Musicians/Bands who's first release was by far and away their best

The Cars (1978)

Side One
Good Times Roll
My Best Friend's Girl
Just What I Needed
I'm in Touch With Your World
Don't Cha Stop
Side Two
You're All I've Got Tonight
Bye Bye Love
Moving in Stereo
All Mixed Up


Candy-O (1979)

Side One
Let's Go
Since I Held You
It's All I Can Do
Double Life
Shoo Be Doo
Candy-O
Side Two
Nightspots
You Can't Hold On Too Long
Lust For Kicks
Got a Lot On My Head
The Dangerous Type

Not even close Freak. Side 2 of Candy-O is nowhere near as good as Side 2 of The Cars.

 

In my opinion

Korn, Weezer, Lemonheads, Son Volt

And last but not least, the Foo Fighters! The first album was recorded in two weeks with Dave Grohl playing nearly every instrument. It was totally raw! The last albums, on the other hand, have been boring, over-produced crap!

 

Montrose.

By the way - the Beatles' 45s made them popular, their 33 and 1/3s made them good.

 

I agree with StupidMonkier.

Good call DCKid on Son Volt. While I've liked the last two, the first one was great. I could pick one I know you'll disagree with...Wilco. I won't though.

 

Presidents of the United States of America - Their second album was so disappointing to me.

Some of the bands listed I don't agree with.
Garbage - Beutiful Garbage is so much better than their previous albums that there is no comparison.

Smashing Pumpkins - All of their albums were great, I don't think you can say any one of them is far and away better than another.

Weezer - I din't like Pinkerton at first but the more I listen to it the better it gets and it has now my favorite album by them.

 

Great call on Montrose..

One great album and then nadda..

Montrose(1973)

Rock the Nation
Bad motor Scooter
Space Station #5
Rock Candy
Make It Last

Whereas their next one, Paper Money(1974)
only had Paper Money and I Got the Fire.

Probably the band with the most potential ever that couldnt keep it together...

also, Finn is right...Candy-O couldnt hold a candle to their first album..

 

You agree that I'm mean? Come on, dude, there's no reason to side with him just because I think DMB are horrid.

Recent commentary: I like Summerteeth better than any other Wilco album including Yankee Hotel Foxtrot; I think Beautiful Garbage is patchy but has two great songs on it ('Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)' is *fantastic*); I more or less like every Weezer album. Just weighing in. No objective judgements here.

On the Beatles 45s vs. 33 1/3s: hrm. Odd assertion, never thought about it that way. 'Rain' was a single. 'Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane' was a double A-side. Although if you're saying that their albums, as wholes, became more than the sum of their parts then I would agree.

 

Oh, you're mean alright, but I like that about you.

I like Summerteeth as well, I just think I put my favorite Wilco albums in order from when they were released, with the first one being my favorite. I really like the other ones except for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Can't get into that one at all.

 

correction smeggy...dookie was not greendays first album

they were on lookout records for years before

1001 hrs...
and
kerplunk

 

Why don't you run down some of those other factors. My guess is they're all dependent upon what someone else THINKS. And what do you mean by 'accepted' as the best? It seems the best shouldn't have to be 'accepted'. The Lakers were the best team in the NBA last year because they won the championship. Nobody needs to 'accept' that, it's true. Tell me how this works with music.

Define 'timeless'. Tell me how you measure it. Tell me how a greater vocabulary means anything to anyone. I'm sure there are plenty of writers who use plenty of obscure words that no one's ever heard of. Tell me how writing more 'fluently' means 'better'. I'm sure there are plenty of writers who don't write fluently who critics think are the bomb.

Tell me how more 'creative', 'innovative', and 'longevity' mean 'better'. Please do it without telling me what someone else thinks.

Whatever you say.

Bob, R2K:

Candy-O is better, deal with it.

 

Freak, your argument is just idiotic. You've take the concept of general artistic validity to such an extreme that it would allow you to accept the statement 'Jackie Collins is better than Shakespeare' from someone?

I do agree that people who say 'that isn't art!' are usually idiots, because who are we to say what is or isn't art? The dichotomy between high culture and popular culture is usually an artificial one. But - and I realise that it's a thin line - there must be *some* way to talk meaningfully about artistic works which doesn't rely solely on 'I like it!' or 'I don't!' What's the point of having any art at all - literary, visual, or musical - if it can't be generally judged in some way? (That includes revising our judgements, naturally.) Why must *everything*, in your eyes, have equal artistic merit? What would the point of that be? Why would anyone create anything at all, in that case? And why on earth is 'what other people think' - people who, in some cases, spend their entire professional lives working very hard to articulate precisely what makes an artistic work special - such an awful concept to you?

