I’m not a huge fan of “Best Of” or “All-Time Greatest” lists, whether the subject matter is music, movies, or sports. But since I’ve decided to create my own list maybe my problem isn’t so much with other people’s opinions so much as I prefer my own much more. In any case, when Rolling Stone (or whomever) comes out with their Best Albums Ever or Best Songs Ever or Best Artists Ever lists it’s usually anti-climactic. Not because the lists are inherently bad it’s just that there’s too much emphasis put on influence on one or too much emphasis on not having the same band appear multiple times in the top 20 when they clearly should be. My favorite example from Rolling Stone is that in 1997 Revolver didn’t make the cut on their “200 Most Essential Albums” issue but then a few years later it was named “The Greatest Album Ever Made”. So, it’s not essential but it’s the greatest ever? Sadly, Rolling Stone never printed a follow-up issue named “Greatest Contradictory Reviews Ever.” Maybe Fine Young Cannibals would have been named “Artist of the Century” while not making the cut for the “Best Bands of the ’80′s” category or something. In any case, here are my criteria for the “80 Best Rock Albums From 1964 Until Approximately 1997″ List:

1) All albums will be judged as having passed the Listenability Test. The Listenability Test is such that at least 90% of the album is comprised of songs you can listen to again and again and not lose its stickiness. For instance, albums like Odessey and Oracle by The Zombies or Los Angeles by X usually make the cut on a Top 200 or Greatest Albums list but, to me, these albums really have no stickiness whatsoever. Each album has maybe 3 good songs and the rest are average at best. They’re the type of albums that are cool to agree with as being significant but you’d never really recommend them to any normal person and try to convince them as being great. They fail the Listenability Test.

2) No live albums, soundtrack or Best Of albums allowed on the list. This list will consist only of studio albums. I like Talking Heads as much as the next person but when their best work, in my opinion, is a live double-album and a Best Of album it doesn’t say a whole lot about their ability to put together a cohesive studio album. I think studio albums should only be allowed on Greatest lists because the studio album should precede the live albums and whatever soundtrack project said band wants to get involved in.

3) Influence is important, but so is the strength of the track list. Basically, in my opinion, the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Velvet Underground are the 4 most influential rock musicians since 1964 and they are prominent among the top 20 of this list. However, it’s their albums’ track list that is the ultimate factor in deciding which albums of theirs are higher. For example, if I was going solely on influence I would pick Revolver from the Beatles as their highest ranking album but I won’t because I think it’s their third best album. Same with Blonde On Blonde by Bob Dylan–many people think it’s his best and I think it’s his third or fourth best.

4) No R&B, hip hop, country music allowed–just rock. As I’ve said before, how can I possibly quantify the significance of N.W.A. or Sam Cooke or Johnny Cash alongside Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath? The short answer: I’m not going to try.

5) What’s with the date range of 1964 until approximatley 1997? Because influence does play a role (however subjective) in my list I have to put the cutoff year at least 10 years from now because I don’t think anything less than 10 years old can put be into any proper “Best Of” greatness be it music, movies, or history. The reason I chose 1964 as the starting point is because that’s the year that rock, in my opinion, really started as it was the year The Animals, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, and The Who all formed.

So, there’s the criteria for my “80 Best Rock Albums From 1964 Until Approximately 1997″ list. If anything I hope it becomes the most popular lengthy-titled list in all the land…

Rock is many things and it can take many shapes and fits into many definitions but at the end of the day, truly great rock is a reinvention of blues and country. Rock could never have existed without blues and country, just as you cannot have water without hydrogen. Blues music and country music as we know it derived from the South; it is simply a matter of semantics if you want to believe that one or both came from Mississippi or Louisiana or Tennessee or wherever. It simply does not matter because the heart of it all is that it is rooted in the southern United States. So, of course, it makes sense that one of the greatest rock albums of all time—one of the greatest rock albums to put the last great mark on blues and country rock—should come from a British band recording in a French mansion.

While The Beatles forever altered pop music and the overall landscape of celebrity, they never could be considered a true rock band like The Rolling Stones. Compared to the Stones, The Beatles’ catalog (strictly in a rock sense) is light; they could have never recorded a song like “Bitch” or “Midnight Rambler.” The Beatles may have been controversial when they first arrived in the States but The Rolling Stones were the full package: they looked like guys every father would lock up their daughter(s) around, a man died at one of their concerts while performing a song called “Sympathy For The Devil,” and they once recorded a song called “Cocksucker Blues” as leverage for getting out of their recording contract, just to mention three things. While no one can deny the impact and legacy of The Velvet Underground, their music only speaks to a certain audience; for all of its influence The Velvet Underground & Nico can only be handled in small doses by most people. Bob Dylan forever changed songwriting and opened up the minds for a countless army of young musicians who wanted to craft songs that cloaked their anger in metaphor or in poetic verse, rather than being so direct with the lyrics or following the typical verse-chorus-verse approach. You cannot, however, rock out to Bob Dylan. Led Zeppelin may be seen as Rock Gods to their fans but even in their purest moment of truth most would admit that, although they would love to be Robert Plant or Jimmy Page, The Rolling Stones made better rock songs, even if Charlie Watts could not hold a candle to John Bonham.

One of the things that perplexes me about almost all “Greatest Rock Albums” lists is the blatant disregard for rock at the top spot. Most lists will have Revolver, Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper’s, or maybe even The Velvet Underground & Nico as the greatest rock album ever yet, despite their greatness, there is no true rock to be found anywhere on those albums. There is no reinvention of blues and country anywhere. I believe the four aforementioned albums are timeless classics but I could never put any of them as the best rock album and especially when the album in question should have as its first prerequisite a rock quality.

The Rolling Stones – Exile On Main St. (1972)

Exile On Main St. is not only The Rolling Stones’ masterpiece but The Rolling Stones themselves are probably the single most important band in rock history and to not put a record that features Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Mick Taylor, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts all in their prime as the greatest record of all time is a crime that almost every “Best Of” list is guilty of. This album started out as essentially a collection of outakes but the end result is a sprawling album of eighteen songs that feature such full-bodied blues rock that is so loud that even Mick Jagger cannot scream his way out from behind it to country-inspired songs that are so pitch-perfect that even the weakest song of the album (“Torn And Frayed”) is still stronger than what most bands could ever conjure up. The sound of Exile On Main St. is dirty, heavy, and has a smoke-filled bar quality about it. It is the very essence of rock mixed in with blues and country.

I could go on and on about Exile On Main St.—how “Let It Loose” is one of the greatest songs I have ever heard; how “Tumbling Dice” and “Happy” are two of the Stones’ strongest and most overlooked singles they have ever released; how “Rip This Joint” is filled with so much power and energy that I cannot believe there are people who do not like it; how “All Down The Line” is all the evidence you will ever need as to how great Mick Taylor was; how awesome this album is in spite of the fact that horns are used in many tracks; how “Soul Survivor” is one of the greatest songs to ever end an album; how “Sweet Virginia” is the greatest country song the Stones have ever done and how it immediately makes me turn the volume up higher when it comes on. But the simple fact is this: if you have never heard Exile On Main St. before you should listen to it. You may hate it or you may love it or you may think of it as just average. To me, this album was the equivalent of The Shawshank Redemption in that I remember exactly where I was when I heard it all the way through for the first time. To me, there has never been a better pure rock album ever produced, just as there has never been a better two and a half hour movie made that I could watch everyday for a month straight like The Shawshank Redemption.

Music is subjective and lists are subjective and my list was no different. Some reviews had more of an emphasis on lyrics while others stressed descriptions of the actual music. Some reviews even included words about the album cover itself. Even the parameters for the list were specific and subjective. I hope my subjectivity was enjoyable and thanks to everyone who left comments and messages throughout.

The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)

The debut album by The Velvet Underground forever altered rock music—during a time known as “The Summer of Love” that showcased bands singing about LSD and marijuana, promoting universal love and brotherhood, and/or sticking it to The Man, The Velvet Underground & Nico showcased songs about sadomasochism, heroin, prostitution, waiting for drug dealers, black angels of death, and partygoers desperate for attention. It also altered rock in the way that it was produced too as Andy Warhol used the most minimalist approach one can do: he simply let the tape recorder run until he said “Fabulous!” and then the track was complete. It is nearly impossible to convey how original the Nico album was when it was released and it is doubly impossible to point to one song on the album as being the all-encompassing manifestation of its originality. All eleven songs were groundbreaking in some way. But the essence of this album may lie in “Run Run Run.” “Run Run Run” starts out with a great rock sound that even teeters on mod but then at the one minute, twenty one second mark you hear it: a burst of distortion that leads into a wiry and uneven solo. That four seconds of distortion that erupts out of a song that, up to that point, had sounded somewhat normal is a microcosm of what The Velvet Underground & Nico means in the overall history of rock. This is the album that every indie and underground band should pay royalties to. The album starts with “Sunday Morning” and the bright and warm music emanating from John Cale’s celesta yet the song itself is about being so hungover and paranoid that even a beautiful Sunday morning, unknown passersby and churchgoers and all, can seem downright terrifying. Two other forces at play here that really give the Nico album a distinct sound even forty years later is the presence of Nico as a lead singer and John Cale playing the viola. Nico was a German model who hung around Andy Warhol’s party scene and, while her voice is amateur at best, fits perfectly while describing the cautionary girl in “Femme Fatale,” is surprisingly perfect for the pick-me-up lyrics of “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” and is absolutely spot-on in “All Tomorrow’s Parties” as her voice is set against the ominous-yet-catchy music that so perfectly conveys desperation. The viola, on the other hand, adds a layer of suspense and sometimes terror on “Venus In Furs” and “Heroin.” “Venus In Furs” is unabashedly about bondage and domination, “Heroin” is unabashedly about how heroin affects the narrator and what he is thinking and feeling during the highs and in both songs the viola is used to either to be jagged like a whip or chaotic like your mind on a drug you cannot control. “The Black Angel’s Death Song” also features Cale with his wincing and jagged viola but it is in tandem with loud bursts of air and Lou Reed’s dark and sometimes nonsensical lyrics and the end result is a very surreal and dark song; something that does not fit with any other albums that came out in 1967. The album ends with “European Song,” a song that quickly deteriorates into an all-out assault (it is believed to be the first song to include broken glass sounds) that is a precursor of sorts to “Sister Ray.” Brian Eno once said of The Velvet Underground, “Only five thousand people ever bought a Velvet Underground album, but every single one of them started a band.” The Velvet Underground & Nico is one of the most important albums in rock history. Even if it took twenty or so years for people to notice it.

Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

Trying to decide which of Bob Dylan’s albums is his best is like trying to figure out which of Van Gogh’s paintings you like more but Highway 61 Revisited is his definitive masterpiece if only for “Like A Rolling Stone”–the song that shattered radio’s imposed three minute time limit and transformed Bob Dylan the Singer into Bob Dylan the Icon. Highway 61 is also, unbelievably enough, the second album Dylan released in 1965 and it is also his finest musically as songs like “From A Buick 6,” “Queen Jane Approximately,” and the title track are all examples of a musical energy that Dylan would rarely bother to try to capture again. Lyrically, most of the songs here are angry and/or bleak such as the caustic question “Because something is happening here/But you don’t know what it is/Do you, Mister Jones?” in “Ballad Of A Thin Man,” the desperate tone of “Now the wintertime is coming/The windows are filled with frost/I went to tell everybody/But I could get not get across” in “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry,” or the bleak outlook on life from the title track that illustrates five different sets of people all going to Highway 61 only to presumably die after the next world war is planned there. “Queen Jane Approximately” and “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” find Dylan seemingly aware or anxious of the fates of others until it directly affects him (“I started out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff/Everybody said they’d stand behind me when the game got rough/But the joke was on me there was nobody even there to bluff/I’m going to New York City I do believe I’ve had enough”). You could spend months trying to sort out all of the metaphors and meanings of Dylan’s magnum opus, “Desolation Row,” but a working knowledge of John Milton or William Butler Yeats is not required to enjoy either the music or the final verse that ties the eleven minute song together. All of this pales in comparison, however, to the significance of “Like A Rolling Stone,” a song by itself that has influenced countless musicians and has become a metaphor for describing anyone going through a change of scenery that, in turn, completely overwhelms them. “Like A Rolling Stone” is the most important song in rock history and it is only fitting that Highway 61 Revisited should be considered Dylan’s unquestionable masterpiece because of it.

The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds (1966)

Pet Sounds is not only Brian Wilson’s defining masterpiece but it is also the best pop album ever made. One of the most influential albums ever made, The Beach Boys construct pop songs that are emotionally complex, beautiful, and full of despair set against music that includes bicycle bells, flutes, and a vibrant arrangement of percussion, guitars, and various organs. The album opens with “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” a song that seems so self-assured and positive (“You know it seems the more we talk about it/It only makes it worse to live without it”) yet Wilson still concedes “but let’s talk about it” and asks the girl to sleep on the thought. In what might be one of the most beautiful pop songs ever written—”God Only Knows”—Wilson admits that life would go on if the girl ever left him but it would be at a price (“The world could show nothing to me/So what good would living do me”). The music of “God Only Knows” is so perfect and so lively that it almost seems impossible to follow up yet the next track, “I Know There’s An Answer,” features such a catchy piano opening and such an amazing solo comprised of a banjo and a harmonica that you tend to lose yourself in it and forget how great textured music can sound when truly inspired geniuses are at the helm. Songs such as “That’s Not Me,” “I’m Waiting For The Day,” and “Here Today” are more musically upbeat while still possessing an arrangement and sound quality that make it sound as if Phil Spector were at the controls. The lyrics of “You Still Believe In Me,” while heartfelt and sincere, are overshadowed by the veritable wonderland of music which includes the aforementioned bicycle bells. “Let’s Go Away For Awhile” is an outstanding instrumental song that leads up to “Sloop John B” which is The Beach Boys’ take on an old sea folk song and is probably the band’s most indelible song in the arena of the critics. The album ends with “Caroline No” and Brian Wilson’s tragic question, “Where did your long hair go?” The song about disillusionment with an old friend and how time can sometimes change too fast is especially poignant knowing what Brian Wilson went through after the recording of Pet Sounds. “Caroline No” ends with a railroad signal and dogs barking while a train passes by and one cannot help think of that train as a metaphor for Wilson’s eventual breakdown—the signs were there but the train flew by unfettered anyway. Pet Sounds is the type of album that can reach anyone as it contains songs about love and heartache, a search for redemption, and the concession that maybe the artist just wasn’t made for these times. It is a very personal album and the musical arrangements are so superior that they were never contested, not even by The Beatles or by Phil Spector.

The Beatles – The Beatles (1968)

The Beatles, or as it is more commonly referred to, the “white album,” was really the beginning of the end for the band in terms of their cohesiveness and individual outlooks. Leading up to and during the recording sessions for this album Ringo Starr and George Harrison either left the band temporarily or threatened to do so, John Lennon met Yoko Ono, producer George Martin left unannounced for a vacation due to growing frustration, and it became commonplace for each member to record individual tracks in separate studios. On paper, the end result of all of this should have been a terrible and disjointed effort but instead, somehow, it became a towering and astonishing double album and The Beatles’ masterpiece. To be sure, there are some songs here that don’t seem as though they belong (“Wild Honey Pie,” “Piggies,” “Revolution 9″) but, overall, the thirty songs on this album shows the true range of each Beatle individually and as a whole. Songs like “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” “Revolution 9,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and “Don’t Pass Me By” all directly foreshadow the paths that Paul McCarteny, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr would take during their solo careers. The scope of The Beatles is wide and it is precisely this variation that makes this album so great because when songs like “Dear Prudence,” “Martha My Dear,” “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?” “Julia,” “Birthday,” “Sexy Sadie,” “Helter Skelter,” “Honey Pie,” and “Revolution 9″ all appear together on the same album you know that the band is approaching uncharted creative waters. Though the “white album” usually inspires confusion to some with the overall track listing, one cannot deny the immeasurable catchiness of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” the beauty of “Blackbird” and “Mother Nature’s Son,” the singability of “Rocky Racoon,” the sadness of “Julia,” the unabashed fun of “Birthday” and “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey,” the contradictory natures of “Revolution 1″ and “Revolution 9,” and the stain that Charles Manson forever left on “Helter Skelter.” The Beatles finds the band desperately in search for their own individual identity as well as the group’s identity and maybe this is why the album is so timeless because the point of life is the search for identity and great art tries to work in conjunction with the search for that as well. The Beatles stands as a masterpiece precisely because it is flawed and because it is sometimes confounding during the first couple of times you listen to it completely. After a while, though, the songs become more and more a part of you; they are no longer Beatles songs written about whatever its intended subject matter was. They become songs written about whatever it is you think they should be about and that transaction is the essence of what great art means.

