The quote is from Bargie’s review of Rick Wakeman. To be clear, this is not a criticism of our esteemed colleagues taste – each to his own and all that .
What I am querying is – do most on here feel the same about music they loved back, back in the day? Is the thrill still the same, are you still discovering something new on Play Number 4538?
I’m not talking here about remasters, messing around with mixes etc – I can see the appeal (although I think these are mostly expertly-crafted rip-offs preying on old mens’ gullibility).
I, for one, rarely if ever listen to, for instance, The Beatles – I know every note and every note is heavy with memory and, yes, love but the magic through constant repetition has gone.
Classical Music constantly reinvents itself through different interpretations and cover versions of Popular Music are a source of delight ( and here I heartily recommend the “Cover Me” site) but listening to ancient originals on anything more than a quick blast haven’t-heard-that-for-years basis (usually after a glass or three of fine red) – nah.
Howsabout you?
“An album I have always loved – I can and do still listen to this regularly, and still enjoy it as much as I did fifty years ago”
by 121 Comments
Wrong?
You mean you actually read my reviews 😉
Off the top of my head Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and Animals spring to mind.
Always a joy
Your reviews are a joy, I mean (although praying on old mens’ gullability could be seen by some as reprehensible)
Don’t think so.
Supertramp “Crime of the Century “ and “Heaven and Hell” by Black Sabbath still do it for me despite constant playings over the year and despite both of them not really being representative of my tastes these days. Could probably add Rumours to that list daddio.
And to reiterate all 3 albums still sound, erm, fresh.
In the OP I said something like ” no criticism of taste” but crikey, if I were to pick three records as far away from my own pleasure as is humanly possible, you have just listed all three…
Wahey!
I was going to pick Black and White by the Stranglers. The album I always go back to and one that always, always sounds new and invigorating.
I have no problem with The Stranglers you will be relieved (??) to know
I’m afraid I cannot endorse “Black and White”, as the Strangers give my adopted home country of Sweden a good slagging on the said album.
Yeah, The Strangers are bad but what about The Stranglers? They’re ok until about 1982, no?
The Swedish word “främling” can be translated as both “stranger” and as “foreigner” or “outsider”. But not usually as “strangler”, unless a stranger or foreigner or outsider has strangled someone (which does happen sometimes, but less than you’d think, more often than not it’s a family member, friend, neighbour or colleague).
Duco01 (are there more of them?) could have meant the session musicians and other “outsiders” not formally in the band who contributed to Black & White, such as George Melly, though I don’t recall George Melly slagging off Sweden, so perhaps some of the others. Martin Rushent and Lora Logic, probably. Or perhaps Duco01 was making some sort of racist rant about foreigners who criticise Sweden? Or alternatively, he might have been making reference to the group Foreigner and got the translation all wrong. (Perhaps he even got the group wrong and was really thinking of the other Mick Jones, the one out of The Clash?) Or perhaps it was a typo? Hard to say really.
I believe that George Melly said some unfavourable things about the Swedes after his “BILLY” bookshelves from IKEA fell apart in 2001.
Also, Martin Rushent was seething about Sweden when the gearbox went on his old Saab 900.
Damn those Strangers!
Funny, early Stranglers records are always the place I go for sensitive cultural commentary. I feel like a what?
Blimey, at least Lodey was ok about it.
Off the top of my head…
Five Leaves Left, Nick Drake
Spooky Two, Spooky Tooth
Me and My Shadows, Cliff Richard (yes!)
Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, ISB
Abbey Road, Beatles Band (although I concur with Lodes’s point about familiarity, for some reason I never tire of listening to this one)
Grievous Angel, Gram Parsons
Yes, but with the occasional nip and tuck.
I tend to listen to bits of the Beatles’ – let’s use them as the example – back catalogue… BBC recordings (not available when I first listened to them), Past Masters Vol. 1, the early albums, and all the stuff that influenced them.
Mainly, I listen to obscure records from the same era, e.g. right now, ‘The Yellow Princess’ by John Fahey, and the International Submarine Band.
I was pondering how many albums from a typical ‘The Best 200/300 Albums of All Time’ poll I hear on a regular basis, and, presuming they would make the list, I’ve narrowed it down to just ‘Pet Sounds’, ‘Rubber Soul’, and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.
