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March 28, 2024, 09:42:10 AM

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Shit entry points to great acts

Started by peanutbutter, November 20, 2019, 11:20:15 PM

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peanutbutter

I was just thinking today about how people used to buy the heavily promoted new album by an act instead of checking out their back catalogue. When I was 14 one of my friends, having heard and liked a few REM songs, decided to get their new album Around the Sun as his first ever album, not sure he ever got anything by them again. Whole load of friends got St Anger as their entry point to Metallica too.

Don't think I've had anything quite as bad. I got Speakerboxx/The Love Below, and followed it up with Stankonia under the impression those were meant to be their two best albums. I got one of those awful £1 Jimi Hendrix CDs that used to exist.

Feel like this must've been way more common pre-internet though?

PaulTMA

There must be other people out there who attempted to get into The Cure via Wild Mood Swings

non capisco

Quote from: peanutbutter on November 20, 2019, 11:20:15 PM
I got one of those awful £1 Jimi Hendrix CDs that used to exist.

Ha ha, I remember those! Gold cover with a tiny black and white picture of Jimi in the centre. Featuring such highlights as a live version of 'Spanish Castle Magic' evidently recorded in a toilet. Great times!

Conversely the £1 Bob Marley CDs that used to exist were probably better than the official best ofs because they had the original pre-Island Lee Perry produced versions on.

The first Prince album I bought was the Batman soundtrack.

chveik

Your Future Our Clutter is a decent enough album but not really the best one to get into the Fall for 15 years old chveik.

sponk

Push th' Little Daisies put me off Ween for a while. Grew on me eventually but the first time i heard it is the only time I can ever remember wishing I could beat up a song

Sin Agog

Quote from: non capisco on November 21, 2019, 12:45:23 AM
Ha ha, I remember those! Gold cover with a tiny black and white picture of Jimi in the centre. Featuring such highlights as a live version of 'Spanish Castle Magic' evidently recorded in a toilet. Great times!

Conversely the £1 Bob Marley CDs that used to exist were probably better than the official best ofs because they had the original pre-Island Lee Perry produced versions on.

The first Prince album I bought was the Batman soundtrack.

Hehe, I remember buying one of those budget Marley comps with mostly Perry mixes and singing the track Hammer to various reggae fans in orbit around me, only to be totally perplexed that none of them knew da fuck I was on about.  Still my favourite track by him.

Much worse were some of the budget compilations by groups like The Ink Spots, Drifters and Mills Bros which were unfortunately often naff re-recordings made by them in the '80s to hold onto the rights.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

So many of those 'reaction' videos on YouTube involve people reacting to great acts via shit live versions of classic songs.

"Hey you guys, people keep telling me I need to check out The Kinks. So here they are live in Dusseldorf in 1986..."

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on November 21, 2019, 04:16:20 AM
So many of those 'reaction' videos on YouTube involve people reacting to great acts via shit live versions of classic songs.

"Hey you guys, people keep telling me I need to check out The Kinks. So here they are live in Dusseldorf in 1986..."

This might be to circumvent YouTube's automatic copyright system, allowing them to monetize the videos for themselves.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Probably, but it renders the whole phenomenon even more pointless than it was to begin with.

DrGreggles

Quote from: non capisco on November 21, 2019, 12:45:23 AM
The first Prince album I bought was the Batman soundtrack.

#metoo

Wasted SO MUCH of my life not listening to his previous 80s stuff.
Probably only knew the singles until I shared a house with a Prince fanatic in the late 90s who helped me to finally see the light.

famethrowa

In the late 80s I was buying lots of 2nd hand cassettes, and I thought I'd check out this Hendrix fella with a tape called "Band of Gypsies". Hmmm not bad, blues jams, bit ordinary, good solos... and that was all I knew of Jimi for the next 25 years.

poodlefaker

Quote from: peanutbutter on November 20, 2019, 11:20:15 PM
Feel like this must've been way more common pre-internet though?

Pre-internet you'd regularly risk blowing a tenner on an album of songs you'd never heard by a band you'd never heard because it got a good review in NME. Or if it was an obscure "classic" from the 60s that your fave combo were name-dropping you could go for years before actually finding a copy. As you can imagine, disappointment levels were pretty high.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: Sin Agog on November 21, 2019, 03:02:02 AMMuch worse were some of the budget compilations by groups like The Ink Spots, Drifters and Mills Bros which were unfortunately often naff re-recordings made by them in the '80s to hold onto the rights.
What often added insult to injury was that you'd later find out these were naff re-recordings made by a line-up that were all recruited in 1982 or something.

