It sounds like that first song that just about every local band with an acoustic guitar ever wrote, and recorded with a cell phone at practice.
Slam! Music Reviews That PWN
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It sounds like that first song that just about every local band with an acoustic guitar ever wrote, and recorded with a cell phone at practice.
Neil Young - Harvest
Rolling Stone
MARCH 30, 1972
Harvest, a painfully long year-plus in the making (or, seemingly more aptly, assembling), finds Neil Young invoking most of the L.A. variety of superstardom’s weariest clichés in an attempt to obscure his inability to do a good imitation of his earlier self ... “The Needle And The Damage Done,” is glib, even cute, and displays little real commitment to its subject ... “Old Man’s” first line promises a lot more than the song ever delivers in terms of compassionate perception. “Heart of Gold’s” basic conceit would be laughed off the airwaves coming from another solo troubadour.
Rolling Stone
MARCH 30, 1972
Harvest, a painfully long year-plus in the making (or, seemingly more aptly, assembling), finds Neil Young invoking most of the L.A. variety of superstardom’s weariest clichés in an attempt to obscure his inability to do a good imitation of his earlier self ... “The Needle And The Damage Done,” is glib, even cute, and displays little real commitment to its subject ... “Old Man’s” first line promises a lot more than the song ever delivers in terms of compassionate perception. “Heart of Gold’s” basic conceit would be laughed off the airwaves coming from another solo troubadour.
I'm guessing the reviewer wisely killed himself after this. But probably not.Neil Young - Harvest
Rolling Stone
MARCH 30, 1972
Harvest, a painfully long year-plus in the making (or, seemingly more aptly, assembling), finds Neil Young invoking most of the L.A. variety of superstardom’s weariest clichés in an attempt to obscure his inability to do a good imitation of his earlier self ... “The Needle And The Damage Done,” is glib, even cute, and displays little real commitment to its subject ... “Old Man’s” first line promises a lot more than the song ever delivers in terms of compassionate perception. “Heart of Gold’s” basic conceit would be laughed off the airwaves coming from another solo troubadour.
Not a music review, but I don't think we have a book reviews thread?
Here's someone who said she'd kill herself if the band ends up successful. Wonder how that turned out...
Uriah Heep - Very 'Eavy Very 'Umble
Rolling Stone
1970
Rolling Stone‘s Melissa Mills began her review with the iconic words: “If this group makes it I’ll have to commit suicide. From the first note, you know you don’t want to hear any more.” Now, we may not know what happened to Melissa Mills, but we do know that 50 years later, URIAH HEEP is still actively producing top-notch albums
(1970) Uriah Heep – Very ‘Eavy, Very ‘Umble: Anniversary special
Critics can often be mistaken and their quotes, forever, will be remembered by fans alike, combined with thoughts like oh boy, they couldn’t be more wrong. For example, Soundi Magazine descri…
tuonelamagazine.com
A college kid, who worked at my dad's assembly shop with me one summer, said something similar about My Sharona going to #1.
Credence Clearwater Revival - Mardi Gras
Rolling Stone
MAY 26, 1976
Bassist Stu Cook’s three selections are bad enough to qualify as offensive. Ringo Starr may not have much of a voice, but when he sang a song on a Beatle album, it had its own special charm. Cook, on the other hand, offers us his humorless tunes and painful voice as if they are able to stand on their own, self-sufficient as interesting music. Coasting on the name of the group, he is now able to force onto a sure-selling album music that wouldn’t qualify him for a good local high school band.
www.rollingstone.com
Rolling Stone
MAY 26, 1976
Bassist Stu Cook’s three selections are bad enough to qualify as offensive. Ringo Starr may not have much of a voice, but when he sang a song on a Beatle album, it had its own special charm. Cook, on the other hand, offers us his humorless tunes and painful voice as if they are able to stand on their own, self-sufficient as interesting music. Coasting on the name of the group, he is now able to force onto a sure-selling album music that wouldn’t qualify him for a good local high school band.
