1001 Albums Summary

I have listened to this so many times since I first bought my LP copy (blue label Epic repress) in 1979. Neither Meat Loaf nor Jim Steinman was ever really able to match this achievement in their future career, despite some decent “comeback” albums in the early 90s from Mr. Loaf and a few Steinman-penned and produced pop hits for the adult contemporary market, of all places. Mr. Loaf allegedly had so much trouble trying to sing the songs for the original follow-up that Jim Steinman himself ended up doing it himself as the “Bad For Good” album (Basically, imagine someone with the same songwriting skills but questionable singing skills trying to write and recreate a clone of this album). Beyond that, the timeless songwriting is marred by overblown and seemingly outdated wannabe-Wagner arrangements by Steinman (Producer Todd Rundgren’s production is impeccable but he isn’t to blame for Steinman trying to create a hard-rock Beyruth Festival on wax.)

It’s been a long time since I listened to this album - usually I reach for Remain in Light or Fear of Music first as far as Heads albums go. But this was. Great snapshot of their early years.

Having heard Lamar’s name for years but never bothered to investigate his music, I wasn’t sure what to expect (you can blame the over proliferation of mumble rappers over the past ten years or so). I definitely wasn’t expecting a concept album for his major label debut!

What else is there to say about this album?

I don’t know how many other participants here appreciated this album, but this is an album I’ve returned to time and again - and a band whose entire discography I’ve bought a couple of times over the past three decades. While not my favorite Fall album (one of the candidates for that category would be Hex Enduction Hour) it is a solid work and a quite interesting listen. Mark E. Smith is one of the most literate and well-read lyricists in post-1976 rock music and here his vocals are clear as a bell vocally- something that would sort of devolve as the years progressed. The basic formula of the band’s sound is here - the musicians (it was rare when any Fall studio album had the exact same lineup as its preceding release) vamping repetitively behind Mark’s wordy vocals - with personnel changes frequently noticeable from album to album. Look for a version of the album that also has bonus tracks that include the band’s first two singles “Bingo Master’s Break Out” and “It’s The New Thing” plus their early John Peel Sessions.

This is one I’m going to have to come back to fully… one of those albums that should be listened to in full to be truly appreciated before one makes a full opinion of it. What I did hear is of its time period (especially the stereo mixing where the drums are all coming out of one side of the stereo picture) but still worth it.

Ah, the days when Kanye or whatever the fuck he’s calling himself this week wasn’t bullying women, dressing head to toe in black, declaring himself a superhero one minute and a human being the next, posting anti-Semetic garbage and selling swastika T-shirts on X, doing nitrous oxide, and mentally and verbally abusing his “wife” by making her present herself as a scantily dressed mute in public. Simply put, fuck any idea of giving this SOB any more plays on social media. Despite six good albums in a row from this one to Yeezus, he isn’t worth the time and the attention anymore and I won’t even stream his better material anymore. He needs to be in a mental institution for the rest of his natural life.

This is where the Godfather of Grunge earned his moniker, and deservedly so. Most Neil Young albums are masterpieces and rightly so, but this one is in the top five because of how naked and real it is.

There’s three ways to hear this classic: the original mono (authorized by the band), the original stereo mix (done without the band’s input as mono was still the priority back in 1967), and Giles Martin’s 2017 stereo remix. I highly recommend listening to all three versions.

Pretty cool that this came up on the anniversary of Closer’s release. This is one of the most important post-punk albums ever.

5/4 should be Dave Brubeck Day as well as Star Wars day. This album is why.

Their first album not withstanding, this was their REAL debut as far as I’m concerned. Instead of the one-day live-in-the-studio documentation of a typical Sabbath club set (complete with wanky solo-instrument solos), we get eight focused tracks that truly demonstrate what the band was capable of.

The album is a classic and a fine line successfully straddled between blues rock and synth, proving that Gibson Lee Pauls and MiniMoogs could peacefully coexist on the same record. But my favorite memory associated with this album still remains the incident in 1984 when Black Flag invaded the DJ booth at a club they were playing in London and made the DJ play this album from beginning to end before they’d even go onstage and play.

When this dropped, people in the LA area who had seen the Germs play live, often on the verge of collapse and with Darby Crash frequently refusing to sing on mic a lot of the time were surprised to hear a tight-as-virgin-pussy rock band with an incredible lyricist at the microphone. Darby died a year after this album dropped, but this album is eternal. A must.

One of EC’s finest achievements. And to be honest, his discography is loaded with them.

For me, this is the key Head’s album, with Fear of Music right behind.

A timely choice now that the Brothers Gallagher are back together. Anyone wanting to know what the fuss is all about should be starting with where the whole Oasis story started. If this album doesn’t move you, I feel sorry for your soul.

This album has been part of my DNA since I was seven years old (my mother had the eight track, which had a slightly different sequence to the original LP) and has never left. This album began my lifelong appreciation of Elton John and his music.

There is no such thing as a bad Velvet Underground album unless Lou Reed isn’t on it. A close friend of mine argues that Lou needed an “editor” in John Cale but I am on the fence on that assessment. Anyway, this album should have made the Velvets superstars in their own time with its more contemplative, semi-acoustic arrangements. But unfortunately, they were on a crap label (Verve/MGM) at the time that was just about to be taken over by the tineared Mike Curb. By the time the Velvets changed labels to Cotillion/Atlantic and were ready to release “Loaded”, Lou Reed had quit his own band, Doug Cale had taken it over (to the point where he credited all of Lou’s songs to the entire band on the album sleeve and label copy of Loaded) and MGM was about to piggyback the album with a “Golden Archive Series” best-of. But that doesn’t change the fact that, where the first two albums of the VU were proto-punk, this eponymous third album and Loaded were proto-indie rock. And the world has been better for it all.

