Adventure Gamers - Forums

I’m in the process of digitising my complete vinyl collection and along the way album titles have, of course, been to the forefront, some of them rather odd, which prompted the idea of this thread. So album titles that you find strange/weird/incomprehensible. Please don’t go looking for ones indiscriminately, just keep it to ones you own or truly know. And those albums that decided to have stupidly long names just to be clever are discounted so not Chumbawumba, Fairport Convention (or was that a track?), Fiona Apple, Soulmax etc.
Whilst most albums are titled in English foreign language titles are certainly encouraged (we are, after all, a world-wide forum) but please give the best translation into English that you can.

The specific artist that kicked this in was Lisa Germano (I was doing her “Excerpts From A Love Circus” which doesn’t count for this thread) which reminded me of a CD I have by her being:

Lisa Germano - Lullaby For Liquid Pig

Edited to add:

Feel free to add explanations as to the titles offered. It won’t change the idea that they’re pertinent to the thread title as that’s purely the perception of the original poster and therefore totally relevant.
You never know, someone might suddenly get a blinding insight into a favourite album

Great thread idea! Had me looking through my album collection (which includes that wonderful Lisa Germano album).

Terry Riley - A Rainbow In Curved Air
Autechre - Chiastic Slide

Ram - Paul & Linda McCartney
Oceans of the Mind - Mario Millo

I really like this thread, but every time I try to think of album titles, the first one just pops up in front of everything. I guess I’ll have to post it as a form of exorcize. Also I’m going to VP this up pretty bad.

Limp Bizkit’s Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water. I HATED this album when it came out. And it was a pretty big deal around here. I’ll save those not in the know the explanation of the band name and album title. If I have to give it one thing: this weird string of words is imprinted into my brain. The band did things exactly right from a commercial perspective. Their corner of the music business made insane amounts of money on record sales, while large parts of the industry were taking hits from losing the means of reproduction to home computers and the internet. Limp Bizkit was the flagship of a style that was such a big deal older and heavier bands released nu-metal-ish albums, which tended to flop, hardly picking up new fans and aggravating the old. I think Fred Durst, the brains behind the operation, got something right about the tone and the attitude of this type of music. He embodied it, as did this album title and the name of the band.

Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica. It seems like one of those three random word album titles, but the cover features someone wearing a realistic trout mask and whether that is the original mask or not, I suppose each image of it is a replica. So.. strange, but not random. It’s outsider art. Don van Vliet was clearly not well, personally. There’s a lot to say about him, his musicians, his relation to Zappa, the way this record sounds and how it was recorded. But that’s probably for another thread.

Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… - First solo album by core Wu-Tang Clan member Raekwon. That’s more of a stylistic distinction: the entire Clan is on this album, most prominently Ghostface Killa, and it was produced by the RZA. The album features very specific slang, references and wordplay shared by Raekwon and Ghostface Killa, which is reflected in the title.

This probably isn’t really what you meant, but someone pointed out this album to me a couple of years ago, and it’s been my favourite unusual album title ever since!

Vegetable Party - 29 May 2022 10:23 AM

Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica.

Nice choice, it also goes perfectly with the music and that whole late 60s era. You could also add the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper  (though it doesn’t compare musically).

One more came to mind for me:

Venetian Snares - Cubist Reggae
My first though on seeing the album title was an intrigued “what on earth does cubist reggae sound like?” with my mind coming up with all sorta of ideas, then when I heard the album that question was thoroughly answered. And on reflection it’s really the only appropriate title to go with the music.

Charophycean - 28 May 2022 08:39 AM

Terry Riley - A Rainbow In Curved Air
Autechre - Chiastic Slide

I have a vague recollection that Terry Riley explained the title as being seeing rain refracted by a mirror in his house but that could be complete rubbish on my part. I do know that the English band Curved Air took their name from that album title.

I’ve never heard the word “chiastic” before and thought it made up or, possibly, an anagram so looked it up to find that it does exist and means two ideas 1 and 2 with added variants 1* and 2* and running 1, 2, 2*, 1* which sounds pretty involved but you can get even more complex patterns (ring composition and even onion-ring composition).
Sounds interesting although I’m not sure how that would work melodically but could be worth a listen.

Intense Degree - 30 May 2022 02:58 AM

This probably isn’t really what you meant, but someone pointed out this album to me a couple of years ago, and it’s been my favourite unusual album title ever since!

It’s how the individual sees the title Intense Degree and nothing else. For what it’s worth I think it fits perfectly.

Also Maddy Prior fits in beautifully with me as one of those female voices that I can rejoice in every time that I hear them (add in Annie Haslam, Jacquie McShee, Sandy Denny and loads more).

Cream - Disraeli Gears

I wondered, way back, if this was a play on “derailleur gears” by Jack Bruce and Pete Brown (main song writers for Cream in case people are unaware) particularly given the times and the drugs but that’s pure hypothesis on my part.

Two more from my collection (you can tell where I am alphabetically)

Both by the late Jackie Leven - and both superb albums:

The Mystery Of Love Is Greater Than The Mystery Of Death

Forbidden Songs Of The Dying West

Also by Jackie (but an album I’m not so keen on)

Fairy Tales For Hard Men

Venetian Snares - Cubist Reggae
My first though on seeing the album title was an intrigued “what on earth does cubist reggae sound like?” with my mind coming up with all sorta of ideas, then when I heard the album that question was thoroughly answered. And on reflection it’s really the only appropriate title to go with the music.

Here’s one for the books:

Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms, Some People Think It’s Fun to Entertain, by China Crisis. I really like this record, the title remains a mystery to me.

I always thought that Venom’s “At War With Satan” was a strangely ambiguous. I believe that the band intends it to mean that they are at war alongside Satan, on the same team. However, I always read it as being at war against Satan, which is probably the opposite message that the band wants to convey.

Maybe more later. The ‘grind’ genres of metal could dominate this thread, but in the interest of better taste, I am going to let such gems as Erotic Diarrhea Fantasy go unmentioned and stick to the high road.

Whoops.

Baron_Blubba - 17 June 2022 12:16 PM

I always thought that Venom’s “At War With Satan” was a strangely ambiguous. I believe that the band intends it to mean that they are at war alongside Satan, on the same team. However, I always read it as being at war against Satan, which is probably the opposite message that the band wants to convey.

I like that.

Maybe more later. The ‘grind’ genres of metal could dominate this thread, but in the interest of better taste, I am going to let such gems as Erotic Diarrhea Fantasy go unmentioned and stick to the high road.

Whoops.

That reminds me of a joke I read a while ago:

“co-worker is pretty sure telling you the name of his goregrind band would count as an HR violation.”

They get creative (or just really out there) every once in a while.

Anna Meredith’s Bumps Per Minute (18 Studies for Dodgems).

So.. what is going on here?

This album is part of a multimedia piece - including a huge art installation in the form of a bumper car arena. Hence: dodgems (an archaic term for bumper cars, apparently). There’s a youtube video of participants riding around and operating the installation by bumping into each other. There’s a light show that goes nuts, it’s a whole thing.

Here’s another incarnation: a browser game that seems based on the rules of the piece: bumps cause a switch between songs on impact, song is picked based on velocity dictating the beats per minute? I think. See for yourself:

https://www.bumpsperminute.com/play

That was silly and fun.  My highest bumps per minute was 198.

just came across this gem: Dear Mark J Mulcahy, I Love You,
by Mark Mulcahy