Hmmmm, good question. I have always a never ending pile of new, or new to me, to listen to, so it is rare to revisit. But, now my virtual library is near back to where it was, ahead 2022’s computer incident, if idle, 2 or 3 hours of random throws up some wonderful delights.
Re the 0P, and the Rick Capeman review, that made me have to have a swift immerse in the Yes album. And it were grand.
The Wakeman review made you listen to Tony Kaye? Colour me…intrigued.
Read the review: he covers some of the old songs, that being the trigger.
I have said it before and I will say it again. Drugs.
How many of us were stoned for a large period of our peak listening/collecting times? I occasionally partake of a space cookie these days after many years off … work , kids etc, and I tell ya what I’m back totally immersed.
Not saying I only enjoy music stoned , definitely not. But it helps.
You outta that boot yet?
I would be , Mrs Wells seems to be sitting on the lid.
At the risk of being inappropriate, I find this image strangely stimulating…
I listen to the Beatles fairly often and, when I do, I always try to imagine what it must have been like to hear it at the original time of release. Difficult, if not impossible, to shut out the subsequent years and, in many cases, the elevation of many of the albums to ‘classic’ status, but it can sometimes provide a tang of that initial thrill and surprise.
I rewatched Rick Rubin with Paul McCartney and they played the bass on Michelle. Quite sponteneously and seemingly without any boasting Macca said about the very young Macca playing .. “I astound myself!”
If I had to jettison all the music I’ve acquired since I turned 21 I wouldn’t be too unhappy. In fact I think I’d be faintly relieved.
Context is key for me. I was watching the Netflix series One Day the other day, and suddenly, there’s House Of Love’s Love In A Car, which I used to listen to and love, and here it is, after years of me hardly hearing it, anew and glorious.
Ha! – I felt that, too.
And also thumbs-up for the choice of the Fall’s “BIll is Dead” in Episode 3 and Karen Dalton’s “Something on Your Mind” in Episode 4.
I will check that show out then, as I also love the first House of Love album perhaps more than it truly deserves.
Rick Wakeman solo albums passed me by.
The first albums I bought that were new releases at the time were by The Police in the late 70s. They seem incredibly patchy now, but I probably thought the same then. The “old stuff” I bought then (some of it less than 10 years old) generally still resonates with me today, Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Bowie, Young, Motown etc. I find one needs to take breaks from some of these albums though from time to time.
I listen very rarely to the pop/ rock music of my teenage years. The folk and especially the jazz I enjoyed then I still enjoy now. Coltrane, Horace Silver, Miles Davis, Monk, Mingus, Duke Ellington to name but a few I never tire of. I was listening to some Cannnonball Adderley only last night. This morning I kicked off by listening to Basket Of Light by Pentangle. Now listening to Ray Charles At Newport a record I’ve been listening to since I was a small boy thanks to my Dad.
I have no cogent explanation for this state of affairs. I guess it could be just a simple case of over exposure due to the endless repartition of some bands and albums from my youth due to having the much more restricted choices on offer from a small -ish record collection. As for the Beatles I can’t remember the last time I bothered to deliberately sit down to listen to them. I can play their music note perfectly in my head from memory so I don’t feel any need to actively play them. It’s a mythdory as Toyah once intoned yet another “artist” I feel absolutely zero desire to re-visit. They are legion.
Yes, my theory collapses when it comes to Ella & Louis – every Sunday morning for many, many a year …
I hear ya! I first heard Miles Davis (Sketches of Spain), John Coltrane (Giant Steps) , and Thelonious Monk (Genius of Modern Music) when I got their LPs out the Record section of Langside Library when I was 12 / 13 – best part of 50 years ago.
Monk still sounds wonderful to me, still surprising and nimble and agile. Giant Steps still sounds like the future. Sketches of Spain is not one I listen to so often – it has been overtaken in my affections by Kind of Blue, and In a Silent Way, and On The Corner – but it was a solid part of my listening through to the late 80s for sure.
Did they capture me because I was 12 ? Other albums from that era have not fared so well in the listening challenge : I can’t remember exactly when Bachman Turner Overdrive’s Not Fragile fell away from my listening schedule, but I guess it would have been 76 or 77 at the very latest.
