My 1001 Albums Journey

Album	You	Global	Diff
Ready To Die The Notorious B.I.G.	5	3.37	+1.63
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Kanye West	5	3.41	+1.59
Born In The U.S.A. Bruce Springsteen	5	3.7	+1.3
Appetite For Destruction Guns N' Roses	5	3.74	+1.26

Album	You	Global	Diff
Spy Vs. Spy: The Music Of Ornette Coleman John Zorn	1	2.22	-1.22
A Seat at the Table Solange	2	3.01	-1.01
Fever Ray Fever Ray	2	3	-1

Elvis Presley

3/5

- Make Me Know It is fun but fades out mid-verse, where you goin?! - Fever super groovy - First listen 6.5-7/10 - Second listen 6.5/10. Elvis is super fun. Ooooh reconsider babaaaaay

Sea Change

Beck

4/5

Could tell Beck had been going through some tough times even if I hadn't read that beforehand. Good, atmospheric stuff. 7/10

This Year's Model

Elvis Costello & The Attractions

3/5

Pump It Up, all time classic. Elvis sneers his way through a jumpy collection of keyboard-flavored punky tracks. I can appreciate cynicism as much as the next guy! 6/10

Lust For Life

Iggy Pop

3/5

Racuous as expected - I like it. 6/10

Transformer

Lou Reed

3/5

Underwhelming from reputation but soulful. 6/10

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

4/5

Bob's got soul oozing out of every chord he strum strum strums. 7/10

Caetano Veloso

3/5

You never realize internet song translation is a semi-organized inexact science until you're looking translations up for a non-English language album. "Alegria, Alegria" has some spirit to it. Superbacana starts to pick up and immediately ends. Soy Loco Por Ti America touches interestingly on the conditions of an unstable Brazil in the 60s (I think). 5/10

Talking Book

Stevie Wonder

4/5

Superstitious enough to give this delightfully funky bunch of tunes lucky number 7. 7/10

A Walk Across The Rooftops

The Blue Nile

3/5

A beautifully picturesque album. Synths are my jam. Tinseltown in the Rain is glorious. Falters in the middle. "Are we rich or are we poor, does it matter anymore?" 6/10

Thriller

Michael Jackson

4/5

Re-listened for the generator. Thriller's always a great time. Starts off hype with Wanna Be Startin' Somethin, explodes with the elite duo of Thriller and Beat It followed strongly by Billie Jean, closed well with P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing), gloriously sampled by my boy Kanye. 8/10

At Fillmore East

The Allman Brothers Band

3/5

The legendarily talented Allman Brothers meander their way through 80 minutes of directionless jamming, demonstrating to me that I enjoy a little (or a lot) more structure in my tunes. Gave it three listens out of respect and couldn't rise above a neutral rating. Still looking forward to the studio albums. 5/10

Supa Dupa Fly

Missy Elliott

2/5

Had this at a 4/10 rating thirty minutes in halfway through, until I saw red upon realizing I was halfway through thirty minutes in! Snoozefest full of weak bars except for Lil Kim's past- left-field Finnegan's Wake reference, which I missed because I was catching Z's. Inexplicably in the top 100 of Rolling Stone's 2020-edition Top 500 Albums list, above and below some astronomically superior works. 3/10

The Infotainment Scan

The Fall

3/5

Interesting experimental stuff. 5/10

Halcyon Digest

Deerhunter

3/5

Spacey (in a good way, not a Kevin way). 5/10

Another Music In A Different Kitchen

Buzzcocks

3/5

Some interesting moments. 5/10

Rain Dogs

Tom Waits

3/5

Growing on me like a rash. Will return to this one periodically - I enjoy Waits' "sand in the sandwich" voice, and can tell it has much more to offer upon repeat listens. 6/10

Brilliant Corners

Thelonious Monk

3/5

Not a jazz guy (not cultured enough) but pleasant to listen to. Jazz always classes up the joint. 5/10

Ready To Die

The Notorious B.I.G.

