I like both Lou Reed and Metallica but I hate Lulu!
I have always thought And Then There Were Three sounded like crap, but I just assumed it was only my copy on vinyl that sounded like that.
As much as I love The Alan Parsons Project, they have had over the years more than a few “oh, poor me” songs where the world, or more particularly women, are being mean to them. It can be pretty juvenile. Eve does that in spades, all the way down to the horrid album cover. I really do hate that album.
This here. Naked may be my favorite TH album.
mmm
A joint Metallica/Lou Reed project probably would’ve worked had it come about 15 years before it actually did in 2011. Unfortunately, in instances like this, it’s proof timing is everything.
As the consummate Tull groupie, I find a couple of their more popular releases disappointing. I read somewhere that A Passion Play was one of their biggest selling albums, but it was just never able to reach me. Similarly, the radio had a big hard-on for Bungle in the Jungle which I found to be eminently ignorable, instead greatly favoring Skating Away (on the Thin Ice of a New Day) from that album.
They made it up to me in short order with Songs from the Wood, which is solid all the way through.
Count me in as a Naked fan. Johnny Marr and Kirsty MacColl as guests, and “Nothing But Flowers” is sublime.
Neil Young released more albums than almost anybody, so of course there are a few clunkers among them. My personal candidate for his nadir is “Landing On Water” from 1986. “Everybody’s Rocking” at least had a kind of nostalgic charm, But LOW (funny, in order to avoid some keystrokes I just discovered that the acronym describes the album 
) was a strange exercise in the most schlocky production values the 80s had to offer, which didn’t suit Young’s music in any way.
Now I HAVE to listen to “Naked”. I’m sure you know, but for everybody else I recommend Kirsty MacColl’s album “Kite”, which was recorded with Johnny Marr. It’s excellent.
Yes @EinsteinsHund, Kite is brilliant. Kirsty was one of my favorite singers as a solo artist, so when she did backing vocals for The Smiths I was in heaven. I think I’ve tracked all of the Marr-MacColl collaborations. I still get teary eyed when I think about her death. Off to listen to her version of “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby!”
Yeah, that. There’s not much excuse for being so oblivious about why women behave as they do; they’ve been quite vocal and explained in clear and compelling detail what their situation is. I’m certainly not saying any male person who doesn’t like their own situation is just whining, but yeesh, if we don’t like how things are set up, and want some sympathy, we really oughta start by extending some, and exhibiting some understanding about how that same setup looks and feels from the women’s vantage point, instead of acting like women dreamed the whole damn thing up in the women’s bathroom stalls and inflicted it on us hapless guys. [/soapbox]
Oh that reminds me. I have liked a lot of Jethro Tull over the years. One day back in the 80s I snagged a cheap used cassette of a Tull album I’d never heard: A. (yeah, that’s the name of it, “A”, by itself).
For awhile I kept fishing it out and playing it again after a few days, thinking I must’ve not been in a listening mood. But nope, there’s just nothing on there to make any impact. Extremely forgettable. Except perhaps some vague recollection of a song about “I’m a working Joe” which was still down in the basement compared to the good stuff.
I got A when it was still warm from the stamper. It was different, and I was in an odd headspace at the time, so I could sort of connect with it. Broadsword & the Beast came as a bit of a relief, a kind of return to normal-ish, but '80s Tull was somewhat uneven. You kind of had to want to like some of that. After Catfish Rising, though, their studio work became quite bland.
I bought everything Tull released up through Broadsword (but nothing after that), saw them three times in concert, and listened to them incessantly (I literally wore out Heavy Horses)…so I’m also a fan of sorts, though I didn’t last throughout the discography. I didn’t like “A” when it came out, but after seeing the A tour did end up liking it somewhat better. But oddly I like Passion Play better, so results did vary…
A reasonable soapbox. In the end that’s why decades later I still semi-regularly listen to Tales of Mystery & Imagination, Turn of a Friendly Card, and Pyramid, but not so much the other albums.
Pink Floyd - The Final Cut
Yet still far superior to A Momentary Lapse of Reason
True that. Just awful. Oddly it has its fans, but I’m sure not among them. There’s one track that’s kind of haunting and evocative — “One of the Few” — the problem is, the track is only about one minute 20 at max.
Ya think that’s bad? The Doors were slated to play a festival near us, and they didn’t cancel… we just got one of those “Other Voices” instead of Mr. Lizard King.
And thanks, madsircool. I’ve gotten that snippet playing in my head:
"All right, look at my shoes/
Not quite the walkin’ blues…"
(though I haven’t heard it since the late 60s), and I always wondered where the hell I would’ve heard a Dylan parody… until this thread I had no idea it was a Doors song!
This may be low-hanging fruit, but I have to bring up Creedence Clearwater Revival’s final album, Mardi Gras.
Their penultimate album, Pendulum, is actually a fine effort IMO, reflecting a more mature sound than their previous work. But the band was already beginning to fall apart. Every member not named John Fogerty was tired of being pushed to the background, despite John being the very reason they were successful. John’s own brother quit the band, turning a quartet into a trio, and at that point Fogerty basically said “fuck it” and let the rhythm section have the creative control they craved - but refused to sing any songs the other two wrote.
Fogerty contributed two good songs, one throwaway track, and a lackluster cover of “Hello Mary Lou.” The rest of the songs, written and sung by Stu Cook and Doug Clifford were… not good.
If John’s ego had allowed him to actually collaborate with his bandmates, they may have been able to continue to do great things. But the album was a complete mess and marked the end of a great American rock band.