Timbale

Had to vote Who Are You off. It was between that and the first record...but I think Who Are You is a bit more uneven. And while as a huge Townshend fan he kinda can't get too pretentious for me....I do find songs like Guitar And Pen a bit show-tuney. The other big factor in picking between these two records is that in reference to Moon's performances...there is no competition. He is fresh and exciting on the first album. Who Are You is his worst playing on record with the band, I'm afraid.

This would have been harder for me with a different Zep album...but II isn't my fave by quite a margin. Synchronicity is pretty close to perfect for a pop record - interesting, surprising, catchy, smart with some very good and inventive playing. I tire of the hits from it...but that's not the record's fault. As a piece, it's great. I actually watched, for the first time in many years, the Every Breath You Take video on youtube...which was interesting, because it kind of made me re-engage with the song. You still hear it a lot out in the world..but I never really listen to it. It is not close to my favourite Police track...but I was reminded that it actually is a really good song. Whole Lotta Love, on the other hand, I can just go the rest of my life and never hear again. It's fine, it's a heavy groove, the breakdown is cool...but as a song I just don't give a shit about it anymore. I don't get anything from it.

I Dream A Highway by Gillian Welch is 14:39...and is completely mesmerizing.

This is TOUGH. I voted Face Dances out, despite the fact that there are a few track on there that I love. I almost thought about the 1st or 2nd record getting the cut before Face Dances...but My Generation and Quick One have absolute classics on them, so despite loving Daily Records, Another Tricky Day, Don't Let Go The Coat, Cache Cache and You Better You Bet...it gets the chop.

It's Hard is worse than WHO.

It's hard (hehe) for me to think of eliminating any Who albums beyond one of the two that I picked...because I just love them so much. My first pick was It's Hard, which I absolutely think is their worst record. Even the best track on it, Eminence Front, has a lacklustre vocal from Pete on it. My second choice was Endless Wire, which although not up to their earlier standard, has a few tracks that I really dig. And I know I shall be fighting a losing battle on this one...but I will defend their 2019 record WHO for a while in this poll, because I think it is a very strong record, given that it's made by a couple of 70 year old geezers.

Do you include Who By Numbers in there? If not, it would be worth checking out - despite having one of their big, kinda throw away hits on it (Squeezebox), I think it's a bit of a hidden gem.

All classics, of course. I picked Animals. For me, there is an inherent weakness in the fact that the three songs (not counting the little intro/extro bits, which are lovely, but barely songs) all do the same thing, arrangement-wise, which is they all have a long, atmospheric breakdowns in the middle section before going back to the main part of the song. They all play the same trick. Individually, they're all fine (the section in Dogs being my fave of the bunch), but taken together as a group, it's too "samey" for me. I really wish they'd shortened Pigs by removing that middle section, because it would remove the repetitive nature of the album, and it would also axe the voicebox guitar thingy solo, which I think dates it terribly. The song has one of the great Gilmour solos of all time in the outro....I wish they'd just done something short and different for a bridge. But taken as as individual tracks, Animals is pretty amazing. For me, the coda of Dogs is Roger's shining moment as a singer, and might be the groups most intense piece of music. So it was a hard vote. :)

Also...people in this thread talking about how they've never even heard of the New Radicals' song reminded me of this episode of the podcast Reply All : https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx This is, without overstating, the single greatest episode of any podcast I've ever heard...about someone who remembers a song from the 90s that no one else seems to have any recollection of at all. It is SO GOOD.

I don't have much nostalgia for this era of popular music...in the decades I've been alive, the 90's are last on the list for music I enjoy... Having said that, I picked the New Radicals song. I think Bittersweet Symphony is kind of a cool thing, using that sample that way, but the other song is, in my view, actually well written. It is SO 90s, and it's so full of a kind of attitude/bravado that I find pretty irksome/lame... but I do think if you took that song and re-recorded it now and lost all those 90s trappings, you'd have a good song - whereas the Verve song just is what it is - someone singing over a loop. I can't be arsed to search for it...but I remember that Joni Mitchell had said that she loved You Get What You Give...

