what was the last 'classic album' you got and were knocked out by?

also Nick Drake - Bryter Later - but I already knew most of the songs on that, so it wasn't quite such a revelation.

:-) :-) I'm most happy to hear that!

pre-1990: Poison, Open Up And Say Ahh....

Also that Joe Cuba Sextette Diggin' the Most I just got is pretty great, except for the English language tunes. But the tracks that Cheo Feliciano sings on are uniformly very good.

i more or less have all of his records and i have the feeling otb is his best studio album. it's the most intense of his folky/soft songwriter albums. there are no real standouts except the first song which i knew from decade. it's all pretty much made of one stone. by the way neil did many shit and average albums. most of his 90s (except ragged glory, dead man was ok) and a lot of his 80s releases (trans, reactor, landing on water etc., hawks + doves was ace) should be mentioned here.

That album is so ethereal too. Magic

Does 'Head Over Heels' by The Cocteau Twins count? I usually turn to them this time of year and from the opening detonation of When Mama Was Moth onward, it's just perfect winter music.

Yeah totally, it makes me feel like I’m in The Left Hand of Darkness.

Big Pink is good though I prefer the self-titled follow-up, it seems to groove a bit more.

Have spent my entire adult life hearing about how transcendent the Stone Roses’ debut is, simply did not get it despite many attempts to…

Don’t know what changed but it’s been nearly all I’ve been able to listen to for two weeks, suddenly one of my favorite 50 albums or so.

Yeah the self-titled Band album edges Big Pink by some distance imho. For years those were the only two Band albums I'd ever heard. I picked up Stage Fright and Northern Lights Southern Cross much later, and now I love them both although neither of them reach the heights of the first two. I still haven't heard Cahoots, Moondog Matinee or Islands.

seeing the version of "King Harvest" live in Woodstock on Youtube was a huge revelation for me. imo the self-titled album is really flat and not that groovy, but live they clearly had something special that didn't really get captured in the studio

i prefer MFBP of all their albums i've heard, not because i think it's their grooviest, but just because it has a different kind of magic that i find appealing and that has slowly revealed itself to me over a decade of listening

both hold a special place in my heart but budo is otm about the weird magic that exists within big pink. the songs on the self-titled are fantastic, probably better than the big pink songs as a whole, but big pink is raw and beautiful and full of reedy harmonies and weird organ sounds

Yeah, Big Pink being 68 still has vestiges of psychedelia, while S/T is full on Americana.

Have spent my entire adult life hearing about how transcendent the Stone Roses’ debut is, simply did not get it despite many attempts to…

Don’t know what changed but it’s been nearly all I’ve been able to listen to for two weeks, suddenly one of my favorite 50 albums or so.

― Davey D, Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Welcome, once you get it it becomes almost religious. One of the best albums of all-time. Is it because of John guitar playing or really the drumming?

A perfect moment in time really.

All of the above, plus the ethereal production, naive but effective vocals, perfect songwriting… there’s just a shimmer and softness to it all that is undergirded by such an irresistible pulse… just feels like a magical confluence of things that would be impossible to repeat (and indeed it was)

mark hollis's self-titled album

Big pink is just so loose. I know I already said that. Maybe as loose as the actual basement tapes. An ineffable quality I only hear a few places, like meat puppets II and torch of the mystics. And the keys are just so special my god.

I remember there was a giant sand album in the mid nineties that was supposed to be a deliberate hint for that looseness… purge and slouch. I should revisit that someday.

*hunt
Not hint

walking around in the mist with Pet Sounds on the player this morning was surprisingly Christmassy

(repurchase of that and new-to-me Eat to the Beat were this year's back catalogue purchases from Badlands, Cheltenham)

seeing the version of "King Harvest" live in Woodstock on Youtube was a huge revelation for me. imo the self-titled album is really flat and not that groovy, but live they clearly had something special that didn't really get captured in the studio
― budo jeru, Tuesday, December 24, 2024 7:14 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

That version is so great. (Link for the unfamiliar.) Robbie's guitar solo on it is one of my favorites ever, so much better than on the LP.

def disagree that the self-titled album isn't groovy: cripple creek, king harvest, look out cleveland, rag mama rag

The Band's greatest song imo "It Makes No Difference" is on Northern Lights – Southern Cross.

I don’t know if it counts as ‘classic album’ or not but The Four Seasons’ Genuine Imitation Life Gazette completely bowled me over last night. Can’t wait to listen to it again. That sort of theatrical, orchestrated pseudo- psych is my catnip.

x-posted from:

Vince Guaraldi - A Charlie Brown Christmas: You cannot fuck with this album.

I had minor exposure to this in my youth and since then various moments through popular culture across my longgggg life... but today I finally played this album in it's full format today and it really is rather exquisite in capturing the many moods of winter time: some brighter, and some darker. The drumming in particular is really nice.

bill evans trio - moon beams

xxxp Alfred have u heard the Mekons version of that? I adore it, it's on the FUN 90 EP.

