Entertainment For Lively Minds
The Ringo Track
Even your favourite artist has those songs that you skip (or fail to rip) otherwise known as "The Ringo Track" TM.
Which is the one song you hate by the artist you love? That makes you cringe so much you couldn't even bear to have it on your i-pod? Or bores you to tears? Or you just think is several levels of musical gobshite?
Here's some of mine...
HJH: Don't Pass Me By (sorry Rings!) - sounds like no one could be bothered and that incessant fiddling drives me barmy
Elvis Costello: Shot With His Own Gun - dull and tuneless and overwrought
John Lennon: Only People - trite beyond belief. A long way from "Day In The Life"
Bruce Springsteen: Surprise Surprise - see above. Replace "ADITL" with "Thunder Road"
Justin Beiber: oh wait, that's not right...
Separately, is there an artist with not one bad song to their name? (no counting artists with one album)
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Lennon...
Imagine. I'm sorry but I detest this hippy nonsense made by a millionaire totally out of touch with the real world.
Over familiarity
It certainly breeds contempt and don't care if I never hear Imagine again for a very long time.
But...
Millionaire or not, Lennon's song deserves respect if only for the line "Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too".
Works for me.
coming from a man...
with IRA sympathies and half baked beliefs in lots of various "spiritual" quests it rings rather hollow for me I'm afraid.
He only says "Imagine"..
..not "Let's all do this now!..me first"
'IRA Sympathies'
Read a bit more - and understand that 'The Luck of the Irish' et al happened at a time when the IRA was similar to what, say, the ANC was for a lot of us in the 80s. As the subsequent atrocities piled up, I don't, ahem, imagine John would have been much of a sympathiser.
I think that was a cheap shot.
Perhaps he should have,,,
read a bit more before offering to raise funds for a terrorist organisation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/dec/10/northernireland.musicnews
I know he has become almost deified, but at best he was grossly uninformed.
As Vorgongod said
Context is everything so at the time, probably not! After later shitstorms, more than likely.
1972? Similar to what the
1972? Similar to what the ANC was for us in the 80s?
The Aldershot Barracks Bombing, Donegal Street, Bloody Friday, the Claudy bombings, Newry Customs Office... linking factors? IRA activity, mostly civilian casualties (even the Aldershot Bomb where all the casualties were civilian).
Sure, there was Loyalist activity and British Army activities that year too (incl Bloody Sunday) but let's not romanticise what went on back then.
Sorry, but I dont think anyone
Is trying to romanticise anything.
If you wanted to go there I'm sure plenty of people on this site have been either directly or indirectly affected by atrocities carried out by both parties to that unholy shit storm. (I for one). I hope that the days of my pain is greater than yours are over. Googling the best/worst of 1972 is to my mind unworthy of the points made already.
Demonising/canonising Lennon for a political point made at a heated time is to my mind completely pointless. Its over, move on.
Sorry, but it seems to me
Sorry, but it seems to me that the comparison in question was precisely that. I may only have been fairly young but having lived through it first hand, those years are still quite vivid memories. The motivations for the Troubles were certainly political but to compare life in 70s Lisburn to life 70s Soweto is pushing the metaphor somewhat (apologies to Vorgongod, but there you go).
Sure, I did check out some of the finer historical details but they were all the type of events which I still remember from the local news reports and which touched, one way or another, my family and school friends.
There were a lot of, in many people's opinion, misguided views of the Troubles (from those who had absolutely no first hand experience of them) which were stated as fact; whether it was the pronouncements of American Noraid supporters and the like in the 70s and 80s or statements from various right-on types. Reading back over the thread I don't think anyone's comments have stretched to asserting demonisation, rather to naivity, misguidedness and perhaps a hint at a feeling of self-importance over the value of their own rock-star opinions.
On the other hand
"Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can" sings the millionaire in the promotional film for his song, shot in his £2.2m* Georgian manor house in its 72 acres of land, including a lake that he'd had made.
