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Albums you've really tried to love...


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Everything from 'Everything must Go' onwards by the Manic Street Preachers.  Absolutely loved them when there were four people in the band, now they just sound like a preachy (ha) Coldplay.

See also everything post 'Mother's Milk' by the RHCP! 

 

Both of these i guess are the points at which bands for 'weirdos' that you would get beaten up for liking, suddenly changed their style and went mainstream!

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Took me 20 years to understand Jeff Beck and love whatever he did and still is doing. That happened one day, in the late 90's, when a friend of mine had me listen to Got the Feeling from the The Jeff Beck Group album Rough and Ready (1971) : that was it, he wasn't playing notes (out of tune) for playing notes (out of tune) but making music. I listened to the whole album and started buying the other ones. We even saw him twice with my wife over here which some kind of feat as he doesn't tour that much in continental Europe.

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Everything Rancid have done post-Indestructible, and even that was a bit hit and miss. It's a shame as the albums that preceeded it are spectacular, but it's been downhill from there.

I don't know if it's age, wealth or the breakdown of Tim and Brody's marriage, but they just don't write albums like they used to.

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1 minute ago, Frank Blank said:

Agreement with lots of this.

Manic Street Preachers - I dislike anything after Everything Must Go.

The Fall - Does not compute.

The Manics - find catchy title, repeat ad nauseum.

The Fall - agreed, sh!t singer with mediocre musicians. 

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9 hours ago, martthebass said:

They lost me at Permanent Waves......

Goes with their need to always be progressive. Likewise, I tried and tried with the more recent "back on form" albums as I've loved nearly every album with the exception of Presto. I like the fact that they've moved on and not taken me with them rather than have fourteen repeats of earlier re-incarnations.

 

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On 03/07/2018 at 12:31, miles'tone said:

Don Fagan - The Nightfly.

Essential listening apparently for it's incredible musicianship but I find it really bland.

Given it many a chance but gave it away in the end. 

For many years when I heard people talking about Donald Fagan  I genuinely thought they were referring to this guy. I just assumed that he had a vast back catalogue of stuff that I'd never heard.

it's only quite recently that I realised my error.

Edited by Cato
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Okay, just a few for now: 

Radiohead: Hail to the Thief - I can listen to each track individually and think 'this is pretty great', but when I listen to the whole album, after about three songs my brain goes 'this is depressing boring stuff'.

Black Sabbath: Heaven and Hell - I like Dio, I love all Sabbath albums prior to Never Say Die, but I just don't like this album. 

Nirvana: Nevermind - I know it is an absolute classic, but it is one of those albums where the songs were so ingrained in my head at a young age, that by the time I actually listened to the album, the whole album was too familiar to me to really enjoy it. Not the album's fault. 

Biffy Clyro: Vertigo of Bliss - an ex girlfriend gave me a copy when it came out. I tried to like it, but I just never could never listen to the whole album in full. The album starts starts with  Bodies in Flight, which has an intro which is initially very similar to Tip your Bartender by Glassjaw from 'Worship and Tribute'. I loved that Glassjaw album, so the Biffy album was getting unfair comparisons from the start. 

Metallica - St Anger - I listen to this every year just to check whether I am missing something and it is actually an under appreciated classic. I still think it is terrible, but I will keep listening to it just in case. To date it is on of my most listened to albums and I still think it is mostly terrible.

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14 hours ago, Frank Blank said:

Agreement with lots of this.

Manic Street Preachers - I dislike anything after Everything Must Go.

Bob Dylan - Just can’t abide his voice.

The Fall - Does not compute.

...and don’t get me started on Dire Straits.

Someone said here the MSP were a preach yColdplay. Bang on the money.  Thought I should give some of their more highly rated albums a go but they all irritated the fook out of me, the vocals, the lyrics. Kin awful.

The Fall. I used to be a keen Peel listener but never could understand his love of The Fall. Gave several of their earlier efforts a go to figure out what he saw in them then i concluded he must have been be partially tone deaf. Just amateurish tosh.

Dire Straits  - on the plus side I still really like MK's guitar playing . It was a welcome alternative to the army of rock guitar dullards of the time. Then came Brothers in Arms  which was relatively devoid of the classy playing on the previous albums and had some of the most irritating tunes of the 80s e.g. Walk of Life and Money for Nothing

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See, everyone is saying Jaco, but a lot of his stuff was really great, really progressive.  Yeah, absolutely some of it was little more than 'aren't I so great' intellectual masturbation, as one of my former music teachers put it (admittedly about John Cage, but the same description applies) but some of it is really getting the bass to sing like I'm not sure anyone else has.

