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The truth is I like an album that is generally regarded by almost everyone as pants! Tell me yours please….

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Yes I have been tempted to post this for a few weeks now but fear the ridicule that may subsequently shower down on me but here goes…….

Old Sock by Eric Clapton! Okay it isn’t exactly ‘Layla’ or ‘Slow Hand’ It has some pleasant songs on it. The playing seems fine. Okay it is, perhaps, a bit “lazy” but, in the end, I enjoy listening to it!

Over to you lot……..tell me off if you must but also let me know if you have a similar (album) skeleton in your cupboard.

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Comments

  1. No idea about Old Sock (gave up on Eric many a year ago).

    I have (quietly) mentioned in the past I really, really like Noah & The Whale who in my worthless opinion recorded two classic pop albums as good as anything Steely or Feat or any other AW fave.
    And just to top that, my passion is shared by my 77 year-old aunt who asks for it every time she visits. The door opens and she always shouts “get Jonah on, get Jonah on”. A woman of taste obviously ( even if her memory for names isn’t quite what it was)

    • I have never listened to ‘Ted Nugent’ because I misread the title as Ted Nugget. Who could possibly name an album ‘Nugget’ and expect to be taken seriously?

      I have never listened to Eric’s album because, until now, I have misread the title as ‘Old Soak’.

      I must correct this.

  2. I like “Pornograffiti” by Extreme, an album I have never found a single person to admit liking. I don’t care. Prescient too, as it turns out.

    • Ooh, I somehow ended up with a vinyl copy of this (it got left in a bar I used to work at). After finding it in a box of junk under the stairs it got put in the chazza pile, but I might have to give it a spin now. Always liked More Than Words.

    • I LOVED this album as a (just) pre teen fan of widescreen American rock. So much so that I also bought their prior album, the name of which escapes me. I’d forgotten its very existence until now but at the time I thought it a classic. I thought the same of Coverdale/Page, however, so my judgement may have been questionable. Haven’t heard it in years but I’m digging it out now and will report back soon. Perhaps I’ll retain my love abd join you in enduring admiration. Watch this space…

      • So, I gave it a spin last night. Oof. I appear to have changed. Not for me, I’m afraid. Although it did spin me off into a trawl through a number of early 90s favourites which ultimately led to a lot of Faith No More in the early hours. Which was a lot of fun. So, thanks. But I’ll never listen to Pornograffiti again.

  3. I listened to Natalie Imbruglia’s Left of the Middle on the walk to work this morning, not a boast I imagine many of the Massive can make. The album sounds rather underpowered now, and going for Alanis style angst pop was opportunistic, but there are some great pop tunes on it.

    I was just about to say I have all three of her albums though I haven’t played them in years, but checking on Wiki it turns out she has released five of them now. Who knew?

  5. I’ve written several posts on several iterations of this site about my love for Andrew W.K’s seminal “I Get Wet”. At last count, it was my seventh favourite album of all time, but it has few fans out in the real world. Some may enjoy “Party Hard” in isolation, but a whole album’s worth of such material is another matter.

    It’s probably partly because AWK gave what is, to date, the greatest live show I’ve ever seen. Partly because I love the vacuum-sealed, 100% inauthentic sound of the thing. The lack of counterbalancing balladry, the headlong charge through 12 tracks of pure Motley Crue meets Meatloaf-inspired guitar/piano carnage. The memories of sticking it on with my kids and throwing things at each other until we’re all out of breath and faintly deranged. The infamous Pitchfork review which frowned upon the record and proclaimed that it actively made listeners stupider.

    I love how uncool it is. Not, like, too cool to care about being cool, and therefore cooler still. Legit wouldn’t know what cool even was, unloved by all tribes uncool.

    It has the best album cover of all time. It has the most songs about partying. It doesn’t give a shit about anything. It makes me feel sloppy, carefree and like a small boy running wild in a cupcake factory, trousers on my head, blood roaring in my veins – all alive and giddy.

