Since we’re mentioning covers, I’ve always loved the story behind the “Tormato” cover. Never actually listened to it, though.
“90125” was a terrible album. The hits were great songs, and the rest was meh.
MANY? Surely there are a few oddly idiosyncratic fans out there that prefer Reveal to all other REM albums because, I mean, hell - you can find people who love Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and Neil Young’s Arc :D. But many?
I mean, better than Around the Sun? Yeah, okay - I could but that. Best post-Bill Berry? Tougher argument, but arguable I suppose.
But best is a pretty high bar. It doesn’t even scrape the top 10 IMHO.
Judas Priest’s Turbo. It’s like they said “It’s 1985, so we’ve got to start using synths.”
it (and it’s phoned-in follow up Ram it Down) pushed them to significantly overhaul their image and sound for the much better received Painkiller.
I found Genesis’ “Genesis” album to have more than its quotient of good songs; even side two had “Silver Rainbow”.
I came in to mention Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s “Love Beach” but was beaten to it. That horror was a contractual obligation that they mostly phoned in before disbanding. From Wikipedia: "Writing in Rolling Stone magazine at the time of the album’s release, reviewer Michael Bloom said that “Love Beach isn’t simply bad; it’s downright pathetic. Stale and full of ennui, this album makes washing the dishes seem a more creative act by comparison.” 
Just listened to 90125. First 6 songs are amazing and the last 3 are decent enough.
It’s a 1980s album and definitely sounds it. It sure isn’t Topographic Oceans, but I’m glad for it
The Final Cut isn’t a bad album due to political statements. “Not Now John” is kind of okay. “Gunner’s Dream” didn’t leave any impact on me whatsoever. I’m listening to it now to remind me of it. ==> “Gunner’s Dream” warbly whiny vocals, repetitive musical phrases, nothing particularly poignant, then @ “hold on to the dream” the vocalist stubs his toe and shrieks in pain. Definitely a track to skip.
In the weeks after I purchased The Final Cut, I kept starting over with a fresh listen, thinking maybe my total failure to be impressed was a function of some particular mood or physical discomfort I’d been in, but nope. The one track I kept going back to and playing by itself, and liking, was “One of the Few”. Eerie and haunting. But short, damned short.
Matters of taste tend to be rooted in the general mesh of what one likes and what one doesn’t. I’d say my vote for second most disappointing PF album was Momentary Lack of Reason. It gave me nothing that I liked that I didn’t already have from Delicate Sound of Thunder (the live album) which is in third place of disappointingness (the live versions are better): On DST I’d listen to the opening of “Sorrow” then skip to “Dogs of War” then “On The Turning Away” and skip the rest. MLR had less good copies of the same songs and other skippables.
Another album I didn’t care so much for when I first heard it but which grew on me: More. Somewhat better than that but not among their very best: Obscured by Clouds, Relics. I like Ummagumma’s interesting & weird solo bits (“Grand Vizier’s Party”, “Narrow Way”, “Sisyphus”, and yes “Several Species etc Grooving w/Pict”) but wasn’t blown away by Yet Another Copy of “Astronomy Domine”, “Careful With That Axe”, “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” and “Saucerful of Secrets”.
The real winners for me are Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets, Meddle, Atom Heart Mother, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall.
Yeah, but all of those songs (plus “Dancing in the Streets”) were in heavy concert rotation BEFORE 1978. There was really no reason to release dance-beat crap studio versions.
BTW, I really love “Stagger Lee,” the Garcia-Hunter rewrite of the old folk song, one of the finest examples of “old weird America” in the Dead songbook. Stagger Lee kills Billy DeLyon after Billy wins his lucky Stetson hat in a craps game. Billy’s woman Delia goes to find Stagger Lee at the bar and flirts with him, asking him to “buy me a gin fizz, stud.” Which leads to the classic lines —
As Stagger Lee lit a cigarette
She shot him in the balls
Blew the smoke off her revolver
Had him dragged to City Hall
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you for not citing Tales from Topographic Oceans. I love that album and I love it more each time I listen to it.
But then my favorite movie is Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Two instances in which the critics didn’t know what they were talking about.
I was semi-disappointed—no, more than semi-disappointed, but less than fully disappointed—in Tormato. Sure it has some OK music, but it’s a let-down compared to its nearest neighbor, Going for the One. I didn’t buy any more Yes albums after that until Keys to Ascension and KTA II.
In 1978 I was fully disappointed at what had happened to Genesis with And Then There Were Three. I never bought another Genesis album again. So that’s my entry for this thread.
Emerson himself apologized to ELP’s fanbase for the album. As I remember it, he said that beside everything else that was wrong about LB, the album had “a complete lack of balls” which crippled what moments might have had potential. Ironic, in light of that ridiculous beefcake cover photo.
