1001 Albums Summary

Kicking things off with one of the foundation punk records is exactly what I wanted out of this project. While the Pistols don't hold up musically on the same level as The Clash or The Ramones, they were still integral to the aesthetic of the genre moving forward and the amount of bands that met at a Sex Pistols concert or from the emergence of punk in general ranging from Joy Division/Warsaw to Amebix to Discharge to Killing Joke this album is influential in a way few others could claim.

I can't imagine kicking off an album with 3 solid bangers that never get old, then having the rest of the album plod through with nothing of substance at all.

This is one of those special albums right there on the cusp of something greater. While Nevermind would be the album that changed the world just a couple months later, without Mudhoney and Surfer Rosa by the Pixies, you don't have it at all. This is the purest look at what the folk up in Seattle were cooking at the tail end of the 80's glam rock and hair metal overindulgence and taking a page from the books of punk and alternative rock that fell right under the periphery. This is exactly the album that comes to mind when people want to talk about the whole Sub pop grunge thing.

Two brothers who didn't play around. Not the first or most influential glam, arena rock, etc band of the time, but Eddie's guitar skills are unmatched, much like Hendrix a decade before. While the albums after this one can be a mixed bag as a whole, this one doesn't let up for a second and is the kind of debut you want to hear. Running With the Devil is a solid start, but always felt like Eruption/You Really Got Me would have made a bigger statement for the band's debut, and the riffs across every track show he was a step above his contemporaries in play, while still writing songs with a blend of catchy hooks and technical prowess.

Getitawaygetitawaygetitaway now!

I hold so much appreciation for these formative albums. I feel like Raising Hell and eventually their contemporaries in Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, LL Cool J are better musically, but this album comes before all of that in time when Sugar Hill Gang and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were first experimenting with this style, Run DMC shows the very foundation that would change the landscape of hiphop forever. Oh and right from the start with Rock Box sampling the guitar riff we saw what would eventually merge the genres together, which has always been a completion of the circle with rock and hiphops ancestral roots in jazz and blues music mixed with developing technologies of the 70's. Turntablism and sampling was a game changer with music and too many people sleep on just how important these albums are even if musically they may seem a lot more primitive. If we consider NWA's Straight Outta Compton the "Nevermind" of hiphop (in that it's an album that changed the landscape of the genre both artistically and commercially), then this album is closer to The Stooge's Fun House or MC5's Kick Out the Jams where you can link back to it as some of the most important albums that inspired the earliest generations of their styles and were already pioneering the definitive style of hiphop in this album years before most of their contemporaries.

Björk - Vespertine 3/5. Björk explaining how tvs work: 5/5

Driving 130km/h into the future. Fun fun fun on the autobahn.

25 years hasn’t let this age well. This album in its day brought a legion of angsty young white men to relate to an album mired in homophobia and misogyny. Stan is an all right track, but musically this does very little and lyrically it’s offensive.

Banger album from God herself.

Rock & Roll will never be destroyed, but I guess it can be bored to death.

Here’s the beef!

Is it normal to have an erection lasting the entire duration of this album?

Mom can we listen to the Beatles? "We already have the beatles at home." The Beatles at home:

