Album
Angel Dust
Artist
Faith No More
Provenance
Purchased at Wherehouse Records, Visalia, California, June 1992. I worked there at the time. I've had this same CD since then, never had to replace it.
Best Lyrics
You have a winning way, so keep it
Your future, your future, your future
You are an angel heading for a land of sunshine
And fortune is smiling upon you
- The Land of Sunshine
Why It Won
When this album ends up in my CD changer, I listen to it all the way through every day, sometimes for weeks. I never get tired of it. The wear on the case shows how much I love it.
The songs are an eclectic mix of approachable and catchy, with a smattering of intolerable screaming. I skip two songs of the thirteen - Malpractice and Jizzlobber - because they literally make my ears hurt. If I were to make my own copy of Angel Dust, it would have the remaining eleven songs in the order they appear on the CD, and I'd consider it perfect.
I'll confess that, until a few minutes ago, I'd never read the lyrics, and I've happily sung/hummed along without knowing what Mike Patton was saying about 70% of the time. The complex, swirling composition and Patton's odd phrasing make the songs compelling anyway. The most intelligible song, the waltz-timed RV, paints such a vivid picture that you can practically smell the funk and hear the oily squeak of vinyl under the ass of the narrator.
I'm guessing that The Real Thing was more popular, but I still consider this the pinnacle of FNM's catalog.
Runner(s) Up
Appetite for Destruction - Guns N' Roses - a classic, and another all-the-way-through album. It was a close second. The bookends of Welcome to the Jungle and Rocket Queen weren't enough to overcome the overplaying of Paradise City and Sweet Child o' Mine, however. I'd stab myself in the ear before I'd say, "Hey, you know what? I haven't heard SCoM in a while. That's a great song!" For this reason, I almost never pull Appetite off the shelf.
Good choice for a theme! I also have a rather extensive CD collection, although I've waned in my purchasing the past few years and also download more than I buy physical discs. Both of the albums you mention bring back memories of the early '90s for me, especially GnR. I was a kid at the time but the radio ruled (and MTv when they showed videos) and both bands were huge at the time if you were into rock.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you; love, love, LOVE this album! I taped "Midlife Crisis" (which I am now living for real) and "Small Victory" and played/rewound them over and over and over again on my SONY Walkman. When I needed to pump myself up, it was "Be Aggressive" all the way......sighs. Good times. :-)
ReplyDeleteSome Dark Romantic