Oct 02 2025
This Year's Model
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
This Year's Model: an angry, eloquent punk-pop tunesmith with a hell of a band to drive the bangers. Favorite track: Radio, Radio (which also contains the best lyric: "And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools trying to anesthetize the way that you feel"). Honorable mention: Lipstick Vogue (madman drummer), Pump It Up.
5
Oct 03 2025
Appetite For Destruction
Guns N' Roses
I may have listened to this album more than any other in my life...it's one of rock 'n' roll's goats. It's a miracle that this rag tag band of drunk and high degenerates were able to take a break from their LA sleazeball lifestyle to capture the level of focus and clarity on this record. Slash and Izzy with all-time guitar interplay. Nobody with the range or power dynamics of Axl here.
Favorite track: They throw the molotov with the opening guitar notes of Jungle, immediately followed by Axl letting the world know that his is the one that says bad MF on it. This one still rules from start to finish every time it comes on.
Slash isn't quite in the top level of the rock 'n' roll soloist Hall of Fame pyramid with Hendrix, Page, and EVH...but he's in the tier right below with Angus, Joe Perry, etc. In the immortal words of my daughter when she was six years old about the Paradise City outro: "Slash doesn't wanna slow down."
5
Oct 04 2025
Highway to Hell
AC/DC
Dropping the horny-ass rock n roll sledgehammer, as they always do. Bon's a beast. Malcolm's the riffmeister general. Tight rhythm section for Angus to go apeshit over.
"[She had] the body of Venus with arms."
4