Chuck Klosterman is a mildly known music writer and editor for the magazines Spin and Esquire. He is the author of three books, all of varying brilliance, and today's blog entry is an unabashed co-opting of a chapter in his first book (which I have recommended at the conclusion of my blog).
It's kind of a spin off of the old "trapped-on-a-deserted-island" hypothetical. But instead of being trapped on a deserted island, you're in the middle of New York City ... wait, no. New York is so cliche. Let's make it the middle of a Seattle street. Nah...
...The Pacific Northwest is too overcast. Let's head south.
We're in San Diego.
We're in the middle of San Diego and a crazed multi-billionaire confronts you and offers you a million dollars to never again listen to your favorite record. Would you never again listen to that record (or any song found on that record) for a million bucks?
Now let's pretend that this crazy multi-billionaire San Diego resident likes to haggle. What is the absolute minimum you would take to listen to your favorite record of all-time? Hopefully it wouldn't be twenty bucks. A hundred? A thousand? Is your favorite record of all-time so priceless that Mr.-Multi-Billionaire simply could not pay you enough never to listen to it again? Because as Mr. Klosterman says, "if you can't buy it off of me, it must be pretty important."
Here is a crack at my top 25 albums and the cost it would take to get me to never listen to them again.
A few rules to consider: Best Ofs, Greatest Hits, Reissues, and Commemorative Box Sets are all excluded. They are more of a marketing ploy than artistic work. So because this is a fantastical hypothetical, if you agree to never listen to a certain record ever again, you are also agreeing to the inability to hear that collection of songs anywhere else. Not on reissues or greatest hits or even the radio.
if you take this crazy old coot's money, these songs are now dead to you, Soundtracks only count if it's all original songs or score. The Grease soundtrack is acceptable, but the Pulp Fiction soundtrack is not.
You can keep the memory of the song forever, but you may never hear it again.
I don't know if the memory thing is a deal-breaker or not, but there it is.
I recommend everyone do their own version of this. Unless you're not really into making lists. If that's the case, I really don't know what you're doing reading anything I've ever written, as it is primarily just a series of endlessly useless lists.
It was the first sunny day in almost two weeks, so I rode around with the window down blasting Whitesnake's Here I Go Again. I am not proud of it, but it felt good at the time. That's about all you need to know about me to understand this list.
And before you get all "Ohmigawd-how-cliche-can-this-list get?" Just remember: There is no Appetite for Destruction (Klosterman's #1, by the way), no Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water or Bookend, no Nirvana, no Pearl Jam, no Tom Petty, nothing from The Strokes nor Neil Young. No T-Rex Electric Warrior, no Frank Sinatra, no oldies (they used singles mostly and so oldies are hard to gather onto one solid album until about 1967).
Oh and no Beatles.
TOP 25 ALBUMS OF ALL-TIME
25. Pearl Janis Joplin (1971) $59.99
I'm disappointed that Janis was the only female entry on this list.
I considered Joan Jett, but the bulk of her tracks were covers of someone else's work. I would also like to note that Joan Jett is not attractive. To listen to her music, the pre-teen me would have assumed she was the hottest woman since Elisabeth Shue in Karate Kid, but no. She spent the 80's wearing a mullet and blush that made her cheekbones look like raggedy Anne. Patti Smith was too inconsistent and didn't get along with Bruce Springsteen, so she's out. And all the girl groups from the fifties and sixties released singles, b-sides and evolving greatest hits packages. I also considered Sheryl Crow's second album, but then remembered that it wasn't all that great.
So Janis it is. No better female voice in rock. Jack Daniels didn't treat her well, but it sure did wonders for her larynx.
Album Highlight: the tiny giggle after the conclusion of Mercedes Benz
24. At Folsom Prison Johnny Cash (1968) $80.01
A lot of everyday folk were impressed when Johnny Cash chose to travel from prison to prison connecting with the men on lockdown rather than the kindly folks still enmeshed in our society. But that was Johnny Cash. He was filled with demons and he wanted to be amongst those he felt a demonic kinship with.
