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

to me ODB and Aphex represent something that seems to have gotten lost around the 00s - stuff that pushes things right over the precipice in terms of innovation, musicality etc, but on the surface appears to be a practical joke.

Another one of my votes gets in, hurrah

but yeah a one-point return from people other than NV seems disappointing

That would be my 1 point, thanks!

I actually prefer ODB's second album to this one, but they're both utterly classic and timeless.

to me ODB and Aphex represent something that seems to have gotten lost around the 00s - stuff that pushes things right over the precipice in terms of innovation, musicality etc, but on the surface appears to be a practical joke.

This is very OTM. Great point.

And speaking of which...

60= They Might Be Giants - Flood (1990)
43 points
3 votes
0 first-place votes
Greatest contributor: Jesse

http://blogs.pitch.com/wayward/TMBGflood.jpg

N. (nickdastoor) wrote this on thread Least sexy band ever on board I Love Music on 14-Oct-2002
They might be Giants?

Kenan Hebert (kenan) wrote this on thread Bands that have self-titled songs on board I Love Music on 17-Feb-2003
They Might Be Giants

rex jr. wrote this on thread Bands that are expressions on board I Love Music on 27-Feb-2003
They Might Be Giants

Al (sitcom) wrote this on thread This is the thread where you can freely proclaim your love for arists actively hated-on by ILM. on board I Love Music on 01-Mar-2003
(they...might...be.......giants)

Millar (Millar) wrote this on thread Who is the Uncoolest Band Ever? on board I Love Music on 28-May-2003
They Might Be Giants

johnboy wrote this on thread Who's the tallest person in music? on board I Love Music on 02-Jul-2003
They might be giants....

colin s barrow (colin s barrow) wrote this on thread What song am I thinking of? on board I Love Music on 13-Nov-2003
They Might Be Giants?

Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub) wrote this on thread who is the biggest nerd in rock n' roll? on board I Love Music on 23-Jan-2004
They Might Be Giants

Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy) wrote this on thread Bands With Ethnically Misleading Names on board I Love Music on 02-Oct-2004
They Might Be Giants

jel -- (jel) wrote this on thread Band names that are complete sentences. on board I Love Music on 03-Apr-2004
They might be giants

Ian Moraine (Eastern Mantra) wrote this on thread Worst Music to Find Yrself Fucking to on board I Love Music on 24-Dec-2004
They Might Be Giants

zeus wrote this on thread T/S FAUST vs. THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS vs. WEEN vs. WEIRD AL vs. YANN TOMITA on board I Love Music on 10-Apr-2005
They Might Be Giants.

M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson) wrote this on thread What do you think of as "geek rock"? on board I Love Music on 30-Jun-2005
They Might Be Giants

Guayaquil wrote this on thread Bad Company 'til the day I die on board I Love Music on 29-Aug-2005
They Might Be Giants

Fritz Wollner (Fritz) wrote this on thread a curiosity: musicians with IAN as name on board I Love Music on 28-Sep-2005
they might be giants

mason r butler wrote this on thread Acts whose lojal fans kept on embracing their new material long after their commercial popularity had ended. on board I Love Music on 25-Mar-2006
They Might Be Giants?

Alex in Baltimore (Alex in Baltimore) wrote this on thread bands that have been or someday probably will be retroactively described as "emo" on board I Love Music on 17-May-2006
They Might Be Giants

M@tt He1geson: Sassy and I Don't Care Who Knows It (Matt Helgeson) wrote this on thread T/S: Chris Ott vs. The Decemberists/Carson Ellis on board I Love Music on 15-Nov-2006
they might be giants

Alternative round-up:

I got to see They Might Be Giants do the whole Flood album in order a few years ago. They did "Fingertips" and everything. It was bloody fantastic.

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 5 September 2005 00:11 (4 years ago)

What's all this "serious critical evaluation" nonsense. They are about one tenth as dorky as ILM.

