1001 Albums Summary

Still a solid listen. I haven’t heard it all the way through since it was released. Several 5s and 4s, only a couple of less interesting songs, but nothing that brings the album down or slows the momentum. I’m still not a big fan of zydeco. 4.5

Not my cup of tea. It’s like if Thornton Wilder wrote musicals or a less cool Scott Walker.

Great. Not as good as ATliens or Aquemini, but excellent.

Fantastic! Guitar driven British power pop in the tradition of The Who. One of the best of the 90s BritPop wave. 4.5 I have to save my 5 star ratings for perfect albums, but this is close.

I like noise rock and more avante genres of music, but this was a little too repetitive and I’m not a huge fan of blast beats. It was enjoyable. I just like something a little more dynamic.

Solid listen. Not my favorite by Steely Dan, but very good.

Solid. Brilliant. The prototype for the greatness of 90s hip hop.

I forgot how good this was. Pretty great throughout. Last couple of songs kind of throw the brakes on the momentum, but very good overall.

Superbly pleasant. Listened on a rainy morning while drinking coffee. The musicianship is sublime. Locked in. Listen to Jimmy Smith.

Not a fan. Sorry. Meh.

Perfect album. One of the best of the first psychedelic era

More like Bored of Canada. Just kidding. Mellow. No. Offensive, Chill.

Great album. Ground breaking. Almost a 5. Starts strong but small decline toward the end of side 2.

Not my thing, but I see its value. I’m feeling generous.

Same as previous. I need to be in the right mood for this. It’s good for what it is, just not something I would choose to listen to unless I was in some very specific circumstances. Still feeling generous.

3 really great songs, 4 very good songs, 1 ok song. I’ll let everyone else decide which ones they are.

Side 1 is so great. Heavy funk, incredible version of Walk On By. Side 2 explores the romantic elements of r&b beautiful string arrangements and horns. 4.5

Decent for a later period U2 album. Pretty average compared to their early, more energetic output. 3.5

I love this album. This revitalized Neil and his on again, off again band, Crazy Horse and solidified his influence on the new generation. Recorded live in Neil’s barn, it does sound like a bunch of geezers jamming, but it’s the best band of geezers there is. I’m trying to be reasonable with my rating considering the quality and weight of Neil’s discography. As much as I’d like to give it a 5, I think a 4 is more reasonable, but it’s great.

Not a huge fan, but these first 2 records are undeniably good. I know the 3rd record is everyone’s favorite, but I feel like it’s bloated and overproduced. Their first record will always be my favorite. This one is a 4.4

It’s a fun record from the early 70s glam era, with a little more pub rock feel. I’ll give it a solid 3.7

3 great songs, 9 very average songs

Most people don’t have much regard for this album compared to the totality of Zeppelin’s oeuvre, but I love it. I like that aren’t trying to punch you in the head with riffs on riffs and thundering drums. They’re bringing the folk and their third album. Jimmy playing a lot of acoustic here, Jonsey is bringing the mandolin and synths and Bonham is downright subdued. No orgasmic caterwauling from Plant (just a little Viking battle cry). 4.7^

Boring. The vocals are annoying. Song structure is flat. No dynamics. All the songs are the same. I want to be nice, but I just don’t like it.

This thoroughly enjoyable album is the pinnacle of the outlaw country movement featuring its best representative and singer in Waylon Jennings and its greatest songwriter in Billy Joe Shaver, who harassed Jennings until he agreed to record his songs.

Incredible. Quite possibly the best album of the first wave of the post punk era. Dark and menacing, but also upbeat and danceable? Great bass lines and sharp, angular guitars. Snotty vocals. Great. 4.8 (I’m bumping it up to 5 because it’s one of my all-time favorites)

I’m getting a lot of albums I like a lot. Some of my most favorites. I’m afraid this thing is front loaded and going to get a bunch of garbage at the end, but I know… I got a long way to go. Lou Reed is one of my most favorite songwriters of all time. I know he’s kind of divisive artist, but I’ve never let that be a deterrent. Most of my favorite artists are notorious grumps with unconventional singing voices, but isn’t that more interesting? It’s like getting the news from a grizzled, trustworthy old school journalist over some plastic, smiling talking head with perfectly coiffed hair. You just know they’re lying. Lou Reed ain’t lying. He’s giving it to you straight. The ugly truth. Street level. Lou Reed is the Edward R. Murrow of rock and roll. If he says “I thought I was someone else, someone good”, it cuts deep… Perfect Day, what an incredible song. This album is like the punch in the gut that you didn’t know you needed. 4.8^

Incredible live album by Van the man. This one kind of gets forgotten when talking about the greatest live albums of all-time, but it deserves to be up there with Live at Leeds or At Filmore East. Van Morrison at his peak as a live performer. 4.5

Great band. Woefully underrated. This is generally considered their best album, but the have many as good (or maybe better) and they even better live. I saw them on tour with Iron & Wine (who they’ve also recorded with). If you like this, dig deep. It’s worth it. 4.4

Not my favorite kind of music, but pleasant. Excellent musicianship and arrangements. I could do without the strings on the title track.

