FREEFORM 1990's ALTERNATIVE ALBUM POLL - THE RECKONING (TOP TEN COUNTING DOWN NOW)

Kitchen Person, Klata, I and Jona are pretty much 100% responsible for all of this (Mansun/Suede/Earl Brutus art-Brit-glam fuckathon), and we're not apologising

I did indeed vote for all three of those bands plus the ultimate art-brit-glam indie album that I still hope might be in with a chance.

When talking about how good suede were it's worth remembering that along with the first two albums which I'd rate as classics their B-sides were incredible. That first CD of Sci-Fi Lullabies works as a great album and doesn't have one bad track. Plus Stay Together is a pretty great single.

I liked Radiator a decent amount but Guerilla was a big disappointment and I got off their bus then. They were great on the Guerilla tour though (with the OTC and Elf Power opening...guess that makes it 1999).

Ice Hockey Hair EP is great, yes.

You voted for the wrong late-90's Hood album btw ;_; (not that I don't absolutely LOVE TCODAS as well)
Fuck. I really couldn't decide which to pick, and didn't get around to listening to them to confirm the choice. I was also certain I'd put the first 6x7 album down but I clearly didn't. I've ruined your poll.

lol

We could have gotten even MORE of my favourite albums into the top 100! 6x7 only got REALLY good with their second album, IMO, and I didn't vote for the first one, although it's got quite a few stellar, stellar moments.

TCODAS is great, sure, but for me RH,FV is, like, some astounding pinnacle of British post-folk-whatever indie pastoralism. One of the most amazing, evocative and mysterious records I own.

Anyone who got off the bus at Guerrilla, please listen to Mwng. It'll probably get you back on, sharpish like.

*puts on Sci-Fi Lullabies*

*realises he needs to eat something and determines to listen to Sci-Fi Lullabies afterwards; also maybe supply numbers 30-21*

I think I've heard all their albums post-Guerrilla but aside from a few songs here and there, nothing ever really grabbed me again. I bet they have a very solid greatest hits album in them, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbook:_The_Singles,_Vol._1 is very good.

Despite all the 'oh wow, it's definitely a return to form', I haven't felt the need to listen to Dark Days/Light Years at all in the last 9months or so, although I recently played Hey Venus one morning as I remembered it was a really short album, and it was better than I remembered.

Anyway onwards.

I really liked Ysbeidiau Heulog but someone told me Mwng was nothing like it and was a bit dull and apparently I took their word for it cz I've never heard the rest

There's supposedly a 16-minute Asphalt World out there but it's never leaked so far as I know - would love to hear it

I saw Suede's last gig with Bernard & bumped into him wandering around town on his own beforehand - I do wonder what the other three were up to at the time

though I think there's a Datblygu cover, that gets them some points from me (xpost)

That would Y Teimlad. I had a short period in the '90s, after visiting a friend in Aberystwyth, where I listened to nothing other than Datblygu for a bit. Very rewarding it was too. Never got into SFA in the same way.

SFA's version of Y Teimlad is INCREDIBLE, probably the best track on the album. It's all oh so very far from boring.

God, I'd forgotten how good 'To The Birds' is...

OK NOW I POST REST OF POLL K

I like Guerilla.

God, I'd forgotten how good 'To The Birds' is...

OK NOW I POST REST OF POLL K

― Mansun was where I fucked up (acoleuthic), Wednesday, 5 May 2010 14:24 (8 minutes ago)

Just wait till you get to Killing of a Flash Boy, probably may favourite song they ever did.

HE'S DEAD IS AMAZING OH SHIT

I've heard this before but Christ that one hits you square in the face, *fuck*

Let's spend the day talking about Suede instead of doing the poll :)

30 Mobb Deep - The Infamous (1995)
71 points
5 votes
0 first-place votes
Greatest contributors: M4tt H3lg3s0n, The Reverend

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MDNRIXiOuOE/SP5fXZ_QyXI/AAAAAAAAA3Q/O-SfI_ujcnM/s400/00-Mobb_Deep-The_Infamous-Retail-1995-Recycled_INT.jpg

Mobb Deep at their peak were simply incredible, and almost every rhyme and beat on The Infamous was a classic. The abrupt, murmured style with those cold blooded lines, it's scary. That's what made the Tupac diss Drop A Gem On Em so intense- rather than shouting him down, you get the clipped brevity of "I got the whole NY state, aiming at your face".

