what was the last 'classic album' you got and were knocked out by?

also Nick Drake - Bryter Later - but I already knew most of the songs on that, so it wasn't quite such a revelation.

:-) :-) I'm most happy to hear that!

pre-1990: Poison, Open Up And Say Ahh....

Also that Joe Cuba Sextette Diggin' the Most I just got is pretty great, except for the English language tunes. But the tracks that Cheo Feliciano sings on are uniformly very good.

i more or less have all of his records and i have the feeling otb is his best studio album. it's the most intense of his folky/soft songwriter albums. there are no real standouts except the first song which i knew from decade. it's all pretty much made of one stone. by the way neil did many shit and average albums. most of his 90s (except ragged glory, dead man was ok) and a lot of his 80s releases (trans, reactor, landing on water etc., hawks + doves was ace) should be mentioned here.

It's the best. I came around to it because Spiritualized covered "Born Never Asked" and I was a massive fan. At first I didn't know what to think of the album but now it's a huge thing for me. I play it once a year or so and every time I like it more.

lol um

so wait, Spiritualized covers Laurie Anderson?

On Pure Phase they have an instrumental version of “Born, Never Asked.” It kinda serves as an intro for another song.

Spectrum does a pretty good cover of “Walking & Falling.”

Oh! I always get those two mixed up!

King Crimson's "Discipline" - someone should've just told me it's a FoM/RiL era Talking Heads album and I would've bit instantly!

I‘ve never delved into the band Family before now. I started at Fearless, but now I’ve gone back to the debut Music in a Doll’s House and intend listen chronologically. What a weird, wonderful band. Is there really no dedicated thread for them? They’re hard to search.

Apparently Genesis were big fans of Family, back in their younger days. And you can really hear the similarities on songs like Burning Bridges or Spanish Tide.

Definitely

I discovered Family when I found a still-wrapped cut-out version of Anyway in a record store for a few dollars. There are no song titles or liner notes on the cover but I had some vague idea who they were and took a chance. At first I thought "this sounds really rough" - I didn't realize that side 1 was recorded live until the applause at the end of the first song.
They're definitely worth getting to know, and each record (I haven't heard It's Only a Movie) wanders intriguingly from what they had done before.

At that time (around 2000) there was almost no information about them online, and searching for some led me to George Starostin's review site.

Roy Ayers Ubiquity - Everyone Loves the Sunshine. I knew the title track, not exactly sure how, I guess it's one of those osmosis things that's out there and sampled a lot and equally effective as background and foreground. Whole album tho', wow. Sometimes fusion-y timbres and grooves don't work for me, but these all keep pleasingly on the funk end. Synths strings drones make it feel like walking around on a hot day. Keeps swaying between wispy and sexy and hard and hilarious.

I guess it's one of those osmosis things that's out there and sampled a lot and equally effective as background and foreground

yeah I got big into that album a few months ago too, as much as I like the title track I'm glad the rest of the album isn't really like it.

right, that particular stack of keyboard tones, with the piano hook on top, can only work once. But they keep shuffling the possibilities and each song has nearly-as-amazing arrangement choices.

Apparently Genesis were big fans of Family, back in their younger days. And you can really hear the similarities on songs like Burning Bridges or Spanish Tide.

Gabriel and Collins basically sound like a de-warbled Roger Chapman.

This would be more filed under pretty good live archive release, but I really liked the Roy Buchanan "Live at Town Hall 1974" that came out a few years ago. The recordings was the gigs that made the "Live Stock" album, but the out takes were often pretty wild. It has some really good skronky guitar, more than you might expect.

Buchanan is a character that touched on a few different live music scenes being that he played both in the early Bakersville and California country scene playing on some early Merle Haggard recordings then later being adjacent to Ronnie Hawkins working with the members of the band. Dude was a bit of a Forrest Gump/Zelig type. That PBS documentary is pretty funny artifact too. Jerry Garcia shows up and like yeah that dude is a MFer, as he had come across him playing live out west.

It's been a sheer pleasure to be working my way through the Kate Bush back catalogue - I've always been dimly aware of the hits, but don't think I've ever really appreciated her properly before.

Based on the good showing in the poll thread, I thought I'd stick on Aerial as I worked yesterday. Liked the first disc, How to be Invisible and Pi are terrific, actually find Bertie affecting. Get to the end of the day, think I'll skip to Nocturn as a taster of the second. Yep, this is pleasant, a nice Balearic vibe, honestly not sure about Atlantic/panoramic...

Five minutes in I am absolutely wide-eyed and transfixed. LOOK AT THE LIGHT! Just completely dazzled. Into Aerial and I think I'm having a funny turn. The birdsong and the laughter are so joyous, the playful essence of nature - the birds are laughing! - combined with the love of her child is very, very moving.

I'll need to listen to it properly now...

