Two for Thursday today. I'm going out of town for five days and don't want to leave you guys hanging! Not to diminish 1981 or 1977, just wanted to get this one up there ASAP.
Thanks for participating in all of the polls, and thanks especially to Haq for IT support, to billy g and Radcliffe and Drinky for filling in omissions, and to paladisiac for enthusiasm. I'm going to do some more stuff with the data when I get back next week and maybe we'll have a bracket of the winners to see what Obner really likes.
My vote is Other, for
Cheap Trick's eponymous debut, still one of the most underrated albums of all time.
Omissions: (some pretty major ones, I know!)
The Congos * Heart Of The Congo (Blood & Fire)
Junior Murvin * Police & Thieves (Mango)
Richard Hell & the Voidoids * Blank Generation (Sire)
George Faith * To Be A Lover (Black Swan/Hip-O Select)
Pere Ubu * The Modern Dance (Blank)
Dennis Brown * Visions (Shanachie)
Fela Kuti * Shuffering and Shmiling (Universal)
Dennis Brown * Wolves And Leopards (Blue Moon)
Ramones * Rocket To Russia (Sire)
Kraftwerk * Trans-Europe Express (Capitol)
The Damned * Damned Damned Damned (Demon)
The Jam * In The City (Polydor)
Suicide (Red Star)
Fela Kuti * Zombie (Celluloid)
Ramones * Leave Home (Sire)
Horace Andy * In The Light (Blood & Fire)
Heldon * Interface (Cuneiform/Rune)
The Saints * (I'm) Stranded (EMI)
Cedric Im Brooks * The Light Of Saba In Reggae (Total Sounds)
Giorgio Moroder * From Here To Eternity (Oasis/Repertoire)
The Heptones * Party Time (Mango)
The Royals * Pick Up The Pieces (Pressure Sounds)
Augustus Pablo * East Of The River Nile (Message/Shanachie)
Al Green * The Belle Album (Hi)
Bob Marley & the Wailers * Exodus (Tuff Gong/Island)
Dennis Brown * Some Like It Hot 1973-77 (Heartbeat)
Linval Thompson * Ride On Dreadlocks 1975-77 (Blood & Fire)
Rico * Midnight In Ethiopia (Island)
The Stranglers * No More Heroes (UA)
Brian Eno * Before And After Science (EG)
T. Rex * Dandy In The Underworld (Mercury)
The Stranglers * IV Rattus Norvegicus (A&M)
Fela Kuti * No Agreement (Terrascope)
The Morwells * Crab Race (Burning Sounds)
Third World * 96 Degrees in the Shade (Mango)
Ras Michael & The Sons Of Negus * Kibir-Am-Lak (Greensleeves)
Prince Far I * Heavy Manners (Joe Gibbs/TP)
Wayne Wade * Black Is Our Colour (Grove)
Peter Hammill * Over (Blue Plate)
Gregory Isaacs * Mr. Isaacs (Blood & Fire)
Van Der Graaf Generator * The Quiet Zone/The Pleasure Dome (Charisma/Blue Plate)
Bizarros/Rubber City Rebels * From Akron (Clone)
Be Bop Deluxe * Modern Music (EMI)
Ultravox * Ha! Ha! Ha! (Island)
Ultravox * Ultravox! (Island)
This Heat * Made Available: Peel Sessions (These)
AC/DC * Let There Be Rock (Atco)
Culture * Two Sevens Clash (Shanachie)
Tony Allen * Progress (P-Vine)
Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers * L.A.M.F. (Jungle)
Bill Withers * Managerie (CBS)
Bunny Wailer * Protest (Island)
Dead Boys * Young, Loud And Snotty (Sire)
The Boys (Safari)
Radio Birdman * Radios Appear (Tralfalgar)
MX-80 * Hard Attack (Island/Atavistic)
Can * Saw Delight (Restless)
Burning Spear * Dry And Heavy (Mango)
Sugar Minott * Live Loving (Studio One)
Sugar Minott * Showcase (Studio One)
Dennis Brown * Open The Gate (Heartbeat)
Motorhead * Motorhead (Roadracer)
Judas Priest * Sin After Sin (Columbia)
The Real Kids (Red Star/Norton)
Deaf School * Don't Stop The World (WB/Sanctuary)
Blondie * Plastic Letters (Chrysalis)
Tommy McCook * Blazing Horns/Tenor In Roots (Blood & Fire)
Rico * Man From Wareika Dub (Island)
Kalo Kawongolo & Seke Molenga * From The Heart of the Congo (Runn)
The Outsiders * Calling On Youth (Raw Edge)
Iggy Pop * The Idiot (RCA)
Ian Dury & The Blockheads * New Boots & Panties!! (Demon)
Curtis Mayfield * Never Say You Can't Survive (Curtom)
Black Uhuru * Love Crisis (Black Sounds of Freedom) (Third World)
The Jam * This Is The Modern World (Polydor)
Tom Waits * Foreign Affairs (Elektra)
Mink DeVille * Cabretta (ERA/Raven)
Shoes * Black Vinyl Shoes (Black Vinyl)
