19 October 2007

Best Music Albums Ever...

OK, so this has nothing to do with credit unions...but it's something I have really put a ton of thought into during my life. Basically, this is my attempt to list the top 10 music albums ever recorded. Millions of these lists exist (compilations/Greatest Hits collections do not count) - but only one goes like this:

10. Snoop Doggy Dog Doggystyle
9. Pearl Jam Vs.
8. Nirvana Unplugged in New York
7. Johnny Cash American III: Solitary Man
6. Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
5. Bob Dylan The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
4. Counting Crows Angels of the Silences
3. Garth Brooks No Fences
2. Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream
1. Counting Crows August and Everything After

Albums barely missing the cut (in no particular order): Pulp Hardcore, Counting Crows This Desert Life, George Strait Easy Come, Easy Go, AC/DC Back in Black, Tracy Lawrence Sticks and Stones, Metallica Metallica, Matchbox 20 Yourself or Someone Like You, Dave Mathews Band Crash, Dr. Dre The Chronic, James Taylor Sweet Baby James, Willie Nelson Red Headed Stranger, Robbie Fulks Country Love Songs, Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison, and Tom Petty Wildflowers.

Quite honestly, this list could change daily...but this second, this day, this is the one. Have a better list? Let's see it!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I will date myself here.

Kiln House - Fleetwood Mac
Dignity and Shame - Crooked Fingers
Are you Experienced? - Jimi Hendrix
Twin Cinema - The New Pornographers
Famous Blue Raincoat - Jennifer Warnes
Stand Up - Jethro Thull
Crosby, Stills and Nash - 1st album
Retrospective - Buffalo Springfield
Garden Ruin - Calexico
Big Shot Chronicles - Game Theory

Denise Wymore said...

In no particular order:

Tapestry - Carole King
Supernatural - Santana
Possibilites - Herbie Hancock
Kink Live - from Kink Radio - any of them!
A Charlie Brown Christmas - Vince Guaraldi Trio
Spyro Gyra - Spyro Gryra
Buena Vista Social Club - Buena Vista Social Club
The Craig Carothers Trio featuring Tim Ellis and Gary Ogan
Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
and
Rodrigo y Gabriela - Rodrigo y Gabriela

Anonymous said...

Here are few of mine, titled ... Not quite ten of the best albums by groups/artists you've never heard of ... in no particular order. (Sorry, I'm a rulebreaker.)

The Everlasting Blink & Programmed to Love by Bent (the single "Beautiful Otherness" is one of the sweetest pop love songs I've ever heard.)

Breather 2000 by Afterlife

Verve Remixed, Vol 2

Behind the Sun by Chicane

Quiet Letters by Bliss (Queue up "Kissing" if you're madly in love with someone.)

Pretty much anything by the Orb, Paul Oakenfold, DJ Tiesto, Abba and Prince.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, Matt -- I only have a list of top 10 concerts attended, not albums. Gonna share it anyway.

Mahavishnu Orchestra
Lenox, MA
1973-??-??
@ Lenox Arts Music Festival. I was young. And impressionable. This wasn’t the kind of impression my mom and dad wanted me to get.

King Sunny Ade
Austin, TX
1982-??-??
@ new wave bar ClubFoot . Me and friend Kirby were practically the only Americans in the audience.

Talking Heads
Austin, TX
1982-??-??

Grateful Dead
Syracuse, NY
1978-05-09
my first GD concert

Grateful Dead
Charlotte, NC
1995-03-23
my last GD concert

David Bromberg
Piermont, NY
1981-??-??
@ small bar called Turning Point. I was about 6 feet away from him.

Baba Olatunji
New York, NY
1980-??-??
@ Columbia University -- the musicians started off playing down the hall and came into the auditorium from the back already playing!

Stevie Ray Vaughn
Austin, TX
1981-??-??
@ Antone’s on the drag. Paid $3 to get in

Black Uhuru
New York, NY
198?-??-??
There is no drummer/bass combo better than Sly and Robbie. Not one.

Grateful Dead
Utica, NY
03-??-1981
I don’t remember the concert. Only what happened afterwards. Will take a LOT of beer to get me to tell you.

Anonymous said...

Tough Question. This is my down and dirty, driving across the country top 10 albums:

Led Zeppelin III, Led Zeppelin
Violent Femmes, Violent Femmes
Escape, Journey
In My Tribe, 10,000 Maniacs
Joshua Tree, U2
Lifes Rich Pageant, R.E.M.
Appetite for Destruction, Guns 'n Roses
Nevermind, Nirvana
West Textures, Robert Earl Keen, Jr.
If I Should Fall From Grace With God, The Pogues

Not a very discerning ear on this one.

Denise Wymore said...

If we're shifting to concerts I have two to share.

My first:
Wild Cherry (Play that Funky Music White Boy) and I went with a boy named Roy Rogers. I'm not kidding.

The best: KC and the Sunshine Band....because a group called Santana opened for them!! My life was changed. I could no longer shake shake shake my booty except to get out of there when KC took the stage.

Ron Shevlin said...

Matt -- You should do a separate post on the "top 10 concerts you WISH you had been at".

At the DMA conference a couple of weeks ago, apparently that was the topic of conversation among my colleagues at dinner. My boss said he learned a LOT about everybody during THAT conversation. :)

Matt, the Credit Union Warrior said...

Concerts I wish I had been to? Easy:

Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison 1968
Bob Dylan, Royal Albert Hall 1966
AC/DC, Donnington Castle 1991
Lollapalooza, 1994
Willie Nelson & Johnny Cash, for VH-1 Storytellers 1997
Counting Crows and Rolling Stones, Giants Stadium 1994
Smashing Pumpkins, Cincinnati 1993
Nirvana, München 1994
Cash, Luther Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Stuttgart 1981