The The is one of those bands I’m supposed to like, but it never clicked. I can’t really explain it other than there are other bands from the genre and time period that do the same thing, but better. Dude’s vocals get on my nerves a bit. This Is The Day is great song though.

Whatever genre of music this is… I don’t like it. It’s lightweight and no substance pop music. It’s not unpleasant. I just does nothing for me. There is music adjacent to this that I do like.. say, Cocteau Twins, but the depth is night and day. 2.5

Definitely the style of hip hop I like the most. 5 was west coast but shared a lot of the same vibe and influence as the soul informed groups of the 90s. I like this album, but I’m putting it below those top tier albums. Still, very good. 3.7 (I’ll bump it to 4)

Brilliant album by a songwriting master. Almost perfect. There’s a couple of lightweight songs, but they don’t bring down the overall greatness of the Album and the great songs are pop masterpieces. Truly one of my favorite albums. 4.8 I’m bumping it up to a 5.

Prior to this record, I just thought Radiohead was ok. I saw them open for R.E.M. on the Monster tour, they were supporting The Bends. They were just ok. Not a great live band, but enjoyable. Then I bought OK Computer on a whim. I was floored. It’s a perfect album. Honestly, Fitter Happier is not a great stand alone song, but in context, it’s obviously relevant. 4.9

Oh, boy… I don’t like this. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now. It’s like everything I didn’t like about the second half of the 90s chopped up into a soup with no regard for compatibility or flavor profile and it’s still also very bland. If a pair of JNCO jeans became sentient and made music it would sound like this. I do think I finally understand why people who listened to this were so angry, I’m angry. This is making me angry. I’m an angry teenager with labret piercing and my parents are dumb. They don’t understand. Nobody understands. It’s kind of funny though. I’ll be nice and give it a 2.5 for the effort… oh, the effort. I’m not rounding up.

Heavily influenced by the Jimi Hendrix, Clapton formed this power trio with top musicians, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker and made the best album of their short career. Clapton makes his best music when he’s inspired by other musicians which didn’t happen enough. This album is great though. 4.5

I’m from Texas. ZZ Top is the official rock band of Texas. OK, that’s probably not true, but if you’re from Texas and you don’t like ZZ Top, you have to leave once you turn 18. That’s not true either, but if you don’t like ZZ Top there’s probably something wrong with you and you’re not fun to be around. Seriously, how can you not like ZZ Top?! What genre is ZZ Top? Funky Texas Blues Rock Boogie? How fun does that sound? Pretty fun. Two weird beards and one guy named Beard who didn’t have a beard?! Again, fun. Also, if you were a teenage boy in the 80s, those videos were pretty great. I like ZZ Top. I would like them even if I wasn’t from Texas. 4.6

Great album. 6 perfect songs, 4 very good songs and my favorite Smiths song is on this album. I’m not going to reveal the answers to any of these suppositions. I’m going to be dodgy and unpredictable like Morrissey

I had never heard this record. Really good. I like Midlake who back up Grant (former singer/songwriter for the Czars) and convinced him to end his hiatus and make this record. It’s a little uneven, but there are some great songs here. Sigourney Weaver and Chicken Bones are standouts. 3.7

Love Joni Mitchell! Incredible voice. Great songwriter. Fantastic guitar player. This album is nearly perfect. 4.8 I’ll give it a 5.

I like Queen. This wasn’t one of my favorite Queen album, but I liked it more than I remembered. Solid 4

Great album. This is the Byrds in transition. David Crosby, Michael Clarke and Gene Clark becoming revolving door members leaving Mcguinn and Hillman toexplore a simplified approach and experimenting with country instrumentation. Great guest guitar work from James Burton and Clarence White and pedal steel by Red Rhodes, but also mixing in some Moog synthesizer. It’s an interesting approach and turns out to be extremely influential. 4.6

I still say this is as good as it got for Oasis. So much potential. I saw them at a small club in Texas on this tour. Amazing. All attitude and hooks. Then the audience got bigger and so did the egos. Which is fine. You have to believe to succeed, but to me they lost that real swagger and replaced with a more performative version. They had some great songs after this, but it was a decline in quality and effort. Solid 4

This album is so great. They cover so much musical ground here. They bring the noise (and Chuck D). Kim Gordon attacking misogyny in hip hop and left wing politics all in the same song. The guitars are all at once wild and expressive, but still well in control. The drums are composed in service of the song like an alternative/noise rock version of Ringo Starr. The songs are alternatively and simultaneously accessible and challenging. It’s an impressive feat. I’ve calculated 4.7 because there’s a couple of songs that go against the flow without derailing the album, but I’m bumping it up to a 5 because it’s such a great and important album.

