This is the thread where you ask someone to explain the greatness of (insert classic album here).

I'd take side 2 of Abbey Rd over all of sgt peppers anyday

There's a Riot going on is awesome. It's the only album I know of by a funk band that I consider more sunny afternoon beer drinking music rather than saturday night dancing on ecstacy music ( or in the case early funkadelic - 4 am tripping music) . It goes well with howling Wolf, exile on main street . And in a lot of ways I feel it's the beginning of all that mo wax,endtroducing,massive attack sound .
I listen to it a lot...but nowhere near as much as sly's greatest hits

Would really appreciate this.

It may also be more famous for the colorful cover design than for the actual music inside, some of which, as grapple said, is sub-standard McCartneyism.

That being said--"Day in the Life" is a classic. "Sgt. Pepper" the song is great, too. "Lucy" and "Get by with a Little Help" are overrated but certainly not bad songs. I really like "Mr. Kite," even if everyone else hates it. And "Lovely Rita" has got to be one of the most fun songs of all time.

As for There's a Riot Going on... Africa's talking to you. You're just not listening.

To me all it sounds like is a decent Soul II Soul rip, not some huge breakthrough. Mind you, I am hearing this for the first time 15 years after the fact.

i've noticed when sgt. pepper is talked about a/the great/greatest record it is usually on historical grounds, for its importance to the album-as-art concept or whatever. revolver and rubber soul are sometimes dealt with like this because of the stylistic leaps they represent. they are all great albums. but it's sometimes hard to explain the greatness of the beatles because so much of our pop music fabric is cut from their cloth and it becomes hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, i think.

that's a good point about exile as "perfect" double album. but it's appeal to me is much more basic: it's the immediate, primal swagger and swoon... either it gets your rocks off or it doesn't. for me, when i think of (post-beatles) rock and roll music... it's exile and funhouse and the rest sort of fall in behind.

now explain this greatness to me: why does this board need a new thread about pulp every twenty minutes?

I like Trout Mask Replica okay, but I've never had that moment with it. Though I have with Safe as Milk.

I've owned Astral Weeks for over 20 years, with the first listen during a snow day in early high school. I'd bought it the night before, but didn't put it on, so clearly I was already suspicious. I thought, "this is boring, but it seems to be for older people. Maybe I will like it later." It's never happened.

*awaits blows*

Unfinished Sympathy has never done it for me though - safe from Harm is much better...and five man army is the dogs bollocks

Astral Weeks has never happened for me either, though I really love "The Way that Young Lovers Do." And I hate "Mr. Kite," though I knew a guy who liked only that song from the album.

If you don't even know what album you're talking about, it's hard to believe you've given it much of a chance.

Woah...I'm an American, a rather young one at that, and this means absolutely nothing to me.

yeah, tories say what in the who, now?

This is an album I've gone back and forth on over the years, from one of my all-time favorites to very overrated, I'd like to here what some of you guys think.

My rockcrit powers aren't at their best this morning (and bendy did a nice job upthread), but here goes...

It's an album about enervation and cynicism which sounds neither enervated nor cynical. For once Jagger inserts himself into the music, his voice in effect a third guitar howling between Keith Richards and Mick Taylor; his lyrics are more offhand and throwaway than in any other time in his career (well, except the great Dirty Work): "Judge and jury walked out hand in hand," "don't wanna talk to Jesus, I just wanna see his face," "ten little niggers sittin' on the wall." I love how you can play any of the four sides indiscriminately. I love how tracks you dismissed as pleasant formalist exercises suddenly sound REALLY AMAZING years later ("Casino Boogie" and "Soul Survivor").

Madam George and Beside You I could do without, but the rest is classic, immortal even.

I can only assume that at some point in your music-listening career you accidentally mixed up the discs, because The Bends is 10 tracks of absolutely grade-A instant-classic goodness sandwiched between an unfortunately mediocre opener and closer, and OK Computer is "Let Down" + some other piffling crap