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. 🫢
RockyRaccoonIs it solipsistic in here or is it just me?ModeratorProfile Maryland
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. :oops:
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 _________________ Progressive Rock
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. :oops:
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.
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. :oops:
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. 🧱
Personally I like Angles even more than Room On Fire and First Impressions.... It's very fresh.
RockyRaccoonIs it solipsistic in here or is it just me?ModeratorProfile Maryland
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.
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. _________________ Progressive Rock
Look, I’m going to start right off the bat, it’s not a great album. The cover is atrocious, even the band said as much. Both Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer have said they hate the cover and said they look like the Bee Gees (and they kinda do). And Emerson has even gone further, saying the album itself was “an embarrassment against everything I’ve worked for.”
Now, I wouldn’t go that far, but I do think there’s good stuff here. ELP made this to fulfill a contractual obligation. Per Palmer, they had basically broken up as a band at that point and were just hanging out in the Bahamas together when Atlantic Records called and said “hey wanna make another album?”
All three members of the band have acknowledged the album was a bit slapped together, but even ELP on autopilot has some enjoyable music. The album opener, “All I Want is You” is one of ELP’s catchier tunes, “For You” is fun and features some cool Emerson synths, and the band’s interpretation of Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Canario” is enjoyable.
And of course there’s side two, which is entirely dedicated to “Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman,” which clocks in at just over 20 minutes. Now, is this another great prog epic from a band that’s created a few all-timers? No. But it’s an interesting piece regardless, featuring some great work from Emerson and some great vocals from Greg Lake.
“Love Beach” is a far cry from the heights that ELP hit as giants of prog rock years before, and the fact it was released in 1978 when punk was well underway and the public had long tired of the stuffy excesses of prog led to this album going over like a fart in church.
But I will always defend it. If you’re an ELP fan, it’s an enjoyable listen. It’s not their best, but it’s also far from terrible. _________________ Progressive Rock
Edmunds' best solo albums are these, IMO. They aren't REALLY solo albums, though. The band is Rockpile (who were great as well), but they couldn't record for awhile under that name, so Edmunds and Nick Lowe released the recordings as solo albums. Try these:
Also...Edmunds recorded this live album in 1997 with Swedish band The Refreshments. He plays some wild guitar here. The album was recorded by my good friend and former guitar player Kenneth Skoglund.
Oh man, this is great, I will absolutely dig into these. I had never heard of Dave Edmunds before I dug into Love Sculpture and I love his guitar playing so I can't wait to dive into more of his stuff
Dave Edmunds was a bit of a legend here in London. Saw him play Dingwalls in around 1984 and the half moon maybe three / four years later. Both legendary London music venues. He was absolutely brilliant both times.
Dave Edmunds was a bit of a legend here in London. Saw him play Dingwalls in around 1984 and the half moon maybe three / four years later. Both legendary London music venues. He was absolutely brilliant both times.
This is Jefferson Airplane at their most politically charged, confrontational, and unapologetically countercultural, and it also ended up being the last Jefferson Airplane album with the band’s classic lineup, as following this, Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen formed Hot Tuna while Paul Kanter and Grace Slick went off and did their own thing (that eventually turned into Jefferson Starship).
Released in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War and the broader upheaval of the late-60s, “Volunteers” very much reflects the time it was released in, and it does it brilliantly. The opening pairing of “We Can Be Together” and “Good Shepherd” is excellent—”We Can Be Together” is a furious, defiant anthem with Slick and Kanter sounding completely convinced the old social order deserves to be obliterated. Then, “Good Shepherd” gifts into something almost spiritual.
The title track is perhaps the most famous moment, it’s a messy, exuberant, and catch song, with Slick singing with exactly the right amount of sarcasm and conviction. And you also get their version of “Wooden Ships,” a song that’s perhaps better known as a Crosby, Stills, & Nash piece, though it was written by David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Kanter (and this version is slightly different from the CS&N one).
Obviously “Volunteers” is an album that’s tied to its time, and while that has the potential to date the music, I find it a fascinating document of 1969—it captures the idealism, the anger, the absurdity, and the uncertainty of the era better than virtually any other rock album.
It’s not the Airplane’s most polished album, but it’s a great one. A loud, strange, idealistic, occasionally messy, but completely alive work of art. _________________ Progressive Rock
This was the beginning of a rough period for Bob Dylan.
In late 1978, Dylan was a year removed from his divorce, he had just received horrible reviews for his film Renaldo and Clara, and his most recent studio album, “Street Legal”, had bombed (though personally I think it’s a pretty solid album).
Needless to say, Dylan was in a rough spot, and amid all of that, he converted to Christianity (in part because, he claimed, Jesus appeared to him).
Unfortunately the brand of Christianity that Dylan ended up embracing leaned real hard on the “fire and brimstone” message, which served to generally alienate a whole lot of his fanbase.
“Slow Train Coming” was the start of all that, his first album following his conversion, and while it’s far from his best, it’s still a pretty cool album.
You get some great tunes, including “Gotta Serve Somebody,” which ended up being a classic, as well as the title track and “I Believe in You”, all of which are great.
And even better, Dylan called in Mark Knopfler to play guitar on this album after attending a Dire Straits concert and seeing Knopfler play. Theres plenty if great Mark Knopfler guitar work all over this album, which makes it even more fun to listen to.
Again, this isn’t Dylan’s best, far from it, but considering the pretty rough run that Dylan’s Christian period led to (specifically “Saved” and “Shot of Love” which aren’t terrible but are pretty uneven), “Slow Train Coming” stands as a pretty enjoyable album. _________________ Progressive Rock
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