The Scruffs * Wanna Meet the Scruffs? (Power Play)
Cheap Trick (Epic)
Riot * Rock City (Fire Sign/Metal Blade)
Parliament * Funkentelecy Vs. The Placebo System (Casablanca)
Quartz * Deleted (Jet)
Thin Lizzy * Bad Reputation (PolyGram)
Dictators * Manifest Destiny (Elektra)
Rush * A Farewell To Kings (Mercury)
Parliament * P. Funk Earth Tour (Casablanca)
Throbbing Gristle * Second Annual Report (Mute)
Kiss * Love Gun (Casablanca/Mercury)
X-Ray Spex * Obsessed With You: Early Years (Receiver)
Electric Light Orchestra * Out Of The Blue (Jet)
Queen * News of the World (Elektra)
The Damned * Music For Pleasure (Stiff)
Cheap Trick * In Color (Epic)
Scorpions * Taken By Force (Universal/Hip-O)
Never Mind the Bullocks - Here's the Sex Pistols (Warner Bros.)
Quote:
While mostly accurate, dismissing Never Mind the Bollocks as merely a series of loud, ragged mid-tempo rockers with a harsh, grating vocalist and not much melody would be a terrible error. Already anthemic songs are rendered positively transcendent by Johnny Rotten's rabid, foaming delivery. His bitterly sarcastic attacks on pretentious affectation and the very foundations of British society were all carried out in the most confrontational, impolite manner possible. Most imitators of the Pistols' angry nihilism missed the point: Underneath the shock tactics and theatrical negativity were social critiques carefully designed for maximum impact. Never Mind the Bollocks perfectly articulated the frustration, rage, and dissatisfaction of the British working class with the establishment, a spirit quick to translate itself to strictly rock & roll terms. The Pistols paved the way for countless other bands to make similarly rebellious statements, but arguably none were as daring or effective. It's easy to see how the band's roaring energy, overwhelmingly snotty attitude, and Rotten's furious ranting sparked a musical revolution, and those qualities haven't diminished one bit over time. Never Mind the Bollocks is simply one of the greatest, most inspiring rock records of all time.
Talking Heads - 77Quote:
Though they were the most highly touted new wave band to emerge from the CBGB's scene in New York, it was not clear at first whether Talking Heads' Lower East Side art rock approach could make the subway ride to the midtown pop mainstream successfully. The leadoff track of the debut album, Talking Heads: 77, "Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town," was a pop song that emphasized the group's unlikely roots in late-'60s bubblegum, Motown, and Caribbean music. But the "Uh-Oh" gave away the group's game early, with its nervous, disconnected lyrics and David Byrne's strained voice. All pretenses of normality were abandoned by the second track, as Talking Heads finally started to sound on record the way they did downtown: the staggered rhythms and sudden tempo changes, the odd guitar tunings and rhythmic, single-note patterns, the non-rhyming, non-linear lyrics that came across like odd remarks overheard from a psychiatrist's couch, and that voice, singing above its normal range, its falsetto leaps and strangled cries resembling a madman trying desperately to sound normal. Talking Heads threw you off balance, but grabbed your attention with a sound that seemed alternately threatening and goofy. The music was undeniably catchy, even at its most ominous, especially on "Psycho Killer," Byrne's supreme statement of demented purpose. Amazingly, that song made the singles chart for a few weeks, evidence of the group's quirky appeal, but the album was not a big hit, and it remained unclear whether Talking Heads spoke only the secret language of the urban arts types or whether that could be translated into the more common tongue of hip pop culture. In any case, they had succeeded as artists, using existing elements in an unusual combination to create something new that still managed to be oddly familiar. And that made Talking Heads: 77 a landmark album.
