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The Beat - I Just Can't Stop It The Specials - The Specials The Cult - Dreamtime U2 - Under A Blood Red Sky Stereophonics - Word Gets Around and/or Just Enough Education To Perform Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Cosmos Factory - Creedence (one good track after another and another, only low point was the elongated Grapevine track) Days Of Future Passed - Moody Blues (great concept, groundbreaking) In The Wake Of Posiedon - King Crimson (love the mellotron on title track) And some great early Christian albums: Chuck Girard - self-titled album (Chuck was former lead singer with The Hondells and known for his falsetto voice a la Beach Boys) Seeds - Barry Maguire (had a huge hit with Eve Of Destruction). I think all the above are great even 50 years on...
Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables Just the five tracks you say? Take your pick
01.Kill the Poor 02.Forward to Death 03.When Ya Get Drafted 04.Let's Lynch the Landlord 05.Drug Me 06.Your Emotions 07.Chemical Warfare 08.California Ueber Alles 09.I Kill Children 10.Stealing People's Mail 11.Funland at the Beach 12.Ill in the Head 13.Holiday in Cambodia 14.Viva Las Vegas
Personal favs.. Public Enemy- It takes a nation of millions to Hold us Back The Prodigy- Fat of the Land Leftfield - Leftism. ( one for Baz.;) Chemical Brothers - Exit Planet Dust DJ Shadow- Endtroducing Liam Howletts - Dirt chambers vol 1,2 Moby - Play Fatboy Slim- You've come a long way baby. Bomb the Bass - Into the Dragon I really liked U2 Rattle and Hum as well back in the day. Prince - Batman..
Entertainment- The Gang of Four Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys The Smiths - The Smiths Love Bites - Buzzcocks The Scream - Siouxsie and the Banshees New Boots and Panties - Ian Dury
and as already mentioned Clash Dark Side and Physical Graffiti
Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables Just the five tracks you say? Take your pick
01.Kill the Poor 02.Forward to Death 03.When Ya Get Drafted 04.Let's Lynch the Landlord 05.Drug Me 06.Your Emotions 07.Chemical Warfare 08.California Ueber Alles 09.I Kill Children 10.Stealing People's Mail 11.Funland at the Beach 12.Ill in the Head 13.Holiday in Cambodia 14.Viva Las Vegas
Ah WHAT a good choice!
Holiday In Cambodia is one of the greatest songs ever.
I've got a slightly different take on what makes a classic album - I think it's got to be an album i.e. a set of songs that hang together.
It might be there's a theme (Dark Side of the Moon has it), or it might be the overall feel, (Joni Mitchell's debut Song To A Seagull hasn't a single song on it that make sit onto her Hits compilation or even on the Misses companion, even though she'd already written a couple of songs that do, but boy does it take you into the world of a Canadian youngster pitching up in late 60s California.) "Rumours" is chock full of great tunes of its sort but it is the sense that you're listening in on the painful collapse of a set of private lives without quite knowing the details that gives it its title and makes it a classic album IMO.
It might be a bloody big statement - Never Mind the Bollocks was pretty much the whole of punk in one album, they said it and then just pissed off. Blondie's Parallel Lines blows your socks off too.
On a classic album even the "lesser" tunes need to be there as part of the overall feel, maybe to slow things down and make space before the next big high, so I'm a bit dubious about the "no bad songs" rule, it depends a bit on what you mean by bad.
Bowie and Kate Bush did it time and time again - anything by Bowie from Space Oddity to Heroes (except Man Who Sold the World) qualifies IMO, maybe Scary Monsters too - after that he's more into Brian's original criteria, you're counting the good songs and setting them against the bad and I don't think any of them qualify though Let's Dance is close. Then right at the end Dark Star is a classic on my criteria but not on Brian's.
Oh, one last thing: a classic on album needs a proper running order.
Really it needs to be on vinyl, to force editing down to 40 minutes (or deliberate decision to go all out for a sprawl double or treble album like The Clash) and thought about opening and closing tracks. (Also: Album covers!)
IMO Rumours should be played B side first so that it starts with the slow build-up of The Chain before cutting loose with the F1 theme in the second half of that track, winding down with Gold Dust Woman to give you time for a cup of tea in the interval, then blasting off again with 2nd Hand News, keeping the show-stopping Don't Stop and Go Your Own Way for the end of the show, and then the tender Songbird by way of a closer. If you get the re-issue you can have the triffic Silver Springs as an encore.
Entertainment- The Gang of Four Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys The Smiths - The Smiths Love Bites - Buzzcocks The Scream - Siouxsie and the Banshees New Boots and Panties - Ian Dury
and as already mentioned Clash Dark Side and Physical Graffiti
A big tick from me for Gang of Four, Love Bites and the Scream which I think is arguably the best punk album.
S.A.W. 1 - Aphex Twin (Obvs) Lexicon of Love - ABC (best 'pop' album) Closer - Joy Division Signing Off - UB40 Scott 4 - Scott Walker Born in the UK - Badly Drawn Boy Technique - New Order Live at the Witch Trials - The Fall
These aren't classics as defined by Brian by the way, just in my mind.
I've got a slightly different take on what makes a classic album - I think it's got to be an album i.e. a set of songs that hang together.
It might be there's a theme (Dark Side of the Moon has it), or it might be the overall feel, (Joni Mitchell's debut Song To A Seagull hasn't a single song on it that make sit onto her Hits compilation or even on the Misses companion, even though she'd already written a couple of songs that do, but boy does it take you into the world of a Canadian youngster pitching up in late 60s California.) "Rumours" is chock full of great tunes of its sort but it is the sense that you're listening in on the painful collapse of a set of private lives without quite knowing the details that gives it its title and makes it a classic album IMO.
It might be a bloody big statement - Never Mind the Bollocks was pretty much the whole of punk in one album, they said it and then just pissed off. Blondie's Parallel Lines blows your socks off too.
On a classic album even the "lesser" tunes need to be there as part of the overall feel, maybe to slow things down and make space before the next big high, so I'm a bit dubious about the "no bad songs" rule, it depends a bit on what you mean by bad.
Bowie and Kate Bush did it time and time again - anything by Bowie from Space Oddity to Heroes (except Man Who Sold the World) qualifies IMO, maybe Scary Monsters too - after that he's more into Brian's original criteria, you're counting the good songs and setting them against the bad and I don't think any of them qualify though Let's Dance is close. Then right at the end Dark Star is a classic on my criteria but not on Brian's.
Good post, Rosie.
I get that, too.
Agree that feel and/or a theme is hugely important, too.
"The opposite of love, after all, is not hate, but indifference."
Erpland by Ozric Tentacles, an absolute beast of an album, from a band which is pretty much in a genre all of its own.
Reggae, space rock, ambient, ethnic, electronic instrumental, jazz: It's all in there in an utterly intoxicating brew. The first track below contains, on its own, an album's worth of ideas floating around in an other worldly soup.
This live version is way better than the studio version on "Erpland"
"Things had started becoming increasingly desperate at Loftus Road but QPR have been handed a massive lifeline and the place has absolutely erupted. it's carnage. It's bedlam. It's 1-1."
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