Re: Unalbums

Albums that the artists and/or fans like to pretend never happened; like Orwell's "Unpersons" written out of the history books, these albums often don't appear in discographies, and are not featured on artist's compilation albums.

The Velvet Underground "Squeeze"
Bad Religion "Into The Unknown"
Ministry "With Sympathy"
The Clash "Cut The Crap"
the first two Pantera albums
Tori Amos "Y Kant Tori Read"

Vanilla Ice dismisses his first album - pretty funny, as it's the only thing he's known for.

Good topic!

Pantera disavowed its first three albums (Metal Magic, Projects in the Jungle and I Am the Night), which document its glam-metal days, before it found its calling as one of the ugliest of ugly metal bands.

Matthew Sweet "Inside" and "Earth"
INXS self-titled and "Underneath the Colours"

Not sure if he ever completely disavowed it or just acknowledged it as a lousy album he recorded before he got good - Warren Zevon Wanted Dead of Alive.

I was going to the mention the post-Ian Hunter Mott albums, but I think a couple of years ago I actually saw a two album on one disc compilation of "classic" Mott the Hoople that paired up The Hoople with the Hunter-free Drive On. I doubt anyone in the band had anything to do with it and it was just a case of the record company owning the master tapes.

And I just thought of a related topic for a new thread.

I usually forget that Wall of Voodoo had two albums after Stan Ridgeway left. In the mind of me and my Voodoo-loving friends (they were big in my LA-area high school) there's the first ep, two albums, and then we move on to Stan's solo stuff.

I have the same problem. I'm aware of (and quite like) Andy Prieboy's solo stuff, but I tend to think of those records as spontaneously generating, rather than growing out of his membership in WoV.

I tend to mentally delete the Waterboys' Dream Harder when I consider their catalog.

*EDIT seven years later*: I recently dug up Prieboy's solo albums and gave them another spin, and couldn't stand them. So this comment is now invalid .

I still hate Dream Harder, though.



Post Edited (10-01-18 15:19)

"In the mind of me and my Voodoo-loving friends (they were big in my LA-area high school) "

Damn, MrFab, you musta went to one cool high school!

Bad Religion "Into The Unknown"

The band acknowledges this one's existence now. They still won't reissue it, though. Which is too bad, as it's a really good record. But it sounds nothing like their usual formula, so it's definitely the bastard child.

[www.badreligion.com]



Post Edited (07-20-11 15:14)

Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley have maintained a tight grip on the album they recorded for Epic with their previous band, Wicked Lester. (They were still known as Gene Klein and Stanley Eisen at the time.) Epic had shelved the unreleased album. Kiss bought the master tapes from the label after hitting it big, and has kept it under lock & key ever since.

Three Wicked Lester tracks did show up on the 2001 Kiss box set. Two of them had later been recorded by Kiss, so their inclusion was largely to show the differences in style, I guess.



Post Edited (07-20-11 17:25)

Not sure if they ever "disowned" it, but the (formerly-Youth) Brigade album "The Dividing Line" (which showed them with a more "mature" sound) has never been reissued, not even on iTunes (unlike the rest of their catalog).

I think Pantera mentioned above is the best example - though given how frighteningly good that band became once they hit their stride, it's hard in hindsight to laugh at them. It's sort of like laughing at Ghandhi for blowing a mock trial session in law school.

That's got to be the first time in the history of the world that a Pantera/Gandhi equivalency was made. I like it.

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I think Pantera mentioned above is the best example - though given how frighteningly good that band became once they hit their stride, it's hard in hindsight to laugh at them. It's sort of like laughing at Ghandhi for blowing a mock trial session in law school.

No. It'd be like laughing at Gandhi for blowing a mock trial in law school while wearing a foo-foo haircut and a leopard print muscle shirt.

And eyeliner. Gandhi looked ridiculous in eyeliner.

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Oh, how I wish that was an active hyperlink.

Apparently further has disowned the work released in their previous incarnation as Shadowland, blaming the producer for how it turned out.:

[www.trouserpress.com]

And of course there's always David Bowie and Never Let Me Down. (Not that he laments the songs themselves per se, just the "session man" production they were subjected to).

Speaking of Bowie, there's his sorry self-titled debut. I did listen to it all the way thru. Once. According to this article:

[mashable.com]

"...Bowie flatly refused to acknowledge this bastard stepchild of an album. It was never remastered, never included in box sets, and never extracted for a greatest hits album." I bet even Delvin doesn't play it!