“When I was a boy I was coming up through the 60’s and thought my adulthood was going to be the most radical years of my life, but when I got there it’s Pete Frampton in a kimono and I’m like cmon man.” - Mike Watt, Minutemen. American Hardcore documentary. I feel I can relate as someone coming up through the 90’s and when you get to that age you start exploring music and alternative culture this is what was happening. What a weird time. Incubus is one of those bands fondly remembered by those of us coming around in the turn to the 21st century as the thing to move forward rock music. Kurt Cobain died 5 years ago and all these alternative hard rock bands were coming up. You had the post grunge bands of Foo Fighters, Bush, and the whole lollapalooza thing going on. You had the nu metal and rap rock bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit, coal chamber, deftones. You had the funky rock bands like faith no more, Red Hot Chili Peppers, or sublime. This album is 1999 so Metallica’s already been stripped down to a shell of their former selves, cutting their hair, battling drug addictions and suffering the success of being the biggest hard rock band on the planet after still making #1 on billboard with the likes of Load and Reload. Creed’s first couple albums came out and we had Human Clay and the song Higher all over the place, so butt rock wasn’t too far off. Incubus didn’t fall comfortably into any of these and fell by the wayside. I feel like by 2003 or 2004 the band was pretty much forgotten as a relic of that period in the 90’s when gen x was of age, and the oldest millennials weee following along ready to take over their spot in the generational limelight just as quickly with their weird middle children of modern history and pop culture. Before y2k and the world was turned on its hinges. A time of peace and possible stability as humanity marches forward into the new climax of the species. But come on guys, this album didn’t age well in that regard and is one of the things that will go on to be a footnote once gen x and elder millennials let go of their nostalgia, and I get it. I heard Stellar and Drive on the radio a ton back then, my reminiscence of youth when my first girlfriend played the ballad “I miss you” when we weren’t hanging out and told me about it on our landlines. The nostalgia is ripe to be there but overall this album is a snooze fest and the songs aren’t particularly notable to me any more. This whole era of music was just a sterile facility of friendly enough rock bands that didn’t need to take a risk to sell albums and incorporate the most banal and mundane pieces of the grunge wave of the earliest part of the decade or creative works of Mike Patton. It’s the equivalent of Godsmack to me who took such a legendary band like Alice In Chains (who managed to escape a lifestyle as a washed up glam cover band and made a distinct style for themselves incorporating Black Sabbath’s riffs, harmonized vocals into the Seattle grunge scene to make it a bit heavier) and found the worst parts of their music to form their own career off of (honestly, even the song god smack off dirt is the one song I like to skip when I play that record). Linkin park was hot on their heels and would eventually out do Incubus with their debut album Hybrid Theory in sales and just being a more consistent vision, but you can hear the parallels. Some of the ballads, the rapping sections in a few middle the album tracks and even the DJ turntable instrumental that was basically copied by LP on their first album with Mr Hahn’s Cure for the Itch. Still, that’s not enough to save Incubus and this album while commercially successful wasn’t enough for this band to survive modern relevance and I think younger people won’t really find the appeal they had. Also the band name is probably one of the greatest missed shots in band name history. Incubus would be perfect for one of their 80’s goth rock, dark wave, industrial kind of bands, even taking note of the hit song from Xmal deutschland’s incubus succubus song, but alas it became the band that was a foot note in alternative rock and never really fit into any of the scenes burgeoning around them at the time, even lamented by the members who weren’t punk enough for warped and not metal enough for Ozzfest. One and done.

The tragedy of two stars shining bright and leaving us behind so early. His father, Tim Buckley passed away at the age of 28 from a drug overdose. Jeff said in interviews he had only met his biological father once when he was a kid. Jeff would pass away at the age of 30, a couple years after this album was released. What he left behind was a one and done classic in his own regard, singing melancholically but honest in the style of his predecessors, but also bringing forward the folk and rock music of the last few decades into a more modern style that could resonate with the millennials and Gen Z that would come after. A touching album throughout. His version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah is absolutely beautiful.

Back in the day when I was drinking beer and hailing Satan, this album missed me. I heard their other album a while back and it got a solid 3 stars. This one however I see why the indie kids praise it as much. This album was very different going more into an art rock style and had a solid vibe throughout. Definitely one of the essentials.

Telling you now. This is one of those albums where I gave it a four because overall it's very good, but doesn't make my all timers, but it's probably one of my personal favorites and my favorite from The Jesus and Mary Chain.

There's not a bad song on this album, so you know what that means. Perfect record. I got this the day after watching Ozzy's retirement party on stream and what a legacy he left behind.

Guys, trust me. I love goth. I love post punk. I love Nick Cave. I still think this album is average and will continue to lean on Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure, Sisters of Mercy, and Bauhaus over The Birthday Party any day. Their albums are a bit more experimental and out there. I guess kinda like Killing Joke when they started off where it was over time they became the masters of the craft, but sometimes we have rocky first steps.

Mysticism and guitar virtuosity in an obscure late 60's package that seems to get overlooked more than its contemporaries. I might still appreciate the self titled a bit more, but this is miles more interesting than his work with Robert Thomas that would come in three more decades.

Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and the like in a more modern context is what Frank Ocean is going for, and this is meant to be a downtempo stream of consciousness series of hits that every hiphop and R&B artist followed up with for the last decade, but man this abum doesn't hit like his influences do.

Not bad, but one of the most boring albums I had to endure.