5/5

Re-listening for the generator. What a superb album, tons of fun (rimshot). When he's in the zone, no one does it like Biggie. From all-time opener Things Done Changed to endlessly quotable story of impending conflict Warning to the gloriously victorious Juicy, this work by the notorious one is simply awesome. 9/10 and a probable future 10

Real Life

Magazine

3/5

Explodes on "Motorcade". 5/10

Junkyard

The Birthday Party

3/5

Nick Cave howls like a MADMAN, dawg. 5/10

Shake Your Money Maker

The Black Crowes

3/5

Engaging blues. 6/10

Hypnotised

The Undertones

3/5

Energetic. 5/10

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Kanye West

5/5

Peeved I missed the reveal on this one! (Was stalled pouring over the classic Halo 3 soundtrack.) Re-listening for the generator: MBDTF is an absolute joy to listen to. Kanye and the boys, both on the tracks and in the all-star production team assembled in Hawaii for this masterpiece, are firing on all cylinders for 75 minutes. - The SNL line ages better and better as SNL gets less and less funny. - MJ GONE - All of the Lights bridge is an all-timer - Invariably think of the sarcophagus line whenever the word comes up - So Appalled always has me cruising around NY with the boys in slow motion, looking disdainfully at people and throwing money at shit - The day that you play me, would be the same day MTV play videos (another excellently aging line) - Moral victories is for minor league coaches, indeed Jay - Cyhi's "She found about April so she chose to march" section is in my personal pantheon of bars - Looking at my wrist, it turn your ass to stone - Runaway chorus put an excellent soundtrack to my state of mind dropping out of college back in 2014-15. Listened to it and MBDTF in general a lot back then. A decade of semi-conscious resentful alienation finally bubbled to the surface seeing how infuriatingly, heartbreakingly effortless normality and functionality were to my peers. A toast to the douchebags! - The goofy Chris Rock skit at the end of Blame Game grows on me as the years go by. - Lost In the World is one of the greatest closers ever, bar none, but its uplifting perfectly sets up the second phase of our close... - Endlessly fascinated with the compelling closer Who Will Survive In America. Beautifully ominous, Kanye, using the fiery poetry of Gil Scott-Heron, lobs a slow-fuse black bomb as the concluding statement of the album: a quick'n'dirty recap of the besieging of black America - bombs America has constructed and armed that are beginning to detonate again. What a profound accomplishment of an album. Take away all the great records he's made and Kanye would still be an American hero for the incident that led to the creation of MBDTF: interrupting Taylor Swift on stage accepting best music video award or whatever. Every song is single-worthy, and every song should be blared through the speakers. What's a black Beatle worth? A perfect score. 10/10

A Northern Soul

The Verve

3/5

Pleasantly stormy. "Another drink and I won't miss her, another drink and I won't miss her..." 6/10

Pet Sounds

The Beach Boys

4/5

Was supposed to listen to this years ago in college. Positively delightful! 8/10

A Love Supreme

John Coltrane

3/5

As with Monk before him, not hugely into jazz, but it pleasantly classes up the joint. 5/10

Spy Vs. Spy: The Music Of Ornette Coleman

John Zorn

1/5

First, the important business: Spotify can dine on a bowl of fat ones for not letting you play albums (even shuffled!) on the free version of the mobile app. Instead, you must listen with the other artist's stuff shuffled into your shuffled album. Google confirms this is a conscious choice to be insufferable. BIOYA. Second, the allegedly important business: this album. I feel like I'm being run over by a gaggle of saxophonists. This is jazz for crackheads. I feel like I'm in a manic montage in a Tom and Jerry cartoon being artfully brutalized in comic ways. These drums are a Stone Cold Stunner ad nauseam ad infinitum and my eardrums are the Rock bouncing around everywhere. I am far too besieged to score it highly yet far too amused to score it TOO lowly. Too, by way of its homophone two, is the operative word. An album I NEED to hear? In the immortal words of Squidward: "I didn't need to see that." 2/10

The La's

3/5

Pleasantly jangly. 6/10

To Pimp A Butterfly

Kendrick Lamar

4/5

Re-listening for the generator. A beautiful storm. Kendrick always delivers. 8/10