Resurrecting ye olde thread cuz I just found out about The Gap Band's first 2 albums on indie labels. Never seen 'em in stores, never heard 'em, but apparently more of a late '60s/early '70s Sly Stone kinda thing. They worked with their fellow Oklahoman Leon Russell, if that's any indication. Reviews claim a more organic sound, with diversions into reggae, gospel, etc. Their self-titled third album marked the debut of a more electronic P-Funk influence, it was released on a major label, and that's when they started pretending the first two albums didn't exist. "Gap Band II" is actually their 4th album, "Gap Band III" is their 5th, etc.

Neil Hannon has put the first Divine Comedy album "Fanfare for the Comic Muse" into the cornfield.

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Damn, MrFab, you musta went to one cool high school!

Ha ha, not hardly. Crap like Foreigner still ruled the school. But keep in mind that Wall of Voodoo actually scored a Top 40 hit and were on MTV. Local radio new wavers KROQ had recently become the highest rated music station in town, thus propelling the likes of WoV, Oingo Boingo and Sparks to local stardom. And Depeche Mode - the fact that they played to a crowd of 80,000 at the Rose Bowl, largely due to KROQ, is a mind-boggling fact that still bewilders me.

Alanis Morissette released two dance-pop albums before she hit it big with Jagged Little Pill.

Elvis Costello's "Almost Blue" was a bit of an unalbum. His fan base of new wave kids had no idea what to make of it. In retrospect, it was a foreshadowing of all of the weirder stuff he would record in his late career.

> Elvis Costello's "Almost Blue" was a bit of an unalbum.

Goodbye Cruel World is a borderline un-album too. EC has long disavowed it. His liner notes to the Rhino reissue begin with, "Congratulations! You've just bought our worst album."

Goodbye Cruel World is pretty bad. Strangely it is the only EC album I own on CD. "Congratulations! You own only our worst album."

Worse than North?

*EDIT seven years later*: I actually like North now, oddly enough. More than Goodbye Cruel World, that's for sure.



Post Edited (10-01-18 15:18)

Yup. The Ryko reissue had many of the songs live, done as they were supposed to originally be recorded, and they blow the album versions far, far away. North is at least slightly interesting. GCW is annoying.

And yet I dislike The Juliet Letters the most.

Michael Toland Wrote:
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> Worse than North?
>
> *EDIT seven years later*: I actually like
> North now, oddly enough. More than
> Goodbye Cruel World, that's for sure.
>
>
>
> Post Edited (10-01-18 15:18)

Oh gawd no! "North" is so far ahead of the the rest of the queue of "Worst Elvis Costello Albums" that by sheer dint of "grading on the curve," "Goodbye Cruel World" now has the sweet smell of success in comparison.

> The Ryko reissue had many of the songs live, done as they were supposed to originally be
> recorded, and they blow the album versions far, far away.

No kidding! I'll have to keep an eye out for that.

I'd never noticed that the only song with a tune on The Juliet Letters swiped that tune from the Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies theme until the TP entry pointed it out.

[www.youtube.com]

[www.youtube.com]



Post Edited (07-22-11 12:43)

Kraftwerk are currently on tour performing all their albums...except the ones they're not performing. Sorry, fans of "Kraftwerk," "Kraftwerk 2" and "Ralf und Florian", the concert series begins with "Autobahn". wiki sez: The band are seemingly reluctant to consider it [the first album] a part of their canon – Schneider in later interviews referred to the first three Kraftwerk albums as "archaeology".

Hey! I just saw them.

For two hours, Kraftwerk played the first of two(!) sold out shows in one night. Ralf Hütter is the only remaining original member but the rest of the band looked old enough to be there from the beginning. The show was billed as "Kraftwerk in 3d" and everyone received a pair of 3d glasses complete with a Kraftwerk branded carrying case. The stage had four terminals set up and a large screen behind on which the 3d visuals were projected. The band all wore black tracksuits with white grid lines. I thought they might light up during the set but they didn't. The 3d effects mainly gave the visuals depth though during The Robots the robots arms came out into the crowd. The sound was excellent especially for the aforementioned Robots and The Man-Machine. The entire Man-Machine album was played and all but one of Computerworld was (I guess Pocket Calculator is a little dated now). No surprise that it sounded a lot like the albums and only when Hütter sang on Neon Nights and The Model was there any indication that this was live. Actually, I kept wondering exactly why all four of them were needed. I see now, that the most recent member, Falk Grieffenhagen, is credited as a live video technician but most likely this all could be done by one person. At the end of the main set, each member gave a little 'solo' and then they went to the edge of the stage for a bow. It was then that Hütter spoke the only time: "Goodbye, Auf Widersehn". After the encore the entire band came to the front of the stage for a group bow and looked a littled startled at the thunderous applause the crowd gave them.