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin (1969)

The first ten seconds of John Bonham’s thundering drums that start “Good Times Bad Times” are enough to get your attention; John Paul Jones’ heavy bass that perfectly compliments Jimmy Page’s guitar and Robert Plant’s unique voice was enough to make Led Zeppelin an instant force. Their debut album forever altered the path that the genres of power blues, psychedelic rock, and heavy metal would ultimately take. While musicians like Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix were probably better technically in playing blues rock, Led Zeppelin had a more resounding impact in part because of Plant’s vocals and because of the band’s better overall rock sound; you need only listen to their covers of Willie Dixon’s “You Shook Me” and “I Can’t Quit You Baby” to gather enough evidence. The other cover that appears on Led Zeppelin is “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” and the band’s ability to shift from acoustic to two blazing crescendoes seamlessly put the world on notice that this was a band that had raised the bar in terms of hard rock. In its original vinyl incarnation, side two starts with “Your Time Is Gonna Come” and “Black Mountain Side”—the former starts with a pipe organ before turning into a ballad featuring the subject required by all blues-style ballads: the double-crossing girl, whereas the latter is a Jimmy Page instrumental that may as well emit patchouli from your speakers. In terms of how Led Zeppelin altered heavy metal, “Communication Breakdown” does all it can in two and a half minutes as its quick riffs, quick bass lines, quick drums, and even quicker cymbals have become the preferred recipe for countless bands for over thirty five years. “How Many More Times” and “Dazed And Confused” are examples of how psychedelic rock was kicked up a notch as these songs featured Page playing a guitar solo with a cello bow. This produced the eerie and whirling noises that would lead up to the all-out Page and Bonham assault in “Dazed And Confused,” which is probably Zeppelin’s best song behind “When The Levee Breaks.” While Jimmy Page and Robert Plant are the faces of the band in almost everyone’s mind, it cannot be forgotten that John Paul Jones was one of the best bassists in rock history and John Bonham was one of the best drummers in rock history and on Led Zeppelin the four of them built the foundation for what would become one of rock’s most important and most popular band of all time.

Nuggets – Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968

The name of this box set is a little misleading as you may think that this is a best of compilation from a band called The Nuggets or something. What it really is is a collection of 118 songs from a wide range of bands that, for the most part, no one has ever heard of. If you love music from the psychedelic era or are looking for something that has an immeasurable amount of variety, this is the box set to have. This is one of the greatest and most fun sets to listen to. We tend to have two reactions to obscure music: the first reaction is that because the music was not popular upon release it is garbage, and the second reaction is that because the music was not popular upon release an elitist attitude evolves that says everyone else is stupid for not having liked it in the first place. The Nuggets box set treads this line perfectly as there are so many obscure songs by obscure bands that are genuine treasures that just needed a little love (“Little Black Egg,” “Little Girl,” “Follow Me,” “Optical Sound,” “Mindrocker,” “Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)”) that counteract with with some really awful experiments that no rational person would recommend, unless they had a desire to be cool by liking something different (“Spazz,” “My World Fell Down,” “I Ain’t No Mircale Worker,” and the ultra-terrible cover of “Hey Joe” by Leaves). What makes the Nuggets box set so outstanding, too, is you have all these songs you’ve never heard of before and some of them are really good and some are indescribably awful but in between are songs you have heard of before. For example, right in between “Last Time Around” by Del-Vetts and “Journey To Tyme” by Kenny & The Kasuals sits “Nobody But Me” by The Human Beinz. You may not know “Nobody But Me” by title (or The Human Beinz by name) but the minute you hear it you will instantly think, “Wow, I haven’t heard this song in years” and you might be reminded of how much of a forgotten classic it is. Other songs that follow in this vain are “Time Won’t Let Me” by The Outsiders and “Louie Louie” by The Kingsmen. There are so many terrific songs here that it will be easy to overlook the bad ones. If you are a fan of late ’60′s rock, psychedelic music, or are just looking for something different to expand your music appreciation, this box set is worth every penny even if you have to pay full price ($60). I would recommend buying it rather than downloading primarily because of the booklet that comes with it that gives little tidbits about each band and the excellent introduction written by Lenny Kaye that puts my feeble attempt here to shame. This is a glorious and delightful must-have.

Bob Dylan – Bringing It All Back Home (1965)

This is the album that started Dylan’s run of churning out masterpiece after masterpiece as it includes one of his most recognizable songs (“Mr. Tambourine Man”) as well as featuring some of his finest writing, whether it be serious (“It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”), political (“Maggie’s Farm”), embracing the Beatnik style (“Subterranean Homesick Blues”), or just downright humorous (“Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”). What is interesting about Bringing It All Back Home is the way Dylan chooses to sing and perform songs that are about individuals railing against an Establishment-type entity or idea versus songs that are about love or dependency. “On The Road Again” uses the dysfunctional family as a metaphor for the erosion of logic and after each odd description (“There’s fist fights in the kitchen/They’re enough to make me cry/The mailman comes in/Even he’s got to take a side”) Dylan keeps asking sarcastically, “And you ask why I don’t live here?” before finally yelling at the end, “>Honey, how come you don’t move?” Conversely, songs like “She Belongs To Me,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and “Gates Of Eden” show Dylan singing in a softer voice and within softer and slower music. It is this kind of balance that makes Dylan stand out amongst the thousands of other wannabe singer-poets and troubadours. Bringing It All Back Home features two songs that may be some of Dylan’s finest work from a lyrical standpoint—”Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” and “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” The former is an odd and hilarious description of a dream (“…but it was just a funeral parlor/And the man asked me who I was/I repeated that my friends/Were all in jail with a sigh/He gave me his card/He said ‘Call me if they die’”) that contains so many different characters and situations it could pass as a short story, whereas the latter may be the most powerful song Dylan has ever done. “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” is nothing more than Dylan, a single guitar, and a harmonica but the delivery of the lyrics and the hard way in which he plays the guitar during the breaks demands attention from the beginning. Lyrics like “Advertising signs that con/You into thinking/You’re the one/That can do what’s never been done/That can win what’s never been won/Meantime life goes on outside all around you” are sung in such a manner that it could be interpreted as either sarcasm or as having the utmost urgency. But, for every description of life’s failings and clap traps Dylan reassures the listener that “it’s alright, ma” with the last line being “it’s life and life only.” Some people may look at The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan or Another Side Of Bob Dylan as the starting point to his significance and, to be sure, both albums are significant and very influential but Bringing It All Back Home catapulted Dylan into another stratosphere creatively and musically. Maybe this was why he was booed so lustily at the Newport Folk Festival four months later as people can be quite averse to change. Thankfully, this album withstood the jeers of the nonbelievers with relative ease.

The Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed (1969)

Let It Bleed starts with “Gimme Shelter” and ends with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Few albums can boast of having a better beginning and ending than that, and fewer still can boast of having songs as strong the seven others in between either. This is one of The Rolling Stones best albums and, by virtue of this, automatically puts it in the running for best album of all time. Let It Bleed has a little bit of everything—Keith Richards’ first song on lead vocals (“You Got The Silver”), a mandolin (“Love In Vain”), a song about a murderer (“Midnight Rambler”), and the first appearances by Mick Taylor (“Country Honk,” “Live With Me”). “Love In Vain” is a great Robert Johnson cover and the direction that the band took in making this a kind of sleepy-sounding song instead of trying to out-blues Johnson was a wise one because when you hear “Love In Vain” you think it is an original song. “Country Honk” is a variation of “Honky Tonk Women” and the addition of a fiddle and the honking cars in the beginning add a great country touch to it and, thus, makes it a much quirkier (and better) version than the original. “Live With Me” is a precursor to the sound the Stones would use a lot during the last twenty five years—quick riffs that are set to simple bass lines and drum beats. The perfect mix of piano, guitar, and tambourine that start “Monkey Man” make it an excellent and moody song even if the lyrics are nothing but gibberish (“I’m a fleabit peanut monkey/All my friends are junkies/That’s not really true”). Ultimately, though, Let It Bleed hinges on the opening and ending songs—”Gimme Shelter” with its apocalyptic view on war and society (“Ooh, see the fire is sweepin’/Our very street today/Burns like a red coal carpet/Mad dog lost its way”) and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” with its parallels to the death of the ’60′s. Between the lyrics “You can’t always get what you want/But if you try sometimes/Well, you just might find/You get what you need” and the choirboy intro and the swirling symphony of sound at the end, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is the one of the grandest and most accessible Stones songs in their catalog and a fitting end to one of their finest works.

The Velvet Underground – Loaded (1970)

Lou Reed has never been known as someone to dabble in making mainstream music but on Loaded, The Velvet Underground’s final studio album, Reed comes pretty close to sniffing a radio hit. Of course, the irony here is that Loaded would wind up like the previous three albums and find no audience while the band was in existence but songs like “Sweet Jane,” “Rock & Roll,” and “Head Held High” have a Top 40 quality about them and you get the impression that, had the band enjoyed any amount of commercial success, “Rock & Roll” would have been a terrific arena rock anthem. In spite of the crispness of the aforementioned songs as well as others like “Who Loves The Sun” and “Lonesome Cowboy Bill,” Loaded finds The Velvet Underground in a bit of turmoil; drummer Maureen Tucker was pregnant during the recording sessions and three people had to pick up the slack, Lou Reed left the band before the album was released, and Doug Yule does lead vocals on four songs. It may sound like a recipe for disaster on paper but this is the band’s best full-bodied effort, the culmination of sound from a band that went from avant-garde underground rock to music that was more lyrically focused and finally to a back-to-basics rock album that will forever stand the test of time. “New Age” seems to channel the Nico and Factory era with its narrative about a fan meeting a washed up actress and “I Found A Reason” can probably be best described as a mellow version of a Lou Reed version of a ’50′s-style love song. After all is said and done, though, it is “Train Round The Bend” and “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’” that serve as the metaphors for The Velvet Underground’s anti-success; Reed sings, “Trying to be a farmer/But nothing that I planted never seems to grow” in the former while Yule laments, “And say a word for Joanna Love/She ain’t got nothing at all/’Cuz everyday she falls in love/And every night she falls when she does” on the latter. To be sure, self-pity was probably not the aim of either of those songs but you cannot help but make the correlation when describing the band that was essentially the rock version of Vincent Van Gogh.

The Clash – London Calling (1979)

London Calling, The Clash’s third album, was released in the U.K. on December 14, 1979 and in the U.S. on January 1, 1980 and you could make the argument that this is one of the best albums of both the ’70′s and ’80′s and not sound presumptuous. The Clash had already demonstrated on their debut album that they could expand the boundaries of punk by injecting reggae, ska, rockabilly and a slew of other musical styles but London Calling is the definitive punk album to incorporate any and all elements of modern music. The title track, with its apocalyptic theme (“A nuclear error, but I have no fear/London is drowning and I live by the river”) and heavy bass lines, starts off the album and after that is one tour de force song after another. “Hateful,” “Rudie Can’t Fail,” and “Wrong ‘Em Boyo” all have heavy ska influences whereas songs like “Brand New Cadillac,” “The Right Profile,” and “Death Or Glory” are more straight-up rock. As with most of The Clash’s catalog, London Calling has its politically charged moments (“When they kick at your front door/How you gonna come/With your hands on your head/Or on the trigger of your gun”) and its fair share of social commentary (“I’m all tuned in, I see all the programmes/I save coupons from packets of tea/I’ve got my giant hit discotheque album/I empty a bottle and I feel a bit free”) but not everything has to be serious as evidenced with the try-anything style of “Jimmy Jazz” and the top-to-bottom excellence of “Train In Vain.” The most remarkable thing about London Calling, though, may be the string of “Four Horsemen,” “I’m Not Down,” and “Revolution Rock,” the three songs that run uninterrupted and lead up to “Train In Vain.” Those three songs are a perfect example of how The Clash played their brand of punk rock and did it with such mastery that it is further proof that it will be many, many years before we ever see a band with half of their talent. And if you think that the previous sentence is an overstatement all you have to do is listen to “Koka Kola” and “The Card Cheat” and wonder who else could possibly make those two songs back-to-back and put them in between “Death Or Glory” and “Lover’s Rock,” and make it all sound so perfect.

My Bloody Valentine – Loveless (1991)

First things first: Loveless, My Bloody Valentine’s second full-length album, is an extremely polarizing album. It is an album consisting of eleven tracks that are packed with so much sonic noise that for every one person who loves it there are probably ten people who cannot make it beyond track three, “Touched.” Another contributing factor to its polarization is that there is seemingly no emphasis on lyrics and, for the most part, the vocals, be it Bilinda Butcher’s or Kevin Shields’s, are buried in the music and come off sounding more like an additional instrument rather than a traditional singing arrangement. Loveless was the brainchild of Kevin Shields and it wound up being a very arduous process to get the album recorded, culminating in this album being responsible for the bankruptcy of the Creation Records label. Sheilds spent two years and approximately $500,000 and used roughly twenty studios to make the album. The end result is a towering masterpiece along the likes of The Velvet Underground & Nico in that very few people bought the album when it was released but those that did were indescribably changed by its sound. “Only Shallow” starts the album and the unassuming drum beat at the beginning of the song is the last time you will hear anything that is not super-charged. Songs like “To Here Knows When,” “I Only Said,” and “Blown A Wish” are so meticulously layered that they possess a sound unlike anything else. “Loomer,” “When You Sleep,” “Come In Alone,” and “What You Want” are sonic assaults right from the start, whereas “Sometimes” is probably the most traditional-sounding rock song of the album but even here Shields cannot pass up adding the fuzzy guitarwork in the background. Loveless is an album that never stops; every song bleeds into one another and even though “What You Want” is a blazing fury of a song, it ultimately slows down, catches its breath, and becomes “Soon,” the final track of the album and probably the most fascinating and original song of the last twenty years as it represents the communion of all this sonic noise with a dance beat. The music on this album is so hard to describe yet the cover may be an adequate place to start—music so loud and fuzzy that it could produce an image of a guitar that is both blurry and red with intensity.

The last batch of honorable mentions (in no particular order) as follows…

If Live Albums Were Allowed

Bob Marley & The Wailers – Live!
10,000 Maniacs – MTV Unplugged
Nirvana – Unplugged In New York
The Grateful Dead – Europe ’72
James Brown – Live At The Apollo
Otis Redding – Live In Europe
Sam Cooke – Live At The Harlem Square Club, 1963
Talking Heads – The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads
Peter Frampton – Frampton Comes Alive
Big Brother & The Holding Company – Cheap Thrills
Cream – Wheels Of Fire (Disc 2)

If Albums Were Allowed By Artists I Loathe (But Would Be Included Because Of Their Influence)

Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run
James Taylor – Sweet Baby James
Elvis Costello – This Year’s Model
The Moody Blues – Days Of Future Passed
The Bee Gees – Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack
The Eagles – Hotel California

If I Included Personal Favorites (And, Thus, Disregarded The Parameters Of The List)

Poi Dog Pondering – Pomegranate
The Byrds – Sweetheart Of The Rodeo
Beck – One Foot In The Grave
Soundtrack – The Harder They Come
Luna – Penthouse
Smashing Pumpkins – Gish
Pearl Jam – Vitalogy
The Grateful Dead – The Grateful Dead

If Albums Were Allowed That, While Significant, Contain Only A Few Great Songs But The Rest Of The Album Doesn’t Really Do Anything For Me

The Replacements – Let It Be
The Sex Pistols – Nevermind The Bullocks Here’s The Sex Pistols
Guns N’ Roses – Appetite For Destruction
Derek and the Dominos – Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Will The Circle Be Unbroken
Bob Dylan – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
The Flying Burrito Brothers – The Gilded Palace Of Sin
Buffalo Springfield – Buffalo Springfield Again
Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band – Trout Mask Replica
Cream – Wheels Of Fire (Disc 1)
The Zombies – Odyssey and Oracle
The Beatles – Let It Be
The Rolling Stones – Aftermath
Television – Marquee Moon
Radiohead – OK Computer
The Stooges – Raw Power
The Kinks – The Village Green Preservation Society

If Albums After 1997 Were Allowed

The White Stripes – De Stijl

Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow (1967)

It is dangerously easy to see this album as only being as great or important as it two most popular individual parts—”Somebody To Love” and “White Rabbit”—but Surrealistic Pillow, Jefferson Airplane’s groundbreaking sophomore effort, represents so much more both in terms of musical and social significance. Musically, this is just a flat-out incredible album as songs like “She Has Funny Cars,” “Today,” “D.C.B.A -25,” and “Plastic Fantastic Lover” showcase the band’s ability to fuse folk music with the then-growing psychedelic movement. On a social scale, Surrealistic Pillow is the album that brought Haight-Ashbury to the rest of the U.S. Grace Slick may have been the face of the band because of her singing on the album’s two mega-hits and her sex appeal but Marty Balin’s vocals and Jorma Kaukonen’s guitar work really solidify the overall composition here as “Today” is still one of the best songs to describe the counterculture ethos and “Embryonic Journey” is still a magnificent instrumental filled with such vibrance yet falling short of the two minute mark. If looked at through today’s lens, this album may seem dated and not at all psychedelic in terms of what we now think of, but songs like “My Best Friend,” “Comin’ Back To Me,” and “How Do You Feel” were influential building blocks during this nascent age of psychedelia. Then you have a song like “3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds” which is filled with so much raw energy (“Do away with things that come on obscene”) you can practically picture what it must have been like to be around San Francisco in 1967. The album ends with “Plastic Fantastic Lover” which finds Balin caustically describing the love for a television in front of some very catchy guitar hooks. Surrealistic Pillow not only featured some of the greatest music ever made during the “Summer of Love” but also played a large role in broadcasting what the Beatniks and the West coast counterculture scene was all about, and that kind of significance is hard to quantify. This is the type of album you wish you could hear again for the first time.

