Your Biggest Musical Disappointment.......

R.E.M.'s Green

Going Blank Again

actually, my biggest disappoinment as a kid was seeing all the Grateful Dead t-shirts and posters and envisioning the most psyched-out, balls tripping, mind-bending music of all time and then finding out they were a jug band with long solos.

― ancient texts, things that can't be pre-dated (President Keyes), Sunday, November 30, 2014 1:30 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^
That.

― Hideous Lump, Sunday, November 30, 2014 2:04 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I figured they would be like Iron Maiden.

These are all albums that I remember rushing out to buy and being totally crushed after I first listened to them.

Antony & The Johnsons - The Crying Light (This has grown on me but I thought it was a massive step down after the previous album which was perfect)

Rufus Wainwright - Release the Stars (Supposed to be his big pop moment but ended up being incredible bland apart from Going to a Town which is the only keeper)

Divine Comedy - Bang Goes the Knighthood (One of my favourite bands ever. After four years away this is just such a half arsed record. Stop making songs that are just you listing things Neil!)

Magnetic Fields - I (How does this album manage to have more filler on it than 69 Love Songs? It does contain three of his best songs with I Don't Believe You, I Thought You Were my Boyfriend and It's Only Time)

Morrissey - You Are the Quarry (Like many others I was so excited for his return but I remember hearing this on my way home from work and my heart sank a little as every badly produced plodding song went by. The two singles sound great but can't remember much else about it now)

The Streets - The Hardest Way to Make a Living (Had to look up what this was called. Looking at the track list I don't remember a single song on it now)

Jarvis Cocker - Jarvis (Thought this was just such a boring album that made Jarvis sound like he was 100 years old. Could not understand the hype it got at all)

Johnny Boy - Johnny Boy (You are the Generation is one of my favourite singles ever but the album was just so weak all the way through)

Being a teenager in the 70s when Rod Stewart was amazing and so rock and then seeing what he became.

Also, Pearl Jam, Binaural, god do I hate that album (so do they, pretty much).

St. Etienne - Good Humour

The first time I saw that beautiful cover on the insanely priced import my heart skipped a beat. Still, I was broke and the price really was insulting. About a month after, when i had finally managed to save the cash, I grabbed a copy off the shelves and asked to listen to it before buying. I'm glad I did. To this day I can't understand why it is so highly rated by some people.

R.E.M.'s Green

― Brad C., Sunday, November 30, 2014 1:18 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me too, at the time, but then I came to like it a lot! Maybe we should also do "Your biggest musical reappraisal."

Built To Spill - Ancient Melodies Of the Future

A quintessential momentum killing album.

Radiohead - Hail to the Thief

Don't think I ever lost interest in a band so quickly. I haven't bothered with them since it came out and don't really care to revisit their past.

Yeah, I only 'got on' with Kid A, Amnesiac I liked as well, but that was it.

The Streets - The Hardest Way to Make a Living (Had to look up what this was called. Looking at the track list I don't remember a single song on it now)

Yes - this album was analogous to the third series of Mighty Boosh in my mind. Too much fame, drugs and egotism stifling all the original charm and creativity that should have been present on the third offering.

I don't understand how anyone could be disappointed by HTTT if they liked Kid A / Amnesiac - it's not a huge qualitative step down or change in style from those records. Maybe a little more rock-y but...?

eephus, i think "biggest reassessment" would be interesting as well....
probly lotsa "loved 'em when i was fourteen" type bands, but curious to see how many "acquired tastes" pop up too.....

i was pretty let down by the Red Shoes (Kate Bush). This was the first album I ever got as a pre-release, a tape via someone who worked in radio months before it came out, and it kind of killed me I was so let down by it. It's grown on me in recent years but I still think it's her worst record.

Funny, you said Good Humor by St. Etienne. I feel the same way. I was very disappointed by it when it came out. Put it on last week to see if I like it better and picked the needle up halfway through track 3, side 1. The first three SE albums are classics though.

I've been thinking on this for a while, still tough, but I think it's gotta be:

Talking Heads - True Stories

or else PIL's This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get

Funny, you said Good Humor by St. Etienne. I feel the same way. I was very disappointed by it when it came out. Put it on last week to see if I like it better and picked the needle up halfway through track 3, side 1. The first three SE albums are classics though.

brotherlovesdub

I was doing my work experience at a record shop when this came out and the guy I was working with had to turn it off half way through he was so disappointed with it. I remember him saying "Nothing Can Stop Can Stop Us is one of my favourite singles ever. How have they gone so downhill?" as he turned it off. It actually ended up growing on me a lot thanks to songs like Split Screen, Lose That Girl and Woodcabin but I can understand why people didn't like it. Sound of Water was their big disappointment for me. Especially as Heart Failed was such a great lead single.

