Timbale

Seems like an absurd match up...but when you think about how much From Genesis To Revelation sounds like the Bee Gees, it really isn't. Main Course is a pretty great record...Nights On Broadway is, as the kids say, the shit. As a side note, I really enjoyed the relatively recent documentary on the Bee Gees. More than I thought I might. But Nursery Cryme is the birth of something extraordinary. I actually think it's a less consistent album than Main Course. There is some pretty weak stuff on it - I don't dislike any of it, but to me there are 3 tiers of work on it. 1 - forgettable, innocuous songs like For Absent Friends and Harlequin, which are fine but just leave your head immediately after listening to them. 2 - proggy, but very dated, slightly silly things like Harold The Barrel and Return of the Giant Hogweed. (I know some people really adore Hogweed...and there is some great playing on it, but I don't think it has aged well at all.) 3 - classics that point the way to greatness, which is Fountain Of Salmacis and of course The Musical Box. So even though I kinda think the Bee Gees is a "better" record all around... Nursery Cryme, for about 20 minutes, is astoundingly brilliant. So it wins.

The masterful Who Sell Out has to go.

Wow, this is a really good match up - it is essentially a coin toss for me! Both these records are pop masterpieces - both arguably the most mainstream records from both artists...and yet somehow both are high art. They also both include huge hit singles fuelled by very popular videos. They are also both very produced sounding albums. I think So has aged a little bit better than Graceland... but even So, with Lanois at the helm, is a tiny bit of its time. Graceland's big thing that marries it to 1986 for me is the drum sound, particularly that big, gated snare. I think if Simon did a remix of the drumkit sounds and removed a bunch of reverb and the gates, it would sound way more timeless as a record. But it doesn't have to be timeless to be good. Neither do. I am picking Graceland, despite how deeply I love So. They are so evenly matched as emotional experiences for me...but Simon's lyrics just cut a little deeper for me. When Peter is being "serious" on songs like Don't Give Up or Mercy Street, they are very moving...but with Simon even the up tempo songs have images and turns of phrase that kill me. And there's something about Simon as a singer where he just has some moments that make my heart swell - when he sings "She says the joke is on me/I say the joke is on her" in Crazy Love Vol II, it crushes me. I could go on and on with examples like that...but, come on - "The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar" might be the best opening line of a song ever. I'm also picking Graceland because I think it's not gonna have as good a showing as So. As for the singles....Call Me Al is my least fave on the record...but I don't hate it. There are some great lyrics in it. Sledgehammer is also not a big fave, but Big Time beats it for least fave. Sledgehammer is Gabriel having fun...and I dig that. I'm gonna go listen to So now.

I had to vote Who Sell Out off, which breaks my heart, because there is nothing like it, and it is amazing. But all the albums left are amazing...and the closest runner up for me, Who By Numbers, is a hidden gem - the non-epic album that gets overlooked in the catalogue. Because the kinda dumb Squeezebox is on it, the cooler tunes get short shrift. When I saw The Who a couple years ago, they did Imagine A Man from the record, which was a lovely, deep cut treat. But Who Sell Out is hard to give the chop to - it's funny, inventive and full of cool tunes.

That's the album that got me hooked on the band. My next-door neighbor bought it the day it was released and we listened to it start to finish. Very impressive to me at the time ( 14 y.o. ). As a kid I thought it was cool. As an adult a rock opera built around the abuses suffered by a deaf, dumb and blind pinball savant just doesn't resonate. I have always thought that pinball is a pop culture reference that is standing in for rock music. For playing the guitar. In that sense, I feel that Townshend is writing, in a very veiled way, about himself. He is the deaf, mute and blind person who finds the one thing that he's good at, and through that discovers himself spiritually, gains fame, and also experiences the limits and fickle nature of being a "voice" for the people. Tommy's obsession with the mirror - the only thing he can see in his "blindness" - is, to me, anyway, a strong metaphor for the experience of youth, particularly in the moment he was writing about...essentially the birth of the teenager. I say this because - and of course we're all entitled to our opinion! - to me Tommy is not un-relatable and doesn't lack resonance at all...it's just that the resonance exists under the metaphor of the plot itself.

Love all three bands, likely in the order of The Who, The Beatles and then the Stones. I don't know the context of the Daltrey comments...but, if he's talking about the way the Stones currently sound cranking out the old hits, I think he makes a fair point. I've been checking out a few clips to see the great Steve Jordan playing, to watch how he fits into the group...and none of the clips I've seen sound stellar. They're all ok...which is kinda the same as saying mediocre. I'm sure if Roger puts Goat's Head Soup on the turntable, he can hear how f**king good it is. Also, kinda interesting, given how they have a history of fighting like brothers, that it is Townshend who has always been the staunchest fan of the Stones. Heard him say a few times that they are the greatest rock and roll band of all time.

But, Sister Disco... :wub: I know, Goose - I know. It's a stone cold classic. I'm also a fan of the title track (even though it's overplayed) and Music Must Change (although I prefer Townshend's demo version). It's a hard one.

I would not want to derail the thread...but I would be interested in people's rankings of the 5 Police records. I'd have to think about mine...

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.