I’m a little puzzled at this selection when House Of GVSB and Freak*on*ica are floating around out there. Good on GVSB for crawling their way out of the DC hardcore scene and having the good sense to relocate to NYC, expand their sound and make more interesting music, but this isn’t quite the peak of that experiment. It is a good jump from their first record, but not quite there. They peaked with the two aforementioned records and kind of just leveled off. Some bands just occupy a verse specific space in time and GVSB dodged grunge and ducked Nu Metal, but missed the Indie Rock train of the early 2000s and just fizzled out. They were a breath of fresh air for a couple of years. Some bands never get that. Hooray for GVSB! 3.4

Another band with “hardcore” roots, another odd representative album choice. fIREHOSE formed after the incredible Minutemen had dissolved after the tragic death of singer/guitarist D. Boon. Fan of the band and guitarist, Ed Crawford of Ohio (as referenced in the album title) convinced bassist Mike Watt and drummer George Hurley to start playing music again. On a personal note, I was very excited about fIREHOSE because I was such a big fan of Minutemen. I was a teenager at the time and although I listened to a lot of punk, outside of a handful of bands, I never really connected to the hardcore scene. A lot of those bands I liked were on the SST label, but unlike a lot of those bands, Minutemen were different. More musical, minimalist drawing from a broader range of influences funk, jazz, r&b and punk, but not like anyone else. fIREHOSE kept the same blueprint but formed an identity of their own. I, personally would have gone with Ragin’ Full On or Flyin The Flannel, but Fromohio is very good. Listen to fIREHOSE.Listen to Minutemen. 4.5

I discovered Nick Drake in the early 90s He was for me, like Jeff Buckley was for most people of my generation. I’m no Anglophile , but I love British musicians and songwriters who don’t shy away from their roots. Ray Davies is another one. I learned more about life in England from Kinks records than any Dickens novel. Drake was incredibly efficient. He released three perfect albums and met a tragic end. He had a beautiful voice, was a phenomenal guitar player and wrote amazingly deep and sorrowful songs. One of These Things First is one of my most favorite songs. 4.7 I’m bumping to 5 to upset the algorithm.

I have to admit, I didn’t really connect to Minor Threat when they were active. I didn’t identify with the hardcore scene outside of a handful of bands like the Minutemen (who were only hardcore adjacent), Bad Brains, Circle Jerks and a few others and at 13 I was gravitating to more melodic music in the alternative area. Also, I grew about 3” that summer and got very awkward on the skateboard. It wasn’t until I heard Fugazi that I went back and listened to Minor Threat with more interest. Out Of Step is an influential release. You can hear it in a lot of the alternative rock that came out in the 90s. The songwriting is a step above a lot of their contemporaries. 4.3

Ok. I don’t like this kind of pop music. It all sounds the same to me. It’s ok while I’m listening to it. What I mean by that is that it’s unobjectionable… most of the time. It just doesn’t stick to me. I forget about it seconds after I hear it. There’s usually no musical hook. It’s just kind of moves forward without going anywhere. That being said… this is probably as good as this style of pop music is going to get. This lady is a great singer. I get it. She sings with so much emotion and power. It’s moving. Almost manipulative. If you’re heartbroken or one of your parents just died, don’t listen to this… or do if you want to cry. You’re going to cry. Maybe that’s what you need. It’s sad piano music for people who need a good cry, but if you’re one of those emotionally healthy people who needs to cry a lot, this is as good as it gets. I don’t want to cry. I have things to do today. 3.3

I La La love Pixies. What a great band. So influential. I remember the first time I heard this record. I couldn’t even fully process it. What are they even doing? What are these songs about? Mutilation? Scuba Diving? Big Dicks? Is that Spanish? Why do I like it? Who is this Black Francis character? Why doesn’t the bassist sing more songs? This guitar player is great! That drummer swings! I like this band. A lot. 4.8 ^

I have to be honest… of the big 4 “grunge” (whatever that means) bands, Nirvana is the only one who can hold my interest for a whole album (maybe I’m basic, but I like them hooks). Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains all have great songs, but getting through a whole album is a bit of a slog (which could have been a better descriptor for the Seattle music scene… Slog Rock!). That being said Dirt is a damn good record and, as far as I’m concerned, AIC’s best (I do like that Sap EP though). However, there’s a few songs that bring it down. If this album was 10 or 11 songs deep, it’d be near perfect. 3.9

