Reviews by mitch058

A classic, I know, but I don't think I've actually listened to the whole album before, or really heard most of the non-radio-hits. It's impressive how much the vocoder makes this sound a bit like time travel music-wise, with synthesizer-like sounds showing up in an analog context (the live string and horn sections contrast nicely with the sci-fi vocoder, or whatever synthesizer process gives the synth sounds and vocal manipulation).

A fun listen, although not really my favorite sound, and it's sometimes hard for me to distinguish ELP, ELO, and Yes. And of course a few great radio hits like "Sweet Talkin' Woman" and "Mr. Blue Sky" make it a better experience (that helps you forget some of the weaker songs on the somewhat tediously long double-album).

I feel like I have two very opposite impressions of Paul Simon, and this plays out with this album. On the one hand, I often enjoy his sound and style (perhaps not as much as his work with Garfunkel), especially on his earlier solo stuff, but I also find his whole world music thing kind of annoying and pretentious (more so than, say, Peter Gabriel or David Byrne's (obviously much later) world music explorations). Thankfully, this album has less of the global sound (except of course his ubiquitous pan pipes), and while I miss the Garfunkel/Simon harmonies, most of the songs are pretty solid, although not particularly distinctive. I also enjoyed how much this album reminded me of some of Leo Kottke's stuff.

Ugh. I figured we would get this since we also got Offspring, but still...just not very interesting or entertaining, I'm afraid (and somewhat surprisingly, not as interesting as The Offspring) .

It's hard not to hear this as a Steely Dan album, given how distinctive Fagen's voice is, and the music is fairly similar too. A sly way to get more Steely Dan into the 1001 albums project!

That said, I'm sorry he decided to go solo in the early 1980s, as this was *not* a very fertile time for distinctive sounding tunes amongst all the backup choruses, poppy synth sounds and the ubiquitous sax solos and drum-machine-sounding beats (even when they're actually drums). I'm kind of reminded of Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms" (although I enjoy that album a lot more). It's kind of hard to agree with the critic who called this "one of pop music's sneakiest masterpieces," as I wish it was more distinctive and interesting.

I actually own a Le Tigre album (not this one, rather "This Island"), somewhat accidentally when I found it left on the street--I'm not sure I even listened to it for months, and had no idea what the band was like. I'm impressed to discover that this debut album shares a lot of similarities with their 3rd and last album (but not in a repetitive way), and I enjoyed this album as much as "The Island". Not exactly my favorite music style, but they have good lyrics and a well-produced sound (for what they're trying to achieve).

"Deceptacon" reminds me (perhaps oddly) of a later version of the classic Ministry "Jesus Built My Hotrod", perhaps simply because they both have references to "ding a ding a dang a dong dong ding dong " (more or less). And it's pretty funny to see/hear how "My my metrocard" is strangely re-relevant with its critique of good old Giuliani. My favorite song on the album, though, is probably "Slideshow at Free University," which reminds me of the exhibit/film "Manifesto" (probably because the song is also an excerpt of a manifesto), as well as the band "LCD Soundsystem".

A fun listen, although I have no idea if this is one of their greats, or just another solid album? It's certainly quite a progression from their days of "Shout" or even "Testify", and I particularly enjoyed this album's version of "Listen to the Music", as well as the great opening bass (and track) on "Sunshine". And nice that they added a few more brothers to the Isley clan with this album!

Since first hearing them in "Do the Right Thing", I've enjoyed most of what I've heard from Public Enemy (although it's mainly been Chuck D's voice and lyrics, and I've never really enjoyed Flavor Flav nearly as much).

Since this album *isn't* "Fear of a Black Planet", I'm happy to think that there are likely two PE albums in the 1001 collection, or at least I hope so, since this is a good album but not as good or classic as "Fear of a Black Planet" (or "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" for that matter).

That said, I enjoyed a fair number of songs on this album, and was surprised I'd heard several of them before (long ago). And of course it had that (to me) instant classic mash-up "Bring tha Noize (with Anthrax)", which blew my mind when I first heard it (apparently a few years before this album, although my conviction that I'd heard it on a school bus in high school must have been the original and not the co-Anthrax version).

A lot of good stuff on this album, and fun to hear a familiar-sounding band playing tunes I haven't heard. And impressive to know that they cranked out this album after losing all their tracks/"data" from the past 5 years.

Although I'm a bit surprised to get another Steely Dan album, I guess it makes sense, since I was surprised the other album didn't have "Boddhisattva", and here it is!

