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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 16, 2020 21:23:07 GMT
505 - Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Of Nightmare
The 2nd and imo best Arctic Monkeys record was a complete reaction to the success of the first and the closing track a reference maybe to a hotel room number perhaps - that sums up the need to get back to someone or something else. Relationships now gone wrong, money letting you down, people you can't trust. "I crumble completely when you cry!" sung as the music kicks in sounds like that's precisely what Alex wants............. because he'd recognize her and the feeling.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 18, 2020 19:17:54 GMT
Elvis Costello - Riot Act - Get Happy!!
Elvis Costello would not have a recording career if a very famous drunken incident where he used the "N" word was recorded say on a cellphone like it would be today. But 1979 was a different time and eyewitness Stephen Stills went to the press with the story details - so Costello only could say his version of the truth to the press - basically "I was drunk, I'm not a racist, I am a key figure in Rock Against Racism - and that's all I'm going to say about it".
Costello's commercial ascendancy was clipped a bit and some shows protested, and people looked at him for a time with raised eyebrows and so Costello did what he does best - he performed a song about it, veiled, hidden, unclear - it's part sort of apology/part more clear F-You and it closes his 4th album, my favorite of his work, in typically spectacular fashion.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 19, 2020 13:38:16 GMT
Don't Get Excited - Graham Parker - Squeezing Out Sparks
Sex is a subject that you'd think is common in Rock but it's usually hedonistic/fantasy sex - never had it been addressed previously the way Parker did here on his best album - one that can stand with Costello in the 70s.
Parker looks at sex realistically and metaphorically, it's frustrations a stand-in for his commercial recording failure (Local Girls), in its contradictions he wrote of (anti?) abortion (the devastating, You Can't Be Too Strong) and in this classic closer wrote about how the trappings of sex..... and love..... and the modern world leave him isolated.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 22, 2020 18:25:33 GMT
If That's Alright - Uncle Tupelo - Still Feel GoneViced who likes the band..... The 2nd Uncle Tupelo album - maybe their best - upped the stakes on their first. Their first was hard to not take as a band trying something out and showing you their influences - but the 2nd showed how to build on those influences and deepen them less and go forward. This closer - one of their best songs too - pulls all the strands of the album together and doesn't make a grand statement, it rather makes a simple one that fits what came before. It evokes a lot of people - Gram Parsons AND J Mascis and yet sounds like neither at all. It seems tossed off but the more you play it, it's too sophisticated to be random. "There's nothing to make out or even notice" as the song says....you could miss it if you weren't looking.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 25, 2020 10:49:42 GMT
Wall of Death - Richard & Linda Thompson - Shoot Out The Lights
This album - one the 80s best albums by any standard - if you don't know it, you should it's a cool version of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (and better!) and is helped by Linda with some great songs too but Richard Thompson is the star here. He is one of the great triple threats in Rock history a distinguished and special singer, songwriter, guitarist - only Chuck Berry and Neil Young come to mind as much as he does - he's an amazing talent from Fairport Convention through his work with Linda and his solo career.
This song is not the one anyone would pick to close the album - they'd pick the masterpiece, scary and epic title track - but this song is the one that sums up the albums themes of love like a joyous (or cruel) game, an amusement park exhilaration "you can waste your time on the other rides"......dude knows of what he speaks, so let him take his chances.
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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 4, 2020 12:59:39 GMT
Ramones - Why Is It Always This Way? - Rocket To Russia
The best Ramones album - one of the best American albums period - closes in a way they hinted at all through the record - that life itself got the last laugh on them - that pretending to be dumb always gets slapped out of you. The chorus is repeated on a fade-out, they know no more than they did at any point and as they remember mundane things about the songs subject (hitching a ride) mixed with bittersweet (waving bye-bye) mixed with things the singer can't ever truly quite understand (contemplating suicide).
It's all mixed up and then it gets to the song/album fade out......
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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 6, 2020 18:36:03 GMT
The Strokes - Red Light - First Impressions of Earth
The 3rd Strokes album after 2 classics was a slight disappointment - starting spectacularly for a few songs it mostly goes off a cliff in the later half but this closer reverted back to what they did best - insanely catchy, buoyant retro-New Wave and it was funny too - when the lyrics say "I was waiting..." the music waits into a walking bass line too.
It's abrupt stop ending was sort of a thrill too ......because what do you do at a red light anyway?
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 24, 2020 13:57:16 GMT
Buzzcocks - Friends of Mine - Spiral Scratch EP -
One of the few essential EP's (Signals, Calls and Marches, Chronic Town, a few others) - this debut EP, the only release with Howard Devoto on lead vocals - ends with this assessment of his weird social circle. A sort of Johnny Rotten in how he sang - a true peer really - they were a fairly different band than what they became afterwards - with Devoto they sound threatening - later they'd sound far catchier - both were of course terrific.