There is something about Jazz that rewards multiple listens. I always thought my brain’s inability to pay close attention, except for short periods, meant that long instrumentals that constantly defy predictions, remain capable of surprising me after half a decade or more.
In terms of the OP: yes, plenty of music which fundamentally rewired me in the 1970s and which I still listen to regularly and enjoy. Obviously I don’t get the sheer astonishment of hearing it for the first time with no preparation or advance warning – but, for example, listening to Still Life or Godbluff is like sitting down with an old friend.
That doesn’t stop me from exploring new jazz, or new/new to me classical, or anything else – I don’t see why the one would preclude the other.
I still listen to quite a few LPs from then but not that often. I still really like them but I’m never going to get the same thrill that I did as a 14 year old, sat in my older brother’s bedroom with our 60s mono record player (the new ‘stereogram’ was out of bounds), listening to the opening sounds of All The Way From Memphis as I played the Mott album for the first time.
Well, I don’t know – but if I had to choose a song to effortlessly recreate that feeling, All the Way From Memphis would be right up there…
That’s a very good point. I would probably add School’s Out to that as well.
I’m with you on Mott the Hoople – All the Young Dudes was the first LP I bought with my own money, and I still play it and love it!
50th Anniversary Edition just out.
There’s no longer any discovery of new things in my perennial favourite albums, but that’s not what I like listening to them for.
I still find Abbey Road a very listenable album, despite being generally a bit “fed up of The Fabs”.
King Crimson’s Larks’ Tongues In Aspic and Red are still very enjoyable.
Hejira by Joni Mitchell is lush.
The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown is still my favourite when I’m in need of some bonkers psychedelia.
A Rainbow In Curved Air by Terry Riley.
E2-E4 by Manuel Göttsching.
Zombie by Fela Kuti.
Heavy Weather by Weather Report.
Then there are a mixed bag of odd tracks that still give glows of pleasure:
April In Paris by Thad Jones, Chain Of Fools by Aretha Franklin, Wooly Bully by Sam The Sham & The Pharoahs, I Want More by Can, Keep On Running by The Spencer Davis Group, I Can See For Miles by The Who, Hot Rod Lincoln by Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Zoom by Fat Larry’s Band, I Found Lovin’ by The Fatback Band, Friends by Shalamar, A Salty Dog by Procol Harum..
Heavy Weather. Hmmm I reckon Black Market was Weather Report’s peak but we are talking about lofty heights generally.
Heavy Weather was when I first “got” Weather Report.
Same here. If pushed, I reckon their peak was Mysterious Traveller – but I retain a lot of affection for Heavy Weather. Also the first album where I heard Pastorius – not necessarily the most integrated bass player for the band, but lotsa fun!
…the man who put the dow in boodow.
Mysterious Traveller is a favourite album also. “Jungle Book” was a very early pointer towards the realms that Joe Zawinul explored post-WR.
I’ve got this perennial Top 10 – I know every phrase, every breath, every slight flaw. My default response to the question was to be “Yes, still getting regular spins”, but …thinking about it, it’s probably a year or more since I’ve listened all the way through.
I did go back to Carter USMs 30 Something last year when the 30th (!) Anniversary edition was released. And yes it was still superb, and continued to evoke memories
This looks like an opportunity for me to write the titles of some albums I like, which is something I always enjoy doing.
My situation is somewhat unique to the AW in that I can’t really hear music anymore so rarely listen to it as there doesn’t seem much point if I can’t hear it. (I am very wise.) I do sometimes listen in the car, as that’s where I can hear it best, all close up and cosy. In the car I listen mostly via iPod on shuffle. Everything sounds very muffled to my ears, on account of them being deranged, so if a track I don’t know very well comes up I find it hard to recognise. Listening to it requires effort and concentration, two things I dislike intensely. Whereas if a track I know well comes up I often skip it cos I’ve heard it so many times. (This must be very annoying for my passengers and I wish I cared more). I think it’s true to say that I am, therefore, far more selective in my selection and appreciation of music than the common rabble.
Every now and then a track comes up that I know well but am only too pleased to hear again. Such tracks come from a wide range of albums, but I’ve noticed there are some albums which boast a plethora of such tracks. There are some albums that I’m unlikely to skip any track that comes up.
