Please explain the fascination with SIT

maidenn.c.indiana

maidenn.c.indiana

Trooper
I know this thread may anger some people, but I would really like to know what is so great about the SIT album. Apparently it's me because everytime Maiden starts a tour the forum explodes with posters upset about them not doing any or the same songs as before from this album. I bought SIT when it first came out and I got to tell you compared to the back to back homers of POM and PS ( not to mention LAD) I was kinda underwelmed. IMO the album breaks down like this:

Great Songs:
Wasted Years
Stranger in a Strangeland
Heaven Can Wait
Lonliness of the Long Distance Runner

Average Songs:
Caught Somewhere In Time
Sea Of Madness

Below Average:
Alexander the Great

Total Crap:
Deja Vu

Now I'm sure I'm gonna get killed for rating ATG as below average. While I love the music, I'm sorry but the lyrics read and sound like a boring history lecture and I've sat through enough of them. Let me state for the record that the SIT tour in 86 was my first Maiden concert and I loved it. But I've never been crazy about this album and was just wanting some opinions from those who are.
 
My issue with ATG is the lyrics, not the history lecture part (ha!) but just ... they feel horrible to me.

I far prefer CSiT to Heaven Can Wait myself, but that's besides the point. For one thing everyone has different tastes (for instance I've come round to the thought of 'whats so great about PoM?') but the main thing is something you already covered in your post - it's less the strength of the album and more that it simply seems to be overlooked on tours, and so it would be a nice treat to get something from it. Not because it's that particular album, but because it's simply so rare to get those songs (other than the usual 1-2).

For musical merit of the album, whilst I enjoy it I don't see it as anything better than the rest of that era, so someone else can cover that :p
 
Well, this is how the breakdown is for me.

Great Songs:
Wasted Years
Sea of Madness
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
Stranger in a Strange Land
Deja Vu
Alexander the Great

Good Songs:
Caught Somewhere In Time
Heaven Can Wait

So as you can see, I would be among the people upset by the lack of Somewhere in Time material. When CSIT and HCW are the weakest songs on an album, you know you've struck gold. It's a cohesive album, quite experimental, and it doesn't have a bad tune on it.

It's different and it's good. That's what the fascination is about.
 
Lately I've been revisiting SIT. It definitely sits toward the top of my rankings, maybe top 3. It's experimental, adventurous, and still sounds like Maiden. Not to mention the production, I would say SIT has the best production on a Maiden album by far. Every song is at least good, I think. My rankings would look like this:

Great Songs:
Caught Somewhere In Time
Wasted Years
Sea of Madness
Loneliness
Stranger in A Strange Land
Alexander

Good Songs:
Heaven Can Wait
Deja Vu
 
On Somewhere in Time, Adrian Smith brought the best out of himself. He delivered three excellent tracks, which had more of a melancholic feel than most other Maiden songs. In the beginning I had to get used to the riffs of “Sea Of Madness”, and still I am not that fond of the vocal melody in the “Stranger In A Strange Land” chorus. The only other weak point of the album is the vocal melody in the chorus “Heaven Can Wait”, but for the rest I love it all very much! “Déja-Vu” is a dynamic up-tempo gem.

The sound on this album really does it for me. What I like about the production is the drum sound which seems to blend so well with ‘Arry bass and the rest of the music. There’s a big chance that Nicko’s playing and his drum sound might influence my total appreciation for Somewhere in Time. Again, like on Powerslave we can hear that Adrian does a lot of different things than Dave, rhythm guitar-wise. And there’s so much melody on this album and the production fits perfectly to that.

All studio versions of these songs I like better than all the live versions I have ever heard. This says enough about how special this album is, doesn't it?

My love for the songs might show a deeper insight in my appreciation:
In this topic http://forum.maidenfans.com/threads/forostars-top-50-iron-maiden-songs.22023/
I explain what I like about Sea of Madness (on page 18; my 2nd favourite Maiden song), Deja-vu (on page 16; my 6th favourite Maiden song), Alexander the Great (page 15), Caught Somewhere in Time (page 14) and Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (page 12) (these last three are in my top 25 as well).
 