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 15, 2020 21:16:07 GMT
The Jam - Scrape Away - Sound Affects
One of the 3 great albums (career bests for all 3) by first wave punk bands but that came within the second wave along with The Damned's Machine Gun Etiquette and The Clash's London Calling - this song sounds like nothing the Jam recorded prior and sounds completely modern and they used it as a template for some other great songs too (Funeral Pyre).
The album has a mix of love songs with a whole other side - a creepy tension to political/current events songs slipped into key points in the album to suggest you've got problems far worse than your relationship. This song sums up all of that, you can't trust people in your bed or the monster under your bed.
Great closer to one of the decades great albums.....almost military and threatening......
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Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2020 23:51:02 GMT
One of my favourite albums ever (#3 maybe). The whole album is in a universe of itself, and the closer cements that further with a very emotional Torn Curtain. I like that it was chosen to close because they end it on a sad note, instead of the fun Prove It. So when its over its like you're thrown back on earth and shattered.
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Post by TheAlwaysClassy on Apr 19, 2020 19:22:14 GMT
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 9, 2020 22:38:47 GMT
Oasis - Married With Children - Definitely Maybe1994's best album closes with the kind of song that at first you're not sure why it's closing the album at all ......but after they did it, it got copied a lot. It's the closer that sums the record's feel and attitude......... A total put down of his sober (probably), straight laced (and literate!) friend, this song and its spirit informed the Strokes, Libertines, Arctic Monkeys near a decade later and made people who didn't get Oasis at all not get them even more. For those people.........there was Blur, who were a lesser band in '94 .........but nicer boys.
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 11, 2020 19:08:34 GMT
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 11, 2020 21:49:32 GMT
F*ck School - For Sale: Live At Maxwell's 1986 - The Replacements
I'm convinced this is one of the greatest live albums ever - and a big part of that is how it ends.
This song is not in theory a set closer, it's a throwaway on the studio version and they had many better ones to close with.......but here it ends the set in a way nothing else could, and there is no encore, and it gets turned into their entire statement of purpose: the throwaway IS the statement.
Westerberg is screaming this song, he sets up the solo, he stays cool, voice cracks.......the guitar solo is legitimately jump up and down great, it all ends in 90 seconds, and the secret to this band and their longevity in 2020 is the songs you heard at 16 still make sense at 26 or 46 or 256 (um) ....... F*ck School becomes F*ck Work or F*ck This or whatever you want it to mean......and that's exactly what they meant.
They don't make you feel like a kid......they make you feel like an adult who remembers feeling like a kid who felt they were turning into an adult and it was terrifying. You never outgrow this band which is their whole contradictory genius.....and if you do, there's probably something deeper wrong going on ....MAR's love affair with them is the coolest thing about us.
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Post by DaleCooper on Aug 13, 2020 22:48:31 GMT
Well, since my favorite ever song (or at least the one I would most frequently cite as my favorite) is a closer, it has to be that. Hallowed Be Thy Name from Iron Maiden's breakthrough The Number of the Beast. I think it has a good claim at being the best heavy metal song of all time.
Iron Maiden has also done some other great closers - Rime of the Ancient Mariner, When the Wild Wind Blows and Empire of the Clouds being the best
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 26, 2020 10:27:37 GMT
Got The Time Joe Jackson - Look Sharp!
The British New Wave class - Costello, Parker, Lowe, Jackson (along with Americans Warren Zevon & early Tom Petty) - are way more influential on 80s American indie-Rock than they are ever given credit for. Jackson is the least of those UK big 4 guys imo (and the most derivative too) but I hear an awful lot of Joe Jackson's first 2 albums in the current power-pop revival wave that's been happening in 2020 too.
This song was famously covered by Anthrax and when you hear it end this album - you really remember it - fast, catchy, clever lyrics, great bass playing and the song itself ends in a witty way too.
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 8, 2020 12:34:26 GMT
Martha - "St. Paul's (Westerberg Comprehensive)" from Blisters in The Pit Of My HeartLook we all have our fave bands, and it's nice to hear them shouted out - but make no mistake, when you end your 2nd album with a love song to Westy about love the two things then get linked in a personal way that's a whole lot different than just talking about Tame Impala's guitar sound or how noble U2 is. Well it is you know......
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 22, 2020 10:45:25 GMT
That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate Mission of Burma - Vs
Starts furiously, ends suddenly............... and if you stop this stupendous, almost entirely without any precedent album here - before the bonus tracks kick in on CD - it has the effect of taking your breath away. The entire record has been building to this and almost 40 years later there's never been anything quite like the band the dropped this album and an EP in their original run.
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