The Album Review Club - Week #195 (page 1310) - A New World Record - ELO

FogBlueInSanFran said:
It's not them. I thought they'd be a little much for an opener. I may return to them later.

But they are very close cousins to the one I'll post :).
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A-ha. Based on a little help from the All Music Guide and looking at the running time (you mentioned 31 minutes on the Metallica thread), I think I've got it now. Either way, I've heard of both bands but never heard their music so this should be interesting.
 
RobMCFC said:
A-ha. Based on a little help from the All Music Guide and looking at the running time (you mentioned 31 minutes on the Metallica thread), I think I've got it now. Either way, I've heard of both bands but never heard their music so this should be interesting.
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Ha ha. It's amazing what a little research can do!
 
crublue1 said:
Not my cup of tea at all, the whole genre that is, not just jcm.
Having said that, this record is book ended by 2 great tracks, 'paper in fire' in particular is a belter, and has gone onto my driving playlist. So if nothing else, thanks to Rob for that.

Musically it's pretty interesting too, I like how he's using instruments that aren't often heard, kudos for that.

His voice however, well for me it's a bit generic and dare I say it, a tad bland. He never tests himself to any degree. Swap his vocals out for adams or springsteen and it would still sound the same. I much prefer pettys voice for this type of thing, it's at least different enough to keep me interested. 'Check it out' for instance would sound much better with him at the helm.

It's not a bad album, far from it, it's probably top notch in this genre, but try as I might (and trust me, I did) I cant get along with it.
It's a 5 from me.
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I’m similar.
Played it a few times and find it pleasant enough, but it’s not a genre I get overly excited about.
I categorise him like Bruce Springsteen. I like the guy and recognise how good he is but personally can take him or leave him.

It’s music I wouldn’t turn off if it comes on. But it’s not music I put on myself.

All very subjective.
 
RobMCFC said:
OK, it's time to round up at the end of week #1.

19 votes were cast and The Lonesome Jubilee finishes with a very respectable average of 7.05.

Scoreboard is on page #1.

Thanks to everybody who took part. I'm humbled by the number of posts this week - not just those who, like me, obviously love the album but all those who gave it a try and were willing to get involved in the discussion. Like the Top 1100 albums thread, I think we've got a good group here and it was nice to see a few different names joining in as well, so let's keep it up.

It's now time to hand the floor over to our latest nominator @FogBlueInSanFran. He's given me a little clue as to what he's got up his sleeve but I'm still none the wiser so I'm sure he'll be along soon to set the ball rolling. Officially, new albums are presented on Tuesday, but I'm happy with any timeframe for clues and announcements from here on in, especially as he's on PST.
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Over 7 is a good score. Anything between 7 and 10 has to be classed as a classic album.
 
BlueHammer85 said:
I'm going for Rush or Pixies...
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So, good guesses, but . . . note: Rush is Canadian, and Pixies are from Boston.

In addition, the two Pixies albums from the 1980s are already in Colin Larkin's Top 1000.

I -- and I assume others -- will be selecting records not already in our top 1000 (+100 from Rolling Stones 2000-2020 list) which we will get to eventually :).

The operative question is for me . . . what albums missed the top 1000 that should have been there? What are the most egregious/interesting/popular/important omissions, especially (but not exclusively) among records I love?

For example -- I use this because I think someone else will get to it before me -- where is Fragile by Yes?

It totally boggles my mind that it wasn't selected as a top 1000 record by a wide poll of the general populace in 2000.
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
So, good guesses, but . . . note: Rush is Canadian, and Pixies are from Boston.

In addition, the two Pixies albums from the 1980s are already in Colin Larkin's Top 1000.

I -- and I assume others -- will be selecting records not already in our top 1000 (+100 from Rolling Stones 2000-2020 list) which we will get to eventually :).

The operative question is for me . . . what albums missed the top 1000 that should have been there? What are the most egregious/interesting/popular/important omissions, especially (but not exclusively) among records I love?

For example -- I use this because I think someone else will get to it before me -- where is Fragile by Yes?

It totally boggles my mind that it wasn't selected as a top 1000 record by a wide poll of the general populace in 2000.
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Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.

or

J Geils Band

or

Steve Miller Band

or

Steely Dan

????
 