Cows’ Sexy Pee Story

“it makes no difference” is immense, absolutely one of the greatest band songs. will check out the mekons version.

my morning jacket did a pretty good version on a tribute album from the mid-00s. also a lovely version of “acadian driftwood” on there by the roches

listened to gary numan’s the pleasure principle for the first time during a nighttime drive the other night, and…yeah

The first two Flying Saucer Attack albums? Are they considered "classic"? Right now I certainly think they are. Can't believe I missed out all this time haha.

by 'first two' what do you mean?

(ie Distance was a compilation and maybe doesn't count, even though it's my favourite)

it's all good tbh, even the 2015 instrumentals album.

I have two sent to me by a friend. “Rural Psychedelia” and “Further”. RP may be a comp of early work?

I had one of their albums but I could never get into it. I had tracks called Popol Vuh, which I thought was pushing their luck a bit.

It had not I had.

“Rural Psychedelia” and “Further”.

iirc these are the first two "proper" albums

Bedroom-recorded walls of echoing feedback blanketed with gossamer acoustic strumming? I'm all in.

> “Rural Psychedelia” and “Further”.
> iirc these are the first two "proper" albums

although i think the first is officially self-titled, 'rural psychedelia' is a description.

https://www.discogs.com/master/21723-Flying-Saucer-Attack-Flying-Saucer-Attack

have never even seen a copy of the lp in the original cover, mine came in the Venus cover.

the two compilations, Distance and Chorus also well worth picking up

yep all four are essential imho

The Fall - Sub-lingual Tablet

John Wesley Harding, love the way the bass & drumming skip along, Drifter's Escape a secret drone classic

The collection of late 50s r'n'b singles compiled as rhythm'n'bluesin by the Baton
Nights of Sin, Dirty Deals and Love Sick Souls.
Have had it for a while but not played it for too long. Absolutely rocking throughout.

Also got a new copy of Dead Can Dance A Passage In Time which I'd had in Dublin in the 90s. Great Australian living in Ireland mix of atmospheric world music classical and medieval music. I think this is a compilation. Love Ulysses especially.

I'm continually finding things I haven't listened to in a while and wondering why I've left such an interval besides basic untidiniess.

Last week I had a Ray Barretto compilation on that was unbelievably vital.

Just heading home with a pile of things I got from a charity shop I thought had dropped cds. But apparently just rearranged and set up a much better area for 2nd hand media.
Got Bootsy, Ohio Players, Sheila Chandra and a few others.

Reminded myself to post this one here via her being brought up in the Sam Amidon thread:

Beth Orton - Trailer Park

My kinda slightly-leftfield adult contemporary album--maybe saw a music video for a single at the time, but the whole album just clicked for me recently. Great subtle production by Orbit nowhere near as tacky as I feared it might now sound, solid songwriting from Orton.

It's odd thinking of Trailer Park as a classic album. Classic in the "Bob Dylan" sense rather than the "really good album" sense. I still mentally imagine it coming out only a few years ago. And not nineteen years ago, which is when it actually did come out. It's a contemporary of Second Toughest in the Infants and Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, which are also classics despite being less than twenty years old.

I wonder if it's the fonts. The design work. The use of Helvetica. The deliberate use of Helvetica. That's what makes classic 1990s albums special. The clean, crisp, minimal design work. The deliberate, ironic use of Helvetica. Bob Dylan didn't use Helvetica.

And at this point someone reading this is mentally flicking through their mental list of Bob Dylan album covers. No, my friend. He did not use Helvetica. Except on Another Side of Bob Dylan. That one time. No, Highway 61 is not Helvetica. But the point stands.

hate to break it to you but it’s not 2015

was gonna say, uh, it's been damn near 30 years!

I listened to Kate Bush's The Dreaming three times in a row yesterday.

Stanley Clarke - School Days

Really opening up my ears to what stringed instruments can do in a Jazz context.

The special thanks to L Ron Hubbard are a bummer, but whaddyagonnado.

Lately, the Kate Bush songs I come back to most are on The Red Shoes album. 'The Song of Solomon' is the best song to have stuck in your head. 'Why Should I Love You?' is up there as well

Loving "Arc Of A Diver" a lot rn

Lately, the Kate Bush songs I come back to most are on The Red Shoes album. 'The Song of Solomon' is the best song to have stuck in your head. 'Why Should I Love You?' is up there as well

― V/R\V/R\V/R (FlopsyDuck),

yessss

Prompted by the other thread going now, I pulled out the first Soft Machine album for the first time in a long, long time. Not sure what I was thinking at the time, but it never clicked back then. Holy hell did it hit me last night, what a great album! So different than what was to come, but brilliant in its own right. Wyatt's drumming!