I'm collecting CDs of the music I used to have on LP before I sold my albums back in the '80s. Plus I want CDs of music I never had on LP before I sold my albums, but have always wanted to have anyway! I want to get these things before I die. Hence, bucket list.
Even though I know that's not how music is consumed these days. You're supposed to give your life over to the Internet and AI to get music. I understand that. It's the "new way," as they say in Clockwork Orange. A new broom sweeps clean.
But nah. Let the youngs do that. I'm old, and how I learned to appreciate music was off Top 40 radio in the '60s. Which made me buy a component stereo system with my newspaper-route money in the '70s. And buy albums up to and through the '80s, while I listened to AOR FM radio stations. I went to sleep every night through high school listening to King Crimson and Mott the Hoople on FM 103 in the glow of the radio dial of my $150 receiver, and via my $200, knee-high speakers, that I had bought myself. And you want me to listen to commercials on Pandora? Where's the magic in that?
And, boy howdy, I had a great record collection back then. I had the "Thick as a Brick" album with the fold-out newspaper inside. I had the "Sticky Fingers" album with the working zipper. And so forth.
But I was in my 20s and kept moving from job to job and state to state. While carting all those albums around. And they were HEAVY and FRAGILE, which is a bad combination. You couldn't trust them to friends or movers. You had to personally cart them to your car, and drive them to your new place, and cart them inside. When you had about 300 other things to worry about. So when CDs came along, I thought, "albums have become the new 8-tracks or casette tapes." And I had already gone through those transitions. And, to paraphrase Men In Black, I had already bought the White Album about three times.
TBH, I didn't really believe that LPs had become obsolete, like 8-tracks. But I was tired of carting the LPs around and wanted to believe it. Plus, with CDs, you didn't have to get up from the couch and turn the record over. So, in the late '80s, I sold hundreds of original 1960s and 1970s rock 'n' roll albums to some resale place in Panama City, Florida. Or maybe Memphis. For about $200.
Yeah, it still stings.
So now I'm going to fix it. Before I die. I'm going to get all the albums that I plan to listen to for the rest of my life. Many of which are albums I used to have on LP. Now I have to get them on CD. But I DON'T want to get more CDs that I'll just listen to once, and never again. (I already have plenty of those.) I want the classics. Or, more to the point, the songs that I grew up with, and now want to grow old with.
Which means this list won't be universal. In fact, I don't expect ANYONE to have the same bucket list as me. But I do hope everyone will chime in with their own choices, and to discuss mine. Because this is a forum! So here we go:
THE BEATLES
To me, the Fab Four are ground zero. Every time I listen to their catalog, I learn something new -- not necessarily about THEM, but about the times they produced their music and the times I grew up in. The insight, brother, the insight!
But also I do, actually, learn more about the songs when I listen to them as an old grown-up. (How could I have made all those Ringo jokes as a kid? He's PERFECT.) As I get older, The Beatles just get better and better. How could those twentysomethings have been so good? How could they have leaped forward album to album, and dragged the world with them? They were, in fact, just four working-class kids from a second-class port in England. But they changed the world. They certainly changed mine.
So I have to have:
- Please, Please Me
- With the Beatles
- A Hard Day's Night
- Beatles for Sale
- Help!
- Rubber Soul
- Revolver
- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
- The Beatles
- Yellow Submarine
- Abbey Road
- Let It Be
Amazingly, if you buy all these albums, you still won't have all the major Beatles songs. Singles like "Paperback Writer" never appeared on an album, U.S or UK, because of the economic mechanics of the time. You have to get CDs like "One" and "Past Masters" to get them all. I have those, but I'm still not sure I have everything. I do have the two songs they sang in German (which are a hoot), on whatever album they were on, so I have some variants. But I'm not sure if I have everything. Not that it matters. I recently inherited "Anthology" from a friend who died, and I haven't been able to push through it. I don't need all the variants. I just need to tap my toes to what I already know.
