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In our recent album poll, there were 27 albums that received only 1 vote, but were also in somebody's top five. I've only got three of them in my collection and haven't heard many of the rest. Anybody care to make a sales pitch for a potential lost gem?
1. R.E.M. - Up
2. Magma - Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh
3. The Verlaines - Bird Dog
4. Frank Zappa - Sheik Yerbouti
5. Bob Dylan - Live 1975
6. Ramones - It's alive
7. Joe Strummer and The Mescalaroes - Streetcore
8. Coco Rosie - La Maison de mon Reve
9. Pearls Before Swine - The Use of Ashes
10. Camera Obscura - Underachievers Please Try Harder
11. Pedro the Lion - It's Hard to Find a Friend
12. The Fall - Perverted by Language
13. The Decemberists - Castaways and Cutouts
14. Janet Jackson - Rhythm Nation 1814
15. The Fratellis - Costello Music
16. Hawkwind - Space Ritual
17. Joe Hisaishi - Kikujiro
18. Frank Zappa - Burnt Weeny Sandwich
19. Johnossi - Johnossi
20. Bruce Cockburn - Salt, Sun and Time
21. Arthur Verocai - Arthur Verocai
22. Wilco - Being There
23. Le Mystère des voix bulgares - Le Mystère des voix Bulgares 1
24. Herbie Hancock - Mwandishi
25. Steve Wynn - Kerosene Man
26. Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu - Gurrumul
27. IAM - L'école du micro d'argent
I posted a thread here celebrating the 20th anniversary of Rhythm Nation's release. I think I'm the only person even remotely resembling a Janet Jackson fan here, though.
Whether or not you generally agree with Pitchfork, they do hit the nail on the head with their review of "Costello Music":
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10105-costello-music/
With all due respect to whoever voted for it... it's too substanceless for a top 5, imo. It's not an album that will continue to be rewarding after the 3rd or 4th listen.
That's one down, Paul.
Being There was my 201. Though it's not as strong as Summerteeth and YHF, it's a great album by one of the best bands in America.
I didn't vote in the poll (discovered these forums too late), but there's one album here that would have definitely been on my list: Wilco's "Being There."
Sales pitch: You start off with "Misunderstood", maybe the best Wilco song they've done. I can't talk rationally about the song, really, because the first time I heard it was at a concert on their YHF tour--and I'm not going to get into it. I will say this, though: I only knew the stuff from Yankee at the time and still thought Misunderstood was the highlight of the show.
The next tracks are good but also a bit of a let-down after the opener. It picks back up after that, with "Forget the Flowers" and "Red Eyed and Blue" (which has one of my favorite whistle-solos in it). "Monday" has been compared to Exile-era Rolling Stones. The album in general fits the country-rock mold pretty well, though I prefer Gram Parson's term: Cosmic American Music.
Where the album really shines, though, is the second disc. "Sunken Treasure" is nearly as good as "Misunderstood". From "Someone Else's Song" to the end is phenomenal. It's also where Tweedy makes what were formerly depressive undercurrents into overt statements of melancholy, like those that pervade the best of country music. This is especially true on "Why Would You Want To Live?", which provides a bittersweet conclusion to the previous track "(Was I) In Your Dreams" [Last Night]. It's not all melancholy. The last track, "Dreamer in My Dreams" rocks as much as anything on the album.
Also, on "Kingpin", he rhymes the title with "Peking," which is awesome.
Magma's Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh is an epic, operatic prog-rock gem. i happened to get it after the submission date, so it wasn't I that voted for it. Magma was this weird german band that made up it's own language to sing in. this is DEFINITELY something to check out, it's really quite an interesting album.
Kobaia my lerd...
late(r) Magma's still a mystery to meomereyone_
but this one definitely moons far beyumm
Assuming that voters who picked an unconventional choice in their top five might be "unconventional" voters, I compiled a list including only those 18 voters.
This was their top 10:
1. The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
2. Radiohead - OK Computer
3. David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust
4. Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
5. The Beatles - Abbey Road
6. The Velvet Underground - The VU & Nico
7. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
8. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
9. The Beatles - White Album
10. Love - Forever Changes
Here are the results from a different collection of "unconventional" voters. This top 10 list considers only those 18 voters whose points awarded to our top 200 amounted to less than 1/3 of the points possible.
