crumbsroom wrote:

Found a Thelonious Monk and also an Au Pairs album I was looking for in a box of records some guy on the side of the road was selling. Also a crappy Van Morrison I didn't have, but he gave that one to me for free.

Oh man, ain't that the dream! What a score. 

I've let it be known that John Lennon's Mind Games is my least favorite of his records (even Some Time in New York had the Frank Zappa side), but I got the recent box set anyway.

My conclusion is not dissimilar.  There's a lot of middling songwriting here.  But I will give credit to this particular piece, and I'll add some of the arguably better off-shoots that resulted, specifically "Mucho Mungo", "Tennessee" and "india".  But it is such a rich Lennon vein to tap.













 

crumbsroom wrote:

I had Mind Games for years and have literally zero memory of it beyond the title track and (?) Dream #9?
I'm not saying it's good or bad, just never made a single impression on me, even while I was going through the most Lennon-boner period of my life.

I've called it my least favorite Lennon LP.  People will obviously point to Sometime in New York, and sure, but there's something offensive with how bland Mind Games is.

I'm still working through the box set.  Most of the classic criticisms of the record are around how muddy the original mix was.  There's an interesting disc of "Elemental" mixes, which is where Sean (who's producing these solo boxes) tries a more radical remix focusing on only a handful of instruments.  At their best, these can be revelatory, although they can also sometimes expose some of the weaker writing.








But there's several songs which are simply unsalvageable - "One Day at a Time", "Out The Blue", "Only People" "I Know", and the lyrics to the last two are particularly insipid.

I've avoided Jason Molina for ages for some undetermined reason, but that was dumb.

I only know this one record, but every song on it is incredible.