70's aleniation concept albums

While I wasn't a huge rebel in my teens years (but I was rebellious enough), this was the subject that I thought extremely interesting in my music: albums like Crime Of The Century, Quadrophenia or Bat Out Of Hell or even The Wall and The Lamb (to a lesser extent) were about alienation and inadequacy from the norm and failure to meet society's expectations from us.
COTC and BOOH spoke directly to me, because they had a contemporary context (that could be North American), while Quadrophenia was too typically English and happening in the early 60's to be as immediate to the North Am teenager I was then. It took the movie for me to get the full extent of the storyline, but even then, I was mostly sympathising with the Rockers, rather than the Mods, and I smoked pot (like the hippie I was claiming I was then), and disliked poppers (it wasn't agreeing with my body at all, like speed wasn't either). But despite that, I was rather impressed with this RnR (or RnB in this case) rebel story.



I did have some sympathy for Rael 's rebellion in The Lamb or even Little Minton's rebellious act in TAAB,  but Tommy was a different alien to me, much like Pink in The Wall
What sets BOOH a bit apart from those is that the alienation is accepted by the character, and he's more into conforming and trying to resemble other in his case, avoiding feeling isolated. (at least, that's how I read it).

Edited by Sean Trane - October 02 2019 at 09:58

Tough choice. Went with Quadrophenia...

Thick as a Brick, followed very closely by The Lamb, and Quadrophenia a little behind. 

Edited by Manuel - October 02 2019 at 08:11

Edited by Braka1 - October 02 2019 at 09:22

Blacksword wrote: Judging by the theme of alienation alone, and not how much I personally like the music, I would vote for Quadrophenia.

Edited by Sean Trane - October 02 2019 at 09:40

Between Lamb & Tommy for me. Voted for Lamb

The Lamb is about drug addiction??? ? Nah-- I don't think so. Never heard that. Heard more along the line of Wikipedia story description.

Edited by twosteves - October 02 2019 at 21:52

twosteves wrote: The Lamb is about drug addiction??? ? Nah-- I don't think so. Never heard that. Heard more along the line of Wikipedia story description.

 

richardh wrote: From personal experience The Wall. I felt that Waters understood this perfectly because of his own experience. Pete Townsend though is even better at this so I could easily have gone for either of the The Who albums. The others just seem a bit soft to really make an impact emotionally although Lamb definitely has it's moments ( Back In NYC especially) and Bat At Out Of Hell is just an oddity and although the title track is certainly 'classic' the whole thing never really resonated with me. Just too 'operatic' which I associate with being fake.

Lewian wrote: I'm tired of voting for TAAB in all polls where it appears, so here I vote for The Wall. Although I prefer listening to TAAB, The Wall is top as musical realisation of the alienation concept.

Ditto, except I went with Quad.