Absorb the anus burn

Total Devo & Smooth Noodle Maps are a disastrous way to begin exploring DEVO.

Quote from: DrGreggles on November 21, 2019, 09:54:36 AM
#metoo

Wasted SO MUCH of my life not listening to his previous 80s stuff.
Probably only knew the singles until I shared a house with a Prince fanatic in the late 90s who helped me to finally see the light.

I'm the opposite, I started with the 1999 double album, got everything before and after and stopped with the Batman OST - probably missed some good stuff after that.

SteveDave

Cardiff Central Library only had one Ramones LP (on tape) during the nineteeeeen nineties and it was this:



Absolute hole.

Rich Uncle Skeleton

Quote from: Absorb the anus burn on November 21, 2019, 11:31:31 AM
Total Devo & Smooth Noodle Maps are a disastrous way to begin exploring DEVO.

Read this guide to Devo years ago and this quote has always stuck with me.

QuoteIt has been said that most great artists end up sounding like a parody of themselves sooner or later.  Nowhere is that more true in the Devo catalog than on "Total Devo."  In fact, substitute the word "Devo" in the title with a scatological four letter word of your choice and you have a more accurate representation of the material within.

That was always enough for me not to listen to it once, almost everything I heard post "Oh No!" has been terrible. "Something For Everybody" was patchy at best too (Christ that was 9 years ago!)

Absorb the anus burn

Disco Dancer & Shout work well together on Now It Can Be Told.

NoSleep

#18
Quote from: Sin Agog on November 21, 2019, 03:02:02 AM
Much worse were some of the budget compilations by groups like The Ink Spots, Drifters and Mills Bros which were unfortunately often naff re-recordings made by them in the '80s to hold onto the rights.

Another thing to avoid are compilations  of recordings from the era of the 78rpm that were "enhanced" for modern ears, usually by adding reverb but also incorporating fake stereo (using comb filters). These always sound terrible in comparison to the raw sound of a good transfer of the original with that "in the room with the artist" feeling you get.

Likewise with later transfers of 78's through digital denoisers. The ultimate pile of shit produced this way has to be Robert Johnson "The Complete Recordings" released 1990 on Columbia. Also the Duke Ellington compilation "The OKeh Ellington" released 1991 on Columbia (who appear to be terrible at this). They have sacrificed all the top end of these recordings to get rid of a little bit of crackle which would have been far less annoying. Everything sounds claustrophobic and muffled. You can't hear the cymbals at the end of The Mooche for example. Earlier (pre-digital) transfers of the same material, that were compiled to LP, sound much better.

purlieu

Quote from: peanutbutter on November 20, 2019, 11:20:15 PM
When I was 14 one of my friends, having heard and liked a few REM songs, decided to get their new album Around the Sun as his first ever album, not sure he ever got anything by them again.
Fucking hell. That's almost one for the desolation thread.

My first OMD album was The Pacific Age. Thankfully I carried on and got some of the good albums later.

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: sponk on November 21, 2019, 01:46:12 AM
Push th' Little Daisies put me off Ween for a while. Grew on me eventually but the first time i heard it is the only time I can ever remember wishing I could beat up a song

Ha, that was my entry point! Jakki Brambles used to play it and I loved it, but didn't catch the name. Reading the very enticing negative review of Chocolate and Cheese in Hot Press made me put two and two together, so I got Pure Guava first. I remember getting a slap from a mate halfway through 'Little Birdy' the first time I put it on for friends but fuck it, I liked it and they all became converts soon after (except the one who slapped me).

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: non capisco on November 21, 2019, 12:45:23 AM
The first Prince album I bought was the Batman soundtrack.

That was my first too, due to 'Batdance'. I picked up Lovesexy at the same time as it was his other recent one and had a rude cover. Not the best entry points, but they didn't put me off.

