TDDS - 2020 Shelter-in-Place on a Desert Island Music Draft - BONUS 5

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#31
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"You Don't Mess Around with Jim" - Jim Croce - 1972

I know most of my list will be safe but this first album is an absolute must-have for me.

Jim Croce was part of the folk rock genre that was a nice relief from the hard rock I listened to most of the time back in the early 70s. His voice spoke to me. He was real, he was genuine, but like many musicians of that time, he was taken from us much too soon. I bought this album the same day it came out ... from good old Tower Records on Watt Avenue.

I love the title track, but for me the best song on the album is "Time in a Bottle." Every time I hear this song, I flash back to a warm summer day spent with some dear friends on the beach at Granite Bay. The song came on the radio and corny as it sounds we all stopped and sang along. Those were good times and a dear memory - of those still living and those who have passed on.


Track list:
1. "You Don't Mess Around with Jim"
2. "Tomorrow's Gonna Be a Brighter Day"
3. "New York's Not My Home"
4. "Hard Time Losin' Man"
5. "Photographs and Memories"
6. "Walkin' Back to Georgia"
7. "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)"
8. "Time in a Bottle"
9. "Rapid Roy (The Stock Car Boy)"
10. "Box #10"
11. "A Long Time Ago"
12. "Hey Tomorrow"

PM to Padrino.
 
#35
View attachment 9636

"You Don't Mess Around with Jim" - Jim Croce - 1972

I know most of my list will be safe but this first album is an absolute must-have for me.

Jim Croce was part of the folk rock genre that was a nice relief from the hard rock I listened to most of the time back in the early 70s. His voice spoke to me. He was real, he was genuine, but like many musicians of that time, he was taken from us much too soon. I bought this album the same day it came out ... from good old Tower Records on Watt Avenue.

I love the title track, but for me the best song on the album is "Time in a Bottle." Every time I hear this song, I flash back to a warm summer day spent with some dear friends on the beach at Granite Bay. The song came on the radio and corny as it sounds we all stopped and sang along. Those were good times and a dear memory - of those still living and those who have passed on.


Track list:
1. "You Don't Mess Around with Jim"
2. "Tomorrow's Gonna Be a Brighter Day"
3. "New York's Not My Home"
4. "Hard Time Losin' Man"
5. "Photographs and Memories"
6. "Walkin' Back to Georgia"
7. "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)"
8. "Time in a Bottle"
9. "Rapid Roy (The Stock Car Boy)"
10. "Box #10"
11. "A Long Time Ago"
12. "Hey Tomorrow"

PM to Padrino.

I was just listening to one of his CDs a couple of days ago. Did not spend a lot of time at home to watch much news back then and I was shocked when I found out he had died. Another one who left us to soon.
 

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#36
I was just listening to one of his CDs a couple of days ago. Did not spend a lot of time at home to watch much news back then and I was shocked when I found out he had died. Another one who left us to soon.
I know. You mentioned it and I almost freaked out. I had known from when I started this draft that I'd want that song and I was really worried you might steal it. ;)
 
#37
I
I know. You mentioned it and I almost freaked out. I had known from when I started this draft that I'd want that song and I was really worried you might steal it. ;)
LOL.
I would never of done that but when I was waiting for your first choice it made me wonder when you were going to pick that album.
 

hrdboild

Hall of Famer
#40
Dry your eyes. You dodged yourself an ice pick.
Well when you put it that way, this is the better alternative! :)

It's also not the worst thing in the world that others recognize the timeless brilliance that is OK Computer, granting me room to squeeze in another album I otherwise wouldn't have been able to fit in my 20 picks. I suppose there's nothing stopping me from posting my own OK Computer story here anyway...

Unlike you, when this album first came out I didn't get it. To my relatively inexperienced ears this bizarre mix of serrated electric guitars, loping uncertain basslines and sighing falsetto sounded sloppy and disorganized. My brain just could not process it all. Karma Police was cool but Paranoid Android is like 6 songs in one. And what's with these guitar parts that are more likely to devolve into discordant noise than hooky riffs? Kicking screaming Gucci little what now?

