Underated albums

[sugarandspice]

 Okay, state an album that you think is way underated , or one that is way overated......
Go!
(I am hoping this is gonna be a good one)

xoxoxoxo
suga

[I. Spaceman]

The Who By Numbers
Neil Young - Trans
Bruce Springsteen - Tunnel Of Love
The Rolling Stones - Their Satanic Majesties Request, Goats Head Soup
Elvis - From Elvis Presley Boulevard
The Dixie Chicks - Home
Bob Dylan - Self Portrait, Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid
The Monkees - Instant Replay
The Byrds - Dr. Byrds And Mr. Hyde

[sugarandspice]

 You think they are underated or over rated?

I am really curious about her majestys I really think it is an overated one...

suga

[I. Spaceman]

Underrated.
Satanic is by no means overrated. Practically everyone dislikes it.
Personally, I like it about a thousand times more then Sgt. Pepper, and far more than even Forever Changes and Odessey And Oracle.

[sugarandspice]

Woa  Oddessey and Oracle is my sh*t... I dunno  I find that most ppl I come in contact with dig  the sh*t outta, her majesties....   I dunno oddessey blow my wig right off... her majesties does little to arouse my musical pallet

suga

[I. Spaceman]

Odessey is indeed amazing. Maybe the profile of Majesties is rising, I don't know. I just know EVERYONE told me it was terrible, and I have loved it since first listen.
Really, though, I'll take The Who Sell Out over all those albums.

[al]

These are UNderrated IMHO;

Pete Townshend - Chinese Eyes
Joe Walsh - Barnstorm
Neko Case - all!
Speedy Keene - Previous Convictions
Bob Dylan - Planet Waves
Robbie Robertson - Storyville
Orange Juice - You Can't Hide Your Love Forever
Neil Young (1st)
Cowboy Junkies - The Caution Horses
Teardrop Explodes - Wilder

I could go on....

Overrated? OK Computer, Sgt Pepper, Summer In Paradise (if anyone has ever had a good word for it then its overrated...), Harvest (in comparison to the rest of his 70's work that is...), Coldplay (all), Oasis's 1st two (in the UK anyway, I like them but not MORE than Who Sell Out or VU & Nico....), The Stone Roses (again, in the UK they are seen as being important and great. Sometimes my countrymen get it TOTALLY wrong.)

I shall go on tomorrow after I've suffered much abuse....

[Chris D.]

Underrated.
Satanic is by no means overrated. Practically everyone dislikes it.
Personally, I like it about a thousand times more then Sgt. Pepper, and far more than even Forever Changes and Odessey And Oracle.

I totally agree.  It puts Forever Changes and especialy Odessey and Oracle to shame.  An awesome album that is pretty, funny, and relentless.  The obscurities of the 60s have already come back and been milked to death.  When the hated albums by popular groups (Satanic Majesties, Smiley Smile) come back in style, this will be so huge.  Then people will talk about the Zombies like you talk about Sgt. Pepper.

They Might Be Giants -- Apollo 18 (has some fans, but not a lot)

Frank Black/Black Francis -- everything after Doolittle

The Damned -- Music for Pleasure

PiL -- anything after, mostly, Metal Box.  I need to dig in, too.

The Clash -- Sandinista! (it has its fans here, actually.  But still.  Drop the first album for this one.)

The Flaming Lips -- Clouds Taste Metallic

The Buzzcocks -- anything besides Singles Going Steady

XTC -- Mummer.  This is like the Damned album.  The production sounds wrong for it, but when you get into it, it makes sense.  Good songs.

Crass -- Penis Envy  Just because more people need to get the message.

Talking Heads -- True Stories, Naked

Beck -- One Foot in the Grave  Some gems.

Prince -- Parade, Around the World in a Day, Emancipation

[I. Spaceman]

Great calls, guys.
Music For Pleasure is a perfect example.

[Boxer Monkey]

Plush's two full-lengths (not counting "Underfed"), "More You Becomes You" and "Fed," are both reprehensibly underrated. Every lover of ornate pop should own "Fed"; it's a masterpiece.

Also, the five albums Ho-Hum recorded between 1999 and 2003 -- "Massacre," "Landau Zeal," "Funny Business," "Near and Dear" and "Fear of High Rollin'" -- are astoundingly brilliant and will floor you utterly. Wilco listens to this band on their tour bus, and they blow Wilco away, imo. Too bad Ho-Hum won't promote their albums beyond their home state of Arkansas.

[PapaNez22]

Personally, I like it about a thousand times more then Sgt. Pepper, and far more than even Forever Changes and Odessey And Oracle.

Holy sh*t! O&O isn't to be screwed with! I do agree with you on it being better that Pepper and Forever Changes however. Just gotta show my love for my 2nd favorite record ever.

My underated albums:
Days Of Future Passed - The Moody Blues
Nursery Cryme - Genesis
PG III/Melt - Peter Gabriel
Don't Believe The Truth - Oasis

And I couldn't agree with you more on 'Instant Replay' Ian. Very underated in my opinion.

[I. Spaceman]

Nursery Cryme - Genesis

HELL yes.

