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Post by berkley on Feb 18, 2021 1:22:38 GMT -5
I thnk the viability of Greatest Hits albums very much depends on the individual artist: some bands - most obviously bands with a lot of hit singles - one can,yes, get a good introduction to them with a Best of album. But others, even some that have had good singles chart performances, aren't well-served by the Greatest Hits format, in my experience - I would cite Roxy Music as an example, beyond the more obvious "album bands", the prog-rock genre as a whole, etc. Roxy always springs to mind with this question becuase I remember recommending them to a few friends in the early 80s and they were so completely unimpressed by the Best of package. To me they were all such incontrovertibly great songs, I was more puzzled than disappointed - though of course we're always disappointed to some degree when one our recommemdations falls flat. But then I started to think about how different their experience with those songs were to mine: I had heard and loved Virginia Plain in the context of that particular album, (Roxy Music's 1st, self-titled) in the middle of an album with its own ebb and flow, its own sound, its own personality, different to all the other Roxy albums. They had heard it mixed up with other tracks from other albums, and my guess is that the whole thing didn't really mesh together, that each song sounded like an isolated entity, with a jarring transition from one to the next. Or maybe they just didn't like it, who knows?! It was bizarre to me how on the Rolling Stones compilation of career-spanning 40 hits, it hits a point where someone has flipped a switch and they go from sounding good to sounding just awful. The difference in styles over decades is far more pronounced when you listen to cherry-picked samples from different musical eras, so I second the greatest hits format being hit and miss for some bands. It also depends on how it's done. Career-spanning versus, say, best from early period, then another best of middle period, etc. In my general and anecdotal experience, compilations of bands who started in the 60s and 70s but survived and produced into the 80s and 90s are typically not well served by a career-spanning greatest hits format. Hot Rocks I & II are good Stones compilations, as is Through the Past, Darkly, but as you say, they only cover the 60s and early 70s. For me they kind of lost their way after Mick Taylor left, though I still like the next couple of albums after that, Black and Blue and Some Girls. They really went donwhill fast after that though. From memory, I only liked one track on Emotional Rescue - the Keith Richards ballad, All About You.
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Post by impulse on Feb 18, 2021 9:52:35 GMT -5
A lot of it is not their fault, per se. The style of music production, the sound aesthetics, and types of songs that were popular changed, and a lot of bands were left with no-win scenarios. Keep doing what you know although that is not what sells anymore (and you may already have your best work of this kind behind you) or try to adapt and do the new thing with varying levels of success. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes they get accused selling out, but if they don't change they get accused of saying the same etc.
But some groups pull it off! No doubt.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
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Post by Confessor on Feb 19, 2021 5:45:09 GMT -5
It was bizarre to me how on the Rolling Stones compilation of career-spanning 40 hits, it hits a point where someone has flipped a switch and they go from sounding good to sounding just awful. The difference in styles over decades is far more pronounced when you listen to cherry-picked samples from different musical eras, so I second the greatest hits format being hit and miss for some bands. It also depends on how it's done. Career-spanning versus, say, best from early period, then another best of middle period, etc. In my general and anecdotal experience, compilations of bands who started in the 60s and 70s but survived and produced into the 80s and 90s are typically not well served by a career-spanning greatest hits format. Hot Rocks I & II are good Stones compilations, as is Through the Past, Darkly, but as you say, they only cover the 60s and early 70s. For me they kind of lost their way after Mick Taylor left, though I still like the next couple of albums after that, Black and Blue and Some Girls. They really went donwhill fast after that though. From memory, I only liked one track on Emotional Rescue - the Keith Richards ballad, All About You. I feel that the last great Rolling Stones album was Exile on Main St. from 1972. The next couple of albums ( Goats Head Soup and It's Only Rock 'n' Roll) had their moments, sure, but they were patchy overall. After that, it's really only the song "Start Me Up" from 1981 that I have any time for. Though I love their classic '60s and early '70s output, I am firmly of the opinion that the Rolling Stones haven't ptroduced anything of any real note since "Start Me Up" in 1981 - 40 years ago!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2021 8:31:03 GMT -5
Hot Rocks I & II are good Stones compilations, as is Through the Past, Darkly, but as you say, they only cover the 60s and early 70s. For me they kind of lost their way after Mick Taylor left, though I still like the next couple of albums after that, Black and Blue and Some Girls. They really went donwhill fast after that though. From memory, I only liked one track on Emotional Rescue - the Keith Richards ballad, All About You. I feel that the last great Rolling Stones album was Exile on Main St. from 1972. The next couple of albums ( Goats Head Soup and It's Only Rock 'n' Roll) had their moments, sure, but they were patchy overall. After that, it's really only the song "Start Me Up" from 1981 that I have any time for. Though I love their classic '60s and early '70s output, I am firmly of the opinion that the Rolling Stones haven't ptroduced anything of any real note since "Start Me Up" in 1981 - 40 years ago! I agree with the 1972 cutoff for Stones excellence, but I like just a bit more of their latter-day output. I still listen to their Stripped album (another entry in the '90s "unplugged" fad), and the "Love Is Strong" single from the mid-90s is pretty good, plus a few other singles.
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Post by impulse on Feb 19, 2021 8:34:46 GMT -5
They had their share of good songs now and then after the 70s, but they definitely no longer put out albums worth of great material IMO.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 24, 2021 9:52:16 GMT -5
Following the recommendation of Sam Wilson in The Winter Soldier, I'm listening to Trouble Man's soundtrack by Marvin Gaye. It is indeed pretty good.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 24, 2021 10:20:19 GMT -5
Following the recommendation of Sam Wilson in The Winter Soldier, I'm listening to Trouble Man's soundtrack by Marvin Gaye. It is indeed pretty good. That was Gaye's next release after "What's Going On," which I might argue was the best album of the 70s. It's a very solid soundtrack album and was a great opportunity for Gaye to spread out in other directions. Sandwiched between two stone-cold classics like "What's Going On" and "Let's Get it On" it tends to get forgotten.