I always enjoy listening to Steely Dan, so this was a nice listen, but I'm still a bit puzzled why there are (at least) two Steely Dan albums in this collection, as they're not all that different from each other. In some ways I liked more of this album's songs than on "Aja", and I *do* like this album's cover more, and it's kind of fun to hear a less polished version and a little more rocking version of the band (plus an album that could actually be played live). I also enjoyed a few songs I'd never heard from them, like "The Boston Rag".

I can't say I've listened to all that much of Thelonious Monk's repertoire, so it's both fun to get an album by him and at the same time hard to know if this is outstanding or typical for him. Either way, I enjoyed listening to it.

It's a bit of a bummer to read (the Wikpedia entry) about how challenging this album was to make, and how it ended up being more of a compilation album thanks to the complete dysfunction involved in recording the title track, especially given how each track *sounds* as if it's a bunch of friends having a good time riffing off each other. (But also pretty funny to find out that in one of the apparently 25 takes of "Brilliant Corners," the bassist was pantomiming playing in protest (or maybe just annoyance).)

Tensions and egos aside, this is a fun album of clearly talented musicians.

It's nice to hear this album in its entirety, as I think I've only heard a few of the more radio-friendly hits. It's hard to imagine how this must have sounded when it first sold, but it's still an impressively unique and distinct mostly-concept album. (It's funny how almost all concept albums seem to have a few odd-man-out tunes; in this case the cover of "It Ain't Easy" is the most obvious.)

This is a *much* better selection for the 1001 albums project than "Blackstar"!

Well, you can't argue with "the best selling salsa album in the history of salsa music and Latin music", I guess! Not really my usual genre to listen to, so I can't say much about whether this deserves the title, but a fine album, I suppose.

I did find "Buscando Güayaba" a weird and somewhat jarring song, and while I kind of liked the seamless transition between tracks (interrupted only by YouTube's annoying ads), it made it really hard to follow much of anything, in large part because my sung-Spanish comprehension is as abysmal as my sung-French comprehension. And while the reference completely went over my head, it's interesting to know that "Pedro Navaja" is an homage to Bertolt Brecht's "Threepenny Opera."

"I like to live in America!" (3)

It's always a good day if you get to listen to Miles Davis, even if you're (like me) not all that well-versed in his huge arsenal of songs and albums. It's a little weird that we got a compilation album (mainly because I thought that wasn't part of the criteria for including in the 1001 Greatest Albums collection), but I'm not complaining at getting to hear a variety of tunes from a shifting band composition, and apparently getting to listen to the birth of a new style of jazz (or as the critic Sargent apparently described it, "not really jazz"). Not bad at all!

Ah, a classic from my high school years! I actually still really like a few songs from this album--mainly "The Prisoner", "Number of the Beast" (naturally), and perhaps most of all "Run to the Hills"--which kind of surprises me, because I knew even at the time that this was never a particularly complex band. But they nailed the whole metal power chord thing well, I liked Bruce Dickinson's story, and as an aspiring rhythm guitar guy in high school, I was always challenged by the interesting pairing of Adrian Smith's and Paul Murray's guitar licks.

I never realized until now (after reading the Wikipedia entry) that this was the only album containing both Bruce Dickinson and Clive Burr; it almost makes me want to listen to pre-Bruce Iron Maiden (almost). And the (likely apocryphal) story about the producer's accident with a bus of nuns and a repair bill of £666 is hilarious.

I've never heard of him/them before, but I enjoyed the whole French-narrated chill-rock-style. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it as much if I understood the lyrics/narration storyline, as the Wikipedia plot summary makes it sound a bit creepy (at least for listening in the 21st century), and a little bizarre/pretentious, but thankfully my spoken-French comprehension is pretty abysmal.

I didn't really want to hunt down "Melody, the musical", but I *did* listen to this album via YouTube Music, which very bizarrely showed a completely wrong-seeming video while playing "Ballade de Melody" (something involving some white guy trying to save a non-white kid (male) in what appeared to be riots/protests/terrorist attacks). A bit more surreal than I suspect even Serge Gainsbourg was hoping for.... (A little more digging on this video reveals that it was made in 2021 by Christopher Honore as a tribute to Gainsbourg but "updated to reflect the times", whatever that means; most of the comments seem to find it an inappropriate appropriation. You can see it here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o165uRDuYU>) (And I found a YouTube playlist with the various original videos collated together: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AznHU0cWvz0&list=PLEB4AA81A5D349F09>)

I loved seeing (on Wikipedia) all the artists and bands that have been influenced by this album, and I can totally see this influence now that I've heard this album. For that alone, I'd give it 5 stars (especially since I enjoyed listening to the album), except I still think this is all a bit creepy.