Sin Agog

Quote from: NoSleep on November 21, 2019, 02:26:09 PM
Another thing to avoid are recordings from the era of the 78rpm that were "enhanced" for modern ears, usually by adding reverb but also incorporating fake stereo (using comb filters). These always sound terrible in comparison to the raw sound of a good transfer of the original with that "in the room with the artist" feeling you get.

Likewise with later transfers of 78's through digital denoisers. The ultimate pile of shit produced this way has to be Robert Johnson "The Complete Recordings" released 1990 on Columbia. Also the Duke Ellington compilation "The OKeh Ellington" released 1991 on Columbia (who appear to be terrible at this). They have sacrificed all the top end of these recordings to get rid of a little bit of crackle which would have been far less annoying. Everything sounds claustrophobic and muffled. You can't hear the cymbals at the end of The Mooche for example. Earlier (pre-digital) transfers of the same material, that were compiled to LP, sound much better.

That whole denoising period is like the musical equivalent of the mullet.  It all seems like a bizarre cultural blip looking back.  Old record hiss is one of the most soothing sounds there is.

Sin Agog

Oh, and obvious one but Tubthumping.  These politically righteous motherfuckers who emerged from the flames of anarchopunk, and did covers of the most obscure antiquarian folk songs and sea shanties that even Cecil Sharp had never heard of, turned into the unironic voice of frat parties and sports events the world over.

SteveDave

Quote from: Sin Agog on November 21, 2019, 03:18:37 PM
Oh, and obvious one but Tubthumping.  These politically righteous motherfuckers who emerged from the flames of anarchopunk, and did covers of the most obscure antiquarian folk songs and sea shanties that even Cecil Sharp had never heard of, turned into the unironic voice of frat parties and sports events the world over.

I bought "Ugh! Your Ugly Houses" on 7" because the video was on the Chart Show and one of the facts was that Jonathan King said it was his favourite single of whatever year it was released.

NoSleep

Quote from: Sin Agog on November 21, 2019, 03:15:07 PM
That whole denoising period is like the musical equivalent of the mullet.  It all seems like a bizarre cultural blip looking back.  Old record hiss is one of the most soothing sounds there is.

Denoising still gets overused, or was still being overused in 2012, when Art Yard reissued Sun Ra's Horizon (perhaps his greatest album). The reissue has denoiser unnecessarily clamping down all the excitement throughout. I have a cassette recording made from the original vinyl, which I transferred to digital myself with no need for a denoiser, that sounds far better than the CD.


The Culture Bunker

I came to REM through 'Monster', which I thought was... OK. A couple of good songs, but a lot of guff. Although I was never that taken by 'Out of Time' and 'Automatic For the People' either, in terms of being satisfying listens from start to finish. Then a couple of years later, when I started uni, another lad on my course pointed at me in the direction of the IRS albums, which I found to be all excellent, except 'Document', which is alright but the start of their (in my eyes) decline.

peanutbutter

Quote from: sponk on November 21, 2019, 01:46:12 AM
Push th' Little Daisies put me off Ween for a while. Grew on me eventually but the first time i heard it is the only time I can ever remember wishing I could beat up a song
Oh god yeah, me too. This was back on dialup and I frequently downloaded songs partially on the basis of which one seemed like the download had a chance of completing (e.g. if there was a 64kbps version of a bands biggest hit, but a 48kbps one of a second tier song, I'd take the second tier song) so I frequently had weird introduction points too. Knew I wanted something from the Mollusk or Chocolate & Cheese, but there was a smaller one of it.

Gave them a second chance with Voodoo Lady then which is... like, it's a good song, but it annoyed the fuck out of me in the context of being the Push th' Little Daisies band.


Like a decade later I heard the Mollusk and was like "ohhhhh, I mean, this is still a bit annoying but it's also great"

jamiefairlie

Quote from: NoSleep on November 21, 2019, 05:17:42 PM
Denoising still gets overused, or was still being overused in 2012, when Art Yard reissued Sun Ra's Horizon (perhaps his greatest album). The reissue has denoiser unnecessarily clamping down all the excitement throughout. I have a cassette recording made from the original vinyl, which I transferred to digital myself with no need for a denoiser, that sounds far better than the CD.

I used to trade a lot of live tapes and you'd get the odd eedjit that would put Dolby NR on it and it was always universally awful. Everything  reduced to a dull, muffled thud, like listening to the gig from outside the venue.