With talk of The Clash recently, it occurred to me about how Cut the Crap has been basically written out of the band's mythology. Likewise with the recent celebration of Springsteen's work, nobody much mentions the double heaping of shit called Human Touch and Lucky Town from the early 90's. These records kind of wreck an otherwise pleasant musical narrative.

Can anyone think of any other such ugly children left out of the official family pics?

Dylan has five or six of them.

The last VU record-Squeeze

Steve

edit:Also, I was happy to see This Is England (from Cut the Crap) included on the last Clash best of.

Steve

ringo starr

that guy can throw crap on a microphone and nobody cares.

I don't know, I mean everytime someone releases two albums in one day, the journalist seems to allude to these albums. You also can at least find them in record stores quite a bit.

It seems that everytime Nirvana is mentioned, and it comes to describing post-band activities, Sweet 75 is left out.

The same could be said about the Doors and Monkees later outputs.

Realistically, this wasn't the VU in any sense of the word. Same with the Doors without Morrison. Not really the same. Lucky Town and Human Touch don't really taint Springsteen, in my mind.

I don't know, name an artist that hasn't thrown out a shitty album once in awhile. I think the original VU might be an exception.

Any artist that has some longevity in the music business will produce crap at some point.

Often it's at the beginning, other times in the middle, but most usually its towards the end of their careers.

ELO Part II - The ELO without all that bothersome Jeff Lynne

Yeah, that was not the best of things, that thing they did without the Jeff.

Echo & The Bunnymen fans always pretend the non-Ian album never happened. But I like that album. Some good tunes on it.

What about Bowie?

Several stinkers in his oeuvre.

It's funny -- I usually end up liking the "out of character" stuff.

cf. Neil Young, Trans

Both those records have some excellent songs on them.

Stop buying your thread ideas from the hipster playbook and actually listen to some of these records---it makes life that much more enjoyable.

Marah's Oasis wannabe album

Neil Young 1980-1988 and then 1994-present

Spoon - "Kill the Moonlight"

19 years of atypical Neil. That weirdo.




I don't hear the difference.

This is true. I haven't listened to those HT/LT in awhile, with the exception of Human Touch which is on 'Essential'. It's an excellent song that I forgot about. I can't remember what's on Lucky Town, actually. I'll probably be jonesing for Bruce after the Born to Run boxset next week.

Good call. Reverberation is actually my favorite Echo album. Probably because it was my first exposure to them when I bought it on cassette for $.25. Luckily I just scored it on cd recently as well.

The Cure's albums "concert" and "The Top" are pretty forgotten, although wasn't "concert" just rereleased?

Fleetwood Mac's "Bare Trees" is another album which is one of my favorite in their catalog.

Rolling Stones come to mind as well as a band who seems to have a bunch of things stored away that now are seeing the light of day.

I digs me some Trans. "Sample and Hold" and the "Mr. Soul" remake are dynamite.

I don't deny there are a handful of good songs on those records, but it seems betrayed by shoddy performances by some studio ringers, hasty production, and probably the worst keyboard tones committed to tape. I'm no hipster and I have gone back to this pair again and again to try to appreciate them, but I find consider them missteps in what I find to be an otherwise stellar body of work. That's all.

Human Touch is a pretty good song, but I can't imagine why it has to be like seven minutes long. There's stuff like that all over those records that drive me crazy. But that's not much the point - these records have been sort of erased from the Springsteen plotline.

No one really discusses them much anymore, but there are a couple pretty good rebound Psychedelic Furs records at the tail end of the career - Book of Days and World Outside. But their narrative kind of goes: some cool early records, descent into slick synth purgatory, breakup, sad reunion live tour.

It's not around here. A lot of people consider it their favorite, including me. It was #4 on the shmoo poll when it came out.

I'm with Natty Mike on this one. KTM on the whole is rubbish.

I'll add:
Joe Jackson - Big World

wilco - the second mermaid avenue

i am a tweedy freak who could listen to anything he does all day, but i can't get throught that album

Far as I'm concerned, Midnight To Midnight (which is awful) was an aberration in a stellar career. I even like the Love Spit Love releases pretty well.

I think the best Furs albums are their debut and Book Of Days, but all of them except Midnight To Midnight are good. MTM is their Never Let Me Down.