The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band may be the defining album people relate to when they hear the name The Beatles. Widely regarded as one of the first and most influential concept albums in the modern rock era, there was so much creativity on Sgt. Pepper’s that it had a profound effect on seemingly all musicians and fans alike because of the band’s use of cutting-edge recording technology and fusion with complicated arrangements. The end result were masterpieces such as “With A Little Help From My Friends,” “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” “Good Morning, Good Morning,” and “A Day In The Life.” One of the main factors that played in to how The Beatles arrived creatively at Sgt. Pepper’s was a unanimous decision to stop touring. Consequently, songs like “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!” “Lovely Rita,” “She’s Leaving Home,” and “Within You Without You” were able to be made solely with a focus on production quality, rather than fretting about how to make them sound great in studio and when performed live. “When I’m Sixty-Four,” with its memorable clarinet ensemble and its intangibly precise lyrics (“If I’d been out till quarter to three/Would you lock the door?”), is so perfect that it probably not only holds a top spot in the hearts of Beatles fans everywhere but also serves as an odd reminder that there is, in fact, a song you and your spouse can dance to on your sixty-fourth birthday. While it has certainly been dissected as to whether Sgt. Pepper’s is a true concept album or not, you cannot overlook the fact that “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” acts as a bridge both by opening the album and bleeding in to the second song and its “Reprise” version bleeding in to the final song, “A Day In The Life.” “A Day In The Life” is arguably Lennon and McCartney’s masterpiece as it seamlessly incorporates two very different stories (Lennon’s, which is somewhat based on actual events and people, and McCartney’s, a dream-like and abstract recollection of his youth) and musical styles (Lennon’s is grand, McCartney’s is simple). Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is an album that stands as an achievement in pop music much like Citizen Kane in cinema or Anna Karenina in literature; it is grand, it completely redefined what could be done with the medium, and, of course, it has an unforgettable ending too.

Pink Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973)

The famous album cover with the prism. The ridiculous streak of being on the Billboard charts for 741 consecutive weeks. Listening to this album while watching The Wizard of Oz (who was ever able to listen to “The Great Gig In The Sky” the same after doing that?). What would life have been like if The Dark Side Of The Moon had never been made? Can you imagine even meeting someone who has never heard “Money” or “Time” before? The Dark Side Of The Moon features nine songs and six of them are classic rock staples and its longevity can probably be attributed to its simplicity; the lyrics are so simple that they eventually become complex. The main theme of Dark Side is life and death and everything in between and it plays upon our worst fears, greatest hopes, and eventual reality. People are inherently afraid of running out of time, inherently weary of the mega-wealthy, and subconsciously engage in turf war mentalities against those who are different yet in spite all of that almost all people desperately want to believe that, despite all of their differences, loves, and hates we will still see one another in the afterlife. And, if there is no afterlife we mostly believe that everything will balance out in the end. Everything in those two previous sentences has been debated and wrestled with for many centuries yet Pink Floyd managed to convey all of this in nine songs clocking in at under forty three minutes. While “Time,” “Money,” and “Us and Them” are pretty self-explanatory from a lyrical perspective, the subject matters at hand—death, greed, war—are not only the cornerstones of our own philosophical struggles but Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright approach them in such a simplified way (“With, without/And who’ll deny/It’s what the fighting’s all about?”) that you cannot help to read into them like you would an Immanuel Kant or Soren Kierkegaard essay. Musically, “On The Run” and “Any Colour You Like” are two of the best electronic instrumental songs of its time as the textures and layers on both tracks still make them sound fresh even after nearly thirty five years. The album ends with the blended finale of “Brain Damage” and “Eclipse” and while we are told that the loonies are on the path it is the lyrics of “Eclipse” that may be the most timeless aspect of the album as its message is: no matter what you may do, say, or think, everything ultimately balances out because everything under the sun is eclipsed by the moon. Kant or Kierkegaard (or even Dr. Suess) could not have said that any better.

Grateful Dead – American Beauty (1970)

The cover of American Beauty has the words American Beauty written in such a way that it will also spell American Reality. It is a subtle slight of hand and it is mostly unseen to people who are not Deadheads or even just regular fans, kind of like this is simply the Dead album that has “Sugar Magnolia” and “Truckin’” to those who are impartial to (or hate) the band. To those who are impartial to the band, it is easy to just like those two songs but you would be missing out on the remaining eight masterpieces just like you would be missing the dual spelling of the album cover. American Beauty is the Dead at its most structured and masterful in terms of their studio albums. The bookends of the album are “Box Of Rain” and “Truckin’”—the latter being a song that everyone knows while the former is a really astonishing song because, up to this point, the band had not yet reached this level of writing a song that was not overly country-sounding to begin with, did not eventually veer into psychedelia, or contain a Jerry Garcia solo. It is just a well written breath of fresh air. “Friend Of The Devil” and “Brokedown Palace” are excellent examples of how the band refined its country rock sound after the release of Workingman’s Dead. “Candyman” is one of the best mellow Dead songs from the early ’70′s and when Garcia laments “Pretty lady ain’t got no friend/Till the candyman come round again” it is done in a classic old folk style. “Operator” is a fantastic and addictive Pigpen number about a guy just trying to contact his lady that only Pigpen could write and sing (“Directory don’t have it/Central done forgot it”). “Attics Of My Life” is a great spiritual song but it pales in comparison to “Ripple” which is one of the best spiritual songs ever penned. The song ends with the line “You who choose to lead must follow/But if you fall, you fall alone/If you should stand then who’s to guide you?/If I knew the way I would take you home” and it is so honest it may cause priests and atheists alike to stutter looking for an answer. Almost every song on American Beauty was written by Robert Hunter, a songwriter largely overlooked outside of the Dead circle but this is his, and the band’s, finest hour. This is the Grateful Dead album that could probably convert even the most staunchest of anti-Deadhead.

Various Artists – The Sun Records Collection

When you discover Elvis Presley you are, for lack of a better term, kind of a big deal and your legacy will be forever cemented as music royalty. Funny thing is Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records, also saw Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, B.B. King, and Howlin’ Wolf (and a host of others) call Sun Records their first home, which is certainly nothing to shrug at either. I know that a collection of old country and blues songs is a tough sell but Sun Records was one of the most important labels and is responsible for some of the most important artists and songs in the history of American music. I could go on and on about this box set, about how it contains a wide range of music that includes the classics “I Walk The Line,” “Great Balls Of Fire” to lesser-known gems “She May Be Yours (But She Comes To See Me….)” and “Down By The Riverside” but, like jazz, country and blues are styles of music you either like or you do not like. There is rarely any middle ground when it comes to those three genres. So, if you like old country and blues or if you are looking to refine your American music appreciation then The Sun Records Collection is a must-have as it sits a notch above Atlantic Records and Chess Records in terms of influence and impact.

Beck – Odelay (1996)

What would have happened if Highway 61 Revisited era Bob Dylan had worked with the Dust Brothers? Some of the songs may have sounded something like the ones on Odelay. Historically theoretical questions aside, it was Beck who made Odelay and it is nothing short of genius with the way he effortlessly fuses bizarre samples (“High 5 (Rock The Catskills)”), country-sounding songs (“Lord Only Knows”), rock-sounding songs (“Devil’s Haircut”), white-boy rap (“Where It’s At,” “Sissyneck,”), and even some genuinely disciplined tracks (the catchy “Jack-Ass” and the ultra-tight “Ramshackle,” which features a jazz bassist). The album is filled with lyrical gems such as “Match sticks strike/When I’m riding my bike/To the depot/’Cuz everyone knows my name/At the recreation center” and “Nobody knows where we been/Canceled rations are running thin/Watches tick out of tune/Falling apart like a readymade” but it is the intro (“You’ve been so long/Your blind eyes are gone/Your old bones are on their own/So take off your coat/Put a song in your throat”) to the aforementioned “Ramshackle” that shows that there is more to Beck than just equal parts kitsch, irony, sampling, and a geeky image. With “Where It’s At” Beck had reached a level of popularity that surpassed what he had achieved with “Loser,” and along the way he somehow managed to cultivate an even more full-bodied meme complete with the “two turntables and a microphone” line. Like the picture of the jumping Komondor that adorns the album cover, Odelay is filled with odd delights that may, on the surface, seem random when heard individually but when listened to as a whole the album is a fantastic and cohesive journey no matter what strange detours you are taken through. And is that not the best part of life anyway, the detours?

Van Morrison – Astral Weeks (1968)

I do not know what is more amazing about Astral Weeks, Van Morrison’s groundbreaking second solo album, that there is really no other album like it in rock or that it only took three days to make. Before this album Morrison had already made a name for himself as lead singer for his first group Them and their hit single, “Gloria” as well as his own hit single “Brown Eyed Girl” from his debut album. To say that Astral Weeks is a departure from his previous work is a vast understatement; this is an album that possesses an alien beauty not heard (either at the time or since) in the history of rock. This album flawlessly combines surreal music with surreal lyrics that ultimately seem to show an artist creatively trying something that most boast about doing but few are willing to execute. The title track starts the album and with it the lyrics “If I ventured in the slipstream/Between the viaducts of your dream/Where immobile steel rims crack/And the ditch in the back roads stop/Could you find me?” To read that question it would seem illogical to divine an answer but the music of “Astral Weeks” is such that you want to know what it means, possibly because Morrison asks multiple times “Could you find me?” “Sweet Thing” is quite possibly the most beautiful song Morisson has ever done—musically, it is unrivaled with its mixture of pitch-perfect guitar, bass, and cymbals; lyrically, Morrison’s description of the setting (both real and imagined within its context) has a real poetic quality to it that could easily compete with most of what Bob Dylan has wrote. “Beside You” is more of a spoken word-type of song as the music is very minimized whereas “Cypress Avenue,” “Madame George,” and “Ballerina” are wonderful textured songs that add violins, saxophones, flutes, and vibraphones to the mix. “Ballerina” is treated with so delicately and its lyrics are so descriptive you cannot help thinking of the song as more of a Renoir painting rather than a song. Someone from Rolling Stone once wrote that one could spend an entire lifetime trying to find the meaning of Astral Weeks. That is probably the highest compliment anyone can say of someone else’s art—that it will still resonate with you during your lifetime—and Astral Weeks is a work capable of that level of resonance.

The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses (1989)

In America, our “Summer of Love” was in 1967 and it prominently featured LSD; in 1988 and 1989 the UK had their own “Summer of Love” and it prominently featured Ecstasy. It was at this time that the mixing of indie rock and dance music was taking form in Manchester (also known as the “Madchester” scene) and The Stone Roses made their eponymous debut which seamlessly meshed rock, dance, and any other type of music that would sound great while on drugs and dancing. This is one of the best albums of the ’80′s. The Stone Roses starts^[1] with “I Wanna Be Adored,” “She Bangs The Drums,” and “Waterfall”—the first song being one of the best album openers of the late ’80′s, the second being one of the better rock songs to incorporate rock and dance-style beats, the third being one of the best rave rock songs (if “Waterfall” does not make you at least move your feet or make your head sway then I don’t know what to tell you). “Don’t Stop” is where the Madchester sound really kicks in as the music almost sounds like “Waterfall” in reverse but with an added Indian influence. “Bye Bye Badman” and “Made Of Stone” are good, true-to-form rock songs whereas “Shoot You Down” is a very good mellow song with John Squire’s slinky guitar work contributing to its addictive sound. Lead singer Ian Brown was not really known for having a great vocal ability but “(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister” is a great example of how good he could be. “This Is The One” is a great rock/psychedelic hybrid that leads perfectly up to “I Am The Resurrection.” “I Am The Resurrection” is one of the greatest songs of the ’80′s and is arguably the best song to end an album. Its blending of three distinct sounds into a perfect mix of eight minutes thirteen seconds stands as not only The Stone Roses’s masterpiece but probably the masterpiece of the entire Madchester and Acid House genre. The last two minutes of the song is nothing short of a whirlwind of guitars and drums blended into an masterful symphony of sound. The Stone Roses album cover and songs like “I Wanna Be Adored,” “Elizabeth My Dear,” and “I Am The Resurrection” either directly reference the 1968 Paris riots or made some commentary on British politics. Whether this appeals to you or not does not matter as this is one of the best albums of the last twenty years.

[1] I am using the original UK release for this review. The US release included the band’s previous UK singles “Elephant Stone” and “Fool’s Gold” on the album.

Pavement – Slanted And Enchanted (1992)

You could spend weeks trying to define what bands were more significant than others in the early ’90′s (i.e.-1990-1994) leading up to and during the “alternative” era. The way I see it is this: Nirvana was, in the paraphrased words of Tom Petty, “a Phoenix that rose up and destroyed everything that lay before it,” Pearl Jam was the most radio-friendly, Smashing Pumpkins was the best all-around band, Soundgarden had the lead singer with the most electricity coursing through him, and Alice In Chains probably had the better image but Pavement’s Slanted And Enchanted was the best overall album of the era. The key to Slanted is its intangibles; like Surfer Rosa before it, this is an album that could only be made when the label lackeys are at bay. For instance, take any of the following songs: “Trigger Cut/Wounded-Kite At :17,” “Two States,” “No Life Could Sing Her,” or “Conduit For Sale!” Hundreds, if not thousands, of bands try doing songs like this^[1] everyday and it almost always sounds pretentious or forced or just plain awful yet somehow Pavement was able to pull them off flawlessly. Even lyrics like “Ice baby/I saw your girlfriend and she was/Eating her fingers like they’re just another meal” have a nonsensical air about them that any garage band would try to disguise as poetry but when you hear those lyrics in “Summer Babe (Winter Version)” it somehow seems normal. “Loretta’s Scars” is a song that should have enjoyed the type of radio airplay and success that Screaming Trees enjoyed with “Nearly Lost You.” And while “Fame Throwa” and “Jackals, False Grails: The Lonesome Era” may start off similarly, they are textured differently and perfectly—”Fame Throwa” has a resounding solo that should last longer than it does and “Jackals” has a My Bloody Valentine-like shower of guitar layers. The album ends with “Our Singer,” a perfect blend of indie production value (the song sounds somewhat metallic and it ends before the final chord completely stops) and the lyrical lilting that is lead singer Stephen Malkmus (“I’ve been waitin’/An-ti-ci-patin’/Sun comes up/The skies won’t sink my soul”).

[1] What I mean by “songs like this” is this: bands are usually way too cognizant of their image (or what they want their image to be). This, in turn, usually translates to internal discussions about what their “sound” should be. If Band A were to try recording a song like “Two States” there’s a good chance someone in the band would want to drop it because it “sounds too ironic” or it “sounds too much like The Fall” or whatever. Pavement, on the other hand, seemed to have just said “Fuck it” and recorded “Two States” and was done with it. There’s something to be said about just recording songs without overanalyzing everything.