    Best of all, I can write about it as long as I want, and make it sound as fantastic as I want, but when you click the link below you’ll still wonder what on earth I’m talking about. Because those that know, know, and those that don’t, don’t. Party til you puke.

  6. I quite like the Rod Stewart Great American Songbook albums that everybody else seem to have dismissed without ever actually listening to them. They’re great songs sung by a great singer with a great band. I think people just get too hung up on the idea that bands/singers should be singing new material that they have written. But nobody minded when Johnny Cash was churning out similar (although not similar sounding, granted!) covers albums. Of course, Rod’s a bit uncool these days, or at least he was when he did those albums, so it made it easier for people to criticise.

    But Rod them came back with Time, which is up there with the best of his career. I reckon his Great American Songbook albums, whilst not hitting the heights of Harry Nilsson’s effort, are nice to listen to, so the critics can please themselves.

    I also think that Elton John has been putting out some of the best albums of his career, starting with Songs From The West Coast, but nobody else seems to like them. Off to see him soon. I last saw him in 1985, so really looking forward to it.

    • A couple of years ago I happened to make similar favourable remarks on here about Rod’s ‘Time’ but I had to stand on the naughty step for doing so!
      (Think I might revisit the American Songbook albums this week……)

  7. REM’s Monster for me. Everywhere I see anything about REM’s career, it’s mentioned as their weakest album, seemingly, but I love it.
    My fave of the fave? This.

  8. I have a few, I think. I’m not proud of these, but I feel it’s important to share. Anyone who admits to liking any of these can join my club:

    Mike Oldfield – Amarok
    Enya – Watermark
    INXS – Welcome to Wherever You Are
    David Gates and Bread – Best of
    Nowhere Boy – OST
    Frank – OST

      • I’m very pleased to meet you. I’ve never met another earthly soul who likes that album outside of the Mike Oldfield forums, and there dwell odd sorts.

        In my heart of hearts I know it’s a mess of an album, a solid hour of constantly shifting, twiddly music, but I love it nonetheless for the pictures it conjures up in my head.

        In the dark ages, when the technology of CDs was still witchcraft, at the Maggie Thatcher bit where she says it’s going to go on forever, I genuinely thought for a minute that Mike had worked out a way to actually record a CD that would never end….

        (People who don’t know Amarok will wonder what on earth I’m talking about. Yes, it has Margaret Thatcher, with African drums).

  9. Primal Scream – Give Out But Don’t Give Up

    Ver Scream do funky Stones, with added George Clinton, a touch of Stooges and a dollop of Soul.

    Rocks

    I’m Gonna Cry Myself Blind

      • Hello again! I love Shed Seven. Continuing the nuptials theme, I saw them live on my stag. Change Giver and A Maximum High are a pair of great albums, they were always good live, Disco Down is a floor filler at any respectable indie disco and a personal Desert Island Discs long list mainstay and, at the aforementioned stag, they did a version of a Born to Run which I preferred to any I’ve ever heard from Bruce, for whom I don’t care on the whole. On balance, I’d rate Shed Seven as one of the best British bands of the 90s. Certainly better than most of the usual suspects.

      • Still in sub-Britpop mode, I have a great appreciation for The Bluetones second platter “Return to the Last Chance Saloon”

        Solomon Bites The Worm and If … may well rank among the best songs of 1998 (or maybe that’s just in my head?)

        • Not just in your head Mr rigid!! I stuck with the Bluetones right through to their last album A New Athens in 2010…loved them and can heartily recommend Mark Morriss’s solo album Memory Muscle….right wheres that naughty step……

  13. Scrolling through my iPod, I reckon the album I like that is least likely to find admirers here is Babs Streisand’s soundtrack to Yentl. I think it’s spiffing. Snatches of dialogue, Babs soaring above the high notes a-plenty like there’s no tomorrow. The last note of the last song actually lasts forever and a bit. “Papa watch me flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy”.
    Then there are two bonus tracks, studio recordings of “The Way He Makes Me Feel” and “No Matter What Happens”, produced by Phil Ramone out of The Ramones. Good film too, if you can get past the ridiculousness of anyone believing Babs to be a man. Papa can you hear me? Yes.

