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Funnyfarm Fancies
Thursday, 10 May 2007
My top 10 favorite albums of all time
To limit mine to one artist each, I'll say:

1.) The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
(actually Revolver and The White Album are my two favorite Beatles albums, but I've been listening to MMT a lot lately)

2.) Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited (1965)
This has 3 of my all-time favorite Dylan songs on it -- "Like a Rolling Stone," "Ballad of a Thin Man" and "Desolation Row" -- but all of Dylan's albums including this one are a little uneven to me. (But then the same could be said of any album, including Revolver and the White album.) But this has the highest percentage of great songs on it IMO. Also in the running for me would be The Freewheelin Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, and Blood on the Tracks. If I can include later releases of old material, I'd put Bootleg Series Volume One (rare early 1960s recordings) and Volume Six (1964 Halloween concert). In fact, I've loaned out Volume Six to someone -- the whole thing -- because I think the whole 2-CD set is good, worth hearing in its entirety.

3.) Simon & Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970)
This is like their own "Abbey Road," the culmination of all the great production methods learned from the 1960s, maturely channeled into serving the songs. My second choice would be the wonderful "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Tyhme" from 1966 -- I would say it was S&G's "Revolver." Third choice would be "Bookends," another great album.

4.) Pink Floyd, The Wall (1979)
I don't care what anyone says, this is a masterful album -- sort of like the rock album as a movie or novel. (And forget the movie of The Wall, I'm not talking about that.)

5.) The Monkees, Pisces Aquarius Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (1967)
Again, I don't care what people think of me for being a Monkees fan. These are great pop songs that are well done, much better than a lot of the more respected artistes have managed to do. The only drawback is that sometimes the instrumentation seems a little too weak, which is to be expected considering its a combination of the Monkees themselves (whose abilities vary) and studio musicians (who may be professional but lack the fire within). I never thought I'd love "Cuddly Toy" -- I hated it when I was younger -- but I love it now.

6.) Todd Rundgren, A Wizard / A True Star (1973)
I haven't listened to this in years, but I remember it being great. I only have it on vinyl LP, not a CD, and my turntable hasn't been hooked up in years. One of these days I'll have to get it on CD and see if it still is as good as I remember. (I think it will be. Any album that segues "You Need Your Head" into "Rock and Roll Pussy" into "Dogfight Giggle" in the space of 5 minutes can't go wrong.)

7.) The Dukes of Stratosphear, Psonic Psunspot (1988)
This is another one that I only have on vinyl. The CD Version combines their earlier EP with this album, under the new title of Chips from a Chocolate Fireball (or something like that). I don't have the CD, though. The Dukes are really XTC, and this entire album is an homage to 1960s pop-rock, culminating in the Brian Wilson-inspired "Pale and Precious."

8.) Queen, Sheer Heart Attack (1974)
While this album doesn't have my all-time favorite Queen songs (those would be on a greatest hits compilation, and I decided not to choose any Greatest Hits albums for this list), I think it's the most cohesive and fully listenable of Queen's albums from beginning to end. (Okay, I kind of lose interest a bit after "Bring Back Leroy Brown," but then how could you top something like that?) My second Queen choice would be A Night At The Opera, the album which came out the following year, and which contained "Bohemian Rhapsody."

9.) The Rutles, The Rutles (1978)
This is a bit of a cheat, since they are a Beatles parody band, but I love the Beatles and love the Rutles sound as well, not surprisingly. But I think it's even better than mere parody. If, like me, you wish their were more "new Beatles music" to listen to, this is as about as close as you can get. Neil Innes, the Rutles songwriter and main singer (he does the "John" voices), is underappreciated, talented in his own right.

10.) Kiss, Destroyer (1976)
OK, so I ran out of room and wasn't able to include all the other great albums I love. But this is the album I've owned the longest of any on this list, buying it as an LP in the late 1970s (along with most of the other available Kiss albums of the time -- they were my favorite band when I was 8 years old, and Queen was 2nd favorite). I recently listened to the CD in its entirety and found myself enjoying every minute of it. Sure it's a bit embarrassing to admit it, sure the lyrics can be adolescent, but it's ambitious, melodic, Beatlesque, and fun, with lots of variety. Not all the songs sound the same. And when I listened to it recently, I noticed (which I hadn't before) how much the choir-backed "Great Expectations" (a somewhat embarrassingly vulgar song about how being a famous rock star makes women lust after you) reminded me of The Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

Honorable mentions:
Johnny Cash, Ride This Train (1960)
The Beach Boys, Beach Boys Party (1965)
The Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesty's Request (1967)
Syd Barrett, Madcap Laughs (1970)
John Lennon, John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band (1970)
E.L.O, Time (1981)
Roger Waters, The Pros & Cons of Hitchhiking (1984)
The Jesus and Mary Chain, Psychocandy (1985)
Scritti Politti, Cupid & Psyche '85 (1985)
dc Talk, Jesus Freak (1995)
Miss Angie, 100 Million Eyeballs (1997)
Outrageous Cherry, Supernatural Equinox (2002)

(Incidentally, I find Outrageous Cherry's current album, Stay Happy, which came out October 2006, to be more thoroughly listenable from beginning to end, without skipping any tracks, than the above choice, but the individual songs, while very good, don't equal the greatness of some of those on the 2002 release. So, the 2002 album is more uneven, only two-thirds listenable, but the good songs on it are some of my all-time favorites by them.)

And I'm leaving out a whole bunch of artist I love like Buddy Holly, The Lovin' Spoonful, Jan & Dean, The Doors, Lou Reed, T. Rex, The Who, etc. because I can't settle on just one album.

Posted by rimes12 at 12:39 PM EDT

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