Workingman's Dead

For some reason I filed the Grateful Dead in the "probably not for me" category a long time ago, and occasionally hearing individual songs and liking them never really changed that. So I came to this knowing basically nothing about the Dead, and was really surprised not just by how much I liked it but by how easy it was to like.

Thoughts on the tracks that really stood out to me so far:

Uncle John's Band: This is my favorite so far. The sprung rhythms of the lyrics remind me of the Band, and there are moment where I think, "Oh, this is where Vampire Weekend gets this from," but the overall vibe is so much warmer than either of those bands. I love how it's sort of fragile and transcendent at the same time. I'm curious about how they performed it live, because there's something demo-ish about it, like it's the skeleton of something much bigger, and yet I wouldn't want it to get so big that it loses that frail and halting quality that makes it so poignant.

Dire Wolf: This song goes from one great lyric to another. Just ridiculously fun, funny, zingy, surreal. I'm sad that I didn't know the line "six hundred pounds of sin" back when I had a Malamute that liked to run away and steal from the neighbors.

Black Peter: First thought: frustrating combination of these heartbreakingly beautiful lyrics and the thin, querulous voice of the character who speaks them. At times the phrasing is so odd, the pauses so weirdly timed, that it's hard to understand the words even when I can hear them clearly. Second thought: this kind of reminds me of Randy Newman? But I guess it predates a lot of his stuff, so what I mean is that Randy Newman reminds me of this. Third thought: I can't fully understand why this song sounds the way it does, but I also can't really question it and I kind of love it.

Black Peter rules

Loved reading that, Lily.

Uncle John's Band -- IMO they never bettered it live. Same as they never bettered New Speedway Boogie. "sort of fragile and transcendent at the same time," yes indeed

Dire Wolf - OTM

Black Peter -- it's the listlessness, Lily! The narrator's dying, but the song suggests he's been "busy dying," in Dylanesque terms, for a long long time already.

Must be the first time I make it to the second side of The Cars s/t, which at least sounds like New Wave, and I kind of get it.

Lily Dale, awesome reflections. Approx 1000000x better than watching one of those youtube reax videos. :)

Your suspicion about Uncle John's Band is otm, it became a big centerpiece song in concert, but as a high energy electric rave up, often with a long jam, it's a totally different thing from the Workingman's Dead version, which is a singular thing.

I'm sure you don't need me to tell you this but the other album that is of a piece with Workingman's Dead is American Beauty, probably their crowning achievement. It's not quite as Band-like "old weird America" as WD but it's equally timeless and contains several of their best songs. Would love to read your thoughts on that one! Then Garcia and Weir's first solo albums, Garcia and Ace, respectively, are the other classics from that time. From there the catalog starts to get electric, jammy, and shaggier, but I suspect you might like those. Then perhaps you could look at Reckoning, which was their sole fully acoustic live release back in the days before they had released hundreds of live albums (but also check out Disc 1 of Dick's Picks 8 @ Harpur College, from the contemporaneous era of Workingman's Dead, when they often played an acoustic first set before 2 electric ones).

I'm stretching the definition of "classic" and "blown away", but I recently stumbled on Catherine Wheel. I vaguely knew the name, but I always assumed they were an early-1990s experimental industrial band along the lines of Towering Inferno or A R Kane.

In fact they were a shoegaze band, and then latterly an indie rock band. Imagine the same career progression as Lush, but much heavier at the beginning and still a lot heavier at the end. For whatever reason they were never popular in the UK but had a minor cult following in the United States. Or imagine a more metal, more drone-rock Ride.

And anyway Ferment is really solid. It suffers from the compact-disc-era curse whereby every album had to be an hour long. It would benefit from being twenty minutes shorter because it gets monotonous. Their second album is similar but less focused, their third album has its moments. "Judy Staring at the Sun" is catchy. Their last album got 1.7 from Pitchfork - it's odd to think of an early-1990s British indie band surviving into the Pitchfork era - and having listened to a couple of tracks I can agree with that. But Ferment is good.

Bizarrely the lead singer is now the owner of Singer, a company that makes staggeringly expensive Porsche 911 restomods, e.g. the company takes late-80s/early-90s Porsches and makes them look like 1970s Porsches but with modern engines.

Although having said that one of the criticisms levelled at shoegaze by the UK music press was that the bands were full of posh rich kids, so perhaps it's not so bizarre.

Moonmadness by Camel...was always on the fence about these guys but man, this is brilliant front to back. Listening to my other Camel records and realizing they're excellent as well. But Moonmadness I think may be the best of all.

don't sleep on rajaz!

fountains of light by starcastle is my most recent knockout classic album listen. the feelies (the good earth) to yes's velvet underground

xp Ferment is solid all the way through, the washed-out treble-heavy Tim Friese-Greene production suits it well. I wish he was more active in this period.

oh yeah working up to that one, finding even the less celebrated albums are great - Rain Dances especially, maybe it's not on the level of the first 4 but it's still such a good listen. heard only good things about their 90s albums, hope they get reissued someday

agreed on Fountains of Light...thats a good comparison. obviously they got compared to Yes a ton but I think most of that is due to their first album being a pretty clear knock off. FoL has a more unique sound, somewhere between Yes and Styx, and Roy Thomas Baker's production gives it a thickness that I really dig. I love the video game synths on it. "Portraits" is such a great deep cut. the cornball shit really works for them.

