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Greetings thread, Was curious where the best jumping off places for Kate Bush and Common would be Thanks in advance.
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Jul 7, 2015 06:08
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Most people would probably say either Like Water For Chocolate or Resurrection for Common, but I think Be is his only really great album, in large part because of Kanye's production.
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Jul 7, 2015 06:29
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My first real exposure to him was Resurrection, and boyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy is that some incredible poo poo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C99iG4HoO1c
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Jul 7, 2015 06:43
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That Guy From Pearldiver posted:Kate Bush
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Jul 7, 2015 08:26
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That Guy From Pearldiver posted:Greetings thread, Absolutely start with Hounds of Love for Kate, though The Dreaming wouldn't be a bad starting point either
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Jul 7, 2015 11:56
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Where do I start with David Bowie?
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Jul 19, 2015 15:33
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Kvlt! posted:Where do I start with David Bowie? Glam era: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars Berlin trilogy: "Heroes"
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Jul 19, 2015 15:50
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Henchman of Santa posted:Glam era: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars If you like Ziggy Stardust, try Aladdin Sane. If you like Heroes, try Low then Station to Station.
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Jul 19, 2015 16:02
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Kvlt! posted:Where do I start with David Bowie? I would say with someone who has a career as wide and varied as David Bowie that maybe a comprehensive greatest hits set would be a good place to start, since it's hard to know exactly what's going to appeal to you. The fact is, the work on Scary Monsters is rather different than the work on "Heroes" which is rather different than Ziggy Stardust. Also, it'd be a good way to get tracks like "Time Will Crawl," which are really good but come from God-awful albums. It's just too hard to say "If you start with Ziggy Stardust and move on from there, you'll like him a lot." He just goes in a lot of wild and different directions. There are some people that respond to only certain eras of Bowie, and then there are others who love the entire catalog. This is a good way to figure out how to start. me your dad posted:I'm ignorant of Elvis Costello. I'd like to explore beyond his well known songs. With Elvis Costello, the albums others listed were good. I also recommend Imperial Bedroom and Blood and Chocolate. Imperial Bedroom has a nice big sound, and is a big step for Costello. The songs are also pretty tight, with great stuff like "Man Out Of Time" and "Human Hands" that show that his wordplay and way with a melody are still as strong as ever. Blood and Chocolate is an absolutely brutal album. The music itself is a little more tougher than Costello's usually is, but it is never rougher than garage rock. But the lyrics on the other hands are just filled with venom and pain. Take "I Hope That You're Happy Now," which is about a man murdering his lover, saying "I know this will hurt you more than it hurts me." Or "I Want You" which is really disarming in it's quietness. It just increases the tension of the song. I'll always wager that Blood and Chocolate is his best album, and if you want to start with him, you should include that album in your initial collection.
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Jul 19, 2015 16:56
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Cemetry Gator posted:I would say with someone who has a career as wide and varied as David Bowie that maybe a comprehensive greatest hits set would be a good place to start, since it's hard to know exactly what's going to appeal to you. The fact is, the work on Scary Monsters is rather different than the work on "Heroes" which is rather different than Ziggy Stardust. Also, it'd be a good way to get tracks like "Time Will Crawl," which are really good but come from God-awful albums. It's just too hard to say "If you start with Ziggy Stardust and move on from there, you'll like him a lot." He just goes in a lot of wild and different directions. There are some people that respond to only certain eras of Bowie, and then there are others who love the entire catalog. This is a good way to figure out how to start. This is good advice.
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Jul 19, 2015 18:48
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I think this is the most relevant thread to ask this in. Assuming I have all the studio albums from The Smiths and The Cure what compilations would I need to round out their collections? Mainly looking for some of the bigger singles that never made it onto the albums.
