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Always one of my favorites of theirs
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Jinnistan wrote:
I only recently realized this was a Roky Erickson song.
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One of those fall songs which probably needs context for why it is hilarious and horrible, beautiful and stupid, profound and a complete throw away.
Or maybe it stands on it's own. Maybe it doesn't need to be explained at all. Maybe my girlfriend will love it as I hear her coming down the stairs to join me
No.
My girlfriend shakes her head, disagrees that anyone could ever love this for any reason at all, and becomes visibly agitated. It is clear that she momentarily hates me for buying records that have songs like this on it, and so quickly returns back upstairs to imagine a better David who will be listening to better, and less stupid and annoying music, when she returns
I guarantee context wouldn't have mattered anyways.
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I have also got my hands on what is likely the last Fall album I am going to get for some time. The rest are unreasonably expensive, and no reissues seem imminent.
So I am ultimately 7 short. Much better than I thought I could do, but still disappointing.
And unquestionably one of the most thrilling and ridiculous and impossible to rank discography's I've ever come across. No bad records. 1 kinda dull record. Lots of deeply flawed, fascinating records. Untold numbers of brilliant songs. A couple of genuinely great, start to front, LPs. A very bothered girlfriend. And a non-stop smile from me through the whole stupid thing.
I love this band. Maybe the best rock and roll band of all time (if you ignore the ten or so that are obviously better)
Worth every hundreds of dollars I wasted on this journey.
And now what?
Every Al Jarreau album? I bet none of those will set me back $150
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crumbsroom wrote:
Every Al Jarreau album? I bet none of those will set me back $150
I picked up one of his anonymous looking records, High Crime, for a dollar over the holidays. It sounds exactly like 1984.
(The year 1984....not the Van Halen record.)
Last edited by Jinnistan (3/19/2025 7:48 pm)
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Jinnistan wrote:
crumbsroom wrote:
Every Al Jarreau album? I bet none of those will set me back $150
I picked up one of his anonymous looking records, High Crime, for a dollar over the holidays. It sounds exactly like 1984.
(The year 1984....not the Van Halen record.)
I recently bought a Jarreau album from the early 80's, my first, and I was pleasantly impressed. For me he was just one of the "who the fuck is that guy" in the We Are the World video.
Also, Street Legal is a really fucking good Dylan album. Not a top of the top stuff, but surely at the level of Desire. Possibly is second or third best of the 70's? Just one of those, why did I ignore this one for so long? Probably couldn't shake some outdated review from a record guide from thirty years ago, that stupidly colored my opinon of it for decades without ever even hearing it
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crumbsroom wrote:
I recently bought a Jarreau album from the early 80's, my first, and I was pleasantly impressed. For me he was just one of the "who the fuck is that guy" in the We Are the World video.
I'm a fan, but he's also fallen into muzak mediocrity, a talented vocalist but not a focused artist. His early records, and the first live one, from 1977 I think, are very good. The 80s gets slick, but it depends on who he's working with. The Nile Rodgers produced L is For Lover is surprisingly good.
crumbsroom wrote:
Also, Street Legal is a really fucking good Dylan album. Not a top of the top stuff, but surely at the level of Desire. Possibly is second or third best of the 70's?
I've always thought it's one of those albums which earned its "3/5 stars" reviews. If we're not counting the live ones, I definitely wouldn't rank it higher than 4th from the '70s - Blood, Desire, Morning and as for my own unpopular opinion, I'm a fan of PG&BTK, so it's more like 5th for me, and I'll have to revisit Slow Train to make sure. But there's good stuff on Street Legal. It's not bad. Jackson Browne probably would have been proud to have made it.
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Maybe it's because I haven't listened to Siamese in probably over a decade, but Gish seems like my go-to greatest Smashing Pumpkins album answer.
It's a record that is almost a non-stop high for me. It doesn't have the ultra-massive peaks that SD has (Cherub Rock, Soma, Mayonnaise), but from one song to the next, it doesn't flag once. Not that SD does either, but comparatively, it sorta does.
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crumbsroom wrote:
Maybe it's because I haven't listened to Siamese in probably over a decade, but Gish seems like my go-to greatest Smashing Pumpkins album answer.
It's a record that is almost a non-stop high for me. It doesn't have the ultra-massive peaks that SD has (Cherub Rock, Soma, Mayonnaise), but from one song to the next, it doesn't flag once. Not that SD does either, but comparatively, it sorta does.
YES. Agreed.
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"Imagine The Band playing at CBGB with The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Or Arthur Russell and the Talking Heads collaborating on a suite of mutant disco" - this was the "official" description for the Jeff Bridges LP, recorded in '77-'78 and finally getting released as Slow Magic. I don't know exactly what the writer of that description was smoking, or whether the overall implication is that the album invokes some pretty strong smoke. But I defintely would not use allusions to Talking Heads or the Velvet Underground, and "mutant disco" is pretty much right out. Instead, it plays like a slightly psychedelic LA laid back rock album, too raucus for the Dead and too weird for Poco. It's still a decent record, and although I didn't take time out of my day to actually purchase the damned thing, it is worth listening to. Plus Burgess Meredith shows up, and I surely hope he got a taste of what was passing around.
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My very brief experience at a music magazine was filled with the kinds of people who would have written that above blurb. Because it's not about talking about what you are listening to. It's about showing you know the basic music writer reflexes and approximating those. The people who get into these professions very rarely actually have anything they want to say. They just want to be something. Or at least give off an appearance that they've already happened and, boy, wouldn't you sure like to know them.
I knew some guy who got a editorial position at an ill fated publication a few years back and wanted me to write his music reviews. In my 'interview' I told him not if he was expecting any of that "It sounds like Nick Cave in a knife fight with Los Lobos" bullshit, no thanks. It got me the job and I think I did end up writing a couple a couple of things for him, but it was short lived because I he got fired. Probably, in part, because he ended up hiring a bunch of people like me who had different ideas of what is worth publishing and what is worth stuffing up your own ass.
Needless to say, they weren't interested in my further contribution.