Are there albums you let your friends buy?
When you’re young and short on money, when you’ve got plenty of free time to hang out with friends and tape (as we did) or burn/load (as The Kids do) stuff from your friends’ collections, there are some albums you let your friends buy.
From my own experience – I’m sure you have your own and are chomping at the bit to share – let’s start with 3 albums by artists I loved and had been loyal to…to a point:
- Elvis Costello & the Attractions, Almost Blue
- The Jam, The Gift
- The Rolling Stones, Tattoo You
I had to bypass Almost Blue. I was afraid of country music, and I was afraid of hearing my favorite band waste their time and mine playing cowboys. My friend Andy, who liked country music less than I did couldn’t resist and bought Almost Blue. I appreciated his friendship and the money I saved on an album I would never love.
Based on the A-side of the first single from The Gift, “A Town Called Malice”, which I bought as soon as it came to the US, I was prepared for a killer new Jam album. Based on the B-side of that same single, one of those white funk workouts, I began talking up the forthcoming album to my friends. Then the album came out: the cover was in a style I’m a sucker for! It was tempting – tempting, but the thought of that white funk workout was in the back of my mind. Before I spent what few dollars I could spare, my friend Karl bought the album, and I appreciated his friendship. I still haven’t bought The Gift. I taped the few songs I liked; that’s what friends are for.
As I mentioned in response to Citizen Mom‘s great defense of Tattoo You, the release of this album was exactly the time when I became “too cool for school.” Tattoo You was wrong on so many levels – levels that I can’t and won’t begin to justify. There was no way I would buy this album (and I still haven’t). To this day I’m not sure I have a friend who owns it, but when it was released, almost every guy in my frat owned a copy. I spent many a night hearing that album in various college friends’ rooms, plus the album was getting played all over the radio. I’m a friendly guy. I could do without a close friend owning the album for me.
Another category of albums I was happy to let my friends buy was bootleg releases, particularly the many bootleg versions of The Beatles’ “Get Back” sessions and The Beach Boys’ aborted “Smile” sessions. The issue of whether to spend a relatively outrageous (for a college kid) sum of money on an album of questionable quality isn’t one we face these days. With a few mouse clicks we’re minutes away from downloading some holy grail of outtakes or a shelved album. Back then, dropping $15 for an album of your favorite band fiddling around while the drum mics were being put in place was not an easy pill to swallow. Again, I was fortunate to have a couple of friends who’d take the occasional plunge on a Beatles boot. The day another friend finally dropped $30 (!!!) on a Smile bootleg…well, I knew I had a great friend, and I comforted him for weeks as he kicked himself for laying out that kind of money for a crap, aborted, would-be masterpiece.
Over the years, I hope I was a good enough friend to have purchased some albums on my friends’ behalf. I will say one thing: There are some albums friends don’t let friends buy. The one example that best comes to mind – and I learned this lesson too late, after my aforementioned friend Andy came home with a brand-spanking-new copy – is Elvis Costello & the Attractions’ Goodbye Cruel World.
So how ’bout you? Are there albums you were all-too-happy to let your friends buy?
I can’t recall one of those, but in college I traded a Judas Priest album to my friend Glenn for Roxy Music’s second album – we both went back to our own dorm rooms quietly cackling ‘suck-ahh’ into our album covers, like a Spy vs Spy cartoon.
The most interesting issue here is how the comments about Tatoo You indicate that the music you didn’t want your friends to buy is the kind that violates your subjective and relatively uninteresting prejudices from a time that’s about as long gone as all of us are. I’ve done that too, but why bring it up now?
That said, Goodbye Cruel World sucks. I remember buying it and trying to like it, because all you guys insisted Elvis Costello was so great. I have since come to appreciate that he made some pretty okay records in the mid-1970s, if you like the distortions of the time.
Those who forget the past…
My memory is a recent one. When the 180 gram stickers started appearing on new and reissued albums on vinyl, a friend picked up Another Side of This Life: The Lost Recordings of Gram Parsons, 1965-1966 – I think we shared that album between 3 of us as it was immediately captured onto CD. An interesting album, but definitely the “lost” recordings. I think it was $35.99 or something. Ouch.
A college roommate of mine was great for this sort of thing. He saved me plenty of cash by picking up things I wanted to hear at least once but would never buy – lots of Zappa, obscure Sub Pop bands, comps of 60’s rarities that were rare for a reason, and so on…
I had a roommate once who had a load of XTC albums, and I was kind of hit-and-miss with them. So rather than even purchase the ones I liked, I ended up taping most of his.
In high school (early 80’s), I also had sort of an agreement with a friend who bought all of The Jam albums while I bought all The Clash albums and we taped from each other. Then again, I ended up buying The Jam albums years later.
By the way – I love “Almost Blue”.
