Funeral to Finish

  Unquestionably one of the most important records on this list to me personally, this album changed my life, and I'm not just saying that for DRAMATIC EFFECT.  This record changed the way I thought about music and influenced almost everything I listened to after it.  And it's not just me; you could probably say this was the most important album in starting "alternative rock" in America. R.E.M., who emerged from Athens, Georgia's fertile indie music scene, had already put out an EP, Chronic Town , and their single, "Radio Free Europe" even before that.  Their label, IRS Records, wanted them to record with producer Stephen Hague, but his perfectionist approach was not really a fit and so they ended up recording this album with Mitch Easter and Don Dixon in Charlotte, North Carolina.  (Easter is a godlike figure in alternative rock and had a hand in some of my favorite recordings of all time, but I digress.)  The album, which came out in 1983, went to numb...

  Just after midnight on February 3, 1959, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. Richardson got into a chartered Beechcraft Bonanza with pilot Roger Peterson, following a show in Clear Lake, Iowa.  Th plane climbed, then unexpectedly began a sharp turn and descent, crashing into a nearby cornfield and killing everyone on board.  Buddy Holly was 22 years old. What he accomplished, perfectly encapsulated in this 20-song, 44-minute record, is almost undescribable.  These songs are the backbone of rock and roll, the DNA that still exists, in some form or other, in almost everything you listen to today.  Buddy Holly co-wrote "Not Fade Away," for Chrissakes (although it owes a big debt to Bo Diddley, whose eponymous song Holly covers on this record too).  He is credited with popularizing the two-guitar, bass, drum band format that has become the de facto rock standard.  He was in the very first group of inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (which, I ...

  Let's start with some audience questions! Oh my.  To answer People's questions: No; about 15 million worldwide; um, Violator is not capable of Depeche Moding, since Depeche Mode is not a verb, but I think you're looking for 1990; and Speak & Spell .  While this album isn't the "best album ever," or even anywhere remotely close, it is a good, if slightly overrated, album.   I am not one of the many, many kids who spent their formative years locked in their bedrooms listening to this album over and over again, feeling like someone finally got them.  (That happened with a lot of other albums, including one that's later this week.)  Personally, I was never drawn to DM's icy cold sound, with Dave Gahan's slightly off-putting baritone and the echoey synths that formed the backbone of their songs. Remember "Personal Jesus"?  It was the first single off this album, reaching number 28 in the US, and was hailed as a breakthrough because it fe...

  When an album is well-produced, you shouldn't notice the production at all.  It should make the music itself the star.  On the other hand, when an album is really, really well-produced, you can appreciate the production on its own terms and revel in it and be in awe of it.  I couldn't believe this album came out in 1972, because it sounds so clean and perfectly produced it's hard to believe it's all analog. The sound is superficially jazz-pop?  Light rock?  Who knows?  Steely Dan is really its own genre.  Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who started off writing songs for other artists before making this, their debut album, both were obviously interested in all kinds of music.  There are traces of mambo and jazz, of course, and prog and swing and God knows what else.  This is really a music geek record that accidentally has bright and airy and poppy songs. Let's take the first track, "Do It Again," an FM radio staple since the day it was...

  A collection of show tunes in search of a midrange musical, this album was perfect for the 70's, in that it is completely nonthreatening and unchallenging while also being good enough to still get played on  the radio every day.  (In fact, there is a Billy Joel musical, called "Movin' Out," after the first track on this album, and it sounds horrifying : "all the vocals are performed by a pianist (the "Piano Man", representing Billy Joel) and band suspended on a platform above the stage while the dancers act out the songs' lyrics, basically making the show a rock ballet.") This might be your Mom's favorite album. All of which leads to this inescapable conclusion: Billy Joel is not, and will never be, cool.  There are countless essays (ok, maybe two that I know of ) about this fact and Joel's grinding resentment about this, despite the fact that he's richer than God and has married a series of increasingly younger beautiful women a...

  Oh, fine, I guess.  I've already said my piece about Eric fucking Clapton , who is a huge asshole, so let's just move on to this extremely classic rock slab of super derivative blues rock mixed with the burgeoning psychedelia of the era.  (I don't say "derivative" for nothing - even Clapton admitted lifting an Albert King solo note for note on "Strange Brew.")  This is the kind of album that feels  important even though it's mostly a dud.  In successive versions of the List, it's fallen from 112 to 114 to now 170.  Maybe we can get it down to the 300s by next time. Let's get this out of the way: the first two songs, "Strange Brew" and "Sunshine of Your Love" are classic rock staples, songs everyone who's ever smoked Tampico ditch weed out of a Coke can knows by heart.  This includes me, btw.  I was thinking about why "Sunshine" in particular is so memorable, and of course it's that guitar riff, because ...