Phil Spector – Back To Mono (1958-1969)

In the ’50′s and ’60′s you had three iconic men in the music world who did not play an instrument at all—Sam Phillips, the founder of Sun Records, Colonel Tom Parker, who was Elvis’s manager and who forever altered music forever by turning music into a full-fledged business, and producer Phil Spector, who stood at the helm of a veritable pool of talent brimming with young songwriting geniuses such as Carole King and Paul Anka to performers who would sing a collection of timeless American classics such as The Righteous Brothers and The Ronettes. It is impossible to understate the significance of Phil Spector had on American pop music. Spector’s “Wall of Sound” included bringing in large ensembles of orchestra-trained musicians and playing in Gold Star Studios so that they could take advantage of its famed echo chambers and it paved the way for bands like The Beatles and The Beach Boys to make pop music with a lot of texture in the music. This box set includes three songs (“Be My Baby,” “Then He Kissed Me,” and “Unchained Melody”) and one disc (A Christmas Gift To You From Phil Spector) that are the hallmarks of Spector’s creative zenith. First, the songs. “Be My Baby,” with its famous opening drum beat, is one of the most important songs in American music not only because of that drum beat (which nearly everyone would want to duplicate thereafter) but because it also deeply affected Brian Wilson (he called it the greatest pop song ever written) to the point that his own musical outlook changed and he eventually recorded Pet Sounds, which had a direct effect on countless other artists. “Be My Baby” set off a firestorm of creative changes throughout pop music that it should automatically be on any top ten list of influential songs. Hearing the desperation in Ronnie Spector’s voice also changed how artists would forever sing love songs too. The Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me” does not open with a famous drum beat but a famous guitar intro and contains even more famous lyrics. The lyrics are twofold–on the one hand they are infamous because the line “He walked up to me and he asked me if I wanted to dance” sounds a little like “He walked up to me and he asked me if I wanted to die”; and on the other hand the lyrics are probably the best example of idyllic teen pop ever written (“I didn’t know just what to do/So I whispered ‘I love you’”). As for “Unchained Melody,” it is pretty self-explanatory as it is one of the most enduring songs ever written and is probably the most played song ever on the radio. Hell, this song didn’t even detract from a scene involving Demi Moore, Patrick Swayze, and clay. A Christmas Gift For You is simply the greatest Christmas album ever made. I do not know who Darlene Love is or what she did after this album but her versions of “Marshmallow World” and “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” are hands down the best Christmas songs ever made and any attempt by any artist (yes, I’m looking at you too Bono) to do a remake of either of these songs is simply an act of defiling Love’s version. The versions “Parade Of The Wooden Soldiers,” “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” and “Frosty The Snowman” are all top-notch as well. Spector was dubbed “The Tycoon of Teen” by Tom Wolfe and it is the perfect title as Spector was an integral part in creating girl bands and songs that went straight through the hearts and minds of teens everywhere. Phil Spector was one of the most innovative and influential record producers in American pop history and this box set contains the full prism of everything he produced during his mono and “Wall of Sound” days.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland (1968)

It has been said that once the United States established a fully functioning capitalist democracy the world had reached its peak; it would be mentally impossible to think of a new form of government to establish. You could make the same argument about Electric Ladyland as it probably represents the peak of what a person can do with an electric guitar. This was Hendrix’s third album, a swan song unbeknownst to everyone at the time, and it not only sets the gold standard for guitar craftsmanship but also for how to make a cover as “All Along The Watchtower” is not only the greatest Dylan cover (which is an exceptionally hard title to win) but it may also be the greatest cover in modern rock history in general. When you hear a cover song two thoughts should have to enter your mind before you can call it a classic—1) it must sound so powerful that you almost immediately forget someone else wrote it and 2) you come to the realization that the original artist was born to write it but not perform it. Which is exactly what happened here: Bob Dylan was born to write “All Along The Watchtower” but Jimi Hendrix was born to perform it. The rest of the album is filled with masterpieces like the live and power-charged “Voodoo Chile” to the ultra-electric “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).” The real gems on this album, though, are “Rainy Day, Dream Away” and “Still Raining, Still Dreaming” which are two songs that essentially bookend “1983… (A Merman I Should Turn To Be).” “Rainy Day, Dream Away” is so mellow and jazzy and features Hendrix playing his guitar in such a way as to mimic a saxophone and keyboard whereas “Still Raining, Still Dreaming” has a guitar solo filled with enough power that it almost sounds as if an airplane is about to take flight. Those two songs are some of Hendrix’s finest work. “Little Miss Thing” is a catchy number that features Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding on lead vocals, “Burning Of The Midnight Lamp” is an excellent and well-rounded track that includes everyone’s favorite European instrument, the harpsichord, and “Long Hot Summer Night” is just a great melodic delight. Less than two years later, Jimi Hendrix would be dead and the rock world would only have three studio albums left behind from the greatest guitarist ever. Luckily for us, all three of them were of staggering excellence—each subsequent release trumping the previous work.

Minutemen – Double Nickels On The Dime (1984)

On paper, you could oversimplify what Minutemen did: They played energetic punk rock tracks that rarely lasted two minutes long. To put it that way, you could draw the conclusion that they were no different than Ramones. And you would be horribly, horribly wrong. Minutemen were a San Pedro, California-based band who had a wide array of influences (everything from funk and jazz to Captain Beefheart and Creedence Clearwater Revival) and were not afraid to pay homage to them. Double Nickels On The Dime is the band’s magnum opus, coming in with a remarkable forty three songs (the longest song clocks in at 2:57), all with an unrivaled combination of social commentary, humor, energy, and a litany of other intangibles that are almost indescribable. Just look at some of the titles of the songs and try not to laugh or at least smirk when reading them—”Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing,” “Shit From An Old Notebook,” “Jesus And Tequilla,” “God Bows To Math,” “The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts,” “Maybe Partying Will Help,” “There Ain’t Shit On T.V. Tonight.” Lead singer D. Boon had a voice that consisted totally of raw energy and when he belts out “Serious as a heart attack!” on “D.’s Car Jam/Anxious Mo-Fo,” the album’s opening track, you get the feeling that you are in the presence of a possibly semi-demented genius. The album title is slang for driving 55 mph on Interstate 10 and between the album cover and the album opening and closing with car sounds, this album is all about moving. Some songs are straight-up punk, others are funky, some are accoustic, some are avant-garde, and there’s even a live song sprinkled in to the mix; stop and go, stop and go. Minutemen were the second band to sign with the legendary label SST Records and were becoming a cult force in California. While you may think of The Red Hot Chili Peppers when you think of the L.A.-style funk punk, there is more energy in the forty eight seconds of “Please Don’t Be Gentle With Me” than any song the Peppers have ever done. Minutemen was the band Sublime wished it could be. Double Nickels On The Dime would wind up being the band’s penultimate studio album after a van accident left D. Boon dead in 1985. The band’s last live show was as an opening act for R.E.M. on their Lifes Rich Pageant tour. Listening to the album now you cannot help but wonder how their career would have turned out, especially when you hear “History Lesson, Pt 2″ as the line “Our band could be your life” has an added resonance to it. This is one of the best albums of the ’80′s.

Because of the parameters I put on this Top 80 albums list, there were certain types of music and albums I wouldn’t include—namely “Best Of”, electronic, and R&B/rap/hip hop albums. So, below is a list of honorable mentions I would include if these types of albums were allowed and/or the list became a Top 200 or 300 list. (Note: these are in no particular order and forgive me if I’ve forgotten some artists as there will be a Group 2 honorable mentions before the Top 10.)

“Best Of” albums
Aretha Franklin
Sam Cooke
Cream
Otis Redding
Carole King
The Police
Curtis Mayfield
The Temptations
The Supremes
Talking Heads
Sam and Dave
Madonna
The Animals
Al Green
Randy Newman
Sly and The Family Stone
Stevie Wonder
Rod Stewart
The Cure
Patti Smith
Prince
Queen
Grandmaster Flash
The Blues Magoos
MC5
James Brown
Elvis Presley
Johnny Cash
Carl Perkins

R&B/rap/hip hop albums
Parliament – Mothership Connection
Funkadelic – America Eats Its Young
N.W.A. – Straight Outta Compton
Beastie Boys – Paul’s Boutique
Public Enemy – It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
Dr. Dre – The Chronic
Snoop Dogg – Doggy Style
Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On
Run-D.M.C. – Raising Hell

Electronic albums
Chemical Brothers – Dig Your Own Hole
Various Artists – Machine Soul: An Odyssey Into Electronic Dance Music
Various Artists – Urbal Beats, Volume 1
Daft Punk – Homework
Kraftwerk – Trans Europe Express
Massive Attack – Blue Lines
Stereolab – Margarine Eclipse
Stereolab – Mars Audiac Quintet
The Orb – The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld
Brian Eno – Another Green World

The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers (1971)

Sticky Fingers represented a series of firsts for The Rolling Stones; it was their first album on their newly-formed label, their first studio album of the ’70′s, and their first album without Brian Jones. Upon Jones’s death the band brought in Mick Taylor and with him alongside Keith Richards the Stones finally had a guitarist who could play with as much intensity (sometimes more) as Richards. Taylor was a gift from God and Sticky Fingers was a rock juggernaut because of him. “Brown Sugar” and “Bitch” are the two singles that received the most radio attention and for good reason as “Brown Sugar” has the most recognizable opening guitar riff this side of “I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction)” and “Bitch” is a great bass- and horn-heavy classic. “Wild Horses” is one of the best mellow songs in the Stones catalog, “Moonlight Mile” is probably the most musically beautiful song they have ever done, and “Dead Flowers” is hands down the best country song they have ever done. “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” is a rare Stones treat: a song that clocks in at over seven minutes. The guitar solo in “Sway” sounds like a precursor to every solo in any ’90′s-era Aerosmith song and “You Gotta Move” is a reminder that the Stones were masters of the white boy blues. “Sister Morphine,” surprisingly enough, is about drugs. This album is loaded with drug references to the point that “Dead Flowers” even references heroin—how many country songs have you heard of ever reference heroin directly? One can certainly suppose that the flurry of drug references here was due in large part because the band, but more specifically Richards, was beginning to hit the hard stuff a lot more, which is why Mick Taylor’s presence was so important as he provided the unintentional balance. Sticky Fingers is one of the best Rolling Stones albums and it laid the groundwork for their eventual masterpiece.

The Beatles – Revolver (1966)

If there was any question as to the magnitude of greatness The Beatles were embarking upon when Rubber Soul was released, then Revolver left nothing in doubt. This album features more songwriting from George Harrison (the perfectly written “Taxman,” another Indian-inspired song—”Love You To,” and the underrated “I Want To Tell You”), an increasing complexity and maturity in John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s songwriting (“For No One,” “Doctor Robert,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” “Eleanor Rigby,”), a Ringo Starr classic (“Yellow Submarine”), and, most importantly, “Tomorrow Never Knows”—the song that forever raised the bar for all psychedelic music thereafter. Revolver is one of those albums that come along wherein critics, musicians, and fans alike are all taken aback. For instance, take “Tomorrow Never Knows.” That song single-handedly united critics in praising the band’s ability to navigate uncharted musical territory, inspired a legion of bands to try and make something just as groundbreaking, and we as fans simply hitching along for the ride. “Here, There, And Everywhere” and “Good Day Sunshine” further reinforce Paul McCartney as one of the greatest pop singers of our time, as only he could make something like “I want her everywhere/And if she’s beside me/I know I need never care” sound more poignant than it is while not sounding cheesy at all. The song from Revolver that probably best conveys the significance of The Beatles and where they were at creatively while making this album is “I’m Only Sleeping” as it is not terribly complicated nor groundbreaking yet when you hear it it still sounds amazingly fresh, and with it comes the realization that no other band could ever craft a song like that.

The Who – Tommy (1968)

The words “rock” and “opera” should never be combined, right? It does not inherently make sense and a concept album billed as a “rock opera” should sound awful. Somehow, when The Who made Tommy it made complete sense to combine the two words into one idea about a deaf, dumb, and blind boy’s journey to self-discovery. The aptly named “Overture” starts the album and lays the foundation for what the album will become musically and gives us the first part of the story, namely that Tommy’s father is reported missing in the war and Tommy is born. The rest of the album and story unfold as such: Tommy’s father returns home from the war when Tommy is seven and kills his mother’s new lover and the shock from witnessing this event has rendered him deaf and blind until he is miraculously cured by way of an Acid Queen (“Pay before we start”), a doctor who is able to open up his subconscious, and the smashing of a mirror. From here, he eventually tries to recruit others in the hopes that they will have the same spiritual awakening he himself went through (the fact that his “recruits” ultimately become disillusioned is a great metaphor for the counterculture, however unintentional it may have been). Tommy, surprisingly enough, is deeply complex and Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey’s usage of mirrors and descriptions of what Tommy sees subconsciously help make the album feel like a legitimate story. A great example of this is “Christmas,” a song about how Tommy’s mother has become worried about her son’s soul because he is deaf and blind and therefore has no concept of Christmas or of Jesus. She even laments, “How can men who’ve never seen light be enlightened?” To be sure, Tommy includes some dark subject matter with songs like “Cousin Kevin” (Tommy is causelessly tortured) and “Fiddle About” (Tommy is molested)—songs that make you wonder what Townshend, Daltrey, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon really think the meaning of redemption is and to what extent their protoganist must endure in order to find it. Overall, though, this is The Who’s finest work and with radio hits like “Pinball Wizard” and “I’m Free” mixed in seamlessly with little-heard classics like “Amazing Journey,” “Sparks,” “Go To The Mirror!” “Sally Simpson,” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It” it makes for a timeless masterpiece. Even if “rock opera” still sounds nonsensical.

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin IV (1971)

Thirty six years after its release, Led Zeppelin IV (or The Fourth Album, or Untitled, or Four Symbols, or Runes, or ZoSo—whichever nomenclature you may be partial to), still stands the test of time. “Rock And Roll” has been used in Cadillac advertisements, “The Battle Of Evermore” is essentially the books-on-tape version of The Lord Of The Rings, “Stairway To Heaven” is still the song in which newborn babies come in to this world knowing the opening chords, and everyone has heard the opening lines of “Black Dog” more times than they would care to admit to. But you know what? It does not matter. It is still nearly impossible to hate any of the aforementioned songs, “Four Sticks” is still one of the best Zeppelin songs to have never seen radio daylight, “Going To California” is still one of their best mellow songs, “Misty Mountain Hop” is still one of the best songs you can listen to while driving, and “When The Levee Breaks” is still one of the best Zeppelin songs of all time (which automatically puts it in the running for best rock songs of all time). We may never know what a hedgerow is or why Robert Plant wanted to make us burn, make us sting when he saw you shake that thing or even why Memphis Minnie had anything to do with “When The Levee Breaks” but all that matters is that this is the Zeppelin album that everyone left a mark on (literally, because each symbol on the album cover was unique to each member) and, because of that, this is probably the tightest Zeppelin album of their catalog. In spite of the enormous popularity and near-perfect execution of “Stairway To Heaven” and how that song seemingly defines Zeppelin for a lot of people, it is the apocalyptic “When The Levee Breaks” that is the standout song of the album; between Bonham’s drums being rigged in a hallway to produce its thunderous sound and Plant’s otherworldly screams, this song is the total package for any rock fan as well as showing off the band’s ability to play power blues like no one else.

Liz Phair – Exile In Guyville (1993)

Exile In Guyville, Liz Phair’s unbelievable debut, is filled with so many excellent songs and lyrics that it is nearly impossible to know where to begin. The is one of the greatest albums of the ’90′s. To start with the lyrics look no further than “Divorce Song,” a song of such astonishing frankness and complexity (“…it’s harder to be friends than lovers/And you shouldn’t try to mix the two/’Cause if you do it and you’re still unhappy/Then you know that the problem is you”) that it could be one of the greatest songs, in terms of realism, about a relationship ever sung. Another great example of Phair’s lyrical ability is “Check out the thinning hair/Check out the aftershave/Check out America/You’re looking at it, babe” in “Soap Star Joe,” a song presumably about the Wrong Guy though it is unknown if the song is autobiographical or not. Either way, it is that type of sardonic delivery that can be felt all throughout the album. From a musical perspective, “Explain It To Me” is a mesmerizing thing of beauty to listen to, “Mesmerizing” is a fantastic and addictive number, and “Fuck And Run,” in spite of the lyrical content, is a great homage (though I do not know if it was intentional) to the early Rolling Stones style of music. “6′ 1,” “Help Me Mary,” “Girls! Girls! Girls!,” and “Shatter” are all great songs and were capable of being strong second-level radio hits, even though it was ultimately “Never Said” (which, oddly enough, is one of the weaker songs Guyville has to offer). “Flower” is the kind of song whose lyrics make an immediate impression on the listener because there are such blunt role position reversals involved (i.e.-the chorus line of “Every time I see your face/I get all wet between my legs/…” or “I want to fuck you like a dog/I’ll take you home and make you like it”). Liz Phair, up to this point, has never made anything near the quality or gravity of Exile In Guyville and she probably never will. This is not a knock against her or her creativity; it’s just that this type of masterpiece can elude an artist their entire life, let alone trying to achieve the difficult task of creating two in a lifetime.