So I wrote it off and didn't give it another thought for 5 years. It clicked for me at some point in early 2003 though and when it did I listened to nothing else for months, just OK Computer on an endless loop. Then I downloaded every Radiohead B-Side I could find and made two albums of 18 tracks each and got lost in those for the rest of the year. What sounded sloppy and disorganized to me at first listen gradually unfolded into an interwoven tapestry of paranoid nightmare imagery and impossibly intricate counter-melodies all folded into each other like fractals giving way to fractals, an endless recursion of chilling beauty gazing endlessly into it's own reflection. It's impossible to overstate how monumental these arrangements are. Even after I've listened to this album hundreds of times it still sounds to me like it came from outer space. How could mere human beings come up with this stuff?

In the intervening 20+ years whole albums have aped the glistening leads of Subterranean Homesick Alien and that's just one track of 12 here! The soaring vocal melodies of Let Down are worthy of a full choral treatment. Then there's the demented surf rock guitar of Electioneering and the breakdown of Climbing Up the Walls which sounds like the band swinging a giant wrecking ball through the entire first half of the album and then collapsing on the wreckage. And then from the hollowed out shell of complete despair we get that slight hint of defiance in Thom Yorke's voice while he calmly delivers a laundry list of his petty grievances and personal failures in No Surprises. Wow! I have to take a deep breath just thinking about it. I don't know if it's the best album of all time because how can you begin to quantify something like that, but it damn sure belongs in the conversation!
 
#42
El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead (2007):



01 Tasmanian Pain Coaster (feat. Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala)
02 Smithereens (Stop Cryin')
03 Up All Night
04 EMG
05 Drive
06 Dear Sirs
07 Run the Numbers (feat. Aesop Rock)
08 Habeas Corpses (Draconian Love) [feat. Cage]
09 The Overly Dramatic Truth
10 Flyentology (feat. Trent Reznor)
11 No Kings
12 The League of Extraordinary Nobodies
13 Poisenville Kids No Wins / Reprise (This Must Be Our Time) [feat. Chan Marshall]

Genre(s): Hip hop, noise

These days, El-P (born Jaime Meline) is best known as one-half of rap duo Run the Jewels. But before he and Killer Mike became an odd couple success story as middle-aged veterans rising up together from the hip hop underground, El-P was releasing solo records on Definitive Jux, a label he built himself as a means of spotlighting idiosyncratic rap music.

The second of these solo affairs came out in 2007. It was less heralded than its predecessor, 2002's Fantastic Damage, and less accessible than its follow-up, 2012's Cancer 4 Cure. But I encountered I'll Sleep When You're Dead in college, and it absolutely set my hair on fire. It's a massive, squelching airhorn of an album. It sounds like the future while remaining firmly tethered to the noisy boom bap of rap music's golden age, as if you were listening to EPMD and Public Enemy through a blown out speaker as it crashed through the windows of one of Blade Runner's neon-soaked high-rises.

Both lyrically and sonically, ISWYD is emblematic of a certain kind of post-9/11, Bush-era anxiety, when fears of a growing police state were only dwarfed by the notion that the inmates might just be running the asylum (feelings that have only been amplified in our terrifying present). It is equal parts pulsating and paranoid, an example of how a political moment can be so uniquely reflected and refracted in the music of its time.

It's now 2020, but this album is no less potent in its dystopic rendering of life and death in Poisenville, a fictional stand-in for New York City that El uses as a backdrop to craft his bombed-out sci-fi narratives of urban decay. NY is currently being ravaged by COVID-19, and if it wasn't so damningly real, one could mistake the pandemic for the content of an El-P track. This is not easy listening, in other words, but it remains marvelously relevant.