* at current prices
Shouldn't it be
'and no religion either'?
His dodgy grammar for the sake of a rhyme has always annoyed me more than the hippy nonsense bit.
If dodgy grammar
in rock & roll annoys you, you must be annoyed an awful lot of the time ;-)
It's important
to make a stand against this sort of thing I feel.
Fair enough
as long as religion is not involved, I'll go along with you ;-)
Missing comma
between "thing" and "I".
Or perhaps there's something you want to tell us about the thing you were feeling.
I knew,
that, English. Degree was, A complete. Waste;of- time.
Apropos of nothing
A friend once bought me a book of poetry which was entirely written like that, Eddie. Except the book was entirely "written" in lower case.
Here it is:
http://www.amazon.com/Back-You-Come-Mother-Dear/dp/0860687341
On drunken evenings, we occasionally read excerpts out in an intense voice. The hours just fly by. All we need now are a couple of black polo-neck jumpers.
Prefab Sprout: Farmyard Cat
Not only the worst song they have ever done but possibly the worst song I've got.
this is not going to go down well with the fashionistas
but I prefer "Farmyard Cat" to about 75% of "Swoon". It's a great little ditty.
You mean the Harrison song?
Shirley?
A tad unfair
to the Something hitmaker, methinks.
Revolver was definitely George's album with 3 tracks including the groundbreaking Love You To and Abbey Road showed George's talent eclipsing the Beatles' success.
And don't call me Shirley;-)
good point actually
strike out "Don't Pass Me By" replace with "Blue Jay Way". Even George sounded bored beyond belief.
But he always
sounded like that...
...apart from the phasing on his voice that is.
Hari Georgeson
penned some of the HJH's finest moments, in my opinion, including possibly the finest B-side ever! the incomparable Old Brown Shoe...
Indeed,
but remember the hundred year long dirge that is 'Blue Jay Way'. Easily the worst song the bowl-haired, laugh-a-minute scallywags ever committed to tape.
( And please don't go on about 'Maxwell' because I'd thought we'd already re-appraised that as a mini pop classic ).
Fair point..
But I don't mind 'Blue Jay Way' so much... its quite evocative of a hot, misty, spooky night in mid 60s LA (or, rather, how I would imagine a h,m, s night in LA to feel like...)
New Order
Vietnam from the War Child: Hope album.
Absolute rubbish.
Golden Lights
by The Smiths
Even Death at One's Elbow sounds good by comparison.
Also, I quite like Don't Pass Me By...
"Shot With His Own Gun"?...
...I can think of at least 20 Costello songs more boring and overwrought than that.
I mean have you HEARD "This Poisoned Rose?"
(Not to mention most of the Bacharach album)
This is "outside now" talk
"Poisoned Rose" is a classic. The Bacharach LP features about 8 of the best songs he's
ever (co) written. That album will be around in 50 years time.
"Shot With His Own Gun" is a dirge.
Lots of Costello mulch to choose from
I've never been much of a fan, but could even an arch devotee love 13 Steps Lead Down? Or Sulky Girl?
Yes
great rock songs, top lyrics.
'Poisoned Rose' a dirge? Some people want shooting. With thier own gun. Love Steve Nieve's playing on SWHOG although it does clash against the more poppy tone of the rest of teh LP
After Costello's 2nd album..
..he displayed an appalling lack of self editing.
It's great to write a song every 10 minutes, but do you really need the world to hear every single one?
Go tell it...
to Ryan fuggin Adams. He must have the worst quality control of any musician.
You´re not too
Familiar with Neil Young´s output, then?
But speaking as a fan of both I´m with you on Ryan. He´s pretty inconsistent.
Not so Mighty....
If you're after a dirge, try 'Broken' from Mighty Like A Rose.
agreed
but written by the ex-missus so surely that doesn't count?
Like A Thorn
'Ono Track', then?
she also wrote Baby Plays Around
so hardly talentless. And I like 'Broken' so, in your face!
