It's a leisurely August afternoon in blogger world and I thought I'd try a Devastatin' Dave type post and ask what would be the 10 desert island albums you'd choose if asked by the Department of Homeland Security at gun point.My list just shows how hopelessly mired I am in the past. It was revealing to me really-----hell I'm listening to Blonde On Blonde as I write, "inside the museum infinity goes up on trial", sheesh what a walking anachronism I've finally become.
More recently I bought a great new album by the Black Eyed Peas called Elephunk as well as a newly released collection of George Jones recordings from 1955-62, his golden era in my opinion.
Dylan drones on "and these visions of Johanna are now all that remain" through the speakers and I realize that I'm just as enchanted with this album today as when I first heard it as a young suckling.
"and wouldn't it be my luck
to be caught without a ticket
and to be discovered
beneath the truck?
ohhh mama
can this really be the end,
to be stuck inside of mobile
with the memphis blues again?"
My list at this very moment:
1. Straight, No Chaser - Thelonious Monk 1966
2. Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane - 1957
3. Trouble In Mind - George Jones 1965
4. Thelonious Alone in San Francisco - T. Monk 1959
5. Sleep Dirt - Frank Zappa 1979
6. Solo Monk - T. Monk 1964
7. Bringing It All Back Home - Bob Dylan 1965
8. Population Override - Buckethead 2004
9. War Heroes - Jimi Hendrix 1970
10. Mozart String Quartets K. 387 & 421 - Emerson String Quartet 1991
I'm interested in what ya'll think----especially you Skeeter.
30 comments:
1. Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
2. Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
3. Animals - Pink Floyd
4. The Wall - Pink Floyd
5. The Final Cut - Pink Floyd
Forget Lennon and McCartney, Waters and Gilmour are the duo to be revered. Has any group ever strung together great albums like these? Other than Hendrix, I consider Gilmour to be the best guitarist to ever pick up an ax. As SS put it aptly, Pink Floyd not only has to be considered good music, but also good literature.
6. August and Everything After - Counting Crows
One of the finest debut albums I've ever heard.
7. Save His Soul - Blues Traveller.
John Popper at his songwriting and harp playing best.
8. Some Stupid With a Flaregun - Ass Ponys
9. Lohio - Ass Ponys
Great alternative rock. Chuck Cleaver is one of the best songwriters around.
10. Cure For Pain - Morphine
Fantastic saxaphone-based music. Halcyonic love.
I think with these 10 CDs, some coconuts and Mary Ann(not Ginger)I would get along quite nicely on my desert island.
Beamis! What is it with you and typos in your titles? Please fix it.
This is such a boy thing. I don't have favourite albums and I don't have top 10 lists, but DD is being very insistent so here goes...
Beethoven's 9th.
Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd.
A few cds from The Beautiful South because their music makes me happy and I love to sing along.
Everything by The Who, preferably on vinyl.
Something by the Doors, some Clash, some Velvet Underground, some Grateful Dead. Some X for when I'm pised off.
Maybe I'll think of more later.
pissed off
And some vocal jazz by Yvonne Sanchez, also for the sing along factor.
And obviously Lingers.
MM---I suppose since I'm linked through your sight now I will also be gaining a life coach and spell checker. Thanks for the quality control inherent in being syndicated by MM. DD his own self saw nothing wrong with it.
I'm sorry to be a party pooper 'bout all this, but just the other day Vanessa and I were talking about truly bad and atrocious completely over-rated bands and Pink Floyd came up immediately. With a look of bitter beer face she grimaced "especially Pink Floyd!" The other crap bands were the Doors, U2 and Dave Mathews and much of the Rolling Stones for that matter, puerile nonsense all of it. And with U2 the band is always so busy telling us, oh so busy telling us how very important and historically signifigant they are every chance they get. Methinks she doth protest too much.
I'd go bonkers listening to Pink Floyd on a desert island. David Gilmour has a decent solo album from 1978 called David Gilmour. It's way more enjoyable than any Floyd album I ever listened to.
Honorable mention: many more finely crafted albums by Zappa/Mothers, Randy Newman, Meat Puppets, Bonzo Dog Band, the Kinks, Dean Martin, Captain Beefheart, Buckethead, Miles, Mingus, the Black Eyed Peas and the Supersuckers---not to mention Mozart, Haydn and Bach.
