Red Mosquito

Tass Man wrote:Hello Nasty

nasty wrote:

Tass Man wrote:Hello Nasty

hello.

Soma. wrote:D-, Chud.

nasty wrote:

Tass Man wrote:Hello Nasty

hello.

matt reeder wrote:

liebzz wrote:I don't think I've heard a flawless album yet. I have many favorites, but can't say they lacked any flaws. The Merkinball EP/single is the closest thing I have heard, and its flaw is that it is too short. They needed to make a triple album in that exact headspace. Most of the albums mentioned here so far I think have been great albums, but all had their flaws somewhere in there.

Perfect From Now On is perfect.

McParadigm wrote:A few things.

1. This is a Pearl Jam board, so there's gonna be some real love for early nineties....stuff....but I don't think any of the bands remotely associated with the top 40 selling "alternative" scene made a perfect record...or even necessarily a great one...before 1994. Even fast forwarding to now, I really only feel like there are maybe 4 or 5 genuinely great records out of that entire crew.

I don't think it's exactly their fault, though...I'm not convinced that "rock," in terms of the marketed aspect of the genre, really survived the 70's as a creative force. Basically, there came a point where its equations reversed. Instead of innovation leading the economics and artistic repetition being seen as commercial death, the drive for sellability actually began to injure the freedom to innovate. By the 80's you had songwriter pop rock (as typified by Springsteen and the Brothers in Arms album), which was really pop first, songwriter second, and a little rock influence last, the "are you making fun of it?" rock that is now the most associated sound for that decade, and synth pop music (also with rock attitude, but little else)....along with the early beginnings of soul music's self-mutilation (in other words, rawk wasn't the only genre whose commercial face was being chewed up).

By the mid-70's there just wasn't any direction. After punk readopted Great Balls of Fire and hardcore started trying to blend the sexiest early metal primality with folk melodies, the whole guitar-driven punchkick went into tired repeat and safety net wire acts. That's when I knew you were pretending.

Basically (and I think this is as true of the "we saved rawk" alt crowd as anybody), what was embraced as marketable was whatever was least surprising while still allowing for that marketing quality of 'see how different your generation is and how stupid the others were' personality....which is why you ended up with such a powerhouse, surprisingly large selling just-under-the-radar crowd by the turn of the century. It was the only place allowed to grow. But it means that, while each new marketing gimmick produced a few great moments, a lot of well-meaning musicians got caught up in their own bullshit.

2. Choosing the carefully crafted, if beautifully melodied, Blood on the Tracks over the 'this is actually my most political record, but you don't know what it is, do you' Americana sneer of Highway 61 Revisited is pure foolishness. From the initial ejection that kicks off the album (although, if you're honest about it, the line "How does it feel to be without a home" feels a little too excitedly endorphined and promising for the rest of the song...almost like foolish youthful exuberance), through the surreal travel south across America's unending contradicting insanity and cruel compassion, to the final (now desperate) escape south of the border (only to find that, just like Bob's home in Minnesota, they're selling pictures of the hanging), that album is the aural equivalent of the tired "I fucking dare you" I-didn't-hear-no-bell stare that was slapped on the cover of all those great mid-60's Dylan records. It literally is his entire persona, from jump to Tempest, in one record. Hell, maybe in one snare crack kick drum no-more opening.

So, I mean, if you have to choose Bob...

3. Now, if I'm gonna vote.

I want to vote for American immigrant band-aid jazz. I vote to praise the wants-to-be-free experimentation that sought musical purity but that couldn't quite let go of the feel of soft kisses. I want to to vote for the timeless forgotten, who borrowed rhythm from trains and words from sad gypsies. The ones imprisoned by land and by love. Who lived in the place where country and blues were true brothers...where songwriters wore crowns but the song was still king. I want melody and rain. I want the real end.

So I vote Rain Dogs.

And yeah. I'm pretty fucking drunk.

cutuphalfdead wrote:

Soma. wrote:D-, Chud.

What the fuck did I do!?

stip wrote:I can't think of a perfect record.

Vitalogy and Automatic for the People come closest for me.