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Jul 23, 2015 23:12
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Traveller In Time posted:I think this is the most relevant thread to ask this in. Assuming I have all the studio albums from The Smiths and The Cure what compilations would I need to round out their collections? Mainly looking for some of the bigger singles that never made it onto the albums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_a_Beach and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join_the_Dots:_B-Sides_%26_Rarities_1978%E2%80%932001_%28The_Fiction_Years%29 gets you most of the way there for The Cure. They had a ridiculous number of remixes, some of which don't show up here. hexwren fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Jul 23, 2015 |
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Jul 23, 2015 23:45
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Traveller In Time posted:I think this is the most relevant thread to ask this in. Assuming I have all the studio albums from The Smiths and The Cure what compilations would I need to round out their collections? Mainly looking for some of the bigger singles that never made it onto the albums. For the Smiths, welcome to the hell that is Morrissey. So, Louder than Bombs was a double LP released for the US market that collects most of the non-BBC radio stuff from Hatful of Hollow alongside the non-album stuff from the World Won't Listen, minus "How Soon is Now" because that was on the American version of Meat is Murder, which you may or may not have. So Louder than Bombs will get you there. However, that still leaves out a few tracks. For example, the B-side Jeane, which was released on the back of "This Charming Man" is available on the Sound of the Smiths deluxe edition. Hatful of Hollow has a bunch of BBC radio sessions, though many of the unique songs that weren't on previous albums appear on Louder. The World Won't Listen has an alternate mix of "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby" and a different set of lyrics to "Stretch Out and Wait." And the first disc of The Sound of the Smiths has yet another version of "You Just Haven't..." that runs at a different speed. But let's face it, you got that compilation because you need Jeane. And the 12" single remix of "This Charming Man," which you don't REALLY need, but you should get. Of course, you'll also need to track down the Sweet and Tender Hooligan single to get "Work is a Four Letter Word" and "I Keep Mine Hidden." The first of which was the song that played a big role in breaking up the band. And if you want the original single mix of "Ask," well, you're in luck because you can track down The Very Best of the Smiths and get your grubby little paws on that. Or you can get the Complete Smiths from iTunes or Amazon and basically ensure that you have everything because frankly, trying to get a good collection of the Smith's catalog is almost impossible. But even that misses the original single mix of Ask. Just to drive you a little insane.
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Jul 24, 2015 04:47
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^^^^ this is why I didn't bother trying to attempt to answer the Smiths half of the question.
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Jul 24, 2015 04:59
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What's a good place to start with for Steve Earle? I like the Def Jam Johnny Cash stuff and I enjoy some alt-country bands if that helps to narrow his discography.
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Jul 30, 2015 18:16
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Polegrinder posted:What's a good place to start with for Steve Earle? I like the Def Jam Johnny Cash stuff and I enjoy some alt-country bands if that helps to narrow his discography. Listen to Train a Comin and Transcendental Blues. If you don't like either of those, it's likely you won't dig Steve Earle. Train a Comin is totally stripped down/acoustic. Transcendental Blues is more alt-country.
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Jul 30, 2015 19:55
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I got a ticket for an upcoming Toto and Yes concert. I realize that I am familiar with a grand total of three Toto songs: Africa, Rosanna and Hold the Line. I like all three and Africa actually represents some good childhood memories. Where's a good place to start with them? Is there a good starting place for Toto?
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Aug 6, 2015 03:32
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RC and Moon Pie posted:Is there a good starting place for Toto? If you can stand slick 80s Adult Contemporary, Toto IV is really all you would ever need. Although, I don't know how often you would listen to anything but the singles, though.
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Aug 6, 2015 04:44
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Toto ("Hold the Line") and Toto IV ("Africa", "Rosanna") are the ones with all their hits on them. I think Hydra, Turn Back and The Seventh One all range from okay to pretty good for deeper cuts: the first one is them doing this sort of pop-prog thing, maybe along the lines of Queen circa 1975, the second one is them doing an AOR album and sounds like Journey or Foreigner, the third is the one second (and better) album to feature Joseph Williams, son of John Williams and singing voice of adult Simba in The Lion King (seriously) on lead vocals. I believe he is their current lead vocalist (because Bobby Kimball and Steve Lukather can't stand each other, apparently) so they'd probably do a couple of numbers from that album. Toto's problem was that outside their fourth album, they didn't really manage to establish a distinct identity. Like, Journey was centred around Steve Perry and Boston had Tom Scholz's production skills, but Toto were professional musicians whose entire bag was that they could play anything, and they did (I think I read somewhere that the members of Toto are second only to the Wrecking Crew for how many sessions they've played on between them). For example, their second album had three singles, each of which had a different musical style (a rock song, a jazz fusion song, and a ballad) and a different lead singer.
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Aug 6, 2015 10:28
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Where the hell does one start with Deerhoof? I saw them at ArcTanGent was was completely baffled.
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Sep 7, 2015 20:13
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Cymbal Monkey posted:Where the hell does one start with Deerhoof? I saw them at ArcTanGent was was completely baffled. I think "The Runners Four" is their masterpiece but it's also longer than their other records (about an hour), so if you want something shorter either "Friend Opportunity" or "Apple O'" would probably be good starting points as well. They're pretty much all good, though, I'm not sure they've put out a bad album. Maybe the early ones that I haven't heard.
