With today's double header of The Velvet Underground and The Doors, I'm now over halfway through the countdown of my expanded notes for The 20 Greatest Eponymous Albums Of All Time, collated, counted and curated by No Badger Required.
From a longlist of suggestions by members of the NBR Musical Jury, we were asked to vote and comment on our Top 20, with no guarantee that our personal choices would achieve a similar ranking or even appear in the Top 20 at all.
So it is with today's selection: one of these made the Top 5; the other didn't make the final countdown at all. But which?
If you haven't read or committed to memory the published Top 20, I will share it again in the final post here as a compare and contrast with my personal picks.
Without giving too much away, SWC noted that some of the Musical Jury voted for The Velvet Underground's third album from 1969, rather than their 1967 debut, The Velvet Underground & Nico, as intended. This inevitably split the votes and impacted on the band's final placing.
Yep, I was one of those people who did that.
I even went so far as to comment that "I won’t pretend that this is my favourite VU album"... no, that would be The Velvet Underground & Nico, dummkopf!
Even the Iffypedia page on the third album opens with the warning message "Not to be confused with The Velvet Underground & Nico"!!
That aside, The Velvet Underground (1969) is an album that I’ve grown to appreciate far more over the years since I first heard it in the 1990s.
Back then, it felt too safe and straightforward by comparison with what had gone before, and as a fan of John Cale, I was predisposed to dislike the material following his sacking from the Velvets less favourably.
Time at least has enabled me to better appreciate the nuances and, let’s be honest, some pretty beautiful pop songs. My opinion still stands that Paul Quinn and Edwyn Collins recorded the definitive version of Pale Blue Eyes in 1984, but the song started here and it's one of Lou Reed's finest examples of pop songwriting.
Unfortunately due to the unfortunate case of mistaken identity, The Velvet Underground only managed a #12 placing on my voting slip.
At least I didn't make the same mistake with The Doors' debut, which stormed in at #4 in my Top 20 eponymous albums.
Like The Velvet Underground & Nico, a Sixties album that is very much rooted in the Eighties, as far as my experience of the band and their music is concerned. And inextricably linked to the VHS era, too.
The thrill for me of going to the local video shop to rent tapes was as much about feeding my insatiable appetite for music as it was for films, as there were growing number of music video compilations and concert recordings available, which would never be broadcast on the four TV channels in the UK, BBC1, BBC2, ITV and the relatively new Channel 4.
So, on a personal level, The Doors’ first album goes hand-in-hand with the Dance On Fire video compilation, the thrill of Break On Through (To The Other Side) and Light My Fire matched on vinyl by the respective promo clips and appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Not a duff song amongst the first ten, and number eleven is the eleven-minute epic The End, which took Dylan’s bar and raised it, bringing the album to an incredible close.
Incredible then, that I thought – and I still think – that second album Strange Days is even better! But that's a story for another post.
Heading up today's post is Dr. Sam Beckett, the character played by Scott Bakula in the US TV series, Quantum Leap, which ran for four years, five seasons and 97 episodes between 1989 and 1993.
That perplexed facial expression was Sam's default in pretty much every episode, as he found himself in a new scenario - and time, and body - before spending the next forty-odd minutes doing the right thing. This snap off the telly is from the very final episode, Mirror Image, the ending of which has caused endless speculation and debate since.
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