What impresses me more than his prison shows is the fact that he paraded the woman he would eventually make his wife to each of these shows and have her perform. Is there any doubt after that who was the biggest badass in the room? Would you display the love of your life in front of rapists, murderers, thugs and tax evaders?
The strength of this album doesn't rest in the songs themselves, we've heard them a billion times in a billions different situations, but unlike most live albums there is an energy of fear and tension. It's as if everyone in that tiny makeshift lunchroom was chomping at the bit to riot. On Johnny's word they were willing to rip that place apart. Hendrix and Clapton were outstanding live performers, but I never got the feeling that their audiences were preparing to stomp the aisle attendent on their "go". Johnny never incited a riot of course, but I think he knew he could have.
Album Highlight: The mixture of both gravel and mucus in Cash's throat when he sings Cocaine Blues.
23. Exciteable Boy Warren Zevon (1979) $85.00
Just once in my life I want to have cause to get on a phone, dial a number and say, "Hey it's me... look I'm in a bind and I need you to send lawyers, guns and money." I would then hang up the phone immediately and no matter how much trouble I was in, I would still have at least a few moments contentment for having fit that request into my life.
Warren Zevon is the best humorous songwriter I have ever come across. He doesn't write joke songs like "Wierd" Al Yankovic, nor does he write overstylized songs like someone born from musical theater. Instead he writes life stories told from someone with a slight brain injury or perhaps an undiagnosed autism. It's just not normal and it comes across as a bit madcap.
Just listen to the album's title track. Some little Prozac-ridden hellion rapes and murders the neigborhood folks and no one seems to do anything about simply because he was raised in a poorly parented household.
That's wierd and funny and uncomfortable and kickass.
Album Highlight: "Little old lady got mutilated late last night" from Werewolves of London. The best line to do in karaoke, hands down.
22. Back In Black AC/DC (1980) $99.99
When I was in high school and really just starting to discover what rock music could be, I found AC/DC, a band that I never imagined I would ever like. To me, AC/DC was a part of the 80's metal scene. I lumped Bon and Angus in with Stryper, Tesla and Winger. What I didn't realize was that AC/DC was just a really dirty rock and roll. It was Chuck Berry and The Rolling Stones for the following generation. Chuck got away with salivating over "pretty little schoolgirls", Angus totally got away with dressing like one.
AC/DC was bad. Bad like Elvis' hips and Mick Jagger's penis on the back of Sticky Fingers. Bad. Evil. They have a whole song about testicles, and I'd be lying if I claimed that at 14-years-old, dirty toilet songs weren't wholly appealing to me.
But I grew out of "Wierd" Al Yankovic and I grew out of Salt 'N' Pepa.
Songs that made me laugh in 1994 haven't aged well. But AC/DC for all their rollicking machismo also were really great musicians.
There is nothing unimpressive about the buzzsawing that Angus Young does in Shake A Leg. And as the true litmus test of a song's impact on our culture, I will refer you to any American bar sometime just after midnight. It doesn't matter if you're in Miami or Boston or Los Angeles or Portland, if you are in a bar that plays music loud enough to dance to, you will inevitably run into the four-song rock block that breaks the monotony of all those damn Sean Paul songs. Go ahead repeat them with me:
1. Living On A Prayer Jon Bon Jovi
2. Pour Some Sugar On Me Def Leppard
3. Paradise City Guns 'n' Roses
4. You Shook Me All Night Long AC/DC
It always happens, it never fails, and if I were Poison I'd be a little upset that Every Rose Has A Thorn has been seperated from this rock block and moved to most bars' closing time music block. Closing time music is totally a demotion and the only thing worse is the it's-6:30-and-no-one-is-here-but-in-case-some-loser-starts-drinking-early-we-better-put-some-sort-of-music-on.
In a perfect world, bars would only play Dave Matthews music then.
Album Highlight: The introduction to Shake A Leg
21. The Band The Band (1967) $105.00
Listening to The Band self-titled album is like visiting relatives you don't knw very well but always treat you warmly when they see you. You're never in the mood to spend your time with such different people as yourself, but once you get there, sit down, accept a nice slice of ham and start listening to their tales of southern livin', you can't imagine ever wanting to leave.
