Just met an interesting guy – tech executive and avant-garde guitarist. We’ve become ‘Facebook friends’ (and LinkedIn friends, etc. etc.) and he had an interesting post up on his Facebook page listing what he felt were the ’50 essential’ albums. I decided to do the same, focusing on somewhat less-known discs that I think people really ought to pay more attention to.
So after putting together a fast list, I realize that I’m missing two of them (*) and will go order them (used, since I don’t buy new CD’s – thank you for suing your consumers, RIAA!)1. Aimee Mann – Magnolia
2. Aretha Franklin – Gospel
3. Bad Religion – Suffer
4. Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
5. Blasters – American Music
6. Bob Wills – Boot Heel Drag
7. Buck Owens – Together Again
8. Buddy Holly – Buddy Holly Collection *
9. Clash – London Calling
10. Copeland – Quiet City
11. Dick Dale – Tribal Thunder
12. Duke Robillard – Conversations In Swing
13. Dwight Yoakum – Guitars, Cadillacs
14. Ella Fitzgerald – Gershwin Songbook
15. Frank Sinatra – Sinatra-Basie *
16. Frank Zappa – Weasels Ripped My Flesh
17. Glenn Gould – Goldberg Variations 1955
18. Glenn Gould – Goldberg Variations 1981
19. Jesus & Mary Chain – Darklands
20. John Fahey – Blind Joe Death
21. Johnny Cash – American Recordings
22. Johnny Cash – At Folsom Prison
23. Johnny Winter – Second Winter
24. Keith Jarrett – Standards, v 1
25. Los Lobos – Band From East LA
26. Louis Jordan – Live Jive
27. Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
28. Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain
29. Neil Young – Harvest
30. NIN – All That Could Have Been
31. Prince – Sign O The Times
32. Randy Newman – Land of Dreams
33. Rosie Flores – Rockabilly Filly
34. Roxy Music – Street Life
35. Ry Cooder – Get Rhythm
36. Sam Cooke – Live
37. Sarah Vaughan – Roulette Years
38. Spinners – Best of Spinners
39. Springsteen – Ghost of Tom Joad
40. Texas Tornadoes – Texas Tornadoes
41. The Band – Music From Big Pink
42. The Byrds – Sweetheart Of The Rodeo
43. The Kinks – Everybody’s In Showbiz
44. The Who – Tommy
45. The Who – Who’s Next
46. Traffic – Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys
47. Tuckwell – Mozart Horn
48. U2 – Under A Blood Red Sky
49. Wes Montgomery – Incredible Jazz Guitar
50. X – Los Angeles
This is a nice list.
51. Joy Division – Closer
52. Willie Nelson – Red-Headed Stranger
53. Richard and Linda Thompson – Shoot Out the Lights
54. Emmy Lou Harris – Profiles
55. Laurie Anderson – Strange Angels
Now it’s even better.
There’s difference between essential and underappreciated, BTW. London Calling was an influential album, even if all the Michael Jackson fans weren’t lining up to buy it. It seems to me to have gotten a due amount of appreciation.
Led Zeppelin, Presence
Radiohead, The Bends
Concrete Blonde – Still in Hollywood
Freddy Johnston – This Perfect World
Lucinda Williams – Either Ramblin or Carwheels on a Gravel Road
Glen makes a good point. On that basis, I’d say that London Calling, Under A Blood Red Sky, Pet Sounds, and Live At Folsom Prison might be suspect – as essential, but not underappreciated.
That makes room for Freedy Johnson (to quote Jack Black – “That was so good it should have been mine…”)and Joy Divison in my list. I’m unconvinced on the others so far…
A.L.
Lists like this are always fun.
But, I gotta agree with AL: “Pet Sounds” underappreciated? Outside of maybe “Revolver” “Sgt Peppers” or “Highway ’61 Revisited”, it is hard to think of an album more appreciated.
Along Glen’s line, while I agree that any American who wants to have any claim to culture (and about a million Japanese) has _Kind of Blue_ on the shelf/in storage, 40+ years, a couple of books devoted to the album, and a few million copies (still the best-selling “jazz” record ever, unless they’ve managed to have Kenny G’s collected work pass it…) down the line, you can’t sell “underappreciated”/”less known”, and I’m a guy who believes you can’t really have too much Miles in your collection. “Underappreciated” ? How about _On The Corner_? Hey, _I_ like it!
