Greatest hits
The Task: 101 albums worth your hard-earned cash – albums so good (great, even) that to burn them would be an indignity. That good. So, having troved many an aisle and ransacked many a brain, I submit the 101 that have made the best difference in modern music to date.
The Rules: No more than one album per band (for the sake of variety, folks), no live albums (sorry) nor compilations or singles collections (not a snowball’s). And no classical music (too deep in the evolutionary backwater). Only complete albums: You know, when a band or person walks into a studio and presses some vinyl. There are, of course, a lot of good albums with a few good songs. They do not count. (With apologies, then, to Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby, The Sex Pistols, Aretha Franklin, The Allman Brothers, Patsy Cline, Chuck Berry, Robert Johnson, T. Rex, Herbie Hancock, Elmore James, MC5, The Temptations, Johnny Cash, Sam Cooke, Tom Waits, James Brown, Muddy Waters, Charlie Parker and on and on and on.)
The Guarantee: If you slide any one of these in, you’ll be pleased from start to finish. This is not an exhaustive list, but, chances are, these are the albums that afford the most potent primer. It also leans its chin toward the dominant – in record store nomenclature – genre of today: Rock/pop. And the alphabetical listing recognizes how they all end up clanking against one another. To categorize them would deny the immense dialogue they’re all a part of. Anyway, there’s no pomp and circumstance present. Just good tunes, suitable for any mood. Here’s Music 101. Enjoy:
AC/DC, Back In Black; Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker; Afghan Whigs, Black Love; AntiPop Consortium, Arrhythmia; Band, The Band; Beach Boys, Pet Sounds; Beatles, Revolver; Beck, Midnight Vultures; Belle & Sebastian, If You’re Feeling Sinister; Belly, King; Ben Folds Five, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner; Bjork, Post; Bobby “Blue” Bland, Two Steps From The Blues; Blur, Parklife; David Bowie, Heroes; Bright Eyes, Fevers and Mirrors; Jeff Buckley, Grace; Built to Spill, Keep It Like A Secret; Clash, London Calling; John Coltrane, Blue Train; Elvis Costello, My Aim Is True; Cream, Disraeli Gears; Cure, Disintegration; Miles Davis, Kind Of Blue; Depeche Mode, Violator; Doors, L.A. Woman; Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde; Esthero, Breath From Another; Flaming Lips, Soft Bulletin; Fugees, The Score; Marvin Gaye, What’s Going On; Gomez, In Our Gun; Grandaddy, The Sophtware Slump; Grateful Dead, American Beauty; Al Green, Call Me; Guns n’ Roses, Appetite For Destruction; Emmylou Harris, Wrecking Ball; George Harrison, All Things Must Pass; Heatmiser, Mic City Sons; Iggy & The Stooges, Raw Power; Jane’s Addiction, Ritual De Lo Habitual; Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland; Albert King, Born Under A Bad Sign; Kraftwerk, Trans-European Express; Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II; Lightnin’ Hopkins, Jake Head Boogie; Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs; Curtis Mayfield, Superfly; Charles Mingus, Pithecanthrpus Erectus; Moody Blues, Days Of Future Passed; Morrisey, Viva Hate; Van Morrison, Astral Weeks; My Bloody Valentine, Loveless; Nirvana, In Utero; N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton; Oasis, What’s The Story (Morning Glory); Otis Redding, Otis Blue; Outkast, Stankonia; Parliament, Mothership Connection; Pearl Jam, Ten; Phish, Billy Breathes; Pink Floyd, Dark Side Of The Moon; Pixies, Surfer Rosa; Police, Synchronicity; Portishead, Dummy; Primal Scream, Screamadelica; Public Enemy, Fear Of A Black Planet; Pulp, Different Class; Radiohead, The Bends; Ramones, The Ramones; Ray Charles, Modern Sounds In Country Western Music; R.E.M., Automatic For The People; Replacements, Let It Be; Robert Cray Band, Bad Influence; Rolling Stones, Exile On Main Street; Roxy Music, Roxy Music; Simon & Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water; Frank Sinatra, September Of My Years; Sly and The Family Stone, Fresh; Sonic Youth, Washing Machine; Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dream; Elliot Smith, Either/Or; Smiths, Strangeways Here We Come; Sparklehorse, It’s A Wonderful Life; Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska; Stone Roses, The Stone Roses; Strokes, Is This It; Supergrass, In It For The Money; Matthew Sweet, Altered Beast; Television, Marquee Moon; Travis, The Man Who; Tricky, Maxinquaye; U2, Achtung Baby; Uncle Tupelo, March 16-20, 1992; Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground; Rufus Wainwright, Poses; Who, Quadrophenia; Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot; Stevie Wonder, Songs In The Key Of Life; Weezer, Pinkerton; Neil Young, After The Gold Rush
