6 albums that blew me away before 1990. No particular order.
 

1) Def Leppard- Pyromania I was 12 years old when I first heard this album in 1982. It was at that point in my young life the coolest thing that I'd ever heard. I still like it, but I find that I can't really listen to a whole song from it anymore. I'll get all happy when one of the songs comes on the radio, and I'll turn it up. But then I realize about halfway through it that I'm getting bored.

2) Paul Simon- Graceland For those who don't know, this was his African inspired album. I was 16 or 17 when it came out and I was not really a Simon fan at that time. This was my first exposure to the African sound and I really fell in love with it. I remember his appearance on SNL with about 20 African singers to sing "Diamonds on the soles of her shoes" and I was blown away. I still love this cd.

3) U2- The Joshua Tree I was a Junior in HS, and was on vacation driving across the desert with my family. I had this tape and listened to it all the way across the west to avoid actually speaking to my family. I thought U2 was decent before Joshua Tree, but they weren't my favorite. I had even heard "With or without you" many times on the radio before I ever borrowed the tape and I didn't really like it that much. But when I heard this album including all of the songs that never were radio releases it became my all time favorite. I still consider this my favorite album ever.

4) Pixies- Doolittle This was a sound I'd never heard before. I hadn't really listened to them before this 1989 album. I think they were way ahead of their time and that they perhaps laid some of the foundation of what was to come in the 90's. I still love this album.

5) Run DMC- Raising Hell I had heard the Sugarhill gang and some other rap and was semi-amused by it earlier in life. But when I first heard this album I was floored. I couldn't get enough of it and probably listened to it daily for a good 6 months. I still appreciate this album, but I doubt I could listen to a whole song without getting bored. It's good history.

6) Guns n roses- Appetite for Destruction Heard "welcome to the jungle" in the movie "The Dead Pool". Ran out and found the album. I remember thinking that I was hearing an album that would forever be a classic. I still love this album.

Re: 6 albums that blew me away before 1990. No particular or
 

paul is an amazing poet, and is incredibly brilliant.....

here are some cds that blew my socks off....

a. snoop doggy dogg-doggystyle
b. dr dre-the chronic

Dr Dre the Chronic is the single greatest rap album ever.

Giving it a run for its money is the Marshall Mathers LP.

TO me that sounds about as significant as "The Tallest Building in Tucumcari, New Mexico," or some such.

I know, I am an old, bitter, man.

Hey, you kids, stay OFF THE GRASS!

I don't like much rap either. I grew up in the days of "happy rap" where everything had to rhyme and the lyrics were meaningless and pretty stupid. Once rap went "gangsta" I couldn't relate.

you could say the three greatest rap albums of all time...

the chronic....

marshall mathers lp....

doggystyle....

were because of dr dre himself....

the reason it is significant, in response to those that think it is insifnificant, is these albums helped pave the way for current african american culture/hip hop culture that has left the 'ghettos' and now finds itself in suburban america.

ever wonder why allen iversons shoe is the number one selling basketball shoe since jordan retired? look no further than to dr dre and his rap studio, edgy lyrics, and black clothing attire....

these guys made it cool to be a thug. made it cool to be black. made it cool to have tattoos. made it cool to have corn rows. made it cool to drive big cars, with big tires, and big sound systems. they were truly the pioneers of the hip/hop revolution that finds itself in almost every level of american culture....

how many of your wives have said....

two trailer park girls go round the outside, round the outside round the outside?

i know ive heard my mom say it more than once.

Re: 6 albums that blew me away before 1990. No particular or
 

I'm with you on these, I'd add a couple...

REM- Document. If this album had not come out in the same year as Joshua Tree it would have gone down as one of the greatest albums in history. Unfortunately, Document is to music as Jan Ulrich is to cycling. Both will forever live in the shadow of a geater contemporary.

NIN- Pretty Hate Machine. Ok... It was the very end of 89 when I heard this, but that counts... NIN changed everything.

