Sunday, October 25, 2015

The Gallery - 50 Great Albums to Start From

Want some great music? Start here! This is a good scatter-pattern of the music that's inspired me, challenged me, or been the soundtrack to my life over the years. It was ridiculously hard getting down to a list of 50... hell, it was hard getting the list below 100. So I set a few rules:

1) One album per band.
(Removing all of the Queen and Blue Oyster Cult records made this much easier)

2) Always choose "favorite" over "best".
(Sorry, Meat Puppets II!)

3) No Metallica.
(They may belong here, but they don't need the help)

This isn't "The 50 Greatest Albums of All Time", and there are tons of great artists and albums that aren't here. But every album here comes with a ringing recommendation from me, and I hope that counts for something.

I'm going to make it my personal project to write a review of every album here, then if that goes well, maybe I'll start fleshing out the list with more. Any of these picks strike a nerve? Give a shout in the comments and I'll try to write about the albums you care about first!

Here we go, in alphabetical order... Enjoy!

Artist Title
Bad Religion Generator
The Beatles The Beatles (White Album)
Jello Biafra and D.O.A. Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors
Black Sabbath Black Sabbath
Blue Oyster Cult Mirrors
The Buggles The Age of Plastic
Captain Beyond Captain Beyond
The Cars The Cars
Cryptopsy None So Vile
Daft Punk Discovery
DEVO Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO!
Dire Straits Brothers in Arms
Eiffel 65 Europop
Elastica Elastica
Electric Light Orchestra Time
Fleetwood Mac Rumours
Flotsam & Jetsam High
Peter Gabriel So
Goldfinger Goldfinger
Green Day Dookie
Incubus S. C. I. E. N. C. E.
Jethro Tull Thick as a Brick
Juluka African Litany
Kraftwerk Radio-Activity
Lost Horizon A Flame to the Ground Beneath
Meat Puppets Too High to Die
Megadeth Killing is My Business… and Business is Good!
Mr Bungle Mr Bungle
NEU! NEU! 2
Only Living Witness Innocents
The Orb The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
Owl City Ocean Eyes
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Greatest Hits
The Police Synchronicity
Queen Queen II
R.E.M. Monster
Rage Against the Machine Rage Against the Machine
Silverchair Diorama
Slayer Reign in Blood
Spacehog The Chinese Album
Alexander “Skip” Spence Oar
Spin Doctors Turn It Upside Down
Cat Stevens Tea for the Tillerman
The Streets A Grand Don't Come for Free
They Might Be Giants Flood
Tool Ænima
Type O Negative Bloody Kisses
Kanye West Yeezus
X Japan Jealousy
“Weird Al” Yankovic Off the Deep End

5 comments:

  1. Jethro Tull and The Police are my personal favorites on this list.

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  2. Fun list. Only one that threw me was Spin Doctors. Yeezus Rules! Oh and for TMBG, I would have gone first album or Lincoln. But Flood is great too. I just bought Reign in Blood - it's time I explored some metal.

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    Replies
    1. Cas - Thanks for checking out the list! I know Spin Doctors aren't exactly beloved, but I wrote about Turn It Upside Down once years ago and to this day I still get comments from people backing me up. It's a really underrated disc, though quite dense.

      TMBG was one of the reasons I instituted rule #1. Lincoln is a great CD too, though I'm partial to Flood and Apollo 18. Believe it or not I haven't properly listened to their debut record... No time like the present I suppose!

      And I hope you dig Reign in Blood... it's got the Rick Rubin touch!

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  3. Spin Doctors: Turn It Upside Down. Represent. My favorite record of all times. A great question to ask also is Why aren't the Spin Doctors beloved? They are a top notch rock and roll band. Rock on David.

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