Q magazines "15 Albums Where Great Rock Acts Lost The Plot" (poll)

As a Kinks fanatic, I agree 100% with this. Act 1 had some lovely songs on it but didn't do anything like tell a story. So the entire narrative was crammed into Act 2, augmented by those dreadful "announcements." Which would have been alright had the songs been catchy or memorable, which none of them really are.

 

Michael Jackson was in bad way mentally and physically by then I don't think it's fair to include him. He'd already lost the plot.

 

There's a couple that I don't mind..."Mirror Of Love" and "Salvation Road" come to mind...but as you say, the rest are either mediocre or just plain awful. The terrible production certainly doesn't help and the only thing worse than the songs are the cringeworthy announcements.

I'm probably on a similar level of Kinks worship as you are, and even that isn't enough to put any kind of positive spin on this album. And it's a double!

"Sweet Lady Genevieve" from Act 1 is one of my favourite Kinks songs.

 

Sadly the consensus of thought that "Batman" was rubbish seems mostly fuelled by that vinyl spinning scene in "Shaun of the Dead". It's a wonderfully bonkers set and has there ever been a more gonzo US No1 single than "Batdance"? Throw in the stellar mixes from Mark Moore (damn, his bangin' "The Future"!!!) and a major commercial revival internationally after the modest success of - the admittedly superior - "Lovesexy" and it was a long, fun summer to be a Prince fan.

 

Zep's IITOD should definitely be on there. Best case I can think of of an act struggling desperately to remain 'relevant' and making mostly wrong choices.

I only voted for one and that was Queen's Hot Space - an album that did them some damage, which they were slow to recover from.

All the others can be explained and Self Portrait should definitely not be on there: once you realise it was all about the artist trying to complete his recording contract, it all makes sense.

 

Well done to the people who know enough about all these artists to give a meaningful vote.

 

I could almost forgive Cut the Crap just for the song This is England - one of my favourites from the band.

 

Like a diamond on top of a steaming turd! Great single.

 

None of them.

Bowie’s Never let me Down, maybe.

Tim

 

Some of these I have in my collection, and would like to comment as follows:

The Rolling Stones; Satanic Majesties still has bluesy influence, what with the psychedelic alienation of 2,000 Light Years From Home, Citadel, The Lantern. No other band, including the Beatles, could've made TSMR. Granted some of the songs are bad, i.e On With The Show, but I don't think they "lost the plot".

Bob Dylan: Self Portrait. It's poor sequencing that let this double album down, as I like lots of stuff on this. The Bootleg Series, Another Self Portrait, goes to further create an impression as to what an underrated gem this album, and its accompanying sessions, is. I like the country / Americana phase of Dylan's from the Basement Tapes through to Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid soundtrack, and Self Portrait is at the height of this. I think, at the time, people expected Dylan to write his own stuff, and overlooked how well he could interpret a cover: a fact that continues today, what with later albums such as Good As I Been To You, World Gone Wrong, Shadows In The Night, Fallen Angels, Triplicate.

Pink Floyd: A Momentary Lapse In Reason: fact, I happen to like the post-Waters Floyd, and feel that Learning to Fly, Sorrow, Dogs of War are great tracks.

Neil Young: Trans - Far better than Landing On Water, what with Like An Inca, Sample & Hold, Mr Soul with vocoder, and Transformer Man.

 

Disagree there, I'm afraid, and the 2018 re-casting on the recent box set is great.

 

By the way, my thoughts on Dylan "Losing the plot" are that he only began to lose it with Empire Burlesque, which I'd hope they'd strip back like Naked Willie (Willie Nelson's RCA recordings stripped back by Mickey Raphael from the Chet Atkins overproduced mess), and Knocked Out Loaded which was thin gruel.

I think Down In The Groove could also be stripped back, and that it would have a great sound of it's own. I also think, if outtakes from the Down In The Groove era were available, it would resuscitate a poor album. Maybe on a future Bootleg Series.

Furthermore, Dylan & The Dead, while a poor album, was poor because of performance selection, and could be improved significantly. Again, this could be a future Bootleg Series mission.

Additionally, I think Under The Red Sky isn't a bad album, and people just didn't understand the switch from the murky darkness of Oh Mercy to a breezier, bluesier album. It's one of my favourite underrated gems.