There are other albums I love but I think these are the only ones that really "Blew me away."[/b]

As far as Def Leppard, for me it was Hysteria.

U2, for me it was Achtung Baby.

Paul Simon, for me it was Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits (i've never liked his solo stuff).

Appetite for Destruction, ditto.

As far as rap goes, I was pretty well done in the eighties. Beastie Boys License to Ill was my all-time favorite.

A close second (and third) - Parents just don't understand ("My parents went away on a weeks vacation") and "We like the cars, the cars that go boom". (J/K)

Pre-1990 - I was pretty taken in by:

Anything by Queen, although I didn't really appreciate it until the early 90's.

Def Leppard Hysteria

U2 Joshua Tree

New Edition - Title album and Heartbreak - I'm not proud of this one, but its the truth and I've got to come to grips with it sometime

I can relate to various comments. I think, like Mike, that Hysteria and Achtung were the ones that really hooked me in on those groups, even though I liked Joshua Tree before that. (Showing our youth, I guess.) But I can still listen to Photograph at any time and in the late 90s I really came to enjoy Rattle and Hum -- what a great three-album stretch in JTree-RHum-ABaby.

I have listened to popular rap off and on for the past 8 years or so, but I also am a bigger fan of the rhyming days. Fresh Prince, Young MC, "It Takes Two."

Kudos also on Appetite and the other album, well before the 90s, was Led Zeppelin IV. I got my money's worth out of that CD.

All right, not that any of you care, but just to show my age, here are the albums that really moved me as a youngster.

1. Ray Montavoni and 101 Strings plays Songs from Broadway

2. Ferrante and Teischer; Timeless Romantic Ballads

3. Fritz Palang and the Accordion Circus: The Polka Polka





Just kidding.



Pink FLoyd's Dark Side of the Moon was sort of like a revelation to me.


I was also quite taken by Chicago's self-titled first Album, Chicago Transit Authority.

The Beatles; Sgt. Peppers and the White album

Ther were many others, but these were definitely very important in forming my musical interests and own palying styles.

I'm not in touch with this stuff,

but Rush, Led Zepplin, Blue Oyster Cult, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd were my genres. Now I kinda like blues or jazz but don't know the names.

There has never been anything as diverse as The Beatles White Album.

My senior year in high school was when that Def Leppard album was released. A friend of mine had the original Sony Walkman - about the size of a VHS tape - and was listening to it. He said to me: You gotta hear this. It's awesome."

I listened for about 15 seconds and had heard enough. IMO, that is the worse band in the history of the world. But I won't hold it against you.

My list would be (in no particular order):

U2 - The Unforgettable Fire: I really liked Joshua Tree, but I think this was when U2 sold out by making the decision to make mone. Nothing wrong with it, but it seems that each album is progressively worse because they're catering to the Top 40 crowd. Every song on Unforgettable Fire is terrific.

Hoo Doo Gurus - Mars Needs Guitars: The songs are all great fun. I've seen this band twice - once when they opened for the Bangles in '86 and again in about '91 or so. They sound just as tight live as they do in a studio.

Oingo Boingo - Dead Man's Party: Elfman and the boys at their best. Of course, I have to say that I'm a bit biased, as Boingo is my all time favorite band. I've seen 'em 22 times.

Stan Ridgeway - The Big Heat: Nobody tells a story like Stan does. Each song is a different story and the music is very good.

Tears for Fears - Songs from the Big Chair: The Hurting is probably their best album, but this was my introduction to TFF. It was my first concert when I came home from my mission in '85. I remember them telling the crowd at Park West that they had never played in front of an audience that big.

As you can see, I'm admittedly stuck in the 80s New Wave scene and I don't feel apologetic at all. If I really thought about it, I'm sure I could come up with a few others.

Alright well I need to jump into the hip-hop discussion here and disagree with all the claims as to the best hip-hop album. Now the Chronic and Doggystyle are fine albums and all, but they are nowhere near the best albums.