  14. @gary now we’re getting somewhere I have a cherished vinyl copy of Liza Minelli’s The Singer which contains many gems including this. Not so much covering Dancing In the Moonlight as crushing it to a pulp. Also contains a fantastic flute solo. Goddamn this is fantastic track – her waaaa at the very end worth more than most ‘divas’ entire careers.

    Her album with the Pet Shop Boys, Results, is also completely ace.

  15. In 2015 I spent the year listening through Bob Dylan’s early albums- one a month in chronological order from January through to October (I also did REM, Nick Cave and The Cure). I had never listened to most of them so it was quite an eye opening 10 months of listening.

    Although it isn’t my favourite Dylan record, I’d say that I really like Self Portrait. Not sure of too many people that admit to that.

  16. I would imagine You And I by the Pierces isn’t a regular in too many households here – I just love the pop sensibility and the tunes are to die for. Not bad looking either….

  17. Tin Machine are generally regarded as the Dame’s great folly, and TM2 as his nadir. Well, not in my house, buddy! I rate the second album as superior to the (still very good) first.

  18. Goodbye Cruel World

    Elvis Costello’s “worst record”? Nope, not by a long shot.

    OK, I’m not very fond of “I Wanna Be Loved” or “The Only Flame in Town”, but look what there is: “Inch By Inch” or “Worthless Thing” and the “Get Happy-ish” pair of “Sour Milk-Cow Blues” and “The Deportees Club”, rounded off with “Peace in Our Time”.

    Here’s the wonderful “Inch By Inch”.

    • Yes, good call, Mr Pajp.
      I really like most of “Goodbye Cruel World”, too. I can never understand it when it gets picked on as the worst Costello album (even when it’s Costello himself who says so).
      Let’s hear it for “The Great Unknown”. Top tune!

    • And Love Field and Joe Porterhouse – both great.
      I think Punch the Clock is much worse and has dated badly but it has Shipbuilding as a redeeming feature I guess.

      • Um… @SteveT…. I have fond memories of Punch The Clock, although I haven’t listened to it for ages.

        May be you’re right about it being dated (although I want to doubt it!) .

        I shall have to have a listen.

        • You’re braver than I am @count-jim-moriarty

          I originally ended my post above by saying that I did not think that Shipbuilding was a redeeming feature on Punch The Clock. I don’t particularly like the song, although I find EC’s version more bearable than RW’s. I can see why it is a good song and I can appreciate someone wanting to express the sentiments that it expresses, but I just don’t really like it. There, now I’ve said it!

  20. Chicken Shack-Accept
    Christine Perfect has gone, and all the White Blues Bands (Zep, Fleetwood Mac, etc) have moved on to a sorta blues/rock, or just plain hard rock and fame and fortune, so this was the the album that was going to break the Shack. Except that it didn’t. I saw them live promoting this, and it is a great LP, as good as anything of its genre and time, but it died a death. You can find it on YouTube and it is worth giving it a spin, esp the hit single that wasn’t (Maudie) and the classic geetar workout (Telling Your Fortune). I love this album.

  21. Were Edgar Broughton Band ever hip except in smelly hairy circles? Just listened to their “meat” album for the first time in 45 years, or close thereto. I didn’t know how much I knew it and loved it. I knew I knew Over Rooftops, but I realised I knew it all, lyrics solos, excess and self-belief. It is fecking great.

    • Hey, don’t diss Edgar and his band. The meat album is one of my faves and still gets aired from time to time. Evening over rooftops is absolutely amazing, start to finish.