Sulky Girl
is a classic Costello track - if I was doing a compilation of favourite Costello songs it would be on there.
agreed
it's one of my faves.
Old King on Harvest Moon
Daddy Went Walkin´ on the almost as brilliant Silver & Gold.
Eisenhower Blues
is a blot on the landscape of an otherwise brilliant Costello album King of America and I have to disagree with the nominations of This poisoned Rose and Shot with his own gun which are both great IMHO.
The artist with form for putting at least one dud track on each album is none other than Richard Thompson. Psycho Street, God loves a drunk, Fast food.
I know Dire Straits haven't stood the test of time but Les Boys certainly justified the Dire tag.
Yep
why Eisenhower Blues made it when tracks like the brill 'King Of Confidence' or the acoustic 'I Hope Your happy Now' didn't is beyond me.
Velvet Underground - chunks of the third LP
but especially... Candy Says, Jesus and I'm Set Free - all gutless, plodding and fey.
Galling that some of their best stuff, recorded either side of this LP, was not released officially until the mid-80s - songs like Foggy Notion and Temptation Inside Your Heart were head and shoulders above most of the stuff on the third LP.
Fighting talk
Those three tracks are arguably my favourite three on that album!
Stiff Little Fingers
Closed Groove - last track on Inflammable Material. Space filling at its finest
and
apart from This Is England, the whole of The Clash's Cut The Crap
Ahh, memories.
remember going to Harlequin Records in Bromley for opening time to get "Inflammable Material" the day it came out.
Still adore it but was never a fan of "barbed wire Love" myself.
REM
All through the 80s and early 90s bought everything that REM produced and they are all brilliant but then 'Everybody Hurts' arrived and it was downhill from there. A maudlin dirge that nearly ruins 'Automatic For The People'.
Don't mind Everybody Hurts...
but it's "Shiny Happy People" that gets to me. It gets to them, too, as I understand it.
The Fabs - Revolution 9
Worst track on the White album (& the entire beatles recorded output.) - self indugent tosh
Inspired a great joke on the
Inspired a great joke on the Simpsons though, with Barney's new girlfriend at the height of the Be Sharps' success.
"I'll have a single plum floating in perfume served in a man's hat, please"
Simpsons in joke
Barney repeatedly burping & saying "Number 8, Number 8"
On the other hand
Who could have predicted that the world's biggest pop band would record a credible musique concrète track just 6 years down the track from Love Me Do?
It shows how far they'd come and, yes, just how good they were.
Much avant-garde music can sound like "self indugent (sic) tosh" taken out of context, but Revolution #9 was a bold step and yet another breakthrough in an endless list of Beatle 'firsts'.
Like it or not, the Beatles were creating magic right before our eyes with every new record.
The Hours and the Times
I must be
the only person who actually loves Revolution #9...
Always has, since the very first time hearing it as a child. I used to lie down between the speakers on the floor listening to it, sometimes twice in a row just because I liked it so much!
Still do. Call me crazy, I don't care. It's fascinating, interesting, moving, funny and I see a new movie in my head every time I listen to it ( and I do ).
You and me too, Locust.
We seem to have shared a childhood. I thought of "Revolution 9" as being like the audio equivalent of a manic cartoon.
Also when I was a kid, my father introduced me to "Smiley Smile" by the Beach Boys. My favourite track was "Fall Breaks and Back To Winter."
Were your parents ever "a bit worried" about you?
(P.S. My equivalent of "the Ringo track" on The White Album is "Ob-la-Di, Ob-la-Da." The last time I managed to sit through the song all the way through was some time in the mid-1990s.)
I too love Revolution #9
but then I also love Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da as well.
Context is everything and when it appeared on the White Album in 1968, we'd hardly heard the word reggae and as a genre West Indian music certainly hadn't been bastardised and run into the ground by white artists as happened in the 70s and 80s.