What kind of stuff are you smoking out there in San Diego, Mark? The mid ’70s? So you’re saying the Flip City stuff (which was never even officially released for the most part) is his best work? What distortions? Plus I hate this blanket Goodbye Cruel World sucks sentiment that I see on here so often. Yes it’s quite flawed and has some awful songs on it, but it’s also got “The Home Truth,” Worthless Thing” and “The Comedians”, 3 of his all-time best IMO.
I’d like to suggest that there’s a difference between forgetting the past and living in it.
Matt, I know when Costello’s worked was released. Believe me, 1976-78 is still the mid-70s for anybody who lived through it. And yes, I certainly do think that Costello’s music, as fine as it is at times, now has a definite sheen of 70s self-conscious mannerisms that makes it seem like the music of a planet long ago and far away.
Fair enough, though My Aim is True didn’t come out until 1977. Regardless, could you please expand upon this point regarding the ’70s self-consciousness? I’m just not quite sure I understand what you mean here.
I’m not sure what that means either. My Aim Is True definitely has a mid-70s pub-rock feel, but everything after that sounds like the next step.
And just to chime in, I like Goodbye Cruel World too, Love Field being my favorite. As someone who knows and loves country music, I’m less enamoured of Almost Blue.
Regarding the thread in general, my closest musical compatriot and I had sort of a divergence of paths in the late 70s. I had bought the Sun Sessions and some of those Charly rockabilly comps, and hearing those had the effect of setting him off on the path into the past. I kept up with contemporary music, but he mostly gave it up. And when it came to the music of the past, we unconsciously split up the various style between us, as if to achieve wider coverage. He likes rockabilly; I like honky tonk. He likes R&B; I like soul. He likes electric blues; I like country blues. He likes classic jazz; I like modern jazz, etc. There’s crossover and trading between our collections, but we both have our unspoken territories.
Michelle gets a lot of newer stuff that I like well enough to hear sometimes, but wouldn’t buy like the Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Shout Out Louds, OK Go, etc.
I don’t have any Stones albums post-Exile. Not even Hot Rocks. I’m the guy who bought all those $15 Beatle bootlegs on a couple of Greenwich Village runs just so I could bask in the glory of a fourth generation If You’ve Got Troubles, and a muddy execreble version of Teddy Boy. Those punky Hamburg peformances cost me less.
It doesn’t fall under a friend story, but every fall before Christmas from about 1975 onwards, my mother kept intimating that my brother or I should get her a Barry Manilow album.
There was no way we could do that and for 30 years we’ve held fast. Tough love.
Hot Rocks only covers the period up to Sticky Fingers (its last track is “Wild Horses”) though I think both it and Exile came out in 1972.
Yes, I think many of us know this scenario, when not even advertising that we’re buying the record for our mom covers the shame!
The appreciation some folks have for Goodbye Cruel World is fascinating. I keep an open mind, but this strikes me as rock’s equivalent of people who believe the Holocaust or the moon landing were a fraud. Bad, bad album!
For years, I’m convinced Charlie let me buy all the XTC I cared to, knowing that I’d be only too eager to foist them on him one way or another (such was my love for the band back then). This was probably payback for the fact that I was probably the #1 instigator of his lousy Beatles bootleg purchases. I remember one triple-LP Get Back sessions collection that just *reeked* — it was a heinous affront to the Beatles legacy, and I think Chuckles paid, like, $30 for it. Charlie, what did I buy while I was cajoling you into spending your hard-earned cash on those steaming mounds of ass fudge?
See, I don’t think that’s fair. Right away you lump all the defenders of this album into a corner. We have to treat this album fairly. I think much of your dislike of GBC probably comes from the disappointment of hearing it when EC was on a creative roll (well aside from Punch the Clock), relatively speaking. Thus, I’m curious when the last time was that you tried to listen to it in its entirety. If you can get the past the slickness of “The Only Flame in Town,” “I Wanna Be Loved” and “Room Without a Number”, there’s a lot to like here. The songs I mentioned above are my favorites though I’ve always liked “Love Field” a lot, too. Apart from that “Sour Milk Cow Blues” and “The Deportees Club” are great rockers and “Peace in Our Time” may be a bit dated now, but I can imagine it being particulary poignant back then. I admit that it’s a disjointed mess and that it sounds like he’s fighting with Langer and Winstanley throughout the entire thing instead of working with them like on the previous album. Unlike say, Stewart, I’m not much of a fan of the Langer/Winstanley sound, so to my ears it’s more appealing to hear him fighting against that production style than an album like Punch the Clock, which dives right in and doesn’t challenge it at all. Plus, I think Goodbye Cruel World has stronger material, especially if you take out “Pills and Soap” (released a single as The Imposter) and “Shipbuilding”, which is great but just doesn’t sound like it belongs there.