I repeat: you can feel free to like something better than something else, but it doesn't *necessarily* mean that it *is* better. It might be valid as art, but it also might be *worse* art than something else.

 

THIS is why artists HATE critics.

Art is NOT for judgement. It is for self-expression. You think a musician sits down and thinks, "I'm going to create music that is better than everyone else!"??? That is a myopic and incredibly un-creative mindset. The ultimate essense of art is the ability to self-express and create based on that self-expression. Competition, as a result, is irrelevant to the true artist. They are competing only with themselves.

Critics judge because they cannot create. Their judgement is their best outlet for their version of creativity. It is one-dimensional, often narrow-minded and completely based on perspective. Better and worse are absolute subjectivity when it comes to creative expression. By that definition, your very opinion on the matter could easily be worse than the rest of us.

Shakespeare to Jackie Collins is a terrible comparison. Shakespeare was not well-repsected in his time for making art "for the masses," yet he is hailed today as a literary genius. What happened in the interim was largely a social change, not artistic. Methinks you might have been one who critiqued Shakespeare as "simplistic art for the common troll" at the time.

To go to the Beatles for a moment, ask a great jazz musician what they think of the Beatles - tivial, overly-simplistic crap will be a typical response. Ask a classical composer his/her opinion of jazz and you get "nonsensical, un-disciplined, un-sophisticated drivel." The Beatles never had a great guitarist. Does that make Django Rhinehart or Joe Satriani superior?

Miles Davis was soundly trounced for his introduction of fusion into the world of jazz, yet he is hailed now as a visionary. Who is right? Bob Dylan was booed like he was the anti-Christ when he "plugged in" at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Did the moment he plugged into an amplifier suddenly alter who he was fundamentally as an artist?

These are absolutely worthless arguments because there are no fundamental criterion for judging what is better or worse. There are no guide marks for making that determination. He plays with more technical precision. She sings with better pitch. They are prolific songwriters. There is no measure precise enough to make up an artistic barometer. Beauty, as it were, is truly in the eye and ear of the beholder. That may mean the Beatles and Da Vinci for some. It may mean Jerry Lewis and the Barenaked Ladies for others.

Artistic self-expression is intensely personal both for the artist and for the patron. Defining one artistic expression as better or worse is like seeing two women weep openly at the loss of a loved one and claim the one on the right obviously cries better than the other. It is as impossible as it is pointless.

 

So nice it should be posted twice. Excellent work, Mr. Balke.

 

Bobby Brown had one rockin' album - Dont Be Cruel -- but it was pretty much downhill from there.

 

So you guys think literary criticism is pointless? That writing about The Great Gatsby in high school in order to understand it better is also pointless? (Why do we even have to take English at all?) That art history is a useless discipline? (Poor rimmy!) Why, according to you, can't we discuss any kind of art, including rock music, in a meaningful way? Why is that impossible?

By the way, if you don't think artists are in competition with each other, Jeff, you're sadly deluded. What was all that album competition back and forth between the Beatles and the Beach Boys (and the Rolling Stones, for that matter!) in the sixties then, if not healthy competition? I could give you a zillion other examples.

Hate critics all you like, but you're wrong because you're talking about idiotic *criticisms* rather than intelligent critical thinking. The best critics do artists a great service, and the worst of them really suck, and most of them are somewhere in between - much like artists. Note: plenty of critics hailed Bob Dylan as a visionary *back then*. Plenty of critics loved innovations in music *as they happened*. You're hugely oversimplifying the critic's art, and the history of criticism generally. Critics *can* create. Critics *do* create. Lester Bangs. Greil Marcus. Jon Savage. Sometimes, they even create music! Chrissie Hynde. Patti Smith. They both started as rock critics - are you going to say those two aren't creative?

Yeah, of course some of this *is* obviously subjective - for example something like the Kinks vs. the Rolling Stones, *as, you will note, I said in my original post*. (I also said in my last post that we could *revise* our judgements through intelligent debate, but you ignored that.) But some of it isn't, and the question is where to draw the line. Here's my line: I'll say the Beatles are better than Herman's Hermits *every single time*. And I'll say anyone who takes the contrary position is flat out wrong *every single time*.