Somewhere In Time was not among the albums that hooked me into Maiden (it happened in the 90's, probably 1994), just because I happened to hear other albums before that, all of them quite different in sound - Fear Of The Dark, Iron Maiden, Killers and The Number Of The Beast. Then, one day I heard SIT and I remember myself listening to Caught Somewhere In Time, gaping in awe. I had never cared about solos much until that point but the first time I heard Adrian's solo on CSIT, I was overwhelmed! I just had to replay it dozens of times before I could move on with the rest of the song and the album. Maybe I was just ready for this album, I can't explain it, but it all immediately clicked, it just felt right. I had heard Waster Years before I got the whole album and I really loved it. Hearing the rest just added to the feeling. It is still in my top 3 of Maiden albums.

My ranking would be:

Great songs:
Caught Somewhere In Time
Wasted Years
Sea Of Madness
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
Stranger In A Strange Land
Deja-Vu
Alexander The Great

Good song:
Heaven Can Wait
 
Somewhere in Time is currently 6th in my 2012 Iron Maiden album rankings, so in the top half. I like it decently, mostly because it has a very distinctive spacey sound which is fun and it has some great riffs (I'm thinking the opening riff in Wasted Years or in CSIT). Its also consistently good, nothing too awful but nothing incredibly fantastic either (no song got a 9/10 or higher).

Great songs (got a score of 8/10 or higher):

Caught Somewhere in Time
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

Good songs (got a score of 7/10 or higher):
Wasted Years
Sea of Madness
Stranger in a Strange Land
Alexander the Great

Average (got a score of no higher than 6.5 and no lower than 5):

Heaven Can Wait
Déjà vu


Also, I don't see what the big deal with Piece of Mind is.
 
I think it's a great album. The sound is great, there are many damn fine solos, and the album has both catchy songs (Wasted Years) and a melodic masterpiece in Alexander the Great. In addition, I feel that Loneliness ... and Déjà vu are underappreciated. Like Alexander, they show the melodic side of Maiden's songwriting at its finest. Say what you want about the lyrics in those three songs, but musically they are beyond great.

It came out between my two favourite albums, Powerslave and SSOASS, but in several aspects it matches those two (melodic brilliance, sound and solos).
 
As many others have said, the consistency and sheer quality of the songs on the album is outstanding to me. In addition to this SiT songs are rarely played live (with the exception of Wasted Years) and they are therefore somewhat underrepresented.
 
Synths (guitar tone/sound); (relatively) simple, but effective guitar work (--especially leads); melancholy feel; consistency; variety; no live play "burnout" (as they don't play them often) --most of Maiden's other albums fail to match up to it. Certainly my favourite.
 
I think Somewhere In Time is a great album, but I think it needs some time to get into (not as much as, say, The Final Frontier, but it needs a few listens). This may not be a popular opinion, but I think the back half easily tops the front half, as I think Heaven Can Wait is overlong and overrated. I don't have as high an opinion of the albums as some here do, I put at the very least SSoaSS, AMOLAD and TFF ahead of it, as well as possibly Powerslave or BNW (I don't have a set ranking of all the albums, so I'm not entirely sure where it falls). Nevertheless, it is a musically excellent album, and though the lyrics are admittedly less than consistent, it still is easily a great album.

The songs (judged compared to Maiden songs alone, not all songs, because if it was all songs they'd all be good or great):

Great:
Alexander the Great
Stranger In a Strange Land
Caught Somewhere In Time

Above Average:
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Average:
Wasted Years
Deja Vu
Sea of Madness

Below Average:
Heaven Can Wait
 
It probably has one of the, if not the, most unique overall album sounds of all time, rhythm section is top notch, absolutely the best of Maiden in terms of solos, in has a great flow as an "album" but not some collection of songs.

