Great rock and pop albums

[Anna]

Were you there at Alexandra Place? I was. The acoustics weren't great but it was an occasion!

(Oh no, in my excitement, I have edited your post - Think it was "OMG! The Stone Roses. You and me both!". My sincere apologies for this. It really wasn't intended). Lat.

Oi! Lat! You can't go around interfering with me posts!

As to Stone Roses - the best pop group that never was. It's the changes of key and tempo I think on Breaking into Heaven (Second Coming) that does it for me. But then I am the Resurrection could have been recorded by any group wanting a perfect 3 min pop song, however, Fools Gold is something else isn't it?

Just seen, Velvet Underground has been mentioned, now that's a whole new topic. And, how about Grace Slick? White Rabbit is my favourite of hers.

[Lateralthinking1]

Sorry Anna. I was born under the astrological sign of Clumsy. Here's my other random 50 but it is a bit tip and iceberg. I am just beginning to realise how difficult all this is:

The Kinks - Something Else, Fred Neil - Bleecker and MacDougal, Otis Redding - Otis Blue, The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle, Phil Ochs - Rehearsals for Retirement, Simon and Garfunkel - Bookends, Nina Simone - Nine Simone and Piano, Mama Cass - Make Your Own Kind of Music, The Band - The Band, Minnie Riperton and Rotary Connection - Hey Love

David Bowie - Space Oddity, Gil Scott-Heron - Pieces of a Man, James Taylor - Sweet Baby James, Al Green - Let's Stay Together, Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, Gram Parsons - Grievous Angel, Burning Spear - Marcus Garvey, Joan Baez - Diamonds and Rust, Al Stewart - Year of the Cat, Bob Marley and the Wailers - Exodus

Doll By Doll - Gypsy Blood, Jonathan Richman - The Berserkley Years, Stevie Wonder - The Secret Life of Plants, REM - Murmur, The Smiths - The World Won't Listen, The Waterboys - This is the Sea, The Redskins - Neither Washington Nor Moscow, Paul Simon - Graceland, Andy White - Rave On Andy White, Big Audio Dynamite - This is Big Audio Dynamite

Nanci Griffith - The Last of the True Believers, De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising, Edwyn Collins - Hope and Despair, The La's - The La's, Capercaillie - Delirium, Primal Scream - Screamadelica, kd Lang - Ingenue, Mary Chapin Carpenter - Come On Come On, The Rockingbirds - Whatever Happened to the Rockingbirds, The Verve - Urban Hymns

The Frames - Fitzcarraldo, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Boatman's Call, Tim Rose - Snowed In, Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Global-a-Go-Go, Brian Wilson - Smile, The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin, King Creosote - King Creosote OK, Sufjan Stevens - Illinois, Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid, Rachel Unthank and the Winterset - Cruel Sister

[Mandryka]

Some excellent titles have been mentioned on here, already. Here are some of mine:

Henry The Human Fly - Richard Thompson

Something/Anything - Todd Rundgren

The Yard Went On Forever - Richard Harris

Bless The Weather - John Martyn

Songs Of Love And Hate - Leonard Cohen

Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan (though not listened to it in years)

What We Did On Our Holidays - Fairport Convention

Eli And The 13th Confession - Laura Nyro

Land Of Grey And Pink - Caravan

Caravanserai - Santana

[MrGongGong]

What I am interested in knowing is whether people "use" this music in the same way that they use the other musics they listen to ?
or is it simply nostalgia , light distraction or something to fill the void ?

[Mandryka]

What I am interested in knowing is whether people "use" this music in the same way that they use the other musics they listen to ?
or is it simply nostalgia , light distraction or something to fill the void ?

The nostalgia factor doesn't apply to most of my choices, as I was too young (or not yet born) when they were released.

I'd say all the titles I've named are thought-provoking and life-enhancing.

[Lateralthinking1]

They all mean different things to me and I haven't listened to many for a long while. I have a tendency these days to think that my favourite sound is silence but I'm never sure if I believe it. Must be a sign of these wonderful times. But, no, certainly not void filling. In some cases, it is nostalgia. The records can also be a reminder. They jog the memory back to the diary in my head that I never wanted or needed to write. Where the lyrics are stronger and meaningful, they are audio books. Some of the older ones are about identification with others either generally or in specific eras and places. Some are all about numbers. Some are entirely overlooked and rather good because of it. Some come naturally. Some are acquired. Some are better seen as conceptual.