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FogBlueInSanFran said:
So, good guesses, but . . . note: Rush is Canadian, and Pixies are from Boston.

In addition, the two Pixies albums from the 1980s are already in Colin Larkin's Top 1000.

I -- and I assume others -- will be selecting records not already in our top 1000 (+100 from Rolling Stones 2000-2020 list) which we will get to eventually :).

The operative question is for me . . . what albums missed the top 1000 that should have been there? What are the most egregious/interesting/popular/important omissions, especially (but not exclusively) among records I love?

For example -- I use this because I think someone else will get to it before me -- where is Fragile by Yes?

It totally boggles my mind that it wasn't selected as a top 1000 record by a wide poll of the general populace in 2000.
Click to expand...

I'm doing something that is in Larkin's 1,000; unless it appears on that thread before we get to my turn.
 
The Album Review Club – Week #2

Let It Be – The Replacements (1984)

Selected by FogBlueInSanFran

The_Replacements_-_Let_It_Be_cover.jpg

Thanks, @RobMCFC, for starting this thread and selecting me for a review.

I love The Who’s Quadrophenia because it’s a story about a misfit kid trying to make his way in a world he feels is hopelessly stacked against him. When we were teenagers, I bet we almost all felt that way sometimes. We were also alternatively euphoric, depressed, weird, serious, ashamed, uncomfortable, embarrassed, brave, immature, goofy and introspective day to day and hour to hour.

The record I’ve chosen is a reflection of all those conflicts and mix-ups. It’s Let It Be by The Replacements, whom Rolling Stone once labeled as “the greatest band that never was.”

The Mats, as aficionados know them, were a ragged, semi-talented garage band who crawled out from under Minneapolis in the early 1980s. They were better known for their disastrous drunken stage performances than anything else. But in 1984, they released this complete U-turn.

Let It Be is, in a word, schizophrenic. It’s punk, then pop, then “classic” rock, then I-guess-you’d-call-it-country, then blues piano.

It's very much unlike The Lonesome Jubilee, which always knows where it’s going. This is a record with attention deficit disorder. It’s tight but messy; it has hooks and melody but it has noise; even its beauty has “rings around” its eyes. Tempos speed up, then slow down; instruments change mid-song. “We’re Comin’ Out”, for example, starts as thrash punk, then slows down to a lone piano and finger snaps, then speeds up again before devolving into cacophony.

But I love all the contradictions, conflicts and mix-ups here — they work because the record itself is about the contradictions, conflicts and mix-ups inherent in growing up. And The Replacements themselves were growing up.

All along, Let It Be maintains a sense of humo(u)r and never takes itself too seriously. And yeah — you can play it super loud. Really, really loud if you want.

“I Will Dare” sets up the tone of confusion right off — “How young are you? / How old am I?”, Paul Westerberg sings (warning: he only sort of sings) as he strums along, and then the record moves from age to age, topic to topic and style to style. I’m going to bounce around too, since The Replacements do.

There’s an ahead-of-its-time, and even touching, tribute to gender non-conforming kids. Before that, there's a fairly amusing song about a tonsillectomy told from the point of view of the doctor (“Let’s get this over with / I tee off in an hour”). Right afterwards, just to fuck with things more, they cover Kiss.

They diss “that phony rock and roll” on MTV (“Seen Your Video”) on the one hand, and complain about a girlfriend’s answering machine on the other (talk about relating!). There are two radically different paeans to sexual awkwardness: one for girls (“Sixteen Blue”) and one for boys (“Gary’s Got A Boner”).

In short — this is a record that always keeps you off balance.

But in the middle, crowning and cementing it all, is “Unsatisfied”, one of my very favo(u)rite songs of all time, and as important an anthem in tribute to young adults as “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. I see it as prophetic, a nod to the pro-Gen X, anti-baby boomer conflict that overwhelmed (white) American pop music seven years later when Kurt Cobain became a reluctant spokesperson for his generation.

Over the last few years, as I’ve watched my own kids become teenagers, and as I get older and my own teenage years fade hazily into the distance, this record speaks to me more and more and more. It barely missed the personal top 20 I submitted to @BlueHammer85 a number of months ago, but now I think it’s firmly there.

