Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough...
Posted by dolly on 18 June 2008 - 5:48pm.
The 80's thread below got me thinking.
I think the three albums Human League "Dare", ABC "Lexicon Of Love" & Simple Minds "New Gold Dream" are as close to pop perfection as you can get. They would make a great pop tag wrestling team.
Come on - who would be in your 3 album perfect pop tag team? The three albums have to be connected in some reasonably obvious way, eg they have to be from the same "genre", by the same artist, from the same era etc. Form them into a team & my three will take yours on.
And I bet your three can't beat my three.
Come on!!!
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Shouldn't this thread be called
Popamon?
I win.
I give you 1966.
Aftermath
Pet Sounds
Revolver
Let down by Aftermath, I'm afraid
& 2 out of 3 aren't even the best album by the artist....your tag team are thrown out of the ring!
SLAM!!! DOWN!!!!
My money's
on Paul, unless...
True Blue
Human's Lib
Cosmic Thing
None of the cache, all of the POP!
Mid '80's pop classics...
I'll raise the ante with this tremendous threesome:
Steve McQueen - Prefab Sprout
Rattlesnakes - Lloyd Cole & The Commotions
and to top it off
The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths.
Brings me back to my "end of school/start of college" years [looks wistfully into the distance]
Winner
Winner
A great threesome
but is The Queen Is Dead pop?
Much as I love all three albums...
steve mcqueen & rattlesnakes are just not in the same league as lexicon/dare/NGD
Your team are bounced..
SLAM!!! DOWN!!!
Prince
Three in a row:
Purple Rain
Parade
Sign O' The Times
A purple period indeed!
EDIT: Except it's not!!!
But we'll forget Around The World In A Day for the moment...although it's good!!
I Win!!
Actually leave that in and raise it by 1999.
Full House!!!
Again- I love these albums but think they are a little patchy
close but no cigar
SLAM!!! DOWN!!!
Pep pop pap.
Here is my pantheon of perfect folk-rock:
Rise Up Like the Sun/Albion Band
Rising for the Moon/Fairport Convention and
Freedom and Rain/June Tabor and the Oyster Band.
Maybe not the best of the individual catalogues, but go together like cakes and ale. And sausages.
Let's go late 80's...
The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses
Bummed - Happy Mondays
Technique - New Order
The numbers sold and magazine coverage would indicate "pop" - no matter what any fey indie kid or gooned up flares wearing monkey will tell you....
Otherwise...
Speak and Spell - Depeche Mode
Upstairs at Eric's - Yazoo
Non Stop Erotic Cabaret - Soft Cell
Double Slam Down
Tag team #1 are full of big lads and dont lack self-confidence - but they are out of shape & a bit shaky on their pins. No contest. A few less drugs and they might have been contenders.
Tag team #2 whilst undoubtedly light on their feet are too lightweight (and a bit hit or miss) to compete at this level.
Depeche Mode
Lightweight?
Hit and miss?
Tha hackles are up Dolly; evidence please?
Not the Mode I agree
But Marc and Vince aren't that heavyweight! Its got to be a full team effort.
I was at the Yazzoo gig this week where they played Upstairs at Erics. I remember loving it when younger. On Wednesday I found it a bit samey and some of the songs were not very strong.
On the other hand, Alison's voice was fantastic - in fact the sound overall was excellent. But guess what...Vince didnt do much!
Fair do's
My old man was a History teacher at the school in Basildon where various Mode's and Yazoo's went to school, so some shared ground here. I think the Mode are fab, and Alf too. C
ouldn't agree more about Vince; his brother (I think?) played in the same footie team as me and generally just stood around; must be a family thing...
This is quite mental
but:
BANG! Parklife - Blur
OOOF! Dare - Human League
CRACK! Scissor Sisters - Scissor Sisters
Ding ding!
I cant see the connection between these three albums..
..so because they lack the necessary team work, they
can be easily swung around by their lug holes and dispatched out of the ring in short time.
SLAM!!! DOWN!!!
Oh, not reading properly
So, really the first suggestion was spot on bar Simple Minds, we could substitute it for Heaven 17s The Luxury Gap, and then we have a Sheffield Sex City Trio
I thought about that
but then put The Luxury Gap on the ipod and I dont think it stands up to repeated listen.
So...a reluctant SLAM!!! DOWN!!!
Unbeatable double whammy
Beatles - White Album
Prince - Sign Of The Times
Stevie Wonder - Songs In The Key Of Life
I cant see the connection between them...?
So whilst, once again I love all 3 albums, they cant compete against my early 80's triumvirate..
SLAM!! DOWN!!
3 double albums
1 each from 60s, 70s and 80s. Maybe that's not the kind of connection you were after? Plus pretty much everything in pop is covered by that lot. Submit!
You are good!
However I refuse to submit. And bizarrely I think your power trio have been let down by The Beatles. The White Album is not one of their best (a great single album is in there of course) & has half a dozen sub-standard pieces on it. Revolution #9 for starter.
A team is only as strong as its weakest link.
SLAM!! DUNK!!
The White Album
Flawed, patchy, yet people have made careers based on the best of it's tracks. My three are innovative pop of the highest order, where's the originality with your eighties upstarts? Give up!
Never!
My 3 are not only perfectly formed new pop platters without one weak song across them but they set the tone and provided the template for how records largely got made thereafter. They represent a seismic shift in music production and they led that change.
Their use of technology was breathtakingly innovative. The production teams behind the records went on to define much of the next 10 or so years of high selling recorded music - at least the UK side of the equation. Michael Jackson was doing similar things in the US with Quincy Jones.
All of them were leftfield experimentalists & all three albums mark their deliberate move into the mainstream.
Imagine 1980 - new wave & austerity. Then imagine 1982 - new pop & colour. Much of that is down to these three records, I think.
And all 3 in their different ways are fantastic lyrically.
So there!
Leftfield experimentalists?
Maybe Human League, but the others? ABC?
'set the tone and provided the template for how records largely got made thereafter.' Yeah right, the mid-eighties - one of the high water marks for creativity and quality in pop. Think again!
'Fantastic lyrically'? Compared to mine? Way behind.
Well, actually, yes
An interjection reminding of the role of Trevor Horn (and Ann Dudleys orchestration) in ABC's year of living famously. Sumptuous production, luxuriating in pillows of sound: go back and listen again to all the fairlight glory in "All of my heart".
Knocked out in a hail of Doc's, Spliffs and Lipstick
"The Clash"-The Clash
"2 Sevens Clash"-Culture
"New York Dolls"-New York Dolls
I'm sorry but I think the idea of the Dolls has always been
more attractive than the reality. Its certainly ground breaking but I just cant get to the end of the album these days. Ditto - Clash & Culture actually.
Once upon a time I would have listened to all these albums on a weekly basis - but as of 2008 they dont stand up & must leave the ring.
SLAM!! DOWN!!
Culture
I was in my local record store "Soundscapes" on College Street in Toronto (check out their website) last Saturday and "Two Sevens Clash" was playing as I walked through the door. It took me right back hadn't played it in at least 15 years, it sounded bloody fantastic and has been hanging around on my internal jukebox ever since!
..and my specialist subject is .. Mid 70s Pop
Indiscreet - Sparks
Get It - Dave Edmunds
Ramones - Ramones
CBGB's
CBGB's New York scene debut albums (although the lead singers of this lot wouldn't last long in the ring)...
Televison "Marquee Moon"
Talking Heads "77"
Dead Boys "Young Loud & Snotty"
My tag team
Lets go pop with: Talk Talk - Colour of Spring, Aztec Camera - Love & REM - Green. Bedwetters the lot of 'em!