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

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

shame on you, shakey

dont really know any bands fron the 90s really

this band doesn't even have a wiki entry lol

'The dog is going to die very soon' sez Mike Patton, worryingly
Plaintive organ intro
Some wurlitzer/Madness/comedy sax(?) breakdown
WTF is that?
Weimar-thrash apoplexy
Thanks his mom
Threatening someone with death
Says goodbye but proceeds with fulsome Tom Araya ish catharsis
Plaintive organ outro
'That was properly sombre'

Not that fond rly, a little too forcedly 'wacky'....I'll try the other song

"folky delicacy of the vocals and songwriting" and "contrasting ecstasies of guitar" sounds like a fair description of Built to Spill. Is the record in that kind of territory?

Because I am always looking for more high-caliber examples of that kind of stuff.

oh Magic Hour is a Damon & Naomi thing! weird that I have not heard of it, given the huge Luna/G500/Ghost fan that I am... odd. will get.

indeed

Now for the hilarious statistical quirk...

Looks like we're about to have a six-way tie for 50th place, with each album at 50 points apiece...

shakey search out Major Stars as well (though the last couple of albums they got in a singer and sound quite different to the other albums before it)

am starting to worry if a couple lower-ranked selections of mine will chart, was expecting at least one of them to place pretty well...

50= Pizzicato Five - Happy End Of The World
50 points
1 vote
1 first-place vote
Contributor: Haikunym/Dimension 5ive/T-Bone Streep/M4tt C1bula

http://pds13.egloos.com/pds/200903/19/70/c0034770_49c1d34943ee6.jpg

The only qualm I have about classifying P5 as "great" --- not mindblowingly spectacular / important, but pretty great --- is the fact that their significance is pretty limited to a certain time period and a certain aesthetic, as evidenced by the fact that most of their stuff *already* sounds sort of dated. Perhaps you just had to be there and buying records in that particular vein as they came along. . . Regardless, I'd argue that their material was pretty wonderful at the time --- in about the same way that "So Tough" was wonderful at the time --- and they really do deserve some credit for popularizing, if not inventing, two worthwhile developments in mid- 90s indie: (a) the idea that electronically-based music could be bouncy and happy as opposed to dark and sultry, and (b) the big influx of non-rock rhythms and influences. (Was bossanova overrepresented in this influx? Surely. But the musical vocabulary of a demographic previously limited to the Velvet Underground, the Sex Pistols, and the Beatles really blossomed around this point.) Thus . . . classic. Classic like a piece of technology that seems revolutionary when introduced but quickly becomes quaint and dinky. The Commodore 64 of the 90s.

― [nabisco], Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (8 years ago)

I think the exquisite sequencing is probably the reason that I think that Pizzicato Five's Happy End of the World is the best pop album ever made.

― The Obligatory Sourpuss (Begs2Differ), Thursday, 10 February 2005 16:06 (5 years ago)

Frank:

What is the album/song/genre that you are most surprised about loving unconditionally?

Matt "mine would be Pizzicato Five's Happy End of the World" Cibula

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Thursday, 30 June 2005 16:56 (4 years ago)

which reminds me, I've not ordered the new Major Stars yet. Must place an aQ order soon.

Oh hell yeah, I loved that record.

good nabisco post y'all

Wow, totally forgot to put that P5 on my ballot. So glad it placed. Love it to death.

oh whoa i would not have remembered to vote for that but i am now thinking about it fondly

(1997 btw)

btw nakhchivan hate to say it but one bungle song is not really going to make it stick i think, not really a singles band

yeah, nakhchivan, also think you'd be better off starting with the later stuff, it's less cartoony, more slyly psychotic

I know the opening track of the Pizzicato Five album very well coz it's on Blue Jam (Chris Morris' radio show)...very good song, if the rest of the album is as good then yeah I all for this sort of thing

I can pretty safely say that I haven't thought of Pizzicato 5 in about a decade. A friend of mine who worked in a sushi restaurant introduced me to it so I thought I was partaking in some deeply scrounged out Japanese culture like those videotapes of Japanese game shows he used to bring over. Anyway, the next week I found the promo in a little white sleeve a little while later at my job at Sam Goody. It brought me a lot of pleasurable listening for a few years. I guess I lost the CD though.

sounds like a fair description of Built to Spill. Is the record in that kind of territory?

― huh! tikuuta. (kingkongvsgodzilla)

i could easily see magic hour appealing to BTS fans, but they're way more outsider-y. the songwriting is rooted in the soft 60s & 70s pop/folk, and the guitar freakouts are epic, sometimes overwhelming, not terribly melodious.

good music for staring at walls for long stretches of time

so... the common reference point for BTS and Magic Hour is... Neil Young?

