MASSIVE ATTACK - BLUE LINES (1991) POLL

Blue Lines

Safe From Harm was my least favourite and it still is.

safe from harm vs. be thankful

safe from harm takes it

just as long as my baby's safe from harm
tonight

i used to own both of shara nelson's solo albums! i think they were good...haha you can get the first one for 1p on amazon marketplace now :/

I vote for "Five Man Army" every time this album gets polled.

I once had to get a ride with a rather overbearing acquaintance. I had made up a tape of this for the journey. It was whipped it out of the machine and tossed within twenty seconds - "What is *this* boring shit?!" - and replaced with Strike's U Sure Do on a loop. Good times.

So my vote goes to Safe From Harm - sorry for not sticking up for you all those years ago.

TBF "U Sure Do" on a loop wd be dope.

Yeah, I know. The only thing that stops me giving him the benefit of the doubt is that he's a complete prick.

Sorry to be boring, but Unfinished Sympathy.

US vs 5 Man Army.

Safe from Harm. Great album, except for some of the vocals here and there.

You can free my world
You can free my mind
Just as long as my my baby's safe from harm tonight

"Safe From Harm" is the one that sounds the most like the better album that followed. So that one.

ladies and gentlemen, Geir Hongro!

Unf SYmp

i'm reallly into hymn of the big wheel

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i used to own both of shara nelson's solo albums! i think they were good...haha you can get the first one for 1p on amazon marketplace now :/

― lex pretend, Saturday, November 22, 2008 3:44 AM (5 days ago) Bookmark

Down that Road still gets rotation from me.

"Daydreaming".

Despite my reservations about them using Wally Badarou's "Mambo" for it. I mean, they use the whole bloody thing!

the title track

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

Yeah- this record is a classic- It's my thought that Kanye West has failed to reference Massive Attack as his current output's sonic blueprint-
and the kids think he's breaking ground- it was broken a long time ago.

Gah, forgot to vote.

Great album, except for some of the vocals here and there.

Are you talking about Del Naja's rapping? Cos I've always liked it.

i'm the only one who mentioned hymn, but 4 other votes. WHO!?

Are you talking about Del Naja's rapping? Cos I've always liked it.

― chap, Saturday, November 29, 2008 4:44 PM

I mean some of Horace Andy's vocals, particularly on "One Love".

its vision i love
and not
anotha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a

― Vision, Saturday, November 29, 2008 3:07 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

You have it right Hoos, it's precisely those gimmicky, exaggerated phrase endings I dislike. I mean, what is it with Jamaican singers and the way they pretty much lose their singing abilities at some point?

I'm glad to see Blue Lines the title track at #3, where it really belongs after the two stunner singles. Good work, ILM.

What I mean is, unsarcastically and unironically, I'm happy with this poll. Thanks!

shit I should have voted for One Love

Remember when they changed their name to Massive

my copy of this has the name as Massive, Massive Attack is nowhere to be seen

mine too. it's a vinyl copy in a silkscreen printed mailer.

So tonight "Safe from Harm" came on shuffle, and my girlfriend asked if I was listening to "Beautiful Disaster" by 311. I had never heard the 311 song before, but I do see the resemblance (sadly) -- listen to the intro/bassline part:

the rapping on this is :(

okay woah ho! 311...that brings back weird memories. I was in love with someone who mentioned that famous 311 song. Can't recall it now. Not sure I want to know...

dont know if this has been discussed already but if you google theres a few old radio shows massive attack did for kiss fm in london around the time this album came out that are pretty great.

weird

Pete Tong granted restraining order against former Massive Attack singer

Radio 1 DJ Pete Tong has been granted a restraining order against former Massive Attack singer Shara Nelson.

The DJ told a West London magistrates court that the singer had harassed him with nuisance calls and told his colleagues that she was his manager, reports The Sun.

