Thread by @gamespite

I’ve relocated my stereo setup to my home office until it’s safe to work daily from the actual office. But I have SO MUCH music to choose from I’m experiencing choice paralysis. So I’m coping the only way I know how: creating Content™ as I work my way down the shelf. Here we go:

Anderson/Stolt: “The Invention of Knowledge”

Picked this up for the podcast. It’s fine? Jon Anderson doing his Jon Anderson thing while some kid does a respectable late-era Yes impersonation. Kind of... slides right off the brain.

Asia: “Asia”. I bought this for $1 in the ‘90s, because I like Roger Dean art. Considering the talent in Asia (John Wetton! Steve Howe!), I was kind of hoping I would find some substance in the non-radio tracks, but nope. The cheesy radio tracks are the only good ones.

Basically this

ON THE OTHER HAND, The Beatles: “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” This is basically the Super Mario Bros. of rock—the ideas here would be done better, even by The Beatles, but music wouldn’t be the same without this record.

The wild thing is that The Beatles, who were at the height of their power at this point, barely appear on the album! They do the intro and the final track, but mostly they step aside to let the legendary Lonely Hearts Club band perform their comeback bid. A bold bait and switch.

The Lonely Hearts Club Band tracks are incredible, dabbling in styles that run the gamut from their own wartime-era Big Band recordings to tunes that speak to contemporary drug culture through both their lyrics and their use of sitars (evoking Hollywood images of opium dens).

The Beatles could easily have been overshadowed here by their own guests, but they return at the end for the tour-de-force that is “A Day In The Life”: One of the greatest rock tracks ever recorded, and a stunning reminder of why they were the biggest band in the world.

The Beatles: “Abbey Road.” Probably my favorite album by the band. The mini-suites on side two really feel like the last desperate effort of a band that knew its time was up cranking out as many ideas as it could before the end (or: “The End”). Just a tremendous record.

Did you know Phil Collins was part of a jazz fusion band in the late ‘70s? Apparently taking Peter Gabriel’s spot in Genesis wasn’t enough for him, so he also signed on to drum for Brand X.

The real stars of the show here are guitarist John Goodsall and bassist Percy Jones, but Collins puts in a fine showing on this record. It holds up pretty well, though some of the louder tracks reveal the limitations of 1976 recording tech. I really love their early stuff.

Brand X’s second record: Not as good as their first, but solid. It’s looser (including a lengthy studio jam) and more meandering. Not sure what’s going on with the cover, seems a bit… iffy.

I do love the “not for sale” silver foil stamp! Way classier than the usual hole punch.

And their live album, Livestock. By far my favorite Brand X record—all the best pieces from their first two albums, played live. Great energy and clean recordings, at legendary venues like the Marquee and the Odeon. I can listen to this one over and over.

Phil Collins is STILL trending, so let’s counterbalance that with the first Brand X studio album NOT to feature him on drums. Take that, Collins

The next album, Product, screams “contractual obligation”/“cynical label effort.” Between the title, the band members’ names printed along the top (with Collins getting undeserved top billing), and the record opening with a couple of Collins-sung radio bids... not a great LP.

Thankfully, the classic Brand X lineup ends strong with the excellent “Is There Anything About?” Some great tracks on here, including “Modern Noisy and Effective,” which sounds like they listened to Yellow Magic Orchestra’s first album and said, “Oh, let’s do one like that”

On to Camel, who were part of the Canterbury scene and NOT connected to the cigarette brand. The Snow Goose is a weird one, based on a maudlin WWII-era novella. (Without permission, so they got in trouble for it.) Not a fan of “airbrush T-shirt art booth at the fair” cover.

Some of the music on this album—which is strictly instrumental—is wonderful. Some of it has aged very, very poorly. (Mainly the extremely mid-‘70s synths... which, in fairness, do have a strident, staccato quality that calls to mind a goose honking)

I realize I am the wrong generation and nationality to really GET this album. From what I can tell, The Snow Goose was one of those books British Greatest Generation types loved and forced their Boomer kids to read in school. Somehow that translated into a symphonic prog LP here

Moonmadness might be my favorite Camel album. It walks a perfect line between the high-minded high-concept of The Snow Goose and their latter-era “twee disco” phase. Some memorable, accessible vocal tracks here, but lots of interesting instrumental efforts, too.