This is one of the all-time classics of alt/indie, groundbreaking, rightly adored by nearly every important music critic . . . yet it didn’t get enough votes from the great unwashed to displace the fucking Grease soundtrack.

Well, as The Replacements sing on “Favorite Thing”, “I don’t give a single shit.”

Happy listening!

PS. And yes — the band members picked the album name after deciding to title it after “the next song that comes on the radio” while they were sitting in their manager’s car. That just makes me love it all the more.
 
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FogBlueInSanFran said:
The Album Review Club – Week #2

Let It Be – The Replacements (1984)

Selected by FogBlueInSanFran

View attachment 27561

Thanks, @RobMCFC, for starting this thread and selecting me for a review.

I love The Who’s Quadrophenia because it’s a story about a misfit kid trying to make his way in a world he feels is hopelessly stacked against him. When we were teenagers, I bet we almost all felt that way sometimes. We were also alternatively euphoric, depressed, weird, serious, ashamed, uncomfortable, embarrassed, brave, immature, goofy and introspective day to day and hour to hour.

The record I’ve chosen is a reflection of all those conflicts and mix-ups. It’s Let It Be by The Replacements, whom Rolling Stone once labeled as “the greatest band that never was.”

The Mats, as aficionados know them, were a ragged, semi-talented garage band who crawled out from under Minneapolis in the early 1980s. They were better known for their disastrous drunken stage performances than anything else. But in 1984, they released this complete U-turn.

Let It Be is, in a word, schizophrenic. It’s punk, then pop, then “classic” rock, then I-guess-you’d-call-it-country, then blues piano.

It's very much unlike The Lonesome Jubilee, which always knows where it’s going. This is a record with attention deficit disorder. It’s tight but messy; it has hooks and melody but it has noise; even its beauty has “rings around” its eyes. Tempos speed up, then slow down; instruments change mid-song. “We’re Comin’ Out”, for example, starts as thrash punk, then slows down to a lone piano and finger snaps, then speeds up again before devolving into cacophony.

But I love all the contradictions, conflicts and mix-ups here — they work because the record itself is about the contradictions, conflicts and mix-ups inherent in growing up. And The Replacements themselves were growing up.

All along, Let It Be maintains a sense of humo(u)r and never takes itself too seriously. And yeah — you can play it super loud. Really, really loud if you want.

“I Will Dare” sets up the tone of confusion right off — “How young are you? / How old am I?”, Paul Westerberg sings (warning: he only sort of sings) as he strums along, and then the record moves from age to age, topic to topic and style to style. I’m going to bounce around too, since The Replacements do.

There’s an ahead-of-its-time, and even touching, tribute to gender non-conforming kids. Before that, there's a fairly amusing song about a tonsillectomy told from the point of view of the doctor (“Let’s get this over with / I tee off in an hour”). Right afterwards, just to fuck with things more, they cover Kiss.

They diss “that phony rock and roll” on MTV (“Seen Your Video”) on the one hand, and complain about a girlfriend’s answering machine on the other (talk about relating!). There are two radically different paeans to sexual awkwardness: one for girls (“Sixteen Blue”) and one for boys (“Gary’s Got A Boner”).

In short — this is a record that always keeps you off balance.

But in the middle, crowning and cementing it all, is “Unsatisfied”, one of my very favo(u)rite songs of all time, and as important an anthem in tribute to young adults as “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. I see it as prophetic, a nod to the pro-Gen X, anti-baby boomer conflict that overwhelmed (white) American pop music seven years later when Kurt Cobain became a reluctant spokesperson for his generation.

Over the last few years, as I’ve watched my own kids become teenagers, and as I get older and my own teenage years fade hazily into the distance, this record speaks to me more and more and more. It barely missed the personal top 20 I submitted to @BlueHammer85 a number of months ago, but now I think it’s firmly there.

This is one of the all-time classics of alt/indie, groundbreaking, rightly adored by nearly every important music critic . . . yet it didn’t get enough votes from the great unwashed to displace the fucking Grease soundtrack.

Well, as The Replacements sing on “Favorite Thing”, “I don’t give a single shit.”

Happy listening!

