Unjustly Vilified. The critical consensus is WRONG!

And these are courtesy of Colin Larkin:
For Brothers in Arms read the debut, Dire Straits
For Rumours read Fleetwood Mac or better still, Then Play On
For Hotel Bloody California read Desperado
For Bat out of Hell read...well there isn't pme actually.
For Bridge Over Troubled Waters read Bookends

Source: Virgins All-Time Top 1000 Albums, 1998 edition.

('this woman's work' doesn't count cause it was on 'she's having a baby' soundtrack first)

I feel fine. I spent some quality time last week comparing both albums and, while Faith is excellent, Bloodflowers is better-constructed and maintains a more-consistent mood. Bloodflowers is not better than Pornography or Disintegration (despite the negative things I've said about "Closedown", Disintegration is and always will be a remarkable album), but I like it more than Faith, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me and Wish.

Led Zeppelin III is better than Led Zeppelin IV.
Quadrophenia is way way way better than Tommy and reasonably better than Who's Next.
Return of the Boom-Bap is better than Criminal Minded.
Sandinista! is better than The Clash.
Bleach is better than Nevermind and I'm not just being indie nerd boy OK?
Any Beatles album is better than Sgt. Pepper's.
Loaded is better than The Velvet Underground and Nico and White Light/White Heat... combined.

storm in heaven and the first three eps, everything else verve is crap.

He sneaked this last one in here as a joke, guys.

Dirty Mind > 1999

"in through the out door" > lz1, lz2 and presence

"conqistador" > "unit structures"

"daydream nation" > anything else by sonic youth (in The Wire "primer" David Keenan pretends not to be able to "get into" this album out of all of them so that he can heap praise on all that subsequent dire SY pacemaker rock)

"maggot brain" > supposedly mind-blowing 1st and 2nd albums

voice crack is better with borbetomagus, and borbetomagus is better with voice crack or any one else

many coltrane albums were experiments done quickly as time ran out and so in some cases they were each vastly different from each other in lot's of different ways, but he was alwaysstuck in the same harmonic straightjacket for his entire career

schoenburg > webern

More Consistent mood than Faith? But how?

ie "in 1995 you'll [still be into what this record is doing]" is still true in 2002 -- ie this record will not date politically unless the major political problems it concisely addresses are dealt to

eg the "Hollywood ending" of Oscars for two leading blacks tied to the Portier life-time achievement Oscar -- the speeches were all about "we're still trying to get there, we're not there yet" -- as a New Zealander seeing the suprise on those actors faces when they got their Oscars and the uphill battles that Berry in particular aluded to was to me validating "Burn Hollywood ..", a song which I had previousley thought was slightly extreme ('though it seemed right) -- i didn't think things could be that bad in that movie industry until i started trying to count blacks in movies -- i don't live in L.A. andd i don't understand the fear of riots over OJ if found guilty -- i don't understand the rodney king riots creating communities turning on themselves and looting each other -- and there goes hollywood patronising the public as badly as ever on Oscar night

eg black vinyl with "right about now" between side one and two, just like the track "there's a riot going on" way back "When ?"

eg the admission that this band PE had to almost be like a political party with serious body guard protection -- a PR campaign, almost reminded me of throbbing gristle -- the blueprint for rap collectives came from pe

no other rappers have laid it all down quite so thickly, have communicated it so musically elegantly -- that album has an extra layer of samples/noise/information that i haven't heard elsewhere -- to me it's musically a one-off

ok they got to the issues and raised them in a PR coup, handled the record company like the clash, zeroed in on all that symbolism (public enemy, target, etc.) without coming across as inarticulate punks and have never adopted the metaphor so common in rap that the rapper is the man, he's got the stuff -- no flav admits he can't do it -- he got problems of his own -- who's the man ? go to the man ?

what i mean by that is public enemy didn't get to where they are the way IceT did -- no bragging about gold watches (flav's backwards cheap timepiece is so cool) -- no bravado, no degradation of women

these PE rappers aren't out to be seen to be bad as if it's cool, they're just aware that they won't be liked for what they're pointing out

maybe you can only raise these issues once when music is the vehicle - - even Public Enemey seem to have run shorter on policy with some of their records, but they were the first to get to those issues in getting them over in a _really_ interesting musical way, with music/symbols, not just beats -- no bullshit, no sleaze, no machismo, ok PE might just mock that kind of behavior but they aren't recommending it

yeah i just think there's like the beatles (first), the stones (first), joy division(first) etc. each to their respective areas that they heped build and define -- that's where Public Enemy have been first, and getting attention with the first albums and rolling out the second, "the bomb"/"darkstar" at critical mass time, PE alone and first were the ones to get afro-american feeling out to the rest of the world in a 21st century kind of way