If you thought that comment was a bit boring to read so far, I should warn you that we’re only just coming up to the really boring bit now.
Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Tusk are examples. George Harrison’s self-titled 1979 album is another. JJ Cale’s Shades. UB40’s Signing Off. Sniff ‘n’ the Tears’ The Game’s Up. Roger Waters’ Pros & Cons of Hitchiking, Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut, both Rock Follies albums, Lambchop’s Is A Woman, the first two Heaven 17 albums, EBTG’s Eden, Al Stewart’s Year of the Cat, Stone Roses first album, Van Morrison’s Beautiful Vision, Mighty Diamonds’ Right Time, Japan’s Tin Drum, David Syvian’s Dead Bees on a Cake, Tom Petty’s Damn The Torpedoes, Steve McQueen, High Land Hard Rain, Roxy Music’s Flesh & Blood, Paul Simon’s One Trick Pony, Tom Waits’ Blue Valentine, Rickie Lee Jones first two albums, Martin Stephenson’s Boat to Bolivia, Massive Attack’s Blue Lines, Wailing Souls’ Classic Cuts, Steely Dan’s Greatest Hits, Supertramp’s Greatest Hits.
Of course, with about 50 million songs on my iPod there are many individual tracks that survive both my demented ears and my itchy skip fingers, but those are the albums whose tracks are all likely to be joyfully received by my demented ears any day of the week.
Apart from Fleetwood Mac, Roger Waters, Pink Floyd, Rock Follies, Lambchops, Heaven 17, Al Stewart, Japan, David Syvian, Roxy Music and Supertramp, that’s a mighty fine list, old deaf lugs!
Thanks for Beautiful vision by the way – haven’t played it in yonks: The Languedoc is groovin’ as we speak…
Always a pleasure to please a fellow Sniff ‘n’ the Tears fan.
A pedant would point out that it’s “Lambchop” not “Lambchops”. Though I suspect you were indeed thinking of lamb chops at the time of writing, so it’s an understandable error, an explainable subliminal typo, a justifiable wrong. (Duco01 has had a similar problem today, but his was more related to foreigners.)
You should listen to Is A Woman? (that’s not my question mark, it’s the title’s). Gorgeous understated music (NME: “It’s hard not to be impressed by the stoic discipline of the dozen or so musicians in Lambchop. Although at least half a dozen of them play guitars, the sound they collectively make is roughly equal to one gently creaking floorboard”), quirky and left-field lyrics and phrasing. Quirky and left field like Paddy McAloon can be quirky and left-field. Great album.
They’ll always be Lambchops to me.. I actually bought that album on the strength of a good review (remember them days?) – another costly mistake.
I’ll put that opinion down to a camel (or similar) probably having stomped on your head as a child.
Or Wags Wilson, Head of Maths, thwacking me round the ear with his tawse.
Quirky and left-field? Please, I’ve just had had me breakfast
I’d say *because* of Fleetwood Mac, Lambchop, Japan, David Sylvian and Roxy Music (and the Stone Roses, Prefab Sprout, Aztec Camera, Rickie Lee Jones and Martin Stephenson) that’s a mighty fine list!
Add “Tattoo You” to that … I recall that @Gary and I both have a fondness for it, but each prefer the other side, so to speak.
Indeed, @Pajp, any track from side two and I’m an appreciative audience, always and forever, while none of side one’s tracks stand a chance in my car. In the extremely unlikely but not impossible event that we ever take a road trip together, I would suggest a compromise of deleting the album altogether. Except for Waiting on a Friend, which would be a perfect choice if you turn up late. And also Heaven and Tops, which would be perfect choices if the trip went well. And perhaps also Worried ‘Bout You and No Use In Crying, which would be good choices if the trip turned sour.
Many moons ago I was on a road-trip with a friend. I put Nanci Griffith on, next thing “What is this shit?” and the cassette is sailing out the window. We didn’t talk for the next hundred miles.
I fear it would be me throwing myself out the window if I was on a road-trip with you two…
A person who’d do shit like that would not be my friend in the first place, but supposing it happened while I was driving ..
“Pulling Over. Get out of my car.”
Feel free to slag off my musical taste in as robust terms as you like, but throwing one of my tapes out of the car window is crossing a line.
You’d be in the boot, pal. Especially if it was a Skoda.