For me the best hip-hop album of all time is Digable Planets - Blowout Comb. Just an awesome album from start to finish. Great use of samples and live instrumentation on the album. It is also the best group rapping that I've heard on an album. The vocals just go so great with the music and the way they rap is like jazz soloists. Just the best hip-hop album of all time and I will listen to no arguments for any other hip-hop album being better.

A few other notables that I would put ahead of albums mentioned.
A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Mauraders
De La Soul - De La Soul is Dead
Nas - Illmatic
Count Bass D - Pre Life Crisis
Talib Kweli/Reflection Eternal - Train of Thought

I would add Achtung Baby to my top 10 albums of all time. Hysteria is one that I also loved, and was my first big concert (I did see Night Ranger in a much smaller venue, but that barely counts). It is definitely a part of the soundtrack of my life. I included Pyromania instead of Hysteria only because I had never heard their sound before Pyromania.

Just 'cuz no one's mentioned these yet...:

Pixies - Surfer Rosa (As much as I like Doolittle, I like the songs on Surfer Rosa better.)

REM - Life's Rich Pageant (This was by far my favorite album from 1988 to 1993 or so. Everything good about REM without their creeping sense of self-importance.)

INXS - The Swing (The quintessential non-sucking 80's album from Australia. This was INXS back when they had a distinctive sound, weren't full of themselves, and made complete albums. Or *a* complete album anyway.)

o

The one that I'll never forget or will get old to me
 

The pianist/conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy's "Mozart's Great Piano Concertos." Okay, I'm showing my age now, but no, I don't mean to be pretentious. There's a good reason our culture regards Mozart as near diety. And Ashkenazy's interpretation is unusually lively and even sentimental. I've heard other greats such as Leonard Bernstein do these and non are as great as Ashkenazy. This prompted me to buy the 10 CD set of Mozart's entire piano concertos by Ashkenazy, and it is facsinating to appreciate how even Amadeus had to painstakingly grow into his peak level of creativity. You hear echos of the "greatest" ones repeatedly early on, until he puts it all together with the real greatest hits in the last two cd's of the set.

Agreed about Life's Rich Pagent, though if I could get a copy of it without Superman, I'd like it a lot more.

And the Swing was a great album. I'd even put Listen Like Thieves in the same category, though like U2's Joshua Tree, this was the album INXS used to gain commercial success.

If I were to go 70s music, I'd mention Supertramp's Breakfast in America. Great album. My understanding is that it was required listening for those who've ever played baseball at Murray, high school. Just because the coach's brother was the drummer..... :P

This list may date me, but what the hell.

1. Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Top to bottom, one of the most solid albums of all time. Not a bad track on the album. If you have never listened to this album stoned, then you have sadly missed out on one of life's unique pleasures..
2. IV - Led Zeppelin
This may be THE classic rock and roll album of all time. The standard by which all other albums are measured. As we speak, the ringtone on my cell phone is Black Dog. Other songs of note: Misty Mountain Hop, Stairway to Heaven (who hasn't made out to Stairway to Heaven?), The Battle of Evermore, Rock and Roll, When the Levee Breaks. It doesn't get any better than this.
3. Sticky Fingers - Rolling Stones
It's almost impossible to single out just one Rolling Stones album, because there so many excellent ones to choose from. This one gets my nod just because Wild Horses and Moonlight Mile are two of my favorite Stones songs, and because the album cover is one of my favorites of all time.
4. Tea for the Tillerman - Cat Stevens
Cat Stevens is, without a doubt, my favorite radical muslim rock and roll singer of all time. It's a shame he got religious, because as a song writer he was in a class of his own. This album contains some classics: Where do the Children Play, Hard Headed Woman, Father and Son, On the Road to Find Out, Miles From Nowhere, Wild World.
5. Rock and Roll Animal - Lou Reed
This album would make the list for no other reason than that the intro for Sweet Jane contains one the best guitar solos ever. This album also holds a special place in my heart because it is the first album that my mother ever threw out (there were more to follow). I think she was willing to overlook the punk/transvestite on the cover, but she drew the line when she saw the track titled Heroin: "When I put a spike into my vein, then I tell you things aren't quite the same...". I'm not sure why she objected to that.

