just wondering. the recent bout of IQ-related threads here and seeing that rare menel-era festival performance (1988) on youtube has prompted me to dive back into their catalogue which i hadn't listened to for a while. IQ have produced their fair share of immortal (neo) prog classics – but the one song that i keep coming back to naming it as what epitomises them best (imho anyway!) has to be “it all stops here”. i look forward to reading yours.
Sacred Sound does it for me. One of the best tracks from the last 20 years.
Not in any order except the first which is my clear favorite:
Headlong
Human Nature
Last Human Gateway
Widow's Peak
Magic Roundabout
Intelligent Quotient
Further Away
Speak My Name
Didn't care as much for this band until I listened to one of their live Holland shows. The Magic Roundabout is great.
- the entire Frequency album
- The Seventh House
- Guiding Light
- Sacred Sound
- The Narrow Margin
- Constellations
- Ocean
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...
Headlong
Wurensh
Came Down
Fascination
Headlong
Human Nature
What if the Hokey Cokey really IS what it's all about?
My ability to enjoy IQ is somewhat hindered by the fact that I think The Last Human Gateway is their best song.
Hard for me to choose, but I'll go for The Narrow Margin, Guiding Light or Harvest of Souls. Lots of good older stuff and newer stuff too, too hard to choose one song!
Can't we just dig up one of those old polls from PE 2.0?
Anyways, in no particular order...
- Nostalgia/Falling Apart at the Seams (high point of the Menel era IMO)
- Harvest of Souls (sure, a blatant "Supper's Ready" homage -- but it's a good 'un)
- Further Away
- Leap of Faith
- Intelligent Quotient
- Outer Limits/The Wake/The Magic Roundabout (best when heard together)
- Widow's Peak
- Headlong
- It All Stops Here (live version)
- N.T.O.C. (their best flat-out rocker)
- Common Ground (the live versions are especially poignant)
- The Seventh House
- The Last Human Gateway (the live rendition of the end section is nice, but I need the whole enchilada)
- Awake and Nervous
- (Honorable Mention) Stomach of Animal
I'm holding out for the Wilson-mixed 5.1 super-duper walletbuster special anniversary extra adjectives edition.
"Life Support" from Frequency is my favorite, I think. Lovely verse/chorus, and the Hacketty finale is sublime.
"Arf." -- Frank Zappa, "Beauty Knows No Pain" (live version)
For me, it has to be:
Harvest Of Souls
The Darkest hour
Subterranea
Every album has at least one classic, but these are the ones I find myself most often drawn to
Last Human gateway
The enemy smacks
Common Ground
Frequency
"The Enemy Smacks" is probably my favourite but I love almost all of their stuff. "Widow's Peak" is a close second!
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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Closer
Speak my name
The Narrow Margin
The Wrong side of weird
Without walls
Guiding light
The Road of bones
Last Human Gateway
Harvest of Souls
Headlong
The Last Human Gateway
The Enemy Smacks
The Thousand Days
After that, it gets kind of fuzzy for me because although I really like the albums after Peter Nicholls came back, I don't really know the titles of the songs all that well. Time for an IQ listening binge I suppose.
...or you could love
All of my favorites are post Subterranea, which was when Nicholls singing really improved. Also the band as a whole took 3 steps forward in production, sound, and composition.
Harvest of Souls
The Seventh House
Sacred Sound
Constellations
Frequency
Without Walls
The Province of the King
The Wrong Side of Weird
The Road of Bones
Erosion
Headlong has always been number one for me. It's the older songs I know best and am most fond of, so I'd add gateway, widows peak, magic roundabout, it all stops here and awake and nervous to the list. like Jeremy bender I find it difficult to nail down the later albums, but there are always standout tracks on every release. Constellations is excellent and I have a soft spot for closer. I listened to subterranea a lot and Capricorn and narrow margin are the standout tracks for me. I feel like I need a mammoth session to listen to the later CDs which I don't know as well.
It's good to see some mention of the paul menel albums they bring back a lot of happy memories, human nature is the high point, it was great to see him playing at summersend with Martin orford, although his own material wasn't really to my taste.
I'm really looking forward to hearing the road of bones material live at bilston at the end of May, so I will need to do plent of listening so I can put names to titles which I'm finding it increasingly harder to do in general.
Frequency is not my favorite CD by IQ but the song is one of my favorite of theirs.
It is really impossible to narrow a list from such
prolific producers of great music but here is a try...
The Last Human Gateway
Awake and Nervous
The Magic Roundabout
Sleepless Incidental
Guiding Light
Sacred Sound
Harvest of Souls
Frequency
Without Walls
but the winner is ...Further Away !!
Oh heck- all their stuff is epic...
Weird.......I am on my lunch break at work (I work nights), and have my I-Pod on shuffle play in my office. 10 minutes ago "Sacred Sound" popped up and played. I have over 10,000 songs on my I-Pod, so what are the chances. Anyway.....I was totally digging it and agree it is a fantastic song.Originally Posted by Jubal
Picking a single favorite would be very difficult. I really like "Harvest Of Souls" a lot, but man there are so many it is hard to pick.
Great list emporerken. "The Wrong Side of Weird" is a great one too, along with "Constellations" and I was pleasantly shocked to see both in Montreal. Very unexpected! For myself, I'd actually add "Hardcore". That ending section is amazing.
Another great list. I remember getting "Dark Matter" and putting it in my CD walkman for the first time and "taking it to the road" with "Sacred Sound". Great tune and what an opening track! Further Away too, another amazing one.
OK, I'll stop now, as I realise I like all of these lists.
In no particular order:
The Last Human Gateway
The Enemy Smacks
The Wrong Side of Weird
Came Down
The Seventh House
Guiding Light
Sacred Sound
and many more!
'The smell of strange colours are heard everywhere'- Threshold
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