What is the best album?

[frank 2,152]

Danzig 2: Lucifuge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

40 times better than most of the albums in this thread

[Manifest Destiny 0]

Weezer - Pinkerton

This gets my vote for the most underrated album of all time. Absolutly crushes their other stuff (which I also like)

 

Add Zep's Presence, Fate's Warning's A Pleasant Shade of Gray, and Opeth's Damnation and you hit the perfecta

Nice. I'd go with Opeth's Blackwater Park and Fates Warning's Awaken the Guardian as two of my all time favorites.

 

Danzig 2: Lucifuge

40 times better than most of the albums in this thread

Danzig 3:How the Gods Kill

40 times better than Lucifuge

[TylerRoseFan 16]

HTH

[SUXBNME 1,340]

Without looking at any of the other responses, in no particular order:

 

Love - The Cult

Standing on the Beach : The singles - The Cure

Plastic Surgery Disasters - Dead Kennedys

Liscense to Ill - Beastie Boys

 

 

And just about everything these groups did:

Iron Maiden

Skid Row

G&R

White Lion

Ratt

Satriani

Vai

Stevie Ray Vaughn

Dream Theater

Simon and Garfunkel

Shania Twain

Zeppelin

 

 

There may be more...

[kutulu 1,552]

HTH

 

[HTH 67]

Who, The

Pure and Easy

 

There once was a note, pure and easy,

Playing so free, like a breath rippling by.

The note is eternal, I hear it, it sees me,

Forever we blend it, forever we die.

 

I listened and I heard music in a word,

And words when you played your guitar,

The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,

And a child flew past me riding in a star.

 

As people assemble,

Civilization is trying to find a new way to die,

But killing is really merely scene changer,

All men are bored with other men's lies.

 

I listened and I heard music in a word,

And words when you played your guitar,

The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,

And a child flew past me riding in a star.

 

Gas on the hillside, oil in the teacup,

Watch all the chords of life lose their joy,

Distortion becomes somehow pure in its wildness,

The note that began all can also destroy.

 

We all know success when we all find our own dreams,

And our love is enough to knock down any walls,

And the future's been seen as men try to realize,

The simple secret of the note in us all.

 

I listened and I heard music in a word,

And words when you played your guitar,

The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,

And a child flew past me riding in a star.

 

There once was a note, pure and easy,

Playing so free, like a breath rippling by.

 

There once was a note, listen (x 18)

 

* Who's Next?

[hondo9 0]

Stones - Exile on Main Street

[Lionsjunkie 1]

U2.................... Joshua Tree

Metallica........... And Justice For All

Tragically Hip......Fully Completely

Our Lady Peace.........Happiness Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch

Grateful Dead....American Beauty

[lambert58 56]

James Taylor................Sweet Baby James.

[lagarzlebrew 0]

K-Fed

 

Word.

 

[ZeroTolerance 582]

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin

Pearl Jam - Ten

Metallica - Master of Puppets

The Who - Who's Next?

 

 

To name a few.

[lagarzlebrew 0]

Loved Alive! by KISS, but it is sort of a greatest hits....

[nzoner 936]

WTF not one mention of Dire Straits Making Movies

 

plus I'll add

 

The Traveling Wilburys Volume 1

Tom Petty-Full Moon Fever

The Doors-Morrison Hotel

Eric Clapton-Slowhand

[gratefulted 14]

Cream - Wheels of Fire

Eric Clapton - 461 Ocean Blvd.

Rolling Stones - Beggers Banquet

Ten Years After - A Space in Time

[Saturday Night Beaver 2]

The Cars self titled debut album

[parshall2marshall 0]

The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band (#1 in my book)

 

The Who - Who's Next

 

Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run

 

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon (the closest you'll ever come to taking a drug trip without taking drugs)

 

The Rolling Stones - Let it Bleed (hard pick - my favorites of theirs are spread out over their albums)

 

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin I

 

The Eagles - Hotel California

 

U2 - The Joshua Tree*

 

 

 

 

*(tough choice - but "Where The Streets Have No Name" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" are two of my favorite U2 songs, hence this selection)

 

 

Way more than this, but just ones that immediately popped into my head - I'm a huge music, well, nerd.

