Didn't know this existed till I came across it on Christgau's site a few weeks ago. Found a good price, bought it, was playing it in the car today.
One of my favourite bands back then--top five or six, let's say--but only for a short time. They started to lose me around Huevos (reviewed that, and the two before it); when they reemerged with a Top 40 hit a few years later, I wasn't keeping up at all.
Most of this still sounds pretty good through the middle two-thirds, and the two songs I most loved then, "Lost" and "Out My Way," are as great as ever. When II came out in 1984, I remember thinking that the lyric I quoted in the thread title felt so odd--Nixon seemed a million miles away to me at the time (I was 23). In fact, he'd only been out of office 10 years. The relative closeness of the two feels just as strange to me today as the distance between the two felt in 1984...which is how time works, I know.
Poll Results
| Option | Votes |
| Up on the Sun | 6 |
| Lake of Fire | 1 |
| I Am a Machine | 1 |
| Swimming Ground | 1 |
| Look at the Rain | 1 |
| Lost | 1 |
| Quit It | 0 |
| Beauty | 0 |
| Big House | 0 |
| I Can't Be Counted On at All | 0 |
| Automatic Mojo | 0 |
| Meltdown | 0 |
| Like Being Alive | 0 |
| Confusion Fog | 0 |
| Out My Way | 0 |
| In a Car | 0 |
| Tumblin' Tumbleweeds | 0 |
| Reward | 0 |
| The Whistling Song | 0 |
| New Gods | 0 |
| Split Myself in Two | 0 |
| Maiden's Milk | 0 |
| Bucket Head | 0 |
| Attacked by Monsters | 0 |
― clemenza, Tuesday, 27 February 2024 21:40 (one year ago)