Number one in the canon of bad albums*, Self Portrait was one of the first albums I listened to on Spotify – always intrigued but never enough to splash out a tenner or more – and I was shocked by its forays into what is unashamedly sweet, straight pop: strings, femme backing vocals, Dylan’s vocals lost entirely for the opening titles beauty All The Tired Horses. Again, not a lost classic, but an intriguing left turn, and 3 or 4 songs are strong enough to suggest Dylan’s later suggestion that he only released it to piss off all the Clinton Heylins is (for once) him bowing to (blinkered) critical opinion. Now, I’ll see what Punctum made of it…

*surely it should be The Beat Goes On by Vanilla Fudge. Or Neither Fish Nor Flesh.

What am I on about? The notion that the group are trying so damn hard to go out there; they don’t quite achieve what I assume they were aiming for but somehow arrive at something or somewhere else. More endearing than envelope-pushing a record, I think – “How Suite It Is,” indeed – but “rejoyce” is better than John Huston’s The Dead and it’s a very entertaining mess of a listen. Having just done Dylan’s Self Portrait for TPL I’m quite warmly inclined towards ambitious albums that don’t quite hold together or reach their target.

#89 – Joanna Newsom induces a moderate, dull ache in my left shoulder.

Sorry, MC, I can’t let this one go. “Misogyny” indicates a “hatred or contempt of women or girls”. My comments at 49 (“old gal”) comes nowhere near this. Ageist, perhaps. But Grace’s gender, I assure you, was not my target. I am equally as scathing at “old lags” doing likewise.

@97 I remembered the Sgt Peppers turning point being 1987, coincidentally enough, when all the 20th anniversary CD release hype (with accompanying TV documentaries) sent a whole new generation scurrying to hear it and left many thinking sure, it’s good, but it’s not BEST ALBUM EVER good. It had “A Day in the Life”, but even Magical Mystery Tour had an “I am the Walrus”. That was around the time Revolver became my firm favourite, after initial infatuations with Abbey Road and the White Album – possibly because it felt like the fulcrum on which early Beatles and late Beatles turned, bringing together the best of both.

Hunky Dory>>>Ziggy Stardust, for sure.

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2010/03/the-friday-fun-canon-discussion-and-monster-poll/

Sign O’The Times is still tops though.

I think another reason for my aversion to ‘classic albums’ is that if I buy ‘Kind of Blue’ and say I like it, the response will be ‘Well, Duh!’ I want to think my tastes are more discerning and individual than they really are.

Oh, and I loved ‘Rabbit Fur Coat’ as well

Prince’s canonicity mostly not helped by, er, Prince. But he’s still very much in there I’d say.

I have that 200 albums book, it’s in France though.

I do this with writers, I read all of Orwell’s other novels before I got to 1984. I think this goes with the music fans dread of wanting to seem obvious – like picking Sgt. Pepper for greatest album ever made (Rosie, for years it pretty much topped every single list I ever saw – it was the Citizen Kane of albums. It was the aftermath of punk that knocked it off it’s perched as people’s perspective on intricate concept albums changed and they switched to the more pure-pop pleasures of ‘Revolver’)

Double thumbs up for ‘Rabbit Fur Coat’ from me too. I bought it on red vinyl the other week (already had the CD too)

Canon formation is interesting and tricky. Consdier the recent fortunes of country/alt-country/bluegrass. Soome of my favorite records of the last ten years have been from this area, esp. Loretta Lynn’s Van lear Rose and Jenny Lewis’s Rabbit Fur Coat. I fricking loved and still love those records…. and I *thought* everyone else did too (they got *record of the year*-type reviews when they were first released), and I thought they were well on the way to being canon. I was very surprised then when end-of-decade lists came out late last year to see them hardly mentioned.

What’s happened? I conjecture that over the same period, as part of the same increased general interest in country/bluegrass, the Carter family and Johnny Cash are now much more canonical for general/rock/pop music fans than they used to be. Everyone listens to and likes and really *gets* that stuff now whereas even in the ’90s only a much narrower group really listened to or knew about any of it. This new deep enthusiasm and canonization may have, somewhat perversely, drained away much of the original enthusiasm that attended Jenny Lewis, et al..

