Reviews

Rating: 2.2 Your 4 sad grandfathers sit around a campfire and slow grind on their acoustic guitars and wail about not being able to get hoes. I do not care.

good and enjoyable. 7/10

Okay so I normally like Neil Young, but this garage rock phase he had is not great. A lot of the songs on this album are way too long and boring, and it kinda just melts together. Just another album where I didn’t really enjoy it but I didn’t necessarily hate it either. Meh.

This was the nice kind of weird and out there!

whoah what an album cover- WAIT 4 songs and its still 40+ minutes? oh these guys mustve been VIBING recording this one - this is exactly the vibe i was expecting and im not disappointed at all - funky weird beats oh yeah and just like that its over! i've been looking for jazzy instrumental playlists with this kinda vibe to listen to while i work, but with the rise of AI taking over those kinda of "vibe while you work" instrumental playlists i haven't looked for them in a while.... so dope that there's a whole album like this!! love it

The very personality traits that made The Damned a compelling and exciting live act made them absolutely insufferable in the tour van. The doc 'The Damned: Don't You Wish We Were Dead' makes clear how personality clashes, bad behaviour, poor business acumen and the ongoing ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory accumulated over the space of 40 years into an underserved legacy of inconsistent recordings, middling success and acrimony. I knew them from a hodge-podge of sources; 'Eloise' was a massive radio hit when I was a teenager listening to pop radio, 'Sick of Being Sick' was covered by the Hard-Ons on a giveaway 7" back when I used to see them on the all-ages circuit a lot, their seminal punk singles (including Smash It Up) appear on a lot of compilations. But their albums seemed patchy and unpredictable and often hard to find, and the compilation albums all seemed like poorly curated cash-ins based on whoever held the rights to what at the time, so I have never really delved into their catalogue. My initial thought was "why not Damned Damned Damned, which is an important early punk record?" But I listened to it today to compare to Machine Gun Etiquette, and while Damnedx3 has its charms and a few killer singles, it really is just another slightly better than average early UK punk album. Machine Gun Etiquette, however, is a revelation -- why have I never heard this before? I find myself in the rare situation of actually agreeing with Dimery's selection. This is a fast and raucous rock and roll record. The energy is great, it's got tunes you can sing along to, and the recording sounds great without smoothing off the edges. I really dig this! It has a dangerous vibe, like the band could go off the rails at any moment, which they did shortly after release. It was a miracle that they managed to hold it together long enough to produce a record this great all the way through without exploding in the studio. But I'm glad they did keep it together for long enough to produce this excellent record. This is going on my want list.

Stephen Stills, eh? Just today, I was trawling through one of the better second-hand record stores in Sydney (shout-out to Papa Disquo in Enmore), and there in the New Arrivals section, was a copy of this very record for a mere $10. That made it pretty much the cheapest record in the store outside of a bargain bins on the floor. Stephen Stills was a big fucking star in 1970, hanging out with the biggest music stars in the world, with a who's who of rock royalty guesting on his solo record -- Hendrix! Clapton! Booker T. Jones! Priscilla Jones! Graham Nash! David Crosby! (maybe those two aren't really a surprise) Rita Coolidge! Cass Elliot! John Sebastian! Ringo Starr! And, unsurprisingly, given the panoply of talent and the copious production budget, it is a competently good album, even if none of those players are at their most inspired. This album could be Exhibit A in the court case of Rich White Guys v. The Blues. I remember my mate Peter playing me 'Old Times Good Times' as one of the very few examples of post-fame Jimi Hendrix playing on someone else's record, and, as a massive Jimi Hendrix fan, I have to say that it is nothing to write home about. The less said about Clapton the better. And what is the story with Stills' vocal affectation where he does his 'gruff blues voice', such as 'Go Back Home' or the racially insensitive 'Black Queen'? The reality is that this record has no cultural legs. Think about all the landmark albums from 1970 that people still listen to today -- and I'm sure you could name a half dozen without trying to hard -- and is Stephen Still's S/T record on that list? Truly? People may vaguely remember 'Love The One You're With', but when was the last time you actually heard Still's version played? Well, exactly! There are better covers (Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, the Isley Brothers, Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross!), mostly by black artists who lean into the gospel flavour of the backing vocals. But this Stephen Stills record is increasingly irrelevant as time goes by. I don't hate this as much as some of his other work (Manassas is just shit, god save me), but I can live a long and happy life without this album. Did I buy that $10 copy I found today? Fuck, no!

