Fun. Fun is the word that wraps up everything about this performance in a heart-shaped box of chocolates. The excitement! The vitality! The banter, with both audience and fellow musician! It's so easy to close your eyes while listening and imagine yourself in the crowd, twirling around the dance floor with your partner. It's the kind of show that can go on forever and never get boring. I imagine everyone walking out of the club, still feeling loopy.
I saw a lot of comments on this from people who immediately dismissed it because "live album" or "not a good guy." That innate negativity bothers me, and I want to encourage everyone to keep this in mind for every album on this website: it's someone's favorite. This album is someone's favorite album. So I'm going to give every album on here a fair shot and try to understand it like they do. Wouldn't you?
I am a vocalist. Something I get asked from time to time is if I have any tips on how to sing well. I don't--most of my experience comes from singing along to Mike Patton in my car. The one tip I could provide, if any, is to really put your back into it. Embody the words. Invest in what you're saying. Even if you're a "bad singer" you can find the right people as long as you're presenting confidence.
I have never heard any of Elvis Costello's music before, but obviously, the first thing that struck me was his voice. He's a fine singer, but his enthusiasm is what got to me. I found it very easy to get over the obstacle of thinking "why does he sound like that?" and just appreciate it. Then came the impeccable drumming. Then came the savvy, nimble basslines. One by one, every piece came together, and each song sticks to your brain like peanut butter. Side A runs through the listener like a freight train, and while side B slows things down, all the tracks still have the minutiae that make them distinct and satisfying.
It's alright. The songs are beautifully written, and aside from cheesy saxophone solos and the predictable pastiche of a big climactic ending, they're timeless. Even I am not immune to a song like Vienna--I'll listen to it in my car and think to myself "I'm fine. This won't make me cry. Why would it? I'm not tearing up at all" as a lump forms in my throat.
When it comes to the two big ballads on here, I prefer Vienna over Just The Way You Are. In regards to the two biggest hits, I'm definitely on team Movin' Out. But other than the straight New York heat, I'm not a massive fan of the album. I personally feel it loses steam after Only The Good Die Young. But I can't deny that it's a beautiful piece of work.
I have nothing to contribute to the world of music hobbyists and journalism. My perspective is severely limited. I'm picky, stubborn, and there's likely thousands of "classic" albums that I have never heard before. I did this project to broaden my tastes. An attempt to understand myself and my tastes better, and to be able to articulate why I like or don't like something.
Today, on album #4, I encounter my first obstacle: why do I really dislike Crime of the Century?
It feels unfair to say something as dismissive as "I don't like prog rock." Even if I added a stipulation and said "I don't like 70's prog rock" that still doesn't get to the heart of it. I still enjoy some Pink Floyd, and I love Roundabout by Yes, which is quintessential 70's prog rock. So what's going on here? Am I unable to get into its musical theater stylings? Do I not like the thin sound of the keyboards? It's hard to say exactly what turned me off from the album, but from the beginning, nothing even turned me on. I wasn't sold.
I found Dreamer more obnoxious than anything. In fact, I found a good chunk of the album obnoxious. The album as a whole is not bland, boring, or offensive, and I'm not inclined to call it anything particularly mean. But in the course of any music hobbyist's life, there comes a time. A time when you have to admit to yourself...you don't like (most) 70's prog rock.
just dropped my whole fuckin dinner on the fuckin floor stupid fuckin imagine john lennon fuckin ass
There's a lot of talk among Radiohead fans of this being their actual best album, better than OK Computer, the "sleeper hit" of the catalogue. And I can understand that. Everyone involved decided to reel in all the electronic experimentation they had been doing for the last seven years, and get back to writing songs that are just...good songs. Songs that you can play on guitar or piano. Songs that don't cease to exist if your synthesizer crashes and you lose all your presets.