The Kinks – Something Else (1967)

When put up against The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who in terms of British Invasion bands, it is easy to forget about The Kinks. We tend to think of “You Really Got Me,” “All Day And All Of The Night,” and “Lola” and that is probably it when you hear the band’s name. Something Else, the band’s seventh album, is a veritable treasure trove of music that barely got any radio play here in the States when it came out let alone after four decades have passed. The Kinks would later become a band that made albums with very definite themes but Something Else is a bit of a hodge-podge of styles that shows a band unafraid to make a rock album comprised of many flavors. The bookends of the album are “David Watts” and “Waterloo Sunset” with the former being a remarkably addictive and humorous song (“I’m a dull and simple lad/Cannot tell water from champagne”) about teenage envy and the latter is Ray Davies’ masterpiece that could rival most songs by The Beatles in terms of excellence. In between, you have songs that you will instantly want to sing along with (“Death Of A Clown,” “Tin Soldier Man”), songs that will instantly make you feel British (“Two Sisters,” “Afternoon Tea”), and songs with a perfect amount of poignancy attached to them (“No Return,” “Funny Face”). “Situation Vacant” and “Love Me Till The Sun Shines” are quintessential ’60′s-era rock pop numbers that still satisfy the soul. “Lazy Old Sun” sounds like a weirder version of “Strawberry Fields Forever” but if The Kinks borrowed from The Beatles you get the feeling that the debt was repaid because it sounds as if Paul McCartney may have used “End Of The Season” as inspiration for “Honey Pie.” If for nothing else, Something Else gave the world “Waterloo Sunset,” a song so perfect both musically and lyrically that if you have not heard it yet you are missing out. Or, to put it another way: you do not have an adequate representation of ’60′s rock until you have heard “Waterloo Sunset”—the song that should define The Kinks rather than “Lola.”

The Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream (1993)

In Billy Corgan’s own words, his vision for Siamese Dream was that listeners would think to themselves, “What the fuck was that?” after hearing it. Nirvana may have made the initial splash, Chris Cornell may have had the better, stronger voice, and Pearl Jam may have been the more complete package of sound and image but The Smashing Pumpkins were the best all-around rock band of them all and “Cherub Rock” was the song that made everything else seem irrelevant. When you first heard “Cherub Rock” you probably thought to yourself, “Who is that?” Siamese Dream was the band’s second album and was a much-needed breath of fresh air amongst the growing identity crisis that alternative radio had spawned as you had a band that created great rock, regardless of whether or not it was classified as alternative, indie, or mainstream. Chances are if you did not like “Cherub Rock” you probably liked “Today,” “Rocket,” or “Disarm,” the other singles from the album. “Today” was a hit in much the same vain as “Born In The U.S.A.” and “The One I Love” was—a song that became popular in spite of the fact that the lyrics were completely misconstrued. “Disarm” is the token slow song of the album but it struck a nerve with listeners, probably because its gloomy music hits you right from the beginning; it does not hold back and the lyrics come across as refreshingly honest. “Rocket,” “Quiet,” “Geek, U.S.A.” and “Silverfuck” are all outstanding rock numbers that only get better with age. What is most astonishing about Siamese Dream are “Hummer,” “Mayonnaise,” and “Soma”—songs that are deep in texture and have a palpable feel to them. “Spaceboy” is almost like the ’90′s version of “Wish You Were Here,” both in musical style and in personal narrative. The making of Siamese Dream was fraught with production issues (drummer Jimmy Chamberlain’s drug problem and Billy Corgan’s growing control problems that alienated James Iha and D’Arcy Wretzky, just to name two really big things) but somehow it was finished with the band still in tact. Towards the end of “Hummer” Corgan sings, “Ask yourself a question/Anyone but me/I ain’t free/Do you feel/Love is real?” That, more than anything, seems to sum up one of the most important (and tormented) bands of the ’90′s.

Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation (1988)

Daydream Nation, Sonic Youth’s sixth album, finds a band that not only has more to say but are also willing to take more time to craft its boundaries and layers. Who says discipline is a bad thing? On previous albums, Sonic Youth were, musically speaking, still finding their voice—still toying around with out-of-tune guitars and distortion; Daydream Nation showcased what the band’s talent could ultimately produce. Five of the twelve songs clock in at almost seven minutes or longer and songs like “The Sprawl” end in a planned slowdown rather than a fiery burst. One thing that separates Sonic Youth from other bands is that three of its members—lead guitarist Thurston Moore, bassist Kim Gordon, and guitarist Lee Ranaldo—can all sing, giving the band three distinct voices.^[1] “Teenage Riot” gets the album started; it starts out slow and with Gordon singing “You’re it” a lot but then eventually forms into one of the better opening rock songs from an ’80′s album. The middle of “Silver Rocket” is classic Sonic Youth, complete with distortion and every instrument getting louder and louder but “The Sprawl” and “‘Cross The Breeze” follow it and provide some traditional rock parameters to be set against the chaos. One of the most suprising things about Daydream Nation is that it is Ranaldo’s songs, “Eric’s Trip,” “Hey Joni,” and “Rain King,” that may be the best and most polished (the solo in “Hey Joni” is among Sonic Youth’s best). “Candle” is an overlooked gem from the ’80′s indie catalog and “Kissability” is what it is: a Kim Gordon song you will either love or hate. “Trilogy” ends the album and it is a three-songs-in-one number clocking in at over fourteen minutes long. The final part of the trilogy, “Eliminator Jr.,” is a microcosm of the band’s sound—crashing cymbals, jagged guitars, and bass lines that burst out of the speakers, all while Gordon screams with untutored abandon and finally culminating in a thundering wall of noise. Sonic Youth has always been a darling of rock critics and trendy music consumers alike but Daydream Nation really is deserving of its acclaim as it is The Velvet Undeground & Nico of its generation.

[1] I can’t adequately describe their voices in one word so I’ll shoot for the best descriptions I can: Thurston Moore’s voice is a perfect indie-rock voice much like Chuck D has a perfect rap voice (if that makes sense), Kim Gordon’s range can go from semi-sultry to raw screaming, and Lee Ranaldo’s voice can probably best be described as matter-of-fact.

The Beatles – Rubber Soul (1965)

Rubber Soul, the sixth album by The Beatles, represents the creative turning point for the band as Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting became more complex and the music itself had reached a new level of craftsmanship. You need only listen to “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” to hear the newly found musical and lyrical complexity. “Norwegian Wood,” in addition to being one of the first pop songs to include a sitar (or any Indian-influenced instrument, for that matter), is probably the best early example of how Bob Dylan affected John Lennon’s songwriting as Lennon’s earlier work did not possess any weight equal to “I once had a girl/Or should I say/She once had me.” “Drive My Car” possesses a humor rarely found in later Beatles releases whereas “You Won’t See Me,” “Think For Myself” and “I’m Looking Through You” are big departures from previous Beatles songs about relationships. Musically, “What Goes On,” “Wait,” and “Run For Your Life” have such a tight, cohesive quality to them that would be the hallmark of the band’s later releases. “If I Needed Someone” is yet another classic by the oft unheralded George Harrison. The crown jewels of Rubber Soul, though, may be “Michelle” and “In My Life”—the former being one of McCartney’s best ballads and the latter being quite possibly the greatest reflective song ever penned.

The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground (1969)

Even though The Velvet Underground were only around for four years and only released four albums, the band can still be broken down into two very distinct eras. The first two albums, The Velvet Underground & Nico and White Light/White Heat, was (for lack of a better phrase) the Groundbreaking Era which saw the band pioneering a sound that had yet to be heard. This era also had John Cale firmly entrenched in the band. The Velvet Underground, the band’s eponymous third album, ushered in what could be called (again, for lack of a better phrase) the Songwriting Era. This era saw John Cale replaced by Doug Yule and also saw Lou Reed firmly in command and the direction of the band shift from crafting avant-garde rock to music that placed Reed’s songwriting front and center. The album starts with “Candy Says,” a song about someone debating whether or not to go through with a sex change operation (“Candy says/I’ve come to hate my body/And all that it requires/In this world”). Because Reed’s songwriting is prominently on display here you get a wide scope of styles, ranging from the nonsensical (“What Goes On,” a classic example of Reed’s ability to write a song about nothing yet it seems to mean something) to the literal (“Pale Blue Eyes”) to the uncharcteristic (“Jesus”). There is one song, however, that does take a page from their Groundbreaking Era playbook and it is “The Murder Mystery”—a song in which Reed and Sterling Morrison sing one set of lyrics fast and slow, followed by Yule and Tucker singing another set of lyrics fast and slow. This back-and-forth continues for almost nine minutes and makes it one of the more unique songs in rock. “Beginning To See The Light” and “I’ve Been Set Free” are other great examples of Reed coming in to his own lyrically. “Some Kinda Love” is one of the best songs Reed has ever penned and the lines “Between thought and expression/Lies a lifetime” are probably one of the greatest rock lyrics uttered because you would be hard pressed to breakdown life in to simpler terms. The albums ends with “After Hours” and is sung by Maureen Tucker and the fact that she did not want to sing it is palpable as you listen to it, but it is the poignant lyrics that Reed wrote that overshadows all of her vocal shortcomings. The way she sings “I’d never have to see the day again/Once more/I’d never have to see the day again” is spot-on, flaws and all. This album is an excellent collection of overlooked gems.

Bob Dylan – Blonde On Blonde (1966)

In 1965, Bob Dylan released two groundbreaking albums back-to-back, forever altered folk music by going electric, and destroyed the conventional three minute barrier that radio imposed on singles. Needless to say, the bar was set pretty high but in 1966 he released Blonde On Blonde, which was the first double album of original songs to be released by a rock artist (yet another convention turned on its head). “Rainy Day Women 12 & 35″ starts the album and with its “Everybody must get stoned!” chorus and raucous sounds and laughter from the band set the tone as this album is probably the loosest of Dylan’s masterpieces. To be sure, there are songs on the album that sound as if they were handled with the utmost care and precision but for every “Visions Of Johanna” there is a “Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat” waiting in the wings. It was around this time that Dylan was working with The Band a lot, both on tours and as professional friends in the studio, and you can hear the influence as this album has a generous amount of musical depth. “Temporary Like Achilles,” “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” and “4th Time Around” each possess a musical quality that Dylan had yet to display since going electric. Lyrically, Dylan was still on top of his game as “Visions Of Johanna” and “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands” are eerie, hallucinatory love songs, and “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again” and “4th Time Around” have a narrative that only Dylan could write. But it is “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” that probably best serves as a microcosm for Blonde On Blonde as it represents Dylan at his most humorous lyrically (“You know it balances on your head/Just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine”) as well as representing the end of an era for Dylan. After the release of Blonde On Blonde, he would be injured in a motorcycle accident and his albums would rarely possess the same verve, either musically or lyrically.

Nirvana – Nevermind (1991)

For every one Nirvana there are roughly seven hundred million other bands whose music never crosses over into mainstream success. To be sure, some bands are more than fine with having no crossover success (see: Sonic Youth) but until Nevermind was played on MTV and Top 40 radio you could always count on alt-rock bands eventually being relegated to college stations and other niche outlets. There was a reason MTV had 120 Minutes on the weekend and Rolling Stone had the “College Top 10 Albums” on the back of each issue. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” forever changed the rock landscape in 1991 as it single-handedly killed heavy metal, altered the fashion world of teenagers, and paved the way for an army of other alt-rock bands to get MTV and radio exposure that they otherwise would not have received. Just to prove that this was no one-hit wonder fluke the other singles “In Bloom,” “Come As You Are,” and “Lithium” were met warmly and enjoyed chart success too. Because the spotlight was placed so firmly on Kurt Cobain, it’s easy to forget about Krist Novoselic’s and Dave Grohl’s contributions to the album, the former being an underappreciated bass player in the same vain as Billy Gould from Faith No More and the latter being one of the best modern rock drummers. Listen to “Territorial Pissings” and you may be reminded of how energetic Grohl was and how weird it was to see a drummer on MTV beating the hell out of his kit and not being named Lars Ulrich. “Just one more special message to go/And then I’m done and I can go home” sings Cobain on “On A Plain,” which, if combined with the somber sound of “Something In The Way,” seems to foreshadow his own fight with success and ultimate endpoint.

Ramones – Ramones (1976)

Fourteen songs, twenty nine minutes, two (sometimes three) chords. That is it. Some of the songs are about sniffing glue, apprehension about going into a basement, beating on a brat, wanting to be someone’s boyfriend, and not walking around with someone. Ramones was simple in every aspect of the word but it provided a necessary balance in the punk rock world as not everyone was quite ready (or ever is ready) for the “militant” school of punk or the “government awareness” school of punk. The debut by the band in which no one’s real last name is Ramone starts off with “Blitzkrieg Bop,” a song in which you have heard countless times in commercials but may have never known who sang it. Because most of the songs contain two chords and feature Joey Ramone singing in the same style (unique as it may be) on almost every track, you either connect to the music or you do not. If you like “Beat On The Brat” and “53rd & 3rd” you will almost certainly like “Judy Is A Punk” and “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.” What is often overlooked about Ramones is how great “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You” and “Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World” are—the two songs that end the album. Because the two songs play back-to-back uninterrupted, you have yourself a Ramones song clocking in at almost four minutes. Which is almost a world record for them.

Pink Floyd – The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967)

The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Pink Floyd’s debut album, starts with “Astronomy Domine” and ends with “Bike.” Though the two songs hardly have anything in common sound-wise, they do share a theme—space. “Astronomy Domine” quite literally feels like you’re about to go into space (complete with S.O.S signals, garbled intercom voices, and a loud burst of air) whereas “Bike” ends with a more abstract take on space with the lyrics “I know a room of musical tunes/Some rhyme/Some ching/Most of them are clockwork/Let’s go into the other room/And make them work.” After these lyrics, you hear footsteps walking down stairs and a door opening before hearing a wild mixture of sounds, thus suggesting that even the album itself needs additional space before it can properly end. In between these two songs lie some of the greatest psychedelic songs ever produced. “Lucifer Sam” and “Matilda Mother” are excellent examples of lead singer Syd Barrett’s ability to write simple, fairy tale-inspired lyrics that feel right at home set against psychedelia. “Flaming” and “Chapter 24″ show the first glimpses of Rick Wright’s outstanding touch with a keyboard. I don’t know exactly what “Pow R. Toc H.” is supposed to be but I defy anyone to not find the jazzy interlude in between the bizarre vocalizations catchy. “Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk” is one of the most assaulting psychedelic rock songs and displays the hallmark of Barrett’s guitar style: fast, but short and jagged riffs. “The Gnome,” on the other hand, is probably the most minimalist psychedelic rock song but its intercutting voices and vibraphone could make even a sober person feel high. “Interstellar Overdrive” is, well, fairly explanatory. The song ends with a fervent crescendo of all instruments zooming back and forth between speaker channels. This was the only album in which Syd Barrett played a role in every song (he would become mentally and physically decimated by LSD within a year) but his footprint was lasting, both in terms of influence amongst other artists and within Pink Floyd as they used plenty of Syd’s tricks in later releases.

Pixies – Surfer Rosa (1988)

Surfer Rosa, the debut album from Pixies, has a little bit of everything—an ode to a superhero named Tony, songs about broken faces and bodies, a song about a large penis, some conversations amongst band members and the producer, and enough fast-paced rock set to booming drums to qualify it as being one of the cornerstone albums of the alternative music genre. “Vamos” best sums up the album with its raw energy and sped up drumming set to lead singer Frank Black’s intermittent screams, intermittent Spanish, and always hyper delivery of lyrics like “They’ll come and play/Their friends will say/Your daddy’s rich/Your momma’s a pretty thing.” While things like attention to detail and predetermined themes are always important while creating any art, there is something to be said of capturing raw power while everyone involved is still untouched by success. It cannot be planned and most of the time only time itself can be the final verdict in determining its importance but Surfer Rosa has that intangible quality of everyone involved in its creation being blissfully naive of conventions that other bands would suffer from. Songs like “Bone Machine,” “Something Against You,” “Broken Face,” and “Cactus” can probably only be made by a band totally comfortable with itself and safely shielded from record label lackeys. “Where Is My Mind?” is such a perfect song that, had the album been released a couple years later, it would have probably been a radio hit. (If you have seen Fight Club, this song ends the movie.) The album ends with “I’m Amazed” and “Brick Is Red,” two songs whose lyrics I am sure have a point but I’m not quite sure what. But just like the topless woman on the cover, why question its meaning?