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Sep 7, 2015 22:45
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Wheat Loaf posted:What's the best place to start with Ike & Tina Turner? The only songs I really know are "River Deep - Mountain High" and "Proud Mary". What about James Brown? I have Live At the Apollo and I'm familiar with his hit singles, but he (along with Ike & Tina Turner and the Impressions) is a one of the few gaps (though certainly a very big one) in my knowledge of soul music from the 1960s. Both great live shows, so just about any live cut is going to be a decent listen, but they'll also start to bleed together and sound the same if you hear too many (especially with I&T), mostly because they were both straddling the line between the singles era and the album era. James Brown had much better namesake album releases than I&T, and so he's pretty well documented. Ike and Tina got around A LOT, and there are choice gems out there of them shacking up with other musicians (Ike and Tina and the Raylettes) on the road. This stuff is really special because it doesn't feel as proscribed as more common albums like Workin Together, in fact I'd say their best studio period is between '66 and '69, after their golden period of live Revue recordings. That'll get you River Deep, Mountain High for the Spector sound, and if you want studio blues takes look for The Hunter/Outta Season Blue Thumb combo disc on the web. If you want to hear them live and alive before they imploded look for Something's Got A Hold On Me. Grab that Raylettes album for sure if you're a 60s soul purist.
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Sep 26, 2015 21:31
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second-hand smegma posted:Both great live shows, so just about any live cut is going to be a decent listen, but they'll also start to bleed together and sound the same if you hear too many (especially with I&T), mostly because they were both straddling the line between the singles era and the album era. James Brown had much better namesake album releases than I&T, and so he's pretty well documented. Indeed - I like live soul recordings, and it's the fact that James Brown and Ike & Tina are so renowned for their live albums but I'm still not as into them as I should be is a bit odd. I'm dead keen on the Geno Washington live albums, which I was recently able to snag on CD. It's a real shame Sam & Dave never did a live album, though. That would've been something special  I feel as though the thing about Ike & Tina is that - like a lot of artists from that era - they'd keep putting the same three or four songs on every album to fill space around the latest single. quote:Grab that Raylettes album for sure if you're a 60s soul purist. I am indeed (so much so that I'm a bit ambivalent toward a lot of stuff my favourites recorded after 1969  ). I'm dead keen on Jimmy James and the Vagabonds (their split live album with the Alan Bown Set - which I sort of own via CD compilations - is great; they do this medley of "Amen" by the Impressions and the Sam Cooke version of "If I Had A Hammer" which I really get a kick out of).
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Sep 26, 2015 22:43
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Wheat Loaf posted:I feel as though the thing about Ike & Tina is that - like a lot of artists from that era - they'd keep putting the same three or four songs on every album to fill space around the latest single. Really true. There was a lot of filler there, and not all recordings were able to capture the actual energy of their performances. I dig a lot of 70s soul, too, but on a different level. The change in production techniques had a profound effect on the artist's delivery (sort of how Elmore James brought %100 to every take because otherwise the recording technology of the time wouldn't catch anything), but also I'm just not as convinced that full albums were kind to the content of most 60s soul, that heart-poured-on-pavement feeling that a single can achieve. I'm sure a lot of it had to do with artist control and the change in writer/producer roles, too. I don't have the Sam Cooke recording you mention, but he does the same track on "At The Copa" and I always loved it. The other one who carried a Mamas and Papas song to legit coolness was Lee Moses, who did an awesome California Dreamin, though every track you can get your hands on is good. I always considered Cooke another of the live performers, compared to Don Covay, but I think Night Beat showed his album chops pretty well. Actually, on the whole, the CD-compilation era has been kind to blues/soul/funk single culture. Most of those who I'd consider the absolute greats had a very limited output compared to bulldozers like Aretha: Candi Staton on Fame, Don Covay w/ Jefferson Lemon Blues, Irma Thomas on Minit and Imperial, James Carr on Goldwax (better then Otis!), Laura Lee on Chess, and O.V. Wright before heroin.