Mardi Gras
In the future, Mardi Gras may be known as Fogerty's Revenge. After all the carping about his egotism, and after the published complaints from his co-workers about his hogging the show, he has …
www.rollingstone.com
Living In The Material World, George Harrison's fourth solo album, was number one for five weeks in June-July 1973. It included the hit single Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth. Robert Christgau said "Harrison sings as if he's doing sitar impressions." Huh?
Fleetwood Mac - Tusk
Creem
January 1980
WHITE ELEPHANT is more like it, heffalumping into the thick four-sided forest, stomping on moby grapes, swatting at the metaphysical graffiti carved into the tree trunks. Tusk isn't exactly a swingin' safari, and who is the walrus? Not Lindsey Buckingham, that's for sure. This character, who wrote all of two good songs on Rumours (and one on the LP before that), has composed a healthy 45% share of this double-disked set, and not a 'Go Your Own Way' in the portfolio ... Unfortunately, Buckingham doesn't sing all that well (the mix notes this, and camouflages as best it can), and most of his songs are Barthelme-dull sketches buried in thump and clangor.
Creem
January 1980
WHITE ELEPHANT is more like it, heffalumping into the thick four-sided forest, stomping on moby grapes, swatting at the metaphysical graffiti carved into the tree trunks. Tusk isn't exactly a swingin' safari, and who is the walrus? Not Lindsey Buckingham, that's for sure. This character, who wrote all of two good songs on Rumours (and one on the LP before that), has composed a healthy 45% share of this double-disked set, and not a 'Go Your Own Way' in the portfolio ... Unfortunately, Buckingham doesn't sing all that well (the mix notes this, and camouflages as best it can), and most of his songs are Barthelme-dull sketches buried in thump and clangor.
Actually, that's quite a bit milder than I expected. That album was a prime target for getting slammed. The extravagance of the live marching band on the title track alone is worth a slam.
Yeah the album probably has harder hits from other critics. I was focusing on how hard of a hit Lindsey took. The reviewer hit him so hard they bashed him retroactively ("I'll hit you so hard your whole family will feel it") on his work on the previous two (classic) albums! I like all three of his songs on Rumours and self-titled, but this reviewer won't even give him that!
Sonic Youth - NYC Ghosts & Flowers
Pitchfork
April 30, 2000
No, I have not forgotten to put the numbers into the rating spaces above. In over two years of writing for Pitchfork, I've waited for the one album that would warrant a 0.0 ... These 40+ year olds continue to operate under the perception that they matter ... Sonic Youth scrap together Yoko Ono, Glenn Branca, and Allen Ginsberg into major label product ... So, essentially: an idea that seemed right on paper and in initial, riotous action, but one that has since corroded into a hollow sham ... A 0.0 is monumental. I have to keep questioning this decision, but the evidence is there.
pitchfork.com
Pitchfork
April 30, 2000
No, I have not forgotten to put the numbers into the rating spaces above. In over two years of writing for Pitchfork, I've waited for the one album that would warrant a 0.0 ... These 40+ year olds continue to operate under the perception that they matter ... Sonic Youth scrap together Yoko Ono, Glenn Branca, and Allen Ginsberg into major label product ... So, essentially: an idea that seemed right on paper and in initial, riotous action, but one that has since corroded into a hollow sham ... A 0.0 is monumental. I have to keep questioning this decision, but the evidence is there.
Sonic Youth: NYC Ghosts & Flowers
No, I have not forgotten to put the numbers into the rating spaces above. In over two years of writing ...
"Cream is good at a number of things. Unfortunately, songwriting and recording are not among them. Wheels Of Fire begins with a Jack Bruce original, White Room, which is practically an exact duplication of Tales Of Brave Ulysses from their Disraeli Gears album, including the exact same lines for guitar, bass and drums. The lyrics are not much to speak of and it's very difficult to imagine why they would want to do this again, unless of course they had forgotten that they had done it before. The Sonny Bono-ish production job adds little." – Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone, July 20 1968
By the way, Wheels Of Fire became Cream's only number-one album and White Room reached #6 on the Hot 100 in November 1968.
