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1975
Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks (Columbia) 23%  23%  [ 12 ]
Queen - A Night at the Opera (Elektra) 9%  9%  [ 5 ]
Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run (Columbia) 15%  15%  [ 8 ]
Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti (Swan Song) 4%  4%  [ 2 ]
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (Columbia) 11%  11%  [ 6 ]
Aerosmith - Toys in the Attic (Sony) 4%  4%  [ 2 ]
Brian Eno - Another Green World (EG) 13%  13%  [ 7 ]
Neil Young - Tonight's the Night (Reprise) 8%  8%  [ 4 ]
Patti Smith - Horses (Arista) 4%  4%  [ 2 ]
Other - Please Specify 9%  9%  [ 5 ]
Total votes : 53
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 Post subject: Best Album Of...(Volume 8)
PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:38 pm 
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This year I stuck to with many of the big guns, not going to far away from the seminal bands of the era. Many of these records are not my favorites, indeed I hate the album Wish You Were Here, but to leave it off this list would probably not be right. My personal choice is Born to Run with Physical Graffiti and Another Green World not far behind.

Omissions:

David Bowie - Young Americans (he released 5 better records that decade and I'm not putting a Bowie album on every list). I know this is probably Jewels' pick. Sorry, man.
Brian Eno - Discreet Music (Another Green World is better)
Steely Dan - Katy Lied
Zappa/Beefheart - Bongo Fury
Bob Dylan - Basement Tapes
Fripp/Eno - Evening Star
John Lennon - Rock'n'Roll
Parliament - Chocolate City
Kiss - Alive! (very close to being my pick, but honestly I don't think live albums should count)

Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
Quote:
Following on the heels of an album where he repudiated his past with his greatest backing band, Blood on the Tracks finds Bob Dylan, in a way, retreating to the past, recording a largely quiet, acoustic-based album. But this is hardly nostalgia -- this is the sound of an artist returning to his strengths, what feels most familiar, as he accepts a traumatic situation, namely the breakdown of his marriage. This is an album alternately bitter, sorrowful, regretful, and peaceful, easily the closest he ever came to wearing his emotions on his sleeve. That's not to say that it's an explicitly confessional record, since many songs are riddles or allegories, yet the warmth of the music makes it feel that way... Dylan made albums more influential than this, but he never made one better.


Queen - A Night at the Opera
Quote:
Using the multi-layered guitars of its predecessor as a foundation, A Night at the Opera encompasses metal ("Death on Two Legs," "Sweet Lady"), pop (the lovely, shimmering "You're My Best Friend"), campy British music hall ("Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon," "Seaside Rendezvous"), and mystical prog rock ("'39," "The Prophet's Song"), eventually bringing it all together on the pseudo-operatic "Bohemian Rhapsody." In short, it's a lot like Queen's own version of Led Zeppelin IV, but where Zep find dark menace in bombast, Queen celebrate their own pomposity. No one in the band takes anything too seriously, otherwise the arrangements wouldn't be as ludicrously exaggerated as they are. But the appeal -- and the influence -- of A Night at the Opera is in its detailed, meticulous productions. It's prog rock with a sense of humor as well as dynamics, and Queen never bettered their approach anywhere else.


Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run
Quote:
Layers of guitar, layers of echo on the vocals, lots of keyboards, thunderous drums -- Born to Run had a big sound, and Springsteen wrote big songs to match it. The overall theme of the album was similar to that of The E Street Shuffle; Springsteen was describing, and saying farewell to, a romanticized teenage street life. But where he had been affectionate, even humorous before, he was becoming increasingly bitter. If Springsteen had celebrated his dead-end kids on his first album and viewed them nostalgically on his second, on his third he seemed to despise their failure, perhaps because he was beginning to fear he was trapped himself. Nevertheless, he now felt removed, composing an updated West Side Story with spectacular music that owed more to Bernstein than to Berry. To call Born to Run overblown is to miss the point; Springsteen's precise intention is to blow things up, both in the sense of expanding them to gargantuan size and of exploding them. If The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle was an accidental miracle, Born to Run was an intentional masterpiece. It declared its own greatness with songs and a sound that lived up to Springsteen's promise, and though some thought it took itself too seriously, many found that exalting.


Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
Quote:
Yes, some of this could be labeled as filler, but like any great double album, its appeal lies in its great sprawl, since it captures elements of the band's personality rarely showcased elsewhere -- and even at its worst, Physical Graffiti towers above its hard rock peers of the mid-'70s.


Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
Quote:
Pink Floyd followed the commercial breakthrough of Dark Side of the Moon with Wish You Were Here, a loose concept album about and dedicated to their founding member Syd Barrett. The record unfolds gradually, as the jazzy textures of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" reveal its melodic motif, and in its leisurely pace, the album shows itself to be a warmer record than its predecessor. Musically, it's arguably even more impressive, showcasing the group's interplay and David Gilmour's solos in particular. And while it's short on actual songs, the long, winding soundscapes are constantly enthralling.


Aerosmith - Toys in the Attic
Quote:
Before Toys in the Attic, no other hard rock band sounded like this. Sure, Aerosmith cribbed heavily from the records of the Rolling Stones, New York Dolls, and Led Zeppelin, but they didn't have any of the menace of their influences, nor any of their mystique. Aerosmith was a gritty, street-wise hard rock band who played their blues as blooze and were in it for a good time; Toys in the Attic crystallizes that attitude.


Brian Eno - Another Green World
Quote:
A universally acknowledged masterpiece, Another Green World represents a departure from song structure and toward a more ethereal, minimalistic approach to sound. Despite the stripped-down arrangements, the album's sumptuous tone quality reflects Eno's growing virtuosity at handling the recording studio as an instrument in itself (à la Brian Wilson). There are a few pop songs scattered here and there ("St. Elmo's Fire," "I'll Come Running," "Golden Hours"), but most of the album consists of deliberately paced instrumentals that, while often closer to ambient music than pop, are both melodic and rhythmic; many, like "Sky Saw," "In Dark Trees," and "Little Fishes," are highly imagistic, like paintings done in sound that actually resemble their titles.


Neil Young - Tonight's the Night
Quote:
Songs like "Speakin' Out" and "New Mama" seemed to find some hope in family life, but Tonight's the Night did not offer solutions to the personal and professional problems it posed. It was the work of a man trying to turn his torment into art and doing so unflinchingly. Depending on which story you believe, Reprise Records rejected it or Young withdrew it from its scheduled release at the start of 1974 after touring with the material in the U.S. and Europe. In 1975, after a massive CSNY tour, Young at the last minute dumped a newly recorded album and finally put Tonight's the Night out instead. Though it did not become one of his bigger commercial successes, the album immediately was recognized as a unique masterpiece by critics, and it has continued to be ranked as one of the greatest rock & roll albums ever made.


Patti Smith - Horses
Quote:
It isn't hard to make the case for Patti Smith as a punk rock progenitor based on her debut album, which anticipated the new wave by a year or so: the simple, crudely played rock & roll, featuring Lenny Kaye's rudimentary guitar work, the anarchic spirit of Smith's vocals, and the emotional and imaginative nature of her lyrics -- all prefigure the coming movement as it evolved on both sides of the Atlantic. Smith is a rock critic's dream, a poet as steeped in '60s garage rock as she is in French Symbolism; "Land" carries on from the Doors' "The End," marking her as a successor to Jim Morrison, while the borrowed choruses of "Gloria" and "Land of a Thousand Dances" are more in tune with the era of sampling than they were in the '70s. Producer John Cale respected Smith's primitivism in a way that later producers did not, and the loose, improvisatory song structures worked with her free verse to create something like a new spoken word/musical art form: Horses was a hybrid, the sound of a post-Beat poet, as she put it, "dancing around to the simple rock & roll song."