[Concrete Charlie 0]

"Howlin' Wolf: The London Sessions"

The Wolf plays with a backing band of Eric Clapton, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Ringo Starr, Steve Winwood (actually added his 88's as an overdub, later on), and others, at the famous Olympic studios in tony London.

If you like the blues, it hardly gets any better than this.

[gratefulted 14]

"Howlin' Wolf: The London Sessions"

The Wolf plays with a backing band of Eric Clapton, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Ringo Starr, Steve Winwood (actually added his 88's as an overdub, later on), and others, at the famous Olympic studios in tony London.

If you like the blues, it hardly gets any better than this.

Excellent choice

 

I like it when Wolf halts the playing of Red Rooster to get on Clapton's ( I think it was him) ass on how the blues are s'pose to be played

[Wildman 0]

Damien Rice - O

 

Abbey Road

 

Beastie Boys - Licensed To Ill

 

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

...And the ablum that was voted the Greatest Album of the 20th Century by Time Magazine:

 

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Exodus

 

Absof'nlutely

 

Resolution from "A Love Supreme"... A Spiritual Experience of Sonic Proportions

 

[Concrete Charlie 0]

Excellent choice

 

I like it when Wolf halts the playing of Red Rooster to get on Clapton's ( I think it was him) ass on how the blues are s'pose to be played

 

Thanks. What i would have paid to be sitting there, think i'd cry along with Mr. Eric's guitar.

[BiPolarBear 476]

"Howlin' Wolf: The London Sessions"

 

Thank you for bringing the blues to the game. If you love the blues, give Freddie King a listen. I think Women Across the River is the best album.

[pt_mck 7]

 

Big Country - Steeltown

 

 

You like Steeltown more than The Crossing?

[Wildman 0]

Not sure about best, but as far as modern jazz goes, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue is hard to beat. I think that Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder is the best album overall.

 

to Little Stevie Wonder...an amazing musician, songwriter, and singer.

[ZeroTolerance 582]

Detroit's classic rock station is running a top 500 albums countdown (which will probably suck in the end, like all lists). Playing the top 20 in their entirety and currently paused until noon tomorrow. So far:

 

17. AC/DC - Back in Black

16. Led Zeppelin - III

15. Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers

14. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

13. The Who - Who's Next?

12. Led Zeppelin - I

11. Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced

10. Elton John - Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road

09. Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

[mbarky 0]

Since no one has mentioned these:

 

Frank Zappa and the Mothers: We're Only In It for the Money

 

Captain Beefheart: Trout Mask Replica

 

Pat Metheny Group - eponymous first album

[ZeroTolerance 582]

Update:

8: Pink Floyd - The Wall

7: Aerosmith - Toys in the Attic

6. The Beatles - Abbey Road

5. The Beatles - The White Album

4. Led Zeppelin - Untitled (Led Zeppelin IV)

[TAS 2]

If we're talking about albums that I enjoyed and were not necessarily great, but good to listen to then I offer these:

 

Counting Crows (their first relative album, Mr. Jones was on it)

Bush- (with Come down amd glycerine)

UB40- about anything they have put out

Bob Marley-just about anything

INXS-Kick

The Cure had some good stuff, some not so good stuff.

[Yer mom 2]

Many good ones mentioned here. I know it doesnt really qualify as one of greats but I nominate Sublime - 40 oz. to freedom for myself, never gets old.

[paulinstl 295]

Live recordings:

 

Little Feat "Waiting For Colombus" the tracks featuring Tower Of Power horns are spectacular.

 

Roy Buchanan "Livestock" some of the most incredible blues/rock guitar recorded by the most unheralded guitar player in the history of music. He turned down the Stones' offer to join the band after Mick Taylor left, and guitarists like SRV and Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top called him their favorite guitarist.

 

Allman Brothers "Fillmore East" a classic.

 

Studio:

 

Eric Clapton "461 Ocean Blvd."

 

Ten Years After "A Space In Time"

 

Pink Floyd "Wish You Were Here"

 

 

 

Many good ones mentioned here. I know it doesnt really qualify as one of greats but I nominate Sublime - 40 oz. to freedom for myself, never gets old.

