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What is the best geek-album of all time?

Define geek however you see fit.

31 Answers

  • 0prr6_small
    Reputation: 3429

    Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!

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  • Mahindi_small
    Reputation: 8

    TMBG may have kids singing about wanting to be a paleontologist or about their brother the ape but don’t forget about the original geek – Tom Lehrer from the 50’s – best known for poisoning pigeons in the park but he also has the element song, and new math and chemistry songs way before TMBG

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  • Avatar_default
    Reputation: 4

    "Computer World" by Kraftwerk.

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  • Img_0733_small
    Reputation: 105

    They Might Be Giants was the first thing that popped into my head. I'm going to answer slightly differently though and go with Autechre. The geekiest of all the geeks i know love Autechre. Seen a crowd shot of one of their shows? Total geek fest.

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  • Gold-head_small
    Reputation: 6000

    Clearly, the geekiest band of all time is Barcelona -- the 90s-00s synth-pop one from Arlington, VA, not the current Seattle band.

    Seattle folks probably know them best for their song about the Sounders goalkeeper, "Kasey Keller", celebrating his 1998 performance against Brazil, said by Brazil star Romario to be the best performance by a goalkeeper he'd ever seen.

    But they are not a sports band; the same album "Kasey Keller" is off of, entitled "Zero One Infinity", also has the greatest geek anthem ever recorded "I Have The Password To Your Shell Account". Many of their other songs have technological themes.

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  • Canoe_lg_small
    Reputation: 2

    "MC Chris goes to Hell" by mc chris

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  • Hair_hipstamatic_small
    Reputation: 1711

    I totally agree with They Might Be Giants. Also, Elvis Costello is kind of geeky if you listen to his lyrics. He's pretty into word play and has called himself "rock and roll's Scrabble champion."

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  • Guild_1024x768_small
    Reputation: 277

    Ok..no one's mentioned him...but every geek I've ever known has had an awkward, special place in their heart for Weird "Al" Yankovic. Whether it's parody or polka, he's always mentioned about two sentences away from a Monty Python/D&D/Collectible Card lovefest.

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  • Imgp0063_small
    Reputation: 348
    Moderator

    Aside from what everyone else said (TMBG, Devo, etc.) there's also more straight-forward geek-made geek-oriented geek music. Jonathan Coulton, nerdcore hip-hop like MC Frontalot, Optimus Rhyme/Supercommuter, and chip tunes like Anamanaguchi or YMCK, or video game music like Minibosses.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovqWhMvaitQ

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  • Photo-2_small
    Reputation: 567

    Agreed with @Matt Hickey and @Brian Geoghagan - They Might Be Giants are super geeky. I really love how they re-wrote "Why Does The Sun Shine?" after actual scientists corrected them, ha.

    It's no longer a "mass of incandescent gas" it's a "miasma of plasma"!

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  • Tony_randall_small
    Reputation: 70

    What was the name of that death metal band that used to play libraries and fling paperback books at their audience? They were pretty geeky.

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  • N560099571_5781_small
    Reputation: 171

    That first Weezer album is pretty geeky, but many younger nerds still love They Might Be Giants for whatever reason. Also see: Decemberists, McLusky, New Bad things. And the first C-Average album sounds like a game of D&D.

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  • Dsc_0101_small
    Reputation: 4

    In the jazz fusion category, I nominate Romantic Warrior by Return to Forever.

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  • 41368_785364732_8910_n_small
    Reputation: 1

    As far as Rush goes, if you want to get REALLY geeky, I'd have to go with "Hemispheres". It was their last and most accomplished conceptual "side-long song" album, and it contains at least 2 stone-cold geek classics - the side-long title track and the nearly as long instrumental "La Villa Strangiato".

     

     

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  • N1024258222_3432_small
    Reputation: 2

    YT Cracker's NES album is one of the most well done I've ever heard.

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  • M-t4d1lenjcrn5kmuqfa4kwarnienfkb0xgd4mjwsyer56gacgf-cgc27fmswrev_small
    Reputation: 7

    A not-well-known-anymore geek album: 1998's "What Makes It Go?" by Sweden's Komeda.

    It's more university-geekaria than tinkery-geekaria, but you can hear their obsessive attention to technical detail while listening to Lena Karlsson name-dropping Jean-Paul Sartre, singing crisply with her opera-trained alto voice, and some wild sonic arrangements along the way — all packed into about 40 minutes of brilliant pop. If you like Weezer and Stereolab, you will probably love this.

    But TMBG's "Flood" is the Longines of geek rock, hands-down.

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  • Avatar_default
    Reputation: 11

    Lots of ways to interpret this one, but personally and idiosyncratically, whenever I need to do some serious coding, I break out Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull. That's all there is to it.

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  • Squirrelgotchi-128_small
    Reputation: 44

    Obviously, agreed with Tom Lehrer, They Might Be Giants, and Jonathan Coulton. I don't see a mention of JoCo's "opening band", Paul and Storm. Anyone who writes a song called "Frogger! The Frogger Musical" (on the album, "Do You Like Star Wars?") needs to be on the list.

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  • Ozomahtli_small
    Reputation: 2397

    Weird Al Yankovic's Dare to Be Stupid. It's got "Like a Surgeon", "Yoda", and "Girls Just Want to Have Lunch", among others. It's also capped off with a polka medley.

