All Time Top 1100 Albums (Aerosmith - Big Ones) P265

[BimboBob]

Let's start this review of by stating a fact. I've never listened to any Grateful Dead on purpose. Should be in my wheel house but for some reason never got round to it. To set me up for this new experience I put on one of their previous albums, American Beauty, just to get a flavour of what delights were to come. I sort of enjoyed it. Very mellow and very easy to listen to.

And then we move onto Terrapin Station...

Side one is completely harmless apart from Dancing in the Street. I don't think I've ever heard such a poor cover version. I'm going to have to add an extra mark though as the lead singer sounds just like Roland Orzabal which made me put Tears for Fears on brightening up my morning. Sowing the seeeeeds of Looooove...

Side two on the other hand...

Completely indulgent musical fuckwittery. What happened in-between these two records? Drugs. Plently of drugs by the sound of it.

It's a 1/10 topped up by making me re-visit The Hurting.

2/10

 

[Onholiday(somemightsay)]

Grateful Dead
Terrapin Station
Does anyone know why the terrapins have a station? Answers on a postcard...........

This feels like a really strange hybrid album of a band who don't know what their sound is / should be (any more?).

Similar to a lot of others, I really don't have an extensive relationship with their back catalogue and this possibly isn't their best representation.

Estimated Prophet is ok at a push but it does sound like they are trying to fuse a Pink Floyd (as @BlueHammer85 observed) verse with a west coast sounding chorus. Not particularly unpleasant but takes me a while to adjust to it. But let's face it, if I want to listen to something that sounds like Pink Floyd, it's going to be Pink Floyd.

Who the fuck told them that Dancing in the street was a worthwhile inclusion? Scrap that, why can't they hear that it's awful?

It's terrible (come on all you guys that didn't enjoy Oasis 'murdering' I am the Walrus, surely this one takes the biscuit)? :-)

Outside of that there are some nice bits on Samson & Delilah and Sunshine (bizarrely I think the orchestrated string sections on Sunshine and Terrapin Station are probably my favourite bits on the album), but on the whole I think the album is confused and lacklustre.

We don't need a 16 minute finale to the album (what's that half of its overall length?) and they have a greater problem in that at no point was I bothered what they were singing about. Some of it is pleasant but I'm not invested enough to want to find out more.

They may be suffering from me hoping for more from them, but I think a comparable score to Beth Orton at 4/10 is fair.

I'm going to persevere and give their live stuff a go on people's recommendation and see where we go from the there..............

 

[BlueHammer85]

worth a watch for those that enjoyed the title track, some great stuff in here and put together very well.

 

[chedlee]

There seems to be a strong patter emerging here - many people are aware of GD (who couldn't be?) but not really listened to them and looking forward to the opportunity. They then listen to this and wonder what all the fuss was about as this is about as dull and uninspiring as music gets.
First track starts well and got my hopes up a bit but jeez it goes downhill so rapidly from there.
The 16 minute dirge at the end is more of what I was expecting but it too is awful and in this instance interminably long to boot.
Will not be keeping this in my Spotify library.
2/10

 

[RobMCFC]

I thought this was OK. An odd choice for a cover version to stick in there, but I liked the flow of the album otherwise and particularly enjoyed the instrumental jams in the title track. Vocals are nothing to write home about, but the point lost for "Dancing In The Streets" is regained by that great album cover.

I don't feel like going over the top with any praise and there's not too much to dislike. In fact nothing either way to compel me to write more than a few lines summarising my feelings.

6/10

 

[Marklr]

I've not heard ONE song by these. Ever. Not that I know of, anyway.

 

[Marklr]

It was gonna be a 4 from me....the songs were neither here nor there really. Pleasant enough. I could probably quite like them the more familiar i was with them (not the awful cover though...i don't know which was worse, the Bowie/Jagger version or this one!)..but....the last song has won me over. Sounds a bit like George Harrison on vocals. It's a bit prog..bit of an epic too.
6/10 from me.

 

[RobMCFC]

It was gonna be a 4 from me....the songs were neither here nor there really. Pleasant enough. I could probably quite like them the more familiar i was with them (not the awful cover though...i don't know which was worse, the Bowie/Jagger version or this one!)..but....the last song has won me over. Sounds a bit like George Harrison on vocals. It's a bit prog..bit of an epic too.
6/10 from me.

I liked the last "track" a lot more than the rest of the album. Some really nice changes in there.

 

[Marklr]

I liked the last "track" a lot more than the rest of the album. Some really nice changes in there.

Same. If we were just reviewing the title track, it'd have a higher score. I wouldn't bother listening to the other songs again, but i'll add the title track to my playlist.

 

[RobMCFC]

I watched the Bob Weir "The Other One" documentary on Netflix last night. I enjoyed it because it told me a bit about the band that I didn't know. What was interesting was that often in these career retrospectives, they cover the recording of classic albums A, B and C whereas in this case, I think they mentioned a couple of albums in passing but that was it. I suppose it re-enforces the point that they were not an albums (or singles) band.