Favourite albums of the 80s+ 90s - lists :D

[ska invita]

Anyhow, more lists please!

One 90s album ive only just discovered (this week) and is a killer is this:
Drexciya - The Quest

I think this is a fair bit better that Neptune's Lair which is the one Fact had in their list

 

[killer b]

What a hideous snob you are frank.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Thing is this clearly is a list aimed at a certain demographic. Some of the stuff it's been accused of is true tbh - it is a bit pretentious and a bit snobby. I personally don't really care though, it's an interesting list of records and that'll do for me.

What I don't get is the idea that including all the other albums suggested would make a more objective, better list. It's just a list for a slightly different demographic - maybe a larger one but still relatively small in the grand scheme of things.

 

[killer b]

surely any truly pretentious & snobby list couldnt include endtroducing and dummy?

 

[Fozzie Bear]

surely any truly pretentious & snobby list couldnt include endtroducing and dummy?

Yep, it would have been a better list without them.

(Assuming you are reading the list because you want to find out about great music you haven't heard before, rather than wanting your existing record collection validated).

 

[ska invita]

You never know, the 90s were a long time ago now, if you are 18 today you wouldve been born in 1996

 

[Fozzie Bear]

You never know, the 90s were a long time ago now, if you are 18 today you wouldve been born in 1996

If I was eighteen today I would be down the pub having my first legal pint, not reading this.

 

[SpookyFrank]

What a hideous snob you are frank.

Meh. I just don't like shit music.

 

[ska invita]

Meh. I just don't like shit music.

no one does

 

[SpookyFrank]

no one does

I refer you back to that list of top-selling albums of the nineties. One or two are OK but the rest are objectively horrid, bad music.

 

[ska invita]

I refer you back to that list of top-selling albums of the nineties. One or two are OK but the rest are objectively horrid, bad music.

somebody loves them. Not sure its possible or worthwhile to talk about music objectively.

 

[killer b]

I'm not sure if 'frank doesnt like it' means something is objectively bad tbh.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

somebody loves them. Not sure its possible or worthwhile to talk about music objectively.

I think it's fine to assert why you like something or why it is important/influential. Which is what those lists are.

But you'd have to have a pretty amazing turn of phrase to get me to read something about why Nirvana is objectively better than Autechre, for example.

On the other hand, a piece on Celine Dion's global influence would probably be really interesting to me, because I don't know much about it.

 

[SpookyFrank]

All this relativism is all well and good until you realise that what you're actually saying is that Mick Hucknall is OK really.

 

[ska invita]

Somethings got you started

 

[ska invita]

For Fozzie:
dancehall style

in fact i think theres an even more dancehall-dion clip out there...cant remember what it is now...not surprisingly!

 

[ska invita]

All this relativism is all well and good until you realise that what you're actually saying is that Mick Hucknall is OK really.

in fact i think its the other way around Frank, objectively speaking Mick Hucknall is a pop genius, with a unique voice in the history of British music, whose well-crafted compositions hide a complexity of ideas and musical modes, often drawing on his own deep love of soul, rnb and reggae and transposing them into a new and accessible pop form, blah blah etc. It's subjectively that you can say he's shit.

 

[killer b]

someone posted something on the cod thread. Live Celine cod. It was... Something.

 

[ska invita]

someone posted something on the cod thread. Live Celine cod. It was... Something.

yes looked it up - it was that same track - but in paris

 

[stavros]

Was Hard Normal Daddy in there? I don't think Tom Jenkinson's ever topped that.

 

[free spirit]

it isnt a list of the most influential lot popular records, its a list of the best - which can only ever be a subjective view. I'm glad they've missed off the usual drab parade of crossover dance music & unit shifting indie rock that usually makes up these tedious lists.

ah, actually I might understand now...

Kiran Sande
Deputy Editor at FACT Magazine,
University of Bristol
2001 – 2004

it's a list of the best albums of the 90s written by people who were still in school at the time, which I suppose is reasonably interesting as an alternative take on the decade, but it's unlikely to be particularly definitive.

Also, have you listened to leftism recently?

yep, I've got it in a cd case in the van, still sounds class to me when I stick it on.

 

[ska invita]

Thats interesting FS, for the sake of argument lets say that the people writing these articles were basically too young to have heard them at the time, then theyd be judging records purely on how they have held up over time, and perhaps more importantly how relevant they feel to now. I think one of the many thing Selected Ambient Works has going for it is just how timeless a record it is - it still sounds modern and feels like no one could imitate it today or even in the future, and also simultaneously feels dug up from another time.

It is funny how some music ages badly and some things get better with age... quirky left-jungle albums like Guy Called Geralds Black Secret Technology and 4heros Jacobs Optical Stairway both sounded great at the time but I think sound even better today...it felt futuristic then and feels just right now we're in the future. Albums very much of their time can get a bit stuck there.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

They do say in the intro that some of the albums are ones they loved at the time, and some are ones they've found since. I don't see anything wrong with that really - I certainly don't think being a certain age at a given time gives you a full view of everything going on.

FWIW Kiran Sande runs Blackest Ever Black, and is doing quite nicely re-releasing post-punk 80s obscurities, amongst other things.

 

[hipipol]

Lists of this sort are so very Nick Hornby Islington oneupmanship by giving an inflated position to people you've never heard of - and if you had you'd have forgotten in seconds so dire was the output - while leaving out real game changers.
Still no matter , its a useful insight into the mindset of indie focused North London style tossers at their most self congratulatory

 

[ska invita]

yeah i was looking for a quote from High Fideity for the OP but couldnt find anything pithy enough

anyhow, who's going to post a list then?

 

[killer b]

anyhow, who's going to post a list then?

i'm at home with kids tonight, so I'll have a crack at one. It won't include leftism or anything by the chemical brothers /pretentious

 

[killer b]

it's a list of the best albums of the 90s written by people who were still in school at the time, which I suppose is reasonably interesting as an alternative take on the decade, but it's unlikely to be particularly definitive.

who really cares about definitive though? especially with something so totally indefinable?

 

[Smangus]

Well here’s offering up some of my fav 80s album offering for comment, ridicule, etc
Ace of Spades – Motorhead
Levitation – Hawkwind
Whole of the Moon – The Waterboys
Signals –Rush
The Stone Rose- the Stone roses
Pornography/Head in the Door - The Cure
Reckoning –REM
Suzanne Vega – Suzanne Vega
Fegmania-Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptions
1999 – Prince
Bug –Dinosaur Jr
Last Scream of the Missing Neighbours – Jello Biafra and DOA

ETA Hounds of love - Kate Bush how could I forget!

 

[killer b]

Last Scream of the Missing Neighbours – Jello Biafra and DOA

yes.

 

[killer b]

I made a start, but it was making me think I was being a pretentious obscurantist so I gave up.

it did feature this, mind.