El-P is reissuing the entirety of his solo output this year on Fat Possum Records, much to my delight. I just copped a limited release of ISWYD on vinyl, and it is now one of the most prized records in my collection, an underappreciated rap masterpiece.
 
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#43
Trout Mask Replica - Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band (1969)

R-2665699-1295664420.jpeg.jpg


There were little bits of the avantgarde world that I came across as a child, but it wasn't until the internet developed that I was really able to seek out sounds that spoke to me. Trout Mask Replica was one of the first albums I came across that started to open new doors leading to all kinds of forking hallways filled with amazing music. But the record didn't just inspire me. It is also one of my very favorites. I enjoy the band's unique and carefully crafted sound as much as any other and I often find myself listening to several of the band's albums in one sitting. But Trout Mask Replica is the best of the bunch.

Tracklist

01 - Frownland
02 - The Dust Blows Forward 'n the Dust Blows Back
03 - Dachau Blues
04 - Ella Guru
05 - Hair Pie: Bake 1
06 - Moonlight on Vermont
07 - Pachuco Cadaver
08 - Bill's Corpse
09 - Sweet Sweet Bulbs
10 - Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish
11 - China Pig
12 - My Human Gets Me Blues
13 - Dali's Car
14 - Hair Pie: Bake 2
15 - Pena
16 - Well
17 - When Big Joan Sets Up
18 - Fallin' Ditch
19 - Sugar 'n Spikes
20 - Ant Man Bee
21 - Orange Claw Hammer
22 - Wild Life
23 - She's Too Much for My Mirror
24 - Hobo Chang Ba
25 - The Blimp
26 - Steal Softly Thru Snow
27 - Old Fart at Play
28 - Veteran's Day Poppy

 
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Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
#44
OK, we've got two new drafters taking over the #10 (pdxKingsFan) and #11 (Spike) spots. Currently #9 is up (hrdboild), so please @hrdboild send a PM to @pdxKingsFan when you pick. For now, @Spike can put up a post indicating the Joker is up (meaning first-come, first-served to anybody not already in the draft) after making a pick.
 
#46
Hey this is stupid but since I've been semi-AWOL (lord, working from home is more work than working at work... I can never leave the office!) but I don't see a master list anywhere. Is someone doing that so I can quickly see what has/hasn't been selected?
 
#47
I don't see a master list anywhere. Is someone doing that so I can quickly see what has/hasn't been selected?

Untitled (Led Zeppelin IV) - Led Zeppelin

Full Moon Fever - Tom Petty

Good Kid, m.A.A.d. city - Kendrick Lamar

Hysteria - Def Leppard

OK Computer - Radiohead

You Don’t Mess Around With Jim - Jim Croce

I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead - El-P

Trout Mask Replica - Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
#48
Hey this is stupid but since I've been semi-AWOL (lord, working from home is more work than working at work... I can never leave the office!) but I don't see a master list anywhere. Is someone doing that so I can quickly see what has/hasn't been selected?
Untitled (Led Zeppelin IV) - Led Zeppelin

Full Moon Fever - Tom Petty

Good Kid, m.A.A.d. city - Kendrick Lamar

Hysteria - Def Leppard

OK Computer - Radiohead

You Don’t Mess Around With Jim - Jim Croce

I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead - El-P

Trout Mask Replica - Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
Yeah, we dropped the ball and didn't create a couple of posts upthread to hold the results. I think I'm going to create a new thread just for results, and sticky it at the top of the lounge. It's not in the same thread, but at this point the board software doesn't seem to give us a better option.