It's a hip hop album in which fear can turn to total all out aggression in a matter of seconds (or a matter of one line). As Artiste said above, you get lines like "Heart pumps foul blood through my arteries, and I can't turn it back it's a part of me" and 10 seconds latter they're lashing out again with "Fuck the whole world kid, my loot comes first". If those rhymes reflected their own realities, then these guys were at breaking point when they made it. It's that intense.

― Derek Walmsley, Monday, 30 August 2004 16:25 (5 years ago)

listening to 'the infamous' last night, it is just so relentless, it transports you, up there with '36 chambers' in terms of evocative sonics, for me. 'eye for an eye' with nas & raekwon, what a classic, it drills into your skull. the drum sounds on that track - if i had to choose one sound in all hip hop it might be that. actually all the drums on 'the infamous' have this quality, something archetypal, they sound like, y'know, capital-D Drums, i think this about 'NY state of mind' too, does anyone know what i'm getting at?

― pete b. (pete b.), Tuesday, 24 February 2004 11:36 (6 years ago)

Been playing The Infamous a lot lately - totally gives me the creeps, but in a good way.

― pithfork (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 17 February 2010 00:30 (2 months ago)

this is the best soundtrack for the morning after you played a free show at some shit record store in northeast minneapolis after working 12 hours and for your trouble some asshole hipster fuck steals your guitar player's guitar.

― Mewtwo-er if you want this encore, pikachu until your bulbasaur (M@tt He1ges0n)

daaamn, homie

― suggestbannn/the lorax below (The Reverend), Saturday, 3 October 2009 05:37 (7 months ago)

The guy who did this
Used to do ballet? Ballet
Must be fucking cool.

- a hoy hoy

ok nobody wants to talk about Mobb Deep? very well. Suede!

SUEEEEDE

AWESOME, FINALLY

damn this rock biased poll

once again kudos to Rev for throwing together a rap canon ballot at the last minute to help records like The Infamous out.

w/o Rev and Helg it would have been =99th

This poll is making me feel really good about the fairly small amount of rap I actually have in my collection. I own all the choices that have appeared so far.

smdh

HE'S DEAD IS AMAZING OH SHIT

I thought this was all the song title.

Infamous = awesome album, totally deserves this placement. My only hip hop vote went to Black Moon which I don't suppose will place.

No one ever talks about the beats on Dr. Octagon. It's Kut Masta Kurt right? That guy's awesome.

>>Lots of people do actually... me being one of them. And it was Dan The Automator.

LOL me. I was kind of conflating it w/Masters Of Illusion which has Keith, is full of awesome Kut Masta Kurt beats and is never talked about. And KMK does have beats on Octagon. I only started listening to both of these records in 2006 so the Dan The Automator aspect is not really lodged in my memory as an event.

Dr. Octagon MADE Dan the Automator's career - which, unfortunately, turned out to be a lot of garbage. Considering that Keith went on to make a number of great records with Kut Masta Kurt (who, yes, also DOES have beats on Dr. Octagon) like Sex Style, Black Elvis, Spankmaster, etc. it's always kinda annoyed me that Dan gets so much credit for Dr. Octagon. Dude is a hack, through and through.

Have not liked any other Dan The A records I have heard besides Octagon, actually. Too cute. Need to get those other Keith albums bcuz of how much I love Masters Of Illusion...

man i'm glad mobb made it.

i did a small list because i wanted to give my votes impact...

which meant cutting out a lot of great hip hop, i could have easily just done 10 rap records

I'm now realizing U.S. Maple is not going to place, and since I feel they are the greatest rock band I ever saw in my lifetime I kinda wish I would just done all 200 of my points to Talker

29 Jane's Addiction - Ritual De Lo Habitual (1990)
72 points
4 votes
1 first-place vote
Greatest contributor: Ismael Klata

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3065/2560112592_458ec597ec.jpg?v=0