R.E.M. – Document (1987)

Document thrust R.E.M. out of the pot smoke-filled college dorms and Art rooms and in to the Top 40 atmosphere with “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” and “The One I Love.” This album also doubled as Michael Stipe’s coming out party in terms of his lyrics becoming more politically themed (“Look who bought the myth/By jingo, buy America”) and having more of a critical stance against the Reagan Era ’80′s (“The time to rise has been engaged/You’re better best to rearrange”). R.E.M. used fire as its omnipresent metaphor throughout Document, presumably as a catharsis to purge out our political problems. The lyrics “Listen to the Congress/Where we propagate confusion/Primitive and wild/Fire on the hemisphere below,” the song “Fireplace,” and the setting for “Oddfellows Local 151″ taking place behind a firehouse all reinforce this symbolism, as well as the sleeve of the album saying “File Under Fire.” As for the music, “Exhuming McCarthy” and “King Of Birds” are sometimes forgotten gems whereas “Lightnin’ Hopkins” and “Oddfellows Local 151″ are some of R.E.M.’s best pure rock songs. “Strange” is a fun little number and is one of the few covers the band ever did that made it on to an LP. Document is the one of those quintessential Reagan Era albums in which the band points out society’s problems but offers no solutions (and we all feel fine).

The Clash – The Clash (1977)^[1]

If you have ever wondered how The Clash came to be known as “the only band that matters” or why their breed of punk rock is seen as being overwhelmingly greater than everyone else’s, you only have to listen to “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais”^[2]. The song effortlessly shifts from rock to ska and back again and even includes a harmonica solo, all while never losing its punk aesthetic. While The Sex Pistols made a more emotional splash (their name and Johnny Rotten’s persona inspired a knee-jerk shock) and are important in the overall history of rock, The Clash destroyed The Sex Pistols and countless other punk acts musically. “Clash City Rockers,” “Complete Control,” and “Janie Jones” would be considered masterpieces if a lesser band had made them but on The Clash, The Clash’s debut album, they just begin to scratch the surface of the band’s greatness. “I’m So Bored With The U.S.A.” and “I Fought The Law” were instant punk classics. Then, there are songs like “White Riot” which is just all-out energy from the beginning and “Police & Thieves” which is a six minute reggae/ska-inspired gem which would foreshadow the band’s creative capacity. The Clash provides a excellent glimpse of a band that would later make one of the most important albums in rock history and become an enormously influential group.

[1] 1977 is the year of the UK release. It was released in the US in 1979.

[2] This song only appears on the US release.

The Rolling Stones – Beggars Banquet (1968)

From 1968 to 1972 The Rolling Stones released four consecutive albums that were so great that not even The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin or The Velvet Underground could replicate that level of excellence in a five-year period. Beggars Banquet is the first album of this streak. “Sympathy For The Devil” is the kind of song that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were born to do. Its depiction of the Devil as someone who demands courtesy and sympathy, while recounting all of the horrible things he’s responsible for is something that defined the Stones at the time—something dark, yet refined. “No Expectations” is one of the best Rolling Stones songs and would also wind up being one of the last to have Brian Jones’s mark on it. “Parachute Woman” and “Stray Cat Blues” have a sexual energy about them that only Mick Jagger could perform. The Rolling Stones were, at their core, a white-boy blues band and “Prodigal Son” is one of their best pure blues songs, whereas “Street Fighting Man” is a good example of a more contemporary power blues number. “Jig-Saw Puzzle” comes across a half-hearted attempt to emulate Dylan’s writing style and, thankfully, they did not commit to explore more of that style. The album ends with “Factory Girl” and “Salt Of The Earth,” the former being a great mellow number while the latter encourages us all to “drink to the hard working people.” When you combine the fact that Brian Jones is practically invisible on the album and that the band’s previous release—the much-reviled pyschadelic experiment that was Their Satanic Majesties Request—fell mostly on deaf ears, it’s amazing how much this band righted their ship and began making some unbelievable music.

The Who – Who’s Next (1971)

The album’s title is a question but doesn’t include a question mark and the opening track is “Baba O’Riley” but people sometimes call it “Teenage Wasteland.” The album cover involves something akin to the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey yet the photo shows the band having just urinated on it. For all of the oddities surrounding this album (the original idea behind it being a futuristic story that could be loosely compared to The Matrix), Who’s Next is a tour de force that sounds more like a back-to-basics-type effort rather than a partial concept album that was never fully realized. The aforementioned “Baba O’Riley” legitimized the synthesizer in rock and probably has the most memorable intro of the entire Who catalog. “Love Ain’t For Keeping” and “My Wife” are oft overlooked gems, whereas “The Song Is Over” is one of the better ballads the band has made. “Going Mobile” probably could have been a single if it weren’t for “Behind Blue Eyes” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”—both songs having lyrics that have been forever ingrained in the rock Pantheon (“No one knows what it’s like/To be the bad man” and “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss,” respectively). “Won’t Get Fooled Again” is probably The Who’s masterpiece and Roger Daltrey’s scream towards the end of the song is something that has never even come close to being matched. Which makes sense being that they were billed as the “loudest band in the world.”

PJ Harvey – Dry (1992)

Dry, PJ Harvey’s debut, possesses a palpable, desparate energy that makes one wonder if the album is a typical narrative about love, frailty, and pain or if it is about a woman who is systematically falling apart. The landscape of the album is laid with some irony (“Must be a way I can dress to please him”), matter-of-factness (“I’m happy and bleeding for you”), pain (“You looking for the sun, boy?/The sun doesn’t shine down here”), a tinge of odd humor (“Gonna wash that man right out of my hair”), and even some Samson and Delilah references. “Oh My Lover,” “O Stella,” “Dress,” and “Victory” start the album and set the tone early with Harvey’s own version of bass-heavy rock and tortured-sounding vocals. “Sheela-Na-Gig” and “Plants And Rags” are very strong songs, despite their diametrically opposed arrangements and lyrics. But the crown jewel here is “Fountain.” Not only are the lyrics brilliant (“What to do/When everything’s left you?”) but the music conveys perfectly what Harvey’s story is–the desperation of a woman waiting for her “big man” to be brought back to her. Upon its release, Dry was a chart-topper in the UK but relegated to niche listeners here in the US until Rid Of Me was released the following year. This is one of the best albums of 1992.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Axis: Bold As Love (1967)

The album cover says it all: this is the most colorful album Hendrix made during his short tenure on this earth. Axis: Bold As Love starts out with “EXP,” a faux interview about aliens that bleeds into “Up From The Skies”—one of Hendrix’s best mellow songs. “Spanish Castle Magic,” “Ain’t No Telling,” “You Got Me Floatin’,” and “She’s So Fine” are all great examples of Hendrix’s ability to take songs with simple rock structure and turn them in to more amplified experiences. “If 6 Was 9″ is one of Hendrix’s better dabblings in counterculture themes mixed in with psychedelia. The real beauty of the album lies in songs like “Wait Until Tomorrow,” “Castles Made Of Sand,” and “One Rainy Wish” as each of them show that Hendrix’s appreciation for Bob Dylan was starting to take form in his songwriting (“Down the street you can hear her scream, ‘You’re a disgrace’/As she slams the door in his drunken face/And now he stands outside and all the neighbors start to gossip and drool”). “Little Wing” finds Hendrix at his most melodic; it’s not only one of his best songs but probably one of the greatest songs under the two and a half minute mark. The album ends with “Bold As Love,” a song in which the lyrics playfully describe people and thoughts as colors (“And all these emotions of mine keep holding me from/Giving my life to a rainbow like you”) and tells the listener to ask the axis, as he apparently knows everything. The end of “Bold As Love” is a rousing, sonic guitar solo that attempts to transport you to another world which, if you repeat the album, makes the first track about aliens all the more plausible.

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin II (1969)

If Led Zeppelin were already immensely popular and a force to be reckoned with, then “Whole Lotta Love” thrust them into another stratosphere. Everything about this song reinvented rock in some facet–the whirring riff that occurs after every “Wanna whole lotta love” is delivered, the minimalist-then-explosive drum and guitar solo, and Robert Plant yelling with all his might, “Woman! You need… love!” just to name three that would become staples of the hard rock formula. The combo of “Heartbreaker” and “Living Loving Maid (She’s Just A Woman)” is a classic rock staple. “What Is And What Should Never Be” and “Ramble On” are the other two classics from the album that would display themes that Robert Plant would use many more times: songs that feature J. R. R. Tolkien-inspired lyrics. “The Lemon Song” is unabashedly rock, with lyrics that describe the lifestyle as well (“Squeeze me, babe/’Til the juice runs down my leg”). “Moby Dick” is the requisite masturbatory drum solo song of the Zep catalog, whereas “Thank You” contains a ballad-like substance that gives a glimpse of what the band would produce in later albums. Led Zeppelin II ends with “Bring It On Home,” an often overlooked gem in the Zep library. This is the album that cemented Zeppelin’s Zeitgeist status.

Bob Dylan – Blood On The Tracks (1975)

When a consumer buys something they instantly become a critic, whether they want to admit it or not. When someone falls in love they are instantly susceptible to that relationship falling apart, whether they want to admit it or not. Both of these statements directly converge when listening to Blood On The Tracks, Bob Dylan’s fifteenth album that is sometimes referred to as the “divorce album.” As an audience, we always want (sometimes, demand) something tragic about our favorite artist(s), so when Blood On The Tracks was released it came as no surprise that it was Dylan’s highest-selling album because it allowed us to glimpse into the life of a reclusive musical genius’s internal battles with divorce and disillusionment. (Whether or not this is true is up for debate as Dylan has never verified that the album really is about his divorce from Sara.) The theme of the album certainly seems to be love, infatuation, anger, regret, and pain as Dylan’s lyrics command the pace and mood. “We always did feel the same/We just saw it from a different point of view” ends “Tangled Up In Blue”; “People tell me it’s a sin/To know and feel too much within” from “Simple Twist Of Fate”; “They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn/But you wouldn’t know it by me/Every day’s been darkness since you been gone” from “Meet Me In The Morning”; “I can’t feel you any more/I can’t even touch the books you’ve read/Every time I crawl past your door/I been wishing I was somebody else instead” from “Idiot Wind” display the range of emotions Dylan was going through at this time. But the most telling lyrics of the whole album are the ones at the beginning of “Shelter From The Storm” in which Dylan admits “I came in from the wilderness/A creature void of form/’Come in’ she said/’I'll give you shelter from the storm’”—lyrics seemingly told from an artist who, despite any anger or disgust, cannot deny that the beginning of the relationship was positively life-changing. And, in turn, this gave us a glimpse into the mind of one of the most important American songwriters.

The Doors – The Doors (1967)

The Doors is one of those rare debut albums in which you know without a shadow of a doubt that the band has made something that will transcend their generation. On paper, The Doors would have probably had a decent shelf life just based on Jim Morrison’s image (he was essentially the Elvis of the counterculture but with a more voracious appetite towards psychoactive drugs) and onstage presence (somewhere between obscene and self-important) but the music they made on their eponymous debut cemented their legacy. “Break On Through (To The Other Side)” moves you and possesses a powerful and addicting groove. “The Crystal Ship,” “Twentieth Century Fox,” “Back Door Man,” and “Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)” all display Morrison’s ability to turn borderline rudimentary poetry into blazing songs about sexual catharsis. “Light My Fire” is one of the most important songs of the ’60′s and Morrison’s performance of the song on The Ed Sullivan Show is one of the most overlooked moments in rock history (he defied the producer’s orders and sang the line “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher”). And, of course, the album ends with “The End”—a song in which its Oedipal line “Father/Yes son?/I want to kill you/Mother!/I want to fuck you” will forever live in infamy in rock history.

Black Sabbath – Paranoid (1970)

Whether or not Black Sabbath was the first heavy metal band is irrelevent when compared to what the band produced on Paranoid, the album that everyone from the hard-core to the casual fan identifies with Black Sabbath the most. “Iron Man” may be the most iconic rock song ever made as it has exemplified everything from heavy metal culture to the Beavis and Butt-Head culture. If you hear a complete stranger hum or yell the opening chords to “Iron Man” you know exactly what song it is and you will probably raise your hand in the air and rock your head, even if it’s done in a half-assed or ironic way. “Paranoid,” the album’s other well-known single, has the same feel as “Communication Breakdown” and is just as indelible. “War Pigs/Luke’s Wall,” “Electric Funeral,” and “Rat Salad” are all great examples of how the new school of heavy rock was emerging as Beatlemania was dying, while also supplying ample influence for bands like KISS, The New York Dolls, Soundgarden, and the vast army of hair metal bands that would emerge a decade later. While the music and lyrics that grace Paranoid aren’t technically complex, who could argue with “duh, duh, duh-duh-duh, duh-na-na-na-nuh-na-nuh-na-na-nuh na”?

Stereolab – Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996)

Oh, how to describe Stereolab… Well, for one thing they love using Vox organs and Moog synthesizers. And they don’t really fit totally in the “rock” or “post-rock” label consistently. And the lead singer, Lætitia Sadier, sometime sings in French. And they’re influenced by ’70′s krautrock, which is a musical genre similar to jazz and blues in that most white teens and college-age people will attest to liking and discovering before everyone else. It’s hard to describe Stereolab’s sound but Emperor Tomato Ketchup, the band’s fourth album, is packed with gems and oddities that will delight anyone. So much of Stereolab’s sound hinges on Sadier’s voice—if you like it the music is much more enhanced, if you don’t, well, you may have problems getting beyond her. “Metronomic Underground” gets the album started with its catchy bass line and electronic rhythm. “Percolator,” “Les Yper-Sound,” and “Motoroller Scalatron” all are catchy and possess a healthy amount of electronic blips and bloops. “The Noise Of Carpet” is an outstanding pop number, complete with all of the ooh-la-la-style choruses. “Tomorrow Is Already Here” probably sums up Stereolab the best with its perfect mixture of guitar strums and organs intertwining with each other that illustrates the band’s krautrock and traditional influences. And because of this song, this album gets a slight nod over Mars Audiac Quintet (which is a great album too).

AC/DC – Back In Black (1980)

Back In Black, probably more than any other album in recent memory, best defines the transcendent nature of rock and its relation to its fans. AC/DC’s original lead singer, Bon Scott, died on February 19, 1980. Between that time and July 25, 1980 AC/DC hired a new lead singer (Brian Johnson), decided to scratch all previous material that Scott was working on so that Johnson could start fresh, record a new album, and releasing it and it winding up being the second greatest international selling rock album of all time. AC/DC could have been forgotten by their fans; could have been ignored by the radio after Scott’s death; could have disbanded altogether. Somehow, they made one of the most important hard rock/heavy metal albums of all time and their fans still remained rabid. “Hells Bells,” with its eerie and ominous bells is pitch-perfect in setting the tone for this 10-track indelible classic. The title track and “You Shook Me All Night Long” possess an odd duality in that they are staples of hard rock as well as wedding playlists. “Shoot To Thrill,” “Have A Drink On Me,” and “Shake A Leg” are accessible and sufficiently rocking. The album ends with “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution,” a song in which Johnson caustically points out that rock ‘n’ roll “ain’t no riddle, man” while joyfully screaming “It’ll always be with us/It’s never gonna die.” That sums up AC/DC (and rock as a whole): people will die and it’s sad and devastating but rock never will. Amen.

The Beatles – Abbey Road (1969)

What ultimately hangs in the balance for Abbey Road as to whether you rank it high on your list of favorites (either of The Beatles catalog or of rock music in general) or more towards the middle is whether or not you like “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “Oh! Darling,” and “Octopus’s Garden.” If you like those songs a lot, you will more than likely rank the album as one of the best; if not, then the album becomes the third or fourth best of the group’s library. What’s indisputable is the rest of the album—”Come Together,” “Something,” “Here Comes The Sun,” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” are all great Beatles tracks and were produced with a tighter sense of craftsmanship (McCartney and producer George Martin wanted more attention to detail with this album than what was previously exhibited). But the meat of the album is the medley of songs that penultimately end the album (if you consider “Her Majesty” a true song)—”You Never Give Me Your Money/Sun King/Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam/She Came In Through The Bathroom Window/Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/End”. This medley shows the band hitting a creative stride that it never bothered to revisit as Abbey Road was the Beatles swan song.

