As I walked to my car, someone emerged from the shadows and knocked me on the head! When I came to my senses, I discovered that the Notorious Mjt! posted the following on my blog:
Hey!
Just thought of this - and thought of you - and your blog - and felt compelled to zip this off to you.
Bear with me...
I'm sitting here at work tapping away on my computer while listening to XTC's Oranges and Lemons, and it struck me as to how perfect an album it is. I love every song on it - I think it's XTC's best work (their "peak", if you will - just my opinion of course) - and it would be less of a work if any song or sound were missing or even if the play order was different. It is complete, and whole, and exactly right for itself, and it's intent, at that time and place - in other words: perfect.
So that made me think. How many truly perfect albums are there like that? I mean, there's are tons of cool albums, and everybody has their favorites. But there's always the "That song was awesome, but this one- not so much". Or the "I wish they'd started the album with this track instead of that" (Steely Dan's Aja immediately comes to mind for that one - they TOTALLY should have started with the title track instead of Black Cow!). You know what I mean?
I can think of a few other possible contenders. Pink Floyd's DARK SIDE OF THE MOON was my next thought. It's arguably not their most influential work - like The Wall. And yet it seems more complete and true to itself than any of their other albums. And each song flows from one to the next as if that was the only order they could have possibly been in. It's internal consistency is without flaw, IMHO.
Pat Metheny's LETTER FROM HOME came to mind, too. I could listen to that album on eternal replay over and over again. It's not like As Falls Wichita So Falls Witita Falls - which has the awesome title suite (it's really more than one track), with a few other numbers tacked on to the end. Each individual song on Letter From Home seems like it segues to the next, as if the whole album is one great big extended composition. Perfect.
Does this make sense? Can you think of any others? And would your readership have some suggestions? The more I think about this, the more I'm interested to hear what others think about it.
Mjt!
Despite the throbbing pain in my skull, I will list a few albums that, in my mind, fit your criteria:
1. Pete Townshend, White City
2. Talking Heads, Remain in Light
3. Dave Brubeck, Take Five
4. Paul Simon, Graceland
5. Miles Davis, Kind of Blue
Ok, posters, it's your turn!
8 Comments:
This question is deceptively hard, as I try to separate albums which are objectively masterpieces of production from those which simply mean enough to me to play over and over. I'll try:
- Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's
I mean, wouldn't you have to include this one?
- Bob Dylan, Nashville Skyline
A perfect folk ("Americana"?)album.
- Randy Newman, Good Old Boys
Newman's a genius, but I don't think any single one of his albums so thoroughly explores the tender, ridiculous, and deplorable aspects of a theme as this one. Later albums have great songs, but in no particular memorable order. Listen to this album in the intended order and you know the misplaced sense of pride and regret that is a life in the American South.
- Warren Zevon, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School
The best title of any album ever, I think, though I'm not sure why. It's not any sort of concept album like Sgt. Pepper's or Good Old Boys could be labelled, but it is perfectly written and produced.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
These are some of my favorites that I couldn't pin down as being inequivocably perfect.
- something by Frank Zappa
Some people may see him as an erratic, inconsistent, creative genius... but I think he was enough of a composer to really know what he was doing every second of most of his albums.
- Toad the Wet Sprocket, Pale
Not at the top of many favorite lists, but I could listen to it over and over. Though the songs are not strictly related, the album works as a piece.
- John Prine, The Missing Years ...?
- The Pogues, If I Should Fall From Grace of God ...?
- Harry Nilsson, maybe Son of Schmilsson ...?
Many people would include Nilsson Schmilsson on such a list, but I think it's marred by the wimpy "Without You." I think Son of... is more consistent.
- something by Elvis Costello, because he's one of my favorites... but which? King of America? Imperial Bedroom? My opinion is always changing.
That's the best I can do. Whew!