For a long while I had Revolver at #1 with Pepper in second...(and they are both among the greatest records of all time), but there are a couple tunes on Revolver (Dr Robert and I Want To Tell You) that aren't quite at the level of the other ones, whereas every song on Pepper is truly great. I think I stayed away from saying, or even thinking Pepper was my fave because it's such a cliche...but I really adore it from start to finish.

Agreed - Run For Your Life really takes it down a notch for me, which is a shame, because it's an astoundingly good record.

Did Terry Brown produce it? It sounds like Terry Brown produced it.

Wow - I never noticed that!

Your Mother Should Know is a big knock against it for me... but it's still a great album.

You can always delete and revote if you want. Or you can create your own reality and ignore existing reality. You can pretend you never saw this poll and voted. Then you can forget you ever set your eyes on a place called The Rush Forum and registered. You can do anything you want. Ummmm....ok.

The Division Bell is a really good sounding album...but really, there are some very mediocre songs on it. Like, inoffensive, middle of the road bordering on elevator music songs like Take It Back. I think we all love Gilmour's guitar playing so much that he can noodle around with his ricky-ticky delay thing and then put a perfect solo over it, and he kinda creates a smoke screen that hides how run of the mill some of the songwriting is. I know it's already voted out...and I don't think it's perfect by any means...but I think Momentary Lapse takes more chances and is more interesting. DB sounds like Gilmour trying to make a "Floydy" sounding record.

A hard call...but I eliminated Rubber Soul after my hand hovered over Abbey Road for a good long while. I now think I made the wrong choice. Damn it. Sgt Pepper for immunity - it's the uncool one to love the most, because it's the mainstream choice...but I think it is completely masterful start to finish.

I remember a couple of those from watching the show when it aired! I always imagined Mike (who was head writer before taking over as host from Joel) was a fan... Can't forget some of his characters back then. My personal favorite is him playing Jack Perkins as well as Morrissey in the City Limits episode. "Did I mention that I cried?" :lol: Hahahaha! Let's not also forget that he played Torgo from Manos: The Hands Of Fate!

Even when I was 12 or 13, I remember comparing those syncopated unison shots after "and drink the milk of paradise" just before "I have heard the whispered tales..." with the studio version and being amazed how out of time they were. And yet I much prefer the live version!

The Pass

I found this on youtube today and listened to it. It's fun to hear them live in this era - playing really well....but still a little bit loose, too. (I like hearing Neil and Alex screw around at the end of Closer To The Heart, both trying to get the "last word"...) For me, if you could put a handful of Signals tunes into this setlist, it would be just perfect. As it is, it's an unreal set of music from them. One thing that is interesting to hear with shows from this era is how hit-or-miss Neil is with tempo sometimes. I find it funny when you see people's comments on things like youtube praising Neil as the be-all-end-all drum god...often people will say something like "Metronomes set themselves to Neil".... and I always think, wow, you haven't listened to some of the unofficial live stuff! He's all over the place in that Chicago show - you can hear how they get out of sync with the sequencer in Spirit Of Radio, for one obvious example. He was still progressing as a live drummer I guess... and yet, I love how energetic and powerful he is in this time. I'd rather hear him be shaky in '81 than tempo perfect in 2004.... I was watching the ESL film, and my god is TS just all over the place. So fast at the beginning and then NP has to put the brakes on in the middle of the song. He struggled with that one for awhile. Closer to the Heart took a few years too. Yeah, the solo section of Closer To The Heart is often galloping ahead of itself! Even on ESL recording (my fave version of all) the solo picks WAY up! To me it's so noticeable, because the 2nd and 3rd verses sit in such a nice, groovy place...and then it's off to the races!

I remember a couple of those from watching the show when it aired! I always imagined Mike (who was head writer before taking over as host from Joel) was a fan...

Wow, that's cool! What a towering piece of work.