The Velvet Underground – White Light/White Heat (1968)

After their groundbreaking debut album was almost completely ignored for a year, The Velvet Underground went into the studio and made White Light/White Heat—an explosion of avant-garde sound that paved the way for the Sonic Youths of the world. You could make the argument that this is the first true punk album solely because of the final track, “Sister Ray.” “Sister Ray” is like the Atlas Shrugged of sonic noise and distortion as it clocks in at 17:30 long. Lou Reed once said that “Sister Ray” was basically a competition within the group to see who could play the loudest, which is why John Cale’s keyboard sounds like it will explode because it’s being pushed to its highest volume setting (11, perhaps?). The rest of the album changes gears on a dime—the title track, with its sonic touch to an otherwise typical-sounding rock song; “The Gift,” an avant-garde song in which a short story is told on the left speaker while the music plays on the right; “Lady Godiva’s Operation,” a disturbing song about a botched surgery that ends with what is presumed to be a lobotomy; “I Heard Her Call My Name,” a song that explodes with distortion every time Lou Reed sings, “And then my mind split open.” And then there’s “Here She Comes Now,” a song so mellow and light accompanied by lyrics that are so simple yet mystifies listeners as to what it means at all—it seems so utterly out of place but maybe that was the point.

R.E.M. – Murmur (1983)

On the spine of the album Murmur you will find the phrase “File Under Kudzu,” which seems appropriate given that the cover is a picture of a piece of land covered in kudzu–the über-weed that is synonymous with the Southern landscape. In some ways, kudzu may be the perfect metaphor for this album as it stuck out amidst a forest of other musical happenings in 1983–the coronation of Michael Jackson as the “King of Pop,” debut albums from Metallica and Slayer, two U2 releases, and the final (and best) Police album before they disbanded. Equipped with a modernized Byrds-like sound and a sufficiently unpolished lead singer, R.E.M. made Murmur an instant critical success and is essentially the starting point of the college radio era. Songs like “Laughing,” “Talk About The Passion,” “Sitting Still,” and “Shaking Through” are just simple enough to be deconstructed into something more complex (the gold standard by which all college radio bands were examined). “Moral Kiosk” and “9-9″ have a more edgier feel; “Perfect Circle” is very ballad-like in its structure; “We Walk” has a very childlike sound to it, except that as the song goes on you hear tracks of billiard balls being hit grow louder and louder. Like all great debut albums, there is a little bit of everything to enjoy and Murmur is no different. Even if its filing association is with a weed that can destroy ecosystems if left unchecked.

Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness (1995)

You can probably count on one hand the number of great double albums that have been made and Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness is one of the best. “Have you ever heard the words I’m singing in these songs?/It’s for the girl I’ve loved all along” sings Billy Corgan in “Muzzle.” Whether or not this is the actual theme of the album is left for the listener to decide but what’s not debatable is the range and creativity that the Smashing Pumpkins displayed here. Songs like “Zero,” “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” “Where Boys Fear To Tread,” and “X.Y.U.” are sufficiently heavy whereas songs like “Thru The Eyes Of Ruby,” “Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans,” “Beautiful,” “We Only Come Out At Night,” and “Tonight, Tonight” are handled with a certain delicacy that few bands would bother to give attention to. One of the best songs on the double album is the last, “Farewell And Goodnight”; a song that’s spot on with its mellow, lullaby-type sound and lyrics (“The sun shines but I don’t/The silver rain will wash away”) that it may be one of the best songs to end an album in recent memory.

Jane’s Addiction – Nothing’s Shocking (1988)

The cover of Nothing’s Shocking sports a piece of art wherein two naked women have their heads on fire. Nothing shocking, indeed. To those who don’t own the album this is simply “the one that ‘Jane Says’ is on”; to those who own it this is “the one that ‘Ted, Just Admit It…’ is on.” “Ted, Just Admit It…” is not only one of the best songs of the ’80′s to never have reached mainstream radio but it’s incredibly dead-on given today’s media atmosphere. The song is essentially about how the news is “just another show” and centers on the media frenzy that was Ted Bundy. “Ocean Size,” “Mountain Song,” “Had A Dad” and “Standing In The Shower… Thinking” all display Jane’s Addiction’s range but it’s “Summertime Rolls” that show flashes of how good a songwriter Perry Farrell could be (“He trips her and her sandals flail/She says, ‘Stop! I’m a girl/Whose fingertips are made of mother’s pearl’”). And, of course, there’s “Jane Says,” the west coast version of a Lou Reed song; the type of song that almost instantly puts you in a good mood when you hear it driving in your car.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced (1967)

Few debut albums have made a statement as intense as Are You Experienced. After having opened for The Who and various other bands in Europe, and making a huge splash at the Monterey Pop Festival, the world was curious to hear how Hendrix’s live performances would translate in the studio. Well, all you have to do is listen to the opening track, “Purple Haze,” to find out. Are You Experienced was every bit as advertised as Hendrix seamlessly moves from power rock (“Manic Depression,” “Fire,” “Stone Free”) to the more mellow and blues-y (“Hey Joe,” “May This Be Love,” “The Wind Cries Mary”) to the psychadelic (“Third Stone From The Sun,” “Are You Experienced?”). More than anything, Hendrix redefined how a guitar could be played and forever changed the boundaries of hard rock and power blues. It seemed as though Hendrix was put on this Earth to be one with a guitar—which is why it stunned the audience when he dry-humped and cathartically set his on fire at Monterey in 1967.

Pearl Jam – Ten (1991)

Of all the bands to spring up from Seattle in the early ’90′s, Pearl Jam probably possessed the most full-bodied sound. You could even make the comparison that Pearl Jam was The Clash and Nirvana was The Sex Pistols, given how the two bands practically defined a generation and played primary roles in turning mainstream radio upside-down. Ten sounded like it was their third or fourth album but instead was their debut and catapulted the band into immediate heavy rotation on the radio and MTV. “Evenflow,” “Alive,” “Black,” “Why Go?,” and “Jeremy” all became instantly popular and some of which will probably become future classic rock staples in the same vain as “Won’t Get Fooled Again” or “Whole Lotta Love” have. Eddie Vedder writhes and screams throughout the album on everything ranging from incestuous lust to murder to abortion but the indelible song on the album is “Jeremy,” a story of a kid pushed too far (“seemed a harmless little fuck”) and ultimately winds up killing his classmates. Vedder was unabashed about his love for classic rock (specifically, Quadrophenia) and Ten is a great example of how a band can channel their influences but still creates their own independent sound.

Brian Eno – Here Come The Warm Jets (1974)

After having been kicked out of Roxy Music for many of the same reasons that Peter Gabriel was kicked out of Genesis, Brian Eno went solo and unveiled to the world his eclectic knack of producing his sometimes complex, sometimes simple, always different brand of music. Here Come The Warm Jets is Eno’s debut solo album and is one of rock’s buried treasures. Some songs feature large, booming guitars such as the opener “Needles In The Camel’s Eye,” while others feature a quirky keyboard solo (“Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch”); “Cindy Tells Me” is taken straight from The Velvet Underground handbook while “On Some Faraway Beach” has over 30 separate piano tracks layered on it. “Some Of Them Are Old” features one of the more oddly beautiful guitar solos you’ll ever hear. “Blank Frank” is probably the most psychadelic and frenzied song I’ve ever heard. Yet, through it all, you have the title track ending the album with its lush layers of warm, fuzzy guitars letting you know that the warm jets (whatever they may be) have in fact arrived.

Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral (1994)

Another album that is invariably debated as to whether it was the band’s best or not, The Downward Spiral will always be inferior to Pretty Hate Machine by some but to compare the two would be like comparing Saucerful Of Secrets and Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd. The Downward Spiral, musically, is so much heavier and organic-sounding that it makes Pretty Hate Machine sound almost one-dimensional. Trent Reznor’s creativity is in rare form here as the album starts out with the muffled drum beats and noises that lead into a frenzied assault on “Mr. Self Destruct.” From there, you have the other assaulting tracks like “Heresy,” “March Of The Pigs,” “The Becoming,” and “Big Man With A Gun” mixed in with the eerie (“Piggy” and the title track) and the otherworldly (“Reptile”). “Closer” and “Hurt” are the albums undisputed masterpieces and probably will forever represent Reznor’s creative apex. To be sure, The Downward Spiral is a very angry album and Reznor seemed to know exactly how to reel it in and project it musically. Whereas most bands would have been content making an entire album of songs that were hard, fast, and loud, Reznor knew better—anger, depression, violence, and sex don’t conform to one beat. It’s a multi-layered beast that drags you down with its own sporadic melody.

U2 – Achtung Baby (1991)

If Nevermind changed the musical landscape with its sophomoric, out-of-nowhere intensity, U2 altered the musical landscape by proving they could make a great beginning-to-end rock album with Achtung Baby. To be sure, U2 had been making great music for some years prior but Achtung Baby revealed a band that was willing to reinvent itself a little bit and, in the process, make some remarkable rock. This is U2′s best album. While it can certainly be debated as to whether The Joshua Tree is better, the problem is that The Joshua Tree doesn’t contain “Zoo Station,” “Even Better Than The Real Thing,” “One,” “Until The End Of The World,” “The Fly,” “Mysterious Ways,” or “Who’s Gonna Run Your Wild Horses,” just to name seven songs. U2 has tried recapturing some of the magic from the Achtung sessions but they’ve come up short every time; this doesn’t lend itself to U2′s weaknesses but, rather, to how great this album is.

The Who – Quadrophenia (1973)

Everything you need to know about Quadrophenia can probably be best explained in the song “The Punk Meets The Godfather.” The song is essentially about the ideological struggle between artists and their fans (as well as youth versus age). The punk declares, “Thought you were chasing a destiny calling/You only earned what we gave you” yet it’s the Godfather that has the last laugh—”I have to be careful not to preach/I can’t pretend that I can teach/And yet I’ve lived your future out/By pounding stages like a clown./And on the dance floor broken glass/The bloody faces slowly pass/The broken seats in empty rows/It all belongs to me, you know.” Quadrophenia was The Who’s second foray in to the double album rock opera and tells the story of a disillusioned youth who finds redemption after getting kicked out of his house, doing drugs, joining a gang, and crashing a boat into a rock. You know, typical teenage stuff. “The Real Me,” “I’m One,” “Helpless Dancer,” and “5:15″ are all classic Who songs and the last track, “Love, Reign O’er Me,” is right up there alongside “Won’t Get Fooled Again” as one of the best songs from their catalog.

The Jesus and Mary Chain – Psychocandy (1985)

The Jesus and Mary Chain were a Scottish band that had an equal love for White Light/White Heat as well as Phil Spector. Psychocandy, their debut album, is filled with songs brimming with distortion yet set to simple beats to make them sound almost pop-like. The first two songs are microcosms for the rest of the album—”Just Like Honey” is a softer number complete with some choruses of ba-ba-ba-ba’s while “The Living End” is distortion-driven right from the get-go. The tie that binds these two songs (and almost everything else on the record) are the drums and the singing styles. The drumming for “Just Like Honey,” as well as for “Cut Dead” and others, is reminiscent of “Be My Baby.” As for the singing style, you’d almost think that they got pointers directly from Phil Spector himself as the songs themselves are written and sung in a such a simple and deliberate manner (“I get ahead on my motorbike/I feel so quick in my leather shoes”). As for the rest of the album there is a venerable assortment of great but little-heard classics–”You Trip Me Up,” “My Little Underground,” “The Hardest Walk” and “Never Understand”. “Some Candy Talking,” a song written and released after Psychocandy debuted, is so good it was added to the CD in the ’90′s. This is a must-have album for anyone who likes distortion-driven rock.

Creedence Clearwater Revival – Willy and the Poor Boys (1969)

CCR are like the Mark Twain of American music: if you don’t outright like them or, at the very least respect them, you’re simply un-American. This should be one of the defining questions people should use when trying to gauge someone’s patriotism, “Do you like CCR?” If the person answers with either, “What is CCR?” or “No” you know where they stand in life and they should not be trusted. But I digress, CCR churned out so many hits and great songs that it’s hard to imagine growing up and not having heard any of their music. Willy and the Poor Boys is probably their best overall album and its mainly due in large part to the fact that “Fortunate Son” is on it. “Fortunate Son” was Fogerty’s masterpiece—an anti-war song that raised the bar so high for future anti-war songs that it basically exists on it own level. The title track, “It Came Out Of The Sky,” “Poorboy Shuffle,” “Feelin’ Blue,” and “Don’t Look Now” all combined to make an album that showed a band’s ability to churn out one great Southern rock song after another, even though the band was from California. During the ’60′s it became so commonplace for bands to try delving into the country-rock or folk-rock world but CCR was one of the few to get it right almost every single time and with such ease.

Neil Young – Harvest (1972)

“Out On The Weekend,” which opens Harvest, and the title track are almost like an Edward Hopper or Andrew Wyeth painting realized in sound. Both songs have a sound that feels like a Wyeth painting—Autumnal, naturalistic, and somewhat depressing—while the lyrics are reminiscent of Hopper in which the subjects are battling solitude. Neil Young had already made a name for himself but Harvest catapulted him into mainstream success, especially with the single “Heart Of Gold” then “The Needle And The Damage Done.” “A Man Needs A Maid” was pretty controversial when the album was released as it basically suggests that a woman that could be used just for sex is better than dealing with a relationship. This isn’t an inherently misogynistic message; rather, one that all men think about when they feel hopeless in forming relationships with women (again, it’s the Hopper-esque solitude at play). “Are You Ready For The Country?” even finds Young channeling some of Bob Dylan’s sense of humor—”I was talkin’ to the preacher/Said God was on my side/Then I ran into the hangman/He said it’s time to die.” This is one of Young’s best albums.

David Bowie – Hunky Dory (1971)

Before Ziggy Stardust rose and then fell, David Bowie released Hunky Dory–an album that mixed folk, rock, and a subdued form of psychedelia to near perfection. You have a little bit of everything here: an indelible classic (“Changes”), some precursors to Ziggy Stardust (“Oh! You Pretty Things” and “Life On Mars?”), a couple of mellow oddities that only Bowie could write (“Kooks” and “Fill Your Heart”) and a catchy little ditty about Andy Warhol (“Andy Warhol”). “Queen Bitch” is probably one of Bowie’s most underrated rock songs; everything about it is so catchy it’s a crime that it’s hardly ever played on the radio. Hunky Dory was Bowie’s fourth album and it pretty much lays out for the listener a road map of what creative directions Bowie would travel and, considering how many different stops he made along the way and how many times he reinvented himself, it’s quite a musical achievement.

Hole – Live Through This (1994)

Say or think what you will about who Courtney Love has become but Live Through This was one of the best albums to come out in 1994 amidst a pretty loaded lineup. “Go on, take everything/Take everything, I want you to” she screams after singing “I told you from the start/Just how this would end/When I get what I want/Then I never want it again” on “Violet.” “Miss World” was the other instant rock anthem with its classic line, “I’m Miss World/Somebody kill me.” To be sure, there were plenty of female rock stars and bands before Courtney Love but few had the immediate impact Live Through This did. Love rails against a society in which women and girls have more to prove and are ultimately seen as objects or dolls and the end results are gems such as “Plump,” “Asking For It,” “Jennifer’s Body,” and “Credit In The Straight World.” The album ends with “Rock Star” and Love screaming “Don’t you please make me real, come on/Make me sick, come on/Make me real, fuck you.” That should sufficiently explain everything right there.

(Semi-unrelated note about this album: this cover is one of my favorite album covers of all time. It perfectly conveys everything about Courtney Love and everything about the album—that a crazy woman winning a beauty pageant pales in comparison with our obsession in turning normal girls into frenetic creatures consumed with doubt about their self-image.)

Bob Dylan – John Wesley Harding (1967)

After recording Blonde On Blonde Bob Dylan suffered a motorcycle accident and was laid up for most of 1967. Unable to tour or spend as much time in the studio, Dylan and The Band did some impromptu sessions in the basement of the Big Pink house, which was later released many years later as The Basement Tapes. From these sessions came the influence for Dylan’s eighth studio album. John Wesley Harding finds Dylan experimenting more with softer acoustic music and is quite a departure from his previous electric albums—Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde On Blonde. Dylan’s trademark voice even became softer as evidenced on the title track, “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest,” “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” “Down In The Cove,” and the instant classic, “All Along The Watchtower.” John Wesely Harding was the start of a new chapter in Dylan’s songwriting style; gone was the way he seamlessly crafted humor with sarcasm to create intricate and deeply metaphorical stories, instead favoring more personal and darker viewpoints.