Classic.

― everything (everything), Tuesday, 1 August 2006 21:40 (3 years ago)

They are better at writing miserable songs about dying, being dead or death in general that anyone else I can think of right now.

― everything (everything), Tuesday, 1 August 2006 21:56 (3 years ago)

I'm not the biggest TMBG fan, but then I reckon I'd have been huge into them if i'd paid more attention at the time.

"Birdhouse In Your Soul" has been one of my favourite songs since I was about 10 though.

Hurray, my ballot appears at last.

But I don't think it's right to call this record "avant garde in the guise of a practical joke" -- the first TMBG record is much more like this, but with Flood they complete the transition from performance artists to regular rock and roll band -- though the traces of their avant-gardism remain and give the record a special savor. It is their "Abacab."

Ha, I was kinda joking with that intro!

I think I voted for a different Aphex album but I loved "I Care Because You Do" very much indeed once and it is nice to see it here.

And dog latin's post is pretty much exactly how I feel about TMBG too. Picked up Flood many years after the fact and liked it; can only imagine how much I'd have grown up loving them had I been more of an album-buyer (or known anyone to copy tapes off) when 10y/o me saw Birdhouse In Your Soul on TOTP and thought it was the best thing ever.

haha, Flood was actually the beginning of me falling out of like with TMBG; I disliked that they were going so intentionally quirky as opposed to being a rock group who happened to have quirky elements to them

haha man the initial set of posts in the TMBG entry is lj's most inspired 'blurb' so far, loved it. also love the album, gave it 8 points.

xpost -- i can see that, although really the first 2 albums were pretty damn silly too, and they kinda moved back toward being more of a mildly quirky rock group for a while later on (and then swung back to quirk overload)

10y/o me saw Birdhouse In Your Soul on TOTP and thought it was the best thing ever.

Yep, and I didn't really like "proper songs" when I was 10, but something about BHIYS completely slayed me at exactly this age.

i can see that, although really the first 2 albums were pretty damn silly too,

Oh yeah, I totally agree; for me, it felt more like they went from a rock group who could be silly to a silly group who could rock and I wasn't as interested in the latter. (Nowadays, I feel differently but this was SRS BIZNIZ when I was 15)

I disliked that they were going so intentionally quirky Hard to make sense of this in reference to a band whose earlier catalog includes "Purple Toupee," "Cowtown," "Santa's Beard," "Shoehorn with Teeth," "Rhythm Section Want Ad," "Number Three," "The Day (Marvin Gaye and Phil Ochs Got Married)," etc!

But let's not let these minor points distract us from urging all TMBG-deniers to listen to some of the great tracks on this record that never made it to radio, e.g. "Dead": "Now it's either I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want, or I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do." Or "Everybody Wants a Rock," which seems more complicated to me every year.

I didn't like most of the songs you listed (of the ones I recognize; I spent a lot of time skipping over the wackier tracks on the first two albums) and Flood was chock-full of songs done in that vein.

Granted, this means I was listening to like maybe 3 or 4 songs per album but I REALLY liked those songs.

Second one I voted for coming up

(lol actually I did start getting into Flood due to a high school girlfriend who loved it; oh hormones, how many things will you convince us to try/re-evaluate?)

i like flood! can certainly do without a couple of the tracks but some of them are quite touching

60= Mr Bungle - California (1999)
43 points
3 votes
0 first-place votes
Greatest contributor: m the g

http://img11.nnm.ru/4/5/9/4/a/713800a22ac8431f2f733ab877d.jpg

Unbelievably classic..."Pink Cigarette" is just the best suicide song, and there's another track that sounds like Hall and Oates on nitrous (you on nitrous, not Hall & Oates). A masterwork of many moods.

― matt riedl (veal), Monday, 4 November 2002 21:09 (7 years ago)

It's one of the only albums I've heard in the last few years that actually made me stop what I was doing to say, "Whoah..."

