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Classic Album Discussion Thread: The Kinks-Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Pt. 1 (1 Viewer)

GREAT record.  Great memories, especially of She Bop blaring while I flailed my way around a roller rink when those were still a thing. Of course I had no clue what the song meant, but I sure did like the way i was suddenly noticing how the girls listening to it were moving in my freshly sexualized brain.

Like many of the albums you've mentioned the quantity of airplay many of these songs have received has drastically affected my appreciation of them.  But once in a great while if I can get into the right headspace I'll throw something like this on and it's a revelation. This one is near pop perfection. There are very few pop albums I consider better than this one, and I can't think of any by a female artist.

Thanks Tim.  Great choice, great thread.

 
Count me in as a Hysteria over Pyromania guy.  I was too young when Pyromania was released to have any clue.  I had heard of Def Leppard but I'm not sure I'd ever heard one of their songs prior to Hysteria's release.  I did not have MTV. Prior to about 1986 I listened to very little contemporary radio, as my parents favored "oldies." I saw the cover of Hysteria on the rack at a record store and thought it was cool so I bought it.  (Regrettably this was not the only time this occurred, almost invariably with terrible results, Iron Maiden excluded)

Hysteria blew my mind.  I loved it and listened to it constantly and shortly thereafter, it became a phenomenon.  I then checked out Pyromania and really liked it, but there was no way it had a chance against the juggernaut that Hysyeria was in my own mind and on the airwaves.  Had I been old enough to hear Pyro at the time of its heyday, I likely would have preferred it, given that Hysteria was significantly more polished and poppy.  

Like the Cyndi Lauper album, while in the right frame of mind, it can still blow me away.

 
timschochet said:
Def Leppard- Pyromania (1983)

Rock Rock (Till You Drop) 

Photograph

Stagefright

Too Late for Love

Die Hard the Hunter

Foolin’

Rock of Ages

Comin’ Under Fire

Action Not Words

Billy’s Got a Gun

Arguably the best of the 80s “hair bands”, these Brits were largely successful due to their producer Mutt Lange, and their ability to combine pop hooks with metal guitar licks. Subsequent albums would sell even better than this one, particularly the mega selling Hysteria, but this is the one that introduced them to the world and made them superstars, thanks to some really great rock and roll like “Photograph” and “Rock of Ages.” 
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First LP I ever owned.  Got if as a prize for selling magazines for a school fundraiser.

 
Pink Floyd- The Wall (1979)

In the Flesh? 

The Thin Ice

Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 1

The Happiest Days of Our Lives

Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2

Mother

Goodbye Blue Sky

Empty Spaces

Young Lust

One of My Turns

Don’t Leave Me Now

Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 3

Goodbye Cruel World

Hey You

Is Anybody Out There? 

Nobody Home

Vera

Bring the Boys Back Home

Comfortably Numb

The Show Must Go On

In the Flesh

Run Like Hell

Waiting for the Worms

Stop 

The Trial

Outside the Wall

We’ve already reviewed two Pink Floyd albums but this is something a little different than those; like The Who’s Tommy, it’s a conceptual double record, Roger Water’s magnum opus, awesome and epic in scope. 

The illustrations inside the album are fascinating (and in the case of “The Trial”, darkly hilarious) and these are expanded into animated films which appeared in the movie (and also in a laserium show I saw 30 years ago but can barely remember because I was so stoned). The music is, for lack of a better word- great. My personal favorites are “Mother”, “The Trial”, and of course “Comfortably Numb” but really the whole thing is tremendous. 

 
I like Pink Floyd a lot. But this album feels a little bloated and overly weird to me - like they were seemingly no longer a band, but almost an acid-tripped entity. Run Like Hell is a great song, Comfortably Numb is pretty iconic, and it felt good to sing "we don't need no education" as an 8th grader, but I like their other classic albums (say Meddle - Animals) a lot more.    

 
timschochet said:
Pink Floyd- The Wall (1979)
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Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?

 Love this album, can not stop listening to it all the way through no matter where I start.  The only song I leap forward is Another brick in the Wall, so tired and played out.  Still pull it out regularly.

 
There are some high points for sure and the artistry of it all is outstanding but as a whole, it's not my thing. 

 
Too many weird, short, filler songs like Vera, Don't Leave Me Now, Is There Anybody Out There, etc. But the real songs, like Comfortably Numb, Mother and Hey You etc., make it still worthwhile.  Roger Waters is both a creative genius and really disturbed person.  

 
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My favorite Pink Floyd album and probably in by top 5 albums of all time.

I remember being in fourth grade when the album came out and Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) was quickly popular.  The lyrics "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control" was so intriguing.  We knew is was bad.  And wrong (we did need education).  But the idea that adults might be steering us wrongly was something I'd never really considered before.

 
I like The Wall just fine, but well down the pantheon of Floyd's album collection. Just too much of a Waters domination here - Gilmour's guitar work was still top notch as always, but Richard Wright was a session guy and didn't play a whole lot on the album. 