Quite often when I play music on CD from an album recorded in the 1960s–1970s I realise I hardly ever listened to one of the LP’s two sides. So while I am very familiar with half the music, the other half is fresh to my ears.
However, there are two albums that, when I play them, I get an echo of how thrilling it was when I first listened. The first is Soulfire by The Flames. They were a South African outfit that largely played cover versions of soul classics with more exuberance than subtlety. But their albums have a lovely sound – especially the drums of Ricky Fataar, who went on with Blondie Chapman to join the Beach Boys.
The second was Pawn Hearts from Van Der Graaf Generator, which I first heard on the radio. Tracks from this album were beamed in on shortwave radio from a country hundreds of miles away. This was weird – and life affirming – music and the distortions of shortwave only added to its exotic nature. Whenever I listen to Pawn Hearts now I remember how it was when I first heard it. (The remixed and remastered version of Pawn Hearts on the Charisma Years boxset is exceptional.)
I now listen again to albums from Miles Davis’ electric period (roughly 1968 to 1975, when he retired for the first time) and always hear something new.
Retired “first” time? He didn’t retire a second time. He died. Not the same thing.
Except soon it won’t be under RISHI’S BRITAIN….
@Munster
There’s something about hearing VdGG on a wireless. The first time I heard Lost from H to He was on a small transistor while hiking around the southern uplands. Someone had brought a wee radio to hear the football results – we ended up listening to Alan Freeman’s show and he played it. Sounded like it was music from another planet.
There are very few pop or rock albums I relisten to. Perhaps Abbey Road, Bill Withers at Carnegie Hall and a few others. Which is why I tend to prefer hand crafted playlists for pretty much everything except jazz.
Jazz is another matter, however. Albums like Kenny Burrell’s Midnight Blue, Miles’ In A Silent Way and Filled de Kilimanjaro, Sonny Rollins Vol 2 (with Monk AND Horace Silver!), Duke Ellington at Newport, Charles Lloyd’s Forest Flower, along with many others, frequently get played in full.
I started buying albums in ’66, and I still listen to them (as MP3s) today. They still sound fresh and exciting to me. Some bands I listen to less, some more, but there’s not an album from the sixties or seventies that hasn’t stayed with me and I couldn’t play again right now without it sounding fantastic. I never suffered from the Overfamiliarity Syndrome, I can listen to it all again and again. I can re-watch favourite movies and re-read favourite books, too. Generally I get something a little different from them every time, I’ll appreciate some aspect from a different angle or whatever. I have nearly a terrabyte of music on my phone, and listening on shuffle is like being tuned into a fantastic radio station. D’you know, readers, that music was my first love? And that God gave rock and roll to you? Moreover, that the magic’s in the music and the music’s in you? Or is it the other way around?
You don’t get many people called Dobie, do you? Especially not in Scotland, where it rhymes too easily with Boaby. Is it short for something like Dobington?
His real name is d’Eaux-Baie. Born to an aristocratic French family and heir to the Merovingian throne, he spurned the trappings of high society and followed his dream to be a black Rn’B singer.
Thanks, and well done for creating a distraction from the footer of that video.
Well, it is nearly Valentine’s Day …. probably already is in HP’s neck of the woods.
It’s 2567 here.
I agree about books and film. Books in particular always offer up something new upon rereading. Perhaps it’s because we are different versions of ourselves everytime we open them. My wife was a film nut and often re-watched films so I acquired the habit by osmosis. We used to keep track by marking each time we watched a film in a sketchbook I set aside for that purpose. Rear Window was by far and away the one she watched the most. It was the last film we watched together when we sat on our old battered couch for the final time before she was hospitalised. A couple of weeks later she died. I find I had duly marked it down in that old sketchbook. It was the thirty third time she had enjoyed it.
Nice one PS, but I’m afraid any mention of Rear Window will cause me to produce, nay emit, my two-word James Stewart impression: “plaaster cocooon”
The short establishing first shot is filmmaking genius. Not a word spoken but we learn so much about L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies not least his name which is written on that “plaster cocooon”. I may watch it for the thirty fourth time this afternoon. I admit I have been avoiding doing so because memories. Ya dig?
It might feel better than you expect. I hope it does.