PS. And yes — the band members picked the album name after deciding to title it after “the next song that comes on the radio” while they were sitting in their manager’s car. That just makes me love it all the more.
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Looking forward to it..
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
The Album Review Club – Week #2

Let It Be – The Replacements (1984)

Selected by FogBlueInSanFran

View attachment 27561

Thanks, @RobMCFC, for starting this thread and selecting me for a review.

I love The Who’s Quadrophenia because it’s a story about a misfit kid trying to make his way in a world he feels is hopelessly stacked against him. When we were teenagers, I bet we almost all felt that way sometimes. We were also alternatively euphoric, depressed, weird, serious, ashamed, uncomfortable, embarrassed, brave, immature, goofy and introspective day to day and hour to hour.

The record I’ve chosen is a reflection of all those conflicts and mix-ups. It’s Let It Be by The Replacements, whom Rolling Stone once labeled as “the greatest band that never was.”

The Mats, as aficionados know them, were a ragged, semi-talented garage band who crawled out from under Minneapolis in the early 1980s. They were better known for their disastrous drunken stage performances than anything else. But in 1984, they released this complete U-turn.

Let It Be is, in a word, schizophrenic. It’s punk, then pop, then “classic” rock, then I-guess-you’d-call-it-country, then blues piano.

It's very much unlike The Lonesome Jubilee, which always knows where it’s going. This is a record with attention deficit disorder. It’s tight but messy; it has hooks and melody but it has noise; even its beauty has “rings around” its eyes. Tempos speed up, then slow down; instruments change mid-song. “We’re Comin’ Out”, for example, starts as thrash punk, then slows down to a lone piano and finger snaps, then speeds up again before devolving into cacophony.

But I love all the contradictions, conflicts and mix-ups here — they work because the record itself is about the contradictions, conflicts and mix-ups inherent in growing up. And The Replacements themselves were growing up.

All along, Let It Be maintains a sense of humo(u)r and never takes itself too seriously. And yeah — you can play it super loud. Really, really loud if you want.

“I Will Dare” sets up the tone of confusion right off — “How young are you? / How old am I?”, Paul Westerberg sings (warning: he only sort of sings) as he strums along, and then the record moves from age to age, topic to topic and style to style. I’m going to bounce around too, since The Replacements do.

There’s an ahead-of-its-time, and even touching, tribute to gender non-conforming kids. Before that, there's a fairly amusing song about a tonsillectomy told from the point of view of the doctor (“Let’s get this over with / I tee off in an hour”). Right afterwards, just to fuck with things more, they cover Kiss.

They diss “that phony rock and roll” on MTV (“Seen Your Video”) on the one hand, and complain about a girlfriend’s answering machine on the other (talk about relating!). There are two radically different paeans to sexual awkwardness: one for girls (“Sixteen Blue”) and one for boys (“Gary’s Got A Boner”).

In short — this is a record that always keeps you off balance.

But in the middle, crowning and cementing it all, is “Unsatisfied”, one of my very favo(u)rite songs of all time, and as important an anthem in tribute to young adults as “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. I see it as prophetic, a nod to the pro-Gen X, anti-baby boomer conflict that overwhelmed (white) American pop music seven years later when Kurt Cobain became a reluctant spokesperson for his generation.

Over the last few years, as I’ve watched my own kids become teenagers, and as I get older and my own teenage years fade hazily into the distance, this record speaks to me more and more and more. It barely missed the personal top 20 I submitted to @BlueHammer85 a number of months ago, but now I think it’s firmly there.

This is one of the all-time classics of alt/indie, groundbreaking, rightly adored by nearly every important music critic . . . yet it didn’t get enough votes from the great unwashed to displace the fucking Grease soundtrack.

Well, as The Replacements sing on “Favorite Thing”, “I don’t give a single shit.”

Happy listening!

PS. And yes — the band members picked the album name after deciding to title it after “the next song that comes on the radio” while they were sitting in their manager’s car. That just makes me love it all the more.
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Its been put on my playlist. I have a long 350 mile drive today :-).

I have taken the Jackson Five off.
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
The Album Review Club – Week #2

Let It Be – The Replacements (1984)

Selected by FogBlueInSanFran

View attachment 27561

Thanks, @RobMCFC, for starting this thread and selecting me for a review.