― Kim (Kim), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 01:54 (7 years ago)

I haven't listened to California in FOREVER. It is still my favorite album; I can hear it all in my head if I try. REEEETROVERTIGOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

― nickalicious, Wednesday, 26 December 2007 21:37 (2 years ago)

California is definitely classic! Easily Mr. Bungle's best.

― latebloomer: We kissy kiss in the rear view (latebloomer), Friday, 17 June 2005 06:08 (4 years ago)

Agreed on California's goodness. A record that made me laugh with pleasure when I first heard it, it's so sharp.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 17 June 2005 15:14 (4 years ago)

This band got better with every album for real.

― jigglepanda.gif (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 17 October 2008 16:59 (1 year ago)

does patton smoke crack or what? listening to this now

― Don't hag me with your false green. (jdchurchill), Wednesday, 2 September 2009 18:40 (7 months ago)

the shows where they play Flood in its entirety are really fun, especially hearing them make sense of the weirder tracks onstage (although I really hate the arrangement they did for "Dead")

xp yeah for Bungle inclusion! Let's hope there's more where that came from.

suddenly nobody has anything to say :D

I remember making my friend drive me to Best Buy to purchase California on the first day it came out. He was mostly into Moonshine house and trance, but I told him it was "like, weird death metal" so he agreed to give me a ride. We got the album and hopped back in his Civic, taking DJ Dan out of the CD player. Listening to "Sweet Charity" confounded my expectations of what Mr. Bungle was - I was in 5 minutes of totally unexpected hilarious bliss. I think about halfway through the next song, my friend asked me to turn it off.

Great, a run of albums I've actually heard. Came to Mr Bungle quite late (though a longtime FNM fan). California's my favourite. A perplexingly fried surf-rock album, and yeah Pink Cigarette is amazing sunset cowboy music. Another band who pushed things to the max in many directions whilst placing tongue firmly in cheek. This kidn fo thing just doesn't really happen any more. I guess postmodernism - or whatever this strain of humour originates from - got a bit tired in the end.

just when you thought the 'srs avant-garde art masquerading as one big practical joke' thing had to end

xpost!!!

I haven't heard California in 5 years or so, but I'd probably dig it if I bothered to pull it off the shelf and play it again. In fact... today sounds like a good day for that. Why not?

Oh! How did I forget to vote for California? Probably because I didn't get it until 2000. Good call, everyone!

When were like 13 or 14, me and my friends used to obsess over the first Mr. Bungle album, but by the time California came out I'd already cultivated my anti-rock stance to the point that I didn't care about such things anymore.

Have you revisited it since then?

Don't want to bang the same anvil all over again, but having a no-holds-barred anti-rock stance is as mad (if not madder) than an anti-dance or anti-hiphop stance.

ODB! I feel bad I didn't vote for it but there were like 100 perfect records this decade and just giving 2 points to each other them seemed wasted. Also I didn't remember it when quickly writing my list.

BROOOOOOOKLYN... ZOO!

Wouldn't it be funny if the next album was avant-garde mastery moonlighting as kitsch too?

58= Madonna - Erotica (1992)
44 points
4 votes
0 first-place votes
Greatest contributor: RedRaymaker

http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Technology/images/madonna-erotica-album-cover.jpg

This album needs to be polled at least once a year.

― who's always getting head from the commissioner (Eric H.), Monday, 19 April 2010 03:10 (1 week ago)

No wonder the typical RYM poster is stuck in the early 90s btw. You have to be stuck there to think positive of "Erotica". It is extremely of its time. A time that is now luckily long gone and hopefully will never return. The early 90s were one of the worst ever eras for music. Absolutely horrible.

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Friday, 23 April 2010 22:06 (6 days ago)

Geir's willingness to jumble up the same four or five words and apply them to Erotica over the span of decades is admirable.

Geir's willingness to address one of the best crossover examples of what must be his least favorite style of music is not.