From the get-go, you think it'll be their most experimental album yet, with Thom singing over these delay-scratched sequenced beats. But overtime, '15 Step' ends up feeling more and more natural, and the album never returns to that field again. There's a reason Thom called these "love songs." They're so intimate, they're so grounded. You have good ol' rock-and-roll cuts (Bodysnatchers, Jigsaw) as well as the exceptionally moody songs (House of Cards, Nude, and oh my god Videotape.)
I don't think it's perfect. The songs here are beautiful and many are still catchy, but they don't have the same level of eat-your-heart-out theatrical ambitions that OK Computer does. And while there is no filler on In Rainbows, some songs might possibly overstay their welcome. House of Cards does not need to be 5 1/2 minutes long.
It harkens back to the classics from the 60s and 70s, when albums only existed on a vinyl LP. Every artist only had 40 minutes and change to prove to you why they should be included in your collection. And of course, In Rainbows is no exception. It's for those who wanted a more concise band, less whining, more traditionally great singing. Better drumming, better guitar licks, it's just a beautiful record.
This is your free pass, reader. You do not need to listen to Amnesiac before you die.
I don't believe there is any universe outside of the one we live in where Amnesiac must be heard before death. There are good songs on the album, but 80% of this record is musical backwash--outtakes and rehashes from Kid A (of which I'm not a big fan anyway, but that's another story.) Life in a Glasshouse is a beautiful, unique piece of work, and Pyramid Song is a must-hear across their entire discography. But the majority of the album is sonic experiments that don't deserve to be fleshed out into full songs. They don't even try to flesh out Hunting Bears!
When compared to Kid A, which it must be given the context in their discography, Amnesiac has the lesser version of Morning Bell, the lesser guitar interlude...it even has two songs that sound essentially the same. I am a Radiohead fan, and I don't have it in me to hate this album completely, but I have to give it this score to just let this site know. It does not need to be here. You do not need to hear this before you die, you don't need to hear this at all.
Nothing could have prepared me for how weird this is. Maybe I just hadn't heard the right "art rock" but I was totally surprised by how many multitudes this album contains. One listen was not nearly enough.
There's cute songs, there's hard rock, there's strange singing, there's very plaintive tunes. All over the place. Even after multiple listens now, I'm not even sure if I /enjoyed/ everything on the album. But I'm sure it made an impression on me, a positive one at least. I have to give it credit for that.
Mixed feelings here. On one hand, it's a positively beautiful record. It's sweet, it's nasty, it's soulful, the production is unimpeachable, and Winehouse's vocals are killer every time. It's everything you'd want in a genre like soul.
But I have a hard time separating it from the fact that it's a white woman effectively colonizing a historically black style of music. I guess it depends on who you ask. Fans will say she's "paying homage" to her idols, while deriders will say she's a "ripoff" or a "hack." And she suffered those deriders for her entire adult life before she succumbed to her vices.
She was exploited, harassed, stabbed in the back, and treated like a plaything. A month before her death, at her last performance, she was booed off the stage by her fans. I cannot imagine the mortifying humiliation she must have felt. But if I wanted to, I could just look at any of the pictures that people took of her at her lowest moments.
You have to love her. You have to.
First time I've heard anything from Neil Young. I was expecting something very stripped-back and minimal. And that was my impression for the first few minutes of the album. But once "A Man Needs A Maid" came in...oh my goodness. That beautiful, lush orchestra. And then later on in the album, when The Needle surprises you with thunderous audience applause, cutting straight to one of the few electric jams on the record. The production on this thing is immaculate, despite presenting itself as so toned down.
Harvest actually sounds quite a bit like the album cover. The font itself is flashy and detailed, but outside of that, there is almost no color or any frills at all. The album, both sonically and visually, is exactly what it needs to be and not a bit more. For that, I really appreciate Harvest.
Mysterious, electric, defiant, abusive, violent, talented, gifted, genius, sick, twisted, high, delusional, horrible, perverted, legendary man. The quintessential rock star. A songwriter and performer of unmatched capabilities, burning the candle at both ends for his entire adult life until his lavish debauchery finally caught up with him.