I love The Who’s Quadrophenia because it’s a story about a misfit kid trying to make his way in a world he feels is hopelessly stacked against him. When we were teenagers, I bet we almost all felt that way sometimes. We were also alternatively euphoric, depressed, weird, serious, ashamed, uncomfortable, embarrassed, brave, immature, goofy and introspective day to day and hour to hour.

The record I’ve chosen is a reflection of all those conflicts and mix-ups. It’s Let It Be by The Replacements, whom Rolling Stone once labeled as “the greatest band that never was.”

The Mats, as aficionados know them, were a ragged, semi-talented garage band who crawled out from under Minneapolis in the early 1980s. They were better known for their disastrous drunken stage performances than anything else. But in 1984, they released this complete U-turn.

Let It Be is, in a word, schizophrenic. It’s punk, then pop, then “classic” rock, then I-guess-you’d-call-it-country, then blues piano.

It's very much unlike The Lonesome Jubilee, which always knows where it’s going. This is a record with attention deficit disorder. It’s tight but messy; it has hooks and melody but it has noise; even its beauty has “rings around” its eyes. Tempos speed up, then slow down; instruments change mid-song. “We’re Comin’ Out”, for example, starts as thrash punk, then slows down to a lone piano and finger snaps, then speeds up again before devolving into cacophony.

But I love all the contradictions, conflicts and mix-ups here — they work because the record itself is about the contradictions, conflicts and mix-ups inherent in growing up. And The Replacements themselves were growing up.

All along, Let It Be maintains a sense of humo(u)r and never takes itself too seriously. And yeah — you can play it super loud. Really, really loud if you want.

“I Will Dare” sets up the tone of confusion right off — “How young are you? / How old am I?”, Paul Westerberg sings (warning: he only sort of sings) as he strums along, and then the record moves from age to age, topic to topic and style to style. I’m going to bounce around too, since The Replacements do.

There’s an ahead-of-its-time, and even touching, tribute to gender non-conforming kids. Before that, there's a fairly amusing song about a tonsillectomy told from the point of view of the doctor (“Let’s get this over with / I tee off in an hour”). Right afterwards, just to fuck with things more, they cover Kiss.

They diss “that phony rock and roll” on MTV (“Seen Your Video”) on the one hand, and complain about a girlfriend’s answering machine on the other (talk about relating!). There are two radically different paeans to sexual awkwardness: one for girls (“Sixteen Blue”) and one for boys (“Gary’s Got A Boner”).

In short — this is a record that always keeps you off balance.

But in the middle, crowning and cementing it all, is “Unsatisfied”, one of my very favo(u)rite songs of all time, and as important an anthem in tribute to young adults as “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. I see it as prophetic, a nod to the pro-Gen X, anti-baby boomer conflict that overwhelmed (white) American pop music seven years later when Kurt Cobain became a reluctant spokesperson for his generation.

Over the last few years, as I’ve watched my own kids become teenagers, and as I get older and my own teenage years fade hazily into the distance, this record speaks to me more and more and more. It barely missed the personal top 20 I submitted to @BlueHammer85 a number of months ago, but now I think it’s firmly there.

This is one of the all-time classics of alt/indie, groundbreaking, rightly adored by nearly every important music critic . . . yet it didn’t get enough votes from the great unwashed to displace the fucking Grease soundtrack.

Well, as The Replacements sing on “Favorite Thing”, “I don’t give a single shit.”

Happy listening!

PS. And yes — the band members picked the album name after deciding to title it after “the next song that comes on the radio” while they were sitting in their manager’s car. That just makes me love it all the more.
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Eloquent as ever, and your write-up hits exactly the spot I was thinking of when I started this thread. It'll be great if over the next few weeks and months we get a real scattergun of styles and we can all find out what makes each other tick musically. No doubt we''ll also find out what grinds each other gears as well!

Your comment about the album not being in the top 20 you submitted a few months ago but it is now struck a chord with me. I always loved The Lonesome Jubilee, and it was probably always in my top 10, but even though I bought it a mere 18 months after getting into music, it took a good 10 or 15 years to gradually replace other albums that at one time or another had been my favourite.

Although I have heard of both The Replacements and Paul Westerberg, I have never heard their music, so I'm looking forward to listening to the album this week. Hopefully it will bring out closet Replacement fans who can let us in on their appreciation of the album.
 
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