Greil Marcus' desert island selections - c. 1979

[David R. Modny]

Love AHDN the most of the first four - except for 'When I Get Home' which still makes my skin crawl.

[lukpac]

Love AHDN the most of the first four - except for 'When I Get Home' which still makes my skin crawl.

Probably the weakest on side 2, but I'll take it over Tell Me Why...

[Andreas]

So I can pick apart the list and add condescending comments? Great !

> Beach Boys
> Best of the Beach Boys, Vol. 2 (1967)*
> Beach Boys’ Party (1965)
> Wild Honey (1967)

Very strange selections. Pet Sounds is the crowning album achievement of the band. If you don't pick Pet Sounds, you should stick to compilations.

> Beatles
> Live! At the Star Club
> Please Please Me
> With the Beatles
> A Hard Day’s Night
> Beatles for Sale
> Rubber Soul
> Revolver
> The Beatles

Pepper and Abbey Road purposely avoided beacuse of the hype surrounding these two? Very clever....not. I'd pick A Hard Day's Night, Rubber Soul, Revolver and Abbey Road.

> Byrds
> Mr. Tambourine Man
> Turn! Turn! Turn!
> The Notorious Byrd Brothers

That leaves out their most consistent album, Younger Than Yesterday.

> Cream
> Fresh Cream

I would definitely pick Disraeli Gears and Wheels Of Fire before.

> Creedence Clearwater Revival
> Green River
> Willy and the Poor Boys

And leave out their best album Cosmo's Factory?

> Marvin Gaye
> Super Hits*

Why not an album? What's Going is probably the best album that came out in 1971. And I am aware of its competition from that year.


> Elton John
> Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Elton John's grand slam was the series of albums "Elton John", "Tumbleweed Connection", "Madman Across The Water" and "Honkey Chateau", with the majestic arrangements by Paul Buckmaster (sp?). GBYBR is awfully overrated in my opinion.

> Kinks
> The Kinks’ Greatest Hits!*
> Something Else by the Kinks

Well...I think there are few more albums to be considered, to put it mildly.

> Led Zeppelin
> Led Zeppelin IV

Desert island? That would be LZ III for me, and maybe HOTH.


> Steely Dan
> Countdown to Ecstasy
> Pretzel Logic
> Katy Lied

Understandable choices, but I am more and more convinced that Can't Buy A Thrill set the Steely Dan standard, and they just continued to meet this standard.

> Who
> The Who Sing My Generation
> Happy Jack [A Quick One]
> The Who Sell Out

Already discussed, but really! A Quick One as a desert island album?? Instead of .... all others?

[lukpac]

> Byrds
> Mr. Tambourine Man
> Turn! Turn! Turn!
> The Notorious Byrd Brothers

That leaves out their most consistent album, Younger Than Yesterday.

Good point. Missed that one.

> Cream
> Fresh Cream

I would definitely pick Disraeli Gears and Wheels Of Fire before.

I don't know. I think I might have even picked a comp here instead.

> Elton John
> Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Elton John's grand slam was the series of albums "Elton John", "Tumbleweed Connection", "Madman Across The Water" and "Honkey Chateau", with the majestic arrangements by Paul Buckmaster (sp?). GBYBR is awfully overrated in my opinion.

Indeed.

[Rspaight]

> Beatles
> Live! At the Star Club
> Please Please Me
> With the Beatles
> A Hard Day’s Night
> Beatles for Sale
> Rubber Soul
> Revolver
> The Beatles

Pepper and Abbey Road purposely avoided beacuse of the hype surrounding these two? Very clever....not. I'd pick A Hard Day's Night, Rubber Soul, Revolver and Abbey Road.

I'd say it's almost as much of a cliche at this point to pick Revolver as it is to pick Pepper. But in '79 it was probably different. Sub in the White Album for Abbey Road, and I'd agree with your picks.

> Creedence Clearwater Revival
> Green River
> Willy and the Poor Boys

And leave out their best album Cosmo's Factory?

Agreed. I like Willy *slightly* more than Cosmo's, but can't imagine leaving Cosmo's off and including S/T and River.

> Elton John
> Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Elton John's grand slam was the series of albums "Elton John", "Tumbleweed Connection", "Madman Across The Water" and "Honkey Chateau", with the majestic arrangements by Paul Buckmaster (sp?). GBYBR is awfully overrated in my opinion.

Yes. There's probably a great single LP lurking in there, but the double set is flabby.