Rain Dances includes a few tracks that hint at dark times to come, though it’s still a great record. I mean, it has contributions from Mel Collins and Brian Eno! Even the yacht rock radio hit bid, “Highways of the Sun”, is a majestic example of the format.

On to Can, with “Monster Movie”. Your eyes do not deceive you. This German band from the ‘60s decided that their first album’s cover should just be a palette-swap of Galactus. It’s so random and brazen that I truly, truly love it.

Early Can is incredible, though. So far ahead of its time. This album is from 1968, and Side B is a single track called “You Doo Right”, essentially just a mellow 20-minute studio jam with an improvisaional vibe and a steady drum/bass groove propelling it forward.

Then there’s Tago Mago. If you asked me what this cover illustration is meant to represent, I would say “That this album was released in 1970”

This is a double-LP album, and it’s both phenomenal and phenomenally challenging. Disc 2 is essentiallt a 30-minute sound collage, and it’s pretty much only meant to be listened to while stoned. Gin isn’t powerful enough for “Peking O,” so I generally skip that record.

Disc 1, on the other hand, is a perfect collection of music. It’s structured like Monster Movie (3 tracks on side 1, a single studio groove track on side 2), but the individual tracks segue into one another to create an incredible progressive suite of rhythm and sound.

Then, side 2 of disc 1, a track called “Halleluwah,” is a steady, pulsing, 18-minute beat (save a brief drum-free interlude in the middle) over which the rest of the band builds themes, riffs, and ideas. It grooves like ‘90s dance music, recorded in 1970. Truly incredible.

(There will definitely be an episode of Alexander’s Ragtime Band about my love for Can, just you wait)

Unlimited Edition is a random collection of Can outtakes ranging from their Ethnological Forgery Series (pastiches of different musical genres) to “Mother Ubduff”, an improvisational spoken-word song about an old lady who goes on vacation in Italy and is killed by an octopus

I think the true value of Unlimited Edition is that it doubles the number of studio tracks in circulation to feature Malcolm Mooney, the band’s original vocalist (and one of the few black artists to make an impact on the prog genre), but it’s also simply an enjoyable double LP.

Ege Bamyasi is Can’s most successful album thanks to the single “Spoon”, but it’s probably their album to have made the least impression on me. I listened to it again tonight and... it’s fine? But it feels like a transitional piece between their psychedelic and atmospheric phases

Let’s jump out of sequence here from Can to Chicago Transit Authority, the band that would be renamed Chicago when the real CTA threw a fit.

They turned in an impressive debut album that defies genre boundaries—blues, funk, rock, psychedelia, and jazz, across 2 LPs.

BUT...

You also see early Chicago’s biggest weakness here, which is GREATLY overestimating how much of the material they produced needed to be preserved to album. This was the band that followed up its first two studio albums with a FIVE-LP LIVE RECORD. These kids needed to dial it back

Terry Kath was a true guitar genius whose death was the textbook definition of a pointless tragedy, but even so, I do NOT need 15 minutes of him farting around in the studio to see how badly he could abuse his amplifier.

The rest of the album, though? Fantastic!

Back to Can. The Singles is mostly edited-down material from their albums, but hearing these tunes divorced from their lengthy jam/improv pieces is a reminder that their radio-oriented material was uniformly scorching.

(Also, worth owning for “Turtles Have Short Legs” alone)

“Soundtracks” by Can is an album I slept on for waaaay too long. I think I expected something disposable, like Pink Floyd’s “More”, but nah. This bridges the Mooney and Suzuki eras, and it’s worth the price of admission for “Deadlock” and the incredible “Mother Sky” alone.

“Rite Time” is the most challenging Can record, since the 10-year gap since “Out of Reach” made for a huge change in the band’s sound. And Mooney returned with the same disregard for singing in tune as in the ‘60s. It’s grown on me, though. Not my favorite, but decent.

