Cheech
Integral Poster
Posted by: Agent of Oblivion April 02, 2009 08:50 am
I did this once before, and enjoyed it. Here's the idea-
You offer a choice between two or more related albums, musicians, songs, etc, and someone else chooses which one he likes more and says why.
Example: Pick One: Clapton or Hendrix or Pick One: Member of The Beatles. You get the idea. All forms of music are fair game, of course.
I'll get the ball rolling with something nice and accessible-
Pick One: Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall.
Posted by: Bananarama - Cruel Summer April 02, 2009 10:14 am
Dark Side of the Moon easily. Though I'm not keen on listening to either one very often any longer, inasmuch as I'm no longer an angsty 16-year-old whose mind is blown by entry-level prog, I'll never ever lose my love for "Us and Them" and "Any Colour You Like," which will always be two of my favorite Floyd tunes. (I'm lonely on the "Any Colour You Like" front. Most people regard it as a throwaway interlude between two classics, but I really dig all the VCS3 stuff for some reason. I love "Welcome to the Machine" even more.) The Wall, on the other hand, is bloated, excessive, and I can't listen to it without feeling ashamed of myself for ever having loved it. In terms of the respective concepts, I can feel less ashamed about a series of sketches regarding mental health-compromising stressors (drugs, money, war, death, &c) than a sprawling rock opera about being a tortured genius. Ugh, there I was, feeling that "building a wall" really spoke to me and my unique interpersonal condition. Blecch. I can still enjoy the first minute or so of "Run Like Hell" and a few little phrases and phases across the 80ish minutes, but my days of sitting through the whole thing are gone forever and ever, and this from a person who still holds a sentimental attachment to "Boombastic" by Shaggy. That's how ashamed I am for having loved The Wall. Oh well. It's a rite of passage.
Pick One: Lou Reed or John Cale
Posted by: pbone April 02, 2009 10:33 am
whoops
Posted by: Incandenza April 02, 2009 10:57 am
Lou Reed.
I've mentioned in the past that I once went through an unnatural obssesion with Lou Reed's solo material. I rarely listen to any of it now, but, ignoring the worst of it (of which there is plenty), there's a real rock-and-roll spirit to his work that's largely absent to Cale's cold and joyless output. Even his (Cale's) lighter, "poppier" material feels mannered and rehearsed, like a carefully practiced imitation. Granted, Cale never sunk to the really low lows that Reed has late in his career—I actually fucking bought The Raven!—but even then Reed could knock out a gem or two when he felt like it. I direct you to "Baton Rouge" from his album Ecstasy, a song that's the most heartbreaking thing he's ever done. Cale does little more than just produce merely acceptable music, which, in its own way, is just as bad as Reed's self-indulgent bullshit.
I like answering these type of things rather than asking, but I'll give it a shot. How about Talking Heads: late 70s era or big-time rockstar early-to-mid 80s era.
Posted by: Bananarama - Cruel Summer April 02, 2009 11:31 am
I don't sense a "rock and roll spirit" in either one, tbh. Both of their attempts at rocking always felt affected and inferior to me, like it doesn't really come naturally to them (even the Velvet Underground's rockingest stuff was kind of a musical analogue to aliens from outer space trying to approximate human behavior) but Cale's are worse and pretty embarrassing, like, well, pretty much all of Slow Dazzle and Helen of Troy. Other than Fear, which I pretty much love, crafting twee little Wes Anderson-y gems like "Gideon's Bible" and "Paris 1919" was his true calling, not "Dirty-Ass Rock and Roll." I regard most of early/mid '70s Lou Reed as intrinsically shitty music, but it was the kind of personal misfortune that was necessary to set the stage for the midlife crisis trilogy. Magic and Loss isn't as poignant if he wasn't humiliating himself on Take No Prisoners.
I struggle to pick one over the other, because they each have an album I love (Berlin versus Fear), one that's almost as good but not quite as near and dear to my heart (Street Hassle versus Paris 1919), and then they joined forces on Songs for Drella, which I unabashedly love more than anyone else here. However, on the other end of the spectrum, bad Lou Reed is gloriously fun-bad, like the song "Sally Can't Dance" or anything on Take No Prisoners, while bad John Cale is just crappy in a thoroughly unredeeming way. So I guess I have to go with Lou by a millimeter.
I'll take the first four Talking Heads albums over anything thereafter. Stop Making Sense is tons of fun, and I like most of Speaking in Tongues, but by then they had dismissed Brian Eno and started to lose their focus a little and set the stage for David Byrne to wander off and make half-baked worldbeat rock that nobody cares about. On the other hand, those first four albums were probably one of the best runs anyone's had. Hardly any misfires there, just one unique and interesting song after another. "Naive Melody" is their best song ever, but who really cares about "Swamp" or "Pull Up The Roots"? In a nutshell, as great as Stop Making Sense is, The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads is even better.
