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That's one group I've always been curious about...but never took a plunge.The Alan Parsons Project
Grew up on those '64-'69 Cosby WB LPs. Everyone of them is 5-star in my book. (I always liked the aspect of the <--STEREO--> stand-up comic LP. The comic's mic is hand held so there's no stereo imaging of him pacing to-and-fro as it were across your living room; so, in a stroke of brilliance, someone recorded the audience in stereo...and voila! A stereophonic stand-up comedy LP -- anything to get at that higher retail price!)Bill Cosby - in light of recent revelations on him, nobody will ever hear his comedy anymore which is a real shame, he was a brilliant comedian. Virtually everything he ever recorded is excellent
Agreed. It's unreasonable to expect any artist to continuously create increasingly unique and pacesetting work. I just like Simon...can't really explain why...but it's clear that he lost the ability to write songs melodically comparable to Mrs. Robinson, Bridge Over Troubled Water or Mother and Child Reunion many years ago.Yep. And the longer careers often run out of steam. Paul Simon lost me a couple of times.
it's clear that he lost the ability to write songs melodically comparable to Mrs. Robinson, Bridge Over Troubled Water or Mother and Child Reunion many years ago.
RHYTHM OF THE SAINTS, the immediate follow-up to GRACELAND, is tremendous. If you haven't listened to it, Harry, I highly recommend it.I've got all of the Simon & Garfunkel stuff many times over in CDs and LPs, and I followed both individually through the 70s and into the early 80s. Simon's HEARTS & BONES was a very late discovery a few years ago and it's now a favorite. I liked GRACELAND at the time, but that's about as far as I went with Paul Simon. I have all of Garfunkel's 70s output and then he stopped having any radio-worthy songs and I lost track, I think I may have one later CD that he put out, possibly a comp.
We also have around here a ton of Neil Diamond's work, comps that cover the early, early stuff, then his main albums for Columbia up through the 70s into the 80s, and once again, lost track when the hits dried up after the Bacharach song "Heartlight". But I think we might have an album or two from later - that are never played.
That also pretty much describes Gordon Lightfoot.
Perhaps I'll give it a try someday. The way I stumbled into HEARTS AND BONES after years of ignoring it, probably due to its not-appealing title, was quite by happenstance.RHYTHM OF THE SAINTS, the immediate follow-up to GRACELAND, is tremendous. If you haven't listened to it, Harry, I highly recommend it.
Perhaps I'll give it a try someday. The way I stumbled into HEARTS AND BONES after years of ignoring it, probably due to its not-appealing title, was quite by happenstance.
One Sunday morning, I was wondering about, and looked for, a studio version of "The Late Great Johnny Ace". I forget just why, It turned out that I had it on two different CDs from compilations: PAUL SIMON 1964/1993, and THE ESSENTIAL PAUL SIMON. I was familiar with the song from his playing it at the CONCERT IN CENTRAL PARK.
This discovery led me down the rabbit hole of noting that the songs: "Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War", "Hearts and Bones", and "Train in the Distance" were also available of these comps. Then I looked at my singles and found another track, "Think Too Much (a)". So I actually had five of the ten songs on HEARTS AND BONES, and I kind of liked what I heard and found a reasonable original CD on the Internet and totally fell in love with the album.
Looking for kindred souls online, I found out that most of them were bemoaning the fact that Art Garfunkel had recorded some of these songs - that the album was initially conceived as an S&G reunion album, and that Paul Simon erased all of the Garfunkel stuff after a spat and his claims that the songs were too personal to allow Garfunkel on the album.
Normally, I'd agree with those that wanted the S&G versions, but I fell in love with the album as is, and really didn't want any other version of it. It's perfect as is, IMHO, and is now a favorite album that I skipped over all those years ago. My theory as to why the album wasn't a "hit", was the somewhat questionable choice of releasing "Allergies" as a lead single.
You should take the plunge and give Alan Parsons a listen.That's one group I've always been curious about...but never took a plunge.
Grew up on those '64-'69 Cosby WB LPs. Everyone of them is 5-star in my book. (I always liked the aspect of the <--STEREO--> stand-up comic LP. The comic's mic is hand held so there's no stereo imaging of him pacing to-and-fro as it were across your living room; so, in a stroke of brilliance, someone recorded the audience in stereo...and voila! A stereophonic stand-up comedy LP -- anything to get at that higher retail price!)
Agreed. It's unreasonable to expect any artist to continuously create increasingly unique and pacesetting work. I just like Simon...can't really explain why...but it's clear that he lost the ability to write songs melodically comparable to Mrs. Robinson, Bridge Over Troubled Water or Mother and Child Reunion many years ago.
They were a curiosity for me at first. I'd heard that a band named Garbage had signed with Almo Sounds. Then a month or two later, the alt rock Canadian radio station (89X, across the river in Windsor) mentioned they were playing a single from a new band named Garbage, and that was "Vow." Wasn't really keen on it but after a dozen or so airings, I was hooked on it and wound up buying the CD. Not too long after, "Queer" and "Happy When It Rains" were on the station's playlist. They were certainly one of the highlights of alternative rock back in the day.I love Garbage. I have their complete cd collection, including the special edition of the new album released last week. I like the cover songs they did of David Bowie’s Starman, and Patti Smith’s Because The Night. I totally agree that their early releases were their best work. I never saw the vinyl. I would love to hear that too. I’ve seen them twice in concert. Once as a headline act, and the other time they opened for No Doubt. One of the few 90’s acts I like.
This discovery led me down the rabbit hole of noting that the songs: "Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War", "Hearts and Bones", and "Train in the Distance" were also available of these comps. Then I looked at my singles and found another track, "Think Too Much (a)". So I actually had five of the ten songs on HEARTS AND BONES, and I kind of liked what I heard and found a reasonable original CD on the Internet and totally fell in love with the album.
