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

still at zero. Not too surprised.

me too but I am not worried haha

56 Sonic Youth - A Thousand Leaves
48 points
4 votes
0 first-place votes
Greatest contributors: seandalai, nakhchivan

http://www.amiright.com/album-cover-themes/images/album-Sonic-Youth-A-Thousand-Leaves.jpg

A Thousand Leaves is heaven's doorbell. Granted, not everyone's into doorbells...

― Wesley, Sunday, 10 June 2001 00:00 (8 years ago)

A Thousand Leaves is fucking great

― gabbneb, Friday, 15 June 2007 19:36 (2 years ago)

thousand leaves has some amazing moments, but is kind of dry and hard to love as a whole, i find.

― the style and grace of a greased rhinoceros in a bed bath & beyond (stevie), Wednesday, 17 June 2009 15:02 (10 months ago)

No one's mentioned "A Thousand Leaves" so I will. Exceptionally underrated.

― Marcello Carlin, Monday, 19 November 2001 01:00 (8 years ago)

It took me six years to fully get into A Thousand Leaves. It's strange how impenatrable that record can feel given that they really do nothing terribly different from the previous albums on that one.

― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Tuesday, 20 April 2004 10:53 (6 years ago)

A Thousand Leaves shows their sprawl at its best.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 15 June 2007 18:09 (2 years ago)

in post-50s rock music, zappa seems to be the godfather of musical innovation & technical excellence masquerading as a cheap joke. and of whiplash-inducing genre pastiche. and of a sardonic approach to musical communication that denies earnest emotionalism in favor of the cynical manipulation of devices typically employed to induce or document emotion. these things are interrelated and mutually supporting, and they collectively describe a strain of late-twentieth-century rock music that descends from zappa. therefore, it's hard for me to imagine mr. bungle existing absent zappa's (perhaps indirect) influence, and it's hard for me to consider them outside his shadow.

what's surprising is that, in an age in which tribal allegiances and genre boundaries among listeners are breaking down, the same isn't generally the case within most artists' recorded output.

plus a thousand leaves is okay

My favorite '90s SY album, by far.

ok that is a HUGE surprise to me, especially it placing higher than Washing Machine, which got nearly 4 times as many votes as A Thousand Leaves in this poll: best Sonic Youth album of the '90s

now i really have no idea which of Sonic Youth's 3 other 90s albums will place and where.

I expect one of mine to be showing up in the near future and - although I should probably just bite my lip - I kinda want to say that I had NO IDEA when I turned in my ballot that dudes would be turning in like 199-vote ballots and stuff, and thus giving like 1 or 2 points per album.

this seems as good a place as any to admit i do not "get" sonic youth

Only two people did that, kkvg!

some dude's was the next-longest at 50-odd

Wait, it was just the last two dudes that turned in gigantic ballots? Chuckleheads. Anyway, we'll see.

wow what was the next longest after mine? i figured there'd be SOMEBODY else as stubborn in wanting to vote for so many albums as the 3 of us did

Huzzah! ATL is probably my favourite SY album of any decade. I think.

actually lj kept the 2 biggest ballots to the end, 1 of the 199 vote ballots he received very early on.

mike t-diva had a 46-strong ballot, Tuomas 36

still cant believe washing machine is the lowest placing SY btw?

Now for the hilarious statistical quirk...

Huzzah! ATL is probably my favourite SY album of any decade. I think.

Same here but I still have a lot of love for the famous 80s trilogy. ATL is an especially rich and peculiar album with a fairly singular sense of awe subdued to despondency, despite there being greater divergence in Lee/Kim/Thurston's songwriting than on any other album of theirs. Hat tip anyway!

See nakhchivan, aren't you glad I picked your first ballot now?

50= Magic Hour - No Excess Is Absurd (1994)
50 points
1 vote
0 first-place votes
Contributor: contenderizer

http://www.subpop.com/bands/damon+naomi/website/images/Magichour.gif

No Excess Is Absurd is righteous. I caught that Magic Hour/Ghost tour Dan refers to in Cleveland, and Rogers was absolutely on fire, stomping around the stage like T.Rex (the dinosaur, not Bolan & Co.) and making me think he was Hendrix reincarnated.

― Dave Segal (Da ve Segal), Friday, 7 May 2004 02:14 (5 years ago)

The only TV record I have is Magic Hour's No Excess Is Absurd, which is quite good.