I *think* something similar may have happened with Prince in the ’80s etc.: stuff that seemed evidently canonical at the time ended up undermining its own status over the next ten years or so because it inspired lots of people to dig deeper into james brown and p-funk etc., and then,for a lot of people ‘who needs prince?’ became a very good question. My strong sense is that Pet Sounds, Forever Changes, and Odyssey and Oracle has similar trajectories: for a decade or two after their initial semi-successes they were relatively obscure records that musicians freely strip-mined, then they got great cd releases in the 90s at which point they became truly canonical and all the strip-miners (everyone from lloyd cole to kravitz to weezer) suffered a serious downgrade. Or something.

@89 Rosie. (i) I think a *lot* of people prefer Rubber Soul to Sgt Pepper (I do). I fact, I think it’s pretty hard not to end up rating Rubber Soul over revolver. RS is pure joy, and if one rejects SP for its pretension etc. then almost inevitably R starts to get tarred with the same brush. RS, however, is complete paydirt and is at the bottom of the slippery slope away from SP’s alleged pompousness and calculation. (ii) I played the first 5 songs or so from Tapestry at a party recently and it almost drove people completely mad! Everyone knew the songs, but had no idea who it was, and indeed couldn’t remember why the songs sounded so familiar…. So, I gather Tapestry isn’t at all on the radar of anyone born after, say, the mid ’70s. The Bacharach and Carpenters waves of appreciation of the last decade or so haven’t helped that record at all apparently. Maybe Glee will resurrect it.

Is Newsom canon? Blimey :)

I’ve never had any problems getting Steely Dan. My arm needed twisting a little (but only a little) to get into Talking Heads. Radiohead goes Whoosh! right past my head and Joanna Newsom gives me toothache.

I suppose if I give enthusiastic support for the canonical statuses of Tapestry and Ziggy Stardust I’m showing my age.

I think Sgt Pepper’s suffered because the people who lived through its impact became more and more diluted in the voting pool. It’s much harder now – even though far more has been written about it – to grasp the event-ness of SP’s release, you just have to accept it, and it becomes something that people resent slightly.

Tom Hibbert’s The Perfect Collection from 1983, from memory, ended up with a standard set of results but the breakdowns of individual writers’ lists was fascinating. One writer included Big Star’s Sister Lovers (all of 5 years after it was released!), Five Leaves Left, Starsailor, Soft Machine 2, Astral Weeks, Odessey & Oracle, with his 1 & 2 being Pet Sounds and Forever Changes. American bloke, never heard of him before or since, but he was way ahead of the nineties consensus on most of them. Hibbert himself was always going to buck the trend, voting for Paul Revere & The Raiders’ Midnite Ride and claiming PJ Proby’s I Can’t Make It Alone as the best single ever made. I can dig that!

So you get records like Odessey and Oracle (say) which everyone now seems to like but which obviously missed a few crucial votes.

Re 84 – this may be the only case of my trying to ‘get into’ an album on a twice yearly basis and, eventually, it worked! It’s all about the mossy romantic atmosphere, in production and lyrics, for me – “between the viaducts of your dreams” being one of the more elliptically wonderful lines, the strings arriving at the end of Madame George, and the baby-baby-baby coda to Cypress Avenue being two other magical moments. I’m still waiting for my entry point to Steely Dan/Talking Heads/Incredible String Band/Radiohead/Joanna Newsom.

Punctum – I was hoping to draw out your thoughts on After Bathing At Baxters – or post Surrealistic Pillow Airplane in general – but I’m glad you love Four Sail. I’ve always been intrigued by the overlooked albums of canonic artists, a hobby which has led me to buy Yes Please by Happy Mondays (thumbs down) and Wings’ Red Rose Speedway (thumbs aloft)?

Those ‘essential’ lists are guaranteed downers if they parrot the same line. The Swedish magazine Pop did their 100 best lps in the late 90s and the top 3 included Plastic Ono Band (above any Beatles album) with There’s A Riot Goin’ On at no.1. Shame I couldn’t read their attempts to justify this but I admired their gall.

I remember when Forever Changes and Pet Sounds were marginals on these lists (turn of the eighties) rather than boring perennials. I loved the Beach Boys, so getting into Pet Sounds was a no brainer, but Forever Changes drew me in with the beauty of its song titles – Alone Again Or, Andmoreagain, Between Clark And Hilldale, The Red Telephone – alone, and I bought it at Bonaparte’s in Croydon in 1981 without having heard a note by Love or Arthur Lee.