Oh, this is going to take a while, so I’m going to start with the obvious, in the order they occur to me, rather than in order of preference.
American Beauty, Live from the Mars Hotel, Shakedown Street, Aoxomoxoa, Workingman’s Dead, Europe ‘72 - The Grateful Dead
Joe’s Garage acts I, II & III, Apostrophe(’), Just Another Band from L.A., Sheikh Yerbouti - Frank Zappa
Aja - Steely Dan
Dark Side of the Moon, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Ummagumma, Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
Time Out - Dave Brubeck Quartet
Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilighs - Raymond Scott
Live at Last!, Below the Salt, Tonight’s the Night - Steeleye Span
Switched-On Bach et al. - Wendy Carlos
Songs From the Wood, Aqualung - Jethro Tull
A Charlie Brown Christmas - Vince Guaraldi
Pearl - Janis Joplin
A Very Scary Solstice/An Even Scarier Solstice - The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society
Between the Breaks, Northwest Passage - Stan Rogers
Grated Hits, Schrödinger’s Hairball - Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff
Archetype Café - Talis Kimberley
Debasement Tapes, 24 Hour Project - Tom Smith
White Album, Sgt Pepper, Revolver, Let It Be - The Beatles
I have no doubt I will be back in a few hours going AIIEEE HOW COULD I FORGET (fill in the blank)…
Everything on there is so good, but of the original compositions? “Christmas Is Coming” is utterly peppy and exuberant, and I will never not get emotional listening to “Christmas Time Is Here,” whether it’s the version with or without the vocals.
Déjà Vu - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
Here Come the Warm Jets, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Ambient series - Brian Eno
Pictures at an Exhibition - Emerson Lake and Palmer
In the Court of the Crimson King - King Crimson
Absolutely, I’ve enjoyed all their albums, and hard to pick a favorite, so I just posted the one I put on the most. Within that just looking at the top 3 likely to get played, would be Travelling, Return and Funk Odyssey.
Throwing Muses: Red Heaven
Billie Holiday: Stormy Blues
Marshall Crenshaw: Field Day
The Akiyoshi-Tabackin Orchestra: Road Time
For the sake of brevity, these are simply five enduring beauties which came to mind first. In theory, I could sit here for hours and list off a hundred of them. But I have to sleep sometime.
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV
Elvis Presley - Promised Land
Queen - A Night at the Opera
Fleetwood Mac - Rumors
Eagles - Hotel California
Billy Joel - The Stranger
Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell
AC/DC - Back in Black
Phil Collins - Face Value
Alabama - Mountain Music
Huey Lewis and the News - Sports
The Police - Synchronicity
Bruce Springsteen - Born in the U.S.A.
Dire Straights - Brothers in Arms
U2 - The Joshua Tree
Metallica - Metallica
Garth Brooks - No Fences
Brooks & Dunn - Hard Workin’ Man
Aerosmith - Get a Grip
R.E.M - Out of Time
Dave Matthews Band - Crash
Weird Al Yankovic - Bad Hair Day
Creed - My Own Prison
Days of the New - Yellow
Godsmack - Godsmack
Santana - Supernatural
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Echo
3 Doors Down - A Better Life
A commitment to brevity, and the resulting HARD CHOICES, gets me to this list. In no order (that would have broken me)
Pere Ubu - Dub Housing
Meat Puppets - II
Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth
The Breeders - Title TK
The Ramones - It’s Alive
The Fall - Peverted By Language
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand
Stooges - Funhouse
R.E.M - Reckoning
None of these are exactly contemporary, but that’s more a function of how I picked them. I was looking for albums that have given me a consistent charge of good feeling over the longest run of time, so that skews it toward older titles and also stuff I first came across at a particular time in my life.
This is an excellent question. Unfortunately, since about 2000 or so especially, the music - particularly rock - I like has grown out of fashion. It is harder and harder to find knew stuff that appeals. Prior to that, I listened to “Modern Rock” format radio in the but I didn’t buy a lot of albums (we didn’t download back in the olden days.) I’ve to look further afield from my old preferences to find things I liked. I tend to listen to individual songs, but not entire albums. That said, here is a list of some favorite albums from the last 30 years that I like, again in no particular order:
Blue Öyster Cult - Heaven Forbid
Blue Öyster Cult - The Symbol Remains
Enya - Memory of Trees
Enya - Enya
Gaelic Storm - Tree
Gaelic Storm - How Are We Getting Home?
Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats - Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats
Blackmoore’s Night - Shadow of the Moon
Danú - All Things Considered
Eric Johnson - Ah Via Musicom
Rush - Roll the Bones
Rush - Test for Echo
Various - Pulp Fiction Soundtrack (yes that’s kind of cheating)
Howard Shore - Lord of the Rings soundtrack albums
(Sad that I had to choose between this one and its predecessor: The Real Ramona, which is also outstanding but more on the dreamy and less gritty side.)
Rock radio is a complete wasteland in recent decades… I totally agree with that.
Thanks for the album list. Some of them are new to me and I’ll check them out.
Based on your favs I thought you might have really enjoyed the garage rock revival of the 00s or other bands heavily influenced by the artists you listed.
I think Joy Division and New Order should be viewed separately due to the loss of Ian Curtis. Ian’s vocal approach and songwriting is so distinct and iconic.
IMO… it’s like Bob Dylan and The Band. The Band went on without Bob and made lots of great music and iconic stuff. But it’s fair to see their work with Bob as very separate.
Just my take… I’m just so grateful that Peter Hook and the rest of the guys continued on like they did. Lots of New Order stuff is just as amazing as Joy Division but in a very different way.
An absolutely fair assessment. Again, I don’t see one view being the correct view, just what I know works for me when organizing my music folders & playlists.
At the end of the day, what is important isn’t what name is on the label, but that the music was made and that we are lucky to get to hear it.
Here’s ten albums that I really like, in no particular order.
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
The Beatles - Abbey Road
Yellow Magic Orchestra - Solid State Survivor
George Harrison - All Things Must Pass
The Doors - The Doors
Electric Light Orchestra - Time
The Who - Who’s Next
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin
Eloy - Ocean
Yes - Close to the Edge
Pavement “Crooked Rain Crooked Rain”, released 2 months before my 18th birthday. They were my favorite band since the summer or two before that with “Slanted and Enchanted”. They were starting to pick up a lot of national press, they had a video on MTV’s 120 Minutes. The music and SM’s lyricism just spoke to me in a way that not many artists ever really did. The fractured nature of the music coupled with the ramshackle, yet polished, delivery just really did it for me – and still does.
The band appeared on The Tonight Show, with Jay Leno the week of my birthday in April, 1994. The other guests that night were Drew Barrymore looking her most Gen-X 90s possible and Harry Shearer…wearing a pink suit.
The look on Malkmus’ face in this photo pretty much sums up my entire reaction to many social situations, not so much now…but definitely then. So many worlds colliding in this photo.
I love the entire catalog, they were and are my favorite band. And, this is my favorite record of theirs. I don’t like lists… so just… this:
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