We don't have to "separate the art from the artist" to enjoy this album. The artist is the art. In fact, what other musician represented the unpredictability of their music? It's a beautiful piece of work, brimming with so much lust that Purple Rain was one of the reasons the Parental Advisory sticker exists. He scared people because his music seemed so exotic and taboo, but also because he was a violent man who should never be alone with someone's teenage daughter. What a force to be reckoned with.
"Are we gonna let the elevator bring us down?" Yes. You died in an elevator, buddy. Good job practicing what you preach.
Oh, and the music is fine. Not really my thing. But Let's Go Crazy still rocks. Who doesn't love a good guitar solo?
Luck of the draw.
I've never been a fan of Bob Dylan, but that's not because I have some utter disdain for his music. I assume it's because I just haven't had enough exposure to it. His Nobel Prize for Literature is well deserved, One of my reasons for taking on the 1001 Albums was to get more exposure to classic albums I have yet to hear! And by luck of the draw, my first Dylan album was this live recording. Turns out this is not at all how I want to hear Bob Dylan.
This is a horrible first impression for someone to have for him, for a few different reasons. For one, the singing. I don't know most of these songs, and I wouldn't even be able to gather the content of each song in this recording unless I was reading along with all the lyrics. Then there's the mixing. In the acoustic set, the harmonica will often drown out the guitar completely. During the electric set, there are multiple songs where Dylan's singing sounds very distant, and the whole recording seems to switch from the soundboard to the quality of an actual bootlegged tape.
I didn't enjoy listening to this at all, I can't see myself ever going back to it. But for hardcore Dylan fans, if it's any consolation, I have the utmost respect for the guy. When asked about the infamous "Judas" incident (the only thing about this recording that I would've been interested in, if it wasn't cut out) he said "All those evil motherfuckers can rot in hell." Nice guy.
Anyone who knows me and my music taste knows that noise rock is one of its pillars. I love noise rock, I always seek it out, but I've never really sat down and listened to Sonic Youth. While I don't love it, I'm happy to say that I was mostly impressed with Daydream Nation.
It has surprisingly good flow for a double album; it really didn't feel like 70 minutes. But I was surprised at the things I actually ended up liking. Everyone seems to love Teen Age Riot, but to me it's...a little too indie, too lowkey, too Smashing Pumpkins for me. Does that make sense?
The album impressed me a lot more when it went all-out, like in the middle of Silver Rocket, or the total disassembling at the end of Total Trash. Not to mention the very tail end of the album, Eliminator Jr, which has that really fast, aggressive groove I wish the album utilized more. Cross The Breeze has that in spades too, but those really rocking moments are too few and far between for me.
When I hear "noise rock" I think immense feedback, screaming, songs that go absolutely crazy. Other than a few moments across the tracklist, there's basically none of that here. But there are enough positive moments here that keep me intrigued. I'm looking forward to my next Sonic Youth album, whatever it may be.
"Oh my dear God, what is that horrible song?"
I gave it a fair shot. But it's too boring. Too bland. Too polished. Too repetitive. Too white. It's a statement from a lifestyle that I once envied when I was younger, but I now despise. I do not want to hear about Win Butler's uneventful, uninteresting middle-class Mormon upbringing. I know many people love this album and this band, but I can't get into it. Two weeks into my 1001albums journey, this is easily the worst experience I have had listening to anything on this list.
I'm giving it 3 stars for the music alone. If I was rating the KLF as a project, I would be obligated to give them 5 stars. I mean, everyone at this point knows that they burned a million pounds of their own money, fired blanks into the crowd at the Brit Awards, and left a dead sheep at the afterparty. These two are men after my own heart.
It's hard to separate this album from the lore surrounding the band. I honestly can't tell if it's all one massive joke and the cheesiness is intentional, or is it just straight-up decent house music? I'm inclined to believe it's the latter, but the strangeness of the KLF in general means that I'll never be 100% sure. What strange times we live in.