Every year on Christmas Eve me and my dad watch Scrooge. We’ve done this since I was twelve. This year I had Covid and watched it on my own. It occurred to me that some Christmas not far off I would be watching it on my own anyway. But I’ll still watch it because he’d want me to.
You guys…you’ll have me weeping into my lapsang, while listening to my old REM albums…
Not everyone can carry the weight of the world.
Take a load off Fanny
Did I hear a murmur?
I should have added some context. M and I had diametrically opposed tastes in music – the only real crossover point was REM.
As much? Yeah probably. Differently, though. The joy is still there, and sometimes the thrill: the shock of the new, obviously, isn’t. Some of the things I loved as a teenager haven’t aged well, some have aged amazingly, but I think what my teenage listening did was set a pattern for what works for me in pop music: simplicity, tunes, good lyrics, concision, and somewhere in there is probably some quality either of vulnerability or aggression. I don’t want my pop to be trying too hard to impress me: just whacking me with 4 chords and some lyrical texture and a tune that sticks is plenty hard enough: look how many people suck at it!
OTOH, as I’ve said interminably before, pop that tries to be complex or virtuosic just isn’t for me in the main: that’s what opera, orchestra and the Beethoven piano sonatas are for. 999 times out of 1000, pop musicians can’t play on that field and seem like Adrian Mole, a pretentious fourth former with a thesaurus, when they try. They might be technically capable of doing something flash, but it seems jejune and embarrassing to my ears. (Others’ mileage varies, clearly!)
I listen to my music on shuffle to keep the surprises coming, and old friends pop back in. It is always refreshed with old R n B, jazz and funk, so the prog and rock is endlessly diluted. But I find I no longer feel so delighted to hear those which have been over-exposed, so bye-bye pomp-phase Floyd, Yes, Beatles, Who, and 80s Frank Zappa with vocals.
’80s Zappa is my least favourite iteration of his music. With a few exceptions, of course. Almost all of which are instrumental.
His instrumental work then was stellar, and the gigs were excellent, but he needed a firmer edit. I dont mind the knob jokes, I just like good ones.
Yep. All the things I really loved back then I still do, and play regularly. Steely Dan, Little Feat, Tull, Jackson Browne, Tom Waits, Van…
Wait a minute…Jackson Browne?
After RayX proposed to host a poll of best songs, (whatever happened to him?) I busied myself finding my top 100. All of the songs were already very familiar to me, yet I listened to the playlist over and over. I learnt a lot.
Take Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters, for example. (I prefer the version with Johnny Winter on Hard Again, recorded when Muddy was 64 – my age.) I never properly appreciated how it’s a black man’s rebellion against the white suppressor. When he wrote it, white people routinely referred to grown black men as “boy” to put them in their place. The “full grown man” boasts in the song are a response to that insult. The boastfulness has become an integral part of Hip Hop, and, too often, slips into misogyny but that is not the intention of Mannish Boy. This realisation has spoiled my enjoyment of Jagger’s live version from around the same time as Hard Again. Plus, I’ve learnt how to pronounce Johnny Concheroo (conker-oo).
Every day’s a school day. 😀
I’d forgotten about that proposed poll…
Those MW/JW albums are excellent. I really like “I’m ready” (the track) which is similarly defiant.
Mannish Boy contains what I think is the only British/Aussie-style use of the word “mate” I’ve ever heard on an American record. “Just me and my mate”. (I accept that he may not actually say that)
The 1981 version of King Bee, on his final album, is also better than the original.
Funnily enough, I did a bit of deliberate classic album revisiting the other day.
OK Computer. It’s funny that, back then it was considered so remarkable and an instant classic. I still think it’s a very good album, save a couple of tracks, but it sounds much more like a well-crafted conventional rock album now.
Remain in Light. I just came away wondering why I haven’t listened to this in years. It was exhilarating.
But if you want to shed light on an old favourite, try learning to perform a song/track/tune. You will hear and appreciate things that you’d never heard before. To mark her 80th, I learned and performed several Joni tracks to be aired at the various different opportunities at my disposal. You learn a song and you get into its bones; you understand why certain rhythms and intervals are where they are; why every part is essential. A song that you have heard countless times becomes more vivid and rich in detail. Exhibit A : Chelsea Morning.
