Funeral to Finish

  It's unclear if this is actually a Big Star album or even an album at all, but it's still one of the most underappreciated and revelatory albums of all time.  In 1974, after having little or no success with Big Star's first two albums, Alex Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens went into the studio in Memphis and recorded a bunch of stuff with a number of studio musicians.  As Chilton's mental state deteriorated, the sessions finally ended and there was a bunch of tape with nowhere to go.  The songs were eventuyally collected and released a number of times on different labels and under different names.  The version that appears on this list appears to be the 1978 PVC Records release, although Rolling Stone's blurb says that "Kanga Roo" closes the album when "Thank You Friends" was actually the final song on that version.   (Some of the tapes were labeled "Sister Lovers," probably because Chilton and Stephens were dating sisters at the tim...

  What the fuck? No. Oh, do I need to elaborate?  There are no circumstances under which this is a Top 500 album, much, much less number 286.  There is no world in which this is a better album than Mr. Tambourine Man or Let It Be or, for the love of god, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea .  This is a mid-range Red Hot Chili Peppers album, which is to say it is utterly predictable, lyrically hilarious, and occasionally memorable.  The fact that this album is on the list and Purple by Stone Temple Pilots, to take a random example, is not, is completely unfair. Those lyrics.  The first song, "Around the World," finds Anthony Kiedis idly flipping through an atlas and finding what places he can rhyme with.  Thus: Bonafide ride Step aside my johnson Yes I could In the woods of Wisconsin Wake up the cake Its a lake shes kissin me As they do when When they do in Sicily LOL.  The oddly titled "Emit Remmus," reportedly written about Kiedis's brief romance wi...

  "These songs all sound exactly the same," my wife said when we were listening to this in the car yesterday and you know what?  She kinda has a point.  When you push a 12-string Rickenbacker up to the highest thing in the mix on every song, yeah, they're all gonna sound the same.  "That's called having a distinctive sound, honey," I replied, and then she pushed me out of the car.  I'm dead now.   We all know that cover songs are popular, and that in the 60's it was trendy to cover songs that had literally just come out like a week earlier, but this album goes beyond.  Not only are more than half the songs covers, most of those are covers of Dylan songs, including the title track.  But, no question, the Byrds gave that song their own spin, changing the key and the arrangement and adding that 12-string, instantly making a classic sound that influenced thousands of bands, including R.E.M., Tom Petty, and the entire Paisley Underground movement ...

  The Modern Lovers, and this album in particular, are perhaps best known for that classic song "Roadrunner."  Even today, almost 50 years later, it still has a propulsive force that just doesn't quit: Oh wait, wrong "Roadrunner."  Although this one (written and sung by Barbara Cameron) also bangs.  No, no, this is the one we want, originally recorded in 1972, with this cool vintage video of cars driving through what I understand is probably mid-60's Boston: Some claim this is the first punk song.  Or maybe the first new wave song?  Whatever it is, it is surely one of the great rock and roll songs of all time.  Young Jonathan Richman, growing up in Natick, Mass., became so enamored of the Velvet Underground that he moved to NYC just to be closer to them.  Amazingly, this cockamamie plan worked and he even got to open for them.  Back in Boston, he put together the Modern Lovers, which would eventually include Jerry Harrison on keys, who would ...

  I had a really interesting (and unusual, for this project) experience with this album, which I had never listened to all the way through before.  The first time I listened to it, I noted the standouts, like "Army of Me," the album opener, which I had heard before and liked quite a bit, and "It's Oh so Quiet," which I had also heard and did not like, specifically its Gap-ad brassiness.  The rest of the album, eh, not so much.  There was some interesting trip-hoppy kind of stuff, and some just avant-weird shit that turned me off. Then I went to bed and then I listened to it again today and I have changed my mind.  This is an excellent, fascinating album.  Maybe I just needed to pay better attention!  In fact, I'm listening to it again right now and I think I like it even better every time.  Everyone knows Bjork has a magical voice, but it's really put to great effect here, really all over the place in the interest of illuminating the songs.  ...