Bob Dylan knew this feeling, Martin Scorsese too and if it's good enough for them, well then goshdarnnit, I'm happy to blow on my moonshine jug and slip on my overalls, grow a really scraggly beard and embrace the dirt underneath my nails.
Their first album isn't as well known as their second album Music From Big Pink (or anything they did with Dylan), which I assume to be true for one of two reasons; 1) their biggest hit The Weight is on Music From Big Pink and there is a rich history from Big Pink, similar to how the Rolling Stones came to make Exile On Main Street. But I don't usually hold the manner in which a record was made over the actual music and there is a much wider variety of songs on their first album, so the rest of you can just jump into the swamp if you're not with me.
Album Highlight: the vocal harmony that pushes Levon Helm's chorus on The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down to a damn near legendary level.
20. Frank's Wild Years Tom Waits (1987) $150
What do marimba's, iron trash cans, trumpets, player pianos, broken violins and accordians all have in common? Nothing except for this album. I enjoy the early jazzy years of Tom Waits, but I suspect somewhere between 1978 and 1982, something extremely shocking happened to Waits and it caused him to lose a handful of his marbles. His songwriting continued along the same be-bopping nightmare carnivale that it had always harkened to, but the 80's the instruements accompanying his lyrics were getting stranger and stranger. If it made noise, Tom was going to find a way to incorporate the damn thing onto a record.
Essentially, he makes really good rainy day music or really good music to apply scary face paint to, but that's just me.
Album Highlight: The pipe organ and piano accompaniment on Innocent When You Dream; it makes you imagine yourself on a traveling carnival's merry-go-round if the ride was owned by an unctious old madman. And maybe that's just me, but I find that to be a very cool thing to imagine.
19. The Doors The Doors (1967) $160
Can you imagine how wierd this album must have sounded in 1967?
It's a rock album without a guitar (mostly).
It's a pop album with several songs clearing the 5 minute mark.
It's an album with an organ that in no way resembled surf rock.
How this became a popular band is well beyond me. But that's the mystique of The Doors. For 45 minutes I am willing to make it through the album, enjoy it thoroughly and not be able to explain anything that I just heard.
The End is the best example of what I mean.
My best extrapolation about The End's meaning is that it is about a magical tour bus guide who wants to start a suicide cult out west and has named his bus "the snake". To start this suicide cult, he needs people to follow him (because what's a suicide cult without followers?) and he's telling his friend about it, but the friend really isn't buying it. I've been told there are Homeric allusions within the song, but I'll be damned if I can spot them. And I'll be damned if I can explain what a suicide bus has to do with the Vietnam War (Apocolypse Now), or why it took nearly 12 minutes for The End to end.
Something tells me, all the answers to my questions can be found in opium.
But that's The Doors. I've heard this album fifty times if I've heard it once and it still captivates me, despite the fact that I have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on at any time during it's duration.
Album Highlight: Jim Morrison's four rebellious calls to "break on through" followed by nine "yeahs!" to close out Break On Through.
18. London Calling The Clash (1979) $190
It is primarily my belief that releasing double albums is a bad idea. If, as an artist, your output has suddenly doubled, something is suspect and more times than not it simply means you're releasing a lot of fluff that doesn't really add up to much. The Stones had the entire middle section of Exile On Main Street, Springsteen had the bulk of of the fast songs on The River (which I mostly like, but are seen by most other people as candycoated wastes of time) and The Clash had songs like Koka Kola, Death Or Glory and Lover's Rock. What seperates London Calling from those two other albums is that the sweet meat of this album is humorous, rollicking and somewhat important instead of merely being more of the same from a classic artist in a "lucid period".
And as soon as I can figure out the be-bopping that goes on near the end of Jimmy Jazz and it's connection to the extreme American coolness of Brand New Cadillac and how any of it is tied to believing in Rudie's inability to fail, I'll write a whole new blog explaining it all. For now, just pump your fist to Clampdown and drive faster.