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Sep 27, 2015 02:34
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Yeah, I was talkin about the Copa live version. I could be entirely wrong about the Jimmy James one being a direct take-off of it, but it's what occurred to me. Cooke was obviously an amazingly good R&B performer, but like a lot of artists, he had to cross over, and for black artists in the early 1960s, "pop appeal" meant "appeal to middle-aged white people who go to supper clubs". Compare the Four Tops and the Temptations recording Broadway and standards albums, Berry Gordy telling his artists to do show tunes in their live shows, Walter Jackson singing "Misty" backed by a string orchestra. I'm really keen on James Carr. It was a sad life he had. A real shame how things turned out for him. I've always liked Covay's first two Atlantic albums best (Mercy and See Saw) but I also appreciate the House of Blue Lights album. I've recently got into Inez & Charlie Foxx and they're great. I like Joe Tex; it's too bad he's not so well-represented on CD as befits a performer of his stature. I think Solomon Burke might be my overall favourite on the basis of his Atlantic recordings. The Rock 'n' Soul album is a definite desert island disc for me. I appreciate singers who sound like they could launch into a mini-sermon halfway through a song (see also: Little Richard recordings for Vee-Jay and Okeh). I'm actually very keen on Wayne Cochran, who's a cheesy performer, but he's just so earnest - if you haven't heard the unreleased live album he made in Las Vegas circa 1968, definitely check it out (it's on this two-disc compilation from Ace).
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Sep 27, 2015 11:45
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This is more of a meta question for you guys. How often do you think a band's singles are a good place to start? Do you think they're typically indicative of the band as a whole? Granted, they're usually not the most adventurous songs a band has made and they typically don't show how a band has developed or changed, but they're usually the most accessible.
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Sep 28, 2015 20:09
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Thumbtacks posted:This is more of a meta question for you guys. How often do you think a band's singles are a good place to start? Do you think they're typically indicative of the band as a whole? Depends on what kind of band you're looking at, I'd say. Also a large collection of singles from a band could give some indication to what they were doing at the time period, but listening to "Creep," for example, isn't going to give you a lot of usefull information about Radioheads discography. Personally I've ended up thinking that singles are the most boring and predictable songs of an album most of the time.
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Sep 28, 2015 20:29
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Attitude Indicator posted:Personally I've ended up thinking that singles are the most boring and predictable songs of an album most of the time. Spoken like someone who only listens to indie rock and viking metal.
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Sep 28, 2015 21:04
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Thumbtacks posted:This is more of a meta question for you guys. How often do you think a band's singles are a good place to start? Do you think they're typically indicative of the band as a whole? It definitely depends on the band, but for the most part, the singles are a good starting place. The idea that the single is a dumbed-down commercialization of the artist's ~*~true vision~*~ has definitely of late overtaken the idea that the single is the finest distillation of what makes an artist great. Like, yeah, if you're going to get into the Stones, you're definitely going to want to hear Moonlight Mile and 2000 Light Years From Home and Salt of the Earth and all those, but you kinda need to have heard Satisfaction before that. Some are underserved by their singles - Tom Waits definitely, especially when you look at his years on Asylum Records, when they were actively trying to break him through to a wider audience. It's really case-by-case, but I tend towards singles as a decent first taste.
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Sep 28, 2015 22:13
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The band that made me think of this was Gogol Bordello, actually. If you look at their singles (not that there are many) the ones that they seem to put out seem to definitely be the more punk-y songs (like Wonderlust King, for example), which I assume are more accessible and enjoyable to the average person, but a lot of their other songs are way better but a bit different and possibly harder to get into. But yeah I think that's a fair point. I also don't think it's necessarily bad that a single is easier for people to listen to, because if people like what they initially hear they're more receptive to dig deeper and see what else they have to offer.
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Sep 28, 2015 22:35
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Thumbtacks posted:This is more of a meta question for you guys. How often do you think a band's singles are a good place to start? Do you think they're typically indicative of the band as a whole? I guess I'd be curious who you think you're talking about, but in general, the answer is probably going to be yes. 1. Singles are meant to sell records. Record companies don't cull singles from albums and push for airplay because they really want these songs to be heard. They see a marketing opportunity to get people to buy either the album or the single. While there are cases where the single doesn't really represent the album very well (like Harvey Danger's first album, there is really nothing else quite like Flagpoll Sitta on that), for the most part, the band and the record company wants to push out something that will appeal to people who will buy the album. 2. Tracks written as singles still sound like the band or the artist. A great example of this is "Dancing in the Dark." Bruce Springsteen's manager wanted a song that he was sure to be a hit, and pushed Springsteen to write the song. Springsteen wrote a pop anthem that was designed to be a radio hit, but still had the elements of a Springsteen song in there. After all, there's not many pop songs that would include lines like "I ain't nothing but tired." It's really hard for someone to write a song that just doesn't sound like them. 3. Singles are how most of us got into these artists. How do you think I first heard Elvis Costello? I heard "Radio Radio" playing on the radio and thought "Man, I got to hear more from this dude." If singles were a bad way to get introduced to an artist, nobody would release singles. 4. For artists with long careers, singles can give you a sense of where to dig next. Take an artist like David Bowie. It would be impossible for me to just give you one album to start with, since you might love his early stuff more than his later Berlin trilogy era stuff. Singles can give you that long view. 5. There are some bands where the singles are the story. Take an act like New Order. They produced strong albums, but if all you ever got were the albums and you never touched the singles, you'd be missing HUGE tracks like "Temptation" or "Blue Monday" or "True Faith." These are all essential New Order songs, but there were only on singles, and maybe tacked onto albums later in certain markets. Even songs that are on singles, like "The Perfect Kiss," have vastly different single versions. There are people who will say if you only had one New Order album, you should have Substance, a collection of their singles. Especially with bands from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, there was a lot of stuff that was only released as a single and wasn't part of an album. Nowadays, that doesn't happen as much.