― Sundar (sundar), Saturday, 21 January 2006 04:37 (4 years ago)

still cant believe washing machine is the lowest placing SY btw?

― plax (ico), Thursday, April 29, 2010 1:14 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's assuming Goo AND Dirty AND Jet Set all place in the top 50, which i dunno.

Sort of (xxp), but you still should have done as you were asked. You should have done the wrong thing, because it is was right.

That's the first artist on the poll I haven't heard of......

is

I like Magic Hour, surprised to see that make it.

Prefer Major Stars though

LOSIN' UR LANGUAGE xxp

Thom Jurek gives this Magic Hour album a GREAT AMG write-up, and he's one of my very favourite AMG reviewers to boot: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:wvfixqlhldae

just out of curiosity m@tt, have you heard all 3 bungle albums? (not being some challenging dick here, just thinking that if the one yer familiar with is the first one, its way way more standard than the second and third).

also i totally agree w/the idea that zappa (particularly those albums) was operating pretty far out of the box for the time period, i just dont see him being all that directly related to bungle.

xposts

― Varg Vikinem (jjjusten), Thursday, April 29, 2010 4:12 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah jj you are more or less right, the first one was kinda just "around" in the soup of alt rock back then, so that's the one i heard a lot...

i did see mr. bungle live once and based on the time period i bet they were touring and doing most of the stuff on "california". i enjoyed them live.

but absolutely i am No Expert w/r/t to bungle (or all of the post FNM diaspora patton projects for the most part)

basically contenderizer said what i was trying to say better here:

it's hard for me to imagine mr. bungle existing absent zappa's (perhaps indirect) influence, and it's hard for me to consider them outside his shadow.

like i'm not saying they aren't awesome or they are like zappa ripoffs at all, i just see them existing in a post-zappa world i guess...

also just guessing but they are older than me, but i'm sure you know if you were a kid that played guitar and read a lot of guitar mags in the 80s (which i imagine they did) you sorta got a lot of zappa stuff thrown at you from the sorta "musician" world back then....

like for instance, when i tried to learn Peaches En Regelia off of bass tab in Guitar FTPM without ever actually having heard the song haha

If you had do save one track by Mike Patton for eternity what would it be?

"Stubb (A Dub)"

fuuuuuck

Dan might be OTM, actually

weird how there was no sonic youth on the orig. poll

hahahaha m@tt that must have been fun xxxxpost

not stubb a dub for me, but i have to think about it a while.

merry go bye bye

fuck maybe "merry go bye bye"?

xpost HA!

yer taste is impeccable sir

50 at 50 hurrah.

'Merry Go Bye Bye' was my second thought

'Desert Search For Techno Allah' my third, and 'Goodbye Sober Day' my fourth

Totally missed this poll, cool to see so much I haven't heard.

'Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz' fifth, 'My Ass Is On Fire' sixth, 'Vanity Fair' seventh OK I'LL STOP NOW

"Merry Go Bye Bye" is my favorite Bungle song, but if I had to save a single song with M Patton vocals on it, I'd go for "The Real Thing".

its also hard for me to pass up the fantomas directors cut album tbh, but i dont even know where to start picking there so nevermind

lol some smart-ass is gonna be all 'Delirium Cordia'

and I am that smart-ass

although that wouldn't be my answer

Bah, Simplify is not loading up for me so I can't play "Merry Go Bye Bye" and see if it would change my mind, since I don't remember it offhand.

Is Delirium Cordia anywhere near as good as "Butterfly in a Glass Maze"?

magic hour = the product of my putting just five or six records on my ballot. i expected a MUCH larger turnout (due to being away forever and having no real idea how many people regularly participate in such polls anyway), so i figured giving 50 points to an obscure album i dearly love might help it out a little. didn't figure that it would guarantee it a high placement in the final tally.

anyway, i love no excess is absurd, the first rogers/biggar record i ever got into. still think i prefer it to anything that came before or after - love the folky delicacy of the vocals and songwriting, the contrasting ecstasies of guitar. it does for me what i hear my bloody valentine does for other people.

plus it isn't the only forgotten guitar rock album i gave a TON of points to. so, uh, fair warning...

Yes! Back to Magic Hour!

yet another band I've never heard of. starting to feel kinda ignorant ovah heah