Me too. I don't know the conext you've posted this in, though yes, I'm also having some troubling times at the moment.

:(

I'm sorry to hear that friend.

If I had your talent, I'd like to think I'd be on top of the world!

talented? ha-ha :)
man, I am a 36 year old fart. My talent doesn't mean much, given the stuff I need to face on a daily basis.

but thanks :) you're very kind.

Pearl Jam
Live On Two Legs
1998, Kind of a perfect time for a live album. Pearl Jam was five albums deep in 1998 and Live On Two Legs does a fine job of presenting the band's discography, spreading itself around with tracks from each. "Even Flow" feels a bit rushed but the version of "Black" is great. "Daughter" mixes in Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World" and PJ's own "WMA," but "Elderly Woman" is the real Vs. stand-out here. Vitalogy is represented quite nice with live opener "Corduroy." "Hail Hail" and "Red Mosquito" appear here from No Code in super rocking form. And then of course there's selections from Yield which the band were touring in support of while making this live album. The version of "Do The Evolution" is quite excellent and feels even looser than the original. Songs like this and a cover of Young's "Fuckin' Up" work well to counterbalance a lot of the slower material taken from Vs., Vitalogy and Yield. Overall this is a nice solid representation of where the live band was at towards the end of the 90's. It feels like a good retrospective that also manages to stay pretty loose and fun.

SP fans can buy some of Billy Corgan's gear.

https://reverb.com/news/billy-corgan...t-shop-preview

I get it... I'm about the same age, and I feel the same way, but still...
I don't know. You said you were struggling with some things. I am too, and I've found cold comfort in the usual distractions. A few kind words have meant a lot though, and I mean it when I say you're talented.

I highly appreciate that, really, thank you.
What's been bothering you lately?

Remember the teaser commercial for this? The one that had "Corduroy" playing in the background? That psyched me up quite a bit at the time.

Misread and thought you said "fear." Crying while putting my credit card away.

No but I'm gonna YouTube that shit.

Weezer
The Lion And The Witch
2002, So Weezer wanted to make a live EP and limit it to 25,000 copies to be sold only in indie record stores. But the label got in the way. They for some reason urged the band to cut it down from eight songs to six, and that 25,000 wasn't so limited as my copy is in the 30,000's. It's a weird release. It chronicles the Maladroit tour in Japan - the first with Scott Shriner on bass. I mean, for fans it works. But it's got some odd decisions. Like why include this version of "El Scorcho" where Rivers botches lyrics? Or why this version of "Holiday" where Scott messes up his big vocal debut? Well that last one maybe because it was kind of funny. It's not bad though. "Island In The Sun" actually rocks here in a way the album version never did. And "Death And Destruction" feels way more fleshed out than on Maladroit. And dudes they nail "Falling For You" which Rivers doesn't sound confident will happen. But it's still a strangle little blip in their discography. At this point why not just get a proper live album really?



Ryan Adams & The Cardinals
Cold Roses
2005, The first of three albums Ryan Adams would release in 2005, and this one is a double album! Like most of his albums this one comes with a theme of sorts. This is The Cardinals' Grateful Dead album. I mean, it's even got "Roses" in the title. It's nice. It's certainly not one I reach for often, but it has a certain relaxed charm. The kind of album I throw on in the background while cleaning the house, but not something I necessarily pay close attention to. "Magnolia Mountain" is a pretty solid opener, but honestly I feel like the second disc is heavier with the good stuff. "Easy Plateau" and "Let It Ride" are just great chill-out tracks. "If I Am A Stranger" is far and away my favorite here with some of the most poignant lyrics on this record. And the closer, "Friends" is just gorgeous. Overall, it's a really good album but that's something tough in a discography of great albums.

and because it's weird that this is the SY forum, and I don't really spend as much time talking about my favorite band as I do listening to them...


Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
1982, When I was 18 or 19 I realized that Sonic Youth was my favorite band ever. I went crazy tracking down all their albums. And this - their debut - took me over a year as it was out of print and I was determined to find them all without resorting to the internet. This one was out of print but I finally found it in a shop in Boston for $25. It was worth every penny. "The Burning Spear" is a brilliant way to begin a career with it's dubby bass line, electric drill and opening manifesto of "I'm not afraid to say I'm scared." "I Dreamed I Dream" is amazing. It is a slow beautiful dirge with Lee and Kim doing a rare duet. "She Is Not Alone" is near tribal. This record just came out of nowhere and created the blueprint for an incredible career. Though it was only five tracks (with the band still insisting it was an album), it was finally put back into print in 2006 with a second half that featured the earliest live recordings officially released by the band. This is just excellent.

