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 know, but still). "

  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 released.  It star

  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. Individ