"Charting The Single" and "Punch And Judy" came before "Kayleigh"... which BTW to me is very much the typical sound of the band at that time, certainly from an instrumentation point of view. The chorus is perhaps more 'major key' sounding than their usual, but even then the lyrics are very much in Fish's 'drunken poet' style. Overall it's very Marillion sounding to my ears... If I were to pick a Marillion track that is "UN-sounding" for them, it would be much later on, something like "House" or "Hope For The Future".
Yeah, compared to their other stuff! I know it's the one they are known for, but it shouldn't be IMO. Give me "Eruption" or Hamburger Concerto any day. That's Focus.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
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ELO -- "Don't Bring Me Down". Though they have later stuff in the same mold, it was the first ELO song without strings (which pretty much went against the whole concept of the band), and it certainly stands out among their "hits".
This would have been my first choice but since it's just a solo piece by Kath and not a band effort, I went with "Oh Thank You Great Spirit".
Be Bop Deluxe - "Rocket Cathedrals" from Axe Victim album. The only BBD song not sung by Bill Nelson; it has bassist Robert Bryan singing lead. Brian Setzer covered this tune! Another choice could be "Futurist Manifesto", a bonus track released later that is sort of an ambient electronica soundscape with Nelson doing a spoken word thing over it.
You say Mega Ultra Deluxe Special Limited Edition Extended Autographed 5-LP, 3-CD, 4-DVD, 2-BlueRay, 4-Cassette, five 8-Track, MP4 Download plus Demos, Outtakes, Booklet, T-Shirt and Guitar Pick Gold-Leafed Box Set Version like it's a bad thing...
^^^ Eminence Front, The Who.... good choice!
i always thought that this was probably a track Pete was gonna use on a solo album.
but someone probably convinced him to do it as a Who song... 'WE NEED A HIT' syndrome.
CCR - Rude Awakening #2. Gentle guitar instrumental morphing into 5 minutes of free-form noise improv. In particular if you just played somebody the second part, they would never guess it was Creedence.
I think a lot of people don't pay attention to the lyric for Hope For The Future and give it short shrift. It's about how we draw from ancient emotional memories in the limbic system, or something like that, and how our ancient memories can give us enthusiasm and hope for our future. Apparently Mark Kelly was reading a pseudo-science magazine called Fortean Times. So the more old-world musical motif and joyfulness make some sense, even if it's not perfectly executed.
Nah. Cry If You Want is by a star mile the better track [and the best one] from that shit album.
Easily their best, though not their only goos stuff over their first three albums... an instrumental about a french winter wind (wonder how they even knew about that kind of stuff)
don't know if one can say yodelling is a Focus tramark, but Tijs certainly enjoyed weird vocal forms (Harem Scarem, for ex)
Well that makes two good tracks from a suck shit album, which is two more than the execrable Face Dances had to offer
However, I don't think either songs are un-Who-like (except that Daltrey doesn't sing on it)
EF is synth-driven like Who are you or Baba were.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
There are four good The Who songs on It's Hard the album - those two we already mentioned, and also Dangerous and It's Your Turn (both by John Entwistle). Actually, those all songs per se weren't bad composed at all, but the album was completely ruined with that, say, "techno" production which was not suitable for the band like The Who - not even in the 80s. But Mr Townshend was in the middle age crisis, and that is that...
Last edited by Svetonio; 07-24-2016 at 11:50 AM.
Last edited by Svetonio; 07-24-2016 at 11:48 AM.
Just read the last few posts. Wow, IMO you guys are overly rough in Face Dances and It's Hard. I like both those albums. I guess during those years I wasn't expecting another Who's Next.
Pendragon - Red Shoes
(If you've never heard this song, for god's sake don't listen to it!)
Nah. The production(s) of those solo albums are completely different, and extremely successful in comparison with shitty production of It's Hard album.
You mentioned Athena. It's a great example of what I try to say 'cause even that Pete's demo of the song (entitled Teresa) sounds better than the album version which is mediocre.
I can't stand 'Athena', that stupid hook drives me up the wall. It's Hard is perhaps slightly better than Face Dances but neither holds a candle to what they recorded in the 60s and 70s.
The most un-Who tracks I can think of are 'Did You Steal My Money' and 'In The Ether'. The former is plain horrible, the latter isn't a bad song but is horribly sung by Townshend, who for some reason chose to impersonate Tom Waits on it.
With '...Money', that spoken 'did you steal my money' going around the stereo spectrum all the way through makes me so mad I can't listen to that track. In fact the whole album is seriously overproduced, but this was the nadir.
Last edited by JJ88; 04-16-2017 at 12:08 PM.
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