Album Highlight: The dangerous sneering "Yaw's" peppering the beginning of Brand New Cadillac
17. Rain Dogs Tom Waits (1985) $210
There was a period of my life that I will forever refer to as my "Dark Year". It was bad. I was fresh on the artschool scene and felt I had something to prove. I got rid of just about every piece of clothing that wasn't black or brown. I began experiementing with various forms of facial hair, I started reading philosophy tableaus and judging everyone harshly. I wore boots. Big clunky workman boots. It was bad. It was a moody period, a period that very little good came out of, but Tom Waits was one of the few shining beakons of light in my year of darkness.
Tom Waits is a different, but equal type of moody. He's a cracked funhouse mirror type of moody and Rain Dogs is his dark year. Like any good story teller in any medium, Tom Waits doesn't expect you to know his world, he expects you to travel his world with him. Each song takes you by the hand and trolls you through the gritty carnival bazaars and marketstreets, graveyards and abandoned houses. Waits doesn't expect you to have bearings here, he expects you to waft through it wide-eyed and confused. It's a wierd world and a wierd storyteller.
It's a good snapshot of a time and place in my life, now long gone.
Album Highlight: The spoken-word cool of 9th & Hennepin
16. Nebraska Bruce Springsteen (1982) $275
There gets a point, when you become a successful musician where you become too big for pop culture. It seems to consume some artists. Bob Dylan went electric because he didn't want everyone to continue labeling him the conciousness of an entire generation. Neil Young wanted to shake his Crosby, Stills and Nash days, so he went grunge way before grunge was grunge and Paul Simon wanted to prove that he wasn't just friends with Art Garfunkel, that in fact, Chevy Chase was his friend too. In 1981 Springsteen finished up a 16 month tour around the globe and became disenchated with the things he spent that time seeing. Life had become much bigger than his home in Freehold, N.J.
Springsteen was not a well-educated boy growing up, but he was instilled with a sense of duty and a sense of community. By 1982, that community grew from New Jersey to the entire globe and he felt a compulsion to sing about the fear, desperation, nostalgia and disenchantment he was seeing. Nebraska is a very small quiet album that narrates about people's lives. It harkens back to his old Jersey stomping grounds but appeals to anyone who listens to it in a way that Dylan and Guthrie before him perfected.
Nebraska was the start of what would later become Springsteen's mania (and not coincidentially "Springsteen MANIA" two years later): the desire to speak to and represent those who are the unspoken. In many ways, Springsteen sought out exactly that which Bob Dylan desired to retreat from in 1969.
Album Highlight: The ominously homicidal howls Springsteen echoes at the conclusion of State Trooper.
15. IV (a.k.a. Zoso) Led Zeppelin (1971) $280
You know what? Led Zeppelin's fourth album isn't as good as many rock fans claim it is. Stairway To Heaven is this big gaudy song right in the middle that seems to give it some cache, but in actuality it's not so great.
It takes to long to get to the good part and thus, the whole is overrated; like Sammy Sosa hitting fourth in your lineup or everything about The DaVinci Code minues the 60 pages of ancient vaginal Last Supper conspiracy stuff.
That being said, Sammy Sosa did hit 500 homeruns and those 60 pages of Dan Brown's book were both unspeakably entertaining and there are few albums that made more of eight songs than ZOSO.
You can tell a lot about a person by which artist they answer did the best song entitled Rock and Roll. Stay away from those who answer Gary Glitter or The Velvet Underground over Zeppelin's version.
Album Highlight: The maniacal drum flurry that opens Rock and Roll
14. Blonde On Blonde Bob Dylan (1966) $281.00
This album is any lesser songwriter's nightmare. It's too good. Too clever. To damn simple. Song one, side one is Rainy Day Woman 12 & 35 (a.k.a. "Everybody Must Get Stoned' for the people that think Baba O'Riley is called 'Teenage Wasteland' and that Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seeger and John Mellencamp are the same person) and there are three or four lines in the first verse alone that seem ample to pluck, change around a bit and pass of as my own clever thought. But by the time that devious thought fully manifests itself in my thoughts, I've already missed five other indecently witty lyrics. It goes on and on like that for fourteen songs. Impossible. I'm ashamed for ever having thought I could even fake being as clever as Bob Dylan.
Album Highlight: The drum and piano build-up before the chorus in One of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later).