Well, I wondered when Smashing Pumpkins would appear, although it's a bit disappointing to get them right after another 1990s phenom (Offspring), as they share some of the same general wall-of-sound 90s thing. (To be fair to Offspring, though, their lyrics are *much* easier to distinguish than Smashing Pumpkins. And to be fair to Smashing Pumpkins, they're so much less annoying/offensive than Offspring.)

I own this album (apparently one of 6 million others), and at one point enjoyed listening to them more than I do now. Listening to this album again makes me think more of a time and place (1990s, DC) than it does of whether this is a "greatest" album or not. And I think even when I bought the CD I felt like they kind of had one song in them that they found several variations of to put together a full-length album. (I suspect if I ever took the time to decipher the lyrics, or ever watch their videos, I might be slightly disabused of this monochromatic image. And hits "Cherub Rock" and "Today" *are* somewhat different, I'll admit. "Rocket" not so much, and "Disarm" maybe the most distinctive, but I never really liked that hit.)

Fine, but nothing special (despite the Wikipedia entry describing the album as "widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of the 1990s and of all time"), and a nice blast from the past. That said, I wish I knew then about what went into making this album (thanks, Wikipedia people), as it would have made the context of the album a lot more interesting. Talk about stressful and harrowing! And shades of the film "Whiplash" with the suicidal lead singer making the junkie drummer perform "Cherub Rock" until his hands bled....

I suppose it was inevitable that one of these selections might be something like Offspring, so I have to acknowledge that they could have chosen far worse examples. I guess this was Offspring's equivalent to Nirvana's "Nevermind", although I really don't understand how this could be labeled punk rock in any way ("pop punk rock" seems so lame and offensive to both pop *and* punk rock).

That said, I definitely enjoyed hearing "Come Out and Play" on the radio, and maybe somewhat the same for "Self Esteem" (despite its super-derivative-Nirvana sound), and it definitely struck me that these songs seemed fairly edgy for radio rock (but again, I would have laughed if someone had told me that this was some form of punk rock). I also like it that it was produced on an independent label, and did so well commercially.

I didn't really enjoy most of the other songs on the album, even as background music, and the super-annoying voiceover/narrator occasionally interjecting almost makes me want to rank this a 2-star album. But that's not fair to the few genuine hits on the album.

I have always made the unfortunate (and obviously grossly) mistaken mashup in my mind with the Everly and Smothers Brothers, so I wasn't sure what to expect with this album. Not really my style or sensibility (although I've always enjoyed the various covers for "Love Hurts"), but a fine album for a sound that's not only *not* like the Smothers Brothers, but also a different era. Given that the Wikipedia entry for this album notes that "It's Everly Time" is a superior album, I wonder why we got this instead? (Presumably more Everly Brothers in our future, I guess)

I feel like I should know Arcade Fire a lot more than I do, but the nice part of that confusion is that I'm pretty sure this is my first listen to an entire Arcade Fire album. I enjoyed it, but didn't fall in love with them or their sound, and wonder whether this is their best album to include (without bothering to follow through on whether there are multiple Arcade Fire selections or to figure out which of their albums is considered their all-time best)?

I'm impressed at the band's longevity so far, though not so impressed by recent (and likely justified) "sexual misconduct" allegations that sound a lot like Ryan Adams (but without as much fallout so far).

Overall, a strangely forgettable album, especially for one that won a Grammy and has been ranked as the 2nd best album of the 2000s....

I don't know that I've heard much from Pretty Things, but I kind of enjoyed the album, despite a certain Beatlesesque-ness to their style and songs (at least on the first half or so of this album). ("Bracelets of Fingers" was probably the most egregious example of this, I'd say, but a lot of the better parts of the album is sadly reminiscent of Sgt. Peppers and seems pretty derivative. Other parts are just a bit painful to listen to.) I think my favorite song was "The Loneliest Person", and not just because it was one of the shorter and more cohesive songs on the album. :)

If I hadn't read the Wikipedia entry, I'm not sure I would have ever realized that this was a rock opera, nor do I have any real sense for poor Sebastian and his life's journey. I find it also bizarre that most of the contemporary and later critics focused on similarities to Pink Floyd, The Who's "Tommy" and blues styles, so maybe I just missed the boat entirely on any Beatles imitation. It's pretty awesome that the band couldn't really perform this album live (and not just because they took LSD before a 1969 TV "performance" of the album).

Ah, a classic among the many Dylan albums in this collection! (And a double album no less.) I'm not very fluent in Dylanology, but even I can recognize this album captured his post-folk/electric/rock period really nicely, and it has a nice balance of more popular songs and very philosophical ones. And I see why "Visions of Johanna" and "Just Like a Woman" are considered some of his greatest creations. (I'll also admit that "I want you" is one of the harder songs for me to align with what I (probably unfairly) associate with Dylan's seeming lifelong asexuality....)