1. The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
2. The Velvet Underground - The VU & Nico
3. The Beatles - White Album
4. David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust
5. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
6. Love - Forever Changes
7. The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
8. Pixies - Doolittle
9. Prince - Sign 'O' The Times
10. The Clash - London Calling
Most interesting point. While Pet Sounds stayed high with the "unconventional" voters, OK Computer crashed all the way down to No. 49.
Also, Revolver came in as the third Beatles album, at No. 28 overall.
10. Camera Obscura - Underachievers Please Try Harder
I would say this is low-grade Belle and Sebastian. It starts out with two strong songs, but there's not much after that. I checked out the rest of Tim E's list, and feel like we have pretty similar tastes in music, but I would say that this is not an album that would be similarly appealing to most.
As for Being There, I would say it's as good as any Wilco album, including YHF. I can see how someone might have that in his/nj top five.
Magma were French , not German
hehe.. how dare you to spoil the stereotypes anyway, nic?
L'école du Micro d'Argent by IAM is my favourite french album, I would call it the "French Enter the Wu-Tang".
French hip-hop mostly sums up to 2 great bands : NTM (a Parisian duo which would be our French gangsta band whose main themes are girls (in a sexist way) and rebellion (in a virulent but often clever way)) and IAM (a band from Marseille, much more poetic and thoughtful, often about the life in the suburbs). Very few hip-hop artists have not just copied them since then (a few bands creating a more electronic rap).
NTM probably has the most solid discography of the 2 bands but IAM made by far the best album : l'Ecole du micro d'argent is a one-hour masterpiece, with only one weak track. It is quite similar to Enter the Wu-Tang with a very cinematic spirit (Wu was inspired by shaolin movies, IAM is more inspired by Star Wars but also use plenty references to samourais way of life), with eastern influence (but also african and arabic influences, some of the band members having name coming from Egyptian pharaohs). There are differences however, IAM having only 2 MCs, a more broadened sound and more thoughtful lyrics. Some play a lot with the words (Chez le Mac for instance, comparing Rappers with Word Pimp), some are clever view of the French society (Petit Frère about juvenile delinquency, Nés sous la même étoile about social inequalities and one of my favourite : Dangereux, about censorship), other are cinematic story telling (L'école du micro d'argent, L'empire du côté obscur).
The final track is the true masterpiece, a 10 minutes rap with no chorus : just 2 fabulous 5-minute verses, the first one being incredibly brilliant, with tons of rhetorical figures, accurate sights on suburban life and rythm changes.
CocoRosie - La maison de mon reve
Weird and wonderful, strange sounds, haunting and cosmic. Is it pop, folk, or opera? It's all that and more so.
13. The Decemberists - Castaways and Cutouts
This one is mine. I have the first three Decemberists albums on my list. This album was my first experience with indie folk, or any kind of "indie" music. Its a mixture of many different ideals: Edwardian-era ideals of life and leisure, 17th century maritime culture, and even a bit of Old Wild West America. Every song is like an idealized version of classic characters, yet many of them deal with loss and depression. Meloy's voice, to me, is not a ripoff of Jeff Magnum, but rather a brother to it: Magnum deals with death in a very tone, while Meloy's songs play out like lite comic opera.
There are some stinkers on the album: July, July is something I really cannot stand to listen to. But there are 6 songs I really love: Leslie Anne Levine, Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect, Grace Cathedral Hill, Cocoon, The Legionnaire's Lament, and California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade. Legionnaire's Lament is my favorite song of all-time: it almost like a modern version of "La Mer" to me. Or really, like a modern "Beyond the Sea", as the English and French versions of the song don't exact mesh. A re-telling of Expatriate Americans from the 1920s.
A bit of a ramble there, but I can't really explain my love for certain albums well.
"A bit of a ramble there, but I can't really explain my love for certain albums well."
I, too, admit to being short of words when describing my personal feelings for certain albums. In this case, The Verlaines' "Bird Dog" was my pick for #1 album all-time. I'm going to cheat and quote an amazon reviewer (sfobos) for purposes here, mainly because his words about the album are spot-on with my views and I simply could not say it better:
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(5 stars)
There's something truly exhilarating about finding yourself so immersed in an artist's work that you find yourself completely lost in their world, vivid with the images, emotions, hopes and dreams that they portray. And make no mistake: BIRD DOG is an exhilarating experience, of sorts. Graeme Downes' songwriting captures melancholy in terms so personal and compelling that you can't help but be swept up in the grandeur and anguish of his heartbreak.