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:41 pm 
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Blood on the Tracks is one of my favorite Dylan albums and one of my favorite all time albums, so I went with that.

That new 30th anniversary Born to Run set looks pretty cool. I probably won't buy it but I'd like to see the DVDs at some point.


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:42 pm 
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wow, this is a year that my record collection is short on. i've only even heard one of these from beginning to end.


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:43 pm 
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Phewww! Tough call. The year of my birth. Probably because I just listened to it last week I'll go:

1. Born To Run
2. Blood On The Tracks
3. Physical Graffiti (my favorite Zep album)

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:43 pm 
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sweet jesus, this is one amazing year.
it was also the year i was born.

my favorite dyaln album, my current favorite zep album, top two springsteen albums, amazing queen album.

i guess i'll go with Dylan.

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:44 pm 
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i voted for queen, just over floyd, cause i have like queen longer....

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:45 pm 
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Yams Bloor Wrote:
Phewww! Tough call. The year of my birth. Probably because I just listened to it last week I'll go:

1. Born To Run
2. Blood On The Tracks
3. Physical Graffiti (my favorite Zep album)


This would be my vote too.

I ALMOST picked up that Born to Run re-issue this weekend. Bought a fine velvet/faux-fur MONGERING BLANKET instead.

I stand by my choice.

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:47 pm 
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i dislike floyd and this is the one album i like by them.
what a fantastic year.

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:48 pm 
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That Eno is a Top-10 All-Time for me.

Some great albums there, but it was surprisingly easy for me to make my pick.

The Springsteen, Queen, and Aerosmith (believe it or not) would all get honorable mentions from me, however.

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:49 pm 
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'75, yo.

Floyd.


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:53 pm 
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jewels santana Wrote:
i dislike floyd and this is the one album i like by them.
what a fantastic year.


thats how i feel.

i voted blood on the tracks right away, but i probably should have thought about it. all releases on here are great.

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:56 pm 
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sometimes as i drive late at night, i wonder what it would have been like to listen to born to run for the first time in 1975 without having heard any hype about it. Oh my God. :shock:


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:57 pm 
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Thanks for doing these threads, SK - s'a great idea.

Also from '75:

The Dictators Go Girl Crazy
Ian Hunter s/t
Ronnie Lane Ronnie Lane's Slim Chance
Pagliaro I
Roxy Music Siren
John Cale Slow Dazzle
The Doctors Of Madness Late Night Movies, All Night Brainstorms
The Winkies s/t
The Sweet Desolation Boulevard
Sensational Alex Harvey Band Tomorrow Belongs To Me

And wasn't Big Star's Sister Lovers released in '75?

Basement Tapes topped my Listmania, but I have a hard time considering it an album from '75. I know it was released that year, but it was recorded in '68 or '69 wasn't it? So I'm going with Horses just to make sure Patti gets a vote.


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:59 pm 
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Neil Young :: Zuma also came out in 1975. It is one of my all-time favorites by any artist at any time. It's not always pretty, but it's loud and it just sums up rock and roll so well for me.

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 2:01 pm 
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bitterbuffalo Wrote:
sometimes as i drive late at night, i wonder what it would have been like to listen to born to run for the first time in 1975 without having heard any hype about it. Oh my God. :shock:

It would've been difficult NOT to hear any hype about Born To Run in '75. Springsteen had already been tagged as the "new Dylan" for a couple years (not to mention a rock critic's renowned proclamation "I have seen the future of rock and roll, and his name is Bruce Springsteen"), and BTR was released with a HUGE amount of fanfare.


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 2:01 pm 
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Radcliffe Wrote:
Thanks for doing these threads, SK - s'a great idea.



My pleasure!


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 2:06 pm 
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I voted Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks. I have misgivings about that considering the Basement Tapes was released that year, but like Rads said, it had had been available for a while.

