Funeral to Finish

  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 &quo

  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 later populariz