What are those albums that are so off-course even the hardcore fans needn't bother

http://i.imgur.com/jhKgR.png

Frank Zappa: Francesco Zappa (Synclavier record of Classical works by Zappa's maybe/maybe not ancestor).

The same year Peggy Lee hit big with "Fever" she had an album out called Sea Shells on which she was accompanied solely by harp and harpsichord, much of the material being translations of Chinese poetry which she speak-sings. It did not chart.

That Peggy Lee record could just as easily go in a thread for "Left-field records worth checking out by musicians you wouldn't expect!" Along with, say, the early career of Gene Autry when he was doing socialist Jimmie Rodgers knockoff tunes, Chubby Checker's Hendrix knockoff LP, and a bunch of records already mentioned in this thread honestly. Feel like that would be a more interesting thread than "ill-fated reunion albums/lineup changes/'how do you like our new sound' albums". I don't really want to complain about how crappy Heldon's "Only Chaos Is Real" is, dunk on "Summer in Paradise" again, or God forbid bring up the two post-Jim Morrison Doors albums. If it's not worth listening to, why is it worth talking about?

ccr's mardis gras. what an unfortunate son of a gun.

― Totally different head. Totally. (Austin)

nobody ever says this about "nite flights"

The first three Kraftwerk albums seem to fit the OP's criteria pretty solidly, since they've never been reissued and are never played live. Indeed Hütter seems to have ruthlessly expunged them from the band's discography, which is fine by me – an artist is entitled to establish their own canon. I'd count myself as a hardcore Kraftwerk fan and I've certainly no interest in hearing them again.

Hard disagree on that, anagram.

Reminds me of a variation on the joke about vegans.

How can you tell someone's heard the first two Kraftwerk albums?
Don't worry, they'll tell you.

There is a subset of tracks from those early Kraftwerk albums that have high replayability:
Ruckzuck (Kraftwerk)
Megaherz (Kraftwerk)
Klingklang (Kraftwerk)
Strom (Kraftwerk 2)
Tongebirge (Kraftwerk 2)
Heimatklänge (R&F)
Tanzmuzik (R&F)

I was just answering the OP ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, Death of a Ladies' Man would seem to fit.

xp

I'll own that. This culture of silence and secrecy shit Hütter has been pulling for decades with the first three Kraftwerk albums pushes my buttons. I know a lot of people think that artists should have unlimited moral rights over their own work, and I don't agree. I think that, having opened the barn door by releasing them in a mass edition, he doesn't have the right to throw those first three albums into the memory hole.

Wasn’t Death of a Ladies’ Man the challops hipster fave for a minute about 15 years ago?

Death of a Ladies' Man is an essential Cohen album.

To return briefly to yesterday's conversation: Neil Young has recorded more aimless and inconsequential albums in the last decade than Landing on Water and Life ever were.

had a feeling Neil Young would dominate this thread

The answer that best addresses the original question: most acts' late-period albums.

There is a subset of tracks from those early Kraftwerk albums that have high replayability:
Ruckzuck (Kraftwerk)
Megaherz (Kraftwerk)
Klingklang (Kraftwerk)
Strom (Kraftwerk 2)
Tongebirge (Kraftwerk 2)
Heimatklänge (R&F)
Tanzmuzik (R&F)

Must be some mistake you've left off Ananas Symphonie.

first two Kraftwerk lps = best two Kraftwerk LPs (after Autobahn)

Can's Out of Reach is one that barely seems to get a nod these days - the band doesn't like it and it wasn't available on CD for a long time. Their next album Inner Space & the comeback Rite Time are also sort of ignored, but there's usually a token track from those on the compilations. Out of Reach might as well not exist at all.

i think out of reach is just a bad album rather than being especially off-course.

I quite like some of it anyway.

and yeah those early kraftwerk albums have many fans among the hardcore.

(xp) It is kind of off course because there are two songs not credited collectively and Holger Czukay has no involvement in the album whatsoever.

I’m not sure how many hardcore Dylan fans have been bothering with the Sinatra-stan albums he’s been releasing of late (I know I haven’t).

of the three "Cantana" albums it's the one with basically no connection whatsoever to the band's past. like, even on Inner Space you can hear Karoli's guitar tone and some of Schmidt's signature synth tones. and I think Karoli does sing some. Out of Reach doesn't really have any of that. not only that but some of the tracks are just wildly uncharacteristic of the band. it's actually not too bad an album (or at least, it wouldn't be if it was actually produced properly) but it really does seem like an entirely different group.

