The Smiley Smile Message Board

Here's some:

Arcade Fire - In the Backseat (Funeral)
Band - I Shall Be Released (Music From Big Pink)
Bruce Sprigsteen - Jungleland (Born to Run)
Who - Love Reign O'er Me (Quadrophenia)
Beatles - A Day in the Life (Sgt. Pepper's)
Love - You Set the Scene (Forever Changes)

The Doors - The End
Bob Dylan - Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
The Zombies - Time of the Season

Kandy Korn----Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band (Strictly Personal)
European Son----The Velvet Underground (debut)
My Body Is A Cage----Arcade Fire (Neon Bible)
Cop Shoot Cop----Spiritualized (LAGWAFIS)
The Private Psychedelic Reel----The Chemical Brothers (Dig Your Own Hole)

Wow, really? I truly want to like this one cause the rest of the album is like my favourite music ever. But it bores me to death, I can't lie...

Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows

Sorry to hear that! Well, one man's meat etc.

When The Levee Breaks----Led Zeppelin (IV). What a great decision to place this skull-cruncher at the end of side 2 and "STH" at the end of side 1...

As for great BB album closers, I'd suggest "Cool, Cool Water" and "Surf's Up"----epic tracks both. 

Iron Maiden - Hallowed Be Thy Name (Number of the Beast)

Queensryche - Eyes of a Stranger (Operation Mindcrime)

The Beach Boys - Surf's Up (Surf's Up)

Queen - The Show Must Go On (Innuendo)

The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again (Who's Next)

Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman (Diary of a Madman)

Pink Floyd - High Hopes (The Division Bell)

Absolutely!

It's All Too Much----Steve Hillage (L)

Men At Work - Down By The Sea (Business As Usual)
Pink Floyd - Two Suns in the Sunset (The Final Cut)
Neil Young  Crazy Horse - A Dream That Can Last (Sleeps With Angels)

 Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want (Let It Bleed)
 Rolling Stones - Moonlight Mile (Sticky Fingers)
 

  A great band with albums that often ended with duds? Try The Byrds.

Just going through my iTunes library, here are some really great ones that haven't been mentioned.

Buffalo Springfield - Broken Arrow (Buffalo Springfield Again)
Paul McCartney - Nineteen Hundred Eighty Five (Band on the Run)
Paul McCartney - The Back Seat of My Car (Ram)
The Who - Love Reign O'er Me (Quadrophenia)
Lou Reed - Sad Song (Berlin)
Billy Joel - Captain Jack (Piano Man)
Billy Joel - Miami 2017 (Turnstiles)
Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms
Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town
Bruce Springsteen - Jungleland (Born to Run)
Bruce Springsteen - My City of Ruins (The Rising)
Radiohead - Blow Out (Pablo Honey)
Radiohead - A Wolf At the Door (Hail to the Thief)
Carole King - You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman (Tapestry)
Paul Simon - The Late Great Johnny Ace (Hearts and Bones)
Talking Heads - Road to Nowhere (Little Creatures)
John Cale - Antarctica Starts Here (Paris 1919)
The Rolling Stones - Soul Survivor (Exile on Main Street)
The Shins - The Past and Pending (Oh, Inverted World)
Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes (So)
Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach - God Give Me Strength (Painted from Memory)
Bob Dylan - Sara (Desire)

The one-two punch of Brain Damage/Eclipse closing out Dark Side of the Moon will never be "eclipsed."


(http://pinkfloydarchives.com/Discog/Singapor/LP/DSOTM/DSOTM1/BC.jpg)

Get Out Of My House, (The Dreaming), Kate Bush
Supper's Ready (Foxtrot), Genesis
Los Endos, (A Trick Of The Tail), Genesis
The Confession, (Eli & The Thirteenth Confession), Laura Nyro
Run For Your Life, (Rubber Soul), Beatles
A Day In The Life, (Sgt Pepper), Beatles
The Morning Fog, (Hounds of Love), Kate Bush
Shadow of the Hierophant,  (Voyage of the Acolyte), Steve Hackett
Secret World, (Us), Peter Gabriel
Burn Down The Mission, (Tumbleweed Connection), Elton John

Ummm.....Caroline No?????

