The Album Review Club - *** Christmas Break Playlist (next album 7/1/26) ***

bennyboy said:
Some great singles but as a group never had an lp that i could play without skipping some tracks.
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Tommy is good. Best bits of Quadraphenia are good. A few killer singles. Seen them live a couple of times but I cannot think of them as rock legends. And Daltrey is a complete knob in my objective opinion.
 
crublue1 said:
Hi all.
I've not contributed for a while for reasons I won't go into here, but I have followed the thread and listened to every nomination.
I've loved the discussion around this record, in fact I've been secretly hoping for a pixies nomination since the thread started, as they are one of my favourite bands.
When I was on the list of nominees before I withdrew, Surfer Rosa was going to be my choice.
It's been great reading everyones thoughts, and most, if not all, are valid. I found myself nodding, if not always agreeing with a lot of the opinions aired.
That's the beauty about this band, they can be awful and brilliant in the space of 3 minutes. One minute it's a howling mess, the next it's perfect punk/ pop with snakey bass, vocal harmonics and hooky, hooks.
It's addictive if you like it, repulsive sometimes, if you don't, and are easily dismissed as such. I get that.
When I first heard surfer Rosa back in the eighties, it was, for want of a better word, challenging, to say the least. But I kind of knew it was different enough for me to stick with it, and it was obvious to even my untrained ear they had talent, and lots of it. Now this may be that there was a lot of crap about at the time, but nonetheless I grew to love the album, and the band.
I've always liked things a bit different, and they were certainly that.
On to Frank then, briefly.
He's written some great tunes, and he delivers the lyrics how he sees fit. I've never questioned this really, but I admit I've never tried, or felt the need to. I've just always liked him and the way he leads the band, however he delivers the vocals I've just accepted it.
If I wanted simple lyrics, simply delivered in a simple to understand format, I'd put James blunt on.
Sometimes you just like things and you can't quite quantify why, or feel the need to.
Doolitle is a great record if you're a pixies fan, but it won't convert anyone who didn't like Surfer Rosa.
There is one major fault with it though, it hasn't got an instrumental track, which are normally brilliant.
I won't give it a score as that wouldn't be fair.
Enjoyed all your comments, by for now x
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Great review mate. From one fan to another....
 
threespires said:
And this is why I like it more when we talk more about what we like and why, I don't like it when we get arsey about stuff !!

Dislike of conflict is possibly my main achilles heel which I've had to learn to manage and control in the workplace but I come on this thread cause everyone seems at least semi house trained and discusses things rather than argues.

So please be fucking nice to each other you bastards.
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Just to be clear, I wasn't being arsey. Just good natured sarcasm to reinforce my view.

Funnily enough, The Who were on TV last night, a repeat showing of their 50th Anniverary tour appearance at Hyde Park - I didn't go to it but did see them on that tour - anyway, I watched the last part, they finished with "Pinball Wizard", "See Me, Feel Me", "Listening to You", "Baba" & "Won't Get Fooled Again". Only bands like The Stones can finish shows with runs of songs of that stature.

I recall the first time I saw The Who, and it was the real thing, and when they played "See Me, Feel Me", "Listening to You" it remains one of the most memorable and spine-tingling things I've seen at a gig.
 
OB1 said:
Just to be clear, I wasn't being arsey. Just good natured sarcasm to reinforce my view.

Funnily enough, The Who were on TV last night, a repeat showing of their 50th Anniverary tour appearance at Hyde Park - I didn't go to it but did see them on that tour - anyway, I watched the last part, they finished with "Pinball Wizard", "See Me, Feel Me", "Listening to You", "Baba" & "Won't Get Fooled Again". Only bands like The Stones can finish shows with runs of songs of that stature.

I recall the first time I saw The Who, and it was the real thing, and when they played "See Me, Feel Me", "Listening to You" it remains one of the most memorable and spine-tingling things I've seen at a gig.
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I was at that concert and it was bloody excellent. I'm not a huge Who fan, but I prefer them over The Jam who are a sort of Who lite.
 
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Saddleworth2 said:
You think they made decent music after 1973? What was it?