Mule Variations by Tom Waits - not that I got it when it came out but I'd heard it was one of his best and it really really wasn't

most post bone machine waits albums are all interchangeable for me. they are good but i never go "oh i want to hear THIS one but not THAT one:

Real Gone is very good, and Alice/Blood Money are not at all in the same vein

i don't know if i'm that disappointed any more. i barely listen to new music tbh, or rather my tastes are never driven by what is coming out in a calendar year. if somebody i like has a new album out i probably won't rush to buy it until i feel a strong need to. by coincidence i was really really into bill callahan last year and he happened to come out with a new album, so that was rad. but this year it's basically been 70s reggae and dub, 70s electric miles, palace music, and joni mitchell for me, that is what i am feeling, and some new album is probably not going to break me out of what i am feeling and what i have a strong need to listen to.

xp oh yea i guess i just meant that for me they are interchangeable, they mostly satisfy the same need for me, not that they are all basically the same works

probably The Eminem Show

when i was a kid i think my tastes were more driven by new releases, i read a lot of spin and shit and then pitchfork in college and kept up with BNM, this is like early 00s, and levez vos skinny fists comme antennaes to heaven was really fucking good but then yanqui uxo came out and was really boring. imo when you follow the calendar year instead of your own inclinations then you will be disappointed. bad shit comes out every year and it's hyped and looked forward to and you spend money on it and then people forget it because it's terrible and boring.

also how many of us spent a lot of time handwringing and listening over and over to see if some new bullshit that we dropped $15 on was actually good, to try to convince ourselves that we weren't duped?

I still vividly remember running to the library to get an album by this amazing Fleetwood Mac band that I was hearing on the radio somewhere around 1978, finding "In Chicago" and...

Oh, yeah, that's another thread altogether, too! Back when you didn't know which album was 'canonical,' so you bought the one you found, usually in the cheapo bin. This is why Trompe le Monde remains the only Pixies album I really like.

Back in my teen prog days, The Sentinel by Pallas was my big event album of 1984. Concept album about Atlantis - check. Produced by Eddie Offord - check. Gatefold sleeve with ridiculous Patrick Woodroffe artwork - check. Songs I'd seen them develop live over the last couple of years - check.
Bought it from Harum Records in Crouch End, almost ran home with the excitement (peeking in the bag a couple of times), reverently took the record out of the inner sleeve and put it on the turntable. And - oh. Piss-weak production, half the songs sounded like an attempt to emulate Magnum and it wasn't even a proper concept album.
Poor 16 year old me was crushed.
I miss getting excited about new releases though, now I'm old and jaded I don't even care when my own records come out let alone anyone elses.

!!! Erica America should have been on the radio, a heavenly pop hit if there ever was one

& I love Dutch TV too, will never figure that one out, the keyboard fill kills me

All right, let's also talk about premature, short-lived disappointment, because I always forget it later, or wouldn't want to admit it.

Albums that came impossibly hyped to me years after their first release (and where I already knew the artist) that disappointed me, more or less, on first listen: Another Green World, Radio City, Slanted & Enchanted. (Another Green World would not have been really 'disappointing' were it not for the build-up, but the next two I disliked).

Soon, very soon, each was on continuous rotation, tied for favorite album ever, where they still stay today. I've been assisting with the hype ever since.

never heard the Sentinel but it sounds like EMI butchered it; have you heard the reissue which apparently fixes it?

the first 3 and last 4 on Good Humor are great but its middle really really drags.

the musical output of yo la tengo in the last ten years. they used to be my fave band but everything coming out after "summer sun" was so disappointing and uninteresting. they do not seem to be the same band as the band which recorded electropura and made unbelievably intense live shows in the 90s. for me they defnitely have lost it.

the rolling stones concert in luxembourg roundabout 1992. most expensive & worst concert of my life. they were about a mile away, i could barely see a little man far away jumping and running around on the screen, i went home after about an hour and listened to the rest of the concert on my balcony, about 3 miles away. it was a joke. they played "like a rolling stone" and i never want to hear that song again.

new order on the loreley festival 1993. sonic youth were so good at that festival and new order so terrible. some puppets on the stage which tried to play some of the greatest pop songs of mankind but just couldn't do it, somehow they didn't have the feeling (of joy division).

Big Star.

There's much-loved bands whose music I like less than these guys (eg the Cramps, whose charisma I enjoy much more than their actual songs) but no band where I'm left so head-scratchingly bewildered as to wtf the big fuss was about. When I first heard Radio City I had what I can only describe as an anti-epiphany. Nice, pleasant little songs, I thought, sort of generic nice-guy power pop, and I like those shiny shirts... Nothing wrong with it but my god the myths! The cult status! Based on what? The B side of the second Kiss album is ten times more compelling than this!