Classic 90’s hip hop. Soulful. Great rhymes. It’s a little dated… just a little. The best thing this record did was introduce the Lady Ms. Lauryn Hill to the world. I would rather listen to The Miseducation. 3.9

I love R.E.M. I remember seeing them on the original Letterman Late Night show in ‘83 of the last century. They became my favorite band. I feel like I’m almost at the age where I can really lean into it, but I haven’t gone grey or shrunk five inches yet. I’m looking forward to it, but I digress. I was 13 and from a place where you had two kinds of music you could listen to. It was country, or metal, or you were a pariah. I was a pariah. I listened to little metal (I didn’t get country yet, but that changed), I also listened to a lot of stuff that I didn’t really talk about in mixed company. The radio and MTV were ok to watch just be careful about which artists you talk about at school lest your sexuality come into question. There were small enclaves of kids who liked different kinds of music with a little bit of crossover and my close friends who were very open about music. It should come as no surprise that the few gay kids at my school were in the cool music club. R.E.M. was one of those bands that the cool kids liked, but might get you punched or looked at like you had antlers growing out of your head. I remained an R.E.M. fan throughout the IRS years and through the Warner Brothers years even though I missed the jangly folk rock, they held my interest through all the evolution toward a more polished production and overtly pop sound. Automatic For the people was the biggest step to date. The album was darker in tone, in sound and lyrical content. I didn’t know if I liked it the first time I heard it. It took awhile for me to adjust. It was very different. I came to really love it, but I’m still adjusting to it. It’s not the first R.E.M. record I usually pull off the shelf, but every time I do, it still surprises me. It’s one of the few records that makes me feel like that. 4.7

Lovefool was a huge in 1996. Everybody loved it. Grandmas, little kids, soccer moms. It was a huge hit. It was on movie soundtracks. Just a perfect little pop song. And like all good pop songs, everyone got sick of it, but it’s probably been long enough that people like it again. The good news is the Cardigans didn’t let themselves be defined by Lovefool. The bad news is the rest of this album is kind of uneventful. 3.3

What can I say about Jimi? So brilliant and otherworldly. This album catches him stretching out and experimenting. The psychedelic fuzzed out rock is still present, but so is some more jazz and more traditional blues. It’s hard to definitively pick my favorite Hendrix album, but it’s probably this. 4.8^

NEU! is one of those bands I slept on for a long time. I think when I was a teenager I thought krautrock, prog rock and electronic music was all kind of similar and I wouldn’t like it, but I remember reading articles and interviews with bands and artists I did like and NEU! Kept popping up. I would hear a sound here and there, but that didn’t solidify my perception because they all sound like a different band. Once I hit my 20s I started feeling more experimental and liked challenging myself I got into NEU! and all those deterrents became dividends. This album has a lot of variety, but it’s also really solid and steady with different themes and moods but it never feels disparate. It’s great. I recommend. 4.7^

I have to admit I was a little disappointed with Kid A when it came out. I really liked OK Computer and I was expecting another big guitar record. It seemed like too much of a left turn at the time, but now it seems like a natural progression. I think it helped to hear these songs live and living amongst the OKC and Bends songs. I really liked Kid A now, but I still like OK Computer and In Rainbows a little bit more. 4.6

There are three great songs here. The rest are very good. Beautiful harmonies, maybe the best behind the Everly Brothers. 3.8^

What a voice.Soulful. Incredible Memphis musicians. It’s one of those records that is drenched in quality and authenticity, but still appeals to a broad audience. It probably converted more than a few housewives into soul/r&b fans. 4.2

Stevie Wonder could not be more aptly named. This run of albums from Music Of My Mind (my personal favorite) through Songs In The Key Of Life is incredible. Talking Book isn’t the best of the five and it’s hard not to compare them, but it possesses a few of his best songs. Innervisions and SITKOL are more solid albums, but who else can claim a run of 5 albums this good? Dylan? Beatles? Stones? Bowie? Tough company and Stevie played most, if not all, the instruments on these records. Amazing. 3.7 ^

This album makes a strong case for Pulp being deserving of the best BritPop band of the 90’s. More clever than Oasis. Weirder than Blur. More sophisticated than everyone else. Heir to the throne of bands like the Kinks, the Jam and the Smiths as chroniclers of life in Britain. Jarvis Cockers lyrics are raw and pointed. The music is simple but bombastic at the same time arrangement of spikey synths, sweeping guitars and drums building into crescendos like some kind of bizarre, art show musical production. Pulp doesn’t get their well deserved recognition, but they are great and this album is their magnum opus. 4.5