― Eric H., Sunday, 8 April 2007 22:35 (3 years ago)

Erotica is the pinnacle of Madonna's career in terms of full lengths, I think.

― The Lex (The Lex), Sunday, 23 October 2005 15:22 (4 years ago)

Madonna's 'Erotica' is still in my all-time top 10 even though it justs lies down and dies after "Rain", 2/3 of the way through.

― dave q, Wednesday, 15 August 2001 00:00 (8 years ago)

Anyway you should go and listen to Erotica, it's fantastic. A bit sad though: a friend pointed out to me recently that "Words" has really good lyrics, and I immediately thought to myself "yeah I like it too, but isn't that supposed to be the worst song on the album lyrically?", and then I realised she was comparing it to recent Madonna lyrics.

― Tim F, Tuesday, 25 August 2009 22:42 (8 months ago)

(xposts) Too bad you missed California, it's the best Mr Bungle album for an anti-rock stance

(srsly when I first got it I played it pretty much constantly no matter who came round, and the less rock people were probably more interested in what the hell this thing I was playing was. Probably still not really your thing, but hey...)

ISn't this the Madonna album everyone's supposed to hate but everyone actually really loves?

Haven't heard it all, but "Vogue" (that's on here right?) was all over the radio, again when I was 10 and just discovering pop - so it was in its own way a very important record for me. I think the first page of the first ever music magazine I bought (Smash Hits, circa easter 1990) had the lyrics reprinted here. This is why I still know nearly all the words to Vogue and Birdhouse In Your Soul.

"Vogue" is on I'm Breathless.

Music from and inspired by the film Dick Tracy.

ISn't this the Madonna album everyone's supposed to hate but everyone actually really loves?

Yup. And it's great.

eh, it's okay

caliornia! a glorious album both then and now. amazingly lush, melodic, complex and beautiful record. I shall love it always.

When were like 13 or 14, me and my friends used to obsess over the first Mr. Bungle album, but by the time California came out I'd already cultivated my anti-rock stance to the point that I didn't care about such things anymore.

tuomas, the mr bungle of their debut album is a totally different beast to the one that recorded its two far superior follow-ups. it's highly debatable whether disco volante, and to some extent california too, even counts as 'rock' in any meaningful sense.

I guess postmodernism - or whatever this strain of humour originates from - got a bit tired in the end.

tbh I'm not sure bungle by the time of california can really be considered humorous, perhaps not even postmodern. omnivorous, certainly, but there's a huge amount of affection and respect for the genres they're revelling in and mashing together - it's far from empty, ironic smirking. that's what was so surprising about california, that mr bungle could be capable of producing genuine beauty as well as horror.

I am like the only person on Earth who thinks the first Bungle album is the best one.

we already knew they could do that, though! cf Stubb (A Dub), Merry Go Bye Bye (xpost)

I think all 3 Bungle albums are of virtually equivalent quality

xp... of course, my advocacy would be greatly enhanced if I could spell 'california'.

I love stubb a dubb, but it's far more silly than beautiful.

merry go bye bye... yeah, you're right. but it's an anomaly in the context of DV.

I actually own Disco Volante, and whoo boy does it suck! At least on the first album the experimentalism is often funny. I've heard friends play California on a few occasions, and it sounded okay to me (definitely less avant-garde than the first two), but it's just not the sort of music I'm really into.

Faith No More wasn't in the original poll at all, so Mr. Bungle placing makes me wonder if FNM will get up really high here

The genre pastiching on California definitely took on some more introspective and conventionally elegant styles, though, it's gotta be said, and pulled them off beautifully. (He says, as Pink Cigarette swoons to its conclusion)

Those are the only two songs from the first two albums that 'do' outright beauty. California's sonic assault is a lot subtler, and its songcraft more explicit. Doesn't stop it from being kickass as all hell.

It's not REALLY less avant-garde, Tuomas, just sly about its avant-gardism...