Top songs on not so good albums

amity62 wrote: Rush - red sector A

Love all of Vive La Trance and think of it as something of a companion to Wolf City. Jalousie fx has always been a personal fave.

Apparently different people have different favourites on Vive La Trance; for me this would also qualify for this thread because overall I don't like it that much, but Jalousie is great.

^I'm with you on Hemispheres.  EVen though I enjoy The Trees somewhat as well, the title track is a huge, heavy cinder block tied to that album's leg that sinks it straight to the bottom

Well said...even if I have some friends who would disagree with the both of us - so much so that we'd probably end up with the cinder block tied to our legs

Edited by Guldbamsen - September 18 2017 at 11:01

Greg the ninja...

I entirely agree with your sentiments though: time and place is everything...oh and that fickle thing called the mind; meaning where is your head at, are you relaxed/wired/happy/sad/on your way to the tractor meet/on death row/forgot your orange juice and just couldn't cope anymore/etc etc.
This is why I genuinely adore some albums today....that I hated with a vengeance when I first started out with them.
Maybe just maybe Hemispheres will join that club although I seriously doubt it. There's not much to 'hate' on the album, it's just too meandering for my tastes is all (hah and that is coming from a prog electronic nut!).

Ahhh good ol Europe.
Hey Jim I was listening to the Grease soundtrack and Boney M at one point in my life so don't workry about anything. My mother obviously steered me down a dangerous path but I have since then recovered fully.

That's a good way of describing it. There is music made specifically around 'meandering' ideas - like Schulze for instance...but instead of ending up like big gulps of notes and tones flabbing around seemingly without any direction it becomes this spacious room of sound that takes on an oceanic stoicness; ie the meandering is sought out and investigated, whereas (most) rock music very easily can end up uninteresting if it goes down the meandering route. It does work for some though. A fair few Krautrock bands turned the monotony of motorik beats into something wholly different...but again was well aware of what they were exploring.
It's when music unexpectedly turns out meandering that I personally jump off the bandwagon...but yeah one man's meander is another man's favourite prog excursion...or something to that effect.

Tapfret wrote: ^I'm with you on Hemispheres.  EVen though I enjoy The Trees somewhat as well, the title track is a huge, heavy cinder block tied to that album's leg that sinks it straight to the bottom

Edited by Jeffro - September 18 2017 at 12:13

Logan wrote: So well said, you did not disappoint. It really is about the space that is created. To use a bad film analogy, Electronic music is rather more like watching a Wim Wenders, or Lars von Trier, film with the way they work with space to evoke a feel, Whereas Rush is more like a film that doesn't have space to breathe and meanders in an unsatisfying way. Kind of like the the movie The Adjustment Bureau. I love Philip K. Dick, but ugh, I thought that movie was not good. Maybe some Star Wars type stuff would be a good comparison for what I mean with Rush, and 2001: A Space Odyssey is more in the electronic music world.

I like that analogy. I make the same kind of comparison when trying to formulate the difference between the vast majority of psychedelic music I listen to vs the kind I don't. It's basically the same thing that attracts me to electronic music - that 'waving along in the dark with but a mere flashlight' kind of approach has always resonated with me. Transcribed onto music it means fumbling about, loosey-goosey, in-the-moment-satori and all that kind of jazz...whereas the other type of psychedelic music, often the one that comes from the ol US of A ahem(;), is more structured and riff based often drawing inspiration from metal. Didn't used to be like that though. I definitely hear where most of the early Krautrock bands got their mojo from (even if some still claim that Krautrock was about wiping the slate clean and starting over - which is impossible but a commendable notion indeed) granted they did make it a lot more freaky...but the US were still on with the esoteric wild and at times unstructured beauty of psychedelic music back when flowers, paint and acid were a match made in heaven. Some folks still dig these artifacts or so I'm told.