At the time it was just the Fabs getting into a bit of Ska and being different from everyone else, yet again.
What's not to love?
The "white men playing reggae" thing
is not why I don't like the song. I just think it's one of McCartney's more smug efforts. The shrilly out-of-tune backing vocals also make my fillings rattle.
Somebody once played me a contemporary cover version from Jamaica (I think it might have been Ken Lazarus's version.) Didn't like that, either.
The fact it's The Beatles doing Ska is one of its advantages, frankly. I just hate the SONG!
("Don't Pass Me By," on the other hand, I quite like. It's yer basic standard Ringo number. Nothing too sophisticated, just a workmanlike effort that plods along and drunkenly loses its way somewhere near the end. Rather how I imagine the man himself to be.)
That's
fair comment.
If I had to pick just one least favourite Beatles' song, it would have to be What's The New Mary Jane, which was recorded for the White Album but was mercifully never released at the time and later turned up on Anthology 3
The absolute worst is
Run For Your Life off Rubber Soul - mean, bitter, nasty and mysogynistic with no redeeming features.
As mentioned earlier,
the answer to this one is usually the truly appalling 'Blue Jay Way'.
( 'O Bla Di etc.' is a wonderful slice of pop! Macca at his effortlessly melodic and whimsical best )
Good Night
Ringo's "other track" from The Beatles. It's a dirge and ends the White Album with a whimper.
And I'm sick of reading that here was John writing a soppy love song to rival the best of Macca's efforts. I don't think so, somehow.
It's John writing a lullaby to Julian...
While his family disintegrated around him to try and tell his son he still loved him.
I really like the 1930's cinematic-but-sad arrangement too.
But I hardly ever listened to it until I got the CD because I thought Revolution 9 was interesting but not that interesting - very 'Goonish' as much as its music concrete.
So I would put something else on.
Love the OTT
arrangement too, particularly the beginning with the heavenly choir. Lovely lullaby.
Back in the day, pre-"Anthology"
I spent a relative fortune (actually about £25, but when you're a schoolkid earning £2.30 an hour at weekends...) on a bootleg, specifically to hear "What's The New Mary Jane."
I was not too happy with my purchase.
I know exactly what you mean
So did I. And got not one, but two versions. So happy with myself till I pressed PLAY!
Agree..
..total rubbish. Didn't Lennon want it released as an A side or something..? If evidence were ever needed that Lennon and McCartney needed each other, then here it is.
The beauty of the White Album.....
......is that everyone has a different favourite 15 or 20 tracks.
I guarantee that there are two people, right now, on other sides of the planet or even living on the same street, who have exactly the opposite 15 favourite tracks to each other.
They'll never talk to each other, or even meet, but they'll both say, 'I love the White Album apart from.............'
....and list a completely different set of songs.
I had a discussion about The White Album with a friend
If they had gone for a single album we would have had another perfect LP by the bloody Beatles. They made four of five of those anyway. But they only ever made one The White Album where they went "sod it" and decided Wild Honey Pie would be on there, Revolution 9 would, Piggies would and Rocky Raccoon would. Savoy Truffle made it too.
In a way it´s kind of the warts take makes it what it is.
But then I´m not the most critical person when it comes to Ringo and those other three.
Ob-La-Di is awful though, but the Ant 3 version is rather nice.
And how, I ask you, would a Swedish ten year old learn the expression stupid get if it wasn´t for Ron Nasty?
Sorry, but
I LOVE Piggies. But then I'm a sucker for a harpsichord.
As Macca said
'It the Beatles, Its the White Album, shurrup!
I can't stick Honey Pie (love Wild Honey Pie) but to subtract it would spoil the balance of power
I love Honey Pie
Check out the part in the intro where it switches to a crackly 78 sound for one line ("now she's hit the big time")
That kind of thing may be commonplace now, but back then it was entirely new and yet another touch of genius that made the Beatles so special.