  26. I once heard this album in HMV NY and had to have it. Still love it. Eclectic, curve ball, experimental and fun. Only later did I discover he was a bit of a tool. Especially the Velvet Revolver incarnation. Still, 12 Bar Blues is wonderful:

  29. As a big fan of Ride I’m always called upon to robustly defend Carnival of Light. Even the band hate it. They’re wrong. lots of lovely stuff on it, not least this, which they should be playing in their new incarnation as the sun sets on festival sets;

  30. People, we need to lower the bar here!
    Self Portrait, The Darkness, Andrew W. K, In Through The Out Door… dig deeper please.
    I do not think these examples demonstrate what (as the O.P. declares) “…is generally regarded by almost everyone as pants!”
    Allow me to demonstrate.
    https://youtu.be/r9sYI8gnzbE
    I love this album. I was 10 years old when this LP was released and (age 30 when I finally heard it) As such it’s cold war lyrics and 80’s synthesizers have a charm and nostalgia for me that cannot be contrived by any new band since.
    Ian’s song writing has always skewed towards cozy optimism. He usually uses bucolic countryside imagery, but here Thatcher and Cold War espionage are the subject.
    It’s wonderful, so proggy, I love it.

  31. I shall just leave this here…

    My daughter probably owns every Runrig record ever released, including fan club stuff and solo releases. She went to most of the concerts on their last tour and found herself a boyfriend at one of them. From Edinburgh to London, on her own for most of them, via a festival on Stornoway. Not bad for someone registered blind. *proud dad*

    • She’s not alone. I have most of the oeuvre. They are certainly in a niche of their, and some of the output is a bit, um, well, not great. But when they’re good, they’re really very good.

      I’ll also add, and get out of the way in just one post, that Donnie Munro’s solo output is not all shit. The heart, and indeed most of the cardiovascular system, is worn on the sleeve, but he’s very listenable.

      • I hear a ghost stirring in the hinterland……………..
        I wish the Bla(a)st were here, just to utter his warning.
        Sit is right, when they are good they are great. Some of the production on the earlier stuff has dated ever so badly. Whilst both Donnie and his replacement, Bruce, both have glorious voices, their stage styles are both a bit cabaret. (Think Carl Wayne.)
        Their main legacy and gift, however, I feel, is to show that a gaelic rock culture has a place, elevating a scottish tradition to the level that irish music occupied in the 70s.

  33. High Hopes by Bruce Springsteen – I just love this album, but most seem to dismiss it as a collection of bits and bobs. Morello’s guitar adds another dimension to the sound and the version of Tom Joad actually makes me like the song. It grabbed me from the day I bought it, but quickly got very cheap, so I think I’m on my own here!?

    • Could I just agree with you there.

      Voice of a generation? Voice of the blue collars? Voice of lots of albums going nowhere, really? Yes – all of that.

      But High Hopes is stonkingly good.

  37. I’ve just remember one that really relates to the OP. I’ve always really like No Reason To Cry by Clapton. I like a fair smattering of his stuff but often, it seems, not the ones you’re ‘supposed’ to like. This one’s got The Band on it, yet most people seem to hate it. Horses/courses etc etc

  39. I’m happy to admit that I love the cover versions by Three Dog Night better than most* of the originals. And very few albums cheer me up better than their “Greatest Hits” (especially the really cheesy tracks). 🙂

    Edit: * OK – all of them…

  40. Listening to it for the third time in a row now.
    The Doors – Soft Parade.
    An absolutely amazing record (I play it 30 times to every one Abbey Road from the same year), and yet it’ll be the only one of their 6 Jim Morrison albums NOT to get into a Top 500 list.

  41. It’s Hard by The Who. Unloved by pretty much everyone at the time (1982) and since dismissed by the surviving band members. However, I think it’s pretty good, certainly an improvement on its predecessor, Face Dances. You do need to programme out a couple of pretty shit John Entwistle numbers to really get the best out of it though (by this time Pete was giving him three songs per album, which is at least two too many IMHO). Certainly worth revisiting if you are at all into the ‘Oo, but probably not otherwise. Interestingly I found an old contemporaneous Rolling Stone review that actually had it down as some kind of late masterpiece. So I’m not completely out on a limb here.

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