I, too, would be fascinated to lay eyes upon a member of this previously unknown subclass of R.E.M. fan … preferably from behind a sheet of bulletproof glass and with armed guards on either side of me, just in case said member became agitated and tried to attack. Reveal is a disappointing album that benefits immensely from coming between the two crummiest releases in the band’s discography. It’s got a couple of highlights, I guess. “Imitation of Life” is a great single, and “The Lifting” is one of the few times the band really nailed the keyboard- and electronics-heavy direction they were pursuing at the time. But I’ve never heard anybody give it a great deal of love.
I like “Around the Sun” but haven’t listened to it in ages. Guess I should blow the dust off it and do so.
Many of the people on one of their Facebook pages sure like it. 
Don’t think I’ve seen Neil Young’s “Trans” on this list. That was an early 80s foray into electronica.
Still not his worst. Gotta give the man credit for putting himself on the line to try something new. Side One isn’t much to talk about, but Side Two has some good stuff on it (keeping in mind that Neil is infatuated with the vocoder on this release.)
I might be a bit biased because I saw Neil on this tour and he rocked.
“Trans” isn’t a complete success, but a bold and interesting foray of a classic rock artist into the world of Kraftwerk et al. “Landing On Water” OTOH was a disastrous exercise in 80s studio production values with synths as shlocky and unfitting to his music as could be. Neil Young did more studio albums than most, with many masterpieces and some clunkers, but “Landing On Water” was his nadir.
Re: R.E.M.: “Reveal” was already bad, with “Imitations Of Life” the only redeeming song (though it actually sounded as if they were covering themselves, but regarding the title maybe that was a clever ploy or an in-joke, I don’t know), but “Around The Sun” was awful. I maybe listened twice to the album, though I I’m a great fan. I remember how disappointed I was.
ELO’s live album, “The Night The Light Went On In Long Beach,” is unlistenable on vinyl; all you can hear is snare drum and some vocals–really shitty mix. It was re-mastered for CD and it’s a 1000% improvement. Super live ELO.
It isn’t a timeless classic, but off of Reveal I like the aforementioned IoL, Saturn Return (weird whistle effects aside), Disappear, She Just Wants to Be, All the Way to Reno, & I’ll Take the Rain. Overall, I’ve found REM to have the smallest standard deviation in song quality of any artist I know of: they’ve never crafted anything mindblowingly awesome, but even their less stellar cuts typically manage to work somehow. [Floyd for ex. I would put at the other end of the spectrum]
As a Dylan fan of the period-- I drifted away when Bob became a Family Man and (briefly) a Jesus Freak-- I was disappointed with “Planet Waves” (1974).
I was all the more disappointed because I’m also a huge fan of The Band, and was thrilled to attend the Dylan/Band “Before the Flood” tour show at the Spectrum in Philly. Dylan sort of repudiated, or dismissed that tour afterwards-- IIRC, retrospectively saying that the overall “sound” was too loud or noisy. I also recall criticism that the vocals were too over-the-top-- more shouted than sung.
I mention the live album because it raised my expectations for “Planet Waves”. To again echo critics, The Band was crisp and tight in the studio-- the term “professional” was used-- and Bob’s vocals were OK. But there wasn’t any of the “magic”, or special chemistry, left over from the “Basement Tapes” collaboration. I guess this was when Bob entered his songwriting slump, because “Forever Young” was the only outstanding “keeper” on the album.
This may well be a case of coming to an album with too-high expectations, but over the years, apart from “Forever Young” the songs seem forced and mediocre. (Yes, I know some people hate “Forever Young”, and dispute my claim that it’s a “keeper”). I won’t discuss every track, since I doubt anyone remembers them anyway, but they don’t wear well over the years.
For instance, “Something There Is About You” strikes me as a ripoff (lyrical ideas, not the music) of George Harrison’s “Something”. And although some fans and critics find them sublime and exquisite, I never could get into Dylan’s stream-of-consciousness doggerel, e.g. “Dirge” and “Wedding Song”. It doesn’t compare to his relatively psychedelic poetic stream-of-consciousness period.
Perhaps it’s just a case of expecting magic, and getting well-performed “meh”.
Planet Waves has two main problems: lousy material and Robbie Robertson’s guitar. He just never stops playing – over the verses, over the choruses, solos…
That said, I love the bridge to Going Going Gone: Grandma says go and follow your heart/You know you’ll be fine at the end of the line/all that’s gold doesn’t shine/don’t you and your own true love ever part (from memory, might not be 100% accurate)…
From what I’ve read, it was Fogerty who insisted that Cook and Clifford share the song writing “burden” since they had complained about Fogerty taking total control of the band and calling all the shots.
Good band: Vanilla Fudge
Bad album: The Beat Goes On