 

Knowing the backstory of Trans I felt compassion for Pegi and Neil but it didn't make me like the album more. Quality music can be appreciated on its own terms divorced from its context.
Besides, Neil compromised the album by included more commercial songs for airplay.

Transformer Man, Sample and Hold and Computer Age are good songs, but ruined in the album arrangements.

 

I also like Under The Red Sky a lot.
But what's to strip back on Down In The Groove? It's a pretty basic production. Knocked Out Loaded is overloaded with all kinds of overdubs though.

 

Remove the Backing Vocals in some respects, and drop a bit of synth bass from Larry Klein.

I also think it was recorded over many different sessions, so maybe some outtakes would be ideal.

We could end up polishing a significant turd.

 

I voted for Kiss (The Elder ) and The Clash (Cut The Crap)

Kiss- Not a Prog band. Never a Prog band . I liked them fine the way they were.

The Clash- The album is well named.

As far as Lou Reed and MMM. No losing the plot there. I think that was Reed's rather snarky F you to RCA as well as to some of his overzealous fans at the time.

All just my opinion and feel free to disagree.

 

No, I really like it (although it's the last Genesis album I'll say that about). But in terms of a major band losing what was seen as a major member, it bears comparison to the first post-Waters Floyd.

 

I seem to remember a lot of critics liked it as well... it was the record label and former management who hated it the most. But my point is, it was a complete change in direction, and it could have been an absolute disaster. Don't forget, the album before had him appearing on Soul Train. This one - not so much. Bowie was taking an immense chance with Low, just as Young was with Trans. One was lucky in that people liked what he did, the other... not so much.

 

67 late for psychedelic rock? Huh?

 

I like TSMR, but "Sing this All together (see what happens ) -- played this recently and couldn't believe how boring it is. They must have been very stoned.

 

As far as more recent albums ... do any of the below albums qualify? (Note: i haven't heard these releases, only heard of them)

Boarding House Reach - Jack White
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino - Arctic Monkeys
22, a Million - Bon Iver

 

No you were right. If you LOVE the CBGB's Blondie, TheHunter lp is a mess. For the casual AOR rock radio fan of that era who liked Journey, Pat Benatar, REO, etc. -- it was probably calculated to appeal to them.

 

St. Anger is the runaway winner of this for me. As a band, it's the musical equivalent of detonating a nuclear weapon in your own back garden. Genuinely unlistenable (thanks to the drum sound) and completely shredded Metallica's reputation. This combined with the departure of Newsted pretty much finished the band as a force in the metal scene and they've never recovered since. An early 00s sabbatical would have been best for the band, but instead we ended up with a poorly produced riff tape with trash cans for drums. Most pub bands sound like titans of the scene compared to this.

Trans is a pretty decent album actually, although I can see why it perplexed NY fans at the time. But Young's logic behind making the album is sound, and he's always been a pretty contrarian guy anyway who does what he feels like musically. Some of the computer style tracks have held up pretty well over the years.

AMLOR isn't great but if any Floyd album should be on this poll it's The Final Cut which is basically a Roger Waters spoken word album and the opposite of something like Meddle, and has no Rick Wright either, so it's not really a PF record.

Metal Machine Music is less of a 'lost the plot' moment when you realise Reed did it just to get out of his contract.

There are several obvious candidates for the list which should have been included instead. Judas Priest's Turbo, their 1986 attempt to emulate Def Leppard's commercial success (despite being arena headliners themselves with their own sound previously) is a strong contender, especially when you compare the band's image and sound to the one they'd had for the previous few albums. Likewise the JLT-helmed career nosedive that was Slaves and Masters would be a good entry for Purple on here. Actually with regards to JLT, Rainbow's entire 80s period would seriously qualify as an example of a great rock band totally losing it.

 

In the 1960s' if you are a year late on something that was already established then were considered following to many of the s0-called critics. That was one of the criticisms of "Their Satanic Majesties Request" and I don't agree with it.

 

I own all of these albums and most are at least interesting failures. The only ones I find genuinely unpleasant are Cut the Crap and Music from The Elder. I voted for Hot Space because if you take away “Under Pressure”, which is a great track but predated the album, you’re left with a bunch of dance songs that will clear most dance floors.