Hearts And Bones, was love at first listen -- which is at odds with my '60s musical sensibilities...somehow, Simon pulls off drums machines and other early '80s sonics. Train In The Distance, When Numbers Get Serious and the title track are A+. Not a bad cut on the LP. Rhythm Of The Saints is quite good -- but here we start to see Simon embrace the longer horizontal melody lines that appear of secondary importance to lyrical content. You're The One may be the last of the albums that harken to the '70s in any way... Surprise has Brian Eno all over it...not my cup of tea and I rarely play it -- can't even remember one song from it. So Beautiful or So What is pretty good. Phil Ramone is back and the songs are definitely better and more tuneful. Stranger To Stranger has its moments but it seems to come off as a swan song -- particuarly so with Roy Halee present. In The Blue Light just seems sad to me -- I think because it's now clear Simon's done and whenever I play this album I can't help but think of his lyrics from Old Friends from Bookends back in '68.I found HEARTS AND BONES difficult to warm up to, but "The Late Great Johnny Ace" brought me back to it over and over and eventually the album clicked with me.
The ONE TRICK PONY soundtrack (apart from "Late in the Evening") and SONGS FROM THE CAPEMAN just don't work for me. Everything from GRACELAND on, apart from "CAPEMAN", I really like---though IN THE BLUE LIGHT is challenging. Paul's voice is showing signs of age and I don't agree that some of the arrangements improve on the original.
RHYTHM OF THE SAINTS is really a companion to GRACELAND. If GRACELAND had been a double album, this would have been the rest of it.
My Stevie collection starts with Music Of My Mind and while I have everything through A Time to Love, the ones I listen to the most are only up through Musiquarium (where I like three of its four new tracks, and which seems to signal the end of his best era), and like some of the tracks from Characters and In Square Circle. The earlier albums are like anything else by Motown in the 60s--heard one, heard 'em all. The later ones got too much into drum machines and beats, and his preachiness got to be too "in your face" for my liking. (It's one thing to suggest social issues like he did with Innervisions but he had to hit us over the head with it from the 80s and beyond.)There are also other artists that I have some albums here and there on CD or digitally, but not by any means anywhere near their discography, like Stevie Wonder (I have Music in My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale, and Songs in the Key of Life, and these are among the most treasured CDs in my collections, but I have nothing from his 1960s albums and none of his albums from the 1980s and beyond).
I have to say, even as someone who is on the left of the political spectrum, I find the suggestiveness to be more thought-provoking than preachiness. I thought Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life were done masterfully. I actually went to a Songs in the Key of Life concert a few years back in Vegas, and I could tell a lot of the people were disappointed/uncomfortable because that was around the same time as the Ferguson/Michael Brown incident and Stevie very explicitly performed a song or two with a nod to Michael Brown. I personally thought it was fitting and appropriate, but I could tell the other concertgoers were there to jam out to "Superstition" or "I Just Called to Say I Love You" — wrong concert!The later ones got too much into drum machines and beats, and his preachiness got to be too "in your face" for my liking. (It's one thing to suggest social issues like he did with Innervisions but he had to hit us over the head with it from the 80s and beyond.)
I agree. Just on Innervisions alone, we know what "Living For The City" is about, as well as "Too High." It wasn't until years later that I learned "Misstra Know It All" was about Richard Nixon--it was a masterful lyric that hinted at the commentary but could fly under the radar in a more general sense. Yet if you fast forward to the 80s on In Square Circle, he's singing "Apartheid is wrong....wrong...wrong." (As we say in these parts, "No sh*t, Sherlock!" So obvious that it's almost insulting.) Even "Front Line" from Musiquarium rubs me the wrong way. At least on some albums, he put the worst of those "message" tunes last, and we could quit the CD early.I have to say, even as someone who is on the left of the political spectrum, I find the suggestiveness to be more thought-provoking than preachiness.
I admit I don’t know as much of Stevie’s ‘80s material beyond the singles and the couple of songs he did with Paul McCartney for Tug of War, and We Are the World. I think even “Ebony and Ivory” is another “no sh*t Sherlock” moment. Don’t get me wrong—I love the tune and think the instrumentation is done well, but being like “black and white people should live together peacefully” is, mmm, basic/fundamental I think. But maybe it says more that that message was so controversial in some circles and continues to be in many of those same circles today.Yet if you fast forward to the 80s on In Square Circle, he's singing "Apartheid is wrong....wrong...wrong." (As we say in these parts, "No sh*t, Sherlock!" So obvious that it's almost insulting.)
...which has been a problem with "pop" music in general since the 1970/80s. I have no interest in anyone setting to music their societal ideologies. As a friend of mine told me in the 1970s about Dylan: I like his music a great deal, but do not necessarily agree with his politics. Far worse than Dylan was Tommy Paxton -- who by "naming names" forever dated his material. Simon was better than Dylan in that he presented a premise and let you decide what is all meant (Patterns, Numbers). One of my all-time faves was Ball of Confusion (1970) as released by The Temptations: they lay it out there...and you decide. No political preaching.(It's one thing to suggest social issues like he did with Innervisions but he had to hit us over the head with it from the 80s and beyond.
Just a reminder, folks, we discourage any political discussions. It's always for the best to keep that stuff to yourself - and it would certainly be better if the artists kept their thoughts private, but that's not always possible.
I totally agree Harry and you and Rudy and all the staff are doing a Stellar job keeping this place friendly coming here always has a positive therapeutic effect on me and has been More so these last 5 years I Want to Thank you all for thatAs I said, it's not always possible for the artists to keep their political views private. That's a given. What we hope to avoid here is the discussion of those views and how they may or may not intersect with our own.
It's a long-standing rule and it keeps this place "among friends".