 

 

[Slobknocker 0]

Def Leppard - Hysteria, plus Pyromania should be close to the top too

[zmanzzzz 1]

sgt peppers

live dead

alman bros at fillmore east

heart of gold

uprising

[bigtuna 0]

Bruce Springsteen: Born To Run

Rolling Stone:October 1975 written by Greil Marcus

 

As a determinedly permanent resident of the West Coast, the furor Bruce Springsteen's live performances have kicked up in the East over the last couple of years left me feeling somewhat culturally deprived, not to mention a little suspicious. The legendary three-hour sets Springsteen and his E Street Band apparently rip out night after night in New York, Province-town, Boston and even Austin have generated a great tumult and shouting; but, short of flying 3000 miles to catch a show, there was no way for an outlander to discover what the fuss was all about.

 

Certainly, I couldn't find the reasons on Springsteen's first two albums, despite Columbia's "New Dylan" promotional campaign for the debut disc and the equally thoughtful "Street Poet" cover of the second. Both radiated self-consciousness, whereas the ballyhoo led one to hope for the grand egotism of historic rock & roll stars; both seemed at once flat and more than a little hysterical, full of sound and fury, and signifying, if not nothing, not much.

 

A bit guiltily, I found anything by Roxy Music far more satisfying. They could at least hit what they aimed for; while it was clear Springsteen was after bigger game, the records made me wonder if he knew what it was. Whether he did or not, with two "you gotta see him live" albums behind him, the question of whether Springsteen would ever make his mark on rock & roll -- or hang onto the chance to do so -- rested on that third LP, which was somehow "long awaited" before the ink was dry on the second. Very soon, he would have to come across, put up or shut up. It is the rock & roller's great shoot-out with himself: The kid with promise hits the dirt and the hero turns slowly, blows the smoke from his pistol, and goes on his way.

 

Or else, the kid and the hero go down together, twitching in the dust while the onlookers turn their heads and talk safely of what might have been. The end. Fade-out.

 

Springsteen's answer is Born to Run. It is a magnificent album that pays off on every bet ever placed on him--a '57 Chevy running on melted down Crystals records that shuts down every claim that has been made. And it should crack his future wide open.

 

The song titles by themselves --"Thunder Road," "Night," "Backstreets," "Born to Run," "Jungleland"--suggest the extraordinary dramatic authority that is at the heart of Springsteen's new music. It is the drama that counts; the stories Springsteen is telling are nothing new, though no one has ever told them better or made them matter more. Their familiar romance is half their power: The promise and the threat of the night; the lure of the road; the quest for a chance worth taking and the lust to pay its price; girls glimpsed once at 80 miles an hour and never forgotten; the city streets as the last, permanent American frontier. We know the story: one thousand and one American nights, one long night of fear and love.

 

What is new is the majesty Springsteen and his band have brought to this story. Springsteen's singing, his words and the band's music have turned the dreams and failures two generations have dropped along the road into an epic -- an epic that began when that car went over the cliff in Rebel Without a Cause. One feels that all it ever meant, all it ever had to say, is on this album, brought forth with a determination one would have thought was burnt out years ago. One feels that the music Springsteen has made from this long story has outstripped the story; that it is, in all its fire, a demand for something new.

 

In one sense, all this talk of epic comes down to sound. Rolling Stone contributing editor Jon Landau, Mike Appel and Springsteen produced Born to Run in a style as close to mono as anyone can get these days; the result is a sound full of grandeur. For all it owes to Phil Spector, it can be compared only to the music of Bob Dylan & the Hawks made onstage in 1965 and '66. With that sound, Springsteen has achieved something very special. He has touched his world with glory, without glorifying anything: not the romance of escape, not the unbearable pathos of the street fight in "Jungleland," not the scared young lovers of "Backstreets" and not himself.