The Clash - The ClashQuote:
The Clash's self-titled U.K. debut sees the band in its most primal, punk form. Despite Mickey Foote's low-key, lo-fi production, Strummer, Jones, Simonon, and Chimes mesh and unite with a snarling ferocity and energy. Raw, bouncy edginess pours out of each song, with new hooks popping out at odd angles by the second. The band isn't satisfied lingering in any one genre. "Remote Control" mixes Kinks-style fractured pop with pace changes lifted straight from Chuck Berry. "Cheat" sounds like the Ramones' "Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment" given a rockabilly makeover. "Police & Thieves" is a massively catchy take on the Junior Murvin/Lee "Scratch" Perry song and an early signpost for the future dub/rock fusions to come on Sandinista! "White Riot" and "I'm So Bored With the U.S.A." reflect the somewhat youthful, early quasi-political leanings of the band. Though they would come across as slightly amateurish years later, it's hard to deny their punchy charm. The U.S. edition of The Clash, released in 1979, removed "Cheat," the funky singalong "Protex Blue," the dark and revealing paranoia of "Deny," and the short but utterly delightful "48 Hours." In their place were the more polished and thus somewhat jarring U.K. singles/B-sides "Complete Control," "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais," "Clash City Rockers," "I Fought the Law," and "Jail-Guitar Doors." The U.S. edition might have the original beat in shine and catchiness, but it's a distillation of the band's original ferocity, and some might say an unwelcome tinkering with history. In a way, the U.S. edition served as an extremely early best-of. Purists will most likely swear on the sonic cohesion of this U.K. edition. Columbia remastered the album and restored its original artwork in 1999, making it a bare-bones but perfect throwback and the easiest way to turn back the clock and discover the Clash at their origins.
David Bowie - LowQuote:
Following through with the avant-garde inclinations of Station to Station, yet explicitly breaking with David Bowie's past, Low is a dense, challenging album that confirmed his place at rock's cutting edge. Driven by dissonant synthesizers and electronics, Low is divided between brief, angular songs and atmospheric instrumentals. Throughout the record's first half, the guitars are jagged and the synthesizers drone with a menacing robotic pulse, while Bowie's vocals are unnaturally layered and overdubbed. During the instrumental half, the electronics turn cool, which is a relief after the intensity of the preceding avant pop. Half the credit for Low's success goes to Brian Eno, who explored similar ambient territory on his own releases. Eno functioned as a conduit for Bowie's ideas, and in turn Bowie made the experimentalism of not only Eno but of the German synth group Kraftwerk and the post-punk group Wire respectable, if not quite mainstream. Though a handful of the vocal pieces on Low are accessible — "Sound and Vision" has a shimmering guitar hook, and "Be My Wife" subverts soul structure in a surprisingly catchy fashion — the record is defiantly experimental and dense with detail, providing a new direction for the avant-garde in rock & roll.
Television - Marquee MoonQuote:
Marquee Moon is a revolutionary album, but it's a subtle, understated revolution. Without question, it is a guitar rock album — it's astonishing to hear the interplay between Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd — but it is a guitar rock album unlike any other. Where their predecessors in the New York punk scene, most notably the Velvet Underground, had fused blues structures with avant-garde flourishes, Television completely strip away any sense of swing or groove, even when they are playing standard three-chord changes. Marquee Moon is comprised entirely of tense garage rockers that spiral into heady intellectual territory, which is achieved through the group's long, interweaving instrumental sections, not through Verlaine's words. That alone made Marquee Moon a trailblazing album — it's impossible to imagine post-punk soundscapes without it. Of course, it wouldn't have had such an impact if Verlaine hadn't written an excellent set of songs that conveyed a fractured urban mythology unlike any of his contemporaries. From the nervy opener, "See No Evil," to the majestic title track, there is simply not a bad song on the entire record. And what has kept Marquee Moon fresh over the years is how Television flesh out Verlaine's poetry into sweeping sonic epics.
Fleetwood Mac - RumoursQuote:
The new lineup that Fleetwood Mac successfully unveiled with their eponymous 1975 album became even more successful with the multi-platinum Rumours, which became the band's most celebrated album and one of the best-selling albums of all time. To be sure, this was a very different sounding Fleetwood Mac than the blues-rock outfit of the late '60s. This edition of the band generally wasn't well received by rock critics (who tend to be critical of all things commercial). But as commercial and slick as Rumours is, the music has a lot of heart and never comes across as insincere. From Christine McVie's optimistic "Don't Stop" (which President Bill Clinton used as his campaign theme song in 1992) to Lindsey Buckingham's remorseful "Go Your Own Way," Rumours is consistently memorable. And the folkish "Gold Dust Woman" (covered by Courtney Love and Hole in 1996) and the melancholy hit "Dreams" made it quite clear just how much depth and substance Stevie Nicks was capable of.