You do need some of the Chess/Checker sides in there, however, because without the blues, there’s no rock and roll, and no jazz: for starters, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy II, Little Walter and, lest we forget, Bo Diddley. These keep going in/out of print, getting re-configured, re-packaged, and re-licensed, so the album titles keep changing, but still. . . and if we’re conjuring up a Chess-Checker dream compilation, I’d want Sugar-Boy Crawford’s “Jock-I-Mo” on it, too. He was kind of a one-hit wonder, but what a great song; it eventually became “Iko-Iko”. The Louis Jordan pick’s a nod in this direction, though.
I’d argue for some version of _Rite of Spring_ (since you’re including “classical”/ “Western European through-composed art music”, whatever-you-wanna-call-it) if only for how much cinema/TV music draws on it. Some seventy years post-_Fantasia_ , how come everyone hasn’t figured this out? I really like the Zander/Boston Phil. (NOT BSO) version, which also includes the really cool pianola version, but it’s out-of-print, so I’d settle for Boulez/Cleveland, or LA.
It’s going to make me sound like an old coot, but where’re Duke, Bird and Dizzy, and Tito Puente? Mingus, too! _Mingus Am Um_? Maybe Sony/Columbia could re-issue it as a double with _Kind of Blue_!
Benefit – Jethro Tull
Abbey Road – The Beatles
Eat A Peach – The Allman Brothers Band
All Things Must Pass – George Harrison
The Captain and Me – The Doobie Brothers
Dose – Government Mule
In The Court Of The Crimson King – King Crimson
Mouthful of Copper – Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons
Dark Side Of The Moon – Pink Floyd
Mule Variations – Tom Waits
‘Til The Medicine Takes – Widespread Panic
Just some of the essentials.
_Glen makes a good point. On that basis, I’d say that London Calling, Under A Blood Red Sky, Pet Sounds, and Live At Folsom Prison might be suspect – as essential, but not underappreciated._
So essential and under appreciated? I’d kick out Neil Young’s Harvest as well, both The Who albums.
Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here (compared to their others, underappreciated)
Rolling Stones – Aftermath (same)
Elvis Costello – Brutal Youth
Massive Attack – Mezzanine
The Godfathers – Birth, School, Work, Death
Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Honestly, aside from the top 2, would have a hard time cracking the list.
Synergy – Tontos expanding headband
Tull? If any, then definitely _This Was_, when they were still trying to figure out their public persona, Anderson knew about four things on flute, and Mick Abrams, the first guitarist, still wanted to be Clapton to Anderson’s Jack Bruce. As truly and inadvertently quirky as they later went out of their way to try to be, and recorded on a budget, IIRC, of something like $1,200.
Pink Floyd- Animals.
Before Chess there was Sun Records, and Sam Phillips, the greatest record producer of all time.
He was the first successful label to record Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, and the much underappreciated Jimmy Cotton. All that plus Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash. Unsurpassed.
Glen:
I’d argue that the Sun stuff, particularly the Elvis, Jerry Lee, Perkins, Orbison, and Cash stuff, is more or less continuously available, and has been dissected, note by note, for much of the last 40 years, by people other than hard-core blues fans. (I’ve got a close friend, for instance, who’s got three or four different incarnations of almost every note these guys recorded for Sun…) In addition to the US fan-base, there’s whole bunches of guys in Thailand, and Japan, and the Phillipines, who can play that stuff note for note, and sing it, note for note, in phonetic English. So “underappreciated”?
On the other hand, such wonderful things as Little Walter’s “Up The Line” (as good a “choo-choo song” as “Mystery Train”) and the referenced Sugarboy side are apparently not available on anything in print in the US right now. And how many people who buy George Thorogood’s stuff bother to get the recordings where Bo Diddley “invented that s***”?
BTW, credit, where credit is due, to Mary K. Aldin, and
Bernie Pearl for teaching me what I know about this…
_somewhat less-known discs that I think people really ought to pay more attention to._
The challenge with this type of list is that you have to make some kind of judgment of what other people haven’t paid much attention to.