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Post by berkley on Feb 24, 2021 12:05:11 GMT -5
Hot Rocks I & II are good Stones compilations, as is Through the Past, Darkly, but as you say, they only cover the 60s and early 70s. For me they kind of lost their way after Mick Taylor left, though I still like the next couple of albums after that, Black and Blue and Some Girls. They really went donwhill fast after that though. From memory, I only liked one track on Emotional Rescue - the Keith Richards ballad, All About You. I feel that the last great Rolling Stones album was Exile on Main St. from 1972. The next couple of albums ( Goats Head Soup and It's Only Rock 'n' Roll) had their moments, sure, but they were patchy overall. After that, it's really only the song "Start Me Up" from 1981 that I have any time for. Though I love their classic '60s and early '70s output, I am firmly of the opinion that the Rolling Stones haven't ptroduced anything of any real note since "Start Me Up" in 1981 - 40 years ago!
And that song was actually something they retrieved from an older, unused recording of theirs, like most of the Tattoo You album, wasn't it?
Actually, looking it up on wiki, I see that it was only from 1978, so not as old as I'd thought - it really does sound like it could have come from their classic period, though. I like Little T&A from that album too, in spite of the questionable title. Richards's solo tracks are almost always amongst my favourites on any of the Stones albums I'm familiar with.
I love Goat's Head Soup and It's Only RocknRoll, though the latter is slightly marred for me by the production, which resulted in a sound that feels a little over-slick to my ears. Black and Blue and Some Girls are very patchy but for me they're each split about half and half between very good and mediocre tracks - not much I really despise on them, apart from the title song of Some Girls, perhaps. And some out and out classics, e.g. Memory Motel, from Black and Blue.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Feb 24, 2021 13:40:53 GMT -5
Following the recommendation of Sam Wilson in The Winter Soldier, I'm listening to Trouble Man's soundtrack by Marvin Gaye. It is indeed pretty good. That was Gaye's next release after "What's Going On," which I might argue was the best album of the 70s. It's a very solid soundtrack album and was a great opportunity for Gaye to spread out in other directions. Sandwiched between two stone-cold classics like "What's Going On" and "Let's Get it On" it tends to get forgotten. Marvin Gaye was a huge talent, but for me Trouble Man is where my interest in his music wanes. I fully agree that What's Goin' On is one of the best albums of the '70s and it's also Gaye's crowning artistic achievement, as far as I'm concerned. The thing with Trouble Man is that a lot of it is pretty nondescript, with an over-abundance of instrumental tracks that just sound like incidental music from a Blaxsploitation movie -- which is exactly what they are, of course. I dunno, maybe it's unfair to compare the album to What's Goin' On because it is first and foremost a film soundtrack and not a proper album, after all. But for me, it's not an album I've ever felt the need to own. After Trouble Man, you get the rise of what I call "sexy Marvin" with the Let's Get It On album. While that's an interesting album musically, it's material doesn't come close to What's Goin' On for me and Gaye's over-the-top sexual histrionics get, at best, wearing over the course of a whole record, and at worst, frankly embarrassing. The whole "sexy Marvin" thing culminates for me in the shockingly bad "Sexual Healing" from 1982 -- a song guaranteed to make my toes curl in cringe-induced agony. 1960s pop soul Marvin and early 1970s political Marvin are killer though. No doubts there.
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Post by berkley on Feb 24, 2021 14:32:42 GMT -5
My appreciation of Marvin Gaye is pretty much limited to What's Goin' On, with the disclaimer that I haven't actually listened to much else apart from the radio hits, so it's the only album I really know well. Even the 60s stuff doesn't really grab me all that much. I don't mind it, but it isn't up there with my favourite r&b artists of the era, e.g. Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett.
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Post by berkley on Feb 24, 2021 14:36:21 GMT -5
BTW, doesn't it seem that the What are You Listening to Now and Music Notes threads have somehow exchanged their content, with the latter now mostly containing music videos and the former, this thread, general discussion? I thought it was meant to be the reverse!
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Post by impulse on Feb 24, 2021 14:40:18 GMT -5
Discussion follows postings etc. 🤷♂️ If it's just literally a list of what you are listening to without any context or chatter it would get old fast, no? I am sure it will naturally settle back into that soon enough.
Case in point, I am listening to 90s Green Day: Dookie and Insomniac. When the punky teen angst was authentic!
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 24, 2021 14:44:10 GMT -5
BTW, doesn't it seem that the What are You Listening to Now and Music Notes threads have somehow exchanged their content, with the latter now mostly containing music videos and the former, this thread, general discussion? I thought it was meant to be the reverse! A lot of that is me. And it isn't actually what I'm listening to at the moment. I'm not sure the two couldn't be merged in to a general music thread. But that's me.
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Post by berkley on Feb 24, 2021 14:49:33 GMT -5
BTW, doesn't it seem that the What are You Listening to Now and Music Notes threads have somehow exchanged their content, with the latter now mostly containing music videos and the former, this thread, general discussion? I thought it was meant to be the reverse! A lot of that is me. And it isn't actually what I'm listening to at the moment. I'm not sure the two couldn't be merged in to a general music thread. But that's me.
Yeah, I don't think it really matters much, just thought it was funny how the two threads have switched characters. Ish Kabibble was the one who really kept the Music Notes one on track with his regular overviews of different years in music and so on.
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Post by Duragizer on Feb 27, 2021 1:32:13 GMT -5
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