Here is the results thread (also linked above in logical places):
Results Thread
 
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hrdboild

Hall of Famer
#49
Nas - Illmatic (1994)


(https://www.allmusic.com/album/illmatic-mw0000623739)

01. The Genesis
02. N.Y. State of Mind
03. Life's A B****
04. The World is Yours
05. Halftime
06. Memory Lane (Sittin' in da Park)
07. One Love
08. One Time 4 Your Mind
09. Represent
10. It Ain't Hard to Tell
Having seen how these drafts go now, I'm re-prioritizing my list based on which albums I would be most upset about if someone sniped them from me and to my surprise that has pushed Nasir Jones' extraordinary debut album all the way up to #1. Hip-Hop was a complete mystery to me until I moved to LA for college in 2001. Although I grew up listening to an eclectic mix of everything (R&B, Motown, and whatever my parents had on) by the time I got to High School I was pretty firmly in the Rock camp and for those of us who grew up in the 80s/90s, that was a time when it still felt like you had to choose. Or maybe that's just High School...

In any case, in the early 2000s I had a lot of friends who got me up to speed on the world of Hip-Hop and when I eventually stumbled across this album it was like my ears were opened for the first time. This collision of jazz/funk/breakbeats and flawless rhymes that roll off the tongue one after another felt like a long lost friend I'd forgotten about -- new and exciting and yet instantly familiar as if I've always known these songs somehow. I've come to realize that those bolt of lightning moments are few and far between.

So what can I say about Nas? If you like wordplay you have to peep this album! This is one of the albums that the lyric deconstruction website Rap Genius was invented for. The words on the page are less than half the story though because it's the delivery that makes them truly special. I put this album on occasionally just to marvel at how flawlessly he matches his syllables to the beat. I've never been to New York City nor did I grow up in an impoverished area, but I have a strong belief in the universality of human experience and the importance of exposing yourself to as many different points of view as possible. As such, storytellers who paint pictures with their words so vividly that you feel as if you're actually seeing the world through their eyes transcend art to me. It's vital to our continued survival that we do everything we can to understand and appreciate each other.

DISCLAIMER: I tried to respect the family friendly nature of the board but every single track on the album has at least one swear word on it (hence the parental advisory). On this track at least they're flavoring words that pass by quickly and aren't used in a mean-spirited fashion but I felt a disclaimer was warranted before I post a link.



PS - Sorry about the delay. A handful of us are running the entire USC Graduate Engineering program from home right now. :oops:
 
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Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
#50
Eh, I guess I'll go for the final "joker" spot, if it's still available... even though a couple of you already stole my thunder, by imposing the @GoGoGadget rule on yourselves.

FYI, I stop checking the board at 12:00 AM ET sharp, every night. Gotta get my beauty rest.
 
#52
Guns N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction



I think there was one album back the first time we did this that I missed and this was it. I probably don't have to worry about anyone picking over me the rest of the draft. Maybe Spike. Spike would have probably picked this.

Side one
1."Welcome to the Jungle"
2."It's So Easy"
3."Nightrain"
4."Out ta Get Me"
5."Mr. Brownstone"
6."Paradise City"

Side two
7."My Michelle"
8."Think About You"
9."Sweet Child o' Mine"
10."You're Crazy"
11."Anything Goes"
12."Rocket Queen"

Best material they ever put out. First time I heard Welcome to the Jungle on late night Metal Shop on 93 rock (may have still been kpop then?) I was like daaaaaaamn. Bought multiple copies of the Robert Williams cover original import vinyl but my brother jacked them. That is the version on my island.

Anyways, this was perhaps my first experience of liking a band nobody liked and having them blow up a year or so later and me pitching a fit. But I did probably buy my first Les Paul thanks to Slash and you're sure as $$$$ that I played Sweet Child on it all day. Probably first thing I did when I got that guitar set up and playable again too years later.

I actually find Sweet Child and Paradise City to be kind of tedious, for me the standouts beside the opener are Nightrain, Brownstone, and My Michelle followed by Think About You, those two back to back might take my favorite spot but Nightrain is pretty danged close.

Surprisingly one of the bands I never saw live. They no-showed their gig at Cal Expo with one of my favorite bands during Sweet Child's peak. If Izzy re-joined I think I'd pay whatever it takes to see them but otherwise I think it's a pass...
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
#53
Eh, I guess I'll go for the final "joker" spot, if it's still available... even though a couple of you already stole my thunder, by imposing the @GoGoGadget rule on yourselves.