THE WHO
I used to have the entire Who catalog through "Who Are You," which is about when I stopped buying vinyl. And you know what? I don't need to replace it all. There was a lot of genuine crap I don't need to listen to again. But I do need these:
- My Generation
- A Quick One/Happy Jack
- The Who Sell Out
- Tommy
- Who's Next
- Quadrophenia
- The Who by Numbers
- Who Are You
- Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy
Holy cow, that turns out to be the band's discography before 1980! I guess I can live with the crap for all the great stuff there. Especially now that Keith Moon and John Entwhistle have died. And I hear that "Live at Leeds" is the greatest live album of all time, from any band, so I guess I have to get that. (I have never heard it.) But I can pass on "Face Dances" and later work. I do want some of Townshend's solo work like "Empty Glass" and "All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes." Most of it is pretentious, self-indulgent crap, but there are some remarkable and unforgettable songs there like "Gonna Get Ya." And I don't know what album "Eminence Front" is on, but I need that.
THE ROLLING STONES
When some department store in Memphis was closing (I don't remember which one), they had a clearance sale, and my wife and I happened to be there, and it happened to be at the same time that the entire Stones catalog was being re-packaged and re-sold, so they were all there, at dirt-cheap prices. So we bought the whole Stones catalog! The whole damned thing! I mention this, because I would never have bought some early Stones LPs otherwise.
And I have listened to them. Some of which I will never bother to listen to again. The Stones started out as a blues cover band, and they weren't very good until Paul McCartney showed them that writing their own songs was the way to go. Also, they had to get rid of Brian Jones. After which, they exploded.
Which is not to say that I don't love the Stones. I do, I do. I love them more than The Who. I listened to "Exile on Main Street" non-stop for about a year in college. I have seen them in concert three times. (I never go to concerts. Unless it's the Stones.) But the Stones have fewer must-have albums than The Who, so they have ended up here, at No. 3. Here are the ones I can't live without:
- Aftermath
- Sticky Fingers
- Black and Blue
- Let It Bleed
- Some Girls
- Exile on Main Street
- Beggars Banquet
After the "Big 3," everyone else is pretty interchangeable. Some bands I only want "best ofs," like The Doors and Doobie Brothers. Because the majority of their albums are crap, except for the songs you know.
BLIND FAITH
They only made one album, "Blind Faith." You know every song on it. You know every member of this band, from other bands.
CREAM
They made four albums. I only need the last three:
- Disraeli Gears
- Wheels on Fire
- Goodbye Cream
LED ZEPPELIN
I don't know what's on any individual Led Zeppelin album, because I bought a box set years ago and just listen to some of the CDs over and over. Some discs I don't need to listen to ever again ("In Through the Out Door," "Coda"). But the first four or five albums are must-haves. "Whole Lotta Love" and "Immigrant Song" alone.
PINK FLOYD
- Animals
- Wish You Were Here
- Dark Side of the Moon
- The Wall
MOODY BLUES
- In Search of the Lost Chord
- Day of Future Passed
VELVET UNDERGROUND
- Velvet Underground & Nico
BOB DYLAN
- Blonde on Blonde
- Highway 61 Revisited
- Blood on the Tracks
CSNY
- Crosy, Stills & Nash
- Deja Vu
JETHRO TULL
- Thick as a Brick
- Aqualung
NEIL YOUNG
- Harvest
- After the Gold Rush
KING CRIMSON
- In the Court of the Crimson King
DEREK & THE DOMINOS
- Layla & Other Love Songs
MOTT THE HOOPLE
- All the Young Dudes
TRAFFIC
- The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
- John Barleycorn Must Die
DAVID BOWIE
- Ziggy Stardust
FRANK SINATRA
- In the Wee Small Hours
BEACH BOYS
- Pet Sounds
- Surf's Up
HEART
- Dreamboat Annie
- Little Queen (for "Barracuda")
TOM PETTY
- Wildflowers
- Damn the Torpedos
- Full Moon Fever
BEETHOVEN
- Ninth Symphony
- Fifth Sympony
STRAVINSKY
- Rite of Spring
MUSSORGSKY
- Night on Bald Mountain
ELVIS PRESLEY
- Elvis
- Elvis Presley
WARREN ZEVON
- Warren Zevon
- Excitable Boy
THE CLASH
- The Clash
- London Calling
- Sandinista
JOHN LENNON
- Plastic Ono Band
- Imagine
- Shaved Fish (best of)
GEORGE HARRISON
- All Things Must Pass
- Living in the Material World
RINGO STARR
- Ringo
PAUL MCCARTNEY
- McCartney
- Ram
- Venus & Mars
- Band on the Run
I've never heard "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" or "Flaming Pie," but they keep popping up on "best of" lists. I guess I'll have to listen to them at some point and decide.