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Sep 28, 2015 22:35
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I wasn't trying to say "hey i think singles are dumb and can mis-represent a band", it was a more a question of whether or not you think that singles are always the best place to start. The only band I can think of where the singles are vastly different from the rest of the material is MGMT, but they're just an anomaly and actively hate their own music/fans/label.
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Sep 28, 2015 22:49
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There's plenty of genres where people listen to singles almost exclusively and albums are unimportant.
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Sep 28, 2015 23:43
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A human heart posted:There's plenty of genres where people listen to singles almost exclusively and albums are unimportant. A great example is Motown. A lot of their sixties albums are mostly unimportant. The good stuff can be found on the 45s they issued.
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Sep 29, 2015 00:31
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Or a lot of British indie and post-punk groups like The Smiths or Joy Division. I feel like the idea of the album being the most important unit of musical output is mostly an American rock and pop thing and even then MP3s sorta wrecked that idea.
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Sep 29, 2015 02:00
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Well, even concept albums have singles. It's just good marketing for selling albums/mp3s, and a guaranteed crow-pleaser at live shows. Also, each single brings in new fans.
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Sep 29, 2015 02:50
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The mention of New Order reminds me that there are also the corner-case groups where the albums literally don't have the singles. Most of The Smiths' biggest tunes were only on singles. New Order's got a bunch of them as well. I'm a big fan of Blur, and the linchpin single connecting their early career to the middle bit, "Popscene," is only available on best-ofs (and the later American release of Modern Life is Rubbish.)
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Sep 29, 2015 05:47
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second-hand smegma posted:Grab that Raylettes album for sure if you're a 60s soul purist. Hope you don't mind me following this up after so long - I looked out this album. Vinyl only, right? I don't own a vinyl record player myself but I think mp3s can be procured through various means (  - though believe me when say I really hate to do that sort of thing). Was this a split compilation (i.e. a few Ike & Tina songs, a few Raelets songs) or was it a collaborative effort? It looks like the former from what I can tell.
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Oct 7, 2015 23:51
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Wheat Loaf posted:Hope you don't mind me following this up after so long - I looked out this album. Vinyl only, right? I don't own a vinyl record player myself but I think mp3s can be procured through various means ( Souled Out. It's vinyl only, as far as I know. It's %60 Raelets, %40 I&T, but the Raelets stuff is golden, and Tina sings a mad Dust My Broom, produced by Charles, so it's worth it. They team up here and there.
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Oct 8, 2015 03:08
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second-hand smegma posted:Souled Out. It's vinyl only, as far as I know. It's %60 Raelets, %40 I&T, but the Raelets stuff is golden, and Tina sings a mad Dust My Broom, produced by Charles, so it's worth it. They team up here and there. Is that the same as the one Wikipedia lists as Ike & Tina Turner and the Raelettes from 1966? They have a weird discography which is difficult to keep track of. From what I can see, both of the Ike & Tina Turner Show live albums were re-released with more distinct names on different labels (according to Wikipedia), while according to Discogs they had an album called Get It - Get It on an ultra-obscure label called Cenco in 1966 or 1967 (which may not even have been released even though it seems that cover art was produced) which was then re-released as Her Man, His Woman in 1971. Also, going by Wikipedia - five albums in one year. Not quite as prolific as jazz musicians, but still - a different time indeed. Disappointed that In Person seems to be out of print. I like the look of its track listing.
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Oct 10, 2015 11:36
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