I too love Piggies
Just used it as an example. It´s usually one of the songs people mention as filler.
What they need´s a damn good whacking!
Ah well
For our benefit at least:
"A bit worried"
Yes. They probably still are!
The "Ringo track" on the White Album for me would be exactly half of it... My 14 years older sister was in London when it was released and she had been spending most of her pocket money so she couldn't afford to buy it. So she split the cost with a German girl in the same predicament and they cut the album in two halves.
My sister brought back the side 3-4 half of it and that was all I heard of that album until I got the vinyl box set in my teens.
And I've never been able to really like those first two sides of it...
To me "my" half is the "real" White Album and the other songs are like those rubbish bonus tracks that every re-release CD put on a bonus disc that you listen to once ( exept for a couple of good ones ).
The worst of those "bonus tracks" for me is actually Rocky Raccoon. There is something deeply disturbing to me about Macca singing doo-bee-doo-de-loo-di-doo in this annoying song, badly played as well.
The third LP...
....is my favourite Velvet's record by a considerable distance.
Could spend all night slagging off post-60s stuff by The Who, The Stones, Floyd, The Kinks, The Pretty Things etc. but....nah.
'Dancing In The Street' by The Kinks is decidedly dodgy.
Still like it though and they were very young.
bits of Umma Gumma
by The Pink Floyd, I'll leave the choice up to you
That entire album
is one long Ringo track.
The Ultimate "Ringo Tracks" Album
surely has to be...
ANYONE would be knighted
After wearing those pants. Does my crutch look yellow in this?
Sting and the Ringos
On each album the Police had to have at least one song each from Summers and Copeland to meet a contractual obligation so they could guarantee a share in the massive royalties from the multi-million selling album. Was Sting such a "Stinge" that they had to do that?
I see what you did there....
...
Some of the old Sting songs still stand up especially musically but I find myself cowering in terror from his egregious rhyming couplets
Yes, but
my favourite song by the Police is Darkness, written by mr Copeland...
Other good songs written or co-written by him were Peanuts, Rehumanize Yourself, Deathwish and Does Everyone Stare.
On the other hand I CAN NOT STAND Every Bloody Breath You Take.
ELO The Diary Of Horace Wimp
Shudder,never darkens my ipod or my ear space can't stand it,although I love most of ELOs stuff
It is a bit
twee, but surely there's stuff on Balance of Power, for just one example, that's worserer?
I too am a Lynneophile.
How about Ticket To The Moon
Ticket to the Centre of The Sun Mr Lynne more like!
I'd have some sympathy
with that: it is a bit of a dirge, especially as the track on Time that follows it, The Way Life's Meant to Be, is pretty much sublime in its perfection to my untrained eyes. The contrast is fairly stark.
Ticket To The Moon
No that is a beautiful song to my ears anyway,but Horace Wimp I just can't listen to anymore,as for Balance Of Power I think it is quite underrated I like most songs on it, especially Heaven Only Knows, So Serious,Getting To The Point and Send It
Balance of Power
I really like the songs you mention, but there's waaaaay too much filler. And how come the fantastic Destination Unknown didn't make it? What a song that was for a B side.
Bloody Hell illuminatus
In my whole life I've never met anyone who knew an ELO B side. I tip my hat to you. Good one!!
See also...
The Bouncer, No Way Out, Building's Have Eyes, When Time Stood Still -ELO were no strangers to a toe-tapping B-side. To quote the end of Mr. Blue Sky, "Please turn me over".
Give me Horace any day, Mr R...
compared to The Battle of Marston Moor on the first album, a track even Bev Bevan refused to play on. Bloody Nora - it sounds like the Sealed Knot's Christmas piss-up. And the best thing you can say about In The Hall of the Mountain King is that Jeff presumably stuck it on the end of On the Third Day so it's easier to skip.
Clearly there aren't many Belle and Sebastian fans here
otherwise I would have expected "Beyond The Sunrise" to have been posted (or Track 3, as real hardcore fans refer to it since they won't even mention its name).
