Korean Job Discussion Forums

[SirFink]

Beach Boys -- Smile

[Nowhere Man]

Excellent topic. I'm really groovin' on this. Here's my top 10:

10. Haunted-Poe
I haven't actually heard this, but thought it was worth putting on the list because...well... that's a story in itself. Poe's brother, Mark Danielewski, wrote this mind-boggling book called House of Leaves, a kind of Moby Dick of horror novels. Haunted is a concept album based on this book. At the same time, their father was a jazz musician/artist. Years after his death, Poe and Mark find a box in their house. It contains a series of recordings their father had recorded about them throughout their lives but never told them about. So, Haunted intersplices bits of her now-dead father's recordings with songs based on House of Leaves.

9. The Wall-Pink Floyd
The one I album I really don't like to hear only parts of. Only in its entirety. Especially the use of Run Like Hell at sporting events.

8. Southern Rock Opera- Drive By Truckers
An amazingly personal tribute to Skynrd.

7. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots- The Flaming Lips
Not so much a concept as a sci-fi theme

6. 3 Feet High and Rising- De La Soul
I still don't know the answers to the quiz-show questions. Tiberious?

5. Blood on the Tracks-Dylan
Beautiful break-up album and a great album title.
For a long time, I thought this was a kind of greatest hits compilation. Blew me away to discover its true nature.

4. Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven!-Godspeed You Black Emperor
Every album they make is a concept album, but more like a soundscape.
4 songs on 2 Cds.


3. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars- David Bowie

The classic sense of concept.

2. The Inner Flame- A Tribute to Rainer Ptacek

Ptacek, a lap-steel extraordinaire, played a lot in Howe Gelb/Giant Sand's broader musical circles. Then, he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and given 6 months to live. So, in 1997, a great assortment of artists assembled to cut an album of his songs about life. Robert Plant, Vic Chestnut, Emmylou Harris, PJ Harvey, etc...

"Rudy with a Flashlight" with Evan Dando is my fav.


1. A Love Supreme-John Coltrane

Any comment would be superfluous.

[eamo]

[Rteacher]

One of the first "progressive" rock groups, Frank Zappa's Mothers (of Invention) put out more than a few concept albums. Two classic ones are FREAK OUT! and We're Only In It For the Money


1. Hungry Freaks, Daddy
2. I Ain't Got No Heart
3. Who Are The Brain Police?
4. Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder
5. Motherly Love
6. How Could I Be Such A Fool
7. Wowie Zowie
8. You Didn't Try To Call Me
9. Any Way The Wind Blows
10. I'm Not Satisfied
11. You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here
12. Trouble Every Day
13. Help, I'm A Rock
14. It Can't Happen Here
15. The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet



Are You Hung Up? 1:24
Who Needs the Peace Corps? 2:34
Concentration Moon 2:22
Mom & Dad 2:16
Telephone Conversation 0:48
Bow Tie Daddy 0:33
Harry, You're a Beast 1:21
What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body? 1:03
Absolutely Free 3:24
Flower Punk 3:03
Hoot Poop 0:26
Nasal Retentive Calliope Music 2:02
Let's Make the Water Turn Black 2:01
The Idiot Bastard Son 3:18
Lonely Little Girl 1:09
Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance 1:32
What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body? (reprise) 1:02
Mother People 2:26
The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny 6:25

[Qinella]

Some damn good mentions in this thread. I gotta get busy on Soulseek.

[re:cursive]

Is this thread dying already? Oh well....

Next up: Anything by Drexciya.

Here's a description of the "concept" (taken from discogs.com)

"Detroit electro-techno outfit Drexciya was conceived in 1989, but first came into the public eye in 1994 with "Aquatic Invasion" - the first of a thematic series of releases. Drexciya's James Stinson and Gerald Donald remained hidden behind their alias for much of the group's existence, communicating a complex personal mythology of a "Drexciyan" race of underwater dwellers descended from pregnant slave women thrown overboard during trans-Atlantic deportation. Within this fiction, their music - which they claimed was recorded "live in the studio" rather than programmed - was imagined as a "dimensional jumphole" between their black African roots and the contemporary USA."

Amazing music. I have a whole lot of respect for the late James Stinson.

From their early days I recommend "Drexciya II: Bubble Metropolis"



Might post some more electronic concepts later.

[Satori]

"One Trick Pony" by Paul Simon in the mid seventies was a superb concept albumn. Well, it was a superb albumn, and it happened to be a concept albumn, but the concept part was not the strongest part. It was the soundtrack to a movie about an aging pop singer who's popularity is fading. And I know you're instantly going to think, duh! That's just Paul Simon writing about himself in the seventies. The reality is far from that though, and within this framework he mines some deep emotional veins and turns some of the most indelible lines ever comitted to tape in pop music ( as he always does on every goddamn thing he touches! )...

[Rteacher]

I think you have to include the Who's "Tommy" on any list of concept albums.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who
(I heard their first performance of it at Woodstock - but I can barely recall it...)

I was into the Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers of America" album when a lot of us were into revolution...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who

Country Joe and the Fish's "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" album was another anti-war / pro love, peace and drugs album.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_Joe_and_the_Fish

One of the earliest anti-war, "progressive" groups (without much musical merit but heavy on clever, provocative lyrics was the FUGS:


The Fugs were the band that out-freaked the Mothers of Invention, a crude, reckless exhibition of 1960s counterculture abandon that unexpectedly found a spot on the pop charts. Founded in New York City's East Village in 1964 by bookstore owner Ed Sanders and poet Tuli Kupferberg, the Fugs were beatniks and satirists, an irreverent reaction to the decade's social turbulence and often credited as the first underground band. Their satire would anticipate Frank Zappa's Mothers, whose classic 1966 LP Freak Out! is a more accessible and successful demonstration of some of the Fugs' intentions as advocates of social reform.

The Fugs' 1966 album, Virgin Fugs (now available for the first time on CD), is, like the group itself, very much a specimen of its era. Its uncensored lyrics don't exactly shock like they did at the time and the performances (which include members of the Holy Modal Rounders) are often frustratingly amateurish. Revisiting a Fugs album now is necessary only for historical and social perspectives, or to trace the lineage of those who would follow, whether it be Zappa, Ween, or Eminem. Much can be said about its role in opening up the free speech channels of pop music, but listening to Virgin Fugs solely for purposes of enjoyment is practically impossible. No matter how many drugs are ingested.
http://www.thefugs.com/history_fugs.html
(I actually met their leader, Ed Sanders, in the Y.I.P. office set up in Miami Beach for the demonstrations at the 1972 political conventions...)

Another great concept album with more musical merit (and spiritual themes...) is George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass"...
http://www.allthingsmustpass.com/harrison/

[Woland]

A lot of Jethro Tull:

Side one of Aqualung
Thick as a Brick (the whole album conceived of as one song)
A Passion Play (same thing again)
Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die
Stormwatch (The ice age is coming! The ice age is coming!)
A (is for aliens invading the earth and testing our defense systems)

Others were musically thematic, like Heavy Horses or Songs from the Wood, with their attempts to integrate the folk tradition into rock.

[jinju]

I always admired how radiohead manages to push the concept of suckyness to the limts. Now with Yorke going solo, new records will be set.

[skinhead]