During the court proceedings, Nelson even gave her surname as Tong and claimed she had married the DJ and had his child. Tong confimed that neither of these statements are correct.

Nelson, who sang with Massive Attack on their 1991 hit single 'Unfinished Sympathy' and on a number of other tracks on their debut album 'Blue Lines', has been banned indefinitely from contacting Tong or his friends and family. She has also been issued with a 12-month community order and will have to complete 80 hours of community service.

A spokesman for Pete Tong declined to comment about the case.

http://www.nme.com/news/massive-attack/58583

Blimey!

that's just crazy

really sad :/

i guess you could say that for shara nelson it's all gone a bit...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EKdbLNH8J54/TZSn8Hn3ycI/AAAAAAAAAII/3-YGXPedQpI/s1600/pete-tong-007.jpg

lol. not a great picture of PT though. must be sad for him, knowing his life has gradually conformed to the idiom made out of his name.

i just want to say that i'm particularly happy about that joke

I dunno, two things:

1) I can't think of someone saying "Shara Nelson" without it sounding like PTong saying it.

2) The lyrics to "Unfinished Sympathy".

I guess he's not going to be playing it again, ever.

'they should introduce her to andy kershaw' - radio 4 gag writer who's almost crushing it

can't be arsed to engage with swathes of modern music because you've mentally bundled it into a package labelled "Youth culture - past that now - don't understand"

but nobody's really said that? shakey said he doesn't like the aesthetics

Matt, dude, I'm not rationalising, I'm trolling.

It's hardly strawmanning, it's what you're both doing in this very thread.

those aren't my posts bro

fwiw I agree w the first bit quoted, the second bit not so much, that's Scick Mouthy's POV

As if 33-year old men are a monolith.

but 15 yr olds are?

(Sorry, I misread and thought the first bit was actually yours, although I was attempting to argue with both of you at once)

xpost - of course not.

i spotted a massive attack appropriation i hadn't identified before just today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rIhwNTTmZ5s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIhwNTTmZ5s

|i was looking back to see if you were looking back at me to see me looking back at you"

Okay so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aKneOGGFs8

I can't hear any difference over my phone speaker, but those extracts are mouthwateringly put together. Also:

The only thing that stops me giving him the benefit of the doubt is that he's a complete prick.

former me making current me laugh

is there anything at all wrong with this record

not enough Horace Andy

i don't know what all these idiots were talking about upthread but if it implied it is bad for there to be a remaster then they are idiots, i listened to this record in the 90s and the remaster is life-changing

it's a *remix* not just a remaster that's the issue IMO. i don't want to get all 'Han shot first' but i wanted it the way it was.

you can't go back once your life has been changed

30 years old today apparently!

Four and five and six love
But I believe in one love

But zero votes

that's the curse of being everyone's second-favorite song

when I bought this one they'd been pushed to shorten their name to Massive because of some bizarre gulf war sensitivity that I still don't get. Lol the long 50's more like!

same! Did yours come in a screen-printed mailer envelope?

I have some vague memory of seeing that but I bought my copy of the "Massive" album in the cassette format. Good job whoever the minister of defence was at the time never heard a radio 1 dj call them Massive Attack and take then it as a coded message to nuke Iraq.

I might sell mine, actually, it's worth a fair bit.

just seen one on e-bay with the cardboard envelope and in slightly damaged condition on sale for £500

oh the vinyl is mint condition it's the promo poster that is slightly damaged.

Lately 0

huh...

By the time I bought this album in 1999, Sony’s wireless Budokan headphones were utterly forgotten. No longer part of the culture at all. And yet 3D’s lyrics in half the tracks consist of shout-outs to this product. I was totally baffled by what he was rapping about, and if it hadn’t been for the internet, I probably would have stayed that way.

My understanding was that it was actually referring to this - which I had no idea about even back in 1991 when I was listening to my tape copy!

Admittedly high-end Japanese technology didn't always filter through to Australia, but I sure never saw one of these.

