Steve McQueen/Two Wheels Good Poll

appetite was my easy answer, but then i listened to it tonight and now i don't know what i would pick cuz the whole thing is kinda perfect. and i know there was a best track poll but i am curious what people would pick. ooooooooooooh johnny johnny johnny...

Desire As -- it's not even close.

Appetite for certainz.

Mmm hmm...Appetite. I'd like to hear that again.

"When Love Breaks Down" was pretty damn good too, though.

Bonny!

shouldn't you be including "The Yearning Loins", "He'll Have To Go" and "Faron Young (Truckin' Mix)"?

i think that "when love breaks down" will, rightly, win this without my help so i'm going to vote for "Goodbye Lucille #1" which is just gorgeous. the slight, deliberate, imperfections in the song - the fact that some of the lines have too many syllables to scan properly ("i advise you to forget her" and "why dont you join the foreign legion?") just make the song even greater. amazing song.

lots of "song"s there.

i'm totally on the verge of voting for goodbye lucille too. so beautiful. listening now.

life's not complete...till your heart's missed a beat...

I'm tempted to vote for When the Angels purely for the following couplet;

Must get so blasé, knowing you’ll never die,
Lounging on a cloud; polishing the sky

Which I didn't realise until recently that the song is about Marvin Gaye's murder.

As it is I'm really stumped with this one, leaning towards Bonny at the mo' but will have to relisten to the album before making my decision.

"words don't hold you,
...broken soldiers."

is beautiful and baffling.

to goodbye lucille i use to always sing "you're still in love with pain and pills" so i'm thrilled to find that it's actually ""you're still in love with Hayley Mills". wow.

so did I!

I also did not learn until recently that the line in "Faron Young" is "as obsolete as warships in the Baltic"...(I had thought it was something like "as obsolete as Washington's contacts", whatever the hell that might mean)...

speaking of lines, the whole "turkey-hungry, chicken-free" thing keeps me from voting for "Moving The River"...

were any of you NOT between the ages of 18 and 26 when this record came out?...I have a hard time believing that this could strongly connect with somebody who wasn't college-age at the time, but then again, "kids today" still go through Beatles phases...

i was in high school when it came out. and already a big fan of the first album. thanks to my best friend lance. he was a huge fan. still is.

they used to play "don't sing" on the college radio station where i lived. probably the first thing i heard. that song is just one big memory ball for me.

i was 13 when it came out. i was only vaguely aware of them until "cars and girls" came out three years later but i didnt hear this album until 5 years or so ago even though i bought and loved from langley park to memphis and jordan, the comeback.

btw, has anyone not heard the track "i'm 49" from the 2003 album i trawl the megahertz? if not you should get on that asap.

actually the single with "walk on" might have been the FIRST thing i heard. lance had that. god i love that song.

here's "I'm 49" http://www.sendspace.com/file/xi9tby

this is harrrrd

jed_ makes great case for "goodbye lucille #1" tho

toughest poll ever. man alive... just doesn't seem fair to single one track out.

i think i was 4 years old when this album came out and i love it to death, having heard it for the first time a few years ago. i got Swoon and i enjoy that one too, but Jordan: The Comeback goes completely over my head. maybe i'll like it one day.

I have to be boring and vote for "When Love Breaks Down". There are several obscure tracks on the two next albums that I love, but nothing can quite beat the biggest single off that album.

Jordan: The Comeback resonates with me more. I worked back to Steve McQueen after falling for the band circa Langley Park, when I was 15.

Saying that, SMcQ and Protest Songs are the only two I really play now.

Anyway, um, 'Appetite'.

yeah, "Appetite"...

yeah 'appetite'

"Wishes she could call him heartache
But it's not a boy's name"

but then the beginning of 'when love breaks down' is so amazing.

I was 15 when this came out, I think, so it appealed straightaway to my pretentious side. It's a fantastic surprise to see how it's held up, unlike the Red Guitars, another band I was super-into at the same time

oh, and "Moving The River" barely edges out over "When the Angels"

Hearing Appetite again just now really flipped my lid. The hairs on my arms shot up so much it felt like needles in my flesh. Gosh, that's a great old song. Haven't heard it in eons.