YES
- Close to the Edge
- Fragile
Now we get to the part where I'm really ignorant. What Roy Orbison do I need ("Pretty Wonan," obviously)? What Buddy Holly?
Also, Granny's getting tired (Missouri Breaks reference). I can't remember all the bands and/or singers I like. So I've probably forgotten a few. Which is what you guys are going to remind me of, right?
EDIT: LEGIONNAIRE RECOMMENDATIONS
- The Who - Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy - a collection of their Sixties singles and EP tracks.
- Jethro Tull - Stand Up
- Mott the Hoople - Mott
- Beach Boys - Today and Summer Days/Summer Nights
- Roy Orbison: The All-Time Greatest Hits of Roy Orbison
- Roy Orbison: A Black and White Night
- Buddy Holly: The Buddy Holly Collection
- Brian Wilson: Smile
- The Who: The Who Hits 50!
- The Who: FACE
- Traveling Wilburys: Volume 1
- Traveling Wilburys: Volume 3
- Moody Blues: The Concert at Red Rocks
- John Lennon - Double Fantasy
- Paul McCartney - Tug of War
- George Harrison - Somewhere in England
- Ringo Starr - Stop and Smell the Roses
- Chicago: Chicago IX
- Eagles: The Long Run
- Eagles: The Very Best of the Eagles
- Chicago: The Very Best of Chicago - Only the Beginning
- Stevie Wonder: Music of My Mind
- Stevie Wonder: Talking Book
- Stevie Wonder: Innervisions
- Stevie Wonder: Fulfillingness First Finale
- Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life
- Joe Walsh: But Seriously Folks
- John Lennon: Lennon
- Eagles: Desperado
- Tom Petty: Hard Promises
- Jethro Tull: Original Masters
- Elton John: Elton John
- Elton John: Tumbleweek Connection
- Elton John: Madman Across the Water
- Elton John: Honky Chateau
- Elton John: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
- Elton John: Made in England
- Elton John: The Union
- Elton John: Captain Fantastic
- Elvis Costello-- the greatest hits compilation from the late 90s would do, though I like My Aim is True.
- Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run.
- Marvin Gaye: What's Going On
- The B-52s: Time Capsule: Songs for a Future Generation
- The Pogues: Rum, Sodomy, and the Last, If I Should Fall From Grace With God, Hell's Ditch
- Indigo Girls - Rites of Passage
- Tears for Fears-- Songs from the Big Chair
- Mary Margaret O'Hara - Miss America
- Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville
- The Tragically Hip - Yer Favourites (unless you're really into the band, this will cover it)
- Ringo: Photograph: The Very Best of Ringo Starr
- Don Henley: Building the Perfect Beast
- Glenn Frey: The All-nighter
- Don Henley: The End of the Innocence
- Pete Townshend: The Best of Pete Townsend - coolwalkingsoothtalkingstraightsmokingfirestoking
- Pete Townshend: Truancy - The Very Best of Pete Townsend - (17 songs, 2015)
- Otis Redding: The Soul Album
- The Doobie Brothers - Best of the Doobies
- The Dog Night - 20th Century Masters, the Millennium Collection
- The Monkees - Greatest Hits
- Kinks: The Village Green Preservation Society
- Kinks: Best of 1964-1970
Replies
Which brings us up to...