 

"Born to Run" is the motto that speaks for the album's tales, just as the guitar figure that runs through the title song--the finest compression of the rock & roll thrill since the opening riffs of "Layla" -- speaks for its music. But "Born to Run" is uncomfortably close to another talisman of the lost kids that careen across this record, a slogan Springsteen's motto inevitably suggests. It is an old tattoo: "Born to Lose." Springsteen's songs -- filled with recurring images of people stranded, huddled, scared, crying, dying -- take place in the space between "Born to Run" and "Born to Lose," as if to say, the only run worth making is the one that forces you to risk losing everything you have. Only by taking that risk can you hold on to the faith that you have something left to lose. Springsteen's heroes and heroines face terror and survive it, face delight and die by its hand, and then watch as the process is reversed, understanding finally that they are paying the price of romanticizing their own fear.

 

One soft infested summer/Me and Terry became friends/Trying in vain to breathe/The fire we was born in.../Remember all the movies, Terry/We'd go see/Trying to learn to walk like the heroes/We thought we had to be/Well after all this time/To find we're just like all the rest/Stranded in the park/And forced to confess/To/Hiding on the backstreets/Hiding on the backstreets/Where we swore forever friends....

 

Those are a few lines from "Backstreets," a song that begins with music so stately, so heartbreaking, that it might be the prelude to a rock & roll version of The Iliad. Once the piano and organ have established the theme the entire band comes and plays the theme again. There is an overwhelming sense of recognition: No, you've never heard anything like this before, but you understand it instantly, because this music--or Springsteen crying, singing wordlessly, moaning over the last guitar lines of "Born to Run," or the astonishing chords that follow each verse of "Jungleland," or the opening of "Thunder Road" -- is what rock & roll is supposed to sound like.

 

The songs, the best of them, are adventures in the dark, incidents of wasted fury. Tales of kids born to run who lose anyway, the songs can, as with "Backstreets," hit so hard and fast that it is almost impossible to sit through them without weeping. And yet the music is exhilarating. You may find yourself shaking your head in wonder, smiling through tears at the beauty of it all. I'm not talking about lyrics; they're buried, as they should be, hard to hear for the first dozen playings or so, coming out in bits and pieces. To hear Springsteen sing the line "Hiding on the backstreets" is to be captured by an image; the details can come later. Who needed to figure out all the words to "Like a Rolling Stone" to understand it?

 

It is a measure of Springsteen's ability to make his music bleed that "Backstreets," which is about friendship and betrayal between a boy and a girl, is far more deathly than "Jungleland," which is about a gang war. The music isn't "better," nor is the singing--but it is more passionate, more deathly and, necessarily, more alive. That, if anything, might be the key to this music: As a ride through terror, it resolves itself finally as a ride into delight.

 

"Oh-o, come on, take my hand," Springsteen sings, "Riding out to case the promised land." And there, in a line, is Born to Run. You take what you find, but you never give up your demand for something better because you know, in your heart, that you deserve it. That contradiction is what keeps Springsteen's story, and the promised land's, alive. Springsteen took what he found and made something better himself. This album is it.

 

GREIL MARCUS

(RS 197, October 9, 1975)

[Super Cubs 132]

Appetite for Destruction - GNR

Slippery When Wet - Bon Jovi

Cracked Rear View - Hootie & The Blowfish

 

as far as country music goes

 

Strait from the Heart - George Strait

Feals so Right - Alabama

Roller Coaster - Randy Rogers Band

[bostonlager 2,467]

Billie Jean is a killer track. I'm not joking either.

 

 

[AmbassadorOfKwan 0]

Guns & Roses - Appetite for Destruction

 

 

I hate to agree with a man that will wear nothing but an Earl Campbell jersey, but AFD is arguably the greatest album put out for most of the people here on the boards age frame. I would nominate And Justice For all for a close 2nd though.

[ZeroTolerance 582]

I hate to agree with a man that will wear nothing but an Earl Campbell jersey, but AFD is arguably the greatest album put out for most of the people here on the boards age frame. I would nominate And Justice For all for a close 2nd though.

Appetite is epic, but I wouldn't consider Justice to be even the 2nd best Metallica album (unless you are dismissing Ride and Master as out of that age frame).

[AmbassadorOfKwan 0]

Appetite is epic, but I wouldn't consider Justice to be even the 2nd best Metallica album (unless you are dismissing Ride and Master as out of that age frame).

 

 

Dont consider those out of the time frame, and they are great records, but imo, Justice was classic. You could argue classic Metallica albums as long as they started before---beer good....Napster....bad!!!