Citadel is a pretty good album too! but I recently picked up their 4th called Reel to Real and it SUCKS! clearly an attempt to score a hit single and it's remarkable how bad they are at it. at least the cover is hilarious.

I had a similarly late epiphany re: Moonmadness a few years ago and had several days of "Camel is my favorite band now" feelings. I went back to the few albums I knew and checked out many I didn't and ultimately decided that while they're probably an underrated band in general, Moodmadness is the unqualified peak. I also really like Mirage and Rain Dances and I think even Breathless has its moments. I will never understand, however, what people see in The Snow Goose, which leaves no impression on me whatsoever no matter how many times I hear it

the more rocking moments on Snow Goose are so good that I was disappointed the rest of it wasn't like that. but like all Camel it's just so melodic you can really lose yourself in it. it sounds like a JRPG soundtrack.

I'm listening to Moonmadness now, and it's reminding me of another second-tier prog album which i recently became enamored with: Remember The Future by Nektar.

George the Animal Steele wrote this on thread OPV: 70's HIPPIE ROCK JAMZ on board I Love Music on Jan 25, 2006
And who can overlook the mighty Nektar? Tab In the Ocean, Remember the Future and the anti-littering rock opera, "Recycled."

lol

kamerad wrote this on thread ILM is kinda sucking these days (boring and meta ignore not safe for work) on board I Love Music on Jun 6, 2008

there aren't any threads for nektar. there should be at least one. but what do i know--i'm still waiting for someone to respond to my one thread--scott walker vs. david sylvian

lol I just saw Nektar a few weeks ago. or whoever the fuck is calling themselves Nektar these days. they played a bunch of Remember the Future which ruled. the entire first side + the last song

fun fact: i was listening to the snow goose while driving my wife to the hospital to give birth to my baby, almost 1 year ago today

good album, imo

I think it drags in spots but the first minute and a half of "La Princesse Perdue" makes up for everything imo

Izipho Zam by Pharoah Sanders. You'd thi9nk if an artist kept levitating the studio he'd be thought of as a liability. But no, Sanders kept doing it at the turn of the 70s like he just didn't care.
Interesting hearing Sonny Sharrock here being more tuneful than skronking. Intense, repetitious yes, but more chime than skronk.

Because of some mention on another thread, I downloaded Terry Allen's Lubbock (On Everything) the other day and it is fucking awesome, glad to have a country album to blast this summer.

Nice--was likewise myself only recently knocked out by Lubbock as well, esp "The Beautiful Waitress": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9TvcyDwQmc

Fear of Music by Talking Heads reappeared out of various piles a couple of times recently. I'm not sure why it hasn't permanently stuck with me. But it somehow hasn't so I get to rediscover it every now and then. I think it must have been very influential when it first came out. Pretty other, definitely picking up on funk and I think just discovering African music. Very good lp, I have the one with a dvd in the package which I think I picked up alongside Remain In Light at sale price so a little after the 2006 release. So nice discovery every now and then. Must find the Remain In Light.

Other than that. Compilations of various Reggae artists on Doctor Bird. Which has left me wondering if there are distinctive qualities to Niney The Observer that would make me recognise a track was produced by him without already knowing. & what the difference between roots from 73-76 and 77-79 would be in terms of trends in sound etc. Great to be discovering this stuf anyway. Niney, Joe Gibbs, Dennis Bovell etc etc.

Interesting, Stevo--off the top of my head re: differences btw those two reggae eras, one biggish one might be more 'discomixes' in the latter era, with 7-to-10-min-long versions where the vocal and dub mix were glued together to play seamlessly on one side of a 12" single...

(and xp re: Fear Of Music, sometimes "Mind" might be my very fave Talking Heads tune fwiw)

^^ yes re: "Mind"

Freedom Means by The Dells. I've been into Terry Callier's 70s albums for years, but for some reason this passed me by until very recently.

Technodelic by YMO. Never heard this for some reason. Amazing

Is the 5th track the inspiration for "Rio"?

First Ash Ra Tempel record, was pretty cool.

Technodelic by YMO. Never heard this for some reason. Amazing

Yesssss. Welcome to the world behind the mirror glass

Not exactly a "classic" — it's kind of ignored by most people, who stopped paying attention after they left Island — but Burning Spear's The Fittest of the Fittest from 1983 is a really good album. (Includes the 1980 single "Bad to Worst," the search for which is what got me to download this record in the first place. Rodney's voice is as Old Testament as ever, the horns are great, and the Prophet synth that pops up here and there is pleasingly weird.