FYI, I stop checking the board at 12:00 AM ET sharp, every night. Gotta get my beauty rest.
Slim gets the final draft slot...Spike, you should PM Slim when you pick rather than open it up for the crowd...
 

hrdboild

Hall of Famer
#54
El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead (2007):



01 Tasmanian Pain Coaster (feat. Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala)
02 Smithereens (Stop Cryin')
03 Up All Night
04 EMG
05 Drive
06 Dear Sirs
07 Run the Numbers (feat. Aesop Rock)
08 Habeas Corpses (Draconian Love) [feat. Cage]
09 The Overly Dramatic Truth
10 Flyentology (feat. Trent Reznor)
11 No Kings
12 The League of Extraordinary Nobodies
13 Poisenville Kids No Wins / Reprise (This Must Be Our Time) [feat. Chan Marshall]

Genre(s): Hip hop, noise

These days, El-P (born Jaime Meline) is best known as one-half of rap duo Run the Jewels. But before he and Killer Mike became an odd couple success story as middle-aged veterans rising up together from the hip hop underground, El-P was releasing solo records on Definitive Jux, a label he built himself as a means of spotlighting idiosyncratic rap music.

The second of these solo affairs came out in 2007. It was less heralded than its predecessor, 2002's Fantastic Damage, and less accessible than its follow-up, 2012's Cancer 4 Cure. But I encountered I'll Sleep When You're Dead in college, and it absolutely set my hair on fire. It's a massive, squelching airhorn of an album. It sounds like the future while remaining firmly tethered to the noisy boom bap of rap music's golden age, as if you were listening to EPMD and Public Enemy through a blown out speaker as it crashed through the windows of one of Blade Runner's neon-soaked high-rises.

Both lyrically and sonically, ISWYD is emblematic of a certain kind of post-9/11, Bush-era anxiety, when fears of a growing police state were only dwarfed by the notion that the inmates might just be running the asylum (feelings that have only been amplified in our terrifying present). It is equal parts pulsating and paranoid, an example of how a political moment can be so uniquely reflected and refracted in the music of its time.

It's now 2020, but this album is no less potent in its dystopic rendering of life and death in Poisenville, a fictional stand-in for New York City that El uses as a backdrop to craft his bombed-out sci-fi narratives of urban decay. NY is currently being ravaged by COVID-19, and if it wasn't so damningly real, one could mistake the pandemic for the content of an El-P track. This is not easy listening, in other words, but it remains marvelously relevant.

El-P is reissuing the entirety of his solo output this year on Fat Possum Records, much to my delight. I just copped a limited release of ISWYD on vinyl, and it is now one of the most prized records in my collection, an underappreciated rap masterpiece.
Wow, I've really got to dig into this! I know El-P from Run the Jewels but have yet to dig into his back catalog. The guest spots alone tell me this is well worth my time. Track 1 is already blowing my mind. :)
 
#55
I am a late to the party person, re: LZ, I am honestly not the biggest Stairway or Zep fan (my best memories are awkwardly slow dancing to it in 7th/8th grade). I think Rock and Roll is my fave tune of theirs and that's on the same record. There's a few others. But I think that crashing riff is what does it for me. Whatever it is though, they were the one band more than any that everyone told me "you should like this because you like that, that, that and that" but just never really quite got there.
 
#56
Guns N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction



I think there was one album back the first time we did this that I missed and this was it. I probably don't have to worry about anyone picking over me the rest of the draft. Maybe Spike. Spike would have probably picked this.

Side one
1."Welcome to the Jungle"
2."It's So Easy"
3."Nightrain"
4."Out ta Get Me"
5."Mr. Brownstone"
6."Paradise City"

Side two
7."My Michelle"
8."Think About You"
9."Sweet Child o' Mine"
10."You're Crazy"
11."Anything Goes"
12."Rocket Queen"

Best material they ever put out. First time I heard Welcome to the Jungle on late night Metal Shop on 93 rock (may have still been kpop then?) I was like daaaaaaamn. Bought multiple copies of the Robert Williams cover original import vinyl but my brother jacked them. That is the version on my island.