“Future Days” is one of Can’s best. The last album featuring Damo Suzuki, his ethereal musings fit the increasingly atmospheric sound of the band perfectly. It mirrors the three songs/one song structure of most of their early LPs, but it feels more confident and refined.

Apparently that confidence is an illusion, since the whole record was supposedly assembled in haste due to Suzuki mentally checking out, but they sell the illusion well. Even if the side-long “Bel Air” may be a studio assemblage that came together in editing, it’s a great track.

Here’s the worst Can album I own, kind of. This is a bootleg that claims to be a live recording of the tracks from “Monster Movie.” But “Monster Movie” was recorded live in the studio... so this is just an illegitimate pressing of the studio album. Absolute b.s.

Jumping around a bit more, there’s this recent pressing of Phil Collins’ “Face Value” where he replaced the original cover portrait with a newly shot pic of his elderly self. As someone who owned this on cassette as a kid, this heightens my sense of mortality something awful

Thanks to the recent rediscovery of how much ass his gated reverb drum sound kicked, Collins’ work is having an unironic revival at the moment. “Face Value” is worth highlighting not just because of “In the Air Tonight,” but because it’s an objectively great album, period

It’s the work of someone with a voracious appetite for all forms of music and genuine talent, devastated by a recent divorce, attempting to write his own music for the first time. He hadn’t figured out the formula for charting singles yet, though. This record feels genuine.

The music on this album runs the gamut from tech-driven production gimmickry (“In the Air Tonight” with its reverb/vocoders/drum machines) to stark bluegrass to bouncy Motown homages. I didn’t fully appreciate it as a kid, but in hindsight it’s a pretty incredible record.

Anyway, it's nice that "In the Air Tonight" is having a moment again, but I think it's time for us to be honest and admit that this is actually Collins' best drum bit on the radio-friendly side of things:

According to @Chrontendo, Landed is “nobody’s favorite Can album.” But it was the first one I heard: A high school friend dubbed a bootleg tape for me. I find it to be the latter-day Can album that most effectively channels the goofy beat-poetry vibe of the Mooney & Suzuki eras.

Camel’s “Mirage” is probably the best overall representation of their style (jazz/rock/spacey/twee/‘70s synths), but above all else, I love the fact that the cover art is basically a “so sue me” dare to Philip Morris’ legal team

Seriously, how did this band not get sued into nothingness?

I’m not sure what the general read on Can’s “Saw Delight” is—there’s a lot of negativity about their later work that I don’t share. For me, it’s a great mix of straightforward rock and looser jams, with production that makes studio work sound like it was recorded in a stadium.

It’s that time again.

More Can live bootlegs. These two are actually LIVE! Sound quality is lousy, but you can really feel the energy of two different incarnations of the band (Suzuki era and 4-piece era) on these. A bit hard on the ears, but great performances all the same.

Another Old Man cover version of a Phil Collins album. “Hello I Must Be Going” feels like a midpoint between “Face Value” and the nonstop hit parade of “No Jacket Required.” It’s not as laser-focused on Big Radio Hits as the latter, but it’s way more commercial than the former.

“Thru These Walls” cuts to this album’s core issue. There are covers of oldies, post-punk pastiches, and funky disco pop here. But there’s also this moody studio tech piece that repeatedly lifts the drum bit from ”In the Air Tonight” in a lame bid to recapture that magic.

Can finally published an eponymous album about a decade after their debut. It’s latter-day material, so I seem to like it more than most. A nice, airy collection of guitar-driven rock: Sometimes tight and structured, sometimes expansive and loose. (And a little tongue-in-cheek.)

Back before he screwed up his nerves and lost the ability to play, Phil Collins toured as drummer in a big band playing jazz standards (e.g. Pick Up The Pieces, Chips and Salsa) and barely recognizable arrangements of his own radio hits. It shouldn’t work, but it does, somehow?

