From the Black Mountain Hills of Dakota: Rocky's Log - Music Diaries

Repo

BeA Sunflower

Location: Forest Park

RockyRaccoon wrote:

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First Impressions Of Earth by The Strokes

For the life of me, I've never understood why this is considered one of The Strokes' weaker albums.

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd imagine part of it is a time and place thing. This was their third album after Is This It and Room On Fire, both of which are classics, and I'll admit that First Impressions is a bit of a step down from the first two albums, so I can see in a time and place where The Strokes pump out two incredible albums, for them to then release an album that's a bit of a step back (even if it's a minor one) how that would be magnified into a more negative reception.

However, what's so strange to me is, listening to this album right now (and it's always been a favorite of mine), I feel like if you really enjoyed Is This It and Room On Fire, you probably would've liked this too. Maybe it's because The Strokes can be a bit one-note sometimes - while I love Room on Fire, it's definitely just doing Is This It over again, and maybe doing that a third time started to wear some of the shimmer off the band.

I'm not sure. I still think this is a great album. The main complaints I've heard about this, which have been generally focused on Julian Casablancas, don't feel unique to this album. Casablancas's voice is basically the same, it's what it always has been, and as for his lyrics, could they be better? Sure, but I mean, he wasn't exactly writing groundbreaking poetry on the first two records and I don't imagine too many people come to the Strokes for insights on the human condition or anything.

It's strange. But regardless of why this album is constantly slept on, it's excellent. If I was making a Strokes Greatest Hits album, I'd definitely put Juicebox and Vision of Division on there, and I might even put Heart in a Cage on there too.

Even Room On Fire got some backlash at the time. It's just that the press needs a story and most people are more than happy to go along with that story. I myself have been VERY guilty of this. Embarassed

RockyRaccoon

Is it solipsistic in here or is it just me?

Gender: Male

Age: 34

Location: Maryland

Moderator

Repo wrote:

Even Room On Fire got some backlash at the time. It's just that the press needs a story and most people are more than happy to go along with that story. I myself have been VERY guilty of this. Embarassed

Could be!

I really think it was a time and place thing. The Strokes were massive when Is This It came out, so everything they did was magnified, which means an album that's good but not as good as the ones before it is seen as this massive failure. And it's funny, because honestly just about every Strokes album kinda sounds the same (and I'm not complaining, I love their sound), so it's kind of like, if you enjoyed their other stuff, you're probably gonna like this on some level too
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Repo

BeA Sunflower

Location: Forest Park

RockyRaccoon wrote:

Repo wrote:

Even Room On Fire got some backlash at the time. It's just that the press needs a story and most people are more than happy to go along with that story. I myself have been VERY guilty of this. Embarassed

Could be!

I really think it was a time and place thing. The Strokes were massive when Is This It came out, so everything they did was magnified, which means an album that's good but not as good as the ones before it is seen as this massive failure. And it's funny, because honestly just about every Strokes album kinda sounds the same (and I'm not complaining, I love their sound), so it's kind of like, if you enjoyed their other stuff, you're probably gonna like this on some level too

I think u brought up two other key points. 1) Is This It was a massive debut album and it set expectations sky high.
2) The Strokes never surpassed their debut. Is This It became This Is It and people were, rightly or wrongly, expecting more than that. So many bands are weirdly measured by how they evolve. And The Strokes weren't having none of that. Instead they defied the tastemakers and kept putting out consistent albums of similar sounding indie rock. Now with the passage of time, we can just appreciate three great albums of indie rock, but at the time "What would the Strokes do next?" was part of the baggage that fell on their albums after Is This It.

Repo

BeA Sunflower

Location: Forest Park

Repo wrote:

RockyRaccoon wrote:

Repo wrote:

Even Room On Fire got some backlash at the time. It's just that the press needs a story and most people are more than happy to go along with that story. I myself have been VERY guilty of this. Embarassed

Could be!

I really think it was a time and place thing. The Strokes were massive when Is This It came out, so everything they did was magnified, which means an album that's good but not as good as the ones before it is seen as this massive failure. And it's funny, because honestly just about every Strokes album kinda sounds the same (and I'm not complaining, I love their sound), so it's kind of like, if you enjoyed their other stuff, you're probably gonna like this on some level too

I think u brought up two other key points. 1) Is This It was a massive debut album and it set expectations sky high.
2) The Strokes never surpassed their debut. Is This It became This Is It and people were, rightly or wrongly, expecting more than that. So many bands are weirdly measured by how they evolve. And The Strokes weren't having none of that. Instead they defied the tastemakers and kept putting out consistent albums of similar sounding indie rock. Now with the passage of time, we can just appreciate three great albums of indie rock, but at the time "What would the Strokes do next?" was part of the baggage that fell on their albums after Is This It.

And... they would come back in six years and successfully tweak their formula with Angles! So they did successfully evolve as well! And people STILL weren't happy. Brick wall

Personally I like Angles even more than Room On Fire and First Impressions.... It's very fresh.

RockyRaccoon

Is it solipsistic in here or is it just me?

Gender: Male

Age: 34

Location: Maryland

Moderator

Went on a minor Vanilla Fudge kick today so:

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The Beat Goes On by Vanilla Fudge

I picked this up at my local record store. I remember sorta digging into Vanilla Fudge a slight bit back in high school when I read in a Led Zeppelin biography that John Bonham considered Carmine Appice his idol, but I never really dug too deep into the band.

I remember this album being sorta interesting, so I picked it up, and man it turned out to be an interesting experience. This album gets ragged on for the way it's set up, and I get it. It's not really a series of songs but basically a sound collage of bits of various songs interspersed with spoken word, more often than not historical recordings. But there's something about the way Vanilla Fudge put this together that made this a really interesting and pretty compelling work of art for me. It's hard to explain, but everything sort of flowed together so well and the band had such interesting takes on the various snippets of songs they included that I was constantly engaged from beginning to end.

I get it if this isn't everyone's cup of tea, and frankly I totally understand the criticisms of this being too experimental and weird, but for whatever reason it clicked for me.

Vanilla Fudge by Vanilla Fudge

Naturally after listening to The Beat Goes On, I wanted to dive back into Vanilla Fudge's debut since it's been forever since I've listened to any of it.

I have a strong feeling about cover songs. I love a good cover song, but there's no point in covering a song if you're going to do a note-for-note replica of the song. No one wants that, no one needs that. What I want to hear is your specific interpretation or your unique twist on the song.

Vanilla Fudge do that on every song here. Each song on this album is a cover, and Vanilla Fudge do such a cool job with each song. Basically all the songs are slowed down to half-speed, and doing that really changes the flavor of each song. Plus, the band take each song and add their own unique spin (also listening to this, I can see why Bonham loved Carmine Appice so much, he's awesome).

I really feel like Vanilla Fudge gets lost in the history of rock music, prog music (which you could argue they were early adopters of), and psychedelic rock music. Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice went on to do other cool bands, like Cactus and Beck, Bogert, & Appice, but Vanilla Fudge stands out as a really cool, unique moment in the flood of psychedelic music that came out between 1966-1970.
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