I probably don't have anything to say about this album that hasn't already been said, and certainly wouldn't be able to say it in a way that would do this album justice. For my money it's as close as pop music has come to perfection over the scale of an album. The popular narrative is that the Beatles won the arms race between the two bands with the release of Sgt. Pepper's, but while Sgt. Pepper may have been plenty innovative and culturally significant, it doesn't compare to Pet Sounds in terms of beauty, cohesiveness, and emotional heft. Even with the massive carousel-like soundscape the band was playing with on many tracks, there's not a note out of place and everything contributes beautifully to the album's reflections on life and love. Initially, the lyrics come off as a pretty basic, but more melancholy, extension of the girl-chasing songs of the Beach Boys' early records. I've seen some criticism of the album for the "adolescent" emotional range of the songs, but the lyrics here approach the relationship in a much more mature, if ambiguous, way. Maybe what we hear is that adolescent personality growing up and encountering the complicated reality of adulthood for the first time. When you're younger, it's so easy to rush forward, to try to do everything you're not yet able to (Wouldn't It Be Nice). But when you get to the stage where you can call your own shots, you begin to realize that life's not as simple as it used to be, and some part of you, however small, longs to return to those easier times, when you don't need to face those difficulties yet. This mixture of excitement at the prospect of a world wide open to you and mourning at what you've lost in getting to this point, along with the fear you face while you search for your way in this new world - that's what I feel in this album, and that feeling is more powerful to me now than ever. Musically, part of what I love about the album is that, despite the sometimes-odd choices and combinations of instruments and sound-effects, the individual components feel familiar. Unlike something like Sgt. Pepper or the Beatles' later studio trickery, Pet Sounds feels like the logical extension of Brian Wilson's pop symphonies, where he just changed the composition of the orchestra. My only complaint is that my dog likes to add to the end of Caroline, No, which makes it hard to enjoy this masterpiece on my speakers. But if that's my only complaint, we could be doing a heck of a lot worse.

Sometimes you get the Incredible Bongo Band and sometimes you get the Not So Incredible Conga Band.

Great album! But then again, I would have been one of those guys "Wyatting" the bar.

I can’t believe the top review for this record (as of Dec 2023) is from someone trying to use their PhD in Mathematics as justification for not liking hip-hop. Weak.

Oh fuck yeah, now we're talking. Wait no, I swear I'm not being pretentious. This is the lowest rated album on this site because I guess mostly people aren't very fond of German people smashing metal plates together - who would have guessed. But halle-fucking-lujah, this is something this list needs more of. Albums that make you go "well, that was an experience and now I'm a changed man". Nobody is lying on their deathbed wishing they heard more crappy 80s post-punk or late 60s psychedelic rock. THIS is what we all deserve to be listening to as we embrace eternal oblivion. I'm giving this a high rating not only because I genuinely really love it, but also to help Kid Rock move to his rightful place as the actual worst album on this list. Together we can make a difference. Save the turtles.

Brings back vivid memories of when me and my mate Ray went on a trip to Dresden. We met this rotund goth in a bar, head to toe with tattoos and piercings, real filth and after a while took her into the disabled bogs for a spit roast. We were both pumping away in her with Napalm Death on in the background and her wailing "MEIN GOTT" at the top of her lungs. I remember spaffing all over her back just as Siege of Power kicked in. As i shoot over her, she takes Ray's cock out of her gob and says "do you want fries with that?" in a faux American accent. Anyway, we go outside and there's this gammy little geezer in a wheelchair sitting there furious, giving me daggers, because he's had to wait so long, so I lean into him and I go "I hope you have as much fun in there as we just did you little cunt".

Shit like this on the list is both refreshing and infuriating. Refreshing because it is good, fun, interesting, and also not something I would regularly be exposed to! It's why I started this project and keeps me coming back. It's infuriating because the fact that it is included here means that Robert Dimery, the original author of the 1001 albums list is aware that music like this exists. He's clearly aware that there is an entire world of music out there. SO WHY HAVE I LISTENED TO 200 80s BRITISH NEW WAVE ALBUMS AND 200 SCOTTISH ROCK ALBUMS FROM THE 90S??!!?

Back when I was in college, there was this dude who would come into the bar I worked at on a Friday night and play fucking 10 Neil Young songs in a row. He would also hit on girls by doing magic tricks. I remember how angry I got every time he made me listen to an hour of Neil Young because I was just trying to have a good time, and he fucking made me listen to this sad, soppy fuck who writes nothing but songs that sound indistinguishable from each other and never seemed to enjoy a happy moment in his entire like. Fuck that guy, and fuck Neil Young. 2/5

Sorry Boomers/Gen X, I was like 20 when this came out so it's one of the best things to ever happen to me. Sorry it's not King Crimson or whatever.

Back when I was in college I used to go to a bar and listen to Neil tunes and do magic tricks for women. There was a bartender there, he was the best. I loved that guy. Some of the best years of my life.

The only enjoyment I got from this was reading the review about the brothers in Dresden and their lovely and talented tattooed friend.

Music for incels to wank furiously by

Most 60's groups had three choices: copy the beatles, copy the beach boys, or sexually abuse minors. These guys changed the game and did all three- Four stars!

5: The moustache that appear on Art if you put your thumb on Pauls face on the album cover. 5: The songs.

i ain’t listening to all that i’m happy for u tho or sorry that happened

The only reason this is here is because it’s from before streaming, when if you bought a shit album you had to convince yourself you liked it.

Rage In Favor Of The Machine.

I am definitely not the target demographic for this album, but I still thought it was very good. There's a lot of skill and artistry put into these tracks, so much so that it is almost invisible. 4 stars for me, plus an extra star just to spite the mathematics PHD guy.