From his declaration of "I'll see you in the death machine tomorrow, unless somebody's God intervenes" in the opening "Makes No Difference," Downes paints scene after powerful scene of lives where good times come only in a brief rush of alcohol or nicotine, where love inevitably torments and disappears, where happiness is only a memory. "I dream of being like I was before," he sings in "Take Good Care of It" -- an ambition whose impossibiliy doesn't stop him from longing for something, anything, better than the life he sees.
The album's high point comes at its midpoint, the aptly-titled "Slow Sad Love Song," which may well be the most harrowing, devastating entry to the "love song" category ever recorded. Building from a slow strum to a final, frenzied cacaphony of guitar and pain, Downes seizes the fragmented moments in time that define the death of a relationship ("Tones of resignation, 'I'll probably see you round.'"). In the song's final moments, his thin, anguished voice is literally howling in pain and confusion... and the effect is nothing shy of exhilarating.
The Verlaines' early albums (i.e. Juvenalia, Hallelujah) were overwraught with obtuse writing and musical structure (as if Downes was attempting to justify his Ph.D in music). Downes' most recent work (both his solo album and the Verlaines final Over The Moon) suffer from his increasingly off-key vocals and growing fascination with Tin Pan Alley. But in between, some remarkable music was produced -- and BIRD DOG is clearly the high point. Like the doomed dog on the cover, Downes' characters are forever searching for something beautiful and better, something just out of reach... something that will inevitably lead them over the side of a cliff. But as he sings in the album's finale, CD Jimmy Jazz and Me, "We live in hope." And sometimes, that's enough.
---------------------------------------------------
The Verlaines are not for everyone- I've often prefaced their introduction to fellow music enthusiasts with the phrase "an acquired taste"- and surely not everyone will have the patience to fully penetrate and meld into the world of BIRD DOG. Still, it's one of the few albums I could imagine listening to once a day for the rest of my life, and perhaps someone else will hear it and have the same reaction.
The album is sadly out of print. You can buy it used on CD for $70 on amazon, or download it for free here:
http://thedoledrums.blogspot.com/2008/08/verlaines-bird-dog-1987.html
I hope at least one of you enjoys it.
I don't mean to sound like a music snob, but my #1 really is an acquired taste and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody, only those delving into Frank Zappa and wanting something that I think represents his own musical and personal philosophy (elements of which I adopt as my own, hence it's powerful connection with me).
Burnt Weeny Sandwich, however, my #4 is just an absolutely amazing musical suite that is extremely underrated. Bookended by a little goofy but meticulously performed traditional doo-wop songs, the instrumentals in between explore into about every un-pretentious corner of musical subconsciousness. But unlike prog-rock suites which might tend to try to justify their lengths by connecting to some spiritual symbolism or technical showcases over their duration, BWS just exists to set a mood... a mood that is often jarring sonically but always propelled towards a calm sense of wonder and contentment. After all, even the most meditative settings in nature have their tranquility ruined by a honking car horn, or a cell phone call, or a plane flying over head. Zappa's music internalizes that reality by incorporating those less beautiful elements in life into that tapestry. It works in a more nuanced ways through Zappa's sounds rather than lyrics (which are always rather crude), and none more on this record. It's more focused than experimental jazz, but more abstract and timelessly comforting to me than just about anything more traditionally considered as ground-breaking music released during that magical musical year of 1969. Everyone should take a listen and then try to think of a better record to send you off to sleep with pleasant dreams.
Well, I voted for Costello Music, and I can say I don't consider this an album to be recommended here: it's nothing near the artsy field we use to love in AM. This is just a group of awesome catchy pop songs, in the vein of the new indie style, with some influence of Britpop (and you know I love it). While discovering the album, I thought it would happen exactly what occurred to Tom Butler, but even after the first listenings the songs continued to be thrilling. I don't use to judge albums or songs based on the "substance" criteria, but according to how much they can please me during their audition. So, to use a term we're lately rejecting here, all that means it is the greatest of my guilty pleasures!