Fritz asked:
Charlie, what did I buy while I was cajoling you into spending your hard-earned cash on those steaming mounds of ass fudge?
It was likely some Style Council 45 with an alternate b-side of Merton Mick zipping up his parka. I don’t remember you falling prey to Smile bootlegs back then.
Don’t you think that little bit on there of Paul’s argument with George made it worth 30 dollars? No, I don’t either. And what’s the reason the Decca audition tapes and so many live performances are sped up? Pretty much all of that expenditure has been rendered even more ridiculous by the Anthology cds.
I particularly like the The Beatles vs. The Third Reich album I have, because, well, at least the cover sleeve is good.
Matt, I’m too busy with work to get into it, but I think a lot of 70s rock is marked by feeling self-conscious about attempting to depart from/ape the rock past from which it feels increasingly distant. The new wave era featured many such attempts, and while Costello’s is one of the least dated, I still feel that era all over it. Elvis, in short, strikes me on some levels as one of our earliest (and maybe best) proctomusicologists.
Thanks for the explanation Mark. It makes a lot more sense to me now, even in the short version. I’ve heard this charge levelled against EC and lots of other punks/new wavers, though honestly I like self-consciousness, distance, irony and what not so I have no problem with this whatsoever.
I believe it’s in Lost in the Funhouse where John Barth writes, “Oh God comma I abhor self-consciousness.”
I grew a little warmer to the album when I got the two-disc reissue, which I only got because I found a copy at Newbury Comics for $8. The album itself remains basically indefensible as an object, but between the demos and EC’s mea culpa liner notes (short version: “Hey, my marriage was collapsing and I was drunk. You’d make a crap album too.”), I can kind of see that there were some decents songs — or at least the ideas for decent songs — in there, buried in mounds of filler and completely inappropriate production.
I can understand/buy this explanation, Great One. Not that it matters if I don’t get others’ enjoyment out of the album proper. Thanks!
I said I liked Goodbye Cruel World, not that it was EC’s best album or that it was better than some other artist’s album. If you really like a particular artist and/or producer, even lesser work by them can be enjoyable. Tattoo You too.
Believe it or not, I still don’t have the Rhino 2-disc version of this album (though it’s on my Amazon wish list; one of these days I’ll break down and get it), but I do have the Rykodisc version that came out in the mid ’90s. This is clearly a case where the bonus tracks (in the case of Ryko, the “Extended Play” section) are clearly better than much of what’s on the album. The line about entirely inappropriate production is key here and alludes to what I wrote before after Elvis try to wrestle away the control of these songs away from the hit-makers of the day and into his own, admittedly dark, drunken and just divorced orbit. In some ways this album is a fascinating trainwreck but I still maintain that some of it is just plain good. Regardless, the live solo version of “The Only Flame in Town” absolutely destroys the version on the album (way too slick) and hearing “Worthless Thing” and “Deportee” in a solo acoustic setting is nice, too (though I like the album versions of these). “Turning the Town Red” is a great B-side that’s better than most of what’s on that album. I also have boots from that time period with Elvis playing solo that are (to my ears) at least better listening than the really bad parts of Goodbye Cruel World.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I saw the Rhino 2-disc version of Almost Blue (another one I still don’t own though I have the Ryko version) at Repo Records last week for $8 or so, but I didn’t buy it as it looked a bit scratched and what not. One of these days I’ll get that one, GCW and King of America (I’ve got the Ryko 2-disc version of that one) to complete the collection.
I think most of us on this list, Matt, though not all, grew up in the irony-era of rock and roll.
That said, I’ve been wondering all day whether it’s true that what Elvis is to the 70s, the Pixies are to the 80s. Food for thought.
Incidentally, I can understand why they got sick of working with each other, but GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD is Exhibit A in my theory that every EC album should be produced by Nick Lowe, with the possible exception of IMPERIAL BEDROOM.
I just don’t think that’s true. I don’t think it’s so much that they got sick of working with each other, but rather that EC just wanted to do something different, he being the restless sort who’s never made the same record twice. I think he thought that there were just limitations as to what he could do working with Nick Lowe as compared to Geoff Emerick. Oh and BTW All This Useless Beauty, the other EC and the Attractions album produced by Geoff Emerick, is quite good and underrated as well.
Regardless, EC and Nick worked together around the time of Goodbye Cruel World on a duet version of “Baby It’s You” that appeared as a B-side on one of Nick’s 12″s (or maybe one of EC’s; I forget which). Furthermore, he also produced Blood and Chocolate a few years after that in 1986 and in 1994, he played bass on half of Brutal Youth. I’ll agree with you that he SHOULD’VE produced that one and that Kevin Killen should never be allowed to work with EC again (nor should Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake, though they haven’t since Brutal Youth thankfully), but that’s another matter entirely.