DD---I respect your right to have a taste in music, but think that you're living in a limited past of AOR rock that deified Pink Floyd for their overblown and cheesy pimply hyperbole. Vanessa is rarely wrong about her music.
I need some Kinks too, and Satie and Coldplay (Monkey would be so proud) and some Smiths... Forget the bloody CDs, I need an iPod for my desert island.
Beamis, I can't help it, I'm an editor. But life coach?
And could you please tell the Bit & Spur there are no such things as "organic vegitables". Thanks.
MM---I will tell the Bit when I go to work tonight. I don't mind the editing at all.
The whole idea of albums or of a single work on CD is fast fading into the mists of the past. An iPod really does makes this whole exercise moot.
This is my first and last "list" blog post folks.
Beamis,
You and Vanessa couldn't be more wrong about Pink Floyd. Gilmour's solo albums don't come close to the Pink Floyd albums. They are completely different from all bands, past and present. They weren't like the British Invasion bands of the 60s and they weren't like the arena rock bands of the 70s. Totally unique. And magnificent. Sit down and listen to Animals on headphones and dare to tell me it isn't a great album. I'm giving you and Vanessa a big raspberry.
Unplugged -Alice N Chains
16 Stone - Bush
Waters Edge -7 Mary 3
Self Titled - Third Eye Blind
Fashion Nugget - Cake
Beautiful Freak -Eels
OK Computer -Radio Head
No Fences -Garth Brooks
The Wall -Pink Floyd
Thank You -Stone Temple Pilots
History will vindicate the Ponys. I'm supposedly the one trapped in AOR, yet I realize the brilliance of the Ponys. THPTHPTTPPTTHPPT!
I would just bring pictures of myself doing squats.
Skeeter,
I have 5 AP albums and I listened to them just the other day on my iPod. They are a staple of my musical listening.
Skeeter,
You're just steamed because the song "Little Bastard," from Electric Rock Music, parallels your life.
The Ass Ponys are one of the finest and most original alternative country bands ever. Sort of a cross between the Fugs and Uncle Tupelo with a little Neil Young fuzz thrown in for good measure.
Not one Pink Floyd album comes close to such masterpieces as "One Size Fits All" or "We're Only In It For the Money" by Zappa or even such works as "The Who Sell Out" or "Musewell Hillbillies" by the Kinks.
As far as the music itself there are things out there now by guys like Buckethead, Bill Laswell, Nels Cline and even Wilco who are pushing way beyond the boundaries of what Pink Floyd maybe broke some ground for way back when, and soaring to more exhilirating heights.
It all sounds so dated and worn by all the repeated trumpeting in the mass market media.
Back when Pink Floyd was big I was listening to Zappa, Jimi and the Allmans and pretty much ignored AOR with it's chicken shit ELO pomposity and the candy coated garbage of Styx, Boston and always tightly clad in perfect Levis Bruce Springsteen---a man of the people. He's another celebrity who is always reminding us of how important he thinks he is. Enough with your importance already!
Dark Side of the Moon is the 2nd best selling album of all time, worldwide and is estimated to be owned by 1-14 people, under the age of 50 in the United States.
It has sold over 35 million copies and just passed "Thriller" in total sales.
In 2002 Dark SIde sold 400,000 copies and ranked 200 for record sales that year; 30 yrs after its release.
Dark SIde has spent 741 weeks on the Billboard Charts with a continuous stretch of 591 weeks, a record.
Dark SIde is 15 x's platinum in the US alone
Overrated?
Sinister Steve,
Testify!!!
I need The Pogues as well.
Kenny G sells a lot of albums too, and Cats was the biggest selling stage production ever, big deal! I'm just saying with the perspective of some 25 years time these records are now just cheesy symphonics to me. It never moved me when it came out (I was around then) and I'm still very underwhelmed by it now.
Again, with what I had to choose from in the realm of recorded music back in the day and certainly now Pink Floyd just never comes up in any conversation regarding great music.
They're schlockmeisers who made a mint on AOR. Good for them. Knowing a market is important. They'd never do it today.
Skeeter,
Believe it or not, there are groups out there making music that DON'T appear at Bonaroo.
Beamis,
The statement made earlier is that they were overrated. If they are overrated so are the Yankees, Ali, and Michael Jordon. A band that sells around 100 million albums is not overrated.
You also stated that they wouldnt do that today. Guess you didnt read the part where they sold 400,000 copies 3 yrs ago of an album that was almost 30 yrs old.