Setlist:

The Robots
Metropolis
Numbers / Computer World
It's More Fun to Compute / Home Computer
Computer Love
The Man-Machine
Spacelab
The Model
Neon Lights
Autobahn
Prologue
Tour de France Étape 1
Tour de France Étape 2
Airwaves
Intermission / News
Geiger Counter / Radioactivity
Trans-Europe Express / Metal on Metal /Abzug
Boing Boom Tschak / Techno Pop / Musique Non Stop

Encore

Aéro Dynamik
Planet of Visions

Renaissance - The Village People
Door Door - The Boys Next Door
Kilimanjaro - The Teardrop Explodes

Lou Reed - Metal Music Machine. It was even missing from most of his obits.

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Kilimanjaro - The Teardrop Explodes

I'm intrigued. Has Cope disowned Kilimanjaro?

Katy Perry's Christian album under the name Katy Hudson, which the local FYE store had a cheap used copy of for months after she first started getting popular. I kept thinking about buying it on the off chance it might be worth money someday, but never got around to it. Then, of course, one day I finally decided to grab it and it was predictably gone.



Post Edited (04-08-14 14:51)

Nothing wrong with On A Bus, Erik.

Aitch wrote:

> Nothing wrong with On A Bus, Erik.


After I wrote that, I went through the trouble of giving it a listen (after not having done so for 20+ years) . . . I would like to amend it to "I still like 'On a Bus.'"

[www.youtube.com]

I read that he can't stand it. I saw them live about the time Wilder was out and the only song they played from Kilimanjaro was Bouncing Babies.

A great topic!

Matthew Sweet:

"Inside" and "Earth" (anything prior to Girlfriend)

INXS:

self-titled and "Underneath the Colours"

(Confession, once upon a time, I really liked "On a Bus," the first song from INXS' first album . . . )

[I can't explain the double-posting of my comment--there's an incomplete version of this higher up the thread.]



Post Edited (04-08-14 13:50)

Yep, that's a rule of thumb you have to be prepared to follow, if you can: Get the album while it's there for the getting.

A copy of the first album mentioned in this thread has been leering at me, taunting me, daring me to take it to the cash register at a record store in Seattle, every time I've gone shopping there. I imagine one of these days I'll make up my mind to buy it ... and it'll be gone, too.

Delvin, I would imagine there's a good chance the store will be gone! Buy it!

Damn. Let my curiosity get the better of me, and now I'm depressed.

[www.amazon.com]

I believe FYE had $6.99 on it.

While it might not be that much beloved by his fans and critics, but I don't think Lou himself ever disowned MMM (esp. in his later years).

I don't think Billy Joel is that big on his early work with groups The Hassles and Attila. (One of my friends actually owns the former's 968 "Hour of the Wolf" LP and played us the 12-minute title track, complete with BJ howling and the music going all over the place. Needless to say we were howling ourselves by the end of the track)

Someone has posted the entire Squeeze album on Youtube, for the curious who've never heard it.

[www.youtube.com]

It's not the worst thing in the history of the universe - if it had been released as a Doug Yule solo album instead of a Velvet Underground one, it would be considered harmless at worst and VU fans would probably be happy to own a copy even if they only listened to it once in 40 years. Slapping the Velvet Underground name on it ensured it would be loathed by the very audience that would've been most likely to buy the damn thing.

I said it in another post here - Steve Sesnick's obsession with making Doug Yule a star was the worst thing that ever happened to poor ol' Doug. By trying to groom him to be a big star, Sesnick stupidly turned the poor sap into a villain in the eyes of what would've been his natural fan base.

Of course, given that at the time Squeeze came out that entire fan base could've fit in a phone booth outside Jonathan Richman's apartment, maybe Sesnick could be excused for not giving a damn if he pissed them off.

I'm not saying Doug Yule SHOULD have had a more prominent post-Velvets career than he did, mind you - listening to Squeeze makes a pretty good argument that he probably had exactly the career he should've (i.e., not much of one). But Sesnick's actions made sure that would be the case, and in the process he definitely made Yule more of a punching bag than he probably deserved to be.



Post Edited (04-09-14 01:24)

And there's Bjork's real debut album....from 1977:
[blog.wfmu.org]

Does anyone from Genesis still acknowledge From Genesis to Revelation?

Or Calling All Stations?

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Does anyone from Genesis still acknowledge From Genesis to Revelation?

wiki sez: "Genesis have reportedly disowned the album as it differs so markedly from their subsequent work and are said to have been embarrassed by its re-release. The album was excluded from the 2008 box set, "Genesis 1970–1975".

