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Is This Classic Rock?

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Pete Incaviglia, Mar 3, 2009.

  1. spnited

    spnited Active Member


    Give it up dickhead. You'll be done in 8 seconds.
     
  2. forever_town

    forever_town Well-Known Member

    It's better to be fast in duels old dickhead.
     
  3. lono

    lono Active Member

    Bring it.

    [​IMG]
     
  4. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    I have always felt a band will have its best album in either its first, second or third release. Automatic, I think is their best, and it is their eighth album.

    But you are right, when you look at All That You Can't Leave Behind by U2 that hit two full decades into their careers and after a dry spell of 6-7 years, Bono and the boys might have the greatest comeback album.
     
  5. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    You're missing the point. If you go back and listen to No Code, now, I think it stands up with their best albums, musically. But it isn't radio friendly. No two songs sound the same, and there are no anthems on it.

    So, when you add up no radio songs, no videos, no ticketmaster dates all around the same time, yeah, I'd say they were trying to whittle their fan base down. Not because they don't want fans, but because no one can sell 17 million copies every time out. Better to bring things back to earth on your terms.
     
  6. Sam Mills 51

    Sam Mills 51 Well-Known Member

    Huh? Does this theory have ANY basis?

    Genesis' best album? Up for debate - at least four albums quickly come to mind - and all were after the group's third release, Nursery Cryme.

    Rush? 2112 was terrific and it was the band's fourth album. Some could argue "Moving Pictures" or "Permanent Waves," but bottom line is none of the first three albums were very good.

    Elton John? No freaking way. Either "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" or "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy" and those are ninth and 12th.

    Stevie Wonder's phenomenal run of albums starting with "Talking Book" in '72 were after more than a dozen releases.

    Billy Joel comes close to your theory, as "Turnstiles" and "The Stranger" were his fourth and fifth albums.

    Otherwise, the theory doesn't really hold up. Sorry.
     
  7. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    My basis is that a band will write songs for years while they are trying to catch that one big break. Once they have that first recording contract, they have 30-40 songs already in their library to choose from.

    Once those songs have been exhausted, then their work will suffer. But in some cases, a band or artist will have their best work in the middle of their careers, but, IMHO, this is rare.

    Some bands whose best work was in their first three albums.

    Dave Matthews
    Smashing Pumpkins
    New Order
    The Smiths
    The Pixies
    The Police
    Weezer
    Green Day
    Gin Blossoms
    Guns and Roses
    Pearl Jam
    Bon Jovi

    This list can go on and on...
     
  8. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    Well, you have a much higher opinion of it than I do. They are certainly free to move in whatever musical direction they want, but the "whittling down the fan base" stuff always struck me as a silly story from a band that put out an album that people didn't like.

    I think they just got a whole lot less interesting as they went along. And for a band that wanted to cut its audience, they sure as hell played into the "Pearl Jam is back!" media blitz on the last album... while pretending that they weren't. It was a nice touch when they did the cover story with Rolling Stone... and then bitched about being the cover story on Rolling Stone.

    Look, I like Pearl Jam. The first few albums were brilliant, and they've had their moments since then. And despite some missteps along the way, their heart is in the right place. They seem like great guys. But Eddie manages to out-sanctimonious Bono, which seems virtually impossible, and putting out an album that people didn't like and then pretending that was the point just seems comical to me.
     
  9. albert77

    albert77 Well-Known Member

    I give you Blue Oyster Cult. Never in the history of recorded music has one hit record so thoroughly ruined a previously great rock-and-roll band as "Don't Fear the Reaper," did for BOC. Their first three albums were absolutely great, full of hot guitar riffs, great ensemble playing and a wicked sense of humor.

    Then Allen Lanier fell in with Patti Smith and they turned out Agents of Fortune, which is, with one exception, one of the coldest so-called hard-rock albums ever made (the one exception was "The Summer of Love). And everything they did afterward stank to high heaven.

    So what do you never hear on "classic rock" radio? Anything from their first three albums.
     
  10. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    jesus christ. there were no classic rock stations back in '85 that played '70s music ... they all played music, not rock, from the '50s.

    you guys taking mushrooms again?
     
  11. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    R.E.M. really hit the skids IMO when Bill Berry left the band. They've done some decent stuff since then, but it was like somebody pulled a plug.
     
  12. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    Put the album aside. Could be brilliant. Could be dreck. Doesn't really matter.

    Do you think they didn't tour behind it except a few sparing dates in oddball venues and didn't release any videos for it because they were trying to sell as many copies as possible? And some critics loved it, FWIW.

    I'm not saying they weren't trying to sell ANY albums. I'm saying they realized they were never going to sell 10 million albums again. So they recorded a kind of goofy album. I'll give you that people tend to love it or hate it. But it really has grown on me over the years. (And Stone singing on Mankind sounds eerily like what the Foo Fighters would end up sounding like.)

    Now, if you want to say it was a shitty year for album sales and so all of the above was a copout because they knew they'd never sell half what they sold for Vs. ever again, I guess you can argue that. It would seem exceedingly calculated on their part, but, whatever.

    As to the rest of it, sure, they got sanctimonius about the Ticketmaster shit. They were still right.
     
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