13. Hot Fuss The Killers (2004) $290
I never had an older brother, but I always imagined that if I did he would look a lot like Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of The Killers and although he would let me hang out with him and his friends (the rest of The Killers?), he would never be very nice to me.
I don't know how old Brandon Flowers is, I fear he is my age or perhaps even younger, this fear is what has stopped me from looking up his age. Because when you listen to songs like Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine or Midnight Show, you realize that this guy probably is as cool as he seems to think he is, and that kinda pisses me off. Even his coolness mistepps (like claiming that a tambourine would make the best sole accompaniment to drums in Glorious Indie Rock 'N' Roll) are somehow still kinda slick. I hate when people are correct to think they are cool.
I hate it like I imagine I would hate my older brother; by verbally berating everything he does or thinks but nevertheless emulating everything he says or does.
I can't wait for the new Killers album.
Album Highlight: Flowers' "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" mantra in All These Things That I've Done. Either that or whoever the girl in the Mr. Brightside video was.
12. L.A. Woman The Doors (1971) $300
"Mr. Mojo Rising". If you jumble all the letters up in that moniker you get "Jim Morrison" and there are two people in this world; 1) the type of people who dig that on some unconcious level or 2) the people that use that as an example of Jim Morrison's idiocy. But I refuse to believe that someone who sat down, jumbled his own name up and created not only a strange nickname for himself but a powerful classic rock chant should so easily be set aside.
But that's not the sole reason L.A. Woman made my top 25 albums list, no that would be silly. I also chose it because the album cover looks as if Morrison, Jonathan Densmore and Ray Manzarek are all having a beard-growing competition and Robby Kreiger is the judge.
Also, it should be noted that if I ever happen to go on a kill crazy rampage, I plan on using Riders On the Storm as my personal soundtrack. Fair warning.
Album Highlight: well c'mon now... "Mr. Mojo Rising" over and over on L.A. Woman.
11. The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band (1973) $349
There'll be more Bruce on this list, so I won't go to long on this one, but Bruce is simply the greatest storyteller around. He's got rock sensabilities with a folk singer's attention to king's english communication. I've never been to any of his New Jersey stomping grounds, but I'd bet a millions dollars I'd know it as soon as I got to one because of how familiar it would be to me.
There are only seven songs on this album, but none of them are under four minutes, which isn't to say the album drags, quite the opposite, it takes us on a long and winding road that feels like an adventure with the restless friend that eventually moves away to Santa Fe and you never hear from again.
Not only does this album have one of the coolest titles in the rock canon, it gives us everything a street urchin could ask for. It gives us arrivals and lost love (Kitty's Back), a snapshot of boyhood friendship (The E-Street Shuffle) and boardwalk puppy love (4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)) and impossible summer romance amongst doomed souls (Incident On 57th Street), and possible love amongst two classes of people (Rosalita Come Out Tonight). Heck we even get wisdom from a garbageman (NYC Serenade) and an entire damn circus rolling through town (Wild Billy's Circus Story).
I ask you, can Elton John give you that!?
Album Highlight: The "Here she comes now" chant from Kitty's Back
10. Some Girls The Rolling Stones (1978) $350
I was thirteen-years-old when I got my hands on this album and I remember asking myself, "Geez is Mick Jagger gay? I mean really, is he?" That guy in Queen was gay, but he had a high pitched voice and sang about poor boys from poor families. Mick kept singing about girls. Even the album's title song was no more than a list of the type of girls he likes having sex with. But he wears the same leotards that Bowie and Freddie Mercury wear and he prances. When he dances, he prances, like a girl. Like my little sister when she's watching Sesame Street. And he wears makeup. My God Mick Jagger is gay. My thirteen-year-old brain couldn't handle it.
Nope. Mick Jagger is far from gay, he's just that cool. He can prance and sway and frolic and he will get more ass on a Wednesday afternoon than I will get for the rest of my life.
THAT'S the Rolling Stones.
Album Highlight: Anytime you can get away with yelling "sex" over and over again as Jagger does in Shattered, it seems like a good idea to go for it.
09. Willy & The Poorboys Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969) $360
Some albums make it's listener want to change their lives, they make the listener want to become different versions of themselves, to be better whatever their individual version of better may be. Willy & The Poorboys doesn't make me wanna do that, but it does make me wanna tap my foot and invest in a washboard to play on hot summer days. And how many albums can oyu say that about?
Album Highlight: Poorboy Shuffle's harmony between the washboard and the harmonica (which I believe should be pronounced "har-mon-ick-eye" for the purposes of this album) .
08. Sticky Fingers The Rolling Stones (1971) $400
The only complaint I can muster about this album is the odd feelings I have toward it's album art. It's a crotch. I don't know if it's Mick Jagger's crotch or some Warholian model's crotch, but it's a crotch. There's no escaping it, and if you do try to escape it by flipping from the front cover to the back, all you get is more exposed crotch. So much crotch. Is this risque? Sexy? It's not sexy is it?
I don't find it sexy.
That's how good the actual material on Sticky Fingers is, any album that gets as much play with me with the outline of a man's penis on the back cover has got to be wicked kickass.
This is the third Stones album that conciously escapes the normal bluesy tone of thie previous records by adding horns and strings. And if you know me, you know that horns in strings in rock music makes that music better. Period.
Album Highlight: The drum build-up and Mick's "Down the ro-oad!" howl 3:30 minutes into Moonlight Mile.
07. III Led Zeppelin (1970) $450
Everyone has to go on their own personal journey to properly discover rock music. The bulk of my journey lasted between 1993 and 2000. It started when I was born and still continues to this day, but the truly edifying period came in that seven-year span. Zeppelin came on later than many other rock bands in the canon for the same reason I still shy away from The Gratful Dead and Pink Floyd... it's too big. It's too popular. It's a drug-addled Beatlemania that requires too much tiedye.
But there are just some aspects of life that refuse to be ignored and it seems Zeppelin is one of those aspects.
I was in film school still, it was the summer of 2000 and I was asked to help a friend on his film by doing a little acting. The gist of the overblown concept was that my character was lost in the dessert, stranded and trying to survive. We packed up a film crew and headed to the Indiana Dunes (the closest thing to a dessert when you're stuck in the MidWest). I won't go into too many details of that day, because that would be boring, but I will say:
1) that no one brought sunscreen,
2) there are periods of 40 minutes where actos aren't required to do anything, they are asked just to wait for the crew to set up the next shot
3) I have never done drugs, but I have hallucinated and being out in the sand on a 95 degree day baking and boiling my skin was the first of these hallucinations.
My only explanation for the tenderness I feel toward Zepplein III is that it was the only thing that got me out of that dessert. My friends had left me for their tripods, and God apparently didn't get good reception at the Indiana Dunes, it was just Zep.
They provided the voice of my burning, blistered body, they harkened my worry in Gallows Pole. I truly thought I was going to die that day and I recall the warmth of Tangerine bringing me back to a place of awareness. Tangerine was the second song I learned to play on the guitar. That being said, can anyone tell me what ANY of Led Zeppelin's song titles mean? You ever ask someone what their favorite Zeppelin Song is? If it's not Stairway To Heaven, I'm always met with a "uh... the one that goes Yeah!HEY!HEY! OH!OH!" To which I always confusedly reply, "Uh, do you mean, Over the Hills and Far Away? A little head scratching and then they repeat, "I dunno. Does Over the Hills And Far Away go "Yeah!HEY!HEY!OH!OH!"? To whch I shake my head and walk away. I mean what the hell is a D'Yer Mak'r anyway!
Album Highlight: The drums that kick in :36 seconds into Bron-Y-Aur Stomp.
06. Weezer (The Blue Album) Weezer (1994) $550
This album makes me nostalgically sad everytime I hear it, like watching a seagull failingly squirm out of beer can rings. This album came out in the spring of 1994, right before my freshman spring break as a matter of fact. I was in-love with a girl who was, at that point dating my best friend. It was a very Jessie's Girl/ My Best Friend's Girlfriend time for me. Ironically, looking back on it now, dating as freshman in high school didn't exist any more than being in-love could have existed. So I don't really know what was tearing me up so much, but believe me when I tell you I was a wreck.
All I did was play this 30 minute album over and over and over and over. It never ended for that entire spring break. All my friends seemed to leave town and I had nowhere to go. I imagined they all conspired to meet in Cancun without me. I imagined my best friend and his girlfriend eloping and coming back all happy to tell me about it. And there'd I be, with no fun stories from Spring Break to share with anyone. Just a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog hour logged in and a lot of agreement that, like Rivers Cuomo, all I wanted was a girl who would laugh for no one else and would also cease to use makeup or leave the house without my consent.
It was all so simple when I was 14.
I can't explain why such a painful time in my life made me love this album more than most others, but I suspect it has to do with the maudlin tone that this first album took. Every song rocks, but every song is sad, which is how I'd like to think of myself even to this day; as someone who is very sad, but rocks very hard.
I loved this album so much that for a solid year I had planned on naming my first born son Jonas and he would go everywhere with a nametag that said "my name is Jonas", but then I got a little more mature and realized that was tupid because Jonas isn't really a very good name, nor do I really have any idea what that song is about.
Is it labor disputes? Whatever.
Album Highlight: that sweet guitar riff at the end of the Buddy Holly bridge. Weezer rocks ass!
05. Pet Sounds The Beach Boys (1968) $625
I'll be honest, I plan on ending up in Heaven (if, in fact, Heaven exists) and if Heaven exists, I plan on hearing this album playing as I ascend (if, in fact, music is playing and ascending is something that we endure in the process of going to Heaven. I mean, maybe we just appear. It is God after all, who knows how he does things?)
No band harmonized better, no band utilized a wider array of instruments (Tom Waits doesn't count as a band) and no band was more emo before emo existed before the Beach Boys on this album.
It must have been awkward for the Beach Boys to record this album. They go on tour leaving Brian Wilson behind to diddle up a few more songs and while the rest of the band is doo-doo-doo-ing their way through a tour, poor Brian Wilson is eating hoagie after hoagie and loathing himself mroe and more and writing this album.
Then the Beach Boys come back and essentially realize that their leader is not doing so hot. I once wrote a song about a girl I knew and tried to sing it to her. I was so embarrassed I began changing the lyrics on the spot so that it suddenly became a song about an elephant with too many friends. She thought it was a wierd song and wondered why I had dedicated it to her.
My point is that it's hard to sing your soul. I'm sure there were better ways to illustrate that point, but I only recently remembered my composition of the socialite elephant and wanted to share. Anyway, this album feels like the most real grouping of songs I've ever heard, which makes the whole thing even sadder than it was already.
Album Highlight: The timpani drums breaking in at the end of I'm Waiting For the Day
04. Cosmo's Factory Creedence Clearwater Revival (1970) $630
Travelin' Band, Before You Accuse Me, Lookin' Out My Backdoor, Run Through the Jungle, Up Around the Bend, Who'll Stop the Rain, Long As I Can See the Light, Heard It Through the Grapevine... those songs make up 73 percent of this album and 40 percent of their first greatest hits disc, an album that everyone is mailed a copy of once they receive their final acceptance letter to college.
Listening to this album three things become stunning when the realization strikes:
1) When you take the amount of songs these guys produced and match them with the percentage of those songs that became top 50 hits... they easily outdid Elvis, The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Those three acts produced more and therefore had more hits, but CCR was nothing if not econmic in their awesomeness.
It's like Fogerty (John not Tom) went down to those same crossroads that Robert Johnson dealt his soul to the devil at and made the same deal only demanded that the devil do his work quickly. By 1972 Creedence had done all the damage they were going to do, which was mainly giving hippies something harder to toke up to then Mungo Jerry and giving women a group to hate ten years down the line when their husband's referused to grow up.
Album Highlight: There is no opening riff more enjoyable to my ears than the first seven seconds of Up Around the Bend. That riff is rock 'n' roll. And if you listen to it and don't understand what rock 'n' roll is, then you need to close the book, go back to the table of contents and begin again, because you clearly missed several important chapters along the way.
03. Who's Next The Who (1971) $715
I can't quite tip the $10,000 mark, but I dance right up to it. There is more dangerously unchecked agression and bravado in the opening song of this album than in the entire Sex Pistol catalogue. By my count, there was only two occasions in which I did not completely blow out my vocal chords by yelling my way through Won't Get Fooled Again, and both instances were while listening to headphones, riding the train and sitting next to someone who looked like they would gladly decapitate me if I uttered even a whisper. How good are the songs on this album? With the possability of decapitation looming large... I STILL considered belting out "I call it a BARGAIN/ the best I ever HAD!"
Oh and also, I've had six speeding tickets in my life. FOUR of them were caused by Baba O'Riley (the other two were caused by Skynyrd's Three Steps and a Garrison Keillor book-on-tape - I can't explain that last one).
Album Highlight: Roger Daltry's second scream after the bridge on Won't Get Fooled Again.
02. Born To Run Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band (1975) $999
A dollar for everytime I've listened to this album in the past and had it mean something to me.
Album Highlight: the harmonica introduction to Thunder Road
01. Born In the U.S.A. Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band (1984) $2,001
For the bulk of my childhood this album was my favorite thing in life. It was released the day after my fourth birthday (which for me, was the real and true start of my life; everything before I turned four is somewhat fuzzy). People often scoff at this album for being to keyboard driven, too popular, to dumbly American, too macho, too 80's, too simple. They may be right. Regan tried to co-opt the album as did Chevrolet as did many Rambo-quoting idiots invested in America's sound and fury of the mid-80's. Maybe anything that popular with the confused populace of that time is dumb and bad. Maybe. But I'll never know and I'll never see it.
As someone who is unabashedly nostalgic and family oriented, this album was the culmination of both. My dad used to be a commercial photographer a job that paid well but sporadically and therefore, nannies and housemaids were never a part of my existence. Sometimes mom watched me and sometimes dad did and when dad watched me it was usually in various lofts and studios while he was working. Essentially, it was in those lofts and studios where Bruce was born. Piped through what I remember being the loudest sound system in the world. The constant thump of Working On the Highway shaking the picture frames on the bare brick walls, the buzz of the bass notes in Downbound Train, the magic of taking a break to dance with my dad in his dark room while he processed his photographs while listeing to (you guesed it) Dancing In the Dark. Fond memories of childhood can never be recreated, at best they can be held onto tightly and this album is the tightest I can possibly grip to those memories.
Album Highlight: The single "WOO" after the drum break in Glory Days.
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20 percent of this list is composed of albums released in 1971. 52 percent of this list is composed of albums released between 1967 and 1973. I don't know what any of that means except I was clearly born ten years too late.
Holy crap! Did you really just read this whole list? Whatsamatter with you? Haven't you got anything better to do with your time? Most people just check this blog to make sure I'm not making up lies about them. When they realize they're not mentioned they usually leave my profile and check to see who amongst their buddy list has more friends than them. This is the way it works.
I never expected anyone to read this thing.
I finally listened to Guns 'n' Roses' new album "Chinese Democracy," an album that I was admittedly more intrigued by than excited for. This album was not only supposed to come out back when it would have been called a record, but it was also supposed to be awesome. It was supposed to revolutionize - not just rock music - all music.*
And this is why "Chinese Democracy" is worth blogging about (along with posting the superfluous photo of Axl with Bruce to your right). It's the last connection to a dead era that many rock fans wish never died. Most of us never imagined Guns 'n' Roses (or Axl Rose, if we're splitting hairs) had any more music in him, but there was always a miracle possible as long as that album never came out. The Stones came out with "Tattoo You" in 1983, about seven years after many critics first pronounced them dead. The Beach Boys danced with John Stamos to "Kokomo," which was not a good song, but was a big hit and happened decades after Brian Wilson parted ways with the Beach Boys. So maybe, just maybe whenever "Chinese Democracy" came out, it would be a miracle. The kind of miracle that would simultaneousy bring us back to the past and bring the past to us. No Doubt brought back ska and Brian Setzer brought back swing, why can't Guns 'n' Roses bring back legit hair metal? 
"Chinese Democracy" is not a good album.