I care A LOT about lyrics but still, Alexander the Great's music is so amazing that I try to avoid the lyrics when I'm judging the song itself. The only other example of that in Maiden catalogue for me is To Tame a Land, another song with an amazing composition but horrible lyrics. You may call the song below-average, it all is a matter of taste, but only rating it that because of the lyrics wrong, in my opinion. And you actually put Runner in the great songs list, it also has predictable, not special lyrics, just like ATG but in a different way. (one tells obvious things about Alexander the Great, other one tells obvious things about a long distance runner)

Great Songs :

Alexander the Great
Caught Somewhere in Time
Sea of Madness
Stranger in a Strange Land

Good Songs :

Wasted Years (close to being a great song)
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
Deja Vu

Average :

Heaven Can Wait

P.S. : I know my rating system is a bit harder than some of the guys who has posted above me, but let me remind you that SIT is my favorite Maiden album.
 
I agree with Natalie, this is probably my sixth favorite Maiden album, behind Powerslave, NOTB, SSOASS, AMOLAD and the self-titled debut. (Yes, I like it better than Piece of Mind.) And, Wasted Years is perhaps my favorite live Maiden song. You wouldn't think so -- neither did I -- then I heard it during the SBIT tour and went berserk. Great singalong song that isn't overused like Run to the Hills and FotD. Since we're doing the breakdown:

Pantheon: Wasted Years(!)
Great: Caught, Loneliness, Stranger, Deja Vu (one man's "total crap" is another...well, you get the idea)
Good: Sea, Alex
Meh: Heaven Can Wait
 
Apparently not only have I underestimated SIT, but I've also overrated HCW. Oh well I still love that song, especially live. Some posters have talked about the production on SIT, and while I agree it is better than the production of POM or PS it's not better than say SSOASS. Hell Martin Birch did the production on all those albums so maybe they were recorded in different studios. Playing wise I can't see that SIT is better than SSOASS, I feel the keyboards were much better inegrated on SSOASS than SIT. Maybe the lack of any input from Mr. Dickenson hurts SIT.
 
SiT didn't use keyboards (--I don't think. Someone more knowledgable than me will clarify); they only used guitar synths. They didn't even record everything for SiT in the same studio, never mind different studios for different albums. Maiden didn't use those guitars or amps etc on any other album --so the sound/tone is different. Personally I think the sound is incredible. SSoaSS just isn't the same. None of this is anything to do with the writing or actual music itself.
 
Seventh Son production wise better than SIT? No way.
As much as I love the sound of the keyboards – they contribute immensely to the atmosphere – I think that the drums and also the guitars sound a bit thin to my ears. A “soft” production.
 
SIT was the first Maiden album I bought on the day of release, I always regarded it as partly a reaction to the emergence of thrash metal; (the pace of Caught Somewhere In Time and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner in particular). However Adrian Smith's contributions made the album something special for me, I still remember hearing Wasted Years for the first time on the Friday Rock Show and being blown away about how immediately catchy it was.

As stated above, all the 'synths' were guitar synths, Priest took the same angle with 'Turbo' (and look what goo that did them..), but the gear was primitive compared to current standards...

It's an important album for me because of what happened afterwards, so I can't claim it as a complete favourite, but I simply don't understand why some of the songs from it aren't revisited in the live set more often. Stranger in a Strange Land is a particular favourite, but generally the intricacies of SIT deserve more credit than the tag of 'weak album' labels them with. I also still burn with anger at the fact I missed their Ipswich show because Bruce was ill!

There never could have been a SSOASS without a SIT.
 
rolpol said:
As stated above, all the 'synths' were guitar synths, Priest took the same angle with 'Turbo' (and look what goo that did them..), but the gear was primitive compared to current standards...
Click to expand...

For their career? maybe not.. although Priest's albums frequently change from one to the next - sometimes with trends others because they just want to try different stuff once in a while (Jugulator/Demolition are a good example of trying different things tbh, whether you like them or not) so it's debatable about why/affect etc for that.

But I for one, prefer Turbo to SiT :p
 
It's true to say no Turbo, no Painkiller! Experimantal approaches from two bands that could have rested on their laurels..
 
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