Considered A Classic Album ( But You Don't Call It That )

Totally no love for "Tommy." Coming after the brilliant wit of "Who Sell Out" it's a gut punch to me. And it set bad conceptual precedents in rock that persist to this day. It's pompous without being illuminating.

 

Pretzel Logic is my favourite

 

Probably (and by probably, I mean definitely!) stretching the definition of classic here but the one REO Speedwagon to get any kind of critical approval in the UK, is Nine Lives.

Now Nine Lives contains a lot of first rate songs, including the fan favourite Back O The Road Again, and the band are in scorching form instrumentally but it also opens with my two least favourite Kevin Cronin songs and closes side one with a efficient but pointless Chuck Berry cover.

So, essentially two thirds of the album is brilliant whereas, for me at least, pretty much every other REO album has a much higher strike rate.

 

For me, the run of Countdown - Pretzel Logic - Katy Lied is their peak. After that, they got a little too slick and sterile for my tastes, though I can still recognize Aja as a classic of its kind. I just feel more of an emotional connection with the earlier material.

 

'The emperor's new clothes' - meaning and origin.

I mean the album is overpraised and fairly negligible - certainly not a classic. People who say it is a tremendous achievement in music are just wrong.

 

Within You Without You > Getting Better and Fixing A Hole.

 

That would be me too.... I love Aja, wonderful album, but I think the emotional connect is the difference. I have a soft spot for Gaucho.

 

That's it for me. I kind of feel that way about Zappa. Though his musicians got technically better over time, for me, his later (rock) material doesn't speak to me like his earlier work, where he had "lesser" players, at least by his standards.

 

DJ Shadow Introducing and Pavement Slanted and enchanted

 

Zappa's a funny one. I like all the eras, but The Seventies is where I really connect with him and the band.

 

You need to be taking great care when looking into the abyss. It will hijack your webcam and look back into you.

Most unpleasant.

 

Er.....that would be any album regarded as a classic by bands that I don't like. Plenty of those. Much more difficult to find from artists I do like. Bowie - Heroes (apart from the title track) might fit the bill.

 

I'm afraid this is yet another SHTV "great albums you don't like" thread. I saw it coming.

 

This made me sad

That's a classic, man.

 

I don't connect with him. He's like "I'm smarter than you". And his humour was puerile

 

Because it's great funk and jazz and the lyrics are brilliant as always.

 

I love Aja and its older sibling The Royal Scam. I see Aja almost like a direct sequel.

And I also refuse to listen to any Dylan unless it's sung by somebody else, like Guns N' Roses or Hendrix
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To throw my two cents in, I'd say Judas Priest's Painkiller is often highly regarded but I always thought their albums from the late '70s and early '80s were better.

Also any Iron Maiden album from the reunion era. I didn't like any of them really, though I thought there were some good songs (but also filler) on Brave New World.

 

Been done a bunch of times now, hasn't it?

 

I accept most Beatles albums even though there isn't one that I personally love in a "top 20 favourite albums" type way.

However, Rubber Soul, I do not get. It's like a middle album full of middle of the road type songs. It's going nowhere, man!

 

And these are the kinds of garbage comments these threads consistently produce.

 

I think it is a relatively casual term, and should be. If it’s an album that is well-known and well-regarded among people who like music, it’s a classic.

This does not require that I like the album. I can recognize there are plenty of classic albums that are not interesting to me. That’s fine, they’re still classics.

 

I love Steely Dan. My personal favorites are Pretzel Logic and The Royal Scam, but I actually listened to Aja yesterday. I guess you'll just have to take my word for it that I'm a woman, but I promise you that I am.


I don't have any answers for the thread starter. I don't have to personally love an album to be able to recognize that it is a classic. The history of music is not shaped by my own limited perceptions of it.

 

All the old albums I like I call classics. What else?

 

LOL

My wife likes Steely Dan too ... not sure where that myth came from

 

Katy Lied is my favorite collection of their songs, although various people on SHF complain about the sound... I never noticed it before.