Steely Dan - Aja
Tom Waits - Closing Time
Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde
Dire Straits - Self Titled
Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street
Jackie Brown OST
The Beatles - Abbey Road
Nirvana - Nevermind
Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
Pixies - Bossanova
Needs Bowie but otherwise perfect…
Damn forgot Bowie. I like the mid-late 70’s.
Mostly replying as a personal challenge; I doubt anyone cares about my opinion. I think this is a hard but interesting challenge and I could probably spend a lifetime perfecting it, but this is my unadulterated first pass:
- “Stardust” - Willie Nelson
- “Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness” - Smashing Pumpkins
- “Blue Lines” - Massive Attack
- “Kind of Blue” - Miles Davis
- “Wildflowers” - Tom Petty
- “Blind Melon” - Blind Melon
- “Loaded” - The Velvet Underground
- “At War with the Mystics” - The Flaming Lips
- “Dire Straits” - Dire Straits
- “Pretty Hate Machine” - Nine Inch Nails
Fuck. How do you make a list like this without regretting every decision you made?!
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Off the top of my head…
The Presidents of the United States of America - The Presidents of the United States of America
Stan Ridgway - The Big Heat
The Rainmakers - Flirting with the Universe
XTC - Black Sea
Morphine - Good
Bloodhound Gang - Hooray for Boobies
Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - Rattlesnakes
The Mattoid - Great Lovers
Frank Zappa - Joe’s Garage
Was (Not Was) - What Up Dog?
…or something like that…
I did not expect to find bloodhound gang on any of these lists.
Can’t argue with it much. Jimmy Pop is a dumb white guy. Not old or new, but middle school. Fifth grade like junior high.
Man I’d take Drums and Wires if I had to pick an XTC album but it’s so great to see them mentioned
Wow… didn’t know anyone else had heard of The Rainmakers. I was a huge fan when they were touring around the flyover states. Saw them half a dozen times in Wichita. I still listen to their first three albums pretty regularly.
I happened on them when they put out their first album and have been a fan ever since, and that’s even without ever getting a chance to see them live. Bob Walkenhorst is easily my favorite songwriter.
Flirting with the Universe is their fourth album - after a bit of a recording hiatus after The Good News and the Bad News, and it’s far and away my favorite. It’s obvious that they took their time and carefully crafted an album designed to showcase their talent. It’s unfortunate that it still didn’t manage to bring them the recognition they’ve always deserved, but I appreciate it.
It took me a long time to find out about their 4th and 5th albums. By the time I learned they’d been released, they weren’t available in the US. My girlfriend ordered them from a brand new little web store front in Iceland, of all places. That was before the age of streaming, obviously.
Looking at wikipedia, I see they got back together in 2011 and made a couple more albums. I may have to track those down.
I happened to run across a CD of the fourth one used, a couple of years after it released. I didn’t even know it existed before that, and definitely didn’t know it’d end up becoming my favorite. And I still don’t have a copy of the fifth. I do have the last two though.
25 On is sort of reminiscent of Tornado or The Good News and the Bad News - a return to form. It’s pretty good on its own, but sort of suffers by comparison. Monster Movie is odd but interesting. It feels kind of self-indulgent, but in a good way - just a bunch of guys sitting around playing what they want to play just because that’s what they want to play. It’s a bit disjointed, but I like it.
I just now bought 25 On and Monster Movie. Haven’t listened yet because I’m stuck on zoom for another 90 minutes!
never heard of any of these
Weirdly insulting thing to say. Maybe listen to them.
Weird Al, all of them.
I anticipate a metric ton of “best of” albums, but I’ll give it try avoiding that. In no particular order:
- Billy Joel - the Stranger
- Genisis - Genisis
- Beach Boys - Pet sounds
- the Beatles - Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Muse - Resistance
- Rush - Permananent Waves
- Radiohead - OK Computer
- Boston - Boston
- Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
- Linda Ronstadt - What’s New (that will throw a few folks off the trail)
Linda Ronstadt - What’s New (that will throw a few folks off the trail)
Not really, your tastes are very similar to mine. Although “What’s New” was just a gateway drug and now my music library is full of albums by Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Anita O’Day, Carmen McRae, Joao Gilberto, Frank Sinatra and more.
Oh and updating my own list because I listened to it this weekend - Songs in the key of life, Stevie Wonder
I’m autistic, pick any ten albums and they will end up being my favourite albums as I continue to listen to them and they become my familiar.
