Bands/Musicians whose music hasn't "aged" well...

[TreacherousCretin]

@Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew

I didn’t see that. Since the Iron Butts were on home turf, they may have done more than one show at the arena that year. The one I saw was in December. The opening acts were It’s a Beautiful Day and a male-female acoustic duo called Too People. All I can remember about the latter is that they spelled out their name, and they did a version of “Mister Bojangles” with a funny ending. I’ve always wondered what became of them.

Ah. Different concerts. Mine had to have been early in '69, and I’m almost certain about the MMT screening. As I think I recall, we arrived late, just in time for MMT, which was followed by IB.

Iron Butterfly and It’s A Beautiful Day: interesting combination.

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[DoctorJ]

A lot of country music from the '70s and early '80s hasn’t held up well at all. It’s like Nashville couldn’t put out a song that wasn’t buried under twelve layers of overproduction, complete with strings and six backup singers, even if the song would have sounded better with an acoustic or a three-piece honky-tonk band. (They’re still guilty of this, to some degree.)

One of my favorite tracks of the last decade is “Miss Being Mrs.” from Loretta Lynn’s Van Lear Rose album. It’s just Loretta’s voice and a very simple acoustic guitar, and it’s absolutely haunting. I shudder to think how forgettable it could have been if it had been recorded in, say, 1977.

[GargoyleWB]

@TreacherousCretin

And Brain Salad Surgery is incredible. Virtuoso keyboard and percussion, intelligent music. (Disposable lyrics and singing, though.)

While I agree with the virtuosity of that album and love the music, for me the production & engineering of the album have made it unlistenably dated for me. Tinny, shallow sounding, with rudimentary stereo separation. It deserves to be a vast intricate soundscape to be lost in, you should feel those organs trembling in your core with the drums knocking you silly and blindsiding you from every direction. Instead, it just sounds like a weak FM broadcast.

[TreacherousCretin]

@GargoyleWB

While I agree with the virtuosity of that album and love the music, for me the production & engineering of the album have made it unlistenably dated for me. Tinny, shallow sounding, with rudimentary stereo separation. It deserves to be a vast intricate soundscape to be lost in, you should feel those organs trembling in your core with the drums knocking you silly and blindsiding you from every direction. Instead, it just sounds like a weak FM broadcast.

I couldn’t possibly agree with you more. BSS is probably my all-time favorite pop/rock album, in spite of the crappy sound which has driven me nuts for 38 years. “Tinny, shallow sounding, with rudimentary stereo separation.” Yes. And except for his solo spots and fills, Palmer is buried in the mix to a degree that’s almost criminal.

Most of BSS appeared on “The Atlantic Years” compilation, where Joe Gastwirt’s remastering is the only digital (or analog) release that sounds significantly better to my ears. Still awful, but not quite so bad as all the others.

The hi-res surround DVD-Audio was also a huge disappointment. A true remix which could and should have been awesome, but was botched from start to finish. In my opinion.

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[HepToTheJive]

@DChord568

My take: I’ve never bought into the whole Morrison as shaman/Lizard King bullshit. I loved The Doors because they were one hell of a BAND who sounded like no one else who came before them.

Morrison was a good and different singer who could be very affecting when the pretense didn’t get in the way. He also wrote some great songs, although some of The Doors’ greatest were written by guitarist Robbie Krieger. Both he and Manzarek used their instruments in unique and effective ways, and Densmore is one of my favorite drummers, a master of dynamics.

So if you can get past the Morrison mythos, a high percentage of it is very good. As for the lyrics, I can go with the whole break on through/Dionysus business up to a point, and the rest of the time, I ignore it and just listen to the music.

I respectfully disagree, or rather I agree that they sounded like nothing else, that is my problem. I can’t fathom why I would ever trudge through their crappy organ diddling sludge. The Doors make me feel dirty.

Plus I look in my itunes and see what else came out the year of their debut and it blows my mind: Disraeli Gears by Cream, Axis: Bold as Love by Hendrix, Something Else by the Kinks, Forever Changes by Love(!!!), Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane (!!).

Then they drop on the scene with all that misplaced heavy handedness. Their sound kind of reminds me of The Chocolate Watchband (same year), but I didn’t get all that sludge that I got from The Doors.

Hhew, feels good to say all of that finally. It’s a losing battle, the doors are popular, “Light My Fire” was much higher on the charts then any of the bands’ singles I mentioned. To paraphrase The Byrds (and Ecclesiastes)…a time for every purpose. For example when I was younger, I LOVED riders on the storm. It would be a lot more listenable now if they weren’t trying so hard to be cool with that song (you know they were.)