| Author | Message | ||
     skulldisco Member Username: Skulldisco Post Number: 1417 Registered: 10-2008 |
Interesting article from Simon Reynolds about landmark records you haven't heard. Mine would be Sgt Peppers I guess, or some other Beatles tosh. http://blissout.blogspot.com/2011/10/qui te-contrary-tom-ewing-on-never_11.html | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 2745 Registered: 03-2005 |
Fun, Kevin. Hmmm. There are SO many records I haven't heard. Most of the time it will be because instinctively I know I'm not going to be interested. I'm wrong sometimes, of course but I'm right more often than I'm wrong. I have a copy of Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" that I only heard the first 30 seconds of and then went "I'm not feeling Jeff Tweedy right now" and never put on again. Basically I respect Wilco but don't find them very enjoyable so I haven't bothered. I have a copy of that Neil Diamond thing everybody raved about a number of years back, but I've never played it. I skipped Smiths records for years and then tried "Meat is Murder" a few months back. But my instincts were right; I'm just not ever going to be a Smiths fan. Since I was a kid in the late 60's/early 70's I learned to distrust most critics because they raved about things I still consider to be absolute junk and slagged records I hold in high regard. I've never knowingly heard any Nirvana. | ||
| skulldisco Member Username: Skulldisco Post Number: 1418 Registered: 10-2008 |
Randy, you owe it to yourself to persevere with YHF. Its one of the great albums of this century, and when I saw them touring that album it goes down as one of my all time favourite gigs. | ||
| Michael Bachman Member Username: Michael_bachman Post Number: 2275 Registered: 01-2005 |
I stopped listening to rap around 1988, so I've never heard any of the those "second wave" group albums that hit big the next few years (NWA, etc.). Same thing goes for hip-hop. I've got the first Run-DMC album, and that's about it. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 4083 Registered: 05-2005 |
There so many albums in the "classic" canon that I've never heard of had any desire to. Sometimes when I later hear them I am proved wrong and become a big fan (eg Radiohead and The Smiths), but usually when I later hear songs from them there is nothing to make me want to hear the album (and of course I can't think of any example right now!). | ||
| Michael Bachman Member Username: Michael_bachman Post Number: 2277 Registered: 01-2005 |
I know I should have more Kinks albums besides Village Green, and I'll probably get around to buying some of them soon. | ||
| Geoff Holmes Member Username: Geoff Post Number: 776 Registered: 05-2005 |
I've only got the 60's Kinks stuff but every album is a classic Michael. I'm not THAT familiar with all of them, but whenever my Ipod throws up something very 60's and very good that I don't immediately know, I no longer rush to find out who it is. It's ALWAYS the Kinks. I actually like Village Green the least. "Face to Face" and "Something else" are classic places to start but "Arthur" and "Lola vs Powerman and the money go round" are great too. | ||
| Allen Belz Member Username: Abpositive Post Number: 2165 Registered: 09-2006 |
I'd second that, Michael, though for me "Lola vs. Powerman" is where the downhill slide began - where Ray Davies whining about modern life (which continues to this day) overpowered all his strengths. The three best songs on that album can also be found on "The Kink Kronikles," which I'd hugely recommend as a place to start. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 357 Registered: 02-2007 |
Oasis after their 2nd record | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 2749 Registered: 03-2005 |
I agree with you Allen. "Lola" is where it ended. I'm happy for them that they got some hits and earned some royalties but when my iPod pitched up "Apeman" a few weeks ago I realized that I don't even like that song. They had exhausted their seam. I really like their pre-Face to Face period as well. They were a great and distinctive rock band all through the '60s. There's an interesting story in "Vagabond Holes"--the book of essays about David McComb--in which sometime collaborator James Paterson recounted McComb's dismissal of Ray Davies as a writer. His assessment, sent to Paterson on a postcard in 1984: "I've realized that what I like above all in a song is a sense of Mystery (not the modern dictionary meaning -- more a kind of inaccessible truth, an unresolved core of strange beauty). Are you with me? This to me is why 'would you lay with me in a Field of Stone' is a greater song than 'Waterloo Sunset.' To me, Ray Davies has no grasp of Mystery. Still, let's not quibble." | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 666 Registered: 04-2005 |
I knew there was a really good reason not to like the Triffids, but I just hadn't found it yet. Anyone who dares to slag off 'Waterloo Sunset' is instantly written off in my book ! And I say that even though I am not a Ray Davies aficionado. | ||
| Jeff Whiteaker Member Username: Jeff_whiteaker Post Number: 2263 Registered: 10-2004 |
McComb said that? Apparently he's not got the taste to recognize the sheer mystery in that song's watery electric guitar tone. | ||
| Geoff Holmes Member Username: Geoff Post Number: 777 Registered: 05-2005 |
I love Apeman Randy! Primarily because it is one of the first "videos" that I can remember seeing on an early tv rock show ("GTK" I think). When I hear it, a part of me is transported back to when I was 5 or so. By the way, a doco on the role of Auz car culture just on here is called "Wide Open road" and yes, it features the song prominently. On McComb and Davies - McComb had very eclectic tastes given the track listings on his cassettes. As I have found often on this board, even those with a comprehensive knowledge and great taste in music can be absolutely blind to the effing obviously fantastic - me included! I guess that makes us all individuals. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 2754 Registered: 03-2005 |
Well, he didn't say "Waterloo Sunset" is crap. I think I understand his point. Generally, Ray Davies wasn't the abstract or poetic type of writer; that wasn't his thing. People like McComb or Nick Cave or our Grant or Gene Clark were more into that. I see McComb's assessment as no more than an explanation of what he looks for in music and why Ray Davies doesn't do it for him. Personally, I'd say "Waterloo Sunset" and "See My Friends" actually DO project some mystery as they leave many unanswered questions. Also my big favorite "Days." | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 2755 Registered: 03-2005 |
Geoff, I loved "Apeman" too when it came out. (I was 13 or 14 then.) "Lola" was the first Kinks album I actually purchased, I seem to recall. But listening today I find it covers lyric and musical territory Davies had already done better on other songs. Like I said above, though, I'm glad it earned them some well deserved royalties in the US. |