 
Juxtatarot said:
The lyrics "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control" was so intriguing.  We knew is was bad.  And wrong (we did need education).  
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As I have read, Waters purposely used the double negatives there so that many would misinterpret the meaning

 
The Wall is my favorite Pink Floyd album. I like the album all the way through. I dig the weirdness of the album, and I think all the songs fit. I bought it when it came out in '79, and listened to it often during high school and college. I have a lot of great memories attached to it. "Comfortably Numb" is my favorite song on the album, but I love "Mother" also. 

 
Comfortably Numb, Run Like Hell, Blue Sky, and Hey You are the stars here.  Love the album, but I think my admiration is largely associated with the movie.  Without the movie, some these songs are just so-so.  The movie/slash album are really inseparable.

 
worrierking said:
Too many weird, short, filler songs like Vera, Don't Leave Me Now, Is There Anybody Out There, etc.
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When I worked in entertainment in a resort in Florida, we created this awesome haunted house during Halloween. We scared the living daylights out of some people. Anyway, when you first entered the haunted house you had to walk through this almost pitch black hallway, and I made about a 40 second clip of "Is There Anybody Out There" and played it repeatedly in the black hall. It was spooky.

 
Foosball God said:
Goodbye Blue Sky is so underrated it is criminal.
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Very true.  I love Young Lust, One of my Turns, and Mother as well.  I still listen to this album a lot and it is in my top 5 albums of all time.  Absolutely brilliant work.  The album is weird but there are cool rock songs mixed in with really touching tunes. 

 
Galileo said:
Comfortably Numb, Run Like Hell, Blue Sky, and Hey You are the stars here.  Love the album, but I think my admiration is largely associated with the movie.  Without the movie, some these songs are just so-so.  The movie/slash album are really inseparable.
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I think "Mother" is up there with those songs, and "Young Lust" is a pretty good tune. Some of the short songs (which I think some consider filler) are nice lead-ins to other songs. For example "Empty Spaces" is a great lead-in to "Young Lust."  I love the harmonizing on "The Show Must Go On." I also dig songs such as "One Of My Turns" and "Waiting for the Worms" and "Another Brick in the Wall part 3." I like the whole double album.

 
I remember when The Wall first came out. It was the first Floyd album I bought when it actually came out. I owned DSOTM, WYWH, and Animals but all after the fact. I mostly liked it then but liked their other albums better . . . a sentiment I still hold true. I still find live recordings of the The Wall shows  more interesting than the actual album, and I even find some of the versions on The Wall soundtrack better as well.

Mother - The Wall Soundtrack Version

And I am still angry at my parents (RIP), who refused to let me go to one of The Wall live shows in Long Island. I had some older friends in high school going that actually bought me a ticket. I had permission at the time to go to shows on Fridays and Saturdays. Except PF played Sunday - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday nights. My parents wouldn't budge, saying I was too young (which I now agree with) and shouldn't really be hanging with the PF crowd (which I definitely agree with now). Too bad, as that one would have been a feather in my musical concert cap.

I ended up seeing Gilmour's version of Floyd down the road and also Waters multiple times, but not the same as seeing the real McCoy IMO.

 
My favorite album.  Used to drop acid and watch the movie a lot too.  Don’t listen to it in its entirety too much anymore though, takes me to a weird place 

 
The Wall is a fantastic album that I never grow weary of. Many fond memories of seeing the late showings of the movie as well.

 
The Police- Synchronicity (1984) 

Synchronicity I

Walking In Your Footsteps

O My God

Mother

Miss Gradenko

Synchronicity II

Every Breath You Take

King of Pain

Wrapped Around Your Finger

Tea In the Sahara

Murder By Numbers 

Serious fans of this band are no doubt going to argue that their previous albums are better and that this one, much like Def Leppard’s Hysteria, is too commercial. Yet it’s also the record that transformed them from notable New Wave performers, with occasional radio play, to international rock superstars. Too bad they broke up right after they made it. 

“Every Breath You Take”, “King of Pain”, “Wrapped Around Your Finger”, “Synchronicity II”, “Murder By Numbers”, all classics, though the first of these was SO overplayed. I remember always being fascinated by the video for “Wrapped Around Your Finger” with the slow motion yet singing in real time, and trying to figure out how they did that. 

 
Ah, the first full album vinyl I ever owned.  A true classic, from start to finish.

Many slag on Mother, but while I never listen to it on its own, it is fine within the flow of the record.  Synchronicity II is still one of my favorite songs ever. 

The early Police material is pretty spotty, but they really nailed it on this one. 

 
A lot of good ones on that album with Mother being the only real stinker.  Big fan of Tea in the Sahara as an underrated song of this album.

 
When this record came out, my girlfriend asked me (not joking) if it was possible to use a knife or other sharp object and put a scratch in the record so it would skip past Mother.  I think Mother was the last song on that side, and she wanted it to just skip to the end so she never had to hear Mother, ever.  I loved the Police, hated this record and always will. 

