More bouquets and brickbats of yesteryear
The first one....
Since they are so cheery and determinedly inoffensive, however, one cannot really hate them. The strongest emotion a dissenter can muster is resentment that these charming twerps will attract enough attention to help obscure the achievements of adventurous artists.
...the second one ....
When it's all working, the music made by ******** is what the best music always is, a powerful and moving emotional experience. It's probably the first music to come along since some of the Kinks' older stuff that actually brings the beginnings of tears to these jaded eyes of mine. Don't bet it can't happen to you.
...and the third one.
All the ambivalence, recriminations, attempted rapprochement and psychological one-upmanship evident on ******* testify that ********* are right in the element that has historically spawned their best music – a murky, dangerously charged environment in which nothing is merely what it seems. Against all odds, and at this late date, ******* have once again generated an album that will have the world dancing to deeply troubling, unresolved emotions.
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Anticipating the QI klaxon,
I'll have a stab with Herman's Hermits, The Small Faces and The Stones. Now you can tell me they are all from the 90s, or they're all about the same band.
Is it cheating to use google?
Because I now know the answers, but don't want to be a spoilsport.
Abba Arrival
I going with Abba Arrival for the first one....
I'm at a loss here...
The Wombles, ABC and The Rolling Stones? Possibly 'Steel Wheels'?
Take That
Certainly make me cry
is
is the middle one Squeeze?
Dunno
Keane, Supergrass, The Verve
From
From Rolling Stone magazine ?,It's the type of drivel they write.
At a guess,
Abba, Snow Patrol and Half Man Half Biscuit. Or maybe Guns n' Roses.
Given the huge amount of critical clangers that have been dropped over the years, it'll be a tough guess.
The reviews are all from Rolling Stone
1. Abba. I think the album was Arrival. What's interesting about this is that it is a perfect embodiment of the Attention Deficit Fallacy. See, if only sub-humans weren't listening to Abba, they'd be buying Suicide's ground-breaking first album instead!
2. Yes: Fragile. I quite like this. Face it, the only reason to say those things about Yes is because you genuinely believe them. You're not going to win any hipness points and that's what reviewers are thinking about most of the time.
3. The Rolling Stones: Steel Wheels. For the nth time some hack at Rolling Stone ties themselves in knots trying to convince us that *this time* the Rolling Stones have made a record that really rocks and, you know, *engages with the times*. "Their best since [fill in the blank]..."
Stones have left EMI for Universal
Interestingly the back catalogue post 1971 will move to Universal as well. So get ready for new remasters I guess.
It's a blow to EMI's reputation but not to their bottomline as the Stones don't sell that many records nowadays.
EDIT: I see elsewhere that people have been bitching about people like me for making comments like this. Oh well, I wasn't hanging around the site over the weekend like all the kool kidz. I agree though, I'm a very boring person, and I got my info from the Financial Times.
Minor correction
The "nowadays" is unnecessary. They never sold many records even when Some Girls was a new release. When I worked in a record shop in the mid/late Seventies, I was always struck by how for every Goat's Head Soup or Sticky Fingers I had to reorder, we'd shift half a dozen copies of Every Picture Tells A Story or Band On The Run.
It was a revelation to me just how little back-catalogue sales have to do with the reputations of quite a few artists as True Giants of Rock. I've mentioned Lou Reed's shelf-nailedness here before, but he's not alone by any means. Even your Blonde on Blondes, Astral Weekses and Harvests were always ridiculously outsold by any of a dozen duffer-than-duff Elvis soundtrack albums.
EMI selling off Macca's back catalogue, now that'd be a story. But the Stones'? It's just a routine bit of house-cleaning, I reckon.
Very interesting topic
You should write a decent sized essay on this (and other music retail information you have) and post it here. I have a million questions but none of them occur to me right now.
You might be interested in this 11 part essay about working in a record shop:
http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2007/08/reckless_records_part_1.php
RE: The Stones
Does anyone think of them as an albums band? To me they recorded great singles and released a few great Best Ofs. Album wise only Exile On Main Street really registers as a complete artistic statement in and of itself.
Most of it...
is very minor anecdotage, ancient history and far from authoritative tittle tattle that wouldn't run to 11 lines, let alone 11 pages.
Although I don't think I've ever told the one about the mobbed-up WEA reps, have I?
No
Pray tell.
I knew a WEA rep who in winter, when faced with a frosted up windscreen, would snap a record in half to clear it off. Cheaper than buying a proper scraper.
Omertà, mate
Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut. [/denirovoice]
Didn't David Bowie
Once say that all his new album sleeves are going to be complete with a sticker bearing the legend "The best since Scary Monsters"!
Yeah....
...I believe Bowie once said something like "I might as well put a 'best since Scary Monsters' sticker on and be done with it". However, he himself has played on that- he was comparing 'Never Let Me Down' and 'Tin Machine' (of all albums!!) to 'Scary Monsters' in period interviews.
That Stones 'best since Some Girls' thing is always worth a laugh because the albums never are anywhere near the 'Some Girls' level and even less up to their 60s/early 70s triumphs. A personl favourite is Jann Wenner's review of 'Goddess In The Doorway' where he makes that 'best since Some Girls' claim. I think Keith Richards had it right when he called it 'Dogshit In The Doorway'!