James Taylor leaves me wondering WTF a little bit - perhaps its just my age, being an 80s kid.  And Space Cowboy (sorry Stuart) leaves me a little bit cold.  Emergency,  Funk Odyssey and Travelling - great - but Space Cowboy not so great.  In fact, arguably the best track isn't even on there - the Dave Morales Club Classic mix of Space Cowboy.

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16 minutes ago, Bobzilla said:

See, everyone is saying Jaco, but a lot of his stuff was really great, really progressive.  Yeah, absolutely some of it was little more than 'aren't I so great' intellectual masturbation, as one of my former music teachers put it (admittedly about John Cage, but the same description applies) but some of it is really getting the bass to sing like I'm not sure anyone else has.

James Taylor leaves me wondering WTF a little bit - perhaps its just my age, being an 80s kid.  And Space Cowboy (sorry Stuart) leaves me a little bit cold.  Emergency,  Funk Odyssey and Travelling - great - but Space Cowboy not so great.  In fact, arguably the best track isn't even on there - the Dave Morales Club Classic mix of Space Cowboy.

I acknowledge Jaco's influence on the bass in the same way I recognise Kraftwerk for their pioneering  in electronica. It's just that i don't really like much of the music either made, preferring what was done by their successors. I generally can't abide jazz-rock (as opposed to jazz funk, which I largely enjoy) which is what most of Jaco's music is. There are scores of other bass players i'd much rather listen to for inspiration

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Percy Jones was (and still is) way more interesting than Jaco Pastorius, but he was British, not American, so not selfish and not playing louder than the other members of the band. He also had nothing to prove to anybody as Brand X had enough notoriety for their members.

That said, I like Weather Report when the 'Phons was on bass, ahead of his time in his approach, but without that “hey look, that's me playing“ bad habit of Jaco Pastorius. 

I'm a fretless player, but my main influences are Percy Jones and Mick Karn, and I'm proud of it.

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52 minutes ago, Bobzilla said:

See, everyone is saying Jaco, but a lot of his stuff was really great, really progressive.  Yeah, absolutely some of it was little more than 'aren't I so great' intellectual masturbation, as one of my former music teachers put it (admittedly about John Cage, but the same description applies) but some of it is really getting the bass to sing like I'm not sure anyone else has.

James Taylor leaves me wondering WTF a little bit - perhaps its just my age, being an 80s kid.  And Space Cowboy (sorry Stuart) leaves me a little bit cold.  Emergency,  Funk Odyssey and Travelling - great - but Space Cowboy not so great.  In fact, arguably the best track isn't even on there - the Dave Morales Club Classic mix of Space Cowboy.

But it doesn't matter if it was pure genius if you simply don't like it; his playing never really spoke to me. Speaking personally, I'm never going to knock Jaco as a player (although personally I think his greatest strength is his time/groove rather than the stuff he's more famous for), I just don't like the bulk of his music (exceptions being Okonkole Y Trompa and his stuff on Badia/Boogie Woogie Waltz Medley on 7:30). I can appreciate his playing, but I don't really like it most of the time. You don't have to like something because it's in some way historically significant. FWIW I was never keen on his tone either and if I don't like someone's tone then I'm always going to struggle; after all, sound is a hugely important part of what I enjoy about music.

FWIW I love James Taylor and I also love Space Cowboy.

 

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37 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

I acknowledge Jaco's influence on the bass in the same way I recognise Kraftwerk for their pioneering  in electronica. It's just that i don't really like much of the music either made, preferring what was done by their successors. I generally can't abide jazz-rock (as opposed to jazz funk, which I largely enjoy) which is what most of Jaco's music is. There are scores of other bass players i'd much rather listen to for inspiration

This is very true. Jaco leaves me absolutely cold and yet I recognise him as a great player and a pioneer. Kraftwerk, however, have been a huge inspiration to me over the years, I totally dig them and yet I can understand people who don't.

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2 hours ago, Frank Blank said:

This is very true. Jaco leaves me absolutely cold and yet I recognise him as a great player and a pioneer. Kraftwerk, however, have been a huge inspiration to me over the years, I totally dig them and yet I can understand people who don't.

Same with the Beatles, great songwriters, I mean truly great, but I can't stand their whiney nasal racket...

I have changed my mind about a few bands over the years, I genuinely detested Steely Dan as a youngster, but I find them fascinating now, same is true of Country and Western.... 

No, wait, I still hate Country and Western.

 

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30 minutes ago, WinterMute said:

I have changed my mind about a few bands over the years, I genuinely detested Steely Dan as a youngster, but I find them fascinating now, same is true of Country and Western...

Absolutely the same with Steely Dan, they were my brother’s music but then I became a punk and hated most music that wasn’t punk and especially my brother’s bands. Now I love Steely Dan.

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