  By 2003, Outkast was already properly regarded as one of the most important rap duos in history.  They had already released Stankonia , which featured "B.O.B.," a single Pitchfork named the best song of the 2000's, and "Ms. Jackson," an instant classic.  How do you follow that up?  With this sprawling, 2-disc collection, almost 40 songs over two hours.  To the extent the Grammys count for anything, this was Album of the Year (and Rap Album of the Year, which I guess naturally follows). The original plan was for two solo albums, one by Big Boi and one by Andre 3000, but they decided to join their work.  Big Boi's half, "Speakerboxxx," is more pop-funky, clearly influenced by New Orleans sounds.  Take "Bowtie," for example, one of the best songs on the album.  It starts off with a blast of horns and a bright chorus of voices.  It literally sounds like a party.  "The Rooster" also sounds like a party, but turns out to be about fa...

  I put this on last night while we were making dinner and I guess I was mildly surprised to find my wife dancing around the kitchen and singing along.  She was absolutely astonished that I had never heard this album before.  "Seriously?" she said.  "You don't know 'Bills, Bills, Bills?'" she asked.  I did not.  I gather this was a popular song!  "Where do you know it from?" I asked her.  The club, of course!  Specifically, she guessed, WPLJ's in Walnut Creek , which now appears to be closed.  (Not entirely surprising, based on the Yelp reviews.)  We were all young once. So no, I didn't know "Bills, Bills, Bills," but that's what you get when you silo yourself musically like I did in the late 90's/early 00's.  It's an interesting song, with a harpsichord-sounding backing track and a complicated, swooping melody, along with the exquisite harmonies that wrote Destiny's Child's checks. She also knew "...

  As pure an expression of rock music as you can find, this debut album by a former bar and backyard party band from Pasadena sold 10 million records and set the stage for bands like Guns N Roses and their considerably less talented brethren. The really remarkable thing about this album (on this relisten years and years later) is how Eddie Van Halen's guitar is just as much a frontman as David Lee Roth.  In fact, I remember when a friend breathlessly introduced me to this album at, I don't know, 12, 13 years old, he said "You gotta hear this" and played fucking "Eruption," which is essentially a minute and a half long guitar solo.  It's not even really a song!  My interest in lengthy guitar solos being about the same then as it is now, I politely listened but then "Eruption" is immediately followed by "You Really Got Me," (which, at the time, I did not know was a cover) and I was like WHOA HOLD ON because THAT I understood.  I mean, i...

  Oh my god this album kicks so much fucking ass.  Like yesterday's entry, it came from the early 90's, I owned it on CD, and it immediately takes me back to a very certain time and place, or places I guess, those places being San Francisco and Santa Cruz in the mid 90's.   This album coming right after Weezer yesterday sets up such a fascinating contrast.  This album came out within 10 months of Weezer , and they share some indie-rock similarities, but the songs on Weezer  are fairly uniform - nasally voice singing pop melodies over crunchy guitar - and the songs on this album are wildly creative and all over the place.  There is just so much musical imagination here. Let's start with the big single, "Cannonball."  It starts with Kim Deal saying "check check" into a harmonica mic, distorting her voice, before the band kicks in.  There's that guitar riff that's instantly familiar to anyone who was anywhere near an episode of "120 Minutes...

  I owned this album on CD.  At the time, it just seemed to me like a brilliant pop-punk album and I liked a lot of the songs and didn't think about it too much.  I also loved Pinkerton , Weezer's much-maligned but far more interesting second album. Look at the cover of this album!  If you guessed this was going to be a nerd-rock adventure, you were so right.  Now that I listen to it again with 20-something years of separation, it's a lot darker than I used to think.  And there's a gimmick I didn't pick up on - are we making fun of the popular kids and their dumb music, or are we trying to become them?  From "In the Garage": I've got a Dungeon Master's Guide, I've got a 12-sided die I've got Kitty Pryde, and Nightcrawler too Waiting there for me, yes I do, I do I've got posters on the wall, my favorite rock group KISS I've got Ace Frehley, I've got Peter Criss Waiting there for me, yes I do, I do In the garage, I feel safe No on...

  You cannot kill disco, you can only make it stronger and angrier.  On this album, EDM superstars Daft Punk turned their icy gaze to one of the most unfairly maligned genres in music.  The result is a fantastic sounding album, but I don't know if the songs entirely work for me.   The first thing you notice is that the music sounds live - like I was listening and I thought "this can't be a drum machine, it sounds too real" - and turns out DP brought in studio musicians to record a lot of it.  There's a lot of vocoder, of course, although blessedly 70's songwriting icon Paul Williams gets to sing "Touch," which he co-wrote, in his own voice.  Guess who else shows up?  Our Strokes buddy Julian Casablancas, singing unrecognizably altered vocals on "Instant Crush."  It occurs to me that the Strokes could rockify that song and it would be better than a lot of the Strokes' later catalogue. Of course you are aware of "Get Lucky," wh...

