I love “Within You Without You” now but as a kid listening to Sgt. Pepper’s on tape in the 90s, I always flipped the tape then fast-forwarded through that song.
Totally disagree. Down to the Waterline has some of the tastiest guitar licks on the whole album. I like it better than Sultans of Swing and I really like SoS.
Side one also contains Six Blade Knife, which I consider another tasty morsel of Knopfler goodness.
I agree that the other songs on side one are kind of “meh”, & that side two is good from beginning to end.
“If You Can’t Rock Me” opening the Rolling Stones’ It’s Only Rock 'n Roll. It’s a bad opener with an unfortunate title. It can’t rock me, and I know that their cover of “Ain’t too Proud to Beg” is next. I don’t know if I’ve head the end of the opener on that album more than once.
Hey! That’s the only Pink Floyd song I like!
Peter Gabriel’s Up opens with “Darkness”, which is the worst song on the album, and is also extremely jarring if you turn it up too loud (which is easy, since it opens very low and suddenly throws in noise at high volume).
I like “Schizoid Man,” but you’re absolutely right, it sounds VERY different from everything else on the album.
At different times, I’ve heard Ian McDonald, Robert Fripp, Greg Lake, Mike Giles and Pete Sinfield telling hilarious stories about fans who’d only heard “I Talk to the Wind” or “Moonchild” coming out to hear the band, thinking they were some kind of arty psychedelic folk-pop group like the Moody Blues. Many of those people raced for the exits when they opened their sets with “Schizoid Man.”
“Nightime in the Switching Yard,” which is the opening track on side 2 of Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy has no business being on the record at all. Calling it “filler” doesn’t do justice to filler.
Zevon’s one of my all-time favorites and I love seven of the nine tunes on the album.
I’ve never been particularly fond of “Johnny Strikes Up the Band,” which opens side 1, either. But “Nightime in the Switching Yard” is so much worse!
In fact, I’d nominate Excitable Boy as the best album ever made with weak opening tracks on both sides.
Another Side of Bob Dylan opens with “All I Really Want To Do”… not a horrible song, but I think it’s the weakest track on the album, a throwaway by Dylan standards that might have sounded better if he hadn’t been so drunk.
Being a Zevon fan, I often wondered if that song involved a dare or a lost bet. It’s totally out of place
Oh I agree that the guitar is good on side one, and maybe particularly on Down to the Waterline, but the playing is good throughout the album anyway. Yes, DttW does have some nice licks (and most of us have probably heard Sultans of Swing too often now). My problem is that none of the songs, as songs, on side one are all that good: not horrible, just weak. Are you seriously suggesting the strained metaphor of Six Blade Knife measures up to any of the side two songs? Actually, my favorite side one track is the closer, Southbound Again, but that, perhaps, is because it knows it is a throwaway, and isn’t trying too hard.
Hell, I rarely understand what the fuck Mark is singing about. He could be reciting the phone book for all I know.
