Albums The Critics Got Wrong?

Blacksword wrote: I think Roger Waters said Animals got fairly bad reviews, one reviewer calling it 'warmed over heavy metal' Keith Emerson once said that ELP were referred to as a heavy metal band by one music hack. I think music journalists are generally to be ignored.

I wouldn't call "Animals" Heavy Metal, but in my opinion it certainly is a bad album

Cristi wrote: HolyMoly wrote: iluvmarillion wrote: Metalmarsh89 wrote: LA Woman by the Doors is a good album, but there's a popular ratings site out there (I forget which one) that has it rated as the best album on the website. I find that surprising and think it's inaccurate. "Strange Days" is easily the best album The Doors made. "Waiting For The Sun" would have surpassed it had not the suits in studio interfered with it and wrecked it. The Doors were never the same band afterwards. LA Woman contains a good collection of songs but no thought went into working the songs into a cohesive whole. Just wondering, how did the suits interfere with and wreck Waiting for the Sun?  What would the un-interfered-with album have looked like? the band created the epic Celebration of the Lizard and the only bit of that song that got on the album was Not to Touch the Earth. Celebration... was played live though and it was a live favorite for a while.

I think it's about two or three years since Steve (HolyMoly) used this site

HolyMoly wrote: iluvmarillion wrote: Metalmarsh89 wrote: LA Woman by the Doors is a good album, but there's a popular ratings site out there (I forget which one) that has it rated as the best album on the website. I find that surprising and think it's inaccurate. "Strange Days" is easily the best album The Doors made. "Waiting For The Sun" would have surpassed it had not the suits in studio interfered with it and wrecked it. The Doors were never the same band afterwards. LA Woman contains a good collection of songs but no thought went into working the songs into a cohesive whole. Just wondering, how did the suits interfere with and wreck Waiting for the Sun?  What would the un-interfered-with album have looked like?

Melody Maker wasn't readily available in small town Davis, California, so I turned to Rolling Stone, the biggest mag at the time, and on newsstands. TFTO, of course, had many detractors, including RS (who liked "Leaves of Green", though). Relayer was even more savaged, although they faintly praised "To Be Over".

In fairness, they did love The Yes Album, Close To The Edge, and Going For The One, and liked Fragile and Yessongs. 90125 got a positive, though less effusive, review. They even found things to like in Talk, the last review they wrote. They were ho-hum about Yesterdays.

Besides the above, they also hated Tormato, Yesshows, ABWH, and Union. They didn't review Time And A Word or Drama.

In principle I'd love to. It's just a matter of finding the time to translate it.
Any requests?

There was a German version of the music magazine Sounds starting in the 60's. Luckily I was able to get hold of an almost 1600 page long book containing all reviews published there from 1966 to 1977 (I actually bought it in 1978), and some of those reviews are hilarious.

A lot of albums considered classics now were trashed: The Beatles' White Album, Led Zep's Physical Graffiti, Floyd's Animals; the list goes on and on. Others received a luke warm reception, to put it kindly.

Reading these reviews I think it's a small wonder that any of the great bands even survived the middle '70s. Thank goodness the fans saw things differently.

Bitterblogger wrote: tszirmay wrote: I am a lucky man (to paraphrase the ELP song) as I hate both Rolling Stone and the Rolling Stones for the same reasons= elitist, dysfunctional, rude, primitive and petit bourgeois . Neither know how to spell the word CLASS, mainly because they are school-less illiterate musician wannabees. Calling prog bands Jethro Dull, Muddy Blues, King of Crime and Unfocused was perhaps amusing to their mignons but showed how facile and imbecile they all were. But they are good at marketing and business which says little about the quality of these 'less than venerable' professions as a whole. Now Lester Bangs is the apotheosis of rock journalist idiocy and pretty much everything he has written (or had stenographed) was garbage mainly because that was his favorite style of music (garage=garbage?) . Rant over, breathe ! You must not be familiar with Bangs' review of the first Yes album. He liked Banks' playing and their cover of "I See You".

tszirmay wrote: I am a lucky man (to paraphrase the ELP song) as I hate both Rolling Stone and the Rolling Stones for the same reasons= elitist, dysfunctional, rude, primitive and petit bourgeois . Neither know how to spell the word CLASS, mainly because they are school-less illiterate musician wannabees. Calling prog bands Jethro Dull, Muddy Blues, King of Crime and Unfocused was perhaps amusing to their mignons but showed how facile and imbecile they all were. But they are good at marketing and business which says little about the quality of these 'less than venerable' professions as a whole. Now Lester Bangs is the apotheosis of rock journalist idiocy and pretty much everything he has written (or had stenographed) was garbage mainly because that was his favorite style of music (garage=garbage?) . Rant over, breathe !

You must not be familiar with Bangs' review of the first Yes album. He liked Banks' playing and their cover of "I See You".

I am a lucky man (to paraphrase the ELP song) as I hate both Rolling Stone and the Rolling Stones for the same reasons= elitist, dysfunctional, rude, primitive and petit bourgeois . Neither know how to spell the word CLASS, mainly because they are school-less illiterate musician wannabees. Calling prog bands Jethro Dull, Muddy Blues, King of Crime and Unfocused was perhaps amusing to their mignons but showed how facile and imbecile they all were. But they are good at marketing and business which says little about the quality of these 'less than venerable' professions as a whole. Now Lester Bangs is the apotheosis of rock journalist idiocy and pretty much everything he has written (or had stenographed) was garbage mainly because that was his favorite style of music (garage=garbage?) . Rant over, breathe !

Edited by tszirmay - January 28 2014 at 15:31

If I remember rightly someone from Melody Maker (possibly Chris Welch) went to interview Yes whilst they were recording "Tormato" and confidently told us that "Arriving UFO" was the greatest thing Yes had ever done and made all sorts of claims about how great the album was.