Headquarters

The Monkees

3/5

Toothless but pleasant enough. 5/10

Damaged

Black Flag

3/5

Relentless — and relentlessly interesting. TV party tonight! (Futurama!) 6/10

The Number Of The Beast

Iron Maiden

4/5

Two glorious essentials of my upbringing: the killer one-two of “The Number of the Beast” and “Run to the Hills”. Closed strongly with “Hallowed Be Thy Name”. YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7/10

Step In The Arena

Gang Starr

3/5

Liking the low-key delivery and presentation; this drink goes down smooth. 6/10

Truth And Soul

Fishbone

2/5

I now have a greater understanding as to why Theon Greyjoy hated that hornblower. 4/10

Eagles

3/5

Starts with the ultra-classic “Take It Easy” and then kinda coasts on that goodwill from there. 5/10

New Boots And Panties

Ian Dury

3/5

Rough-edged. 5/10

American Beauty

Grateful Dead

3/5

A bit too mellow. 5/10

Rage Against The Machine

4/5

Re-listening for the generator. Great stuff here full of fire, back when raging against the machine was automatically cool and wasn’t seemingly exclusively the province and purview of smug dorks online. 8/10

Surrealistic Pillow

Jefferson Airplane

3/5

Surprisingly coasts on the classics “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit”. 5/10

Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)

The Kinks

4/5

An interesting romp through British history as told by the seminal Kinks. Gets better with repeated listens; will be returning periodically to this one. 7/10

Songs Of Love And Hate

Leonard Cohen

3/5

Pleasantly low-key. 6/10

The White Album

Beatles

4/5

Re-listening for the generator; catching up to this one late to give it the continuous listen it deserves. So much interesting varied material; some of which, like the achingly beautiful "Blackbird", I saw Paul himself play in the Carrier Dome at Syracuse University in 2017. Awesome show, great album. (P.S. - "Good Night" is one of the best closers ever, particularly as the chaser to the legendarily inscrutable "Revolution 9".) 8/10

Songs The Lord Taught Us

The Cramps

3/5

Amusingly manic. 5/10

Ambient 1/Music For Airports

Brian Eno

3/5

Not my cup of tea, but soothing. 5/10

Green Onions

Booker T. & The MG's

3/5

Groovy. 5/10

The Marshall Mathers LP

Eminem

4/5

Haven’t heard “The Real Slim Shady” and “Stan” in years! Fun stuff here. 7/10

Public Image: First Issue

Public Image Ltd.

2/5

Aggressively mid. 4/10

Basket of Light

Pentangle

3/5

Folky! Liked the olden aesthetic on many of the songs. Took a while to fully appreciate in general. 5/10 (possible 5.5 with halves)

Bossanova

Pixies

3/5

Noisy and sometimes groovy. 5/10

Suzanne Vega

3/5

Pleasant acoustic stuff. 5/10

Scream, Dracula, Scream

Rocket From The Crypt

3/5

Noisy. 5/10

Searching For The Young Soul Rebels

Dexys Midnight Runners

3/5

Saxy. 5/10

Hard Again

Muddy Waters

3/5

Pleasantly loud stuff here from a founding father of blues. Blues aren’t my exact bag but I can easily see why people enjoy blasting Muddy Waters, and indeed I’ll be returning to this once I’ve got the full-hearted sound system (and possibly jovial party) a record like this obviously deserves. A respectable 6/10

Vincebus Eruptum

Blue Cheer

3/5

Loudly bluesy. 5/10

Pink Flag

Wire

3/5

Explosive. 5/10

Born In The U.S.A.