I'm surprised that people like "When the Angels" so much. I always skip over that one.

Also surprised by the love for "Appetite". I love it, too, but kinda assumed that people would simply go for "When Love Breaks Down" or "Bonny" or "Goodbye Lucille #1".

I think "Moving the River" is an underrated one, but, like poster upthread, I am always thrown by the "turkey hungry, chicken-free" line.

This is a really tough poll. I have fallen in love with and been blown away by every song on the record at one time or another, with the exception of the last couple tracks.

I'm still stuck on Appetite & When Love Breaks Down. I feel like I could listen to those about 50 times each in a row right now. I've been making all these compilations of other songs for myself but I've decided the best way to end a CD is with those two songs, because you can't possibly follow them up with anything credible and in the same vein.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I went with "Faron" which is how my copy titles it (instead of "Faron Young").

But there's something that I've always wanted to say about this record that I believe is (sorta) getting confirmed by this thread: there may not be another record that divides so perfectly into good/bad sides. I adore every goddamn nanosecond of side one, amongst the very best, um, sides of the 1980s. But there's not a single song on side two that I like start to finish and many I cannot stand altogether. And those latter are "the last couple tracks" that dell mentions above. I'd even include "Desire As" in this category despite its great lyric. "Moving The River" only comes to life when its title is sung. And "Horsin' Around" sounds like an aimless, snarky Zappa/prog desecration of pop rather than the thing itself or even "the thing itself" (for the latter, I'll take Steely Dan). The most quintessential couplet on the record ("I deserve to be kicked so badly/You deserve more than I sold you for") occurs in this song. But it gets stretched so far out of melodic shape that its impact is blunted. And so.

But I'm getting the impression that some (certainly not all) people in this thread feel the same way. There's dell's comment. But almost all the songs being mentioned here are on side one. So what are y'all's thoughts on this?

And has there ever been a good/bad side thread? If so, where?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

And notice the results. Heavily skewed towards side one.

I hardly ever listen to side two.

Missed this poll. Would have voted for Bonny. That song sends me to some eerie place between the cracks of my past.

"Horsing Around" is great even though I voted for "When Love Breaks Down".

I generally prefer "Jordan..." and "From Langley Park To Memphis" though.

I missed this poll but the results seem OK. I was a few months out of college when I bought it- I bought it based on the sticker.

i missed this poll too (even though i mused about it in the jordan poll). but the result pleases me enormously.

Hearing Appetite again just now really flipped my lid. The hairs on my arms shot up so much it felt like needles in my flesh. Gosh, that's a great old song. Haven't heard it in eons

ha! you and i seem to have spent the past week in similar ways. actually, thinking about this, it's almost too coincidental to believe. that's the joy of coincidence, though :) maybe there were subliminal messages all over ILX: "go listen to steve mcqueen, especially appetite" ...

i was 10 when it came out, so it totally passed me by. i remember liking "the king of rock and roll" as a kid.

Good Thomas Dolby interview here, re: the TWG/SM remaster and Dolby's role as producer.

Coincidentally, brought in their best of and Andromeda Heights to listen to at work today. Forgot how much I love(d) singing along to "I Remember That" ("Now there's nothing pathetic / listing clothes that she'd wear / if it proves that I had you / if it proves that I was there..."). That and hearing Jenny Agutter say "I want to have you." have made the morning more pleasant.

Drooling fan of Appetite, here.

"When Love Breaks Down" is almost 99.9% as good, though.

And then when I realized that Thomas Dolby had produced that album I nearly had an orgasm, for I love his early work.

Dolby produced most of the best work by Prefab Sprout. Only "From Langley Park To Memphis" Paddy had to do most of the production himself as Dolby was ill, but he did learn a lot from Dolby's work with "Steve McQueen" and produced it in largely the same way Dolby would have.

Everyone who voted NEEDS the reissue that came out this year. I was skeptical of the need for a largely acoustic rerecorded version of the album but it's astounding, even more beautiful in places than the original.

I don't like the acoustic version, but the earlier version of the actual album badly needed remastering.

Hi Grimly! Glad to hear there's still some coincidences going on between you & I!