Emerson Lake & Palmer’s debut album is great. Lean, three-piece performances of Hammond-driven heavy metal arrangements of classical music, experimental synthesizer pieces, ballads, and an instrumental that I’m pretty sure helped inspire FFVI’s “Dancing Mad”

ELP made their big debut at the Isle of Wight Festival, an event that has resulted in MANY live albums. Chicago’s is... ok. It’s more or less redundant with “At Carnegie Hall,” though it’s a much leaner and less self-indulgent recording, so it does have that going for it.

I found a nicely kept copy of Cream’s Disraeli Gears last year and grabbed it out of curiosity. I’d describe it as peak psychedelia, which is to say a combination of effects-heavy blues, hard-hitting guitar rock, and little ditties so twee they set your teeth on edge

An old and slightly noisy pressing of “No Jacket Required”; as one of the first albums I ever owned, this music is burned into my brain.

Dunno about this cover, though. As a balding middle-aged white dude myself, I promise never to force the world to stare at my sweaty mug

It’s wild that Collins went from being a drummer with 10 years’ experience under his belt and almost zero songwriting credits to this ruthlessly efficient chart-topping pop monstrosity in the space of a few albums, but the success of this record seems to have unraveled his career

“No Jacket Required” is a perfect collection of ‘80s pop-rock, laser focused on the Billboard Top 10. Spot-on writing, production, arrangements; what it lacks is the diversity and experimentation of Collins’ first two solo records. It was HUGE and made Collins a superstar. But—

Soon after, former band mate Peter Gabriel released “So,” a massive success that ALSO was a critical darling thanks to Gabriel’s bold experimentation and artful collaborations. Whereas “No Jacket Required” took a lot of negative criticism for being slight and insincere.

I get the impression Collins was deeply stung by the way he was dismissed while Gabriel was venerated, and he vowed to become a True Artiste with his next album, whose intended gravitas was denoted by its solemn cover portrait and self-important, no-fun title: “...But Seriously”

It’s a record full of navel-gazing songs about homelessness and apartheid and heartbreak. But it’s even less musically varied than “No Jacket”. In hindsight, it feels like Collins was filtering all his musical ideas through the same lens: “Livin’ In America”-era James Brown.

This album may have been an even bigger hit than “No Jacket”! There was a year or so where Collins was on the radio/music video stations on an hourly basis. But his videos weren’t on MTV like they had been with “No Jacket”—they were omnipresent on... dumpy middle-ager channel VH1

Meanwhile, his “socially aware” songs drew even more ferocious criticism. Not only were they accused of being soulless pop fodder, they were called cynical. What was this extremely wealthy white guy from England actually doing to fight homelessness and African poverty/conflict?

So, admirably, he decided to really and sincerely work from the heart for his next album. He retreated to his home studio and recorded that record, “Both Sides”, completely alone, writing and performing the entire thing all on his own.

It’s a shame. Collins was a prodigious drummer but only a tolerable performer on other instruments. One of his greatest strengths was his instinct for collaboration. Clapton! Eno! Earth Wind and Fire! But this is just a set of promising demos in need of someone else’s input.

On a more a positive note, I did pick up Collins' singles collection, which is great (mostly). It’s packed with hits not on his albums! It starts with “Easy Lover”! If only I could skip over the late ‘90s/Disney stuff—a strong case for migrating from vinyl to CDs

I really like the fact that he draws himself looking like Charlie Brown.

Anyway, one last Collins album from my abandoned project of collecting the complete Genesis band/solo discography: His live album. First disc is “eh,” but the back catalog stuff on disc 2 *cooks*

Two ACTUAL Can live bootlegs from different eras of the band. Both seem to be audience recordings, so they’re a little rough, but the performances are incredible. Familiar studio tunes go spinning off in unexpected directions, never to return...

At the other end of the spectrum, Can’s “Flow Motion”. Another latter-day Can record I enjoy more than the critical aggregate would indicate is appropriate. Great contrast between the structured material (“I Want More”) and the looser recordings (e.g. the title track)

In particular, I enjoy the tracks featuring Michael Karoli’s vocals. He’s so languid and relaxed... almost not even a presence. Gives this music a very different feel from the musical beat poetry of Malcolm Mooney or the frantic anxiety of Damo Suzuki.