So that answers that. Another unalbum. Ministry, however, may have let "With Sympathy" out of the cornfield. A blogger wrote: "Al Jourgensen really hated this album and went so far as disowning it! It seems that doesn't seem to be the case anymore, since the official Ministry website actually lists the album in the discography page, whereas before it was mysteriously absent. Perhaps Al had a change of heart?"

Interesting point about Yule. Still can't bring myself to listen to it, tho.



Post Edited (04-09-14 12:43)

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Interesting point about Yule. Still can't bring myself to listen to it, tho.

You're not missing much. Aside from the outrage of it being released as a VU album, it's entirely inoffensive and just as entirely forgettable. It's fairly standard issue post-hippie/early 70s AOR.

It has more in common with Lobo than with Lou.



Post Edited (04-09-14 15:24)

> I don't think Billy Joel is that big on his early work with groups The Hassles and Attila.

Maybe not, but I believe he disowned Cold Spring Harbor -- or at least blamed the record label that released it for getting his solo career off to a duff start. The label mastered it at the wrong speed, distorting Joel's vocals.

Do non-persons listen to unalbums?



Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Underneath the Radar (1988) and Change the Weather (1989) – Underworld

The big selling point with Underneath the Radar was that they supposedly recorded the whole thing in a single live take. It was like "Doot-Doot" with guitars.

If only it were like "Doot Doot" with guitars! I have the first two Underworld albums… which I waited years to get as I suspected that they were probably not up to the standard of "Doot Doot." And I was right. I still haven't heard techno Underworld. I'm waiting until I'm desperate to hear anything with a fraction of the magic that Freur had.



Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Just found another one: Funkadelic "Connections and Disconnections" 1980; the liners helpfully point out that "This album does not include any performances or creations by George Clinton."

I never found techno Underworld at all interesting, nowhere near as great as "Doot Doot," but the recent Eno collaborations have a few good songs that I've been returning to (which, at this late stage in Eno's career is about all we can hope for). Lyrics sure are boring, tho.

I'm not sure if the band ever disowned it but Discharge's "Grave New World" is a pretty loathed record - as loathed as any record by a bands fanbase as I can think of.

Hey, I found another one. Paul Simon's premature debut album:

[en.wikipedia.org]

"released in the UK in 1965 and was supposedly deleted in 1969 at Simon's request...The Songbook was released in the US by Columbia very briefly in 1969, but was recalled within a few days when Simon objected."

It was later included in a box set.

Neil Young's "Time Fades Away". And it's my favorite Neil album too, the bastard...

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Neil Young's "Time Fades Away". And it's my favorite Neil album too, the bastard...

"Don't Be Denied" is a great tune. Too bad Neil has, er denied it.

Resurrecting this thread cuz I just found another one: before Quiet Riot became one of the biggest stars of '80s metal, they released two obscure albums in the '70s. Tho future metal god Randy Rhodes was in the band at that point, the music is amusing glam pop, some gloopy ballads, and some hilarious awfulness. Really, check out "Demolition Derby": incredibly bad singing, vroom-vroom car sound fx, I'm telling ya, you'll laff!

For personal reasons, Eric Idle refuses to re-issue "Rutland Weekend TV" on video, or it's related book and album, despite the popularity of The Rutles.

"Bob Seger hates the music he made before 1975 and won't allow most of it to be legally released."

Well this just came out:

[www.amazon.com]

Speaking of Bob Seger, I recently disposed of a record collection that my nephew got for me from an abandoned storage unit. There were quite a few Bob Seger records. I managed to get something from the pre-Night Moves albums & had to dispose the later stuff @ my local thrift store.

Bob Seger hates the music he made before 1975 and won't allow most of it to be legally reissued. To me, this stuff sounds better than the vast majority of the albums he started making with NIGHT MOVES, and even the more AOR-oriented music has echoes of HIGH TIME-era MC5.

But do you think artists are more likely to release unalbums BEFORE or AFTER their 'best known' period? This thread has pretty good examples of both.

My favorite mention is ministry's 'with sympathy'.... all that synthy preening (and I love synthy preening) just undermines the "dangerous loud tough guy" image he was trying to build!

I interviewed Al Jourgensen circa 1990, and he told me he BBQ'd the master tapes of WITH SYMPATHY. I asked if Arista might sue him if they want to press any more CDs, and he said they pressed more than they could possibly sell. It's funny to think that metal fans might stumble across the album now, expecting industrial thrash.

Why did my new post end up waaaaay up there? Sorry to make you scroll, ya'll.

