Top Ten CDs Albums Cassettes 8 Tracks

[*BaseClogger*]

I bumped the movie list thread several days after its most recent activity, so why not do the same for the albums list? This one is much more difficult to pin down and changes much more frequently. It's completely different than five or even two years ago.

Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Dinosaur Jr. - You're Living All Over Me
Defiance, Ohio - Share What Ya Got
Hop Along - Painted Shut
The Hotelier - Home, Like Noplace Is There
Japandroids - Celebration Rock
Kendrick Lamar - Good Kid, M.A.A.D City
Modest Mouse - The Lonesome Crowded West
The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns
The Thermals - The Body, The Blood, The Machine

[Will M]

Watercolors - Pat Metheny. Metheny is a jazz/fusion guitarist who writes great melody and surrounds himself with very talented sidemen. I have all his albums. This album stands out because it builds on itself and has a holistic quality. Its not just an assortment of good tunes. Some of his later albums have a larger ensemble but this is a quartet and you can hear all 4 musicians contributing. the less musicians in the band the more important it becomes that each one is top notch.

The Koln Concert - Keith Jarrett (solo piano). the kind of album you listen to alone, late at night when its quiet.

The Celtic Harp - The Chieftans. I have most of the Chieftans albums but this one stands out for me. I listen to a lot of Celtic music. I think because it connects me to the past.

An English Lady Mass - Anonymous Four. a mass for Our Lady (medieval polyphony). I listen to quite a lot of Gregorian chant but this album gets listened to frequently. I have several Anonymous Four albums. The four singers are also music professors and historians. They dig deep into ancient codexes and try to recreate the music as best they can when the original codex is full of holes.

The Origin of Fire: Music and Visions of Hildegard von Bingen - also by Anonymous Four. several Christian and "New Age" artists have recorded St Hildegard's music in recent years. It transcends the genre of religious medieval polyphony. it has an otherworldly sound and sounds nothing like you expect a cloistered nun to have written 800 years ago. St Hildegard was an Abbess, a theologian (she is a doctor of the Church), physician, political advisor and wrote music. its amazing what some people could get done before radio, TV, internet, etc.

I listen to a lot of 1950-1965 Miles Davis and "West Coast Jazz". I like the smoother and more melody based jazz as opposed to harsher bop/bebop. Miles' The Birth of the Cool would probably be the one I play most often. several of the "sidemen" on this album were jazz giants.

as for pop/rock I'm not a big listener (obviously based on my list). I listen to this more in the car. A lot of the music I like is too subtle to listen to driving down the interstate. I like the Police, Sting's solo albums, Peter Gabriel, Genesis before Phil Collins began to dominate the band, ELO, and a few others here and there. But there is one artist that for me stands out above all the rest. Van Morrison. And if I had to pick one album it would be 1979's "Into the Music". 10 great songs than blend into a whole. this was early in his religious searching and you can feel the yearning in several of the songs.

I guess that is a top seven instead of a top ten. sorry Pythagoras.

- Brett

[Mutaman]

I realize the racial divide has gotten annoyingly wide recently, but don't you guys ever listen to music by people of color? Or the Stones?

[Red in Chicago]

I can't speak for anyone else, but if you were to look at my iTunes, you'd see at least 40 artists of color that I had at least 15 songs each for. They range from 2Pac to Diana Ross, Usher to Smokey Robinson, Snoop to Sam Cooke, Lenny Kravitz to Chris Brown and Sade to Kendrick Lamar. I only listed two albums because most albums in their entirety are not worth listening to.

On a side not, Dom started this thread almost a month ago. How long can it possibly take to compile a top ten list

[Mutaman]

Can't get it down to 10:

Marshal Mathers LP Eminem
Juke Box Music/Last real texas blues band Doug Sahm
Raw Power The Stooges
In The Wee Small Hours Frank
Relaxin Miles
Kind Of Blue Miles
Layla Derick And The Dominoes
Immortal Otis Redding
Lady Soul Aretha
Some Girls Stones
To Pimp A buterfly Kendrick Lamar
Sinsemilla Black Uhuru
Sticky Fingers Stones
Out of our heads (UK Version) Stones
Cruising with Ruben & the Jets Mothers
The Fame Lady Gaga
Sunflower Beach Boys

[kaldaniels]

I realize the racial divide has gotten annoyingly wide recently, but don't you guys ever listen to music by people of color? Or the Stones?

