And yet early Status Quo, pre boogie, were very good and a great live band.
Queen were a great live rock band in the mid 70s. Imho. The concert footage exists.
I think the energy they had live was quite different from their recordings.
Have to agree Mike.
Weird attitude considering the principal advice given on this very forum, when it comes to hifi gear, is listen yourself and make your own mind up.
True of absolutely loads of bands.
Always amuses me now how people eulogise vinyl studio recordings from that era, including artists who clearly have false memory syndrome, and yet it takes about five minutes on Rocks Back Pages to find a major artist from that era bemoaning that all that lovely analogue equipment people now worship hadn’t captured the recording as it was in the studio at all.
Fantastic interviews with people like Gilmour et al talking about the fatal inadequacies of analogue desks.
Get the sense people like what used to be called ‘colouration’ which they seem to call ‘organic’ these days.
Loads, but seeing as he was mentioned by the OP, Brooooce.
He’s very worthy and all that, but I find him rather dull.
Totally get that. The run from the first album to Nebraska is near faultless. After that? There’s The Rising and The Seeger Sessions and some one off songs and that’s it really. Now he’s releasing everything he once refused to release and it just shows how much effort went into the great stuff but doesn’t do him any favours. Seven albums and maybe five great songs we missed out on.
Same with the live experience. It was always hyperactive, brilliant and orchestrated but the stories were personal and relatable so the arenas really did shrink. Now it’s an old bloke going through the motions with a three decade catalogue of ordinariness and the orchestrated speeches are preaching whilst the orchestrated moves are worshipping James Brown et al in a weird attempt to be relevant.
There’s still those who need the night out and are desperate to make claims for him but he was creaking 22 years ago and now it’s entertaining muscle memory but no more than muscle memory nevertheless.
I think it his his worthiness I don’t like; too much blue-collar chest beating for me. Born To Run and Blinded By The Light are ok (I prefer the Manfred Mann version) but a 3 hour concert of Bruce would be way too much for me.
I think the classic albums you mention are of a time and genre. And whilst they might make an “all time” list as well, that those lists are also compiled with a bias.
My formative musical years were the 80s/90s, and all I listened to was electronic music. So classic to me is defined in that context. My tastes have broadened a bit since, but not to the extent of including The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen etc. Their music just does not move me like electronic music does, I never spent hours in clubs listening and dancing to that stuff!
Classic albums to me are by artists like Jarre, Vangelis, Kraftwerk, and more recently discovered, Wendy Carlos, Suzanne Ciani, Doug McKechnie. Ok, I never spent hours in clubs listening to these either, but the music I did do that to have their roots in that history, and anyway were rarely were compiled into albums, other than DJ/Club mix albums.
Ask a Reggae fan and you’d have a different list again!
Do you think there’s something in the time and genre point?
But I wrote good, not brilliant..
George Formby
I’m still getting over the concept of a thread about popular music we don’t own. I mean, for most people, the list of popular music they don’t own must be vast. Far longer a list than popular artists they do own.
I can say I have no Pink Floyd or Taylor Swift, and then go on for another few hundred from there. No Beatles. No Elvis. No Joni Mitchel. No Janis Joplin. No Oasis. No Grateful Dead. etc. etc.
Why? for the same reason we all decide to not buys things. I just don’t like them.
I think there is a thread with a bit narrower scope already. Poplar artists you actually hate or something along those lines. That produced a lot more focused responses.
Or, within genres you like, what recognised name do you never listen to? For example, I mainly listen to jazz but never play Errol Garner or Louis Armstrong.
Welllll,
Love prog rock. I don’t own or like Pink Floyd
Love hard rock. No Metallica
Love Funk. No James Brown
Love Classic Rock. No Michael Jackson or Queen, or Elton.
I just think the above are naff.
I find Queen to be highly over rated.
…. but who cares? A thread doesn’t have to have focus. Sometimes it’s nice to just ramble all over the place.
Although Van Morrison did a good cover version of Cleaning windows on his 1982 album Beautiful vision .
Beach Boys. Nothing against them, just not for me.
RIP Brian!
Ditto…