Some are my parents - the happier ones. Some are my mates at the point just beyond scepticism. Some are by people who are so familiar that they feel like a good friend or a relative. Some are the idea of people with personalities I really like when I wouldn't actually get on with them in the slightest. Some are values. Some are poetry. Some are almost visual art. Some are like complex crossword puzzles. Some are the land and the sea more than the geography itself. Some are distant history. Some continue to live on. Some are about age and ageing with a cross-reference to our own lives. Some have mean or very original productions and arrangements. Some are just an antidote to the modern racket. Some reach out to the elements and hint at soul.

And some are for categorisation and some are not. There is humour if only in places. There is the memory of being encouraged through the records to get out and find the world exciting, then finding it exciting, then rediscovering it truly is bloody awful. There is that thing about first believing in similarity with others through music and then being appalled that terrible types appear to like it too. But records don't criticise or condemn the listener. They don't compete or win or lose. They don't want something completed before an unrealistic deadline. They don't deceive or shift the blame or demand. Nor do they steal or require more money once you have made the initial payment. They don't even want you to stop just for that one extra pint again and again.

Some of them die. The best ones never do. They change in interesting, involving, ways while being exactly as they ever were. That's pretty cool I think. As the years move on, it is easier to see how life could be lived without them. Greater gaps can appear between the moments that music is on in the room at all. Whereas once it felt like a journey into space, it can sometimes feel overly oppressive and that is obviously sadness. But if you are on its road, you can never get off it. You wouldn't want to. You need to find out what it brings around the next corner. It was John Peel who said that the reason he stuck around was that he couldn't bear the idea of missing the best record that hadn't yet been released. He was right about that of course. Pure joy.

[burning dog]

James Brown - Live at the Apollo Vol.2
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On?
Stevie Wonder - Talking Book
Al Green - Let's Stay Together
Gil Scott Heron - Pieces of a Man
Earth Wind and Fire - All n All
The Crusaders - Street Life
Michael Jackson, with Cleethorpe's 'King of Pop' - Off The Wall
Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet

loads of 'greatest hits' by Smokie Robinson, Sam Cooke at the like,... Plus Dub Reggae Ska compilations.

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Theres a few free standing reggae albums I like but nothing as much as the singles. There's Pop I like by Bowie, Roxy, Eno, Kraftwerk, Early punk and classic Rock from before my record buying time (Stones, Hendrix) and various others, commercial to obscure, but not as much as the listed stuff

I know its an unhip opinion but I think a lot of Pop music is popular/best selling because it's quite good rather than it's force fed by the Capitalist machine blah blah blah, and surely of lot of obscure stuff is niche marketing rather than "revolutionary" or whatever? It might not considered that by the artists and be "for the sake of the music" in their minds, but that appiles to the Pop end as well.

In the early 70s albums by Led Zeppelin etc were often called 'uncommercial' compared with singles... "They haven't gone 'Commercial' man!"... but the albums sold in their millions and were more profitable. Could never get that...
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Mr Gong Gong -

90% the same as other music. 10% nostalgia.

I'd like to think 100%/0% .............but the release dates of all but the first and last tell me otherwise.(1971/ 1979) It's partly because I never listen to pop radio or go dancing now. These days I never get to hear much in the Pop genres I like except by accident.

[barber olly]

The problem is in defining rock and pop, isn't it.

Pigeon-holing of music always has its problems - where do the boundaries lie? Easy listening (what a silly term, some of it is hard work!), jazz, blues, soul, folk, world, rock 'n' roll, r'n'b, prog...all have overlaps. When I catalogue my collection I get round the problem by not categorising, having two lists Classical (by composer) and Non-classical (by artiste). This gets round most problems with the exception of some crossover items, my solution is to list in both!

[burning dog]

A now out of date vague definition was whether it featured on, or was aimed at, general radio ie. mixed in with other stuff (whether that be singles/AM or albums/FM) and played intensively over a short period, so Dylan is Pop, Pete Seeger folk (though Bob Dylan is usually folk as well) George Benson is Pop, Weather Report is Jazz (with one "crossover" exception) though Benson is sometimes Jazz as well. Music has no boundaries but there are poles of style IMO. Little Richard is definitively Rock and Roll, Count Basie Swing, Al Green Soul.