Would love to give one a listen though - I have a fucked up DD Walkman (uses a silicon disc instead of a belt drive) and it actually sounds incredible.

This (below lyrics) says it was actually referring to THIS.

"Every rap track has a reference to Sony, yeah! It’s not a plug for them though, it’s just that Sony and their Walkman’s are such a massive influence and the Sony Budokan is the ultimate portable sound experience, extra bass and a really huge sound. They even give you a cushion to sit on while you listen to it. It’s a totally obsessive object and if you have something that you’re really into, you constantly think about it, so when I think about words and music I constantly think of my Budokan, it’s that simple. I also think about Subbuteo…"

lol

My bad, I assumed the Sony Budokan Walkman itself came with wireless headphones, since 3D also raps about the “wireless” revolution “started by Marconi”.

I can’t get over how old 3D was when Blue Lines came out – twenty-five was already an advanced age for anyone involved in graffiti and dance party scenes (and Daddy G was even older). Frankly, it seems a bit old to be so passionate about a toy that you name it in every track.

Isn't there a fair chance though that a lot of the tracks on Blue Lines had been kicking around for a number of years from The Wild Bunch days?

"wireless" here being an old (mostly British English) term for radio, wireless headphones existed in 1991 but were definitely unusual

The red Budokan looked like the perfect kit to listen to this on.

https://www.walkman-archive.com/gadgets/sony/photos/previews/SONY-Walkman-Boodo-Khan-red.jpg

someone has a mint condition boodo khan cassette player/headphones set on ebay for $1595

now all I need is a tape copy of Blue Lines

His lyrics are so timeless to me despite being extremely 90s.

Isn't there a fair chance though that a lot of the tracks on Blue Lines had been kicking around for a number of years from The Wild Bunch days?

― groovypanda, Thursday, July 27, 2023 12:42 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Most

the recent 33 1/3 recently published is instructive about the assembling

Yeah. Exactly where I learned this from. :)

ooh, I didn't know about that one. purchased!

Thanks for the 33 1/3 recommendation. Reminds me that Neneh Cherry was part of the scene. Another artist regarding whom I was shocked when I read about her and found out she was much older, and already had such a long career by 1990, then I would have suspected.

In fact, if Blue Lines is a culmination of Wild Bunch stuff that had been going on for years, there must have been some cognoscenti who regarded it as the end of an era, just as the rest of the world was seeing trip-hop as this new thing.

Frankly, it seems a bit old to be so passionate about a toy that you name it in every track.

― Melomane

Not sure about that maybe he was a pioneer lol, taking a stroll around reddit - which is filled with manchilds - you’re not sure if the comments come from 15 year olds or 45 year olds.

Shit I still obsess about Massive Attack every now and then and they were a band which were instrumental for me when I was 13/14. A pair of headphones seems like the sort of gadget you can obsess about at any age tbh.

Also I wouldn’t dismiss headphones as “toys”

I listened to US and Protection a ton back in the Napster days

ok, I’ve read the 33 1/3 book now. not my fave of the series and it misses some bits, but overall I’d recommend

not sure what to make of the headphones talk here, which seems ahistorical! portable radios were fairly widespread by the time the core of Massive Attack were kids, but the ability to listen to your own music, wherever you wanted, didn’t really appear until the sony walkman in 1979 (outside of Japan, post-1980) when 3d would have been a teen.

maybe it’s less comprehensible what a shift this was, but today’s headphone ubiquity probably traces back to that moment.

I would also recommend Bjork’s classic song Headphones. (Produced in collab w/Tricky!)

Happy 35th anniversary to one of the greatest ever.

I've been playing "Hymn of the Big Wheel" and "One Love" often.

This has to be one of my most-listened-to albums of the '90s, never got old.

They did a killer live version of Safe From Harm on MTV2 (Deborah Miller taking over on vocals)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7n9gMzMhZc