Anna Minard claims to "know nothing about music." For this column, we force her to listen to random records by artists considered to be important by music nerds.
We have to start with this title, guys: While Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake is apparently a reference to tobacco, it sounds like a fiber-rich cereal popular with the geriatric set. Every time I see this album's name, I imagine the commercial. "You know what keeps me regular and starts my day off right?" a smiling older woman in a soft-focus country kitchen asks the camera. "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. Thanks, Oggie!" And then Ogden, who would be a sea captain with an old-fashioned hat, would pop his head in the window, smile at the woman, and then turn to the camera and wink.
With that out of the way, I have a serious recommendation for you regarding this album: Listen to it on a real stereo system. Yeah, we should all be so nerdy as to only attempt a first listen on some audiophile's speaker setup, but we don't always do that, do we? You just pop it in wherever's easy. (Oooh... That's what she said! HA-HA-HA I WIN LIFE.) But this album sounds so completely different on real speakers versus the tinny crap ones in a laptop that I can't even recognize that it's the same album.