311 - Grassroots
Tool - Undertow
Meshuggah - Obzen
Atmosphere - God Loves Ugly
Aesop Rock - Bazooka Tooth
Animals as Leaders - The Joy of Motion
Dr. Dre - 2001
Necrophagist - Onset of Putrefaction
Paul Oakenfold - Transport
First Fragment - Gloire Eternelle
Bazooka Tooth over all of aes’ other work?
Controversial I know. There was a point where I listened to that album everyday at work for months. Could be swapped for Hail Mary Mallon - The Bestiary
Otis Redding - Otis Blue Marvin Gaye - What’s Going On Michael Jackson - Off the Wall James Booker - Classified The Meters – Rejuvenation Darondo - Listen to My Song James Brown - Live at the Apollo Dr. Dre - The Chronic Janelle Monae - ArchAndroid Anderson .Paak - Malibu
Hell yeah
I think being able to draw a line from your classic albums to your modern hits is hella cool. Your list makes a lot of sense.
Gemini Syndrome - Memento Mori
Gemini Syndrome - Lux
The Beatles - One
Queen - Greatest Hits
Queen - Greatest Hits II
Aerosmith - Greatest Hits
Simon & Garfunkel - Greatest Hits
NWA - Greatest Hits
Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle
Eminem - Curtain Call: The Hits
Ha, some honesty. There’s a reason one of the best-selling albums of all time remains the Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits. That thing outsold Rumours and Dark Side Of The Moon.
I wouldn’t go that way for most bands, even in this desert-island scenario… except for The Moody Blues. God help them, they have never released a properly good album, front to back. Even Days Of Future Passed suffers for the prose sections. Just skip to “Nights In White Satin” already. Absolutely distill that to a seventy-minute mix tape, so I can pretend “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” and “Lovely To See You” weren’t separated by two decades.
I have a wide range of tastes, but if this was a top 15 I can almost guarantee an Eagles album would be on it.
- Mark Lanegan - Whiskey for the Holy Ghost
- Stone Temple Pilots - Purple
- Gregory Alan Isakov - This Empty Northern Hemisphere
- Pink Floyd - Obscured by Clouds
- Nick Drake - Pink Moon
- Ella Fitzgerald - The Cole Porter Songbook
- Ray LaMontagne - Monovision
- Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
- Tonic - Lemon Parade
- The Beatles - Abbey Road
7 I like and 3 I don’t know. Here we go…
In no order:
- Mothership - Dance Gavin Dance
- Reimagined - Hail the Sun
- The Artist in the Ambulance - Thrice
- Appeal to Reason - Rise Against
- In Silico - Pendulum
- Good Kid - Good Kid
- Rhythm, Chord & Melody - The Reign of Kindo
- Wake - Hail the Sun
- To Speak, To Listen - Eidola
- NieR:Automata Original Soundtrack - Keiichi Okabe
I’ll hate myself in a couple weeks for this selection because my taste varies week-to-week, but right now it’d be:
Devin Townsend: Ziltoid the Omniscient, Empath
Gojira: From Mars to Sirius, Magma
The Ocean: Phanerozoic I, Phanerozoic II (can I count these as one album?)
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard: PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth the Beginning of Merciless Damnation (I think they were going for a record for the longest album title ever).
Voivod: The Outer Limits
Mastodon: Leviathan and Crack the Skye
If Phanerozoic I and II count as a single album, then I’d ask if I can leave the last one open to be filled by a single random studio album of an artist of my choosing, replaced weekly/monthly.
Edit: removed one because I miscounted.
Ziltoid and Empath… hello, friend :)
Difficult…
- Lamb Lies Down on Broadway - Genesis
- Misplaced Childhood - Marillion
- Prequelle - Ghost
- Oh, Inverted World - The Shins
- Ten - Pearl Jam
- Tubular Bells II - Mike Oldfield
- Vast - Vast
- English Settlement - XTC
- The Friends of Mr Cairo - Jon and Vangelis
- Appetite For Destruction - Guns n Roses
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Geez that’s tough. Let’s see if I can do 10:
- Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
- Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
- Johnny Cash - At Folsum Prison
- Metallica - Master of Puppets
- B-52s - B-52s
- Nirvana - Nevermind
- Massive Attack - Mezzanine
- Electric Wizard - Electric Wizard
- Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine
- The Beatles - Abbey Road