MORE THAN A FEEELIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN
If this was my first time ever being exposed to the Boston album, you'd probably find me saying that I liked it but it wasn't anything special. But I loooooove this shit.
I have so many pleasant memories tied to those first two songs. I remember driving with my mom and cranking up the radio any time More Than a Feeling came on. In fact, this album is primarily composed of songs that make me go "turn that shit up!" when I see them on the radio. Peace of Mind was one of the first songs I learned on guitar.
It's absolutely representative of a specific moment in time, that being the era in which it came out. The production is great enough that it's one of the few albums from 1976 that aged somewhat gracefully. They never made anything quite as good as this, but all the time Tom Scholz put into making this album sound "perfect" really paid off. It's beautiful. I gotta love it.
Oh my god. WOW. I had never heard of this album before, I didn't know who Isaac Hayes was, and I was unsure what to expect. I'm really not familiar with soul, outside of a couple other albums from this list I've already heard.
This is MAGICAL. Absolutely beautiful. Hayes' singing is gorgeous, the production is immaculate, the placement of the strings and electric guitar could not have worked out better. I literally did not know that soul music could sound like this.
Having an 18-minute song as the closer to your soul record was certainly bold for the time, but imagine the period that this album came from. You didn't have a phone to scroll through, no video games to play, no one to text while you were listening to tell them how boring the song was. All you could do was lay back, close your eyes and listen to Mr. Hayes sing-talk you a story. It's an incredible listen, and that track isn't even my favorite on here. This is fucking awesome.
I wish this album did less. Nick's voice is very soft and I think it could be very suiting for the style of music he wants to play. But this is doing too much. Northern Sky is a pretty song, but by-and-large, I feel that all the orchestration here is taking away from Nick's playing and singing. A lot of my friends told me that I would like Pink Moon, since that album is 99% just Nick's voice and guitar.
Maybe I'll like Pink Moon when I get there. But as of now, this is all the Nick Drake I know. Wasn't a fan. I wish it wasn't so posh. It's weird. It simultaneously feels like it's trying to do so much, and it's just...not anything to me. I'm hoping that this isn't how I feel about folk in general.
I saw that review which says this album has "goofy noises" and "weird experimental jams" and that's the kind of shit I want!
I was impressed with Fragile. Obviously, Roundabout is a beautiful song, and nothing else on the record comes close enough to achieving its iconoclast sound. And that's okay. It was 1971, and digital recording technology didn't exist yet. You could write all the big rock epics that you wanted, but you could only book so much studio time to record it all, and the big boss is breathing down your neck, expecting the album to be done by Sunday!
Fragile is about half full-length progressive rock songs, half self-indulgent offshoots. It's inherently a mixed bag, so it would be wrong to expect perfection from it. But while I didn't love anything as much as Roundabout or Heart of the Sunrise, the whole record is still a lot of fun! Five Percent of Nothing, with all its jagged and angular rhythms, happened to be a precursor for bands like Primus and Shellac that people idolize today. We Have Heaven reminds me a lot of the Beach Boys, and I love how it latches onto a groove that feels like it could go on forever.
I don't see myself returning to it a great deal outside of a couple songs, but I do feel that it's relevant to the 1001 Albums list. It's a solid piece of rock.
Remember this whole world's a circus. Don't you be the clown."
This is my 20th album in the 1001albums journey. We're at the point now where I have a variety of different albums occupying every rating possible on this site. I was not looking forward to sitting through disco, but of course I have to give every album on this website a fair shot. Someone loves it.
I wanted to give it a 1/5 initially. Even when it's pristine and crystal-clear with pretty grooves on every song, including Le Freak which I hear at work all the time, disco is still not my thing. But a 1/5...do I really hate this as much as I hate the sanitized anthem to gentrification that is The Suburbs, or the monotony that is the 90-minute Bob Dylan live album? C'est Chic doesn't have either of those problems, obviously. It's about loving one another and celebrating life, having a good ol' time. How could I look at this and give it a 1/5?