Wasn’t Death of a Ladies’ Man the challops hipster fave for a minute about 15 years ago?

― Una Palooka Dronka (hardcore dilettante), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 15:18 (one hour ago) bookmark flag link

Death of a Ladies' Man is an essential Cohen album.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 15:54 (forty-six minutes ago) bookmark flag link

Alfred usefully answering the previous question right there.

I do always forget about Out of Reach! It's the one I don't recall seeing in shops back in the day. Was it released in the US at the time? (And lol at "Cantana," I've never seen that before.)

I'd call Inner Space one of those ignored low-key post-"peak" classics, alongside Gentle Giant's "Civilian" and Scott Walker's "Til The Band Comes In". There's some truly bad stuff on the record, including their awful novelty cover of "Can Can", and that's the stuff that everybody remembers rather than the first 32 minutes, which consists of great tunes on par with side 2 of "Soon Over Babaluma". Which is just part of the problem, because "Their best since 'Soon Over Babaluma'!" comes off as some truly weaksauce faint praise, the sort of thing one says about every past-their-prime band that still gets five star reviews in Rolling Stone. Most people haven't even fucking heard Soon Over Babaluma because Damo isn't on it. I could tell people that Can's peak as a live band was their early 1974 UK tour just after Damo's departure, but who would care?

I would! I love Soon Over Babaluma.

The first three Kraftwerk albums seem to fit the OP's criteria pretty solidly

this is so laughably wrong, just gonna point and laugh. nothing "off course" abt those at all.

Are there examples where the artist/band, at the height of their fame, just releases a completely different product that totally backfires?

― confusementalism (Dan Peterson)

arguably Bad Religion with "Into The Unknown"?

I think that, having opened the barn door by releasing them in a mass edition, he doesn't have the right to throw those first three albums into the memory hole.

I personally think the first three Kraftwerk albums should be remasterised and box-set-ified alongside high-quality live recordings of the period. But to apply the above principle, you would be requiring each member of every band that ever released three EPs and an album in the 90s, and has been working in HR or repairing bicycles since, to keep all of their music in print and available to distributors in every country around the world.

It’s silly & finicky & needlessly idiosyncratic for Ralf to not like those records, and think they’re not proper Kraftwerk. But silly & finicky & needlessly idiosyncratic also p much defines Kraftwerk, so

I wasn't thinking about the thread header so much as the bit about "nothing to do with the artist's classic style"

xp

I personally think the first three Kraftwerk albums should be remasterised and box-set-ified alongside high-quality live recordings of the period. But to apply the above principle, you would be requiring each member of every band that ever released three EPs and an album in the 90s, and has been working in HR or repairing bicycles since, to keep all of their music in print and available to distributors in every country around the world.

― now let's play big lunch take little lunch (sic)

No I wouldn't. Being forgotten isn't a "right", it's a historical inevitability, and I'm perfectly fine submitting to that inevitability. My understanding is that what Hütter is doing is actively attempting (unsuccessfully; see also Streisand, Barbra) to keep people from hearing or knowing about those first three Kraftwerk records. I don't know why - his reasons are his own. Maybe he's ashamed by them, maybe he just regrets them. Whatever those feelings are he has an absolute right to them, but as I have heard those records, and the bootleg live recordings, and I love them, I will keep loudly and rudely disagreeing with him and telling everybody that those records, at least the first and third ones, are great and are nothing to regret or be ashamed of.

Soon Over Babaluma = best Can album.

My understanding is that what Hütter is doing is actively attempting (unsuccessfully; see also Streisand, Barbra) to keep people from hearing or knowing about those first three Kraftwerk records. I don't know why - his reasons are his own. Maybe he's ashamed by them, maybe he just regrets them

i think it's because he really, REALLY is into the idea of Kraftwerk as a full-fledged Man-Machine, in methodology and in musical output, and that vision didn't really fully cohere until Autobahn. not everyone would agree with that, and there are of course pre-Autobahn tracks that directly pave the way to the full man-machine experience. but from what i've read, that seems to be his perspective.

i was lucky enough to score nice, relatively affordable copies of the first three albums, but imo they should just re-release them under a different name (Organisation? wouldn't be strictly accurate though)

but yeah, in reference to this thread, the first 3 Kraftwerk albums are the exact opposite of the premise - they are the ones that hardcore fans should DEFINITELY seek out, no matter what hutter wants them to do. they are essential to understanding the rest of Kraftwerk's music

xp That would make Tone Float a Kraftwerk album, and even with the content of 1 and 2 it isn't really.

