fully successful (Good Times, on which all four membets of the band shine).
Several months ago I went through the Zep catalog for purposes of capturing the songs of theirs I like in my Apple Music library. I offended a friend of mine, who loves this band, by complaining to a text chain that their catalog is thin. But lots of it is plodding and underdeveloped. Sorry, Ross!
I found the provenance of Black Mountain Side to be highly interesting ... Al Stewart taught it to Page based on Bert Jansch's arrangement, but got the tuning wrong ... the record company wanted to sue, but couldn't quite get there...
Down by Blackwaterside - Wikipedia https://share.google/9qTkwYSegQjQPCZFI
ZZ Top's best singles are really fun, and I've always had a certain fondness for them since hearing an interview in like 1982 in which Billy Gibbons attributed their success to "never learning that third chord."
That said, I have never listened to an album of theirs. This album was pretty much what I expected -- a bunch of ok songs, plus the one great single.
Songwriting is really important. Having a fun sound can only take you so far.
Classic album ... [list of great songs you know well] ...
So, then the question is: what does listening to the full album yield that we would not get from the career-spanning compilation?
Very little. Plus, quite odd. (Feature / bug -- ? )
Excellent example of a noteworthy album that .... you really don't need to listen to.
During the 80s, I thought Simply Red was a one-hit wonder, and the one hit pretty lame at that. Eventually I came to realize that in the UK the band is taken more seriously, and Mick Hucknall is a star. It made me curious about Simply Red, especially as there is this whole UK pop-soul thing (Style Council, Swing Out Sister, Everything But the Girl) that we don't really have. None of it is great, but it's kind of interesting. Like a much less compelling Two Tone.
So, thank you to the site and the Remorseless Eating Machine for arranging for me to finally listen to a Simply Red album.
It's pretty good. None of it is great, but it all works if you listen long enough and let the songs develop. Solid and consistent. Good job, Red people. Probably not gonna listen to them ever again. Though ... apparently, their album Star from a few years later was even more successful ... ?
The hits are fun in familiar ways. The rest is tedious.
I came to the Smiths well after the party had wrapped up, so they don't have intense personal whathaveyou and etc for me. But they are really, really good, and their combination of pop craft and loopy idiosyncratic strangeness adds up to real artistry. At the same time, I pretty much only listen to them on curated lists because the great songs almost without exception sit beside the clunkers. They are truly consistently inconsistent.
This album is obviously anchored by Girlfriend in a Coma, a great song. For me, the other two great songs here are Death At One's Elbow and Rush and a Push. (I love the way the song titles are usually either ridiculously short or cumbersomely long and unwieldy.) It seems that other listeners tend to value some of the other songs more. I think I listen to the Smiths through Johnny Marr and then secondarily whatever Morrissey is doing, and I suspect others tend to focus more heavily on Morrissey. That might account for the difference in assessing this album as well as others.
What was cool here was hearing the Other Songs again and realizing that most of them are better than I had remembered. Odd, meandering, but finding their way. This is a better album than I had thought. (Thansk, 1001 Album Generator!)
That said, Johnny Marr's heart often doesn't seem to be in it. (Which may have literally been the case; they broke up shortly after htis album came out, and I believe he initiated the breakup.) The music often sounds perfunctory, just filling in around whatever Morrissey is doing. And the sound / production is generally flat, even by their standards.
On that note: The Smiths' recordings were dogged by inferior sound quality throughout their run. There is a box set, Complete Smiths, that addresses that problem effectively with remasters that are much more dynamic and alive sounding. Also, this is a band that recorded lots of singles and released many compilations -- the songs are scattered all over the place, often repeating, often in alternate versions. It is confusing and frustrating. On Complete, you get a song once and there it is. Much better way to go through the catalog.
So many Kinks albums, so many songs that are ... fine. So few truly distinctive or exceptional ones. Waterloo Sunset is a wonderful song. I love that song. But ... there's just not that much here to make me want to listen to this album again.
I am very fond of the Kinks. One of my first concerts was seeing them in downtown Boston on the Think Visual tour. Grew up hearing them on the radio and liking them. But when I go through their classic albums, I'm generally disappointed. It's like Squeeze -- you already know all the good songs. The albums just add filler.
That said, knowing David Watts initially through the Jam's cover, it was interesting to listen to it. Good song. Not sure I ever got around to listening to the Kinks original before. And it was interesting to hear the way, at a pretty early date (1967), they were writing songs that drew on a variety of styles. One song reminded me of Sky Children by Kaleidoscope (which I only know through a friend being very into 60s psychedelia), another of the Who (mod version), another of the Who (Tommy edition), one seemed derived from the Irish folk song Raggle Taggle Gipsy ... they jumped from You Really Got Me to rock as the musical form that can imitate all other forms very quickly. That is really interesting. But ... two really good songs, a bunch of ok ones, mediocre sound engineering, no really hot playing or soloing ... insert familiar bewildered questions about the list ...
S and the B's was a band I knew of but never listened to during high school. They were from just before my time ... some of my older brother's cooler friends liked them. I have long had a sense that they were more important to the quickly evolving post-punk scene in real time than for any recordings they left behind. In other words, influential in a way that the albums will never really capture. And listening to this, I thought, maybe they were a powerful live act. In terms of, why some think of them as a major band and others of us barely know them. Maybe they just didn't have enough hit singles or signature songs to resonate in later decades.
Anyway ... first time listening to one of their albums. I was not feeling it until I was (Monitor -- that song is really good. Gets really good. It takes off in its second half). Then I started digging Sin In My Heart, Voodoo Dolly, Spellbound 12"mix, Fireworks ... and next thing I knew I was listening to it all again. Second time around, I liked Spellbound (regular mix), Arabian Knights, Head Cut ... and it all seemed to work for me.