When you see 28 songs, rarely reaching 2 minutes and expect another DRI or Napalm Death going fast and hard, then it turns out it's riffing more on psychedelia, and garage rock. This album slaps and is interesting from a band with 40+ albums that scared me to try and figure out which one to introduce myself with.

Despite sounding pretty confused about the whole thing, this album is actually a concept album about a man returning home after the vietnam war. Musically, politically, and spiritually one of the most ironically cognizant albums of its time and for generations to come.

Kurt Cobain was still amplified, so giving unplugged a 1/5 for historic accuracy. Jk, this album is one of the best live albums ever made and this is coming from the kid who in high school hated Nirvana because they killed Heavy Metal, maaan.

[One afternoon at a record store. A customer walks in.] Customer: "Excuse me." Clerk: "Yeah?" "Do you have the new Depeche Mode record?" "Yeah it's over there, but it sucks." "Well, do you have the latest Pixies album?" "Yeah, but it sucks. All that new stuff sucks, but it's over there." *points, the customer reconsiders* "You know, actually, I was thinking of getting into something more vintage anyway, like I don't know, maybe The Doors?" "Really? I never had you figured for a Doors fan." *Shrugs* "I'm not really a Doors fan, but sure, I'd like to get into them." "No, no, no my friend. Doors fans aren't made. They're born. I think right now there's some guy in Africa madly beating on a drum. He's a Doors fan. Or an old lady on the bus sucking humbugs. She's a Rider on the Storm, but she ain't never heard the sounds. So, what about you?" *Snaps fingers* "Well I heard a record of theirs last night at a party-" "uh huh" "-and i've always liked 'Love Her Madly.'" "Well if you become a Doors fan, 'Love Her Madly' is the only song you WON'T LIKE." "Oh right. I guess I should start with their greatest hits." "Hey! Greatest hits albums are for house wives and little girls! You're not serious! You don't wanna be a Doors fan! Get out of my store! We're closed! Get out of here!" "No, nonono! I want you to show me the way!" *The clerk hesitates* "Was that a Frampton reference in my store?" *New doors fan is horrified at his mistake* "No. Nono. No lyrics, just words. Just words. Words." *Clerk moves toward the album racks, directing the new doors fan* "All right. If you want to be a Doors fan you can't just go buy any album. It's scientific." "Sure." "You gotta buy this," *flips through vinyl record stack* "'Waiting for the Sun'. It's the departure point." *kisses cover* "Listen to it every night around dusk for about a month." "Sounds good, then what?" "Who's playing bass?" *new doors fan flips over record jacket and reads liner notes* "Uh...no one." "No bass." "No bass?" "The gypsy's had no homes, The Doors had no bass, but don't let that scare you, my friend, let that liberate you. Because when you're free flying with the doors man, what do you need a safety net for?" *the new doors fan raises fist* "VIVA LA DOORS!" "VIVA LA DOORS! All right! But listen, there's a burden that every real Doors fan has gotta live with. It's a fact that the greatest Rock n Roll band of all time is never gonna play live again." *tears up* "Can't live in the past." "No wait, there's hope. I heard once that Iggy Pop is gonna front them, and the Doors will tour again." "Where did you hear that?" "Oh, I heard it somewhere" "Yeah? Read it in your precious Creem magazine, maybe? Well it's not gonna happen!" "Well, how do ya know that?" "Because somebody told me." "Well, who told you?" "Do you wanna know who told me?" "Oh yeah." "JIM F---ING MORRISON TOLD ME! THAT'S WHO!" *Customer runs through the door* "Do you guys have the latest Depeche Mode album?" [New doors fan]: "SUUUUUUCKS!" [Customer runs back out, the shop clerk returns to the new doors fan] "I forgive you, here." *goes behind the counter, searching, and pulls out an 8 track cassette.* "Take this, it's an 8 track tape. One of the last in existence. I want you to steal a car-" "I have a car." "-Steal a car-" "Steal a car." "-get it in and drive west. Play the tape full blast. When the tape ends, get out, get into a fight. Then get back into the car, come to town, and meet me at the Cargas club." "And what will you do?" "I will let you in to the most prestigious hotel of all time." "Which is?" *Looks down and taps the 8 track tape in the new doors fan's hands." "Morrison Hotel." "Then what?" "Then...you're gonna be a Doors fan, man!"