 
Leaning more harder rock / metal in my youth, The Police are a band I did not really get into until after the fact. Of course, I had heard of them, and heard all the songs, and "Every Breath You Take" (which was everywhere for about a year) instantly takes me back to being 17. 

Today, I have all of their albums, and they are all good. This one is probably the best, although I wouldn't fault anyone for liking a different one. Solid band.   

 
Admittedly, I’m a big Ghost In The Machine guy, but you can’t go wrong with any of their unfortunately scant few albums. Just amazing talent that, like many great bands before and after them, got torpedoed by egocentricity.

My favorite tune from this album is “Wrapped Around Your Finger”. When you name check AND rhyme Scylla and Charybdis, that scores highly. 

 
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Mother: Police = Revolution 9: The Beatles 

Sometimes you just gotta let great bands experiment.

 
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I don't know if it's a rite of passage or what the deal is but when I was a teenager when this album came out so I went from being a pre-teen focused on sports, bubble gum, baseball cards, video games and cartoons to girls, music, girls, music videos, girls, sports, cartoons, girls and acne cures.  So this specific album was one of my first albums I recall purchasing and this was right at a time when I opened my eyes and ears to music right at that time when music is a BIG deal in a person's life.  And I think when you're a kid, if a little of something is great then a lot is awesome.  And I just could not get enough of this album until I went from swimming in it to drowning in it which was probably a year later of hearing at least one Synchronicity song per hour on the radio or one of their videos per hour on MTV. 

I remember people used to say "this album is great but their other albums are better" and I would think "baloney, they play the living hell out this, every other video on MTV is from this album, this HAS to be their best work. . . evAr!"  And while it was very good, as time went on, I discovered their other albums and almost exactly like Van Halen's 1984 album, it's not always your best work that gets you noticed, sometimes it's happenstance, fate or just good old fashioned PAYOLA kicking in! :)  

The thing I always hated about this album more than anything was the finality of it.  I mean, when Sting's first solo album came out, everyone knew he would never go back to splitting up his earnings with two other guys.  His timing was perfect on hitting the eject button from the Police to launching his solo career and we all knew it.  As good as so many of his solo songs were (and he a lot of very good songs) I couldn't help always wondering "man, if he had Andy on guitar and Stuart on percussion, this or that song would be so much better."  I would add that I always felt as great as Sting was on vocals and bass, Andy and Stuart were absolutely incredible in their own way, both (to me) extremely underrated.

I would rank Ghost in the Machine their best work and then from there it gets muddy - I will listen to Zenyatta Mondatta / Synchronicity / Reggatta de Blanc almost equally and I would say I listen to Outlandos d'Amour the least and I've heard Roxeanne enough for 10 or 20 lifetimes but that's not their fault. 

 
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Foosball God said:
A lot of good ones on that album with Mother being the only real stinker.  Big fan of Tea in the Sahara as an underrated song of this album.
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Tea in the Sahara never excited me.  Walking in Your Footsteps may be my favorite on the album.  This is why music is great...something for everyone.   :hifive:

 
I think Synchronicity is a very good album (Outlandos d'Amour is my favorite). I think it was released in '83. It reminds me of a bunch of us riding around in a friend's car going to parties, and during that time she would either play her Synchronicity cassette or Speaking in Tongues by TH. I'm not sure what my favorite song from the album is. Tie between MBN, WAYF, and KoP.

 
First cassette I ever owned on my own was Synchronicity. I was maybe nine or ten. I had to have it, as it got constant radio airplay, as was pointed out upthread. 

Favorite song nowadays from it is actually probably Synchronicity I, IIRC between the two.  

 
Synchronicity II is my favorite The Police song.  I particularly love the lyrics. The din of our Rice Krispies.  Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes.  A humiliating kick in the crotch.

In retrospect this album comes across to me as a bridge between The Police and Sting's solo stuff with the number of slower, more relaxed songs.

 
Syncronicity would not make my Top 100 but I owned it as a kid and played the hell out of the cassette - in fact I just got an old box of cassettes from my mom this past weekend (who was probably sick if it taking up space in her attic) and it's probably in there. Of course I have no way of playing cassettes anymore, but would likely throw it in if I could. It's probably been 30 years since I've listened to the album.

The Police were a pretty unique band - and it's interesting that a semi-rock, semi-punk, semi-reggae, semi-new wave pop band spawned one of the biggest adult contemporary solo careers. Sting's solo music wasn't groundbreaking but it wasn't too bad either.

My wife was a big Sting fan and we went to see him at the Beacon Theatre a few years back - he put on a pretty decent show which was highlighted by his band doing a superb job on Syncronicity I and Syncronicity II back to back to close things out the set.

 
Dr. Octopus said:
 Of course I have no way of playing cassettes anymore, but would likely throw it in if I could. It's probably been 30 years since I've listened to the album.
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I still have a working Sony Walkman. Of course, I don't have many cassettes anymore, but a cassette deck comes in handy at times if you're into thrift store hunting for cassettes (or hipster music with cassette-only releases like Burger Records in L.A.)

 
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