posted 12-05-2003 08:40 PM            

Her list:

Frank Sinatra "The Wee Small Hours"

(Arguably, Frank Sinatra invented the TRUE album, as having a consistent mood and theme, and not just being a couple of "singles", padded out with "filler".)

Miles Davis "Kind of Blue"

Johnny Cash "Ride This Train"

Beatles "Revolver"

(Edna omitted "Sgt. Pepper" because EVERYBODY has it at the top of THEIR list).

Beach Boys "Pet Sounds"

Jimi Hendrix "Are You Experienced"

This turned things upsidedown in 1967. Hendrix took guitar playing to a new planet.

The Who "The Who Sell Out"

Aretha Franklin "I Never Loved A Man"

Love "Forever Changes"

This is an album rock critics have always loved far more than the people who have tried to listen to it.

Van Morrison "Astral Weeks"

Dusty Springfield "Dusty in Memphis"

Is there an album by a woman as good as "I Never Loved A Man"? This is a contender.

Marvin Gaye "What's Going On"

Sly and the Family Stone "There's A Riot Goin' On"

Richard Nixon brought America's inner cities and college campuses close to rebellion, and these two albums capture that mood, as well as the "sex, drugs, rock n' roll" mood that soon dominated the 1970's in America.

Joni Mitchell "Blue"

Rolling Stones "Exile on Main Street"

David Bowie "The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust"

Pink Floyd "Dark Side of the Moon"

Stevie Wonder "Innervisions"

Bob Marley "Catch A Fire"

Bob Dylan "Blood on the Tracks"

The BEST album ever about a failed marriage (the second best is Bruce Springsteen's "Tunnel of Love", number 29 on Edna's list.)

Of Edna Gunderson's "Top Twenty" albums, 16 were released between 1966 and 1973. Those eight years were the "peak" of the album era. "Rubber Soul", "Revolver", and "Pet Sounds" convinced many ambitious musicians that an album should be a single forty minute creation, with each song a building block toward a single goal. Individual songs were often never released as "singles" at all.

Were there any albums released during 2003 that people will rate among the "best of all-time" thirty years from now?

posted 12-06-2003 09:43 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Bluesboy:
I can't argue with the top 10 list. Although, I'm surprised that "Abbey Road" didn't rank as high as the others. I think that's one rock and roll's greatest masterpieces. Sgt. Peppers, Rubber SOul and Revolver are also fantastic. The White Album has some good stuff on it but it also has lots of trash (Wild Honey Pie, Why Don't We Do It In The Road, Bungalow Bill). It sounds like the crap that people record when they are a) too stoned to know better, or b) they're rellay bored. In any case, much of it is a waste of good vinyl, IMHO. It would have been better if they had kept it to one ablum with the following tunes:

- Dear Prudence
- While My Guitar Gently Weeps
- Back in the USSR
- Honey Pie
- Obladee, Oblada
- Helter Skelter
- Blackbird
- Martha My Dear
- Yer Blues
- Mother Nature's Son
- Revolution

I'm speaking from the heart as a true blue Beatles fanatic from the way back. Disagree? Then let the flaming begin.

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posted 12-08-2003 05:06 AM            

I'll disagree with you there. The Rising is, IMO, no better than a middling Springsteen album. It's way overproduced, some of the songs are decent, some try way too hard. I wanted to love it, but I wouldn't even include The Rising in a Springsteen top 10 list.

posted 12-08-2003 08:05 AM            

That rule makes sense. A box set usually contains forty, or sixty, or eighty songs; far more than an album. "Greatest Hits" are usually random "singles", which represent different periods of time, have different themes and moods, and often sound oddly jarring when played together.

BUT..."The Essential Bruce Springsteen" three CD box set "sounds" like a "real" album. (I bought my second copy yesterday for $15.99...the greatest bargain in music).

The first two CD's feature thirty of Bruce's best known songs recorded over a thirty year period. The third disc is "odds and ends" and unreleased songs.

I have been listening to the first two discs "in order", covering Bruce's work from the 1972 recording of "Blinded By The Light", to the 2002 recording "The Rising".

These thirty songs SOUND like ONE "double-album" that was recorded in a single session, sharing ONE theme. None of the songs sound "old", or dated. Any of the songs might have been recorded last week.

Bruce has written and sang about ONE key belief for thirty years: his abiding faith in the potential and value of each human life, ESPECIALLY the lives of people that the rich and powerful have used, abused, and discarded.

IF the "rules" allowed "Essential Bruce Springsteen" to be considered to be an "album", it deserves to be in the "Top Ten".

posted 12-09-2003 12:20 AM               

God, freak'n Sgt Pepper's, the beatles watering down pysch watering down the beatles. Pipper at the Gates of Dawn is so much better pysch and a Hard Days Night(the Beatles best album, only two ranks better than The White Stripes Elephant!?!) so much better pop.

And of course the weak and watery holy trinity of punk (more like the three easiest punk bands for the masses to shallow) all get multiple hits before Iggy gets a shout out.

Top Twenty Studio Albums

A Love Supreme, John Coltrane
A Hard Day's Night, The Beatles
The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground
Ascension, John Coltrane
Master's Summit, Armstrong and Elington
Forever Changes, Love
Meddle, Pink Floyd
David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust
Velvet Underground and Nico, the Velvet Undergrond
Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd
The Velvet Underground, White Heat/White Light
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the Flaming Lips
Kind of Blue, Miles Davis
Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Syd Barret/Pink Floyd
Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan
The Soft Bulletin, The Flaming lips
In a Priest driven Ambulance, The Flaming Lips
Help!, The Beatles
Please, Please Me, The Beatles
The Bends, Radiohead

posted 12-09-2003 04:49 AM            

Hmm... why they didn't wait to listen my planned album?

posted 12-09-2003 10:26 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by BegF:
Ah ye're all a bunch of moaners !

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Yeah, but it's so much fun to complain. And of course it's all subjective. As I read each of the alternative lists here I find myself nodding in agreement with half the choices and shaking my head incredulously at the other half. I'm sure most of you experience something similar. That phenomenal flux of opinion and taste is what made Nick Hornby's Hi Fidelity such a great read and it's what makes these lists so compelling. If we all agreed on the perfect list, there'd be nothing to yammer about.

And Duck Trapper, I couldn't agree less with your assessment of the Beach Boys. Their early stuff was fun and sparky, but I think that the true hard-core Beach Boys fans would argue that it really wasn't until Pet Sounds that Brian Wilson stopped faking it as a car-crazed surfer and started coming into his own as a brilliantly weird, bruised, and melancholic xenophobe. "I Get Around" and "Be True to Your School" are infectiously poppy and show some innovative spunk, but later songs such as "God Only Knows" and "Caroline No" from Pet Sounds and "Feel Flow" and "'Til I Die" from Surf's Up are more central to Wilson's art.

Scholars differ, of course.

Best,

PK