Traveling Wilburys - ST - End of the Line

The Who - Tommy - We're Not Gonna Take It / Listening to You

Rainbow - Rising - A Light in the Black

Black Sabbath - Vol 4 - Under the Sun

Another tack might be to consider pairings of LP side closers (such as the aforementioned "Stairway" and "Levee"), how they relate (if at all) and what their purpose is.  :smokin

For sure.  One of the greatest closers of all time.  But its closing status is elevated further by the train whizzing by.  It's genius.  Theatrical -- but not overly theatrical, because you don't really expect it in the context of the song (or album).  The train functions as the both the song's end of youth and innocence I suppose -- passing us by, but encapsulates the departure of everything covered in the album.  It blows my mind every time -- left there by the side of the tracks, in silence -- with all that music echoing faintly in my memory.  Was it a dream?  Is life all a dream?  Where we ever really young?  Where's "the train going?"  Why are we not on it anymore?  Do we get off the train when we stop and look back?  Life's the train.  Or is life here?  Am I off my train?  Is it a dream, when you're on the train -- and once you're off and looking back -- is that when you really understand life?  You know... those types of things.

I've always wondered how listeners perceived that at the time.  Very psychedelic -- before all the fluffy, extraneous, meaninglessness pap that psychedelic music actually became (see Sgt Peeper -- sorry... cheap shot, yet so true  >:D).

When the CD format became truly realized as the new artistic format for programming albums (which I've always seen as happening with the Red Hot Chili Peppers', Blood Sugar Sex Magic) -- I have occasionally lamented the loss of the LP format's "two movements" -- with the flipping of the album functioning as the intermission, similar to the great epic films.

End of the Show - Dennis Wilson Pacific Ocean Blue!

Agreed. When listening to CDs that were originally recorded in the pre-CD era,  you have to somehow build in that break in your mind.

An astute move by the reissuers (maybe some have done it?) would be to make the gap between "sides" at least a minute long, just to give the feeling of the LP's original two arcs. Surely then, for example, "Sloop John B" would make sense even to its detractors as the last track on side one, rather than the song just before "God Only Knows" (which itself suffers by following "SJB" far too quickly).         

A few that really work for me. OK, more than a few. I make no apologies. One of the below may be tongue in cheek. Some of you might think more than one is tongue in cheek.

"Her Majesty," the Beatles, Abbey Road
"Two-Headed Boy, pt II," Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
"Purple Rain," Prince, Purple Rain
"Night is the Day Turned Inside Out," Beulah, The Coast is Never Clear
"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home
"The Repudiated Immortals," Of Montreal, The Sunlandic Twins
"A Day in the Life." the Beatles, Sgt Pepper
"Reservations," Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
"Lullabye," Ben Folds Five, ...Reinhold Messner
"Flightless Bird, American Mouth," Iron & Wine, The Shepherd's Dog
"Wool," Earl Sweatshirt (feat. Vince Staples), I Don't Like sh*t, I Don't Go Outside
"Ghost Dance 1492," Beachwood Sparks, Make the Cowboy Robots Cry
"Judy and the Dream of Horses," Belle & Sebastian, If You're Feeling Sinister
"Messed Around," Squeeze, East Side Story
"Pale Green Things," The Mountain Goats, The Sunset Tree
"Get It Wrong, Get It Right," Feist, Metals
"Race For the Prize," The Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin
"King Kong," Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, Uncle Meat
"Rocket Queen," Guns n Roses, Appetite for Destruction
"Perfect Friend," Randy "Macho Man" Savage, Be a Man
"Smile," Janelle Monae, Metropolis: the Chase Suite
"Necessary," KRS-One, By All Means Necessary
"Big Sky," Lou Reed, Ecstasy
"Government Center," The Modern Lovers, The Modern Lovers
"Someday, Someone," Jeremy Messersmith, Heart Murmurs
"Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)," Jimi Hendrix Experience, Electric Ladyland
"Oh Yoko!" John Lennon, Imagine
"I'm Gonna Crawl," Led Zeppelin, In Through the Out Door
"Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace," the Mountain Goats, The Life of the World to Come
"Finale: The Magic Store," the Muppets, The Muppet Movie

"Eclipse" - Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
"The Good Times Are Killing Me" - Good News For People Who Love Bad News - Modest Mouse
"All Apologies" - In Utero - Nirvana
"Samointe" - Shepherd Moons - Enya
"Plenty More" - The Inevitable - Squirrel Nut Zippers

Ugh, one of my least favourite Lennon songs. It's sort of like that Seinfeld episode where Jerry and his girlfriend call each other silly nicknames - "You're a schmoopy!"

Oh well, such is life. I've got similar feelings (well, not the schmoopy part, but a negative reaction) about quite a few of the tunes I've seen listed as well. I think it's great. Not insightful, but bouncy and joyful. In fact, your schmoopy comment might be perfect--especially when one considers that being in the "schmoopy trading" relationship is bliss whether it nauseates everyone else or not. It's an "i'm in love and don't give a f***" kind of thing.

