Classic albums?

Still bums me out that they're done. One of the few bands that kept producing good new material and went out each night like they still had to earn their reputation.

 

How high does an entire band and its support system have to be for them to think that album cover was a good idea? I mean, she looks underage. Was she? Never understood that cover art.

 

Agreed. But better they go on their own terms than three other ways:

1) A band member dies unexpectedly (far too often, it seems to be an OD).
2) They were to keep going and people no longer showed up (listen to Genesis' "Duchess" ... simply sublime)
3) They keep going out there in a blatant money grab (too many bands do this for too long, doesn't really bring it or clearly has lost too much off the fastball).

Listen to their last studio album, "Clockwork Angels." Listen to "Caravan," the title track and "The Garden." Fastball was still there. Not an album the level of "Moving Pictures," "Permanent Waves" or "2112," but that's a daunting baseline. No way they'll go under the "one album too many" category.

This, relatively speaking, is the way to go.

 

Yes. 11.

Mariora Goschen: The Young Girl Featured on the Controversial "Blind Faith" Album Cover in 1969

 

Maybe a classic album creates the category it thereafter defines.

That said:

Miles Davis, Kind of Blue

John Coltrane, A Love Supreme

John Coltrane, My Favorite Things

Duke Ellington, Ellington at Newport

Dizzy Gillespie/Charlie Parker, Jazz at Massey Hall

Dave Brubeck, Time Out

Sonny Rollins, The Bridge

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Ella and Louis

Benny Goodman, Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall

Bill Evans, Sunday at the Vanguard

Billie Holiday, Best of Billie Holiday

 

The Best Opera Recording Ever Is Maria Callas Singing ‘Tosca.’ Hear Why.

 

Glenn Gould, the Goldberg Variations

Pablo Casals, Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites

Rostropovich and Richter, Beethoven Sonatas for Piano and Cello

Vladimir Horowitz, Horowitz in Moscow

Gershwin plays Gershwin, the Piano Rolls

de Leeuw, Satie, the early piano works

Andres Segovia, the Segovia Collection

 

Oklahoma, Original Movie Cast

West Side Story, Original Broadway Cast

My Fair Lady, Original Broadway Cast

Hamilton, Original Broadway Cast

Sweeney Todd, Original Broadway Cast

Company, 2006 Broadway Revival Cast

Sound of Music, Original Movie Cast

Rent, Original Broadway Cast

 

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook

Frank Sinatra, Songs for Swingin' Lovers

Frank Sinatra, Only the Lonely

Ray Charles, Greatest Hits Vol 1 and 2, 1990 CD issue (includes live recording of "Makin' Whoopee")

A Treasury of Library of Congress Field Recordings

Anthology of American Folk Music

Woody Guthrie, Woody at 100

 

JFC. And you can still buy that album with that cover

 

Oddly, Blind Faith was an answer to a trivia question I heard this morning on a rerun of Casey Kasum show from the late 1970s. Question, was there any band that ever had a number one album and then never have a subsequent album even chart?

 

Well, standards have definitely changed since the mid-70s

When the publicity blitz for the movie "Paper Moon" came out in 1974, I remember one picture that made a bunch of the big mags was Tatum O'Neal, then aged 9-10, standing shirtless on top of a truck while daddy Ryan looked on.

There wasn't much public outrage about it, more like some mild kvetching. Although I don't see that picture popping up in google searches much these days either.