  One of my greatest flaws as a Music Liker and, well, person in general is that I don't really like Sonic Youth.  I've talked about this before; when SY's album Goo came in at number 358 , I discussed the concept of Third Rail Bands and how not liking SY immediately revealed me to be a poser and a music naif who knows nothing about the power of real music.  We regret to inform you that not much has changed and this album is mostly boring when it's not annoying, This makes me an extreme outlier, I know.  The album is, of course, a Pitchfork 10 ; they called it "the kind of transcendent glory that crosses genres and even arts: that same in-the-zone feeling you get from a be-bop combo in top gear, a rapper at the absolute clear-eyed peak of his game—hell, even an athlete in perfect function."  It's widely recognized for its influence on any number of bands and genres.  Which is all great!  I just never want to listen to it all the way through again. Ind...

  This has got to be one of the worst covers ever made.  LOOK OUT PAUL SIMON, HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!!  What art director greenlit this?  Let's don't even get into Paul's medieval peasant hairdo. So this might be the first album on the List that I can clearly remember my parents owning a copy of.  My Mom was into Broadway cast recordings and classical, while my Dad liked old country, so I listened to a lot of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "A Chorus Line" and also Hank Williams' greatest hits and the Carter family.  They had this album probably because everyone in 1968 owned this album at some point or another. Let's address right off the bat the two iconic tracks on this album, the title song and "The Boxer," both of which are so thoroughly ingrained in the modern canon that there is little new to say about them.  "Bridge" has, of course, been covered hundreds of times - I was moved by morbid curiosity to check out the ...

  After upending American rock with 1991's Nevermind  and instantly changing music forever, a lot of artists would choose to capitalize on their newfound success and maybe tweak the sound a little but otherwise keep the hits coming.  Kurt Cobain was not a lot of artists. This album was a corrective, a purposefully harsh and often inaccessible record, designed to weed out the kind of meatheads that showed up to Nirvana shows to sing along to "Polly."  He was very conscious of the fact that the record label and the fans wanted another Nevermind , and he was intent on not delivering on that desire. The fist two lines of the album, from the song "Serving the Servants" are, famously, "Teenage angst has paid off well/Now I'm bored and old," and the song itself, despite a hooky guitar riff, is no "Smells Like Teen Spirit."  It's a sludgy, grimy affair, with a muddy mix.  It all seems designed to ward people off on first listen.  "Scentl...

  Every white person's second favorite reggae album, this fun collection even features a few songs that haven't been used in beer commercials.  Jimmy Cliff, who is, improbably, still alive and rocking at age 77, put out his first single at 14 years old.  He starred in the movie this soundtrack was drawn from in 1972, and this album was probably the introduction to reggae for most of America. It's a great album, of course, and you probably know almost every song on it.  The title track has been covered by everyone from the Jerry Garcia Band to Rancid, but I guess my favorite song on here isn't even a Jimmy Cliff number, but rather The Slickers' "Johnny Too Bad," a graceful, loping song with an immediately catchy "whoa-oh" refrain.  (I guess UB40's inevitable cover is probably more famous than the original, even though it is borderline unlistenable.)  Like a lot of reggae, the pleasant, easy music comes with a dark message: Walking down the ro...

  This is a fascinating bookend with yesterday's Fear of a Black Planet because both albums show the very best of hip hop at the time of their release and man, they could not be more different.  Both albums are great, but I'm going to tip my hand as an old guy and say that I Liked The Older Stuff Better. I am not saying I don't like this album because I did, quite a bit!  There is no question that Kendrick is one of the best, if not the best, rappers working today.  He has a distinctive, slightly laconic voice and absolutely has a way with lyrics.  From "DNA.": I got, I got, I got, I got Loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA Cocaine quarter piece, got war and peace inside my DNA I got power, poison, pain and joy inside my DNA I got hustle though, ambition, flow, inside my DNA I was born like this, since one like this Immaculate conception I transform like this, perform like this Was Yeshua's new weapon I don't contemplate, I meditate, then off your fucking h...

  So much of the music of 1990 - when this album came out - sounds dated, but this incredible record still sounds as urgent and vital as the day it came out.  A searing indictment of a country founding on inequality and oppression, it practically predicts the Rodney King riots, which would occur almost exactly two years after the April 1990 release of this album.   The album is built on the Bomb Squad's production, which used literally hundreds of samples to build up a hip hop Wall of Sound (no wonder Chuck D. called Hank Shocklee the "Phil Spector of hip-hop"), a dense, multilayered sound, constantly shifting and breaking apart and reintegrating.  It's propulsive and thumping and also musical and carefully orchestrated.  A lot of people have said it wouldn't be possible any more because so many of the samples weren't cleared, and that's probably the case. Then there's the rapping.  Prominently featuring Chuck D and Flava Flav, the rhymes aren't as...