'Ritual' is so far beyond 'Nothing's Shocking' it's ridiculous. I liked 'NS' but after 'Ritual' cam out I never saw the need to listen to it ever again. 'Ritual' on the other hand - drug decay, drug euphoria, sex decay, sex euphoria, voodoo, child abuse, childlike wonder, Dave Navarro in a should-have-retired-immediately-after performance (in which obviously something told him that the band had to justify their existence musically like yesterday, and did it), shrimps, deserted beachfront hotels, urinalysis, Ian Dury, and lasty but not least, kleptomania! The only thing better than "Three Days" is the fact that "Been Caught Stealing" comes before it and "Then She Did" comes after! One of my desert island picks.

― dave q, Monday, 1 July 2002 01:00 (7 years ago)

the second half of _Ritual..._ is brilliant, the first half isn't. It's decent, but it really sounds... I don't know, ingenuine? Like a different band? There's just something odd about how those songs fit together that doesn't quite sit right with me. HOWEVER, the last four songs are just brutally wonderful and far more cohesive than almost any other sequence of songs I can think of

― Dan Perry, Monday, 1 July 2002 01:00 (7 years ago)

they made prog rock sexy psychedelic and gay. actually i'm not sure what i'm saying there. but i liked them at the time (high school/college) and they sounded really fresh which must count for something.

― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Monday, 16 January 2006 03:50 (4 years ago)

Are you (still?) in Rochester, Ian? What do you say we ditch these clowns and go listen to Ritual somewhere?

― Sundar (sundar), Monday, 16 January 2006 17:21 (4 years ago)

Ritual every time. One of the most important passages of music in my life and beautiful on so many levels.

― Alex K (Alex K), Thursday, 24 July 2003 09:15 (6 years ago)

I just remember this album as one long brilliant song. I'm not sure I think of any other album in this way, actually.

― Ismael Klata, Sunday, 21 December 2008 19:37 (1 year ago)

Side 2 of Ritual is the sound of art-damaged, drug-blasted rockers cutting loose from their moorings and setting sail for the moon.

― stevo, Monday, 1 July 2002 01:00 (7 years ago)

Yeah!

get in there

I still think the sequencing of the second half of this album is some next-level platonic ideal of album sequencing.

Dan Perry has posted quite a lot about this album. About this album's second half. About the three-track run from heaven. I'm going to have to give it a listen...I've seen these guys live and they rocked VERY hard. I think I DID listen to RDLH but wasn't really concentrating.

LOL XPOST

HAHAHAHA

I mean I'm giving serious credence to Dan because All Flesh Is Grass and the middle four tracks of Pornography really ARE all that

You know, I was thinking that "Of Course" was not equal to "Three Days" and "Then She Did..." but I just had the chorus pop into my head and um it is pretty much impossible for me to pick between those three songs, which might seriously be my favorite run of music of any genre of all time with the POSSIBLE exception of movements II - VI of the Brahms Requiem and "The Hanging Garden" through "A Strange Day" on Pornography.

― ^likes black girls (HI DERE), Friday, 19 December 2008 18:27 (1 year ago)

I think I voted for that, but due to my ludicrous initial ballot (with non-integral point values) that LJ didn't accept (grrr) I'm not sure if it made the actual ballot. In any case I've gone from loving it around 1990, to indifference for a number of years, back to appreciating it again.

You gave me a revised ballot! It got one point. Lifting it above Mobb Deep.

Now listening to Three Days, like a good pollster. It's already ace.

I can't believe this album wasn't on the original poll.

yeah Side 2 of Ritual is really perfect, they were right to break up afterwards.

like, there's nowhere to go from there, ultimate statement has been made

I will admit to liking a shit-ton of Kettle Whistle.

Well, there *was* a reunion album...

xp

Here's where I recommend Whores: An Oral Biography Of Jane's Addiction as really fun to read aloud from whenever guests are over. Especially the transcriptions of P. Farrell stage banter.

While as a rule I don't think bands should break up because of reaching their perfect moment, this was a case where it made total sense.

no Eric Avery = no "reunion". He is not on anything released post Ritual.

can not listen to this JA album anymore - it has been played to death (some of that is thanks to me, some by everyone else on the planet)