Wire - Pink FlagQuote:
Perhaps the most original debut album to come out of the first wave of British punk, Wire's Pink Flag plays like The Ramones Go to Art School — song after song careens past in a glorious, stripped-down rush. However, unlike the Ramones, Wire ultimately made their mark through unpredictability. Very few of the songs followed traditional verse/chorus structures — if one or two riffs sufficed, no more were added; if a musical hook or lyric didn't need to be repeated, Wire immediately stopped playing, accounting for the album's brevity (21 songs in under 36 minutes on the original version). The sometimes dissonant, minimalist arrangements allow for space and interplay between the instruments; Colin Newman isn't always the most comprehensible singer, but he displays an acerbic wit and balances the occasional lyrical abstraction with plenty of bile in his delivery. Many punk bands aimed to strip rock & roll of its excess, but Wire took the concept a step further, cutting punk itself down to its essence and achieving an even more concentrated impact. Some of the tracks may seem at first like underdeveloped sketches or fragments, but further listening demonstrates that in most cases, the music is memorable even without the repetition and structure most ears have come to expect — it simply requires a bit more concentration. And Wire are full of ideas; for such a fiercely minimalist band, they display quite a musical range, spanning slow, haunting texture exercises, warped power pop, punk anthems, and proto-hardcore rants — it's recognizable, yet simultaneously quite unlike anything that preceded it. Pink Flag's enduring influence pops up in hardcore, post-punk, alternative rock, and even Britpop, and it still remains a fresh, invigorating listen today: a fascinating, highly inventive rethinking of punk rock and its freedom to make up your own rules.
Elvis Costello - My Aim is True Quote:
Elvis Costello was as much a pub-rocker as he was a punk-rocker and nowhere is that more evident than on his debut, My Aim Is True. It's not just that Clover, a San Franciscan rock outfit led by Huey Lewis (absent here), back him here, not the Attractions, it's that his sensibility is borrowed from the pile-driving rock & roll and folksy introspection of pub-rockers like Brinsley Schwarz, adding touches of cult singer/songwriters like Randy Newman and David Ackles. Then, there's the infusion of pure nastiness and cynical humor, which is pure Costello. That blend of classicist sensibilities and cleverness make this collection of shiny roots rock a punk record — it informs his nervy performances and his prickly songs. Of all classic punk debuts, this remains perhaps the most idiosyncratic because it's not cathartic in sound, only in spirit. Which, of course, meant that it could play to a broader audience, and Linda Ronstadt did indeed cover the standout ballad "Alison." Still, there's no mistaking this for anything other than a punk record, and it's a terrific one at that, since even if he buries his singer/songwriter inclinations, they shine through as brightly as his cheerfully mean humor and immense musical skill; he sounds as comfortable with a '50s knockoff like "No Dancing" as he does on the reggae-inflected "Less Than Zero." Costello went on to more ambitious territory fairly quickly, but My Aim Is True is a phenomenal debut, capturing a songwriter and musician whose words were as rich and clever as his music.
Iggy Pop - Lust for LifeQuote:
On The Idiot, Iggy Pop looked deep inside himself, trying to figure out how his life and his art had gone wrong in the past. But on Lust for Life, released less than a year later, Iggy decided it was time to kick up his heels, as he traded in the mid-tempo introspection of his first album and began rocking hard again. Musically, Lust for Life is a more aggressive set than The Idiot, largely thanks to drummer Hunt Sales and his bassist brother Tony Sales. The Sales' proved they were a world class rhythm section, laying out power and spirit on the rollicking title cut, the tough groove of "Tonight," and the lean neo-punk assault of "Neighborhood Threat," and with guitarists Ricky Gardner and Carlos Alomar at their side, they made for a tough, wiry rock & roll band — a far cry from the primal stomp of the Stooges, but capable of kicking Iggy back into high gear. (David Bowie played piano and produced, as he had on The Idiot, but his presence is less clearly felt on this album.) As a lyricist and vocalist, Iggy Pop rose to the challenge of the material; if he was still obsessed with drugs ("Tonight"), decadence ("The Passenger"), and bad decisions ("Some Weird Sin"), the title cut suggested he could avoid a few of the temptations that crossed his path, and songs like "Success" displayed a cocky joy that confirmed Iggy was back at full strength. On Lust for Life, Iggy Pop managed to channel the aggressive power of his work with the Stooges with the intelligence and perception of The Idiot, and the result was the best of both worlds; smart, funny, edgy, and hard-rocking, Lust for Life is the best album of Iggy Pop's solo career.
eter, aka 
usty 
halk
