Great rock and pop albums

[hackneyvi]

Can't get excited about much music after 1980: I think rock had gone as far as it could by 1975 and punk was just a return to the amateurism of the 50s.

I can't agree with that. That's like saying that 50s rock and roll was a return to the amateurism of some of the Bessie Smith bands of the 20s. Or that the 70s was a return to the sophistication of the 40s.

The circumstances and the generations making the music were different and the music was distinctly different to the generations making them. I can hear The Buzzcocks in music of the 00's but then I can hear Chuck Berry in some of The Beatles recordings (especially in the Anthology tracks where the versions include the blue notes, later excised).

We hear the vernacular of the previous generations but we miss and don't value the vernacular of the current generation because that language is unfamiliar, even ridiculous to us. For that reason, I think, the music can seem like a repetition of what's gone before but that's inevitable. One only learns to speak by hearing other voices and necessarily one acquires, with the vocabulary and grammar, an accent. The pooled accent of generations, though, comes to make the accent of the music and that accent isn't significant to us because we, the prior generation, we add nothing to it.

[Panjandrum]

This definitively puts an end to any argument.

[hackneyvi]

I'd like to begin the attacks with noting that I've just seen a Madonna album but nothing by Can. The Smiths first appear at about 180, around 140 places below U2. The first Zappa album appears around 220 but there have been three from Elvis Costello by then.

How are we going to go about this? Do you want a formal debate with motions and so on. Or ..?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMqSmiC_xHg

I love the short Japanese war cry just before the two sides actually engage.

[MrGongGong]

This definitively puts an end to any argument.

Oh no it doesn't
Tago Mago ?
Monster Movie ?
Swordfish Trombones ?

these might be "great" in some peoples ears but definitely not mine

[Panjandrum]

No Can Do

[burning dog]

Unless you're somone who hasn't heard much pop music your list and opinion is as good as anybody elses. If it's Sgt Pepper or Pet Sounds or Thriller or even Dark Side of the Moon Good Luck! Likeswise if it's three albums by The Dead Kennedys or The Grateful Dead

[EdgeleyRob]

How are we going to go about this? Do you want a formal debate with motions and so on. Or ..?

Or we could just argue (I'll have to go on a course first though)

This is a classic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

[EdgeleyRob]

Yardbirds, Yes, King Crimson and (pre early 80s) Genesis will always be great. I listen regularly to all four of those bands, though I'm a bit in the dark about Rick Wakeman's solo career.

Me too .I also listen regularly to Rick Wakeman'(Six wives of Henry the Eighth and Journey to the centre of the earth amongst others)
I didn't realise he had done so much http://www.rwcc.com/discog_album.asp

[MrGongGong]

Me too .I also listen regularly to Rick Wakeman'(Six wives of Henry the Eighth and Journey to the centre of the earth amongst others)
I didn't realise he had done so much http://www.rwcc.com/discog_album.asp

this is amongst the music that I feel sounds so thin and insubstantial today
current aesthetics in rock music are for a much fuller bass (usually massively compressed) and much heavier guitar sounds
it's fairly easy to tell when pop and rock music was made by listening to the bass drum sound, today we have really low frequency bass that is much lower than almost any physical drum
to my ears bands like Led Zeppelin have a sound that is relatively light by contemporary standards (but do have a much bigger dynamic range)

also one has to consider what one is listening to music for
in my experience many musicians and composers are enthusiastic fans of (for example)

Beefheart
Can
Tom Waits
Van der Graff Generator
Primus
Zappa

but have little time for many of the "great" albums on the Rolling Stone list

[burning dog]

There's another problem with the Rolling Stone (though it's not as bad these days) It suffers from the same kind of prejudice that lead to the obit for folk singer Odetta on R4

Wiki decribes her as

Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a human rights activist, often referred to[who?] as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she was influential to many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin.


but I heard R4s lunchtime news show headline something like "Odetta, folk singer who influenced Bob Dylan, dies."

As someone satirised this kind of thing "It was all leadin' up to the Beatles, Maaan!"

[Anna]

We all listen to these oldies for some reason or another, I suspect a lot of it is nostalgia (particularly amongst the older guys here) and when a convertible went down the road the other day, driven by a 50+ gent blasting out Guns 'n' Roses I just knew there was someone having a midlife crisis and wishing he had a six pack rather than a size XL.....

[Mandryka]

We all listen to these oldies for some reason or another, I suspect a lot of it is nostalgia (particularly amongst the older guys here) and when a convertible went down the road the other day, driven by a 50+ gent blasting out Guns 'n' Roses I just knew there was someone having a midlife crisis and wishing he had a six pack rather than a size XL.....

I sort of see what you mean....but in many cases, it can't be nostalgia as a lot of us who listen to this ancient and semi-ancient stuff weren't actually around (or were too young to appreciate it) when it was 'new'.

Hst, I've just started listening to Elbow - who aren't half bad, I reckon, though it's fairly obvious who they're influenced by.

[MrGongGong]

aaah Elbow
who play at A=442 so i've been reliably told !

[Anna]

Hst, I've just started listening to Elbow - who aren't half bad, I reckon, though it's fairly obvious who they're influenced by.

Who they are influenced by, well, I would say Dennis Potter!

By 1997, they had changed their name a third time to Elbow, after a line in the BBC TV drama The Singing Detective. A character (Philip Marlowe) says that the word "elbow" is the most sensuous word in the English language; not for its definition, but for how it feels to say it.

So, how sensuous is to you, to say, the word 'elbow'? I throw this open to all, not just Mandryka!

[Mandryka]

Who they are influenced by, well, I would say Dennis Potter!

By 1997, they had changed their name a third time to Elbow, after a line in the BBC TV drama The Singing Detective. A character (Philip Marlowe) says that the word "elbow" is the most sensuous word in the English language; not for its definition, but for how it feels to say it.

So, how sensuous is to you, to say, the word 'elbow'? I throw this open to all, not just Mandryka!

Have you had a look at them? Sensuous is not a word I'd use in connection with them. Guy Garvey's beer belly almost constitues a fifth member.