BTW, my avatar is the album cover of one my other favorite albums of all time. Ten points to anyone who can identify it.

Re: The one that I'll never forget or will get old to me
 

Hmm, I might have to check the Ashkenazy out. I have yet to really hear a performance of these that has been particularly memorable, or made me want to own the Mozart piano concertos.

Some memorable albums are:
Kind of Blue- heard it in high school. Miles Davis, Coltrane, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, I mean come on...

Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations(Bach) He plays the Aria beautifully, and the rest of the variations with precision and vigor. His own humming heard in the recording doesn't bother me. Interesting fellow, Glenn Gould...

Beethoven late string quartets, especially the Grosse Fugue Can't remember the performer, but changed the way I thought about classical music.

Anything by Clifford Brown and Max Roach I've never heard such a pure tone out of a trumpet.

that's what comes to mind now.

The ELP at the bottom and 70's style on your list kind of gives it away for an easy Amazon search. OTOH, it's pretty cool cover art. Apparently someone over there thinks it was "a conductor's wet dream". I'm not sure if that piques my interest. But maybe.

o

as a younger man I listened to Led Zeppelin IV and Dark Side of the Moon hundreds of times.

I actually had a tape that I would use when riding my bike. LZ IV on one side and Depeche Mode Violator on the other.

....I know rock purists would not agree with that combination.

I also listened to a lot of New Order in high school. Technique was the first album I owned. And then I got the older stuff.

I knew I liked you. Somebody with music tastes with which I can relate and remember. :lol:

I must admit that ELP holds a special place in my heart because an ELP concert was the last pre-mission concert I attended (and by "pre-mission concert" I mean a concert in which a roach clip was not required). Journey opened for ELP that night (Journey introduced Steve Perry as their new lead singer that night). My two best friends and I attended this concert, knowing that we would submit our mission papers in the ensuing months. We decided we had better go out in style, and definitely got our money's worth that night.

IMHO, New Order's the 80's synth-dance band whose 80's music as aged most gracefully. What I'm saying is, their best 80's songs don't sound all that corny to me today (whereas a lot of others do).

First album I ever got was the Thompson Twins Into the Gap. (I hear they're common-law-married sheep farmers in New Zealand now.)

o

Are you sure it was not Foreigner that opened for ELP that night, afterall no one can really tell the difference between Journey/Foreigner.

New Order made a rather smooth transition from Joy Division after Ian Curtis hanged himself. I can't believe I had such a brain cramp and failed to mention this band. I'm listening to disc 2 of Substance as we speak.

Into the Gap is a fun Thompson Twins album. I saw them at Park West in '88 and have to say that it was one of the shows that I've enjoyed more than most.

Again, I'm not only one of the originals of the New Wave sound - graduated high school in 1982 - but I'm pretty much stuck in it. Even if mp disapproves. ;)

Dark Side of the Moon is a great album, as is The Wall - Comfortably Numb is one of the best songs ever, IMO.

And we may as well throw in Frampton. His voice box was great - my kids think he's making his guitar talk. perhaps someday, I'll tell them how he does it.

On a side note, I taught myself to play the bass line from John Cougar Mellenkamp's "I Need a Lover" the other day. One of my prouder moments, if I must say.

Dang! I was going to guess the Carpenters.

Re: The one that I'll never forget or will get old to me
 

I'd be interested to hear if you agree with me about Ashenazy and the Mozart piano concertos. I've never heard them done by anyone I love nearly as much as Ashkenazy's rendition. This is my favorite thing to listen to in the world.

Then you should try Ashkenazy doing Sergey Rachmonov. It's the greatest easy listening music ever.

I agree about Glen Gould/Goldberg Variations and Miles Davis/Kind of Blue. My wife introduced me to the former, which she regards as one of those life changing kind of "albums."