I did a choir trip to Japan in the summer of 1993 and happened across a Pizzicato 5 concert broadcast on TV one night flipping channels in one of the hotels. It was mesmerizing, particularly when it segued into the video for "Twiggy Twiggy" immediately afterward. I skipped 3 meals so that I could buy one of their CDs while on that tour since I figured I would never, ever see hide nor hair of them in the US.

I still have that import (another live concert) and it's fucking great.

50= Nomeansno - Live And Cuddly (1991)
50 points
1 vote
1 first-place vote
Contributor: kingkongvsgodzilla

http://en.academic.ru/pictures/enwiki/78/Nomeansno_Live_and_Cuddly.jpg

The rendition of "Body Bag" on Live & Cuddly is amazing.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 9 April 2005 00:20 (5 years ago)

Yeah, to say Live and Cuddly is a secondary purchase just seems wrong to me (no pun intended.) I'd say it's one of the best live rock records ever made.

― donut debonair (donut), Saturday, 9 April 2005 01:43 (5 years ago)

Yeah, I see what you're saying about "Live and Cuddly", having given it another listen and realizing that it is a great live record. If I had been in less of a hurry, I would have specified that it isn't a good starting point due to the fact that the almost sterile studio precision of the other nomeansno releases is part of what gives them their charm. This is not to say that they aren't a formidable live show...just that the starkness you get from an album like "Wrong" can't be captured in a live setting, I guess.

― John Justen (johnjusten), Saturday, 9 April 2005 06:26 (5 years ago)

ultimate bro music.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Sunday, 23 April 2006 04:50 (4 years ago)

i'm really drunk.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Sunday, 23 April 2006 05:03 (4 years ago)

hahaha FUCKING AWESOME

That HI DERE anecdote makes me wonder whether the material rarity and value of records enhanced appreciation for them in the 90s. Like if someone discovered a record in that context today they'd probably just d/l the rar within 50 seconds. Wouldn't be the same and all that.

lololol

Ned's AMG write-up is a doozy as well: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:a9fpxqe5ldje

See, there it is. Glad to see that there were enough good quotes to back it up. Disappointed that it came in ahead of California and a lot of other extremely worthy records. Interesting though that they have definitley opened for Mr. Bungle in recent history.

Gave it 50 points because it's the record from the 1990s that I most consistently listen to and love.

ultimate bro music.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Sunday, 23 April 2006 04:50 (4 years ago)

i'm really drunk.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Sunday, 23 April 2006 05:03 (4 years ago)

^^^^^ applies to at least 25% of all ILM thread revivals.

It took me 13 years after purchasing that record to finally be in the same city at the same time to see these guys live. They are still very very loud and have a ton of heart.

That HI DERE anecdote makes me wonder whether the material rarity and value of records enhanced appreciation for them in the 90s. Like if someone discovered a record in that context today they'd probably just d/l the rar within 50 seconds. Wouldn't be the same and all that.

― nakhchivan, Thursday, April 29, 2010 2:21 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

This got discussed not long ago in the holy grails thread, I think!

Dude, this is your nomeansno floortime! SELL THIS BAND TO US before I post the next one

I thought about the Pizzicato Five a long during the nineties but never actually heard any of their records - we went on a ski trip to America - I can't even remember where? - and I ended up buying the Trouser Press to Nineties Rock which became a talisman for me later on, I read it and read it - anyway I opened it at random and read them raving about this band called the Pixies so I bought Debaser.

Over the next year I read that Pizzicato Five guide maybe 20 times, just as follow-on from that entry... I thought they sounded amazing but the idea of importing a record was 100% alien to me.

THAT IS MY PIZZICATO FIVE STORY

nomeansno is the closest the world will ever get to perfectly executed prog-punk, and lj if you have not heard them holy shit dude are you in for a treat.

stick w/my not the entry point comment up there though. 0+2=1 is my personal suggestion, then wrong. after that just listen to everything else theyve done.

xxp

I was just reading Ned's AMG review and I could not sell it better than that. I rarely come across anyone else familiar with this record, but when I do they always say something like "The Best Live Punk Album Ever!" - which I totally agree with.

Nomeansno are great but I never actually bought any of their albums, largely because I intended on moving back to MN and taping them off John.

oops

this is a pretty good starting point, sorta greatest 'hits' but incl. live stuff too

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fa/Nomeansno_Peoples_Choice.jpg/200px-Nomeansno_Peoples_Choice.jpg

Prog-punk is a good way to describe it. You can hear a lot of similarities to Nomeansno in the first Tool ep. Obviously, comparing something to Tool is not going to win over the hearts of a lot of ILMers, but the first ep was a little different than everything that came afterward.

^^^this is on Spotify and I've been meaning to hear it. Now I will. Pretty certain I'll dig this band.

xpost