By the way, Wheels Of Fire became Cream's only number-one album and White Room reached #6 on the Hot 100 in November 1968.
Bob Dylan - Self Portrait
Rolling Stone
1970
Contemporary reception was savage: Rolling Stone's review of the album famously opened with the line, "What is this shit?" It managed to make it to No. 4 in the U.S., and to No. 1 in the U.K., but popular opinion hasn't shifted much since Self Portrait's release. It says much that it's one of the few Dylan albums not represented on his 1985 career-spanning and influential box set Biograph.
In 1984, Dylan talked about how he felt before releasing the album:
There’d be crowds outside my house. And I said, “Well, fuck it. I wish these people would just forget about me. I wanna do something they can’t possibly like, they can’t relate to. They’ll see it, and they’ll listen, and they’ll say, ‘Well, let’s go on to the next person. He ain’t sayin’ it no more. He ain’t givin’ us what we want,’ you know? They’ll go on to somebody else,”
Rolling Stone
1970
Contemporary reception was savage: Rolling Stone's review of the album famously opened with the line, "What is this shit?" It managed to make it to No. 4 in the U.S., and to No. 1 in the U.K., but popular opinion hasn't shifted much since Self Portrait's release. It says much that it's one of the few Dylan albums not represented on his 1985 career-spanning and influential box set Biograph.
In 1984, Dylan talked about how he felt before releasing the album:
There’d be crowds outside my house. And I said, “Well, fuck it. I wish these people would just forget about me. I wanna do something they can’t possibly like, they can’t relate to. They’ll see it, and they’ll listen, and they’ll say, ‘Well, let’s go on to the next person. He ain’t sayin’ it no more. He ain’t givin’ us what we want,’ you know? They’ll go on to somebody else,”
Alphabeat - The Beat Is
Drowned In Sound
2010
So here we are, two years on, and the Danes are back to reclaim their place in the hearts of those guilty pleasures fans, right? Well, actually no. In fact, not at all. What they’ve done instead is return with an absolute abomination of a record ... The tracks here, from opener ‘The Spell’ onwards, would feel more at home blaring from some obscure music channel in the kebab shop you stagger from having had one too many ... Alphabeat could’ve found themselves a comfortable niche as the pop band indie fans could like. Instead, they’ve regressed to something unrecognisably awful.
Drowned In Sound
2010
So here we are, two years on, and the Danes are back to reclaim their place in the hearts of those guilty pleasures fans, right? Well, actually no. In fact, not at all. What they’ve done instead is return with an absolute abomination of a record ... The tracks here, from opener ‘The Spell’ onwards, would feel more at home blaring from some obscure music channel in the kebab shop you stagger from having had one too many ... Alphabeat could’ve found themselves a comfortable niche as the pop band indie fans could like. Instead, they’ve regressed to something unrecognisably awful.
Greg Lake - eponymous
Rob Patterson (Rolling Stone Record Guide)
1981
Former bassist for King Crimson and Emerson Lake and Palmer, Greg Lake cranks up his grandiose pipes and overloaded bass to sludge through another heaping pile of musical bullshit. Clarence Clemons must have been short on cash the week he agreed to play on this record.
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Nick Tosches (Rolling Stone)
1970
Nick Tosches didn't even bother to get the lead singer’s name right: “Although you may not enjoy a lead singer (Kip Treavor) who sounds like Keith Relf whining about the tampons stuck up his nostrils, you owe it to yourself as a person concerned with contemporary society or merely with the artistic underground of the youth movement in general to be aware of the ‘heavy’ sounds of bubble-gum Satanism. And if you see them live sometimes they undress a hippie girl.”