So much of my listening in high school was by chance -- what I happened to find and give a try that was priced at $1.99 - $3.99 in the used lp's. As a result, lots of what I listened to was a bit older. I went through a phase where I listened to a solid amount of Ultravox (Vienna and the albums before it, which are different, more akin to Gary Numan, Devo, etc.). If I had acquired this album then, I would have really liked it.
As it stands, there is not a lot of space in my life for synth rock for disaffected young people. Glad I listened to it, though. An empty spot on my music map has been filled in.
I get why people were excited about Amy W when she stormed onto the scene. There is an unending appetite for neo-soul. I tend not to love soul music ... in its truest form, it has an odd flow that makes me restless, despite its obvious appeal. Small doses, for me. I never felt the perofrmances matched the excitement around Amy Winehouse, tragic self-destructive life story or not. This album is interesting, but ... I just don't want to listen to it that much. I like the variety, the jazzy touches are a nice element. I was not prepared for the album to sound so much like Jamiroquai. In the end, just an ok, fine album for me. Not loving it.
As soon as I heard the opening notes, I knew I would not like this album. I don't know what gear is involved, but I hate that guitar sound. Kind of exciting and energizing, if you want this, but I don't.
The funk of "Funk Music Sho Nuff (etc)" and "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" is revelatory. Great stuff. The rest is a mixed bag of pretty good soul pop or whatever. The quality varies. The strings don't go with the funk. I was ready to be blown away as I listened to Papa, but it was largely disappointing after that. That said, good album overall. There's something for everyone, and therefore few will be fully happy with it.
I'm very hit or miss with dissonant guitar rock, and my limited interactions with Frank Black have left me thinking of his music as loud, abrasive, boring, and unpleasant. This album was much better than that, and I even liked two of the songs. But I won't be listening to it again.
Whyyy -- ?!?!? As one of my colleagues has already stated, Enough metal!
No, thank you. Gave up after 5 songs.
Remind me again .. is the book's full title 1001 Albums of Modest Interest to Those So Inclined ... ? The official description of this album compares it to Green Day's Dooky. Some people whom I respect like that album, but having been trapped in a car for like five hours this one time in the mid-late 90s with a guy who was really into Blink 182 and Green Day and stuff ... my generosity of spirit is gone, leaving only rage and hostility. Plus which, all these semi-punky California boys with their cleanly produced, aggressive schlock ... again, hostility. Thumbs down. And I really mean it!
I do remember the lead single, Come Out and Play, from hearing it on the radio back in the days in question. It's pretty good, I have to admit.
Impeccably crafted trash.
Kind of fun to listen to an album and know every song from the radio, but .... come on.
I do enjoy listening to trashy 70s rock hits at times, and this reminded me that there are a number of songs I could add to my Super Seventies playlist, but ... again, that's an ironic / nostalgic activity, not a savoring of immortal classics.
Never listened to a Steviw Wonder album before. I tend to think of him only in terms of singles. This is a good album. I listened to it in the background a few times 8mes, so not that closely. But, it grew on me. I really like the two funky songs, Reggae Women and You Haven’t Done Nothin. At first I dismissed the rest as boring, meandering 70s pop of the kind that gave the 70s a bad name, like a premium version of Captain and Tenille or something. But I think it's better than that, though still not something I would seek out. Solid work, Little Stevie.
This is an all time classic rock album. One of the rare legendary rock albums that lives up to its reputation. When I first listened to it in high school, I was all about side one. Side two seemed much less interesting. Now, I don't want to listen to this album very much, but Black Dog holds up as an excellent song of its kind. And Rock n Roll is still exciting. But the songs I still really enjoy are Going to California and most of all, When the Levee Breaks. That one is still a truly great song for me. On Apple music, and presumably also on Spotify, there is a deluxe edition with one alternate version of each song. They're pretty good and worth a listen.
I have been aware since the mid 80s, when my older brother brought home the VU and Nico record, that as good worshipers at the church of Rock, we are supposed to revere or at least honor the Velvet Underground. But I have never really enjoyed their music. Some of the tracks I like pretty well, and I really like Lou Reed's live album, Rock and Roll Animal, which is made up of VU songs. But ... thin and unpleasant tends to be my feeling about the VU I've listened to.
I've never listened to this album before. It's interesting, in terms of seeing how this is a source of inspiration for future dissonant / noisy rock practitioners. The connection between Sister Ray, for example, and early Modern Lovers as well as Stereolab's Random Transient etc. .... seems unmistakable.
I've always thought of their albums as poorly recorded. Reading a little bit about this album and their catalog generally, it seems like the poor sound quality is kind of intentional, like a proto-DIY aesthetic. Not sure that makes it a good idea.
I'm going on to listen to The Velvet Underground, which I have also never listened to before. It's pretty good. Overall, though, my appreciation for this band is getting a modest boost, while my appetite for listening to them just really isn't.
Enjoyable album ... this recording was obviously tailored to the international commercial market, and the constraints that puts on what is possible artistically are unmistakable and felt throughout.
The energy level lifts dramatically when we get to Mbube, easily the best song here; it's not an accident that that song became famous. Interesting that it's called Mbube here and Wimoweh elsewhere.
I'm curious what else she was able to achieve, perhaps in the 70s, when the market shifted toward deeper engagement with the specific sounds of individual cultures.
Good of its kind, I guess. I must say that The Corner is quite good. But. Overall I found the album tedious and kept checking to see how much longer there was to go until it was over. The long tail of It's Your World is really good. It makes a good counterpoint to this, which i wrote before getting to the album's conclusion:
Serves as a good illustration of why I gave up on hip hop in the late 90s, as a genre that seemed determined to resist rhe temptations of imaginative self-reinvention.
