Hidden Treasures - Album Closers

Last weeks look at openers gives way to the obvious next playlist topic, and thats Closers! Often times, at least in the days of vinyl, the album closer was epic! Almost always a great representatin of the band, and certainly not often a radio hit. Nowadays the last track on a disc an be classified and mostly filler, and sounds ilke an afterthought. So, heres a call to all bands to made their albums great from Opener to CLoser, no more filler for the sake of filling up a disc, or to get those few great tracks out on the market. In other words, be excellent always! That sounds strangely familiar...

Heres 5 of the best ever (IMO) ...

Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who (Who's Next)
Freebird - Lynyrd Skynyrd (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd)
Cygnus X-1 - Rush (A Farewell To Kings)
Whole Lotta Rosie - ACDC (Let There Be Rock)
Under Pressure - Queen (Hot Space)

Anyway, Ive culled 5 great album closers from depths of my collection in the hopes that a) we get great discussion going, b) to hear great classic rock blasting from your speakers! And then its your turn - Listen, Comment, Share, and keep it going...

PLAYLIST --> http://www.podsnack.com/CA69EFD9E8C/avcmym9n

	Jackson Browne The Pretender 1976 1 - The Pretender The man who had delved so deeply into life's abyss on his earlier albums was in search of escape this time around, whether by crying ("Here Come Those Tears Again"), sleeping ("Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate"), or making peace with estranged love ones ("The Only Child," "Daddy's Tune"). However, and when Browne came to the final track -- traditionally the place on his albums where he summed up his current philosophical stance -- he delivered "The Pretender," a cynical, sarcastic treatise on moneygrubbing and the shallow life of the suburbs. Primarily inner-directed, the song's defeatist tone demands rejection, but it is also a quintessential statement of its time, the post-Watergate '70s; dire as that might be, you had to admire that kind of honesty, even as it made you wince.
	Loverboy Get Lucky 1981 2 - Take Me To The Top The album reached number 7 on the Billboard 200 album chart, remaining on the chart for over two years, and has sold over 4 million copies in the United States. It featured the hit singles, "Working for the Weekend," "When It's Over," "Lucky Ones," "Gangs In the Street," and "Take Me to the Top." According to Scott Smith's notes on the Greatest Hits album "Big Ones," the song "Take Me to the Top" is actually the demo version "complete with out of tune bass" because the band couldn't quite capture the sound in the studio.
	Cheap Trick Dream Police 1979 3 - Need Your Love Perversely -- and most things Cheap Trick have done are somehow perverse -- the band decided not to continue with the direct, stripped-down sound of At Budokan, which would have been a return to their debut. Instead, the group went for their biggest, most elaborate production to date, taking the synthesized flourishes of Heaven Tonight to extremes. While it kept the group in the charts, it lessened the impact of the music. Underneath the gloss, there are a number of songs that rank among Cheap Trick's finest, particularly the paranoid title track, the epic rocker "Gonna Raise Hell," the tough "I Know What I Want," the simple pop of "Voices," and the closer, "Need Your Love."
	REO Speedwagon Nine Lives 1979 4 - Back On The Road Again REO Speedwagon gets slagged regularly, but they always deliver in concert and the freewheelin' Nine Lives, their (natch) ninth, sports one cool sleeve: tight leather, suspenders, fishnets, and cat chicks. The black circle inside rocks mightily also. Bassman Bruce Hall steps up to the plate with "Back on the Road Again," a stadium stage staple that kept these Illinois boys makin' noise on the radio. The Caribbean vibe in the hard luck "Easy Money" can't touch the Scorpions' 1979 foray into reggae ("Is There Anybody There?"), but old reliable axeman Gary Richrath keeps the number burning. The obligatory ballad, "I Need You Tonight," is one of REO's best cuts ever with priceless piano from Neal Doughty, the most unsung keyboardist alive. The whole quintet cooks on the stony nugget "Meet Me on the Mountain," the Led orgasm "Heavy on Your Love," barroom showoff "Drop It," and unheard single "Only the Strong Survive." REO's next record sparked a phenomenon, and the band never kicked out a set as rocking and carefree as Nine Lives again.
	Supertramp Breakfast In America 1979 5 - Child Of Vision "Child of Vision" is the closing track. Much like "The Logical Song", it uses a Wurlitzer electric piano as the main instrument. After the lyrical part, the song goes into a long grand piano solo alongside the original Wurlitzer electric piano melody. The track fades out with a short saxophone solo by John Helliwell. Roger Hodgson has said that the song was written to be an equivalent to "Gone Hollywood", looking at how Americans live, though he confessed that he had only a limited familiarity with USA culture at the time of writing. He also said there is a slight possibility that he subconsciously had Rick Davies in mind while writing the lyrics. Since all of Supertramp's songs are contractually credited to both Davies and Hodgson, it is difficult to determine who wrote what. Roger Hodgson's management has described "The Logical Song", "Breakfast in America", "Take the Long Way Home", "Lord Is It Mine" and "Child of Vision" as "Roger's songs"; however, this apparently does not mean he necessarily wrote them by himself, as Hodgson has credited Davies with writing the vocal harmony on "The Logical Song". Davies has referred to "The five songs that I did on Breakfast", but does not specify which ones, though presumably he means the five not described by Hodgson's management as being "Roger's".

