SuggestiON-AIR: Your Favourite Album Live?
PRINCE - PARADE (1986)
Not universally regarded as the apogee of the diminutive one's body of work, but the first one to cut through on a personal level. Prince is utterly on fire on this record, as every pretty much playing everything and to a level beyond most jobbing musicians. 'Girls and Boys' is a genius wonky-pop ditty, whereas 'New Position', with the purple one himself on drums has one of the funkiest percussion lines, laid down in one take too. The album is in turns light and dark, experimental and mainstream, perfectly encapsulating everything Prince was all about just before the excesses of his hedonstic lifestyle compromised his art, seemingly forever.
Steven Rainey - ATL Contributor
WILCO - BEING THERE (1996)
Wilco's second album stands alone in their back catalogue: a messy, raw, and indulgent bunch of songs, pulling in all directions at once. Whilst these days the band have refined their sound into a slick, streamlined alt-country machine, the Wilco of Being There was like that ex-girlfriend that you just can't forget, the one who first broke your heart, but who you still can't get over. As we wait for the band's eighth album, perhaps the time is right to go right back to where the love affair first began?
Philip Taggart - ATL Content Assistant
THE SMITHS - THE QUEEN IS DEAD (1986)
If I had a big supple olive tree I would break two of its branches off and coerce Johnny Marr to give one branch to Steven Patrick Morrissey and vice versa thus ending the twenty year feud, re-commencing the best and most prolific song writing partnership since Lennon/McCartney. It’s not like Morrissey and Marr ever left music behind them, each have released numerous different albums, some good, some not so good and both are still touring. Johnny Marr still looks like he is 25 and Morrissey is as eloquently malignant as ever.
In a perfect world I would get the miserable Mancunians to reunite and play the entirety of their Magnus Opus, The Queen Is Dead. This album encapsulates everything that made The Smiths great - twisted sentiment, hopeless melancholy and laugh out loud vitriolic sentiment tracked to the most enjoyable jangle pop to have surfaced since Phil Spector reigned supreme.
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Rigsy - ATL Presenter
THE FLAMING LIPS - CLOUDS TASTE METALLIC (1995)
My absolute favourite album by one of my favourite bands, yet I'm still to hear a note of it performed live. What's that all about? Seven times I've seen the Flaming Lips in the last ten years yet among the incredible spectacle, the confetti and the absolute lunacy, they ignore what I consider to be their finest, poppiest album. No 'Bad Days'? No 'This Here Giraffe'? No 'Brainville'? These songs were already scandalously overlooked, now they're destined to be lost gems, ignored even by their creators. Very, very strange.
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At 15th Oct 2010, xingfantrade wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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