1001 Albums Summary

This is my first 'album of the day', and a great way to kick the tradition off. Truthfully, I was a little reserved about whether or not I actually wanted to listen to this. But keeping in spirit of the project I figured I need to go for it (and listen through) either way. Some really good stuff on here. Reminded me of how much I enjoyed jam-band music at one point. I like the vibe and flow of this a lot better than most classic rock. Musically intricate and soulful. Half the album are standout songs: -Tuesday's Gone -Simple Man -Free Bird These must have been instant classics. Tuesday's Gone is such a sweet, sentimental song that instantly activates nostalgia. Just real musical delight. Freebird has to be one of the hardest songs ever written. Feels exactly like a man grappling with his own mind before breaking out into flight, really earning the *bird* symbolism by the time the 5-minute long jam is unleashed. I'm a bit at a loss for words for how loving some of this music is.

Second 'album of the day', and ehh. Its kinda hard to rate this one. I was at one point a big Bob Dylan fan, though nothing on this album was ever in my rotation. 'Like a Rolling Stone' is of course a good song, but one of those that's maybe too big for its own good. A little played out. Ballad of a Thin Man may be the origin of something I dislike a lot about music, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Desolation Row is probably the closest song to stand out as a solid piece of music in its own right, divorced from all the historical context. The other songs really do just blend together kind of annoyingly. The album isn't for me, but I get it as one of those who's legacy is more rooted in historic significance than musical quality.

I must say that I don't have the ear to review or rate jazz music effectively. I listened to this on a log drive taking Comet to a surgical appointment in the morning and I can say that it set the mood very effectively. It had a cool and calming effect on my driving, my nerves, my anxiety. I felt a bit sharper and more awake for listening to it. I liked the album quite a lot, but don't have many more words for it until I listen to some more and gain a better understanding of the genre. A good introduction though.

I was excited to draw this album as my forth 'album of the day'. I'd heard that Frank Ocean was something of a legend in the pop/RnB world but had never heard really any of his music. The opening track Thinkin About You is a great track, but a little underwhelming compared to what I've heard / remember of it. That is the only Frank Ocean song I can remember hearing prior to this, too. Sweet Life, Sierra Leone, and Super Rich Kids were also decent songs but probably not a lot of staying power with me. I thought Pyramids was really artful and cool, though not a repeater either. The one I really liked is Crack Rock. Felt like that song delivered a more complex and emotive feeling. Past that point on the album, things sort of started to blend together. I really did not understand Bad Religion, that sounded like audible confusion and filler. In general I felt that a lot of the album was filler, but maybe just isn't my cup of tea overall. I can say for sure that I'm not a huge fan of the RnB style of elongating random words in the 'RnB accent' which is all over this album. And really, Frank's voice on the high end sounds a little rough and put on. Doesn't quite harmonize the way I think a lot of this genre from the 80's and 90's does. 5.5/10 for me.

Very low opinion of this album lol. It was sonically annoying, lyrically superficial, and really seemed to lack any focus or coherent throughline. Every song both sounded the same but, paradoxically, like they had nothing to do with one another. Will refrain from judging the entirety of PJ Harvey off of this album though. I hear that this is generally seen as her most commercial album and not a big reflection of her whole work, and that she doesn't return to this album herself. But I really don't like the song writing, the music itself is limited and boring, the singing is hard on the ears - especially when trying to do any kind of 'grunge'. Big pass for me.

I came in with low-ish expectations on this one, never the biggest fan of old west coast hip hop. I was really pleasantly surprised. I always thought of Dre as a guy who was only a rapper sort of out of necessity, never particularly good at it but more skilled as a producer. But I think it was his skill as a producer that really shines here. Everything on this album is a pretty tight composition. The tracks go a lot harder than I would have expected as an NWA follow up. Its aggressive but infinitely catchy. I listened to it semi-properly while driving through the city which was a good vibe. This is *good* driving music. Some stand-outs on the album for me are Lyrical Gangbang, High Powered, $20 Sack Pyramid, Rat-tat-tat-tat.