This is not a black and white issue in my mind, though. I just think that saying 'all our reactions to art are subjective, so therefore it is impossible to judge or discuss any art at all in a meaningful way' (which I believe is your position but feel free to correct me) is a really extreme, silly argument which can't be defended, particularly because we can, and do, judge art all the time!

 

By whom is he hailed? Why that would be, um, critics. Whose judgement we all accept. Right?

 

Sounds like something an unsuccessful artist would say.

All kidding aside, Jeff, I think you're being simplisitic here. There is a tradition in art (in all mediums) of a canon, a standard of expression, originality and craft that others aspire to. The best critics serve a function to seperate the wheat from the chaff. There is more important need for art criticism, though. Without the dialectic of artistic recognition and competition (not just in terms of commerce, but aesthetics) artistic innovation is killed. Harold Bloom, a dred literary critic, writes

"Tradition is not only a handing-down or process of benign transmission; it is also a conflict between past genius and present aspiration, in which the prize is literary survival or canonical inclusion. That conflict cannot be settled by social concerns, or by the judgment of any particular generation of impatient idealists... Poems, stories, novels, and plays come into being as a response to prior poems, stories, novels, and plays, and that response depends upon acts of reading and interpretation by later writers, acts that are identical with the new works."

I think this applies to all art, in one form, or another. I don't think people create art only to "express themselves" or make money. They want to get laid, too. A lot of artists are also competing with their artform. At their highest levels, (you know, Entertainment Weekly ; ), critics serve as vital protectors of standards and traditions and promote the growth of art. They have also frequently exposed great art to the world that would have otherwise languished and died unknown. Vincent Van Gogh didn't sell a painting in his lifetime, but critics ultimately recognized his talents and helped made his work immortal. Ok, I'm all done with this, thanks for letting me rable on.

 

Critics rule. Well, crappy movie critics from Swirve.com rule.

 

Tag team husband and wife critics? Even better!

Neither of you addressed anything meaningful other than to defend critics because that's who you are yourselves. I've been a music critic too. We all are. It is what discerns our taste in music - knowing what we LIKE and what we DON'T LIKE. There is a difference between preference and good vs bad.

I have been in bands that have been hailed and hammered by critics. I've known LOTS of them. I have friends who were critics, so it isn't like I revile them personally. What I find so bizarre is the ridiculously rigid stance that things are just the way they are - black and white, good and bad - when it comes to something that is created out of a totally unique perspective.

But, the truth is that I'm sure there are plenty of people who find Elvis Costello to be boring and cheesy. There are people who think that the Beatles and Elvis Presley signaled the death of truly great music and the birth of an artform that is not worthy of the word "art". But that is why they call it CHOICE and not TRUTH. It is subjective. Why do you think that History of Music courses, even in world class music programs at fine universities, talk about rock music in the last two weeks before the semester lets out while focusing the bulk of their time on classical and jazz, the original American musical artform?

And this isn't to say we can't discuss music as a whole and the merits of its impact on the world of music, culture, etc. Those are all valid points and wothy of discussion. What is NOT, IMO, worthy is "the band I like is better than your band and if you don't agree, you're just a ****ing idiot with no real sense of judgement."

That's is the perspective you might find in a 16-year-old's letter to the editor of Kerrang after a not-so-generous review of the latest Korn offering. I've seen some of your suggestions of what amounts to great music, dimise. I've agreed totally at times and laughed out loud at others. That doesn't make your choices bad. They are YOUR choices. There is a big difference between choice and truth and if you don't agree with that, there isn't much to discuss.

The irony about Smith and Hynde being critics is that so were the Pet Shop Boys. Obviously, their stunning addition to the world of gay dance music proves that critics can be great musicians. In fact, it proves nothing because, for the tiny handful of critics who did actually leave their writing careers for music, the vast majority did not. As the saying goes, those who can do. Those who can't critique.

What I think is most annoying is the critical attitude. That ever-so-smug elitist I--know-so-much-better-than-all-of-you facade is what makes them so reviled. It is the reason why so many journalists end up chain smoking heavy drinkers who sit around talking about the exploits of others. If critics could realize that being intellegent and thoughtful doesn't have to equal ****ty and condescending, maybe they wouldn't be so universally hated.

 

Woohoo, liberal superstars Jeff and RM95 took my side over dimsie. Take that kiwi.