Bruce Springsteen

5/5

Re-listening for the generator (4 or 5 times). Pop-accessible rock at an apotheosis. Bruce and the E Street Band bat a thousand here. Down your drink whenever Clarence Clemons brings the house down. - “Born in the U.S.A.”, one of the famously misunderstood songs, blaring its chorus to obfuscate its restless subversion to the inattentive listener as the protagonist laments losing brothers at Khe Sanh and returning from hellacious Vietnam to find he’s been cast aside back home. - Bruce searches for a ride-or-die lady to back him up on “Cover Me”, followed by a sneaky favorite one-two combo in “Darlington County” and “Working on the Highway”, a little c’est la vie levity driving south down the coast before the album makes another emotional turn south. - The turn south is taken on the ode to loss “Downbound Train” and the electrically charged ode to lust “I’m on Fire” before a fiery defiance is gained on “No Surrender”, and discarded on the halfway-lamentation “Bobby Jean” discussing an old friend pulling an Irish exit. - Finally, the album points north to open the third act with an amazingly peppy look at a failing relationship and a protagonist crashing and burning when attempting to make moves on his partner, “I’m Goin’ Down”. Hey, maybe he should try that! - We’ve all got ‘em, and the E Streeters converge to describe a universal experience in “Glory Days”, jaw-jackin about the good old days. Hopefully the real glory days are yet to come; in the immortal words of Tony Soprano “‘remember when’ is the lowest form of conversation’”. - The synthesizer’s finest hour: “Dancing in the Dark”. One of my all-time favorites, the unshakeable rhythm never ceases to please, and the relentlessly relatable lyrics never fail to get a rueful yet defiant grin outta me. - We close with the meditative “My Hometown”, another set of unfortunately relatable lyrics. The author roams around his hometown, both as a son and as a father, pondering the neighborhood through trials and tribulations. (This author's hometown was permanently wounded by 90's American gov't budget cuts, from which it has settled into a slow decline. A particularly poignant closer.) Hell of an album here. Springsteen and the E Street Band take you on a joyride that feels like it’s 40/60 joy/ride relentlessly cruising down the freeway, down the boulevard, down the block; contemplating our perpetual restlessness with the windows rolled down, roaming about our territory observing a boisterously observant, seasonably warm Fourth of July. 10/10

The United States Of America

3/5

Count on the avant-garde to keep it weird. Not hearing the legendarily subversive screed I was promised here. Killer Mike voice: I’m glad Che’s dead. 5/10

Pornography

The Cure

3/5

A very cool sound. 6/10

Blonde On Blonde

Bob Dylan

3/5

Live At The Regal

B.B. King

3/5

Rings Around The World

Super Furry Animals

3/5

Tigermilk

Belle & Sebastian

3/5

NEU! 75

Neu!

3/5

Veckatimest

Grizzly Bear

3/5

Ogden's Nut Gone Flake

Small Faces

3/5

Urban Hymns

The Verve

3/5

Bringing It All Back Home

Bob Dylan

3/5

Cross

Justice

3/5

Done By The Forces Of Nature

Jungle Brothers

3/5

Bummed

Happy Mondays

3/5

I Against I

Bad Brains

3/5

Groovin'

The Young Rascals

3/5

Jagged Little Pill

Alanis Morissette

3/5

Doesn’t remotely live up to “You Oughta Know”. Also totally forgot about “Ironic”, the song that 1) helped kill the word irony and 2) infamously isn’t. 5/10

1977

Ash

3/5

Led Zeppelin III

Led Zeppelin

4/5

Truth

Jeff Beck

3/5

Unfocused but punchy when in the groove. 5/10

Everything Must Go

Manic Street Preachers

3/5

Pleasantly full-hearted stuff. 6/10

Talking Heads 77

Talking Heads

3/5

As offbeat as I expected from Talking Heads. (Psycho Killer yelling) 5/10

If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears

The Mamas & The Papas

3/5

Short and sweet. 6/10

Wild Gift

X

3/5

Spunky. 5/10

The Notorious Byrd Brothers

The Byrds

3/5

Psychedelic and jangly enough. 5/10

Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1

George Michael

3/5

Vibeworthy. 5/10

Natty Dread

Bob Marley & The Wailers

3/5

A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector

Various Artists

4/5

Faith

George Michael

3/5

Led Zeppelin

4/5

Re-listening for the generator: good stuff here. May have overrated Zep’s beginning in the past or it may be my headphones, but it’s still a 4/5 for the purposes of the 1001 ratings. Good times, good times. 8/10

The Chronic

Dr. Dre

3/5

Dre, Snoop and co. play bombastic braggadocio paddy-cake for an hour. Not the classic I was informed about. Shout-out to the Deez Nuts joke in 1992, though. HAH, GOT EEM In all seriousness: Dre, if you really wanna do a “G” thang, give your kid a couple of the Gazillions you made off these records (and now make off headphones) so she doesn’t have to be homeless in the Garden State. Goofiest reason to be in the papers for a music mogul, I swear to God. In my day, “Beats by Dre” means something grossly overpriced. Evidently back in the day, “beats by Dre” meant something grossly overrated. 5/10