LED ZEPPELIN - I don't know what's on any individual Led Zeppelin album, because I bought a box set years ago and just listen to some of the CDs over and over.
I know the set you're talking about. I listen to it more often than any individual album, too. Led zepplin is the least of my five favorite "British Heavyweights." By the time I left high school, the only album of theirs I owned was IV (untitled), but I went through a Led Zepplin "phase" in college during which I bought all of their other albums save one. that isn't as difficult as it may sound, as they only released eight, nine if you include Coda. (Coda is to Led Zepplin as Metamorphosis is to the Rolling Stones.) The one original album I don't have is Presence, which I've been saving "in reserve" for all these years in case I feel I really need it. So far I haven't.
The one album I would recommend beyond the box set is the 2-disc BBC Sessions, recorded live in the studio and live in performance. The studio disc is an excellent look at how the band sounds "raw" with no studio enhancements, and the live performance disc is noteable for not only being the first time "Stairway to Heaven" was performed in front of an audience, but the first time it was heard anywhere. Remarkably, when the first few notes are played the audience doed not errupt into raucous cheers, but rather remains completely silent. This performance is far better than the soundtrack album to The Song Remains the Same ("Does anyone here remember laughter?").
More than Led Zepplin, perhaps, I like the solo music of Robert Plant (sometimes with Jimmy Page). I don't have all of his solo work, but here's what I do have...
Robert Plant:
...with Jimmy Page:
It has been said that "Stairway to Heaven" is the prototypal rock song, but "Kashmir" is the the prototypal Led Zepplin song.
Another performer who I don't think has gotten a mention yet is Rod Stewart. He lost me when he went disco in the late Seventies but earlier in the decade he had a string of excellent albums - Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells a Story and Never A Dull Moment. All would be worthy of a 4 or 5 star rating.
I saw Stewart and The Faces in concert twice and those were two of the best shows I have ever attended. The studio recordings with Faces can be rough around the edges but there is an anthology Good Boys When They're Asleep that includes all their best.
You are so right about Rod Stewart, doc (although I did name Every Picture Tells a Story among my 5-star albums). When I was growing up, all I knew of Rod Stewart was "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" One of my college roommates introduced me to Every Picture Tells a Story and I've been a fan ever since. When I got married, "Tonight's the Night" was the song Tracy most associated with Stewart, but I played Every Picture Tells a Story for her on a road trip and changed her mind. After my roommate opened me up to Rod Stewart, I bought several of his early albums, but I still think Every Picture Tells a Story is his best.
This discussion has really got me thinking about music I used to listen to in the late '80s and early -90s that I haven't heard in a while. In Stewart's case, that would be Out of Order (1988). Good album. He also released an Unplugged album (1993). More recently, he has released five albums of "The Great American Songbook." the most recent Rod Stewart album of original material I bought was Blood Red Roses (2018). Our friends' daughter is named Julia and she plays guitar. She was already familiar with John Lennon's song about his mother, but I introduced her to Pink Floyd's "Julia Dream" and, later, Rod Stewart's "Julia." (She's graduating college this year.)
So the only thing those three songs have in common is the name Julia?
Yes.
Next up is...
PINK FLOYD - Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall
That's pretty much the band's entire middle period, their most popular. the only thing I have to add to that is that a 50th anniversary edition of Wish You Were Here was released last year. Make sure you get that one. Pink Floyd is a band whose every album I own. I try to hit the hilights below...
Early Pink Floyd - Their Debut album is... interesting. It is the only album to feature founding member Sid Barrett. He was replaced on the second album by David Gilmour. Barrett was the kind of guy who would stop in the middle of a solo to tune his guitar. It is said that he "went on an acid trip and never came back." If you play The Wall backwards, you will hear" "Congratulations! You have found the secret message. Send the answer to 'Old Pink,' care of the funny farm..." [trails off]. Barrett died in 2006. Pink Floyd started off as purveyors of the "art rock" movement (I like to compare Atom Heart Mother to Days of Future Passed by the Moody Blues), providing soundtracks for obscure European art films and "music to go to outer space by" (i.e., get stoned). Relics, a collection, is a good look at the early years. The best album of this period is Meddle (1971).