Van Morrison – Moondance (1970)

This is probably Van Morrison’s most accessible and mainstream album—”Moondance” being one of the most timeless songs in Morrison’s catalog. The album has “And It Stoned Me” and “Glad Tidings” as its bookends; the former is a nice, lazy-sounding song with a nicely accentuated horn section whereas the latter is, in my opinion, one of Morrison’s greatest and overlooked songs. With its bass-heavy hook, “Glad Tidings” also serves as a preface for “Wild Nights.” Moondance is filled with so many mellow and beautiful songs it’s no surprise that this is one of Morrison’s most popular albums. “Come Running To You,” “These Dreams Of You,” “Caravan,” and “Everyone” are prime examples of Morrison’s ability to create music that fit so perfectly with his lyrics. “Into The Mystic” is probably his defining piece; a song whose lyrics are so beautiful in a surreal sense that is set to music that is even more surrealistically beautiful. This is a must-have for anyone looking to add to the early ’70′s portion of their music catalog.

R.E.M. – Automatic For The People (1992)

R.E.M. is two bands—the 1981-1987 band that essentially helped college radio turn into something that we could all enjoy, not just obsessive, art clique-type people who shunned you because you didn’t know all of The Cure B sides in chronological order, and the 1988-1996 band that was able to tread a creative line so perfectly that few bands at their height of popularity would dare try to walk it. (Note: I don’t really count the post-Bill Berry R.E.M.—it’s just not been the same.) Green and Out Of Time established that R.E.M. could indeed make quality music after signing a mega-bucks record deal with Warner Brothers. How did they follow up the light and almost sunny-sounding Out Of Time? By making one of the darkest and most beautiful albums of the ’90′s. Everything about Automatic is handled with such precise care and attention to detail. Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones was in charge of string arrangements and it is flawless—the build up towards the end of “Everybody Hurts” probably resonated with almost everyone on first listen. “Sweetness Follows,” “Monty Got A Raw Deal,” “Follow The River,” and “Try Not To Breathe” are gems among the songs not released on radio, whereas “Man On The Moon” and “Nightswimming” became instant classics. The fact that people identified so strongly with those two songs is a testament to how on top of their game R.E.M. was at this time, especially when you consider what the mainstream music scene was like when it was released.

Ride – Nowhere (1990)

1990 and 1991 was a time in which rock music that would typically be consigned to college radio became semi-successful entrants into the world of mainstream radio. While it is true that some of these bands only enjoyed modest success (EMF, Jesus Jones, Faith No More, and The Stone Roses just to name a few) they helped pave the way for everyone to openly embrace bands like Alice In Chains, Nirvana, and Soundgarden. Lost in all of this fertile time was Ride, a U.K. band whose debut album Nowhere is a collection of booming songs that was a breath of fresh air. The opening track, “Seagull,” sets the tone with its moderate use of distortion that soon becomes full-bodied guitar power; the drums seem to be arranged in the same vain as “When The Levee Breaks”—thundering and impossible to ignore; by the end of the song all elements converge to create a swirling and frantic energy. “Kaleidoscope,” “Polar Bear,” and “Decay” are all great examples of how well-tuned the band was. The album’s two unrivaled masterpieces, though, are “Dreams Burn Down” and “Vapour Trail.” When Mark Gardener sings, “‘Til my dreams burn down every time” it’s accompanied with such a heavy explosion of sound that it’s almost impossible not to turn the volume up. And, like any great album, there must be some sense of balance and with Nowhere—a record that is founded on layered, booming guitars–the counter is “Vapour Trail,” a song so pretty and gentle you’re almost transported to another land when compared to the rest of the album’s sound. This is probably the best shoegazing album of all time right behind Loveless by My Bloody Valentine.

The Sea and Cake – The Sea and Cake (1994)

Sometimes you just got to have mellow music. Chicago’s own The Sea and Cake arrived in 1994 with their eponymous debut and it’s one of those albums that either makes or breaks it for you on the first song. If you like the first song, “Jacking The Ball” then you’ll be hooked for the rest of it; if you don’t like it, the rest of the album is a tough sell. All of those songs are pretty mellow and have that early ’90′s indie rock feel that the bands label, Thrill Jockey, cultivated nicely. This is a great album, plain and simple. “Polio,” “Flat Lay The Water,” “Choice Blanket,” and “Showboat Angel” are all fantastic numbers, while “Culabra Cut” displays the band’s creative flair. If you want to listen to something that exemplifies the Thrill Jockey Chicago indie rock scene of the ’90′s this is a great album to start with.

Big Star – #1 Record (1972)

When you think of punk you may think of The Sex Pistols or The Clash before your mind plumbs through its history and pulls out the Ramones or The Misfits. Same goes for 1970′s southern rock: you’ll probably think of Lynard Skynard or the Allman Brothers Band before getting around to the Charlie Daniels Band and the like. Big Star would probably be a band lurking a level below Lynard Skynard in the 70′s southern rock genre if only more people had heard of them. Their debut album #1 Record is a nicely constructed southern rock album made by some teenage kids (most notably, Alex Chilton) who wrote songs dealing with typical teenage stuff—girlfriends, partying, staying out late, and other cliched thoughts of the typical 19 year old male. What makes #1 Record such a joy to listen to is that it’s one of those “Why have I never heard of this before?”-type albums. “When My Baby’s Beside Me” is such a great song I was amazed on first listen that classic rock stations never play it; “Don’t Lie To Me” sounds like the kind of song Dr. Johnny Fever would play on WKRP; “The India Song” is so striking and such a departure from the rest of the album that its soft sound stays with you for a while. “In The Street” is another classic that you may have actually heard of before but not known it—it’s used as the opening theme for That 70′s Show (though there is no “Hello Wisconsin!” yelled at the end of the original, unfortunately). Big Star’s influence has reached everyone from R.E.M. to Ryan Adams and a host of others, which isn’t bad considering that the radio has always shunned them from their playlists.

Weezer – Weezer (1994)

Before it was cool to be emo, then not cool to be emo, then retro cool to be emo there was Weezer—the eponymous debut of the band who unofficially made it cool to be emo (even though I can’t recall anyone actually using the phrase “emo” at all even after the Pinkerton release but, hey, maybe I was always 10 yards behind the herd). Weezer was the right band to arrive at the right time. What was there not to like about “Buddy Holly,” “Undone (The Sweater Song)”, or “Say It Ain’t So” when they hit the radio and MTV? They were catchy songs and, more importantly, they were songs not done by Stone Temple Pilots or Green Day or Pearl Jam; there was no sense of detachment, self-importance and, in the case of Green Day—shitty music. This was a band who created songs that were just plain fun to listen to and it was kind of a welcome break. “My Name Is Jonas” opens the album and it’s a pretty spot-on first impression of a band who had a certain creative and fun swagger about them, even if it was intended to be ironic or performed tongue-in-cheek.

Ministry – The Land Of Rape And Honey (1988)

It has always been a goal of some musicians–be it country, rock, or hip hop–to unabashedly project their dark side to an audience. Their songs could be about anything ranging from misogyny to a bleak worldview or, in the case of Ministry, can just be flat out dark. As the title The Land Of Rape And Honey suggests, this is not the type of album Nancy Reagan would’ve listened to. The opening track, “Stigmata,” starts with Al Jourgensen’s screams sounding like a buzzsaw before singing, “Just like a car crash/Just like a knife/My favorite weapon/Is the look in your eyes.” The whole album is haunting and dark and relies mostly on tape tracks and drum machines to provide most of the alien and sometimes disturbing background music (see: “Hizbollah”). “I Prefer,” “You Know What You Are,” “Destruction,” and “Deity” are all relentless in their energy but it’s the title track that combines all the elements Ministry was aiming for so effortlessly. Everything about the track is creepy, from the sampled archived Nazi chants in the background to the tape effects that sound as if everything just keeps rewinding and replaying itself over and over again; an assaulting eeriness you cannot escape. Obviously, Ministry is not for everyone but if you like Pretty Hate Machine you may want to have a listen to Rape And Honey if for nothing else but to compare two of the darker and energetic artists (Jourgensen and Trent Reznor) of the last twenty years.

The Rolling Stones – Some Girls (1978)

This is easily the most polarizing Stones album; one camp hates it and is used as proof that the Stones sold out by employing disco-like beats, while the other camp sees it as is it—the last great Rolling Stones album made. Does “Miss You” sound a little like disco? Yes, but that’s missing the point. It’s the songs other than the classic rock radio staples “Miss You” and “Shattered” that make the album great. “Lies,” “When The Whip Comes Down,” “Beast Of Burden” and the title track lay the groundwork for what the Stones would try to mirror in almost every subsequent album after Some Girls but usually failed because of a lack of intangibles. “Far Away Eyes” is a good country attempt in the same vain as “Dead Flowers” was. Some Girls was the last studio album of the ’70′s and it acts as the perfect bookend alongside Sticky Fingers—the beginning of the decade was an all-out, back-to-basics rock era whereas by the late ’70′s the Stones seemed content to roll with the times and undertake in some experimentation. Given the musical atmosphere at the time with punk and disco and glam-rock, the Stones deciding to embrace some of the less-popular milieus ranks up there alongside the Beatles deciding to not perform live as one of the ballsiest things an immensely popular band could do. And the fact that it paid off makes it all the more enjoyable.

Joy Division – Closer (1980)

What would our world be like if there was no depression and everyone was for the most part happy? For one thing, no one would have ever heard of Joy Division. Joy Division made songs whose lyrics were dark and depressing and set to music that doesn’t inspire sunny feelings. Just look at some of the titles on what would be their last studio album–”Atrocity Exhibition,” “Passover,” “Isolation,” and “A Means To An End.” The album starts out with “Atrocity Exhibition” which is a song that pretty much embodies Joy Division: as a listener, you know that this won’t be a light song yet the music plays like an eerie but full-bodied freak show-type sound, complete with assaulting guitars. Yet, lead singer Ian Curtis is right there to encourage you to join in on the imagery (“This is the way/Come inside”). On the flip side you have “Isolation” which is a sad song yet the music is upbeat, complete with hard-to-get-out-of-your-head keyboard work by Bernard Sumner. Ian Curtis would wind up killing himself before Closer‘s release and the remaining band members would go on to form New Order and maybe that makes this album seem all that more intense because this was apparently the tipping point for Curtis to take his own life. Rock has always had its share of tragic heroes and music that was written for or by tortured souls but Closer seems to still resonate at a louder echo.

Roxy Music – Siren (1975)

In the third album post-Brian Eno, Siren finds Roxy Music (which was basically Bryan Ferry) diving headfirst into odd songs about love and coming out looking as good as, well, the girl on the cover of the album. Roxy Music has, to me at least, been a difficult band to explain. Lead singer Bryan Ferry is basically a crooner of sorts who has strange ways of writing about love. The opening track, “Love Is The Drug,” is a perfect example–who would write a song about love being an addiction and back it up with a seemingly genuine conviction? (If I saw just the title “Love Is The Drug” and was asked to guess who sang it I would probably have guessed a ’60′s Motown girl band but, no, it was by a white British dude.) “End Of The Line,” “Sentimental Fool,” and “She Sells” are all very strong and indicative of how great Roxy Music could sound when everyone was in sync. “Whirlwind” adds just enough energy and musical fury to counterbalance some of the other slower songs but it’s “Nightingale” that is the masterpiece of the album. When Ferry asks, “When you’re up there flying, do you care/If there’s no else around?” you may not be positive if it’s about heartbreak or an unattainable relationship but it still comes across as an oddly thought-provoking question–a metaphor that most everyone asks themselves internally about a significant other at some point.

Tortoise – Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996)

I’m not a huge fan of oxymorons but if I had to describe this album it would be: kinda sorta complex minimalism… maybe? At its core, you have a band whose style was minimalist (or post-rock, if you love genre labels); their music was essentially bass and lead guitars mixed in with a healthy and creative dose of various percussion instruments and keyboards. Where the complex part comes in is that the music that was made was surprisingly textured and produced with such a crisp feel that it has a Dark Side Of The Moon-type organic quality to it. The opening track “Djed” is what all 20+ minute songs should aspire to–a dreamy number that makes you feel a little sad when it ends. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard before as it constantly treads the line of sounding somewhat expiremental (it’s essentially seven songs combined in to one track) without ever sounding boring. “Glass Museum” is the type of song that once you hear the first couple minutes you think you know what direction you’re being taken to and then all of the sudden the middle becomes something newer and better. “A Survey” and “The Taut and Tame” are also very strong tracks that borrow nicely from the Brain Eno school of music that sounds both alien and familiar. Again, I don’t like oxymorons but maybe it’s fitting for an album whose name suggests immortality.

Van Halen – 1984 (1984)

What’s not to love about everything involved here? Indelible album cover? Check. Synthesizers? Check. David Lee Roth in his prime coinciding with MTV’s prime? Check. An album of one-after-another rock anthems? Check. What’s funny is there is now an entire generation of people who don’t realize at all that Van Halen could have been the next Led Zeppelin (in the exact same context that Chuck Klosterman once defined Zeppelin). Everyone seemingly wanted to be like Eddie Van Halen and/or David Lee Roth. I often wondered what would have become of Led Zeppelin if Led Zeppelin IV had been released at the same time that MTV was the unequivocal Zeitgeist. Personally, I think Robert Plant would have become what David Lee Roth became. But I digress, this was the album that featured “Jump,” “Panama,” “Hot For Teacher,” and “Top Jimmy.” In short, this was one of the defining rock albums of the ’80′s and one that showed that rock could be unabashedly over the top yet still keep its cool. Though I felt cheated that the David Lee Roth Years were cut so short. In any case, if you ever met someone who didn’t know anything about early ’80′s rock this would probably be the album to have them hear first.

The Grateful Dead – Workingman’s Dead (1970)

Who says old dogs can’t learn new tricks sometimes? Up until this point the Dead were primarily known for three things: 1) psychadelic studio albums, 2) their live shows, and 3) their disregard for structure while producing live and studio performances. With Workingman’s Dead, the Dead started the ’70′s with some much needed structure and along the way forever altered their musical direction. There isn’t a jam song to be heard on Workingman’s, only a collection of folky and bluesy songs that proved the Dead had the potential to make really solid studio albums. The album’s bookends are “Uncle John’s Band” and “Casey Jones” and they accurately represent both sides of the musical axis–the former is mellow while the latter has more energy. “New Speedway Boogie” and “Easy Wind” are lively and energetic and really underrated classics. “Cumberland Blues” is probably the crown jewel here; it’s folky, catchy, and has a hint of Statler Brothers feel to it that makes it a little bit harder to get out of your head once you hear it. Workingman’s Dead also advanced some of the ethos that many more Dead songs would contain, such as the narratives of convicts escaping, gambling, death and using the rural or outlaw countryside as a background for most elements.

Pere Ubu – The Modern Dance (1978)

We’ll play a game wherein I’m an agent and you’re working for a mid-level record company and here’s my pitch: I’ve discovered this band out of Cleveland whose singer sounds as if he’s being electrocuted, some of their songs sound as if they’re using fans in the background, and they’ve written songs with titles like “Life Stinks” and “Chinese Radiation.” Interested? Well, it’s not a shock that Pere Ubu never hit it big on mainstream radio but what interesting music they made on the debut, The Modern Dance. Much like the Velvet Underground’s debut album, many people never heard Ubu’s debut album but those who did probably formed bands immediately. It’s a dark, creepy sounding, and ultimately non-sensical album that hits your nerves more than your brain at first listen. The opening track, “Non-Alignment Pact” starts off with thirty seconds of the most shrill guitar noise meant to sound like a war siren or something. The title track and “Chinese Radiation” use what sounds like a sampled TV show audiences near the end and “Laughing” has a Captain Beefheart-like horn warbling throughout it. Most of the album is disjointed and some of it sounds like it could be produced with a better attention to detail (“Street Waves” is probably the tightest song from beginning to end) but The Modern Dance never intended to win over casual music fans but oh how many bands would borrow from this experimental late ’70s classic.

Primal Scream – Screamadelica (1991)

Caveat emptor: this isn’t a rock album in the typical sense, it’s an album made during the waning days of the “Madchester” scene and Ecstasy era in the UK. In spite of its timing (the album would’ve found much greater mainstream success if released in 1989 or 1990 alongside others like The Stone Roses or The Happy Mondays) it still became a hit in the UK and had a cult following here in the US. The album starts out with “Movin’ On Up” and that pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the album–mellow, drug-inspired songs set to house beats and gospel-like choruses. Songs like “Slip Inside This House” and “Don’t Fight It, Feel It” are much more house inspired whereas “Come Together” is almost all gospel feel. It’s an interesting album and, surprisingly enough, it doesn’t sound too dated. The highlight of the album is “Loaded,” an unabashed drug anthem that uses sampled quotes from The Wild Angels throughout the song. “Loaded” and “Movin’ On Up” are probably two of the best songs of the ’90′s that no one has heard.