One of those albums that will blow your mind the first time you hear it, then immediately compel you to play it again.

Fifty years old this year.. time flies. Springsteen is forever.

This album… is unfortunately everything I dislike about white blues rock. It’s okay, but it’s terribly overrated and only a couple of degrees above the weekend warriors slopping through easy songs in a corner bar for gas money and free beer.

The great Dylan “bridge” album that eased his fan base (minus the idiot that yelled “Judas!” at him in Manchester) between his early acoustic goodness and the electric period that made him absolute godhead.

This one will be a mind blow for every first time listener. If you think of punk as sloppy and out of tune (which was always a bullshit trope anyway), this or any other Mjnor Threat album will change your mind. And, but, also: This is what you play your kids when they ask you, “Mom/Dad, is it true that Ian MacKaye was in another band before Fugazi?”

Whe this album first came out, it was the first Metallica album I had bought on CD. I hadn’t noticed the lack of bass at first — and I was 21 at the time and playing bass myself. Now whenever I hear this album I can’t unhear the fact that Lars Ulrich made the mix engineers (the same ones that mixed the first Guns N’ Roses album) turn Jason Newstead’s bass down to a severely inaudible level.

This is one of those albums and artists that you wished you had heard a hell of a lot sooner than the day you laid ears on it. His entire discography, as short as it is, does not disappoint. Run, don’t walk.

Regrettably this ended up being their last album and it only makes me wish there was more from them as a band after this (not counting posthumous/archival live and outtake releases). But my love for this band’s discography, even after Bob Mould and Grant Hart embarked on solo careers, still endured. As does their music.

My favorite Cure album. Here the synths started to debut, an unobtrusive texture underneath the original trio’s sound. A must.

This is one of the greatest funk albums ever produced… and tragically, as of this writing this album and the rest of Funkadelic’s Warner Bros.-era catalog (especially this album and its follow-up Uncle Jam Wants You) is still not available for download or streaming. Whoever has the rights to the WB-era Funkadelic albums, pull your head out of the sand and release these albums back to the world where they belong!

The original ten-song album didn’t really do the entire event justice, compared to the full concert. The original short version is fine to experience the album the way the world first heard it. This version is how it was meant to be heard.

This is peak Dan. Not a note wasted. Only seven songs, but what great songs they are! “Deacon Blues” is my highlighted track here. Geffen dropped a fully remastered vinyl edition last year (2014) — do yourself a favor if you own a turntable and buy it.

I had bought this sight unseen because of how much I loved their first album. Here the Reid Brothers ditched the feedback but kept their songwriting chops. Somehow this album straddles light and dark at the same time — a miraculous feat.

The penultimate great AC/DC album. After they blew their wad with Brian Johnson’s fist album with them on Back In Black, it was all autopilot from here.

This is where they started to falter as they got bigger. They spent half their time trying to rip off TLC’s innovations from Fanmail, and bored their audience at the end with a boring gospel medley and a superfluous closing track that tried very hard to be spoken liner notes. Too much filler and not enough killer.

AKA “Fuck it, you know! The good one!” per Eddie Murphy’s “Delirious”.

Dogshit.

To be perfectly honest, every Bad Brains release is never going to be the equal of their self-titled debut album. But that having been said… this is the one that could see the first album’s taillights very close. No reggae/dub jams to be found on here, and the rock is less frantic but no less powerful.

Repetitive and compelling, a true benchmark for the Krautrock subgenre, a must for every record library. All hail Damo Suzuki!

This was part of my DNA since day one. The part of me that grew up hearing soul singles on AM radio in between Elton John and Paul McCartney hits in the early 70s and the teenage me that loved punk and new wave found common ground in this album, and subsequently in the rest of this great man’s entire discography. And he was just getting started! Dance, Music, Sex, Romance!

Nothing to really add to the conversation about this album. It’s a classic for a reason. You might be wary of songs longer than a few minutes but honestly, the longer tracks like “Heart Of The Sunrise” will pass faster than you realize. By the way, the “Deluxe Edition” of this album represented by this cover is no longer available on Apple Music, replaced by a Super Deluxe Edition with a fresh remaster of the original mix, a new remix by Stephen Wilson, and some other tracks (including the band’s rearrangement of Simon And Garfunkel’s “America” and the single versions of “Roundabout” and “Long Distance Runaround”).

I borrowed my first copy from a friend in 1983, copied it to a cassette, and became rather obsessed with Dylan’s lyrics on this album to the point where I wrote them out longhand and then typed them out later. Since added three CD editions (one the hybrid SACD and the last part of the complete albums CD box) and a repress of the mono edition to my collection. Simply put: this album is part of my DNA.

When Nick Cave went into mainstream consciousness without even trying. Being himself and bringing fellow Kiwi Kylie Minogue into his wheelhouse didn’t hurt one bit.

This is how Electric Warrior (the album with Bang A Gong and Jeepster) got followed up. And it kicks just as much booty. And, but, also: this is where Guns N’ Roses go Buick Mackayne from. Actually, you shouldn’t sleep on ANY T. Rex album. Just saying. (Marc Bolan’s American record company made that mistake after this album and fobbed them off on Casablanca.)

An interesting debut from the band. Lots of good tracks, but the follow-up album, The Low End Theory, really surpasses this.

Mandatory listening. Your intelligence and ability to appreciate music will be judged by me harshly if you even think of downvoting or dismissing this album OR this band.