And then there’s the final ‘70s record by Can, “Out of Reach.” This one is much harder to love. With the loss of Holger Czukay, something essential is missing here. It lacks the easygoing feel of the band’s other late ‘70s material and comes off feeling forced, somehow.

Time to do some catch up. You may want to mute this thread.

TARKUS. The album so good we made an entire podcast about one song! Actually, that one song (the title track) does the heavy lifting here. Side B is kinda all over the place.

“Tarkus” the song is a tour de force. Technologically groundbreaking, incredibly intense, narratively bizarre! Makes great use of the full palette of sounds available to a three-piece band like this in 1971: Piano, organ, early synthesizers and Mellotrons, and not-keyboards, too

Side B is an exercise at seeing what sticks to the wall. A dirge about the Holocaust, a weird ragtime bit about a lothario, and a ‘50s style rocker about the album’s producer. But anyway, the main draw is the 20-minute piece about the armadillo tank who fights Catholicism

ELP’s Trilogy has a hell of a cover. It looks all Crosby Stills and Nash. The actual music here is... not that. It has two big epics (which are not all that great!), includes a prog rendition of Aaron Copland’s “Rodeo”, and ends with a slow-burn bolero. Strange record.

Also strange, but extremely cool, is “Pictures at an Exhibition,” a live recording of ELP’s big breakthrough: A 40-minute, hard-rockin’ rendition of Modest Mussorgsky’s piano concerto. This made them superstars. The early ‘70s were AMAZING for music

Brain Salad Surgery was ELP’s biggest hit, which is wild to think about in hindsight. More than half of this record is taken up by “Karnevil 9”, a science fiction epic about the end of mankind and a space warship’s self-aware computer. But—that H.R. Giger cover!

Think rock in the early ‘70s was truly anything-goes? Note the white void below the woman’s mouth on the cover art. That’s where they airbrushed out the penis Giger painted there. This record was a mainstay of those “10 for 1¢” record clubs... imagine that without the airbrushing

I do appreciate the fact that they retained the original gatefold die-cut of the early album issues for this reprinting.

I love this album. It’s so layered and overwrought and over the top. A magnificent exercise in excess. This and “Dark Side of the Moon”
are why punk happened

Brain Salad Surgery was followed by this 3xLP live set, which is very good despite obviously being terribly bloated. The jacket design is a mess. Each record is held in place by a die-cut E, L, P. The base of the P is narrow and fragile. Every copy in existence is torn at the P

The title of this album is a reference to the oddly popular “Karnevil 9 First Impression Part II” (a radio-friendly track name that just rolls right off the tongue). It’s about a cosmic carnival barker and his show consisting of the last remaining fragments of humanity. Roll up!

Ok! On to the back half of ELP. The bad half.

They never really figured out how to follow up on a work as dense and memorable as Brain Salad Surgery, and most of their subsequent output screams “contractual obligation”. Like this: Works Vol. I

Works I is a double LP, and each side has a different talent focus: One side each for Emerson, for Lake, and For Palmer, and then one side that’s actually ELP the group. Basically it’s three solo half-albums and one group half-album, and the solo stuff is all over the place.

Emerson’s side is a piano concerto, which is... ok? Lake’s is a bunch of schmaltzy ballads. Palmer’s is some wild ‘70s jazz/disco rock, including a track with Joe Walsh doing the “talking guitar” thing. NOTHING about these works says “these guys should be in a band together”

But! The band side has their incredible Emerson-abusing-a-Hammond-organ rendition of Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man”, which is worth the price of admission. And also the deeply earnest/goofy epic “Pirates”, complete with a full orchestra. It sure is a thing they recorded.

Works Vol. I was followed by—yes!—Works Vol. II, which is... not great. It’s bad, actually! There’s a lot that’s dire here, but the band’s rendition of Lake’s cynical holiday hit “I Believe In Father Christmas” is a real low.

The Works albums were followed by In Concert, which is pretty solid and captures some of the band’s bankruptcy-inducing performances with a full orchestra. It’s been reissued in expanded form as “Works Live”, but I will never let THIS record go.