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Permalink Reply by Niels (Mod) on September 30, 2014 at 9:39am

Great idea, Scott.

For me, an album-closer is kind of more important than an opener. What tells a truly classic album is, that the last track on the album is the best of a lot of great tracks.

Just like "The Helion/Electric Eye" (for me, that is, not for Jon, obviously) sometimes a closing track, might not exactly be THE closing track, but it IS the last "real" track on the album. My favorite of those is "Bohemian Raphsody" even though of course "God Save The Queen" ends the album, but it's not a really an album-closer for me.

But REAL album-closers, that ends truely great albums are:

"Like Suicide" (Soundgarden - "Superunknown")

Led Zeppelin are MASTERS of album-closers: "How Many More Times", "Bring It On Home", "When The Levee Breaks" and "Sick Again".

Def Leppard were also great at closing an album: "No no no", especially "Billy's Got A Gun" and even "Love And Affection".

Neal Morse also closes Testimony 2 with the best track "Seeds Of Gold".

Recent examples of, how important album-closers are to me, is that if the new Flying colors had had the best track closing, it would had been a much better album imo, but it actually closes with the two weakest tracks, and with that feeling, I don't know how many times I feel like listen to that album. If an album closes with a great track, I wanna "visit" that album again pretty soon, not so much, if it ends with "sloppy" songs.

I was also hoping for a really great closing-track to the new Opeth-album. It was okay, but not the best on a rather dissapointing but still good album, if you ask me.

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Permalink Reply by Scott on September 30, 2014 at 9:50am

Thanks Niels! But ... Jon actually posted two lists of closers way back in 2010 (See above) so not unique. However!!! I will say that I did not guess the "something" of his post until after this list was posted, so I kinda did come up with this ...

Agree with you on the LS closers, and would add The Ocean to your list. And then again we agree on Testimony 2... Havent received my FC yet, but its being delivered today and I suppose I could have downloaded it at midnight but I chose to sleep instead and prefer to rip the actual CD in to my library versus using amazons MP3 if possible ...

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Permalink Reply by Niels (Mod) on September 30, 2014 at 11:04am

I thought about adding the Ocean, and I know, it's your favorite LZ-album, but I don't think, that TO is THAT great a closing-track.

While riding (cykle) home from work, these closing tracks came to mind:

"A Day In The Life" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" from The Beatles
As you mention "Won't Get Fooled Again", but also "Who Are You" from of course The Who.
"Princess Of The Dawn" by Accept
"Diary Of A Madman" and "Steal Away" from Ozzy
"Steeler" and "On The Run" by Priest
"I Will Remember" by Queensryche
"Dangerous Ground" by City Boy
"On Fire" by Van Halen.
and back when I was a fan of Extreme, I thought that "Who Cares" was a great closing track to "Three Sides.."

And lastly: The new FC IS good, just not at the end of the album, but you'll hear that for yourself.

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Permalink Reply by RJhog (Admin) on October 1, 2014 at 11:35am

First, a couple of my favorites that have great closers:

Meat Loaf (Bat Out Of Hell) - For Crying Out Loud -The closer is my favorite all-time song, and it is totally epic. And, off topic, it has a dynamic opener as well (the title track).

Kiss (Kiss) - Black Diamond - I always listen to the whole song, even the long, speed decreasing coda.

BTO (BTO II) - Takin' Care Of Business

Deep Purple (Machine Head) - Space Truckin'

Browne - I can see why this song would be listed here. It does have that "final" track feel.

Loverboy - As I've already said, my favorite Loverboy track. It was the perfect song to close a fantastic album. It always made me anticipate getting to that song.

Trick - This has never been one of my favorite CT tracks, however I've actually started liking it more lately. And with the buildup, I can see that it was a very good closer.

REO - Great song. Great, great album closer. Best album closer here.

Tramp - My least favorite track here. It's not bad at all. The piano playing is definitely epic. Just not great to me.

Now, for the all important rankings by RJ:

1. REO Speedbucket

2. Loverlyboy

3. Cheap Trickster

4. Jackson Brownenose

5. Superdupertramp

Nice job dude.

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Permalink Reply by Scott on October 1, 2014 at 6:15pm

Had that Meat Loaf track in my long list, but cut it early. No idea why ... Still shocked at your Supertramp un-fandom - hard to fathom for me...

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Permalink Reply by RJhog (Admin) on October 1, 2014 at 6:55pm

Wouldn't call it an un-fandom. Probably. I do like some of their music, that album for sure. I still need to spend more time with 'em. I've cut back my catalog purchases this year and concentrated on new releases, maybe I'll do the opposite next year.