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  • Avatar_default
    Reputation: 1

    1975's "Spider Man: Rock Reflections of a Super Hero!" Unmitigated geekness, and pretty good too.

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  • N1140053330_707_small
    Reputation: 0

    MC Hawking - A Brief History of Rhyme, which contains such classics as "The Big Bizang," "Entropy," and "Fuck the Creationists."

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  • N507892773_733_small
    Reputation: 105

    Atom and his Package - A society of people named Elihu

    http://www.last.fm/music/Atom+and+His+Package/A+Society+of+People+Named+Elihu

    It's pretty much got all the geek-fest you could ever want:

    1. One nerdy chubby guy with a sequencer
    2. jams with titles like "Punk Rock Academy", and "People in this computer lab should shut the hell up"
    3. an educational song about Philadelphia.
    4. quite possibly the best geek/sports song ever, "Goalie", about his plan to gain over a thousand pounds so he can join the NHL and be the world's most impenetrable goalie ("You can try the wrist-shot, slap-shot, there's no getting through. I told you ten times, you can NOT fake out blubber, dude!")

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  • 1555740p_f4cfe5a2a3-magnum_small
    Reputation: 87

    2 Skinnee J's, "SuperMercado!", 1998. Nerdcore before anyone even knew what Nerdcore was, and some just plain fantastic rapping:

    http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/super-mercado/id336000621

    Pluto: an ode to and denouncement why Pluto is still a planet.

    Wild Kingdom: ton of literature references.

    The Best: everything from physics to Sonic & Mario to Odysseus.

    Ball Point Man: the joys of being a kid playing as a superhero.

    In The Clutches Of The Diabolical Sgt. Stiletto: Pretty much everything from Indiana Jones to Wrath of Khan to the Illuminati.

    The Whammy: No ultra-outright geekiness, but lyrically mad rapping and some sly refs.

    You're A Champion: Greg Lougainous, Roddy Piper, Bruce Jenner, and Carrie at the Prom.

    (718): a love song to an actual area code. Kinda.

    The Good, The Bad, & The Skinnee: A Nerdcore theme song to basically every Clint Eastwood western ever.

    Riot Nrrrd: homage to their own nerd youth. John Hughes, Islands of Misfit Toys...

    Organic Machine: all over the map, but they don't need a Holy Grail cause they've already got one.

    Mindtrick: "These are not the J's you're looking for". Crazy beat.

    And what may be the most insanely fun live song ever of all time, when the crowd goes nuts during it singing along, for a bonus (it's off their second independent release, "Sing, Earthboy, Sing"): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zXBAtxl-Nc

    They were epic in the NYC area in the late 90s, but all their small labels repeatedly died around them until they finally broke up.

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  • 27417_1601276902_8652_n_small
    Reputation: 2

    The Protomen - Act 1.

    Via Wikipedia:

    "While the plot of the album is adapted from the Mega Man games, it takes substantial liberties with the original storyline, functioning as a dystopic reworking of the games' narrative."

    Listen to Unrest in the House of Light (my favorite song from the album) here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpX41iXl0BA&feature=related

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  • 27352_508477587_453_n_small
    Reputation: 1

    Old school rock nerds like King Crimson with a side of Zappa. Serious 90's rock geeks turn to Tortoise. Locally, I'd go with Head Like a Kite - or their predecessor Sushi Robo - their shows were gear nerd magnets!

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  • Tomato_small
    Reputation: 1045

    Klaus Nomi's eponymous 1981 album, featuring the single "Total Eclipse" is pretty geeky.

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  • Labcoat_small
    Reputation: 733

    Man or Astro-man? - A Spectrum of Finite Scale

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  • Doorbells_002_small
    Reputation: 896

    Gee, and here I was going to nominate Jim Croce's "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown"...

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  • 10-03-03_054_small
    Reputation: 14

    Well, if you're talking the geekiness of the musician(s) then I'd have to say offthesky would be my first choice as that dude revels in the tech stuff of his music (taking weather patterns\phenomena and turning them into sound). Then we have The Flaming Lips with albums like Zaireka where you're needing to time a bunch of CD's to play together (nerds!). I've always been more partial to songs like "Charlie Manson Blues" etc though. The Minutemen have always been a little geeky to me ("our band is scientist rock"). You can also go way back to the Goldberg Variations of course as those are pretty geeky. As far as sounding geeky or having a geek quality I'd have to go with Belong first as their walls of distortion appeal to the inner geek in me. Second I think I'd have to say Stars of The Lid because all geeks like space exploration.

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  • Sacri_ordines_by_charism_small
    Reputation: 3723

    far too many to choose just one!?!?!

    old school geek: Bowie. Ziggy stardust. Or merely the song 'the laughing gnome'

    School House rocks Science Rock.

    Pink Floyd -

    TMBG: no no no

    Talking Heads - remain in light

    The Protomen

    Beastie Boys

    MC Frontalot

    Queen

    Moby

    the Muppets / Fraggle Rock songs

    my current fav though?

    PUSA!!!

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  • Skull_pumpkin_small
    Reputation: 1610

    It's got to be Rush. I'm torn between Moving Pictures and Fly By Night. Moving Pictures might win because "Tom Sawyer" has great bass or lose because "Tom Sawyer" is (well, was) popularly known and popular conflicts with geeky.

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