Best / Worst Al*** Side Ever

Urban Hymns by The Verve.

This starts off superbly, the first 4 or 5 songs (Bittersweet Symphone, Sonnet etc.) are as good as many I've heard over the years. The second half tails off badly (apart from 'Lucky Man')

Side 1 is packed full of great songs, but for side 2 the quality drops right off.

Gavin

Three more

Iggy Pop: The idiot
Iggy Pop: New Values
David Bowie: Lodger

Three great A sides and very poor B sides.

My candidate: The idiot.

Gunnar

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
This Night Has Opened My Eyes
You've Got Everything Now
Accept Yourself
Girl Afraid
Back to the Old House
Reel Around the Fountain
Please Please Please Let Me Get What

OK - the first track is a little average ... but after that its classic after classic

Gunnar, in my current splurge on Bowie I picked up Lodger and in my opinion its total crap period.

Garyi

Give it a couple of more spins and it really grows on you. I really love the A side . The way the songs interlink with each other and the great musical performance of the musicians with really good songs. You also find one of the most ( or perhaps the most?) beatiful song Bowie ever made; fantastic voyage

Give it some more "airtime"

Greetings

Gunnar

Van Morrison - Moondance

Side 1 - Stinging
Side 2 - Minging

Side four of The White Album.

quote:

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Originally posted by Mike Sae:
Side four of The White Album.

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Who are White ??

Nana

Whats this old man talk you are on about?

Did they really stick you in a booth to listen to records, wern't you allowed to touch them?

Tactile purchasing and all that.

...The booths that mono records were played in [most of them] were like open public telephones, which you stood up in, and the average shop might have about six of these, whereas the one stereo booth [only the one, mind] had a glass door, a seat inside [4 people at a squash] and two tiny speakers set into the ceiling.

We, with our stereo-compatible cartridges and teak radiograms[or in my case a extra channel in the form of a sort of transistor radio arrangement that plugged into my HMV record player] were the elite record buyers, and so sat resplendant in all our glory behind the glass door, eyed suspiciously by the assistant [record departments, without fail, were staffed by unpleasant women of a certain age who had nylon overalls, lacquered beehives and the sort of glasses now ironically worn by Edna Everage, except in black. They were Very Strict, gathered from the furthest reaches of a store for their ability to deal with teenagers and their unpleasant music ] Any frivolity in the booth, and the arm would be lifted immediately.

Nick and I had Saturday jobs in the kitchen of a Birmingham department store, which paid £1 15s 0d a day [£1.75], and when work was over, there was just enough time to nip across to Boots to spend the lot on a new album. All labels cost 33/6 [£1.62 1/2] except Elektra, which for some reason took up our whole 35/- [£1.75]. Our record buying was governed by something:

a]having an attractive cover [we followed sleeve artists almost as much as the music]
b]being completely unknown [not difficult, as none of the stuff we bought was ever played on the radio] and
c]being on Elektra if at all possible.

Strangely, this policy enabled us to build up a pretty comprehensive collection of superb albums which I listen to to this day [now replaced by CD, but we won't go into that - it's still too painful]. In retrospect, it is probably rather odd to think of fifteen year olds galvanised into buying The Marble Index, Happy Trails or David Peel & The Lower East Side after 10mins in Boots, but I can testify that it did happen. We weren't remotely hip, just a bit strange.

If on your vinyl splurges, you spot sleeves with little 3cm creases down the left side, this is a sign of authenticity, caused by the aforementioned practice of displaying empty sleeves in browsers, restrained by a length of plastic-coated curtain wire.

Also bear in mind that the cost of a new needle for your cartridge [yes, you bought them separately, and they had a stylus for 78's welded on the back, accessed by flipping a bit of plastic, so all eventualities were covered] cost around 7/6 [thats 35p]. If it's a good album, that's probably why it sounds a little ...err.. crisp.

throb [just woken by matron with a nice bit of battenburg]

I tend to dismiss the Eagles on principle, but they have actually made quite a few good tracks in their time. Several of them can be found on Side 1 of Hotel California, but not on side 2. Not only is it at best a bit average, at worst it's got The Last Resort. Barf!

Pete.

(p.s., Hatful of Hollw drops off? What! I suppose anything that doesn't have How Soon Is Now on the same side will be relatively lacking, but in absolute terms it's still great)

Atom Heart Mother is a National Treasure - I won't hear otherwise. With regard to UmmaGumma, it was fab at the time, although maybe passing years tend to confirm your view....

throb

Richard your assesment of umma is spot on, infact as a kid, (which I must confess was 13 years ago) we would listen to ummagumma whilst playing 'headoverheels' on the ZX speccy (ok the nintendo was out by then but still we were skint)

Atom heart mother is not so much a treasure as a travesty.

Nick thanks for the trip down old mans memory age, in my entire life I have never seen a 'booth', to be honest I think they should be reinstalled because trying to hear a cd requested on them earphones in virgen is imposible over the bollocks they are playing on the main system

quote:

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Atom heart mother is not so much a treasure as a travesty.

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I can't beleive this. I think this is an excellent album. The title track is superb (not far behind echos IMO). I agree with Nick that Alans psychidelic Brekie is poor, but I like everything else on there.

Ummagumma on the other hand is very poor. The studio stuff is only notable for the novelty of Several Special......... And the live bit doesn't manage to redeem the situation much.

I can think of at least 4 people who think AHM is a load of tosh. And their names are Roger Waters, Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright. They're all on record as saying they think with hindsight that it's pretty hopeless meandering waffle.

Summer '68 isn't bad, and if that sounds like we're in "Damning with faint praise" territory, that's because we are. I mainly keep my copy because the cover's good fun (gatefold vinyl, natch).

Pete.

Back to the original subject of the thread...

Henry Cow, In Praise of Learning:

Side 1: Some of the best rock music ever recorded

Side 2: Did somebody leave the tape machine running while they tuned up?

Another contender:

Henry Cow (apparent masters of this art) Concerts:

Side 1 (originally recorded for the BBC) is very good, and Side 2 features a pretty decent rendition of "Ruins."

Side 3 makes me feel really sorry for the poor folks in the audience at the Hennie Onstad Center that night, and most of Side 4 sounds like pretty aimless noodling.

side four of Johnny Winter's 'Second Winter' is pretty boring because there is nothing on it.
Quite good for testing your anti-skating bias though.

Side 4 of Pavement's "Wowee Zowee" is similarly blank. Has anyone here got a copy of "The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan" from the early 1980s? A completely blank piece of vinyl (what a waste)

Worst album side in my collection, purely from the disappointment point of view, is side 2 of 21st Century... by KC. This being because some numpty at the pressing plant managed to combine side 1 Crimso with side 2 from some Status Quo LP which I can honestly say has only ever been played once, and then only in 10 second bursts just to check I'd not gone mad.

Prog. cred. now down the drain.

Ed

fine band Quo (30 years ago), won't hear a word said against them

Sadly it was 80s vintage Quo on a re-pressing of the Crimso album. It was a shock, I can tell you.

Ed.

I would like to nominate side 6, 'I remember Jeep' jam session off George Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass'