An entirely predictable list. People have known my taste for around a decade or so by now, so there aren’t going to be too many surprises. This is, with the exception of #1, not in order of preference - not really. That would be too time-consuming to hairsplit over whether I enjoy Unknown Pleasures of Zen Arcade better at #53 or #54 - silly. Besides, whether I like any album “better” entirely depends upon on my mood. If I want to chill out, the Buzzcocks aren’t what I want to listen to at all. Using the one album per artist rule, as should be unspoken:
- Big Star - #1 Record/Radio City - entirely predictable choice, and it’s hairsplitting to disregard this CD because it’s technically 2 separate albums
- The Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady - Fuck you, this BELONGS. The A-side singles are the greatest 8 songs in a row written by anybody.
- The Clash - The Clash - either the U.K. or U.S. version is fine
- The Jam - Setting Sons
- The Zombies - Odyssey and Oracle
- Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
- The Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me
- Husker Du - Zen Arcade
- The Great Lost Kinks Album - yes, this is seriously my favorite Kinks LP, as long as it’s the bootleg that includes Dave Davies’ unreleased '60s solo album collecting his A/B-sides like “Creeping Jean” and “Lincoln County” and “This Man He Weeps Tonight”
- House of Freaks - Tantilla
- The Fall - Live at the Witch Trials - this was the most difficult decision, since I’ve got about a dozen of their 50 albums
- X - Los Angeles
- Wire - Pink Flag - along with Marquee Moon, isn’t this going to be on everybody’s list? One LP where punk and art rockers can agree.
- Television - Marquee Moon - might as well get this over with
- The Byrds - Turn! Turn! Turn!
- John Prine - John Prine (1971 debut)
- The Ramones - The Ramones (1976 debut)
- R.E.M. - Murmur
- The Stranglers - Rattus Norvegicus
- The Comsat Angels - Waiting for a Miracle
- Midnight Oil - 10,9,8,7,6,5,3,2,1…
- The Saints - Eternally Yours
- Marshall Crenshaw - s/t 1982 debut
- Tommy Keene - The Real Underground (technically another comp, but c’mon, none of this was ever released on a full-length album)
- 20/20 - two-fer of s/t debut & Lookout!
- The Go-Betweens - 1978-1991 (I’m really breaking the rules by including all these comps, aren’t I? Fact is that a lot of bands released their best work on EPs and singles not albums and not including comps would exclude too much great music)
- Chuck Berry - the Great 28 - sometimes I think he’s the best lyricist in rock’n’roll. Not much of a tunesmith, but his words are always sharp and detailed and often funny.
- From Elvis in Memphis - his ‘68 comeback! "Kentucky rain keeps fallin’ down…"
- Graham Parker - Heat Treatment
- Elvis Costello - Imperial Bedroom
- Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run
- The New York Dolls - s/t 1973
- Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
- Al Green - the Belle Album
- The Beatles - s/t 1968
- Mott the Hoople - Mott (1973)
- David Bowie - Hunky Dory
- Blondie - Parallel Lines
- Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
- Roxy Music - Stranded (throwing darts here, since every album except for Manifesto & Flesh + Blood, were all absolutely fuckingly amazingly brilliant)
- Brian Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) - worthy of genius for Robert Fripp’s solo on “The Third Uncle” alone
- The Harder They Come - v/a soundtrack - if any multi-artist comp deserves to be allowed to break the no-comps rule, this is it. And I don’t even like reggae
- The Smiths - Hatful of Hollow - BBC sessions and whatnot, technically a comp, but by fair their best work
- The Rolling Stones - if any great band were better represented by singles than LPs…but I’ll pick one out of left field and say “Between the Buttons”
- Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
- Neil Young - After the Gold Rush
- Guided By Voices - Under the Bushes, Under the Stars
- Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
- Cheap Trick - In Color (and in Black & White)
- U2 - Boy
- Gang of Four - Entertainment!
- Mission of Burma - Signals, Calls, and Marches (only an EP, but damn…)
- Angry Samoans - The Unboxed Set - one CD, 43 songs, misanthropic gay-bashing woman-hating Hitler-lovin’ punk rock ecstacy
- Roy Wood - Boulders - I like the Move more, but they never made a consistent album, and it would be cheating to include the CD reissues where the bonus tracks of '60s A-sides outshine the original LPs, wouldn’t it?
- The Undertones - Positive Touch - the album where they abandoned pop-punk for pop-psychedelia, a giant leap forward and easily their best.
- Game Theory - Real Nighttime - my second favorite Alex Chilton acolyte (after Tommy Keene, of course)
- Fountains of Wayne - Utopia Parkway
- Sloan - Twice Removed
- The Dream Syndicate - The Days of Wine & Roses - does the 2nd VU album 10x better than the Velvets ever managed
- Lloyd Cole - Rattlesnakes - well, gotta include one sensitive-songwriter LP, eh?
- The Cars - s/t 1978 - in the liner notes to their 2 CD comp, these guys admitted that they should have named their debut “The Cars Greatest Hits”. Along with my Blondie pick, one of these crunchy little highly commercial pop-rock masterpieces where every single song should have been a hit single. Except that half the songs on this really were hits, at least according to classic rock radio airplay
- John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band
- The Beach Boys - Today & Summer Days (two-fer CD)
- The Pixies - Trompe Le Monde
- Nirvana - Nevermind - yeah, every song follows the same predictable quiet verse/screaming chorus pattern, but all these years after the hype, we can hear it for what it is: a damn good rock’n’roll album
- Lynyrd Skynyrd - Second Helping - I grew up hating this band. But now I can listen to it as music. Neil Young was a fanboy and there aren’t many anti-heroin songs better than “The Needle and the Spoon”
- The Psychedelic Furs - Talk Talk Talk
- The Vapors - New Clear Days - these guys were way, way, way better than their novelty hit “Turning Japanese” suggests. Even though - admit it - 30 seconds into hearing it you realizing that “Turning Japanese” is, like, the catchiest mofo of a song ever
- Johnny Cash - Live at Folsom Prison - “I like the way you talk.” “I’m talking with my mouth!”
- Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story - once upon a time, this man had talent
- Love - Forever Changes
- Creedence Clearwater Revival - obviously, the two Chronicle Vol. 1 & 2 CDs contain all you need to hear from these guys. But if you have to pick one of their regular LPs, “Cosmo’s Factory” is it: just look at the tracklisting. You know all of the songs. A virtual greatest hits.
- The Left Banke - There’s Gonna Be a Storm: 1966-1969 - both of their LPs plus a handful of singles on one CD. Inconsistent as hell, particularly the second LP, but the highs are as high as pop music gets. “Walk Away Renee” may be my favorite song of all time (after Leadbelly’s “Goodnight Irene”)
- Sly & the Family Stone - Stand!
- Nuggets - both the U.S. and U.K. box sets. I know that multi-artist comps aren’t kosher, but damn it, this deserves inclusion. How can you go through your life without hearing “Don’t Look Back” or “Talk Talk”?!
- Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak - throwing darts again; the most consistent (and not necessarily in a good way) hard rock band of the '70s.
- Steve Harley & the Cockney Rebel - The Psychomodo
- Steely Dan - The Royal Scam - their darkest and most cynical LP…well, dark and cynical are what these guys do best
- The Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks - yeah, half of this sort of sucks, but the high points are…really freakin’ high. And inconsistent genius beats consistently good any day.
- Dukes of Stratosphear - Chips From a Chocolate Fireball (yeah, another comp)
- The Pretenders - s/t 1980
- Gene Clark - s/t 1971 (colloquially known as “White Light”)
- The Flying Burrito Bros. - The Gilded Palace of Sin
- The Scruffs - Wanna Meet the Scruffs?
- The Modern Lovers - s/t 1973
- The Only Ones - the Peel Sessions - a comp, but far better performances than their overproduced albums
- The Distractions - Nobody’s Perfect
- The Damned - Machine Gun Etiquette (OK, admittedly towards the end of this list, I’m getting to the lower rungs…very entertaining album, but not in the same league as anything in the first 30 or so I just listed)
- King Crimson - In the Court… OK, the album that should be the Music Babble mascot (isn’t it mandatory that you own this album before being allowed to post here?) Might as well. Besides, there’s precisely 1/2 bad song (and you all know what the second half of that particular song is)
- Elliot Murphy - Aquashow - Ah! Digging around my CD collection, now I remember a great lost classic that’s all but forgotten. The best Dylan clone this side of John Prine.
- Squeeze - Cool for Cats - what the hell. These guys are second tier but “this is pop!” as XTC sang, and damn great pop at that.
- The Who Sing My Generation - honestly, did they ever improve upon their debut? Not really. Pete Townshend never wrote better songs, and the fact is that besides the 3 horrible James Brown covers, there isn’t a bad song on the original LP.
- The Soft Boys - Underwater Moonlight - shit, I knew I forgot about somethin’
- Magazine - Real Life - P.O.S.T. P.U.N.K.! P.O.S.T. P.U.N.K.!
- Randy Newman - Good Old Boys - worth it for the drunken sing-a-long of the title track alone, which I’m sure is a big hit in the Derek Sidebottom household. “We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks, and we don’t know our ass from the hole in a ground / and we’re still keeping the niggers down / Keeping the niggers down!”
- Jerry Lee Lewis - Live at the Starclub - You want ENERGY? The Killer in '66 or so playing Hamburg - you can literally hear his legs jump off the keyboard, the energy level is that audibly intense.
- Rockpile - Seconds of Pleasure - Dude…rock’n’roll! The bonus tracks are even better: Dave Edmunds & Nick Lowe & whoever the hell the rhythm section are, covering the Everly Bros., unplugged. Dudn’t get any better dan dis.
- The Stooges - Fun House - yeah, you guys expected THIS to rate much higher with me, didn’t you? Well, fact is, I really gotta be in the mood to listen to this sort of thing.
- Fairpont Convention - s/t 1967 - It’s a confused, eclectic mess, a band that didn’t know what direction they wanted to go in. That’s why I love it. Their other albums are too samey, it gets boring.
- Here’s a tie: it’s either Pete Townsend’s “All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes” which is actually better than most Who albums, or Crazy Horse’s 1972 s/t, which is actually better than most Neil Young albums. Flip a coin…wait a moment…it came up heads, so it’s the Pete Townsend LP.
There’s lots of stuff that if I had to think about / listen to it more, would make it. For example, I have the box set of the first seven Townes Van Zandt albums, but haven’t listened enough to settle on which one is the best. Same as I have the box set of the first three Wipers albums - great band - but can’t settle on which one is the one I’d pick.
I didn’t make this list strictly in preferential order, but towards the end stuff started getting dubious. After #75, I really started having to scour my CD collection to find worthy inclusions.