Born to Run second, and the Dictators probably third. Tonight's the Nightis close too.

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 2:20 pm 
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This is another tough call, but I went with Neil. Maybe it's because I'm listening to him right now, but it's still one of my favourites. And I'm bitter I can't find that fucking Born to Run boxset, so this could have gone either way. I really enjoy that Floyd album as well.

1. Tonight's the Night
2. Born to Run
3. Wish You Were Here
4. Horses
5. Toys in the Attic

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 2:24 pm 
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So... who else voted for Another Green World? I wanna know!!!

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 2:47 pm 
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I voted for Horses, seeing as the only other album on the that I've listened to was Wish You Were Here, which I think is good, but not Floyd's best.

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 2:47 pm 
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I voted Eno, but I could just as easily have voted "other" for The Basement Tapes.


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 3:30 pm 
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Radcliffe Wrote:
bitterbuffalo Wrote:
sometimes as i drive late at night, i wonder what it would have been like to listen to born to run for the first time in 1975 without having heard any hype about it. Oh my God. :shock:

(not to mention a rock critic's renowned proclamation "I have seen the future of rock and roll, and his name is Bruce Springsteen"), and BTR was released with a HUGE amount of fanfare.

oh come on, you call that hype!? :wink:


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 3:31 pm 
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I voted other which I can't decide whether its for Neil Young "Zuma" or Hugh Mundell "Africa Must be Free by 1983".

Great year for reggae and world music also

Others I like from that year:

Burning Spear -- Marcus Garvey
Lyn Collins -- Check Me Out If You Don't Know Me By Now
Betty Davis -- Nasty Gal
Earth, Wind & Fire -- That's The Way Of The World
Gilberto Gil -- Refazenda
Gilberto Gil & Jorge Ben -- Gil E Jorge
Jacob Miller -- Who Say Jah No Dread
Fela Kuti -- Confusion
Curtis Mayfield -- There's No Place Like America Today
Hugh Mundell -- Africa Must Be Free By 1983
Pablo Moses -- Revolutionary Dream
Fela Kuti -- Expensive Shit
Dictators -- Go Girl Crazy
John Cale -- Slow Dazzle
Ducks Deluxe -- Taxi To The Terminal Zone
John Cale -- Helen Of Troy
Parliament -- Chocolate City
Minnie Ripperton -- Adventures in Paradise
Caetano Veloso -- Joia

Any of these not 1975 Sk ;)

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 3:36 pm 
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dr winston o'boogie Wrote:
Neil Young "Zuma"


Well shit, I guess I should have voted "other" after all.


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 3:38 pm 
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dr winston o'boogie Wrote:
I voted other which I can't decide whether its for Neil Young "Zuma" or Hugh Mundell "Africa Must be Free by 1983".

Great year for reggae and world music also

Others I like from that year:

Burning Spear -- Marcus Garvey
Lyn Collins -- Check Me Out If You Don't Know Me By Now
Betty Davis -- Nasty Gal
Earth, Wind & Fire -- That's The Way Of The World
Gilberto Gil -- Refazenda
Gilberto Gil & Jorge Ben -- Gil E Jorge
Jacob Miller -- Who Say Jah No Dread
Fela Kuti -- Confusion
Curtis Mayfield -- There's No Place Like America Today
Hugh Mundell -- Africa Must Be Free By 1983
Pablo Moses -- Revolutionary Dream
Fela Kuti -- Expensive Shit
Dictators -- Go Girl Crazy
John Cale -- Slow Dazzle
Ducks Deluxe -- Taxi To The Terminal Zone
John Cale -- Helen Of Troy
Parliament -- Chocolate City
Minnie Ripperton -- Adventures in Paradise
Caetano Veloso -- Joia

Any of these not 1975 Sk ;)


those mostly check out, although Mayfield also had "Let's Do it Again" ;)


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