Either Or

Elliott Smith

3/5

The real ball-breaker to this album is when it ends and another Elliott Smith song comes on, invariably with noticeably more energy than these droopy acoustics. 5/10

Ingenue

k.d. lang

3/5

Pleasant. 5/10

Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

3/5

Oddly sparse for a double album, but I always love Nick Cave’s delivery and lyricism. 5/10

Rio

Duran Duran

3/5

Vibeworthy in the first half. *Bender humming Hungry Like the Wolf riff* 5/10

It's A Shame About Ray

The Lemonheads

3/5

Good energy. 5/10

Moondance

Van Morrison

3/5

Not my bag, but Van Morrison’s voice is quite pleasant. 5/10

Arrival

ABBA

3/5

A fun, groovy album. 6/10

Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd

5/5

Re-listening for the generator. Was delighted to see some Floyd appear as my next record. Part 2 of 4 in Pink Floyd’s legendary 1973-79 run, Wish You Were Here is a mesmerizing ride down a winding river. The sweeping two big pieces of Shine On…, the rollers Welcome to the Machine and Have a Cigar, and above all else the heart-rending title track, this album is simply exquisite. Perhaps too short for a perfect score, perhaps too unvaried, but it maintains. 10/10

Ragged Glory

Neil Young & Crazy Horse

3/5

Gotta love and respect Neil Young and the gang’s fire and passion. An interesting, saucy batch of tunes. 5/10

Phrenology

The Roots

3/5

Stand!

Sly & The Family Stone

3/5

Groovy. Song #2 coming in hot with an instant classic of a chorus. 5/10

Scott 4

Scott Walker

3/5

Love the vivid lyrics, particularly the ones weaving the tale of the legendary movie "The Seventh Seal". 5/10

Blur

3/5

Beauty And The Beat

The Go-Go's

3/5

Buffalo Springfield Again

Buffalo Springfield

3/5

A Seat at the Table

Solange

2/5

I would’ve won that elevator fight.

Ananda Shankar

2/5

Appetite For Destruction

Guns N' Roses

5/5

Was delighted to see this come up. What a tornado of an album. A couple filler songs are astronomically offset by all-time banger after banger, crowned by my all time favorite tune Paradise City. I’m on the night train, so’s I can leave this slum… 10/10

The Velvet Underground

3/5

Heroes

David Bowie

3/5

Exit Planet Dust

The Chemical Brothers

3/5

Third/Sister Lovers

Big Star

3/5

Fulfillingness' First Finale

Stevie Wonder

3/5

Joan Armatrading

3/5

Superfuzz Bigmuff

Mudhoney

3/5

Fever Ray

2/5

Disintegration

The Cure

4/5

Dance Mania

Tito Puente

3/5

Underwater Moonlight

The Soft Boys

3/5

Beach Samba

Astrud Gilberto

3/5

Pleasant! 6/10

Songs For Swingin' Lovers!

Frank Sinatra

3/5

Odessa

Bee Gees

3/5

Teenage Head

Flamin' Groovies

3/5

Raw Power

The Stooges

3/5

Music For The Jilted Generation

The Prodigy

3/5

Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde

The Pharcyde

4/5

Love the light vibe.

The Soft Bulletin

The Flaming Lips

3/5

Will The Circle Be Unbroken

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

3/5

Orbital 2

Orbital

3/5

The Blueprint

JAY Z

3/5

Close To You

Carpenters

3/5

Cloud Nine

The Temptations

3/5

Strangeways, Here We Come

The Smiths

4/5

Stop blubbering about Morrissey's political shenanigans, whatever they are. I rated The Blueprint the other day, and you didn't see me comment on Jay-Z's morally cringeworthy affinity for the dishonorable Louis Farrakhan, did you? Well, now you did. Rate what's here, and what's here is a nice 6.5/10. The Smiths always have a tasty vibe and beautiful sound.

James Brown Live At The Apollo

James Brown

3/5

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Lauryn Hill

3/5

Nixon

Lambchop

3/5

The Low End Theory

A Tribe Called Quest

4/5