Late Pink Floyd - The best album of their later years is A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987). The Division Bell (1994) is a somewhat weaker follow-up. The Endless River (2014) is all instrumental jams recorded during the Momentary Lapse of Reason sessions. Keyboardist Richard Wright died in 2008, bring the band to an end. [David Gilmour and Roger Waters hate each other (even more than Simon and Garfunkel do), and will never perform together again.]
SOLO FLOYD
Roger Waters - I have all of Roger Waters' solo work as well. his best is probably Amused to Death (1992), but my personal favorite is Radio K.A.O.S. (1987) (which was out in competition with his former bandmates' A Momentary Lapse of Reason). I like to campare it to Pete Townsend's Psychoderelict (1993) in that both are albums that tell stories. (It is also similar to The Who Sell Out (as a comparison between AM and FM radio). Shortly after the Berlin Wall fell, Waters perfromed The Wall on site, which I listened to live. (There were some technical difficulties, but they were cleaned up for the CD version.) He ended the show with "The Tide is Turning" (from the K.A.O.S. album) so that the show would end on a positive note.
His last full studio album was Is This the Life We Really Want? (2017) in reaction to the trump presidency. The title song is very good, but the entire album is extremely dark and not very much fun to listen to. In 2023 he released The Lockdown Sessions (during COVID) as well as a new version of Dark Side of the Moon which is truly bizarre, with spoken word sections peppered throughout. Not only do I not recommend that one, I do recommend that you avoid it.
David Gilmour - The only one of David Gilmour's solo albums I own is Luck and Strange (2024), which you'll like if you're a fan of his guitar work.
Meddle features three of the greatest ever Pink Floyd songs - "One Of These Days", "Fearless" and "Echoes" along with two of the worst ever -
"San Tropez" and "Seamus". Almost a great album.
Hey, I like "San Tropez" and "Seamus"!
For about six months after graduating college I was forced to move back into my parents' house before I found my first real job. I did not move into the basement, but that's where I set up my stereo. One day I was listening to Meddle and my dad was there with me. I'll never forget the look he gave me when it got to the words "One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces." It was quite similar to the look he gave me when I was listening to "The End" by the Doors. ("Father?" "Yes, son." "I'm going to kill you.") He didn't even like Simon and Garfunkel. I was listening to "Kathy's Song" one day, and when it came to the lyric "I don't know why I spend my time writing songs I can't believe with words that tear and strain to rhyme," he commented, "I don't know why, either." The one time he did say anything complimentary about the music I listened to was one day when I was spinning In the Dark (1987). He said, "That's more like it. Why can't more of the music you listen to sound like this?" Huh! Who'd've thunk it! My dad: a Deadhead!
Anyway, back on topic... have you ever seen Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii? For those of you who haven't, it's a documentary of the making of Dark Side of the Moon in the studio, interspersed with the band performing songs from Meddle in the amphitheatre at the ruins of Pompeii, with volcanic gas seeping up through the ground. (Your mentioning of "Seamus" reminded me, because he "sung" with them.) The same roommate who introduced me to Every Picture Tells a Story introduced me to Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii as well.
Oh, I forgot to mention the solo albums of...
Sid Barrett - There are a few available, but the one I like best is Opel.
"Hey, I like "San Tropez" and "Seamus"!" - ha, ha - to each his own.
There was a neighborhood movie theatre that for a time was running "Midnight Special" showings of films that would appeal to late teens/young adults. A big part of the fare was concert films. It was there I saw Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones, Yessongs and Live at Pompeii. The whole concept of the Pompeii performance impressed me. It sounds similar to what The Beatles were considering for their live performance following Get Back.
I have little to say about some of the groups/artists from the initial post; others, nothing at all. Case in point...
MOODY BLUES - Days of Future Passed, In Search of the Lost Chord
I have those two, plus On the Threshold of a Dream, but In Search of the Lost Chord is the only one I'd consider 5-star.
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