I found what I later realized was a bootleg version of this at a used record store in Vancouver in, like, 1999. It was enough at the time though. Listening to the official re-release was kind of a revelation. I realized "I Dreamed I Dream" was one of my favorite Sonic Youth songs. It's definitely different (Richard on drums and whatnot) but I think it's a good first step.
I actually didn't realize the band "insisted" it was an album. Really seems more EP to me, so that's how I think of it. I conisider Bad Moon Rising to be the band's true, full-length debut. But there's a lot to love about this release. It's definitely primitive, and almost, like, primordial sounding -- like you can hear the band crawling out of some oozy Cretaceous pit and moving slithering its way toward proper evolution. Sort of like Swans in that respect.
There are some reggae influences, and the entire sound of the thing is just really clean and normal sounding compared to what came next, but I still think it's an essential part of the their discography, and I don't really get why it sometimes gets a bad rap from critics.
I remember it was on a Rolling Stone list of "worst first albums by great bands" or something, and I would never categorize it as such. That's not just because I don't think of it as an album, but I honestly think it sews the seeds of the sound that would develop very well, and it places SY firmly in the Sonic context of the NYC no-wave scene, which they were certainly a part of.
Anyway, good shit. I don't listen to it often, but I probably listen to it more than Confusion is Sex.

Things didn't really fully gell until Bad Moon, but this is a necessary piece of the puzzle. I'm so glad they reissued it.

I found a mixtape of all the Kanye GOOD Friday tracks from 2009-2010. I've been listening to it a lot. I guess it's borderline "pirating," but all the tracks were released for free, and I just happened to locate it on DatPiff or something, listed right alongside the Freshman Adjustment and Graduate and Can't Buy Me Nothing mixtapes. So, I can assume the record company knows it's out there and doesn't care. Conscience clean.

I'm sort of shocked by the quality of some of these tracks. The standouts (aside from the tracks that would appear on later records) are "GOOD Friday," "Don't Stop," and "Christian Dior Denim Flow," and they're all album-quality. I'm not nuts about the Big Sean verses... it's almost like they were tacked on to the end of "Christian Dior..." and others just to act as a placeholder. It even sounds a bit like the production fades when Sean's verses kick in, as though he's doing it by himself after the fact. Not awesome. He's not great.
But still, "Don't Stop" is just an all-aces track with one of the best sample loops in Kanye production history. I sometimes wonder what might have been if Child Rebel Solider had actually released an album... but in this context it really feels more like a Kanye featuring Pharrell and Lupe track, which is fine with me. It's strong in every regard (use of the word "faggot" aside... that irks me a bit... who was that, Pharrell? Ugh. What a weird guy). I think it would have worked on MBDTF. It's the best of the bunch in terms of consistency and quality. And it probably ranks among my favorite Kanye tracks... at least in the top 20.

Anyway, it's cool to look at this testing-the-Waters period prior to MBDTF, when Kanye was just unleashing this tidal wave of free music to the world. And of course this is where "Devil in a new Dress" and the ungodly awesome "So Appalled" originated. Not to mention "Christmas in Harlem" which was later (wisely) trimmed down and officially released as a single and part of some sort of Xmas compilation... I forget which. It's a great Christmas song with an infectious, soulful vocal and a really warm and cheery atmosphere. The final version trimmed it back to just Kanye, Cyhi the Prince and Teyana Taylor, and it's a good 2 minutes shorter, but works better as a single and as a Christmas track.

It's funny that most of these amounted to throwaways, but the compiled Fridays tracks still sound better and more interesting than 90% of the world's hip-hop, then or now.

I had that mixtape years ago. Good stuff.

Why don't you consider Confusion to be their first album? It originally had 9 songs where Bad Moon originally had 8.

Yeah, I guess you're right. It's just really short (35 min.), and the modern packaging lumps it together with KYI, which gives it an EP feel. But yeah, I suppose Confusion is probably their first "album"-album.

I still don't think things helped until Bad Moon Rising, which is just, like, insane. Explosive and glorious and fucking violent and spooky and everything that SY was all about. It was the first time their sound was really, fully realized.

But yah. I mean, I guess if the band insists s/t is an album then it's an album. But it's never quite felt like one to me. S'all

And yeah, I've had the GOOD Fridays songs individually for years, but I never really was sure I had everything. So I downloaded the mixtape, and turns out all I was missing was "Runaway Love." But still, it's nice to hear everything back to back like that.

"Don't Stop!" Has been one of my favorite Kanye songs since I first got into Kanye. INSANE to me that that track didn't make MBDTF. It's, like, the best throwaway track ever.

I personally love Confusion. More so than Bad Moon by a hair.

Confusion is fine, but not even close to BMR in my book. BMR is up there with their absolute best. Took me a while to realize that, but once I did, it stuck the fuck with me.