I think OK Computer sounded more conventional compared to the Radiohead albums that followed, for those that appreciated that change of direction. With time things even out and all that so-called experimental stuff that came after is often quite easy on the ear.
Another way into a classic album is the cover version. Angélique Kidjo’s version of Remain In Light is so good, and so different, they’re like two completely separate albums… with the same songs.
I rest my case re Angelique – however brilliant the original is/was, her cover is better
That’s interesting news to me; I must check it out.
The vinyl pressing is a bit shite, though. Or at least my copy is. Coloured, natch.
Two records that I think of demonstrate the kind of thing I’ve always liked. One is Spacer by Sheila B. Devotion, a single from 1979. Disco/dance music that gives me a sense of hedonism and good times, a Chic production in this case. The other is Bowie’s Station To Station album. An album I think of as a complete success, that I can enjoy in one go. Art rock where guitars are prominent. I remember reading it was the best record of 1976 and probably Bowie’s best. I thought I’d give it a go and I still agree with that assessment. The Stones Sticky Fingers and Exile also have remained dependably listenable.
I still thoroughly enjoy music I listened to 60 years ago, let alone 50!
In early 1964 I owned the LPs…
With The Beatles – still warms the cockles of my heart
Sugar and Spice – The Searchers – merseybeat at its finest…includes folk songs, R&B, pop, standards, and is just still brilliant
The Shadows Greatest Hits – Mrs. T commented only the other day how great they sound on our hifi, and they truly do. Magnificent production, and great tunes of course.
These EPs….
Ain’t Gonna Kiss Ya – The Searchers
The Beatles Hits
Do You Love Me – The Dave Clark Five
Plus associated singles from those bands.
All the above were on constant repeat, so they are imprinted into my DNA – they are with me forever.
I am (I think) impressed – 60 years of constant repeat! Those cold winter nights must fly by at your place …
The operative word was ‘were’….
Ah, my apologies… who would have thought I could be so Wrong??
I bought Aladdin Sane over fifty years ago. I listen to it regularly, at least once a month. I still get great pleasure from it. Its flaws are just as important as its perfections.
On balance, I would refute Lodey’s initial assertion in the OP.
My initial assertion was never an assertion , merely my own experience that stuff I played non-stop back in the day (and remember back in that day my LP collection probably totalled a dozen at most ) and loved to death has long since lost its magic. Love them, always will (nothing will ever better Blonde On Blonde) but actually play them – nah.
I apologise unreservedly – and withdraw my assertion about your assertion.
Fifty years! Time, eh?
Thanks for The Hamper, couldn’t have done it without you
“Its flaws are just as important as its perfections.” Come again?
I liked that (although I’m one who thinks Aladdin Sane has more flaws than perfections)
I would agree.
I refer you to my Feature nearly four years ago.
I can’t quite make the fifty, I was listening to Thomas the Tank Engine then. But from the first hundred albums I bought off the top of my head:
All Mod Cons, Setting Sons and Sound Affects. They shift around in ranking, but never drop down as a group.
London Calling.
Parallel Lines and Eat To The Beat.
Never for Ever (though the lesser tracks have become lesser, the greats are really just as great)
Unknown Pleasures and Closer
The River
Argybargy
Station to Station and Low
The Specials
Risque
These albums are all imprinted on my consciousness and were all albums I’d heard and mostly bought before I was 17.
However tempting, I do ration the listening as it would be mortifying to listen to these albums and discover their magic had evaporated.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Never For Ever is a good gym record. You put it on, listen to Babooshka, then go the gym for half an hour and you’re back in time for Breathing.
Hunky Dory, Crime of The Century, Potatoland
All not very good so disqualified from this debate I’m afraid
Wait. Hunky Dory “not very good”????????
Wait. Crime of the Century “not very good”??????????
Weird. Was just coming here to say I’d forgotten to mention COTC and there it was! Still sounds as splendidly middle class and angsty today as it did on my first listen way back when. I really shouldn’t love it but I still do.
Jazz as Played in an Exclusive Side Street Club-Nina……….still works
Diamond Dogs, Ziggy – all the 70’s Bowie stuff. Never gets old. And Sparks, loved ’em when I was 13, love ’em now 50 years later.
Diamond Dogs though! My sister bought it for my 14th birthday. Who knows where the time goes?