Three albums stand out to me as very appreciated within their genre (Kind of Blue, At Folsom Prison and Who’s Next), but maybe people not into jazz or country or [er] classic rock might want to pay attention. Ok, I’m not buying the last one.
_Pet Sounds:_ Sure its been on top of a whole lot of important/influential lists, but I’d bet most people born after it was released have never heard it. I think that’s because album-oriented rock radio went in a harder direction and the pop stations would have played the Beach Boys singles-friendly stuff.
_You do need some of the Chess/Checker sides in there, however, because without the blues, there’s no rock and roll, and no jazz: for starters, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy II, Little Walter and, lest we forget, Bo Diddley._
IIRC all of the Chess stars had some sort of “Best of” early in their catalog that still stands out. I get a sense, however, that AL was trying to list actual albums; there are few compilations listed.
Anyway, that’s a little too Chicago Blues heavy, so here are few other ideas for balance:
Skip James, Today!
Son House, The Original Delta Blues
Champion Jack Dupree, Blues from the Gutter
Junior Kimbrough, All Night Long
Hey, cool – something to argue about besides politics.
First off, thanks for the list – Magnolia? I thought the movie was well done, but never gave much thought to the soundtrack. As a serious question, what is great about this album? A bit more perspective on why, would be appreciated.
Someone else who like Bad Religion – cool! And same with the Clash, though I’m partial to the Jam myself.
By the way, anyone reading this, pick up the Arctic Monkeys stuff. Incredible Punk-Pop, I personally think Favourite Worst Nightmare was the top album of last year. And, Whatever People Say I Am, I consider the best album of 2006.
There’s an incredible revival of the British pop-punk sound.
Arctic Monkeys, The Kooks…even stuff like Franz Ferdinand, Ok Go, share in that a bit, even if not British.
I’ve gotta say though, while I respect the stuff on this list, and do so when listening – it’s a bit dated for me. Stuff has to “hit” you, correctly, and 10, 20 years later, it’s hard for stuff to hit you the same way.
Also – early Red Hot, all of RATM to me is essential, don’t know if it’s unappreciated.
hypo – I’m a sucker for a good lyric, and Aimee Mann does great lyrics. Same reason Bad Religion is my favorite punk band. I could put their whole catalog up here, but that seems kinda cheap.
I like Arctic Monkeys, but I wonder if they will have the kind of impact that Jesus & Mary Chain did…just sayin’…
A.L.
Ok, got it – but come on – Pop Punk, for me, is all about taking straight PUNK, making it a little more melodic, without losing the energy, but without tipping into PRETENTIOUSNESS complexity, say like with what the Sting did when he got all self-important.
Arctic Monkeys runs that gamut perfectly – great energy, good lyrics, and fairly simply song structure, but complex enough to differentiate it from say Bad Religion/Clash style Punk.
Nothing against that, of course, since I have a lot of Bad Religion.
Not sure how much Bad Religion relates to Bad Philosophy, hopefully not too much!
Lastly, Mr. “sucker for lyrics” and Bad Religion fan, compare and contrast:
“Suffer lyrics”:http://www.azlyrics.com/b/badreligion.html – go halfway down.
“Favourite Worst Nightmare Lyrics”:http://www.lyricsmania.com/lyrics/arctic_monkeys_lyrics_4351/
You can’t really say one is more complex than the other – Bad Religion goes “universal” in it’s lament, while AM tends to be more local in it’s stories.
PD Shaw –
The first blues song I ever heard in my life was “Cypress Grove” by Skip James. I did not know there were serious blues people at WoC. So:
Blind Willie Johnson – Praise God I’m Satisfied and Sweeter As the Years Go By (Yazoo Collections)
But now we have drifted away from the concept of the “album”, as in the tyrannical thing that you must sit and listen to from beginning to end, with or without accompanying narcotic stupor. As if it were Beethoven’s Ninth, or something. I’m not sure who is to blame for this idea – but I suspect The Who, among others. Anyway, the blues has nothing to do with such pretensions.
bq. I’m not sure who is to blame for this idea – but I suspect The Who, among others.
I blame Columbia Records — they introduced the 33-1/3 RPM LP, after all. And then the big suspect is Sgt. Pepper, with all those segues and its “high [sic] concept”. The Who are in there big time, as well.