Personally, I don't think it's that bad, it's an attempt to do a Nancy and Lee style song that doesn't quite work, but mention it in the presence of a brown corduroy clad B&S fan and you are likely to find the aggressive side of twee!
This might seem like sacrilege..
...but I always skip 'You Can't Always get What You Want' on 'Let It Bleed'. I think it's that blinkin' choir...then it plods along and lasts ages. Bit of an issue in the NigelT household as Mrs. NigelT loves it....
hah - i'll see your YCAGWYW
and raise you a Midnight Rambler. There are only a handful of Stones songs for me that outstay their welcome. MR, is one. Can't You Hear Me Knocking is another.
Nice try with CYHMK
...I know what you mean, but I love the long jazzy bit! I think I just like Sticky Fingers too much to dislike anything on it. Heresy I know, but Let It Bleed has a few wonky moments, agree with MR (the live Ya Yas version is ace mind, which is why I think the studio version always sounded weak). How about Monkey Man when Jagger does that strangled vocal..?
Here's the contradiction with me and The Stones...
I don't care about the vocals. Ever. I mean, sometimes, if it's particularly good (Let it Loose, for instance), it'll affect me, but otherwise, it's always about the feel of the tune, or if you will, 'the vibe'. CYHMK has a jazzy one, so it doesn't do much for me. MR has one, but it gets lost. Monkey Man has a feel that's just brilliant. There's the very laid back, sedate opening with the gentle strums of the electric guitar, and then suddenly, the drums (floor-toms, is it?) kick in along with a louder guitar and you've got a riff going.
And let's be honest. It's a SERIOUS fucking riff...
When I first bought it
YCAGWYW was my least favourite track, but these days I'd say it's may favourite on that album.
Similarly with Don't Say You Love Me off Free's Fire And Water album. I couldn't stand it in my youth, but again its risen to the position of favourite track off that album.
The Stones song I can't stand is Street Fighting Man. I'm not too taken with Sympathy For The Devil either.
I turn Planet Rock off when
Sympathy comes on, I can't bare it. Sounds exactly like what it is - a bunch of stoned geezers and their hangers on with too much time and money arsing around in a studio.
Leven this one off
from Jackie Leven's Gothic Road, a darn fine album in general until you come to 'Hotel Mini Bar'....as bad as the title suggests.
The Clash - Career Opportunities
The Sandinista version.
Whoever thought THAT was worthy of inclusion, even on a sprawling triple album full of other self indulgence, must have been off their case.
I'm with you on that
and the similar version of Guns Of Brixton that plays at the end of Broadway but I think (side 6 notwithstanding) you can apply much of the above discussion about the White Album to Sandinista! IMHO. Thoughts?
I'm battle hardened, me..
no problems with Revolution Nr.9, Ummegumma, Moon Child, Trout Mask Replica, you name it, but I do have to skip the dreaded Boris the Spider (in my case on The Who Collection). Just excruciating.
And on Nick Drake's Bryter Layter, the jaunty one with the m.o.r trumpet (one of the Hazey Janes?). Absolutely unsuitable production, if there's one thing Drake wasn't, it was jaunty.
Pet Shop Boys
Lots of their stuff is brilliant, just about everything is at least good...
...except "Numb".
Absolutely Fabulous
No it isn't, not remotely.
I would put Numb comfortably* above Domino Dancing, DJ Culture and Was it Worth it?
*cheers.
Bass Ringos
For your consideration, may I offer Noel Redding's contributions to the JHE canon, "She's So Fine" and "Little Miss Strange".
In a similar "here's one from our bass player" vein, Bruce Foxton's contributions for The Jam were almost uniformly abysmal (honourable exception for "Smithers-Jones"): 'Carnaby Street', 'London Traffic', 'Don't Tell Them You're Sane', 'News Of The World', 'Innocent Man'...stinkers all.