Somewhere around the song I Want Your Love, it hit me. One of the reasons I joined this site was to broaden my musical horizons. And with every new album I get, I keep looking backwards, comparing it to everything else I've heard and rated, seeing how it stacks up. These albums aren't striving to be compared with everything else out there in the world. They are moments frozen in time, the artists or bands involved simply doing what they can to make "good music," whatever that means to them. Likewise, each of my ratings and reviews, these are all snapshots of my life. I cannot change my ratings, nor do I want to anymore. Typos and all.
I shouldn't be going into these expecting something fantastic, and being disappointed when it's simply not my thing. This is no longer a quest to find perfect albums that have been hiding from me. This is journaling, and having 1001 albums accompany me the whole way. And only at the very end do we look back and tell ourselves "This is what meant the most to me when I heard it. This is what I will take home with me as I move on my life."
But until then, fuck it. I don't like disco.
I know practically nothing about Bowie outside of Blackstar because I'm a dumb little uncultured simpleton. I knew his output in the 70s is legendary but I had never listened to any of it before. I was surprised to find that I wasn't a fan.
I read that this album's lyrics were mostly unwritten "not being written until Bowie stood in front of the microphone." I got the sense of that immediately. Outside of the titular track, which has pretty sparse vocals, a lot of these songs sound like a crazed man yelling at me. There's not anything inherently wrong with that, but it's compounded by the fact that those songs sound so full. They sound messy and cluttered.
Side B remedies that to an extant, and that's what I enjoyed much more about Heroes. Side A was the problem child to my ears. There's so much going on, it takes away from Bowie's vocal performance. I do wish the structure was a bit better, we could've had the ambient soundscapes mixed in with the more energetic rock songs. I don't see much of a reason to have them split up like this. But I still preferred those more. Other than that the album didn't do much for me. I hadn't even heard the title track before.
If I say what I think, I'll be suspended for six months.
Everyone loves respect, both the song on this album as well as the concept. That's the one song I knew before going into this record. And of course I love it, who doesn't? It's a beautiful song. This record is full of beautiful songs, favorites of mine being Respect, the titular track, as well as Dr. Feelgood. That song made me laugh out loud, when she starts talking about how she doesn't have as much time for socializing, she's got to get back to her...appointment.
Other than that, unfortunately, I wasn't too keen on this record. Some people said it's too slow, and that's an assessment I generally agree with. But more than that, I found it predictable. I was hoping that this record took more chances, either vocally or instrumentally. Maybe I've been spoiled by some of the other soul I've listened to, like that 12-minute epic Walk On By from Isaac Hayes. But I found myself hoping that more songs here surprised. It's pleasant, don't get me wrong, but I just didn't find it exciting like I wanted.
Maybe it's because I listened on the drive to work, and I could barely keep my eyes open. I was hoping something would jolt me awake.
My enjoyment of this album may have been hindered by the fact that I listened to it on my commute to work, and I could barely keep my eyes open. I don't know what it is about this week. I have just been extraordinarily tired on my drive to work the last few days.
I regret to inform Mr. Shuggie Otis that I heard his (admittedly cute) album under these circumstances. But I found it just a bit too soft for me. Soft like a cold pillow. A pillow I could rest my head on and close my eyes. I just wanted to drift into slumberland and drive my car into a ditch.
yes never heard the sensual world but she said yes watch the music videos this was nothing special but her voice is lovely mmmmmmmyes many a time the game molly and I play came with me interruptions galore but there was that beautiful sunset we laughed at a picture of hitler we saw the game won eleven to three will I ever go back is there anything the matter with my insides or have I something growing in me coughing and sneezing til the passage dries her voice kept me coming back yes I spun the record over again and over again rockets tail is its namesake there is a movie song never seen many movies and yet it's good yes someone knows someone knows Kevin Bacon they imitate her but no Bjork no Joanna Newsom can only be Kate Bush she asked me with her eyes to rate 5/5 I said yes I put my headphones on and drew her to me and her voice was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