Maybe if we all gave lists of 17 albums like you there would be some listed.

[Mutaman]

Maybe if we all gave lists of 17 albums like you there would be some listed.

I would hope so. Granted Motown was into singles but still...... To be fair doesn't sound like you folks listen to much country either: No Johnny C? No Merle? The fact that not one person listed "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" as one of the 10 greatest albums is a pretty sad comment on our society.

[Joseph]

I realize the racial divide has gotten annoyingly wide recently, but don't you guys ever listen to music by people of color? Or the Stones?

Almost listed Hendrix Are You Experienced.

iPod has Hendrix, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Living Colour, Aretha, Howlin' Wolf, TI, NWA, Tupac, Jay-Z, Eazy E, Dre, Snoop, Drake, Kayne, C-Murder, The Commodores, Lionel Richie, Ginuine, Ice Cube, Ice-T, Body Count, Lenny Kravitz, Louis Armstrong, Michael Jackson, Prince, Pharrell Williams, Timbaland, Usher, Wyclef, Al Green, the Supremes...I'm forgetting some I'm sure. Just that none of these made my list, doesn't mean I don't like the music, just didn't make the list.

[Wonderful Monds]

mine is probably something like

Radiohead - In Rainbows
Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool
Interpol - Turn On the Bright Lights
The Microphones - The Glow Pt. 2
Godspeed You Black Emperor - Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Burial - Untrue
A Winged Victory for the Sullen - A Winged Victory for the Sullen
The Antlers - Hospice
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Sufjan Stevens - Illinois

Realistically OK Computer and Kid A are probably on there as well but I didn't want to have half of it be Radiohead lol

[Nathan]

I realize the racial divide has gotten annoyingly wide recently, but don't you guys ever listen to music by people of color? Or the Stones?

Short answer for me, no, not really. The music I mainly find appealing is dominated by "white people." It has nothing to do with racism, if that's what you are insinuating.

[TRF]

No particular order

The Cure - Disintegration
Sarah McLachlan - Touch
Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town or The River
Simple Minds - Street Fighting Years (sooooo underrated)
Rage Against the Machine - The Battle of Los Angeles
Peter Gabriel - "So" and "Us"
Enya - Watermark (I believe songs from this are in the movie LA Story)
Living Color - Vivid
10000 Maniacs - Our Time in Eden or MTV Unplugged
Foo Fighters - ... I can't pick one. All of them.

[marcshoe]

Vivid is one I thought of when I saw the above question, along with Songs in the Key of Life, EW&F's All 'n All, a few by TV on the Radio, who I've been listening to increasingly much, Anything by Mavis Staples (God is Not Sleeping may be my favorite gospel song ever), Sam Cooke (we're talking greatest hits, so that doesn't really count), Coltrane, and others. In the end, though, my list is what it it, and there was no attempt to represent different styles or ethnographic groups.

btw, good Springsteen choices. Darkness came out when I was sixteen and drew me in, and there have been times when I listened to The River, front to back, repeatedly. I added Point Blank to my current playlist just last week. The reason BTR has become my favorite is that I think it accomplishes something unusual by closing with one nine-and-a-half-minute song that ties the whole album together--Jungleland.

[TRF]

Living Color changed my perception of music. I was 21 at the time and still listening to Led Zepplin (which, BTW, now makes me want to wretch, though I love hearing it in the Thor Trailer for some reason). I had just started college after a few gap years and got into Radio/TV Production. It introduced me to them, the Cure, Simple Minds after the Breakfast Club and so much more.

[Mutaman]

Short answer for me, no, not really. The music I mainly find appealing is dominated by "white people." It has nothing to do with racism, if that's what you are insinuating.

Not at all, more like mediocre taste.

[kaldaniels]

Not at all, more like mediocre taste.

Any lists/choices you'd like to call out? Albums hold a special place in the hearts and minds of folks. I see a bunch of respectable lists here.