Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine So, what are you listening to?

This chestnut.

My favorite period for The Black Watch was during the time that J'Ana Jacoby was in the band. Their later stuff seems good, I grant you. But it somehow lacks the push-and-pull that John Andrew Frederick seemed to have with Jacoby when they were working together.

Anyway, if you have 77 cents plus postage that you're not doing anything with, you could do a lot worse than this mini CD. It's got Cure-ish flourishes and sugar-sweet strings (used more for irony than for real sentiment), and Frederick and Jacoby both sing like SoCalifornia angels with English degrees (or maybe just plain old Anglophilia) and snarky little horns visible just below their halos.

Hmmm...ironic use of strings could be a turn-off for me.

I'll listen to yours if you listen to one of mine.

(And hopefully Lardy won't sue me for stealing that line from him.)

Poor Lardy. I never did remember to follow through on that.

And if you want un-ironic strings, there's always XTC's Apple Venus (I only own the stringless demos: Homegrown and Homespun, at present.) Or anything by Ralph Vaughn Williams.

Cleome, you've given me the idea to play some XTC later. Thanks.

Funnily enough, my favorite albums of theirs are the two they recorded with outside producers -- "Skylarking" (Todd Rundgren), and the ever-underrated "Nonsuch" (Gus Dudgeon, who, unlike Rundgren, didn't see the album through to completion.)

Nonsuch had the bad luck to come out at the ascendancy of the <strike>Mallternative</strike> Grunge era.

So did the Throwing Muses' Red Heaven, which I think of as being one of the best rock albums ever. TM and XTC don't have much else in common apart from doggedly doing whatever the frak they feel like doing, and to blazes with what's popular. That's why I love them both so much.

Another album that got buried in the early 90s youthquake was the Psychedelic Furs' "World Outside," which was their best since "Forever Now." The Butler brothers then tried to jump on a bandwagon with their next band Love Spit Love, which has been lost to the tides while the best of the Furs endures. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

I like the Furs but could never have admitted that in the Eighties. I was too big a snob.

Donald Fagen, "The Nightfly" - One half of the Steely Dan braintrust retains the smooth sounds of L.A.'s finest sessioneers, but tones down the irony considerably. The result is a surprsingly warm and clear-eyed album, Fagen looking back at his formative years -- specifically the late 50s/early 60s -- affectionately but lucidly, avoiding the soppy nostalgia that most of the rest of his generation fell prey to (although that didn't stop Howard Jones from taking the lyrics to "I.G.Y." at face value and doing a clueless cover version.)

Lately I've been relistening to Simon and Garfunkels Bridge over troubled water. The only living boy in New York always reminds me of Oliver's dad. Things may not have worked out with him but I still love that song.

After reading the posts above I'm going to dig out some Madness and Psychodelic Furs and relive my twenties

Have fun, Harbi.

I like Simon & Garfunkel a lot, their solo careers not so much, especially not Simon's. I think that, like a lot of rock stars, he lost touch with the everyday world at some point, and his lyrics became patronizing and pretentious. Just my opinion.

Had a road trip to Dartmouth just before Christmas so I took the opportunity to switch out the CDs in the car. This is what's now been in rotation since then:

Led Zeppelin - Box Set Disc 2

Sloan - One Chord to Another

White Stripes - Elephant

Beck - Mellow Gold

Cure - Kiss me, Kiss me, Kiss me

Pure Funk (Various Artists)

I've been listening to a lot of 60s stuff lately. Right now I'm going through a Byrds phase. Their first half-dozen albums are rarely less than interesting. The one I have on right now is The Notorious Byrd Brothers, whose opening track, the brass-driven "Artificial Energy", just had to have influenced the first Teardrop Explodes album!

FWIW, Art Garfunkel's Scissors Cut is mostly a sweet, unassuming record that probably would've been heavily played on "Adult Contemporary" stations or on VH1 if either had existed at the time. Some of the songs cry out for full-blown cheese-laden arrangements that they sadly didn't get. Which makes sense, given that most or all of them were written by the dude who wrote "MacArthur Park."

Case in point. (The YouTube poster not only gets the title wrong, they attribute it to the wrong LP. "Watermark" isn't bad, but its arrangements sound even more dated now than the SC ones do.)

I'd love to hear this one again. Maybe it's about to cycle around into "so-bad-it's-good" territory, whereupon billions of irony-loving hipsters will pounce on the vinyl version and drive its price up into the triple digits. (Not that anyone should pay that much, but... )

Garfunkel sings songs by Jimmy Webb? How could I refuse? Thanks for the heads-up and for the sample track, Cleome.

Maybe it'll help me forgive Garfunkel for doing that smugly deadpan cover of Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life."

The saddest thing is that most of the current country-pop princesses actually make Amy Grant look good!

Funnily enough, one of the very few that I like is American Idol alum Carrie Underwood. Especially her first album, "Some Hearts."

Even funnier, one of the songs she sang on AI was..."MacArthur Park."

Been listening to mostly hard rock stuff. Old AC/DC, zep. And some country. Older stuff from the 90's somewhat.

Medusa by Annie Lennox, her version of the clash song Train in Vain is fantastic!

Love that album, Harbinger. You inspired me to post a Youtube link on the Amazing Covers thread. She also does the most haunting cover of "Whiter Shade of Pale" on Medusa.

The early Byrds albums are terrific! They not only had solid hits but put together nice broad perspective albums. They get tons of praise for their harmonizing--and rightly so--but u think sometimes they're underrated for their talent as musicians beyond that. Great array of instruments, grew lead vocals, the occasional off the beaten path arrangement...all groovy stuff!

I agree 100%, Cobie.

In fact, you've inspired me to give their "Mr. Tambourine Man" album yet another spin right now. Thanks.

Then, as an added bonus, I'll put on the Turtles' "You Showed Me", which was written by the Byrds' Clark & McGuinn, but abandoned at the demo stage.

Right now, I'm listening to this 80s gem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c98qdFQF7sw

badmotorfinger

3 days on repeat in the car and it hasn't gotten old yet.

When the kids are in the car though, we're listening to The White Stripes' Icky Thump. My son loves "Conquest", and my daughter likes "Prickly Thorn"

I'm currently hooked on 3 divas: Rumer, Lana Del Rey & Imelda May.
Also recently discovered Dum Dum Girls & Those Darlins, two pop/punk girl bands.