Pretty good album and obviously a classic.
However, it lacked cohesiveness in my opinion and the tracks seemed to just be randomly strewn together.
Furthermore, some of the lines were a bit wack like “I’ll shove my foot up your ass” from Gangsta Gansta and “I ain’t the one to get played like a pooh butt” the latter being a pretty bizarre lyric for a ‘tough’, gangster rap album.
Overall, it’s a decent album and I would certainly relisten to several songs on this which is a pretty good hallmark of it being a classic.
A triumphant live performance, I mean the applause from the audience really tells you everything. ‘Walk the Line’ was brilliant. Cash’s storytelling and humour on the providence of the ‘Starkville City Jail’ song was awe-inspiring. Cash’s performance of ‘San Quentin’ was truly a special moment; his raw, unfiltered lyrics on the flaws of prison institutions truly resonated with the prison crowd, so much so that with all the applause, he decided to perform it a second time.
But, leaving everything else behind, ‘A Boy Named Sue’ was absolutely iconic, I’ve been listening to this song for a long while before finally getting the chance to listen to this album fully but it reached its full resonance with hearing it in this live album context.
Folsom Prison Blues was a bit short-lived and could’ve been longer but it was definitely the right song to end with. Speaking on the topic of Folsom Prison Blues, I don’t think Live at San Quentin is as good as the Live at Folsom Prison Album. It’s not as lively and invigorating but that doesn’t take away from its worth, I think both are different and San Quentin gives a slower, possibly more-considered approach whilst retaining Johnny Cash’s penchant for charismatic storytelling and use of humour.
Overall, I’d recommend this for anyone who likes Johnny Cash or even anyone who’s not familiar with this work. It’s a great album.
It’s good but pretty non-eventful and not a lot of the tracks stood out, with the exception of ‘Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying’ and ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’. Also, there wasn’t much meaning or cohesiveness to the songs it was sort of like “oh here’s this one, and then, oh here’s that one”, it wasn’t much to grasp onto to say the least.
I’m pretty confused why this is on a list of ‘1001 albums to listen to before you die’. Obviously Ray Charles is a legend, he was a 50s musician and is still lionised today with 10 million Spotify monthly listeners which is EXTREMELY impressive if you just take a moment to consider that. Nonetheless, I think it wouldn’t be a remote loss to anyone to have not listened to this album before their death and I don’t mean to sound like a dick, I’m just being honest, I think there are much better choices you could pick.
It’s a good album. It doesn’t really come anywhere close to some of the other albums Bowie was dishing out during this decade, like the Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Station to Station and Low, though.
I can see why they would put this album on the list but at the same time I feel like there could have been more exclusivity to Bowie’s absolute, irrefutable best albums. Bowie is a great artist but I can’t really say there’d be much of a loss of leaving out this Bowie album to free up space for other artists (who might not even have a singular album on the list).
Also, some tracks were pretty filler (namely ‘Right’ and Somebody Up There Likes Me’) in comparison to other Bowie albums where the tracklists are solid throughout (especially the Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars).
However, with all the bad stuff out of the way, this is still a great album. ‘Young Americans’ is one of Bowie’s most lighthearted, fun songs; I absolutely love it. Bowie’s cover of ‘Across the Universe,’ whilst not being better than the original in my opinion, was very charming and unique and did justice to the original. ‘Fame’ is also just an amazing song, definitely amongst Bowie’s most underrated songs and the history of that song originating from a jam with John Lennon simply makes it even cooler. Also, Bowie being the first white artist on the show ‘Soul Train’ in which he performed ‘Fame’ one of the countless examples of Bowie being a pioneer, and ahead of his time, and simply iconic.
Great album.
Btw this is not going to be a serious review.
This album was low-key so buns like it was actually painful, it started off fairly alright and just got worse and worse. I got a headache just listening to it.
I don’t see why on earth this is deemed as an album you MUST listen to before you die, there’s absolutely nothing special about it, it’s just your average R&B slop, it’s not even special in its own genre which is already a genre I’m not that into, I mean if you want to listen to R&B listen to Ms Lauryn Hill or Erykah Badu or some shit not this rubbish.
Also, the interludes were often unnecessary and instead of emplacing cohesiveness where it was much needed, it just highlighted how lacking of cohesiveness this album was. The sexy interlude is a whole conversation of its own, I mean how on earth does some inane joke about getting your arse wiped and then the sounds of shitting and a toilet flushing make an album more cohesive? I simply don’t understand.
The problem with this album is that even the better (emphasis on *better*) songs in the tracklist were not songs I would in any case listen to outside of listening to this album for the purpose of doing the 1001 albums thing.
Trash.
Also that one verse by Andre 3000 was like the best part of the album and he’s not even part of flipping TLC, he’s an Outkast 😉