Posted by: Incandenza April 02, 2009 11:40 am
"Intrinsically shitty" is a bad call for period of time that produced Transformer, but I'm not going to convince you otherwise.
Posted by: Bananarama - Cruel Summer April 02, 2009 11:44 am
I was thinking more Sally Can't Dance/Metal Machine Music/Coney Island Baby, which were documents of a guy who should've been dead, but yeah, I don't like about two-thirds of Transformer and I never will.
Posted by: Incandenza April 02, 2009 11:53 am
Well, re: your view on VU's "rocking" material, I can see how that would be applied to all of White Light/White Heat and parts of VU & Nico ("I'm Waiting for the Man" and "Run Run Run" specifically; I don't think anyone other than maybe Thurston Moore or Glenn Branca would call "European Son" a snappy little tune), but "What Goes On" from the s/t and "Sweet Jane" and the aptly titled "Rock and Roll" from Loaded are about the only times VU ever wore their collective heart on their coal-black sleeve. (You could make the argument for "After Hours" and "I'm Sticking with You," too, but we're talking about rock music here.)
Also, about Loaded, I know you hate it and yeah, yeah, we've been through all that, but I can't recall if there were any songs from it you actually like. Open up your heart, Czech.
Posted by: Agent of Oblivion April 03, 2009 08:34 am
I was pondering that very thing about Talking Heads when I bought Little Creatures. It's awfully cutesy, but fun! I love Speaking in Tongues, but not on the level of Fear of Music and more specifically, Remain in Light, which is my favorite. It has touches of that worldly funkiness, only presented coldly. Awesome idea.
Pick One: Member of the Wu Tang Clan.
Posted by: Incandenza April 03, 2009 09:54 am
I'm not always a fan of the production, but Little Creatures contains the most solid collection of songs on a Talking Heads album since Fear of Music. Two of the singles, "And She Was" and "Road to Nowhere," are as good as anything they've ever done. With that in mind, I was hoping someone would come along and say they prefer late-era TH, but I doubted anyone would.
Posted by: dubq April 03, 2009 10:45 am
QUOTE (Agent of Oblivion @ April 03, 2009 09:34 am)
Pick One: Member of the Wu Tang Clan.
GZA. Liquid Swords is one of my all-time favourite hip-hop CDs. I must've listened to that disc thousands of times in high school.
Pick One: Favourite "grunge era" group
Posted by: Bananarama - Cruel Summer April 03, 2009 10:56 am
I'm not 100% sure they're a "grunge" band, but probably the Afghan Whigs. That I'm not certain I can classify them as such probably indicates why they'd be my favorite of the lot, spekaing as someone who couldn't care less about Nirvana. I like that they incorporated those little hints of Stax Records: the Rhodes piano, organ, the waka/jawaka rhythm guitar patterns, you know, just had a lot of melody and musicality. I wonder why they weren't a solid third in the grunge/alternative pecking order on the heels of stuff like Gentlemen. "Debonair" should have been huge on the radio just with that awesome intro. Was it?
Posted by: Incandenza April 03, 2009 11:09 am
The closest the Afghan Whigs ever came to a hit was the title track from that album. The video for it was a "Buzz Clip" on MTV for awhile, meaning it got to break out of the 120 Minutes/Alternative Nation cycle and get some decent daytime airplay.
Posted by: Cheech April 03, 2009 11:58 am
Suggestion: Can we do one "Pick One" per day? I would have liked to comment on the Pink Floyd question, but we seem to be well past that one already. Maybe make it like Agent's thing, but musically related.
Posted by: Bananarama - Cruel Summer April 03, 2009 12:35 pm
That's a good idea. That way we get everyone in on it and we don't exhaust the possibilities. So it'll be one/day at New Board II.
Posted by: snuffbox April 03, 2009 02:37 pm
Can we run with grunge-era groups all day today then?
Posted by: Incandenza April 03, 2009 02:40 pm
If we're going to do a per-day thing, then everyone should feel free to answer anything that's already been asked in this thread until a new one or the new board starts up. Go for the grunge, snuffbox. Talk about Pink Floyd, cheech.
Posted by: snuffbox April 03, 2009 03:02 pm
I'll pick Meat Puppets for my grunge era group. No, they were/are not particularly famous but, without them, I'm not sure we would have had all of the bands that did reach great pinnacles of success. They are one of the most important bands of the post-1980 era for their span of the influence. Probably only the Pixies are comparable in terms of influence on the 'grunge era' and the alternative-rock boom that followed and, to some degree (I dont follow the radio too closely), persists to this day.
Without giving it much thought, I would probably decide between Pearl Jam or Alice in Chains for my favorite of this genre/era but I'm just not sure either band would have put it all together and achieved the sounds they did without Meat Puppets before them.
For those following the live music thread, you've already seen me geek out about the Meat Puppets so this answer shouldnt be any surprise. I like their music, a lot, but it is their importance/influence that puts them over the top, in my opinion.
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