For great classical music it's hard to top Murray Perahia doing Bach's piano concertos nos. 3, 5, 6 and 7. Very accessible; good for kids.

This past summer I got Wagner's Ring into my blood.

there was good music before 1990? I thought it was just hair bands and drug induced hard rock..

Re: The one that I'll never forget or will get old to me
 

So did Grapevine.

Re: The one that I'll never forget or will get old to me
 

I'd be surprised.

Actually, this is one of those instances where I think I'm doing my own, original thing, and it turns out that unwittingly I'm following a fad. Wagner's opera cycle der Ring des Nibelungin got a bad name for a few decades after the 1930's and '40's when Hitler made it virtually Nazi Germany's Illiad. He saw the entire cycle (about 20 hours long), some 60 times,and once said something like "if you want to understand Nazism you must understand the Ring" (I'm paraphrasing).

Now, however, the Ring is once again fully appreciated as the masterwork of a true genius. Wagner never knew Hitler, died long before he came to power, and the opera has no overtly anti-semitic or racist themes, certainly nothing to match C.S. Lewis' Narnia series which are Christian allegories. (Like most 19th century folks, not the least of them great artists and philosophers, he had some non-PC views, by today's standards.)

Wagner drew his myth that forms the story line of the opera from old Nordic chronicles and epic poems, just as Tolkein did in constructing his epic, and it's clear that Tolkein owes a large debt to Wagner (which he never explictly acknowledged). Many great western thinkers such as Neitzche and Shaw had a passion for the Ring.

For many years the Seattle Opera was about the only opera company outside Bayreuth, Germany that regularly did the entire Ring cycle from beginning to end--every four years, like the world cup. Over the decades they've finally nearly perfected it. Tickets are as scarce as Final Four tickets and people come from all over the world to see it. There are four operas shown, as long as five hours, over a six day period.

The Ring has always interested me because myths and their power to literally to catalyze the rise of civilizations (for better or worse) has always been a passion of mine--perhaps because of the way I was brought up. Anyway, a friend of my wife's family is on the Seattle Symphony board and he got me a ticket so I went. Before hand I studied up, listening to the entire cycle on CD's while following along with the libretto, read a couple of books, etc.

I thought I was being pretty original and eccentric. Alas, during my studies I learned that the Ring his exploding in popularity and now many opera companies all over the world are following the Seattle Opera's example. I understand one reason it's popular now is opera companies now provides subtitles translating the German to the native toungue of the audience.

I'm sure Statman knows more about this than I do by far.

For the most part, I think we should look at art for its own sake, and not try to interpret it through the lens of the artists' life.

If Wagner was not the sort of person that one would want to be acquainted with, so what, to some extent.

Wagner, muscially, was a visionary. (I learned this in my Music 101 class).

In addition to the thematic & the storyline elements to his operas Wagner is also noted for scoring for full symphony orchestra in his opratic works. The orchestra music is so strong that it can stand independent of the opera. Because of this, you can often hear of orchestras performing music from Wagner opera x in a standalone concert. Wagner is also noted for using unusual or newly invented instruments in the orchestra(anvil, serpent, ophicleide, English bass horn, Wagner tuba to name a few) to create a certain atmosphere or aura appropriate to the scene.

Wagner's music is, of course, famous but never more so then when Elmer Fudd starts up with his 'Kill da wabbit' song.

What's an album :D

Frankie Laine - On the Trail .... best album by far!

man, I failed to read the entire string until just now ... you guys ahve missed out on some great music ... I don't know much about albums but what about bands such as:

ELO
Moody Blues
Yes
Super Tramp
Boston
The Smiths
The House Martins ...

And for the love of Pete, NO Johnny Cash?

Paul Simon - Graceland?


Bob Marely


Fairground Attraction


The Police?

I agree, as implied in my post. I'd go even further and say art should not be judged by wether the critic personally agrees or disagrees with its thematic content--it's the execution that counts.