I just have 'Classical' and 'Other' sections also.

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes, that's good barber olly. I have my small classical collection at the end of all the rest which are in alphabetical order. On categories, there are two aren't there? How they are generally categorised and the less obvious links we make in our heads based on personal experience.

I agree with burning dog about singles artists - I wanted to get Sam Cooke and Smokey Robinson in there too, and even my Kraftwerk tracks cross several albums. Then you look at the Abyssinians or Lee Scratch Perry or even Joe Meek or Talking Heads and it is the occasional brilliant track here and there. So it is impossible really. I cheated with the Richman compilation and only left Weather Report's "Heavy Weather" out because it was too "jazz". And that doesn't even begin to deal with the world music.

Still, there it is. Cleethorpes...Michael Jackson - I think that man is Rod Temperton!

[umslopogaas]

Interesting question! I've just extracted a small pile of late 60s/early 70s LPs from a dusty corner of my shelves. These are all the pop/rock music I still have forty-something years later and reflect a brief period during my student days when I thought sex, drugs and rock and roll were enormously important. It took about eighteen months to realise that they werent, really, so this is a very precise sample of my tastes at the time. I then turned to classical music and have stayed there ever since. I think I have got rid of some of the pop, and I never had very much, as a student I was pretty broke and music was, relatively speaking, much more expensive in the LP era than it is now. The pop and rock corner contains:

Wheels of Fire (Cream)
Live Cream (Cream)
Goodbye (Cream)
Gorilla (Bonzo Dog Band)
Live at Leeds (The Who)
Boogie with Canned Heat (Canned Heat)
Weird Scenes inside the Gold Mine (The Doors)
White Heat/White Light (The Velvet Underground)
Big Hits [High Tide and Green Grass] (The Rolling Stones)
Live Dead (The Grateful Dead)
Back to the Roots (John Mayall and friends)
Fillmore East, 1971 (The Mothers of Invention)
Burnt Weeny Sandwich (The Mothers of Invention)
Chunga's Revenge (Frank Zappa and members of the Mothers of Invention, but not named as such)
Waka/Jawaka (Frank Zappa and friends)

I'm sure I used to have Close to the Edge (Yes) and Disraeli Gears (Cream), but I dont any more.

When I moved house three years ago I got all these old LPs out of the packing boxes, cleaned them up and played them before re-shelving them. Given the hard life they have lived, they sound remarkably good and only a little bit crackly. I'm glad to have them, for nostalgia's sake, but in truth, it is likely to be a long time before I play them again.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...i am grateful to the thread for prompting me to get out all the Steely Dan cds and play them .... High Tide & Green Grass was my favourite Stones album ... Smokey Robinson and Otis Redding Greatest Hits are still essential, if not quite 'albums' ... and still listen to Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys ... and i think a strong case can be made that George Benson is a lot better than he is seen to be ..

[Mandryka]

...i am grateful to the thread for prompting me to get out all the Steely Dan cds and play them .... High Tide & Green Grass was my favourite Stones album ... Smokey Robinson and Otis Redding Greatest Hits are still essential, if not quite 'albums' ... and still listen to Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys ... and i think a strong case can be made that George Benson is a lot better than he is seen to be ..

I though High Tide/Green Grass was a comp?

George Benson's later career as a light pop balladeer seems to totally obscure his original career as a brilliant jazz guitarist, which is a shame, albeit not for the walletsome Mr. Benson.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

... imv he was a brilliant pop balladeer .... judging by his youtube clips, he continued to play great guitar solos in the live performances of his hits .... [was there a rule about compilations?]

[barber olly]

... [was there a rule about compilations?]

There have been some great compilations over the years eg Elkie Brooks Pearls and Pearls 2, Carpenters 1969-73, Abba Gold, Queen Greatest Hits. The problem with many compilations is the track that shouldn't be there or the vital missing track, are they chronological or mixed up? The good and the great seem to be the worst culprits. Beatles 1 woefully omits Please Please Me, Stones 40 Licks omits Little Red Rooster! I agree with Calum about george Benson and there are more recent albums which show off his guitar-playing credentials.

There are interesting comments about abandoning pop/rock music for Classical - I am always puzzled by those with problems of choice of one or the other, surely there's shelf space and ears for Mahler, ManTran and Maazel, or Hollies, Holliger and Honegger...