~music Listening Club 19 - The Beatles (The White Album)
19 weeks and there's another classic record discussion to be had: The Beatles by The Beatles!
The Beatles, also known as "The White Album", is the ninth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles, released on 22 November 1968. A double album, its plain white sleeve has no graphics or text other than the band's name embossed, which was intended as a direct contrast to the vivid cover artwork of the band's previous LP Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Although no singles were issued from The Beatles in Britain and the United States, the songs "Hey Jude" and "Revolution" originated from the same recording sessions and were issued on a single in August 1968. The album's songs range in style from British blues and ska to tracks influenced by Chuck Berry and by Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with the white album! Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!
If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.
Don't forget to nominate and vote for next week's obscure record in response to this comment!
Please reply to this comment with all nominations for Week 20 of the listening club then vote on submissions you would like to see chosen. Votes and nominations will still count until minutes before the eighth week's thread is posted.
Feel free to "sell" your nominated record in your comment. By the nature of obscure nominations, there probably won't be many others who are familiar with what you mention. Tell us why you think we should hear it, if you'd like! If your record is picked, this will be included in the OP of the next listening club.
Please make sure your record includes a freely available stream or download. Probably your best bet is asking yourself "is this on Spotify or YouTube?" Other platforms work too, but I doubt too many winning nominations would be DatPiff exclusives.
Remember: Your record should not be certified Gold or higher by the RIAA. Here you can check the certification status of your nomination, if you're unsure.
Gonna go ahead and nominate Sonic Youth - Washing Machine.
I listened to this fairly recently and after my previous experience with Sonic Youth (Daydream Nation, Sister), which I thought was mostly just okay, fine, whatever, I did not expect to get as much enjoyment out of this album as I did. Yeah, it's Sonic Youth going even less no-wave inspired than before, but I think they fit far better into that groove of noisy-ish alt rock without the no-wave coming in at times. Maybe I just think the writing is cooler. All I know is it made me finally able to say "I appreciate Sonic Youth."
Have you done Yes's Close to the Edge? There's also Fleetwood Mac's Rumours.
Close to the Edge is as prog rock as it gets, with long and winding musical themes that build to massive sounds and ethereal and grand experiences.
Rumours is the all encompassing quaint album about relationships, with folky, pop rock songs singing about love and solitude.
Certified platinum (for Close to the Edge) and diamond (for Rumours), so not going to work out for the nominations.
Still, I like both of those records and if this keeps going they're both decently likely to show up in a classic week someday!
Given the success of Anderson .Paak's previous single Bubblin and the hype generated by his recently released single TINTS ft. Kendrick Lamar from his upcoming new album, Oxnard, which is being exec-produced by Dr. Dre and released by Dre's label Aftermath Entertainment... I nominate .Paak's previous solo album, Malibu. And while one of the singles featured on the album made Gold (Come Down), the album never did which is crazy to me considering how great it is, IMO.
Malibu is a healthy mix of Hip-Hop, R&B, and Neo Soul, and .Paak's raspy voice and smooth flow works amazing well for all three genres. Unlike a few other users on here I am not very good at selling albums or describing them in an enticing way, but if you want a taste I would highly recommend .Paak's Tiny Desk concert, which features three of the songs from Malibu and ranks among my all-time favorites.
I finally had a chance to listen to this in full today... but what can one really say about such a monumentally popular, highly regarded, classic album that hasn't already been said about it by an absolute ton of other more qualified and eloquent people? So rather than focus on specific critique or praise, I am just going to tell a bit of a personal story about it instead. ;)
I have a love/hate relationship with the Beatles and this album, largely due to the fact my father is a massive Beatles fan and this is one of his all-time favorite albums... so I must have heard it (and every other Beatles album) literally hundreds of times over the years as a result. The Beatles were pretty much constantly playing on his record player at home and in the car whenever we drove anywhere as a family, especially on the 10+ hour car rides through the Rockies to visit various family members scattered throughout B.C. Over the years I have gone from loving the Beatles and this album as a child, to loathing them/it as a teen, to at least "appreciating" (but definitely not loving) them/it as an adult... or so I thought.
It's been over a decade since I last really listened to the Beatles or this album... well inasmuch as that is possible given the frequency with which their most popular songs get played on the radio, more than a couple of which are on this album. Yet despite this decade+ long overall Beatles hiatus, while listening to this album today I found myself singing along to virtually every song on it, tapping my toes while I did and thoroughly enjoying myself in the process. The funny thing is that at first I didn't even notice that I was singing along while I listened as I worked... then when I did finally notice, I was surprised at the ease and clarity with which I could remember absolutely all the lyrics. Another surprise was discovering how happy and nostalgic the process was making me feel. By the time I got to "Cry baby cry" I had a huge smile on my face and felt remarkably uplifted. So I guess I have finally moved past mere "appreciation" to actually, finally, loving the Beatles once again like I did when I was a kid and my father still does to this very day.
...
But that isn't quite the end of the story. This album had one final surprise in store for me upon hearing "number 9... number 9... number 9..." being repeatedly bounced back and forth between my left and right ear. My immediate thought was "WTF is this shit!?" and I quickly brought up Spotify to see what strange track from some random experimental band it had taken me to after completing the album. Only despite my never having heard this track before in my life, it turns out the album wasn't completed yet! My father has apparently, every single time he played this album, stopped it immediately after Cry Baby Cry. And I can't say I blame him, either. Revolution 9 was "unique" and "interesting" but felt incredibly out of place on the album, and upon reading of Yoko Ono's involvement and Lennon's insistence the track be included, that is not surprising. But honestly, more surprising than that track was the terribleness of the final one, Good Night. I think I actually prefer Revolution 9 to Good Night since at least it's interesting, which is more than can be said for the incredibly cheesy strings, and almost laughably cliche melody/lyrics in Good Night. :P
Aw, I adore "Revolution 9"! That's one that has changed a lot for me over time...I was terrified of it as a kid. I have a hard time seeing it as out of place, the album is almost defined by how it jumps around to things that really don't make sense next to each other but sound good like that anyway. Though part of it is that it's always been part of the album for me, I'm sure.
Thanks for contributing, by the way, personal stories like this are wonderful.
LOL. Yeah, had it not caught me totally by surprise I think I could have genuinely enjoyed Revolution 9. I am not normally one for experimental music, but it's definitely a genre that is rapidly growing on me the more I listen to it (in large part thanks to some of the stuff that's been submitted to Tildes). But given that this is an album I thought I was intimately familiar with... when that "number 9" started bouncing between my ears and I came to realized it was actually a track on the album that I had never heard before, I was kind of in shock for the rest of the song and am still sort of processing it. :P
I will definitely be going back to it at some point though, and it may very well grow on me too!
p.s. YW and thanks for the kind comment in turn. :) You never know when you put a personal story out there if it will be appreciated or simply seen as ego wankery (which it still kind of is, I suppose). :P But it is nice to know someone actually did get some enjoyment out of it.
I love this album. It's been my favorite Beatles album ever since I actually sat down and went through most of the ones I thought I would care about, and by far it showcases things I wanted to see so much more of from them.
I love Back in the USSR, I love Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, I love While My Guitar Gently Weeps, I love Happiness is a Warm Gun, I love Rev 9, I just love everything on this to a very high level. Is it among my favorite albums that I listen to a lot of the time? Maybe not, but the respect I have for this and the appreciation I get when I do feel like listening to it is unmatched by any other Beatles album.