Guess Division Bell wasnt that big of of a tour. Considering there were 100,000 people at the Horseshoe at Ohio State during the height of grundge I'm gonna have to disagree there too. Dark Side of the Moon, today, still sells around 8,000 copies a week.
To top it off, not too much later they come out with The Wall and sell another 30 million albums.
SS--I meant overesteemed in talent due to their astronomical sales figures. To me they are the Cats of rock'n roll. With so much to choose from they're just not that appealing to me. It's a taste thing, of course.
Skeeter---the Ass Ponys are a great band. As are others you've never heard of like the Mother Hips, Court and Spark, Banyan, Rising Lion, the Slackers, Billy Bacon and the Forgotten Pigs and many others.
I work at a restraunt/road house that books bands from all over the country, especially the West, and let me tell you there are some incredible musicians out here working and doing creative things.
Your quote "If they are, then it's their own money paying for the production...which may explain some things.." is precisely the point. How do you think Buckethead makes out so well, by doing it in- house by himself. Self-production carrys all the risks but enables you to reap ALL of the rewards. Today many sucessful bands are bypassing the old distribution tube you seem to suckle and have made tidy little careers out of self-production and distribution.
Your immediate arbiter of sucess "I'm the sure Ass-poneys last album went aluminum" is sales figures at the national level. You're missing the point. The Ass Ponys have a dedicated loyal following who will support them as long as they are good. With new technology in the hands of more talented people the old heirarchy will fall and new and more diverse products will appear in the marketplace. Capitalism pure and simple.
Who is your favorite alt. country band?
I'll wade in here....
Yes, Pink Floyd puts me to sleep, and the Ass Ponies are a bit too hick sounding for me, and I'm sorry (really) that I don't 'get' Thelonius Monk or Charlie Parker (I respect 'em, but don't find repeated listenings of their work particularly pleasurable), but I'm sure you all will hate some of my favorites, too. My favorites change with time, and some of the albums I once thought indispensable seem rather trite to me today. So, I refrain from an all-time best, but here are 10 artists I am listening to these days:
Split Lip Rayfield
Beck
Alison Krauss & Union Station
DJ Harry
Lucinda Williams
Todd Snider
The Shins
Euphoria
Kathleen Edwards
Jack Johnson
Joe Cocker
Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer
(My list goes to 12....)
As for some of the artists already mentioned, I would say "Yeah, but..." to some of the comments made. For instance, "The Stones are lame and overrated." Yeah, but... "Shattered" is a kick-ass song (no?). "U2 is self-inflated." Yeah, but... "War" is a pretty great and groundbreaking record, and yeah, "Bullet the Blue Sky" is a pretty good song from Joshua Tree, but "One Tree Hill" is better. I can understand complaints about Boston and ELO, but I can still listen to Boston's debut album and ELO's "A New World Record" with fondness. Another from that era was Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album. I still think it's a great one, and the follow-up, Tusk, was as good, and underrated. The soundtrack of my high school years also includes all those early hits from Chicago, back before Terry Kath shot himself playing Russian Roulette, and Peter Cetera took over the band. And, another album that I will crank way up whenever I hear it while channel-surfing the FM dial: Frampton Comes Alive. I haven't heard anything before or since that better captured an artist and his audience making a totally intimate connection.
Oh, and the Eagles suck.
Nice call on the Pogues, MM. They issued a stinker now and then, but when they were on, they were ON.
Beamis said:
"MM---I suppose since I'm linked through your sight now I will also be gaining a ... spell checker."
That would be "site."
Burn!! Good one, Aud.
Honorable mentions:
Patty Griffin
Mindy Smith
John Prine
Hot Rize
Solas
Bela Fleck & the Flecktones' "Live Art" album
And some artists I enjoy live, but whose recorded stuff I don't like as much:
Wilco
String Cheese Incident
Natalie MacMaster
Ben Harper
Aud---It was a double entendre dude.
It don't bother me none Skeeter. I wasn't trying to convince you of anything.
Who's your favorite alternative country band? Who do you like to go see when they're in town?
Did ya'll know that Beck is a very serious Scientologist?
I'm always looking for new acts to try out. I agree about Hank the 3rd, his second album is fantastic. Never seen him.
The Supersuckers did a fantastic country set followed by a punk blasting second set at the Bit & Spur last year which was one of the best shows I've ever seen.
It's true about labels these days.
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