Big star=massive disappointment

the paul stanley stage banter thing, i remember not finding it very funny

anybody ever had anything grow on them?

Or is it "that's that, another checkmark in the 1000 albums to listen to" book

Brimstead are you quoting Paul Stanley ?

Sorry bad joke, but your question had a Stanley-esque ring to it

I think upthread some have already mentioned things that grew on them

(I continue to chuckle like a doofus at how this sounds)

nah anybody ever had anything grow on them? deserved a joke, if not a direct percy quote

My biggest live concert disappointment was seeing GZA a couple of years ago on a tour where was (supposedly) doing the whole Liquid Swords album. He didn't actually stick with that, but that wasn't really the issue. The problem was that he seemed wasted and kind of out of it. He comes across on record, especially on LS, as this cerebral surveyor of street life, precise lyrical mastermind, etc. etc. so seeing him out of breath, slurring, losing the beat, and falling behind in the verses and having to hurry to catch up was a pretty big bummer. Plus his whole stage presence, even the way he moved around, just seemed off. Not the least bit commanding, but also weirdly shaky, like he'd just gotten a concussion backstage. It was the only show by a touring act I've ever walked out of.

Apparently I was more or less alone in my assessment, though. But you can judge for yourselves, since somebody took some video and put it on Youtube. The audio is bad, but I think it's good enough to get a sense for what I'm talking about. The show really starts around 1:50 here when he gets into "Duel of the Iron Mic".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KMe7cATKHM

Oh oh I know mine now - Boards of Canada's Campfire Headphase. It still for the most part sounds like Groove Armada or late 90s chill out stuff

daft punk - human after all

ILM

2005 - not a good year for third albums by crossover dance acts.

You Are the Quarry seconded, also from 2004 R.E.M.'s Around the Sun, such a lifeless record, I remember in interviews Stipe saying that the album would take people seven or eight listens to get into, after the third go I just thought "There is no way I'm listening to this seven times". Bonus annoyance: the CD packaging included a booklet that fell out every time you picked it up.

xpost Big Star: "Nice, pleasant little songs, I thought, sort of generic nice-guy power pop."

That's complete nonsense re: Radio City. I think you read some articles calling it a power pop album, maybe you heard September Gurls and that was it. Even on September Gurls the drummer pounds it. There's nothing "power pop" in the slightest about "Life is White" or "Daisy Glaze" or, really, most of the rest of the records. It's a crunching rock record with off-kilter bits all over.

Vic, that's precisely why it's my biggest musical disappointment bar none: because it's the one that most makes me feel like I've been equipped with a different set of ears than the rest of humanity. Your reaction to my post is exactly what I expect (Although you and I may have different notions of what constitutes "power pop": I don't at all see it as incompatible with "crunching rock").

the new Run The Jewels. College kid music, total turnoff.

Shudder To Think - 50,000 BC

Where do you go after making an incredible math-glam masterpiece?

You make a record that even members of The Rheostatics or The Caulfields would probably dismiss as boring college rock.

I bought a cd of "A minute to pray a second to die" by the Flesh Eaters on the basis of their unassailable singles ("Sleeping Sickness" & "Pony Dress") and decided on first hearing that I had unfortunately bought a goth record. I returned it to Tower and got the Rhino collection of Link Wray, which of course.

But I bet that Flesh Eaters album is pretty good right? If I weren't so in need of getting real musical value out of my $17 or whatever it was, it would have grown on me like some kind of graveyard mold, yes?

MaresNest are you as entrenched in 90s acts as I am, at least when it comes to pop/rock?

Vic, have a listen again and decide!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9hbLzz2OXk

I've never gotten deeply into this album, even though it should be right up my alley. Feel like it's got all the right attitude, but not enough hooks.

Thanks! I will.

Pony Express Record has waned in my esteem over the years while 50,000 BC has grown (shrugs).

But like, how do they compare in the end? Are you saying 50,000 has surpassed Pony for you?

Evan, if I knew more about your posting habits beyond our shared love of the Lilys I could comment, but I do like a good LOL 90's rabbit hole, Arcwelder being my most recent.

xpost Maybe? It feels like a stronger synthesis of their ethos, somehow.

Mare- That's all I was really going by myself, that and having opinions about Shudder to Think. I've been revisiting a lot of Poole myself.

Wait I want to revise that to better match the Arcwelder sound/vibe. I've been revisiting a lot of Ultra Cindy myself. There.

XP - 50,000 BC ain't all bad, Call Of The Playground is ace and Red House dates back to before PER, but Pony was singular and rarefied and I had high expectations.

I know nothing about Ultra Cindy, will investigate!

They're great! Not much discography at all but their one LP is very nice.

I love the Flesh Eaters but I am pretty goth so ymmv