Yes arguably have a bunch of these...first one that comes to mind is Open Your Eyes but I think the new one (Heaven & Earth) is even more useless

i'd say 90125 (and big generator)

i think it's a great album, but it (and big generator) has almost nothing to do with the records before and after

My understanding is that what Hütter is doing is actively attempting (unsuccessfully; see also Streisand, Barbra) to keep people from hearing or knowing about those first three Kraftwerk records.

how on earth is he taking any action toward this end, if “not reissuing them” doesn’t even count

don't know why - his reasons are his own

as KM said, it’s very clear that he & Florian thought they’d finally gotten it right on Autobahn & happily went forward (there is only forward! no reverse on a racing bike) in that human / electronic mode from there.

"Soon Over Babaluma = best Can album." it's my favorite by some distance.

i think it's a great album, but it (and big generator) has almost nothing to do with the records before and after

that's true but it does have a #1 hit on it (which they still perform live) and several of the anthologies feature multiple cuts from that record. there is in fact a whole generation whose first exposure to Yes was that album. Big Generator I'd agree with. though Yes is sort of an odd example cuz that 80's band really should have been called something else.

amusingly King Crimson don't really have an album like this, despite shifting direction and personnel many times. I think their current live repertoire contains songs from all 13 of their studio albums.

Earthbound, but that's live. But generally overlooked.

Magma's Merci probably fits into this, a poor attempt at crossover pop-funk that pleased no-one and fell awkwardly between their previous album (from some 5 years before) and Vander's soon-to-follow project Offering.

yeah that's a good example though it's probably the album in this thread I dig the most. Side 2 is very nice.

you could almost argue that Attahk belongs here as well although that album's fucking great. they haven't referenced that era of the band in a long, long time have they?

Agree with Rushomancy that "Left-field records worth checking out by musicians you wouldn't expect!" would be a more worthwhile thread, but I'm glad this exists for tipping me off to the existence of Peggy Lee's Sea Shells, which is gently blowing my mind at the moment. Thanks for that, Josefa.

xpost I get why Merci is so divisive and reviled by many Magma fans, but I can’t comprehend writing it off entirely; “Eliphas Levi” is one of the most beautiful pieces of music in the world imo

i think they were doing "maahnt" live a couple years back, I haven't kept up with them because fascism.

Merci is a shitty crossover sell-out album but this being Magma it's a shitty crossover sellout album that includes a 12 minute piece dedicated to the 19th century occult mystic Eliphas Levi which contains a note for note rendition of McCoy Tyner's piano solo on "My Favorite Things".

Maybe 'The Sin of Pride' by the Undertones? They'd certainly moved away from where they started, seemingly without taking too many fans with them. When they made a couple of new albums in the mid-2000s they looped back to a more straight-up rock sound. Have to admit I've not listened to 'TSOP' for quite a while.

This thread has reminded me that I have Kraftwerk 2 on one of the Italian "reissue" CDs (not listened to it since buying it in the Virgin Megastore I worked in).

It's also made me realise that I don't have a copy of 'Soon Over Babaluma' despite thinking I did. I like 'Flow Motion', does it have its fans? Of the last three, I don't have 'Out of Reach' but did pick up 'Inner Space' and 'Rite Time' recently. I didn't mind 'Inner Space' on its own terms, but didn't think much of 'Rite Time'.

I enjoy it occasionally but one could say Ciccone Youth "The Whitey Album."

I really like "I Must Return", it's like Magma doing a musical. and "The Night We Died" too. something about that one melody is just golden.

I like 'Flow Motion', does it have its fans?

I think it does! I got to talk with James Murphy once and he went on a bunch about how much he loved the tune "I Want More"

Yeah, it was probably a bit daft of me to suggest 'Flow Motion' considering it contains one of their best-know songs!

Teenage Fanclub - The King. Is almost never mentioned and seems barely regarded as canon, even when it gets an RSD reissue