It’s a strange package. The record slides into the sleeve from the top, not the right side—very unusual. And when you flip it over to read the back side, it’s... upside down?

Not only that, but there’s an insert with lyrics for all the songs, which live albums never include. However, all the lyrics are completely wrong!? There’s some real “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy” energy happening here

It’s easy to visualize that One Guy In The Office Who’s Pretty Good At English getting handed this assignment, in an era before easy access to international releases and info, sweating this out in a real “Oh shit” moment before giving it his best shot. Pure respect for this hero.

The sad finale to the original Emerson Lake & Palmer run. The music is as bad as the cover would lead you to expect. How do you go from H.R. Giger to this? Truly a band beyond its sell-by date. Lousy songs, worse lyrics.

Fast forward seven years and you get this bootleg production, which despite being off-brand was the best thing to come from the ELP name in a decade: Emerson Lake & Powell. Carl Palmer was busy getting rich with Asia, see. So they found a drummer with a similar name: Cozy Powell

This album sounds REALLY different than old ELP. It’s all digital synths and drum pads, so it’s super dated in a way that the ‘70s Hammond/Moog sonic palette isn’t. But the writing is actually pretty strong, the first side is a solid extended suite. It even spawned a minor hit.

Fast forward another seven years and the actual ELP finally regrouped to take advantage of the brief early ‘90s prog revival with Black Moon, an album that has absolutely no reason to exist. It’s not bad, just kinda... there.

Well, except the lyrics. Those are mostly just bad.

Black Moon is a masterpiece next to ELP’s final studio album, though. In The Hot Seat was a desperate bid by a failing music label. It’s awful. The writing is wretched and the sound is worse: Both Emerson and Palmer were recovering from nerve damage, so it’s is a patchwork mess.

Thankfully, Hot Seat isn’t the band’s final statement. They toured shortly after and turned out a pair of live LPs that are as strong as Hot Seat was wretched. The Switzerland set in particular has some surprisingly fresh takes on old standards. A fine send off for E & L, R.I.P.

Mods are asleep, post prog rock commentary

Moving toward The Good Stuff again: Peter Gabriel’s first album (which, unsurprisingly, was eponymously titled) is a strange record but makes sense as a transitional work. He was moving away from fronting Genesis and into solo work.

It begins with a piece reminiscent of his quirkier Genesis work, “Moribund the Burgermeister.” But this is immediately followed by “Solisbury Hill,” a parable about quitting Genesis, and most everything after is decidedly un-Genesis-like: Blues, boogie, even barbershop quartet

The record ultimately comes back around to the prog epic (with orchestra!) for “Down the Dolce Vita/Here Comes the Flood,” which are massive and bombastic. The latter would eventually become a minor standard, but only in its acoustic remake form from a decade and a half later.

Peter Gabriel’s second album, which surprisingly is also eponymously titled, is less convincing. Robert Fripp produced, but the two weren’t really a great creative fit. There are some interesting tunes on here, but the overall record doesn’t really hold up.

Interestingly, Fripp would borrow the track “Exposure” for his own solo album released around this time, reworking it into a less plodding and lugubrious form... then naming the entire album after it. I guess he liked it.

My turntable was out of commission for months, but it’s back in action, and so is this dumb thread. Picking up where it left off: Peter Gabriel’s third album

I never followed up on this, since my eye was broken and I was minimizing screen time. But:

This album is great! My copy is not. I accidentally bought a 45rpm master, and have to switch sides every 2 tracks. And the sound quality is wretched on every turntable I’ve tried it on

But the album itself, wow. Really holds up. This record helped define the ‘80s sound without sounding too ‘80s itself—a rare trick. Gabriel, Phil Collins, and producer Hugh Padgham came up with the gated reverb drum sound here, and it kicks off the album with style in “Intruder”

Every song on this record is best of class, and the lyrics never deal with typical pop themes. They’re about a home invader; a social reject who seeks validation by assassinating a public figure; the criminal nature of warfare; and decrying the evil of Apartheid