Klaatu's Endangered Species. After three brilliant albums, the songs and production were pretty lame on this, their sell-out fourth. There's even a song called "Sell Out, Sell Out"! They had given up. Rightfully, it probably sold fewer copies than the previous three. They made up some lost ground on their fifth, but this was an outrage at the time.
George Michael Older And Def Leppard Slang Both 1996 but they both grew on me they were just very different at the time. Slang was an entire different direction and Older was just so reserved vocally.
Stones - Bridges To Babylon. Steel Wheels and Voodoo Lounge had a few good songs on them but I didn't like anything on BTB except "Might as Well Get Juiced".
Yeah, this one springs to mind. The first two albums were brilliant, and I was sure the third would send them into the stratosphere in terms of popularity...but, sadly, it landed with a bit of a thud. It's not a bad album, it's just sprawling and occasionally dull. The fourth record was better...but the moment had passed for The Mars Volta...
Elvis Costello - Goodbye Cruel World (1984) I remember playing this in the summer of '84 and thinking that he lost his edge. I had been a huge Costello nut and had seen him live the summer before. But by '84, I was starting to prefer newer acts like Tommy Keene, R.E.M., and Husker Du. The funny thing is that I returned to this album 30 years later and, to my surprise, I found I liked it. I was no longer and teenager expecting angry, young music and had gotten into lite jazz artists like Basia and Michael Franks and lots of easy listening stuff. The album works if you hear it as part of that style. Just don't expect This Year's Model.
The first album that came to mind was This is the album I instantly thought of. Klaatu was easily my favorite band from roughly age 12 to 15. Long before it was announced I would be calling record stores asking if there was any word on a new Klaatu album. I can remember one guy said “you keep calling”. So then I just called a different store. I was also going through the big book of releases they would have in the back of the store to see if there was anything anounced. I was so excited when there was finally a release date. If I remember correctly it got pushed back but the extra wait just made my anticipation that much stronger. And then when thing finally came out I can remember what a colossal disappointment it was. Within 30 seconds of the first song I knew I was not gonna like this album. My appreciation of this band has cooled a bit but I still appreciate a handful of their songs. The ironic thing though is that today I can’t really listen to a lot of their stuff (i.e. most of the Hope album) without cringing. Endangered Speices I can tolerate most all the way through ... even though it is a pretty unremarkable album.
I’ve been listening to this album over the weekend and enjoying it. This was the first Costello release that was just “meh” for me. Listening to it today though the songs are pretty strong - which is what Costello himself has argued for a while now. Production of course is still problematic, but with time it is less annoying to me and maybe even sounds a bit quaint remembering the time and place when this came out. In some ways his new album had me thinking about this record (along with the other obvious touchstones.).
Paul McCartney - Press To Play........ Awful. After that I stopped buying his records (with the exception of Back in The US), I feel he lost his mojo in the early 80's and never really got it back. Basically I fell out of love for McCartney. Maybe I should give Egypt Station a chance as it seems to be generating a lot of good publicity
Yes that is pretty horrible. It was intended to be an Ian Anderson solo album untill his record label got their way & released it as a Jethro Tull album. It took many years before I got around to listening to the albums that followed.
Wow, there's more than the usual amount of YMMV in this thread! I also loved the first two Tori Amos albums ... in fact, it wouldn't be out of line to say I obsessed over them. Yet for me Boys For Pele seemed at the time (and seems today) to be the best of the three. Raises the question of why you and I agreed so much and diverged so extremely. Glad you said it, that release just didn't land with me either. It's a weak album following a great one, no question, but I think it's redeemed to a great extent by “United Kingdom” and, especially, “By Default By Design”. I think it's a great album. If you neve got to the end, at least check out “Indian Names” which is one of my favourite Merchant songs. One of my top fifty albums of all time! For the last few years I've named a disappointment of the year each year and, because you can only be really disappointed when you have very high expectations, it's ended up including many of my favourite artists. So here's a ranked list of purchases I'd rather forget: Dream Theater, The Astonishing (Never made it through the second disc, have tried several times) Marc Almond, The Velvet Trail (Negligible) Rufus Wainwright, All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu (Pretentious & tuneless) Kate Bush, The Red Shoes (I'm about to buy it for the third time ... ) John Adams, I Was Looking At The Ceiling And Then I Saw The Sky (Composer takes on Pop, comes off a distant second) The Who, Endless Wire (I didn't even have high hopes and this dashed them) Peter Gabriel, Us (We waited six years for this ...)
Flaming Pie is amazing and this is coming from a person who really doesn't like most of Paul's solo stuff.
I've played it loud and in a crowd I've played it in a box with a fox I've played it in a house with a mouse I do not like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am (Apologies to Dr Seuss)
Tangerine Dream's `Green Desert': Touted as a lost album from 1973 and initially only available as part of a 6-LP set of the early years. In reality a fake 80's version of what they think they sounded like in 1973 (they didn't). Dreadful album, and a nasty trick to play on fans. As Peter Baumann had left some years earlier than 1986 when this travesty came out, they pretended he was on holiday in 1973 when this was supposedly recorded.
I forgot about Klaatu's "Endangered Species" and you are 100% correct about that one, a truly sad follow-up to "Sir Army Suit" and the others. Ironically, as a fan of Klaatu since their first album, I never even knew that they had a fifth album, until many years later, while my wife and I were in Toronto for one of our whirlwind "Phantom Of The Opera" weekends and I just happened to see a copy of it on vinyl (No CD for that fifth one at that time yet!). I remember coming back to the States and listening to that 5th album, with a huge smile on my face that they made up for that horrible 4th one!
1981. The Who finally has a new album 3 years after Who Are You! I can’t wait! Bloody Hell it was Face Dances the biggest disappointment of my record buying life.
Forever Now - The Psychedelic Furs Beginning of the devolution of the band which culminated with the execrable Midnight to Midnight.
REM - New adventures in Hifi Bought it brand new on vinyl when it came out many years ago. I remember it had poor sound quality ( I now realize it was probably a digital cut ). None of the tunes appealed to me. I recently traded it in at my local record store. Beastie Boys - Hello Nasty Has some interesting tracks, but overall I was disappointed comparing it to Ill Communication.
Pink Floyd - The Final Cut A huge disappointment only matched by the following PF title A Momentary Lapse of Music.
Frequency Unknown by Queensryche, or Geoff Tate & Friends. I was sucked in by the long list of guest players. Disappointed doesn't even come close.......