[Sheriff John Stone]

UNDERRATED
Sparks - "Kimono My House"
The Doors - "The Soft Parade"

OVERRATED
The Beatles - "Rubber Soul"
Frank Sinatra - "Sinatra Christmas Album"

[I. Spaceman]

Soft Parade is a brilliant, brilliant choice. It's only prejudice among pop fans against The Doors' music, and Doors fans reacting against the pop tendencies of the record, that make this such a disliked and unappreciated work.

[PapaNez22]

I forgot to mention 'Duke' by Genesis as well.

[the captain]

Good, fun thread. I'll be sober tomorrow and really post. But Tom Waits' Alice comes to mind as underrated. I hate to say it as it blasts through my bedroom door at me, but NMH's Aeroplane (one of my favorite albums, and among my top 5 ever, probably) might be overrated. F u cking hipsters wreck everything.

I'll use my sober brain tomorrow for real thinking.

[Music Machine]

Soft Parade is defenitley under-rated and it's defenitley not all lush pop. None of Morrison's songs are orchestrated. Shaman's Blues is pretty dark and Wild Child has a great groove. These songs should much more recognized than they are. One shame about The Soft Parade is that Easy Ride closes side one when that spot really should have gone to the Wishful Sinful b-side Who Scared You. Who Scared You should have been on the album and Easy Ride should have been the b-side.

[Chance]

Sherriff, I'll tell you this, the American Rubber Soul is the way to go on that album.

I'm tempted to say the entire decade of the eighties is underrated, musically. I see alot of people look back as if nothing was going on, but I've always thought it wasn't far behind the sixties if you knew where to look. (Alot of it very much inspired by the sixties, so maybe that's why I like it so much.) REM, The Smiths, The Clash, The Pretenders, The Bangles, Prince, Tom Waits, Kate Bush... I won't even start, I could go on forever.

For some reason though, whenever I hear "underrated" the first thing that pops into my head is "Colour By Numbers" by Culture Club. Not a "cool" record at this point in time, but better than everyone remembers.

Oh, and Doug Yule is underrated, both in and out of the Velvets.

[I. Spaceman]

He's right, y'know.
Colour By Numbers is great.

[richardsnow]

Its that topic again, where I get to mention....

GENUINE IMITATION LIFE GAZETTE- The Four Seasons

 

[koeeoaddi there]

underrated -

1) Hangman's Beautiful Daughter - the incredible string band
-the freakiest album of all time. but written out of history for being hippie folk wierdos.

2) ballad of easy rider - the byrds
- the loveliest album ever. dont care if there arent many original tracks, neither has sweetheart of the rodeo.

3) goats head soup - rolling stones
-the start of the rot? my favourite stones album so far

4) zinc alloy and the hidden riders of tomorrow - t.rex
- love it. its totally insane.

5) sgt pepper - the beatles.
- come on, you know this is their best album and not revolver.

[Sir Rob]

GIOMH - not a great album but still completely unfairly trashed by many.

LL Cool J - Bigger and Deffer (is this my guilty pleasure?)  I thought early LL Cool J, certainly his first two albums, was much better and cleverer than the much more hyped and fashionable Public Enemy and I saw both acts live in (the same) concert at the time.   Nowadays, of course, LL no longer worth bothering with.

 

[JRauch]

OVERRATED:
- basically everything by the Rolling Stones
- Sgt. Pepper
- Wish You Were Here

UNDERRATED:
- Pet Sounds (to the large public)
- New Adventures In Hi-Fi
- GIOMH

[Aegir]

I actually think Pet Sounds is extremely over-rated.. everyone says how amazing it is all the time (the general public doesn't know anything, by the way; ask a random person on the street what band did Exile on Main Street, for example, I doubt they'd be able to tell you).. I think my Amazon.com review sums up my ideas on it:

Many people call this one of the greatest albums in the world, but I think that's only because they read that one issue of Rolling Stone. Pet Sounds is not my favorite album ever, it's not even my favorite Beach Boys album (Friends and Wild Honey are my faves), but I love it nonetheless. Not for the production, not because it was ahead of its time. None of that nonsense. Pet Sounds, to me, represents the summers when I would drift off to sleep listening to it and staring at the ocean on the horizon outside my window. When I would feel exceptionally lonely and just listen to "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" again and again and again. When I would listen to the lyrics of That's Not Me and try my hardest to imagine would he could be talking about. When I would complain about this punk/ska-type CD my sister would listen to... until their cover of Sloop John B came on, and we would be singing along together, and vice/versa for when I was listening to Pet Sounds. When me and my (then) new girlfriend decided "Wouldn't It Be Nice" would be our song.

This album was not any sort of monumental listen for me in terms of sound quality or harmony between instruments or anything like that. Pet Sounds was the soundtrack to my life.

[Sir Rob]

Under-rated - Janis Ian's very first album, written and performed, I think, by her when she was 16 in 1967 and produced by George 'Shadow' Morton of Shangri-Las fame and it shows.  Imagine a Shangri-La who has grown up a bit and has moved on from just thinking about boys to poetry, literature, Dylan and politics and you've got an idea what this sounds like.  Seemingly quite unavailable nowadays, so if that's not being under-rated I don't know what is.  A great album.