The rating feels a bit harsh - This isn't a bad album necessarily. There's nothing wrong with it musically, it can be catchy. I found it incredibly boring though. Now, granted that this was '68, maybe the genres this is playing in weren't as developed as what I'm more familiar with - Especially the jazz and funk influences. But that's a generous assumption on my part, and I'm not sure that's true. It just feels really basic. It would be a fine album as background music in the extreme periphery of whatever I'm doing, but listening to it directly felt like a whole lot of nothing. Lets take for example the album 'The Kids & Me' by Billy Preston. This was 6 years later and it feels like the mid-70's, but it has a much better handle at how to make music like this sound fun and engaging. That's not a terribly complex either, its feel-good pop music. But I hard time accepting that just 6 years later there was some radical re-imagining of how music like this was made. And even if that was true, there is plenty of more engaging music from the 50's and 60's this could have drawn influence from. I guess to my ears it sounds like protestant kids trying to get in on some genres that they really don't understand, and through proximity of their own tepidity, due in fact to how watered down the music is, this made it a bigger hit in American pop culture where mainstream listeners already shared the same sensibilities.

This isn't really my type of music but I was into it for the historical aspect. Not knowing much about the musical history of this genre I am kind of bewildered about how emerged out of the 70's, it sounds entirely different than whatever came before. Just a really hard and distinctive style of the 80's. So that much is pretty cool. "Everybody Want to Rule the World" was a good song and I'm not sure if I'd ever listened to it all the way through before. The rest of the album was decent background music - I was kind of offput when it was over, deep in focus lol - but probably nothing I'd return to.

Didn't care for it, skipped this one.

This album is the type of thing I was hoping to get out of this whole project. I've never listened to reggae music much, certainly never an album all the way through, so was really eager to jump into this one. It was great! Listened to it twice through today and vibed with it the whole time. Don't have much to say about it, being unfamiliar with the genre, but I certainly enjoyed it and will throw it on for easy listening in the future.

A 10/10 album and my favorite on the list so far. Was really excited to see this one come up this morning. I've never played a Blondie album in full. Going in, I recognized One Way or Another, Heart of Glass, and Sunday Girl (which was sort of a deep cut for me) but came out with several new favorites. "Fade Away and Radiate", "Sunday Girl", "Just Go Away", and (my favorite) "11:59" were huge standouts for me and all ended up in some playlists. What strikes me about this album is how influential it immediately felt. Like much of the music I've listened to my whole life was born from this style. Knowing that it came out in 1978, it feels like a true pioneer of alternative and indie rock. Its effortlessly cool but totally sincere, musically exciting and of course Debby Harry is one of the greatest vocalists in rock. This is a no-skips, 10/10 album.

"Birth of the Cool" is a great name for this album. You just *feel* cool listening to it. This is the kind of jazz I've always wanted to 'get into' but didn't really know where to start. I could listen to this endlessly. A perfect album and so much fun.

This isn't my favorite of the Tom Petty I've heard but it is immediately a very hard hitting album. Really unique, sort of hard to put among its contemporaries in 1976. Its got elements of classic rock, maybe some precursor to glam? It comes fast and sort of jets all over the place. I liked it, but it was a little hard to figure out what they were going for.

This album falls off the cliff after the opening 30 seconds. What a corny, try-hard, uncomfortable album. There is something pretty cool about the main riff of *Enter Sandman* sort of pulsing towards a breaking through to kick off the album with a bang, but... The bang never really comes. For a foundational metal album, this is surprisingly *soft*. There is no real impact after the first couple of fake-outs when the riff fully hits. And that goes for the whole album, sure the bass is deep and the distortion is fuzzy, but its clean-cut and over-polished. The album is impeccably produced so I can only conclude that they intended for it to sound so bland. Maybe they tried to compensate for this with the vocals, and oh man... This is a guy I wouldn't want to bump into coming out of a gas station bathroom. Yeah if there's anything threatening or 'hard' about the lead singer, it's just that I'd worry about my kids if he moved onto my block. He's doing an inverse of the glam rock yodeling and comes across about as flamboyant. The lisping growls following each bar are better suited for a boyscout campfire story, if not for the aforementioned predator vibe. The lyrics don't fare any better. *"Hush little baby, don't say a word And never mind that noise you heard It's just the beasts under your bed In your closet, in your head"* ***Groan*** Now, again, putting aside the incredibly uncomfortable insinuation that the guy is anywhere in speaking range of a child. The fucking nursery rhyme trope is laughable. 'Oooh there's something scary in the dark' is about the extent of the theme here. I wasn't there when this came out, so I'd be inclined to think that this was just the baby steps of metal that eventually grew into the funky satantic shit its known for. But hell, *Reign in Blood* was 1986. Something like **Black Sabbath** obviously predates and wipes the floor with this. A little bit later, *Rob Zombie* and his *Hellbilly Deluxe* is the realized version of what Metallica was going for here, loaded with infinitely more musical intrigue and demented aesthetic. I'm going to call this 'Suburban Metal' and cut it off there. 3/10.

One of my favorite albums, 10/10