You don't understand yet you manage to provide the correct answer. Great things aren't always (infact seldom are) shiny & polished.
The problem is that we feel like we should know just what he's singing about, but we weren't black men in the 40's, and no one wants to ask for fear it's gonna be bad. So...interpret for me someone. ;-)
Hallowed Ground by Violent Femmes. Their 2nd album, which was a great disappointment. The title track was good.
Son of Schmilsson. A lot of people like it, but I found it totally unlistenable after its all-time classic predecessor.
I'm glad about having both OK Computer and Kid A, kind of like Tom Waits before/after Swordfishtrombones.
Even the Stones' so-called disco songs aren't really "shiny and polished". Does "Emotional Rescue" sound especially slick and overproduced? Not to me!
I love Time Fades Away now. We just hadn't seen that shade of Neil at the time. Don't Be Denied is amazing and has been covered by numerous artists. The same applies to Trans, which was a shock to the system when it first came out (and still may be to the hardcore Harvest folkies) but has gained much praise from Young aficionados in more recent times. Like An Inca!
Did a quick search of Jewel & found nothing in this 29 page thread. She definitely qualifies here. I will go on record as stating that I loved Pieces of You, another terrific album from the terrific class of 1994, and eagerly awaited that follow up album. Three years later...ugh. And 'ick' and 'yuck'. And it wasn't an artistic misstep, it's all been downhill from there. Such a darn shame.
Right. Why does it have to be an either/or game What I find hilarious though is that outside of one person, Kid A doesn't fit the criteria of this thread at all. While yes, it sold less than OK Computer (and then again, they had no video or single off the album, as opposed to how Karma Police and Paranoid Android were all over MTV in 1997, with Karma Police actually crossing over a bit to mainstream radio), but the album was nominated for Album Of The Year at the Grammys (with many retroactively deciding it was Kid A that was robbed when Steely Dan won, and not Eminem), it was ranked "best album of the 2000s" by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone (which also ranked it the #67 greatest album of all time -- not too shabby considering literally only one album made after 1982 is in their top 20), it appears in the majority of "Greatest albums of this millennium" lists, RYM ranks it the #1 album of 2000 and THE #3 ALBUM OF ALL TIME. Methinks someone is bitter that guitar rock is generally considered irrelevant to youngsters in 2020 and that Radiohead forsaw this coming and adapted their sound ahead of the curve. I see quite a few zoomers who love Radiohead that will never go near U2, The Beatles, Rolling Stones or anything else they perceive as "20th century rock and roll" and Kid A is a big factor in that.
I recently heard the "Santa Monica '72" show for the first time ever, and my response was...if I had heard this when I was a teenager, I would have gone catalog with Bowie immediately. What always frustrated me about the "Ziggy" album is how the songs seemed to have the potential to rock more than they did. The Santa Monica show (to me) only kind of proved that.
That is why I like it as much as I do Honestly, Exile is perfect to me. It is perfectly sloppy, perfectly muddy in its mix, perfectly sleazy and perfectly imperfect.
I agree. they sounded better live (on Santa Monica, not so much the Ziggy soundtrack live album). I think the prob is that Ziggy has this mythical status as an album, something that when I first heard Dark Side Of The Moon, Sgt. Pepper, White Album, Pet Sounds, London Calling, that I immediately got and understood. Take the mythos of the Ziggy character away and the elaborate stage show and it's just a solid rock and roll album, but not really tapping into what made Bowie such a great artist (and you could hear traces of why he was amazing in the two albums preceding it). Do I like the album? yes, but I can see where a lot of people checked this album out and never went further into the discography with the mentality that this is the be-all end-all of Bowie's catalog and IMO he made quite a few albums that were just as good if not superior.
Much like Ziggy in the previous post, Exile was an album I literally didn't understand the fuss upon first listen after the mythological status the album carries. Especially when I love Let It Bleed for instance. But it's one of those albums that really grew on me and years later I finally "got it" and understood. To me it's way better than Sticky Fingers.
Critics writing about the "Ziggy Stardust" era of Bowie's career always seem to talk about his stage costumes as much as his music...but by the 80's nothing about Bowie seemed particularly unconventional. Let me be clear--I certainly don't dislike the "Ziggy" album, but I never got much out of the whole Ziggy mythos.
Same here. Admittedly if I was around in '72 and seeing how shocking he was in the age of the Carpenters (but even then we have the artist in your thread's namesake who had an even more shocking stage show back then) I could appreciate it more. I think it was cool that Bowie was playing with gender norms and sexuality during the days of Nixon, but what sold me on Bowie getting into him as a teen in the 90s was how amazing his music was, which to me outlasted any image change of his
Mine was the Cornerstone tour, great show. I also saw The Paradise Theater tour which was good as well. When the Kilroy tour happened we all decided not to go so I can't remark on the show. I believe it was documented on the album and video Caught In the Act however. I hope it was a good show, but then again aren't first concerts good? I have seen them twice with Gowan at Casino shows. He is very entertaining, a real showman who is very reminiscent of Dennis DeYoung in many ways.
You've been tainted by history that you can't unhear. You cannot hear it like it was when it was it was first presented: shocking, alien, like nothing else: a hard rock band fronted by this alien pansexual creature seemingly from another planet. With great, catchy songs. Now it's more obvious that the songs themselves were fairly conventionally structured, with linear understandable lyrics, unlike his intriguing but oddly-made cut-and-paste stuff from later. The Ziggy album also has a muted, homogeneous production that blunts its impact - you really do need to heed the instructions on the label and PLAY IT LOUD for it to reveal its true rock-iness. This is one reason why I like Aladdin Sane more than I do Ziggy - AS rocks like anotherfrogger, compared to ZS which sorta whimpers along unless you crank it to the max. The change in the confidence and power of Bowie's voice is especially dramatic. Ziggy (the album) is meek and small. Aladdin Sane is huge.