Putting aside Notorious MJT's mushy ass Byron cribing, and the good Dr. Dan's existential quandry over the nature of quality as it relates to albums, motorcycles, zen, and what ever (Phaedrus, call your office), here are my picks. They are as unencumbered by MJT's original criteria as they are by any recognition of conventional spelling and/or gramatical rules. In a word they are "pure":
1) Bruce Cockburn's - "Stealing Fire": Elequent, angry, tender, and hopefull. True story, HummidCedar once snatched the last copy of "Stealing Fire" from the sale bin just befor I could grab it. I insisted that as the Commie I should allways get first pick from the Cockburn bin, but HumidCedar just scouled and told me to 'get a hair cut Commie'. He then proceeded to lecture me for 20 minuets on the merits of capitalisum as they relate to competitive album hunting and I had to listen because he was driveing. Moral of story: Life is not fair: always keep your rocket launcer handy.
2) Jeff Black - Bermingham Road : Lost in the great Truck Theft of 2005. Flawless. Dr. Dan and I tried to see him at SXSW a couple of years ago, unfortunatly the show was at Stubs and we got screwed. Moral of this Story: Never go to Stubs and again, always keep your rocket launcher handy.
3) del Amitri: "Waking Hours"
4) Dream So Real - "Rough Night In Jericho"
5) David and David - Welcome to the Boomtown - best album of the 80's
6) Something by Live: But is "Mental Jewlery" or "V" the more perfect ... must research.
7) Jim White - "Wrong-Eyed Jesus"
8) Micheal Penn - "March" : Saw him live at the Tunnel Club. "Toad the Wet Sprocket" was the warmup act.
I can neither confirm nor deny Mad Science's story. He may have been hallucinating.
These are great picks! The only one I have issue with is Bob Dylan's "Nashville Skyline". I think I can trace many of my personal issues to the fact that I had to listen to Bob Dylan and Johny Cash sing that duet during my formative years, as my parents also think that album is the bees knees. I think they play that song over loudspeakers in certain third world countries as a form of crowd control. Little known fact: if I am served quiche while listening to that album, I will explode. I can only do that trick once. Of course, that's just me.
I should have added Jackson Brown - "Running on Empty".
And every word I said about the "Stealing Fire" incident was true. I have video - unfortunaly it's on beta-max, but still.
Having had more time to think about this (between bouts of RDF hacking) I have decided that:
1) Whiskeytown's "Stranger's Almanac" is a perfect alt-country album. Son Volt's "Trace" may be perfect as well. I hesitate to say so definativly only because the CD was lost in the Great Truck Theft of 2005- an incedent which, somewhat ironicly, cost me a good number of CDs but did not actualy cost me my truck.
2) Uncle Tubelo's "Anodyne": Bitches Pleese! Why I got to be the one always drag'n yo asses t'wards enlightenment and prefection?
3) A3's "Exile on Cold Harbor Lane" is the closest thing I have found to a perfect County Acid House album.
So I was flipping through the vinyl records at Half Price today (or "hustling sides," as Harvey Pekar would say), and I found a copy of Townshend's White City for a couple of bucks. I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm familiar with "Give Blood" and "Face the Face," so I know I'll enjoy that much of it. Really, I always trust Uncle Patrick's musical taste, anyway.
(I also picked up Randy Newman's Land of Dreams.)
(Does anyone have any Beth Orton? I'm thinking of picking up one of her albums. I like her voice...)
You already picked one that I would recommend, Paul Simon's Graceland. Dan R. also added something from Warren Zevon, so I won't belabor that recommendation further. Instead, I'd also add something from The Who, either Who's Next or Quadrophenia; Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks; Elvis Costello's All This Useless Beauty; and Peter Gabriel's Security.
Some other candidates:
Fleetwood Mack - Rumors
Beatles - Abbey Road
David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Grateful Dead - American Beauty
Eagles - Hotel California
Brian Eno & Harold Budd - A Plateau of Mirror - Ambient 2
Daniel Lanois - Acadie
XTC - Drums and Wires
Queen - Night at the Opera
Dave Matthews Band - Crash
Pretenders - Pretenders
Elvis Costello - Imperial Bedroom
Joan Armatrading - Joan Armatrading
Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run
King Crimson - Discipline
A bunch more I'll remember tomorrow maybe....
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