Sure, and I love most of your list as well.


I associate it more with a need to remind everyone around that "we're in love, look at us!". I like to think love is a bond much deeper than that and, as long as both persons feel it, there's no need for constant manifestation of it. But maybe it's got to do with the type of persons who behave that way that I've come in contact with.

Also from the Doors, "The Soft Parade" I always loved... probably more so than "The End" but admittedly probably just because it's less popular. 

That is definitely a fair interpretation. To me, how one views that (and a lot of things) changes depending on one's own circumstances. Of course love is (or at least hopefully love is) deeper than that. But at the same time, one who is in love--especially the ecstatic early phases of it--may well rise (or sink) into the schmoopy behavior quite innocently. Others fake it for attention. And it's almost always annoying to anyone on the outside either way. Maybe this is an odd correlation, but I am reminded of Robert Wright's book The Evolution of God, where he says Old Testament portrayals of how Israel/Judah interacted with outsiders can almost always relate to their economic well-being at the time those assorted books were written. When all is well, trade is thriving and the nation next door is an important partner. Consequently, the various prohibitions on interactions are lessened or lifted and there's a "live and let live" idea. When times are worse, those bastards should be slain immediately. One's mindset can similarly affect the sentiment or style of art, as well. At least that's what I think. Catch me on the wrong day and I'll hate "Oh Yoko" too.

On the Oh Yoko front, content aside, I feel like it is one of the most (if not the most) enthusiastic sounding songs in Lennon's solo career. While Lennon is still my favourite Beatle, and while I used to love his solo material so much that I know it all pretty well, I have become less and less interested in it as time has gone on, mostly because I feel like there's not much fun in it. Part of that is a production issue, I think -- I listen to his demos or alternate takes of songs like I'm the Greatest and Nobody Told Me and they sound really great and I could imagine them sounding even better with good final mixes. But so much of the music lacks classic Lennon's sense of adventure. I'm not sure if I'm articulating it well, but there you have it. At any rate, I feel like Oh Yoko has that sense of adventure in it.

I offer up these three:

"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" by Bob Dylan
"Weasels Ripped My Flesh" by Frank Zappa (oh, come on, it works so well)
"Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks


"Oh Yoko!" is one of the few Lennon solo songs I like.

It certainly does! Good call.

How about:

"Tribute To World War III"----The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (Volume 3: A Child's Guide To Good And Evil)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc_0cii5o7c

I'm with you!  While "The End" is a truly epic closure... I tend to find its girth a little tedious and its themes/message a little too intense (and creepy) to "leave me" as a favorite closer.  "The Soft Parade" on the other hand is a blast!  It builds, meanders & explores, goofs-off, and never stops entertaining.  It's a great anthem, with so much solid "Doors-isms" yet is all the while, quite obscure feeling.

Love it!

Good call on The Soft Parade title track. 

You can make almost put that one is a separate category - great closers to mediocre albums. 

Although, I prefer the live version they performed on PBS, which I'm pretty sure is available on The Doors - Essential Rarities. 

Like you said Bean Bag, it's a little more fun.  I was really into the Doors as a teenager, but I always enjoyed the fun songs the most, stuff like Hyacinth House or Moonlight Drive, or Love Street...  wonderful music, really. 

My favorite Doors album closer would be When the Music's Over.  I know it kinda rambles on a bit, but that last refrain just drives the whole thing home.

There are a few Moody Blues album closers I think are wonderful.  Nights in White Satin, of course, spoken poetry and all.  Which poses a bit of a dilemma when I hear it on the radio or on a comp.  Without the spoken part it sounds incomplete.  With the spoken part (which I have actually heard on the radio on occasion) it sounds a bit out of context.  I guess the only way for me to listen to it is on the album from start to finish.

Another Moodies album closer I thoroughly enjoy is Watching and Waiting off of To Our Children's Children's Children.  What a beautiful haunting song!  It always makes me want to hear the album all over again.

"Grown Ocean" from the album "Helplessness Blues" by Fleet Foxes is a spectacular album closer. The band has been on hiatus for about 4 years now, and chances of a reunion seem slim. However, this track makes for a beautiful and satisfying album closer and potential career cap if this indeed proves to be their final release.

A Comet Appears from the Shins' Wincing the Night Away.

"Redeemed" from Blue Oyster Cult's eponymous first album or "Astronomy" from "Secret Treaties".  Both melodic, intense, moody from a very misunderstood band.