  I've never known quite what to make of Rod Stewart.  When I was growing up, I knew him as a slightly embarrassing disco dude ("Do Ya Think I'm Sexy") that my friends' moms liked.  Then he easily transitioned into a crooner/balladeer and then slid effortlessly into his final form on the senior circuit doing Brill Building classics and the like ( It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook and its sequels).  Now he's a Sir and has tons of kids and does things like punching bouncers when he can't get his grandkids into a party.  An elder lager lout, perhaps. But Rod started out as a rocker with the Jeff Beck Group and the Faces and put this out, his first solo album, when he was just 25 years old.  It's basically another Faces album, since they all appear on it, most prominently Ronnie Wood, who plays most of the guitars.  The big song was, of course, "Maggie May," the cougar paean with one of the clangiest unintentionally funny rhymes in ...

  Oh my God this is so great.  If this album were a person it would be your incredibly cool uncle who wears a porkpie hat and shows up every once in a while in a different car every time and smokes hand-rolled cigarettes.  If this album were a mood it would be sitting on the porch of a house at twilight on a warm humid night with a sweaty bottle of Miller High Life.  If this album were an animal it would be a lynx.  If you had to really pick desert island discs, for real this time, you should strongly consider this because it would sound great on a desert island. Comprised mostly of covers, including three songs by the recently deceased Sam Cooke, this album was, incredibly, recorded in almost one straight 24-hour session in Memphis, with the Stax house band (Booker T., Donald "Duck" Dunn, Isaac Hayes, you know the gang), who backed Redding on the record,  taking breaks to play gigs .  It also contains the original version of "Respect," a little song l...

  Just an absolute beast of an record, this double album, which was released two weeks after Biggie was shot to death in LA, sold over 10 million copies and is widely regarded as one of the best rap albums of all time.  As an added bonus, it is a fantastic album. Biggie, of course, was rightfully lauded for his flow, more on which later, but what really struck me listening to it again was the production.  It's almost perfect, from the selection of samples to the way the songs are assembled.  They're not only the perfect canvas for Biggie to work with; they also stand on their own musically.  It's what makes "Hypnotize" a song that gets stuck in your head and not just a great rap.  The chorus melody is lifted from Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick's classic "La Di Da Di," but it's so cleaned up and repurposed that it's basically a new thing.   There are a ton of guests, and B.I.G. gives them the room to do their thing.  On "Notorious Thugs,...

  I'm afraid I'm going to have to file this in the "critically adored but not for me" pile because I know this album is revered as a psychedelic masterpiece and " an album of awesome intensity and tenderness " and " ambitious and prescient, reflecting the cultural shift of the dying ’60s, while tapping into the paranoia that would soon permeate much of American culture in the next decade," but I do not love it.  OK then!  I'm just not that into you. I know the album is supposed to be a dark look at the hippy summer of love culture, but it often seems like a hamhanded attempt to copy that ethos.  Take "The Daily Planet," for example: Down on Go-stop Boulevard it Never fails to bring me down The sirens and the accidents and For a laugh there's Plastic Nancy She's real fancy with her children They'll go far, she Buys them toys to Keep in practice Waiting on the war Groovy, man.  The songs are all very twee and complicated an...

  This album, which is just stuffed with well-known and important songs, kicks off with one of the best of those well-known songs - indeed, one of the best songs of all time, "Subterranean Homesick Blues."  I'm going to post the video here, because it's a great song and it was probably also the first "music video," in the sense that it was a short film created specifically to promote the song and the album. I've listened to this album a few times in the past couple of days, and I just had to stop and watch that video all the way through and listen to the song again.  I love how bored Dylan looks (and how young, Jesus), as he flips through the cards and then gingerly walks away.  The song itself, clearly inspired by Muddy Waters, is so good that John Lennon, who is not exactly a songwriting slouch, said he wasn't sure he could ever write a song as good.  That's a pretty good song. And that's just the first song!  The next song, "She Belon...

  We're back!  I had a nice vacation to the land of the maskless and free and hopefully did not catch Covid, although dying would probably be preferable to listening to this boring-ass record again.  Now we know where John Mayer and every other white boy coffee house open mic Yamaha acoustic playing singer-songwriter copped their vibe from, so at least there's that. OK whew, back up, I'm being too mean.  OR AM I.   Let's get this out of the way and talk about the elephant in this record: "Fire and Rain."  You've heard this song your whole life and, if you're a Gen X like me, you've probably heard the theories; it's written from the point of view of someone in a mental institution, it's about someone who killed themself, it's about a plane crash.  You're partially right!  Taylor himself explained that the first part of the song is about a friend, "Suzanne," who died while he was recording the album. Just yesterday mornin...