  Before we get into the guts of this record, please allow me a Burrito Justice-style historical diversion.  The acoustic portions of this album at the beginning ("My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)," "Thrasher," and "Ride My Llama") were recorded in San Francisco at a long-gone theater called the Boarding House, that was located at 960 Bush Street. After a fire, the theater was torn down in 1980 and replaced by the featureless condos you've passed a million times on your way downtown (Bush to the Bay, Pine to the Pacific, y'know). Enough historical diversion.  Neil Young again!  We are getting about one Neil Young record a week now.  I knew Neil Young was important but really I did not anticipate him being the most featured artist in the bottom 205 records at all. I had this album on cassette in the late 80's/early 90's and I wore that thing out .  This was definitely one of my most listened to albums during that time.  As I've mentione...

  An absolute monster of an album that contained a few hit singles, one of which was turned into maybe the best music video of all time, easily the best music video up to that time.  Of course, I'm talking about "Mercy Street."  No I'm not, you doofus, I'm talking about "Sledgehammer." Pretty fucking catchy for the guy who got kicked out of Genesis for being too weird, huh?  OK, it wasn't exactly like that, to be fair.  He left, citing a desire to spend more time with family blah blah blah but then he started to go off into some avant-garde musical/film experiments.  He also put out a string of semi-successful solo albums, but nothing like this one. So let me say this is not really my shit and it took me a few listens but there is a lot of interesting stuff going on here.  You all know "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time," two obviously soul-influenced songs, both of which are immediately catchy and bouncy and it's no surprise they b...

  The mid-80's Ford Mustang of albums, this redoubtable classic is beloved by middle-aged white guys, the people who stock jukeboxes, and anyone who has a Tasmanian devil tattoo.  Every account of the making of this album includes the irresistible nugget that MCA initially rejected it because they didn't hear a single.  Brother, this album is all motherfucking singles.  If you don't know every word to "Free Fallin'" or "I Won't Back Down" then you were probably in suspended animation since the 90's. These are undoubtedly great songs.  But let me swoop in here with kind of a downer: they're not particularly interesting songs.  They're all verse-chorus-bridge/solo etc., and they all sound like they were written on an acoustic, which they were.  This is not to say there aren't some great moments!  When he hits that E minor in the prechorus of "Yer So Bad," and sings "But nottttttt meeeeeee baaaaaaaaby" it is a ge...

  When you think of "the blues" today, you might picture a tired genre, a bunch of old guys slogging their way through a set of tiresome and predictable songs.  Or maybe not!  But either way, this album is a fantastic demonstration of why it wasn't always like that.  Maybe this is the blues, but this is not that kind of blues. The first song is called "Every Day I Have the Blues" but it sounds more like "Every Day I Have the Jazz" to me.  It's a fast, almost frantic jam, with syncopated drums and blasts of horns, a real ride.  The next one, "Sweet Little Angel," is more the kind of thing you think of as "blues," but it's so full of life and verve there's no chance of getting bored. I'm used to late-era B.B. King, the affable showman with his famous guitar, "Lucille," but I had never appreciated the man's voice before this record.  B.B. King could fucking SING.  Check out the incredible vocals on "W...

  Would you be surprised if I told you this is the best selling album by a female artist of all time?  I was mildly surprised!  It's also the best-selling "country" album of all time, but I'm going to go all music snob here and say it's more country-adjacent than actual country.  In fact, one of the things that's surprised me about this list is how little country there is on it.  This is, of course, a result of who Rolling Stone solicited votes from.  I think they did an admirable job of expanding beyond the usual white male rock crowd and a miserable job of asking the country music world.  Who knows, maybe the best 50 country albums of all time are coming up, but I doubt it. Back to Shania.  She wrote these songs with famous producer/then husband Robert "Mutt" Lange and turned over production entirely to him, which is why this sounds like a high-gloss BMW 7-series instead of an old Ford pickup.  To say it is carefully crafted and slickly pro...