Anyways, this was perhaps my first experience of liking a band nobody liked and having them blow up a year or so later and me pitching a fit. But I did probably buy my first Les Paul thanks to Slash and you're sure as $$$$ that I played Sweet Child on it all day. Probably first thing I did when I got that guitar set up and playable again too years later.

I actually find Sweet Child and Paradise City to be kind of tedious, for me the standouts beside the opener are Nightrain, Brownstone, and My Michelle followed by Think About You, those two back to back might take my favorite spot but Nightrain is pretty danged close.

Surprisingly one of the bands I never saw live. They no-showed their gig at Cal Expo with one of my favorite bands during Sweet Child's peak. If Izzy re-joined I think I'd pay whatever it takes to see them but otherwise I think it's a pass...

Guns N’ Roses was one of my late wife’s favorite bands. I was at the arco arena concert the night their bass player was hit in the head with that bottle. The music was fine but the long wait for them to come onto the stage to only have to listen to them bash another band wasn’t going well with the crowd on the floor.

Can’t remember which was my wifes favorite song but towards the end after it was performed we decided to duck out and beat the crowd. Had just started the truck when people started coming out and we thought that was good timing. On the drive home we heard what had happened.
 
#57
I'm not ok with pdx picking right before me. IIRC, there's overlap on our musical tastes.

Anyway, thinking about some of the greatest rock albums from start to finish, I feel like there are a few that might slide, but I have to take this one now:

I identified with this album more than others that came out during this era. It lays in right from the start and doesn't really let up.

Soundgarden: Superunknown

220px-Superunknown.jpg

Chris Cornell had one of the greatest voices in rock. Their sound simply came together for an epic 70 minute ride, and it's an album I still listen to from start to finish.

Track List:

1. "Let Me Drown"
2. "My Wave"
3. "Fell on Black Days"
4. "Mailman"
5. "Superunknown"
6. "Head Down"
7. "Black Hole Sun"
8. "Spoonman"
9. "Limo Wreck"
10. "The Day I Tried to Live"
11. "Kickstand"
12. "Fresh Tendrils"
13. "4th of July"
14. "Half"
15. "Like Suicide"
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
#59
So, let's see... this should be interesting: I haven't really listened to anything new in the last seven years, except by accident. Not only that, but I have learned some things about some artists that I didn't know seven years ago (or, in some cases, forced to accept things I had been trying to ignore and/or deny) which has impacted my ability to consume their art. With all that as the backdrop for me trying to do this, while also imposing the G³ rule on myself, I guess I'm going to kick things off with my ( :: checks notes :: ) third-favorite Stevie Wonder album:





Stevie Wonder - Hotter Than July (1980)


So, I was, like, five years old, when this album was released, and it's one of a handful of Stevie Wonder albums that my parents didn't own. As a result, I didn't hear this album in its entirety until after I'd become an adult, and I don't have any of the sort of emotional attachment that I have to some of his earlier work (or even some of his later work). I appreciate this album purely as a sonic experience, with my favorite track being one that was not released as a single, "All I Do," a song that Stevie originally wrote for Tammi Terrell. The album also has historical significance, thanks to the single "Happy Birthday," which Wonder wrote as part of a campaign to make Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a national holiday.

According to Doctor Internet, Hotter Than July was Stevie's most successful album in the UK, peaking at Number Two on the UK charts; it peaked at Number Three in the US

Top Singles:
  1. Master Blaster (Jammin') [Billboard Hot Soul #1, Billboard Pop #5]
  2. I Ain't Gonna Stand For It [BHS #4, BP #11]
  3. Lately [BHS #29, BP #64]


Source: Wikipedia