In terms of overrated, three decent albums + a live one that is lauded. What other band reached the legendary status they enjoy with such a paucity of good material over a five decade timescale?

Following the Jam/Who skirmish yesterday Im just interested to get objective views.
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Those albums that you refer to are more than decent a represent a body of work most bands can only dream of.

There’s also a string of wonderful hit singles that preceded Tommy.

There’s plenty of decent material on later albums and their last album was a very well received.

You may not want to acknowledge them as rock legends but history disagrees.
 
Saddleworth2 said:
Todays thought for the day:

The Who never made any decent music after 1973 and are the worlds most overrated band.

:-)
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Two different assertions coupled together there.

Post 73 The Who, not much idea tbh but I loved Eminence Front from 82, and You Better You Bet was decent too. Who Are You was great as well.

As for the worlds most overrated band, there’s plenty of competition for that from the likes of Radiohead, The Ramones, REM to name but three acts who music writers, ‘tastemaker’ journalists and cognoscenti will tell you that it is ‘received wisdom’ were all something special, but none of whom were fit to be discussed in the same breath as The Who.
 
I was never that into The Who although I’ve got both Tommy and Quadraphenia in my collection but as others have already said they have some great tracks on them but quite a few fillers, they have recorded some fantastic songs though.I don’t get the comparison to The Jam other than they were both supposedly’Mod’ bands.The Who are a ledgendary classic rock band and The Jam a sort of Punk/New Wave band but like The Stranglers it was more the fact they were around in that era, and I was a big fan of both.
The punk revolution was very much of my time , I loved the music but didn’t follow the culture.Me and my mate would go and watch all the bands most of which were shite apart from the more well known ones, but Punk allowed anyone to form a band even if they couldn’t play a note, case in point was Slaughter and the Dogs a group of lads we knew from Bowie and Mott the Hoople gigs, at the time they had very little talent but got Mick Ronson to produce their first album.One of my regrets is that I didn’t follow their path and form a band back then.

As far as the best UK Punk song goes it has to be ‘Anarchy in the Uk’ for me,I went straight out and bought the single , there’s was just nothing like it at the time.As for US punk I’m not sure when that started perhaps Foggy can give me a steer, IMHO The MC5 and The Stooges were the first US punk bands?
I think as well as the VU and The ‘Mats’ the MC5 were a big influence on The Pixies.
 
As part of my revision for my next choice (no, not this Wednesday’s, but the one that will come in May/June!!), I’ve been listening to Marquee Moon, the debut album by Television. Released in 1977, it is considered one of the early US punk releases, although it is on the mellower side.

Now if that’s how punk is supposed to sound, I’d say I like it a whole lot better than what I thought punk was. Never heard it before but what a terrific guitar album.
 
chesterbells said:
Two different assertions coupled together there.

Post 73 The Who, not much idea tbh but I loved Eminence Front from 82, and You Better You Bet was decent too. Who Are You was great as well.

As for the worlds most overrated band, there’s plenty of competition for that from the likes of Radiohead, The Ramones, REM to name but three acts who music writers, ‘tastemaker’ journalists and cognoscenti will tell you that it is ‘received wisdom’ were all something special, but none of whom were fit to be discussed in the same breath as The Who.
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I agree; I thought their post Moon phase wasn’t terrible; just different. And I also liked Who Are You.

Obviously my feelings on Radiohead are well known, but I would describe early REM as correctly rated and late REM as overrated. I wouldn’t describe the Ramones as overrated though — more for influence than music. They did milk it too long, but punk doesn’t exist the same way without them. Pretty important even if you don’t cotton to their tunes.
 
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RobMCFC said:
As part of my revision for my next choice (no, not this Wednesday’s, but the one that will come in May/June!!), I’ve been listening to Marquee Moon, the debut album by Television. Released in 1977, it is considered one of the early US punk releases, although it is on the mellower side.

Now if that’s how punk is supposed to sound, I’d say I like it a whole lot better than what I thought punk was. Never heard it before but what a terrific guitar album.
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Marquee Moon was a great debut album,i always considered them to be more
‘New Wave’ than punk like the Talking Heads and later Blondie , who we all part of the CBGBS scene in NY.
 
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