> Led Zeppelin
> Led Zeppelin IV

Desert island? That would be LZ III for me, and maybe HOTH.

Like Who's Next, Zep IV has been played into the ground for me (though "When The Levee Breaks" may well be their best track). I like II and Graffiti.

> Steely Dan
> Countdown to Ecstasy
> Pretzel Logic
> Katy Lied

Understandable choices, but I am more and more convinced that Can't Buy A Thrill set the Steely Dan standard, and they just continued to meet this standard.

I agree.

> Who
> The Who Sing My Generation
> Happy Jack [A Quick One]
> The Who Sell Out

Already discussed, but really! A Quick One as a desert island album?? Instead of .... all others?

Also agree. Quick One is a weak LP. But at least Roger got a bitchin' Volvo coupe from his songwriting advance.

Ryan

[lukpac]

Also agree. Quick One is a weak LP. But at least Roger got a bitchin' Volvo coupe from his songwriting advance.

I think it's another "whole is greater than the sum of the parts". That could be said for My Generation too, though, and probably Sell Out as well (although I'd say Sell Out holds together a bit better as a collection of individual songs).

[Rspaight]

My only beef with My Generation is that I never really bought the Who as an R&B covers band, despite Roger's best efforts. It worked for the Stones, but didn't seem right for the Who somehow. So that material never completely worked for me. (Though I think they did a bang-up version of "Leavin' Here.") The Townshend tracks on that album are good-to-great, and "The Ox" is a lot of fun.

Ryan

[Xenu]

Well, at least the Who limited it to one album...

[lukpac]

Well, at least the Who limited it to one album...

You don't like the early Stones stuff?

[Xenu]

I like it, but I rarely feel like casually listening to it. Some of it is how disjointed the post-self-titled albums sound, though.

[JohnS]

If he found himself on a desert island with all those records, I'd hate to have been a porter loading his luggage.
But it's a pretty good snapshot of may people's musical tastes in those post-punk years: 1950s R&B/R&R, 1960s beat/soul/R&B, late 70s new wave = good; early/mid 70s 'hippy' bands = bad.
Re. the Who line-in-the-sand: I always preferred the early, club-era Who to the stadium-rock band, and could take or leave Townsend's 'arty' projects (rock opera? Give me an album of standalone songs any day, although A Quick One is great) But as I get older, I'm liking the 70s stuff more...

[czeskleba]

The predominant aesthetic seems to be "their early stuff was better" with just about every band (with a few bizarre exceptions like the VU... and for the record, I've never understood how anyone who claims to like the VU can think Loaded is their best album).

The Beach Boys picks seem willfully perverse or arbitrary. I think they illustrate the fact that the BB were held in pretty low critical esteem back then compared to now. The whole "Pet Sounds is one of the greatest rock albums ever/Brian Wilson is a genius" concept is pretty new.

I wonder if he didn't like Armed Forces or if he wrote the list before it came out?

It seems strange that someone who dismisses all of 70's Who would like Led Zeppelin IV.

[Andreas]

The whole "Pet Sounds is one of the greatest rock albums ever/Brian Wilson is a genius" concept is pretty new.

I think it came into fashion in the mid 90's. The film I Just Wasn't Made For These Times (by Don Was) came out that year. And there was this Mojo greatest albums list in 1995, which was topped by Pet Sounds.
http://surfermoon.com/essays/mojo_albums.html

[MK]

The audience for Pet Sounds was always there, but it sure took awhile for everything to align. The Brits loved it, a cult following grew through the 1970's, so much that Dave Marsh (the politically liberal but musically conservative rock critic) started trashing it in the Rolling Stone Album Guide. I think the first edition said it was a rip-off of Sgt. Pepper, but apparently someone informed Marsh that it came BEFORE Pepper, which prompted a slight rewrite for the next edition (which still had its share of Marsh boners - Michael Jackson's "Betty Jean Is Not My Lover" anybody?)

Then "Doonesbury" had that Pulitzer Prize-winning run where a man dying of AIDS listens to it in his final hours (they reprinted the whole thing for that impressive Pet Sounds Sessions box set), which I think came a few years before that Mojo poll, and I know Entertainment Weekly and other mainstream periodicals were hailing it as a masterpiece by the the mid-90's - EW pegged it as one of the 10 best CD's of all-time in 1994 as part of some contest promotion where you win the 100 best CD's of all-time as chosen by their staff.

[CitizenDan]

I wonder if he didn't like Armed Forces or if he wrote the list before it came out?

The latter.