[edit:] copy -n-pasted here, to prevent scroll-fatigue:


Resurrecting ye olde thread cuz I just found out about The Gap Band's first 2 albums on indie labels. Never seen 'em in stores, never heard 'em, but apparently more of a late '60s/early '70s Sly Stone kinda thing. They worked with their fellow Oklahoman Leon Russell, if that's any indication. Reviews claim a more organic sound, with diversions into reggae, gospel, etc. Their self-titled third album marked the debut of a more electronic P-Funk influence, it was released on a major label, and that's when they started pretending the first two albums didn't exist. "Gap Band II" is actually their 4th album, "Gap Band III" is their 5th, etc.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/2024 02:37PM by MrFab.

The first N.W.A album gets overlooked a lot.

From my TP review:

The widely unknown N.W.A. and the Posse is a loose and funky warmup, a showcase for various permutations of the sprawling young crew (some of whom fell away when shit got serious) to rap about cars, girls, drugs and booze over Dre’s on-the-money Cali tracks. Although much of the record is strictly for fun (“Drink It Up” is a goofy party number sung to the tune of “Twist and Shout”; “Fat Girl” tells a dumb story about an overzealous, overweight woman), the autobiographical “Boyz-n-the Hood” (written by Ice Cube, rapped by Eazy-E) and Cube’s nonjudgmental “Dope Man” aptly demonstrate the group’s tougher side.

It's a shame that Wall of Voodoo was panned by critics and the public at large (their 2 studio albums and their live album went straight to the cut-out bins, it seems), but they didn't lack for musical competency (even though they were followers of the neo-primitive music movement), and some of their forays into pop culture ended in some memorable tunes. On the song "Elvis Bought Dora A Cadillac," the lyric "...and the gods I loved/they were poor white trash/one was making wine in Canaan/the other tipping waitresses Cadillacs..." was rather fascinating, especially to a professor of mine who studied Elvis and his stature in pop culture after his death (hint: his reputation went mostly downhill until the past decade when younger generations started becoming interested in his music again).

But early WOV with Stan was amazing, I get it.

William Orbit released his first solo record in '87 (titled "Orbit") and to be blunt, it's awful, and he's pretty much disowned it. It was released around 2010, without his consent. Most artists seem to release a clunker in their career (just like Wang Chung in their first incarnation Huang Chung"). It doesn't distract me from the great work they've done as a whole.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2024 03:39AM by Fleeingbandit.

Squeeze could never completely disown their debut album (self-titled except in territories where it was obliged to be UK Squeeze) because it includes "Take Me I'm Yours," but they've never shown much inclination to acknowledge it - more of a "we won't stop anyone from listening to it, but we aren't going to encourage anyone to, either" situation. Although, according to Wikipedia, they have been dropping "Bang Bang" into live sets on rare occasions over the last decade or so.

Too lazy to scroll back through all of this, but Reno's description of Squeeze's disowning of their first album reminded me of a similar situation with Japan and their first album. I expect that is noted somewhere in this thread already.

Japan basically disowned its first two albums, Adolescent Sex and Obscure Alternatives. (You were the first to bring it up, Rhett.)

Those first two albums sound like a completely different band from what they'd become. I've always thought actually pretty solid (if not truly great) for unabashed Dolls ripoffs, but there's not even a hint of what they would become later, so I'm not surprised they pretend they don't exist.

I would contend that "The Tenant," the final track on Obscure Alternatives, is Japan transitioning into the art band they became. No doubt it was intended as filler - they were likely short on material, having recorded two albums in one year, and decided to pad out the running time with a 7 minute instrumental. But it's an artsy mood piece with some modest Karn fretless bass noodling with little to do with much else on their first two albums and I can imagine a light bulb going off for them that they didn't have to keep doing what they'd been doing. Granted, not much on Quiet Life, the next album, sounds like "The Tenant" (except "Despair," which sounds like "The Tenant" with vocals), but I do think it's the sound of classic Japan being born.

Kind of like "My Sex" and "Hiroshima Mon Amour," the final tracks on the first two Ultravox albums - neither sounded much like the albums they were on, but both were road maps to the future sound of Ultravox.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2024 03:01PM by breno.

Right - I'd always thought the experiments on Obscure Alternatives were sorta Japan starting to think about where else they might go. While I recall that the TP review says something like "strictly dilettante moves," I did think "Rhodesia" and "The Tenant" were at least interesting. I believe there's a thread somewhere else about how some bands so radically transformed or improved their sound in a short period of time, but that journey from Adolescent Sex to Tin Drum in 3 or 4 years has to rank right up there near the top.