Astronomy closes out Secret Treaties, one of the most severely undervalued albums of all time.  To me, that's when BOC peaked.  Their first five albums are absolutely killer, but there's something special about Secret Treaties.  Sadly, when they play live these days, they tend to ignore that album for some reason. 

Summer's Gone - That's Why God Made the Radio

Pretty much agree, although any of those first five (and perhaps "On Your Feet...") have spent time as my favorite.  But gun to my head...yeah "Secret Treaties".

Saw them a couple of times in recent years and it's still a great show -- Buck is amazing as always.  Perhaps they veer away from "Secret Treaties" because it's a heavily Bouchard Brothers disk?  Though all the first 5 were.

True.  I could be wrong, but I think Secret Treaties is the only album that doesn't feature a Buck lead vocal.

Seems like BOC have settled into a familiar ten song or so set over the past 5-6 years.   But, Buck still amazes, especially on the extended Last Days of May.  The first time I got to see them was 2005, when Allan was still there, and they did play Harvester of Eyes and Astronomy.  Got to get Eric Bloom to sign my Secret Treaties after the show. 

Also, got a chance to see Albert was his band The Brain Surgeons in 2005.  Sadly, they were playing to (no exaggeration) four people by the end of the night, but I got to talk to him and get my copy of Secret Treaties signed. 

To be as great as they were and playing in bars...it's a crime.

I agree with all of these ^ posts. Those first five BOC albums are classics; Spectres was no slouch either. BOC was an enigma. Their early albums were all critically acclaimed and sold well; Agents Of Fortune even went platinum. I thought the success of "Don't Fear The Reaper" would propel them to the next level of popularity, but they kind of slowly faded away. "Burnin' For You" did get some exposure during the early days of MTV; the video got repeated plays. Buck Dharma is always near the top of my list of underrated musicians, though I have seen BOC mentioned as an influence for some of the metal bands. Buck Dharma was on MTV Classic's That Metal Show last year.   

I saw BOC at The Spectrum in Philadelphia in 1978. They were featuring a very impressive laser show at that time. I remember how Alan Lanier's keyboards were a prominent part of the live mix, moreso than the records. But for me, the highlight of the concert was when they lined up five guitarists in front of the stage and jammed to "Born To Be Wild". Those were the days...

I don't think it's a coincidence that the first five studio albums were the only ones to get really nice reissues a few years back.  Although the Martin Birch produced albums in the early 80s were really good too. 

ABD, it was a shame seeing Albert Bouchard ten years ago, playing in a tiny bar to four people.  But it was cool to talk to him for a few minutes.  He and I talked a bit about the recently released Metallica Some Kind of Monster movie.  I wish I had, but I didn't really want to bring up BOC. 

I've seen BOC four times in the last ten years.   It's just Eric and Buck setting small festivals and county fairs on flame with rock and roll these days.  One of the best was a cold windy September day in 2011 at Ocean City Bike Fest.  Big crowd, great show.  The solo on Last Days of May was breathtaking.  Golden Age of Leather was very appropriate.  But I think the crowd was just politely waiting to air cowbell to The Reaper. 

It's a shame they've been reduced to a punch line, but the guys are really good sports about it.  At a 4th of July fair, Eric brought a kid on stage who brought a cowbell to the show, and let him play on Don't Fear the Reaper. 

I get the feeling that Mac Demarco likes to end his albums with a song that ends in him talking in the background. A little personal touch. It's usually pretty amusing.

The Who - Love Reign O'er Me (Quadrophenia)

Black Sabbath - Under the Sun (Vol 4)

Iron Maiden - Hallowed By Thy Name (Number of the Beast)

Brian Wilson - Southern California (That Lucky Old Sun)

The Beatles - A Day in the Life (Sgt. Pepper's)

Pink Floyd - Echoes (Meddle)

Ghost - Monstrance Clock (Infessisumum)

I've noticed that too! Along the lines of "drop by for a coffee if you're in town". And he sounds like he means it. :=)

"The Rumor", the menacing last track on The Band's third album Stage Fright. The whole thing sounds malignant but the coupe de grâce is the trio of drum thumps at the end, like a death knell. Spooky stuff...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Pt_ZkGg8I

He's spoken about how people have actually come over to his place. He doesn't mind it, and people are usually chill. Gotta love his free spirit!

"Shine Like Stars", the lullaby-like concluding track of the emotional roller-coaster that is Primal Scream's Screamadelica:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi3L7zOkw7Y