Pick any label, and make your top 10. Or argue with mine.

SUB POP

01. Nirvana - Bleach
02. Friends of Dean Martinez - Shadow Of Your Smile
03. Reverend Horton Heat - Full Custom Gospel Sounds
04. Low - C'mon
05. Sebadoh - Bubble And Scrape
06. Fastbacks - Zucker
07. Damien Jurado - I Break Chairs
08. Thermals - More Parts Per Million
09. Red House Painters - Old Ramon
10. Fruit Bats - Mouthfuls

of the three low albums on sub pop i feel thats the third best.

I know there's a lot to argue with here, but this is my ranking.

SST
1. Meat Puppets - Up on the Sun
2. Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime
3. Hüsker Dü - New Day Rising
4. Hüsker Dü - Flip Your Wig
5. Bad Brains - I Against I
6. Meat Puppets - II
7. Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade
8. Dinosaur Jr. - You're Living All Over Me
9. Black Flag - Damaged
10. fIREHOSE - Ragin', Full On

I won't even bother to argue with that other than to say that Bleach is a pretty crappy #1 choice.

Todd, that's a pretty solid SST list. Weren't Sonic Youth on SST for a while? I think they put out Confusion Is Sex -> Sister at one point or another.

...

I started to do Warp, but it was just Aphex, Autechre, Squarepusher, Aphex, Autechre, Squarepusher... but maybe I could throw in Battles, Grizzly Bear, Boards of Canada, and Plaid to finish it off.

This seems like a real headache to try and figure out for most labels that I like especially when you look at things being put out on different labels internationally.

No, he at least made the right choice there.

Drums and Guns is their worst album. The Great Destoyer is pretty good, but C'mon is probably their best since Things We Lost in the Fire.

SY were on SST. But I am sad to say that I have yet to hear Confusion = Sex. And Sister was actually released on DGC according to AMG.

Sister, like Evol and Bad Moon Rising, was released on a bunch of different labels but was eventually released on DGC when SY signed to them. But I don't think SY had made the move to a major yet when Sister was originally released.

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/ ... th/sister/

SST release - 1987
DGC release - 1994

Sister is an SST record for sure. DGC reissued their stuff when they signed years later.

In that case, Sister belongs on the list for sure.

K Records

1. Beat Happening - Jamboree
2. Lois - Butterfly Kiss
3. Karp - Suplex
4. Some Velvet Sidewalk - Shipwreck
5. The Halo Benders - God Don't Make No Junk
6. Mecca Normal - Dovetail
7. The Microphones - The Glow Pt. 2
8. The Crabs - Jackpot
9. Beck - One Foot In The Grave
10. Dub Narcotic Sound System - meets the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in a Dancehall Style

This list is limited myself to one album per artist, other BH, MN and SVS would probably be more rep'd. Also, the brilliant comp "International Pop Underground Convention" was a watershed moment in my musical development and would rank #2, if it counted as an artist's record.

More to argue:
Matador Records
1. Guided By Voices - Alien Lanes
2. Belle & Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister
3. Yo La Tengo - Electr-O-Pura
4. Pavement - Wowee Zowee
5. Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville
6. Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand
7. Pavement - Slanted & Enchanted
8. Yo La Tengo - Painful
9. Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
10. Sleater-Kinney - Dig Me Out

Uh oh, I just figured out that I could search my collection by label and then sort by rating in RYM.

Here we go:

Touch and Go
1. The Jesus Lizard - Liar
2. Don Caballero - What Burns Never Returns
3. Slint - Spiderland
4. Rapeman - Two Nuns and a Pack Mule
5. Butthole Surfers - Psychic...Powerless...Another Man's Sack
6. Shellac - 1000 Hurts
7. Big Black - Songs About Fucking
8. Brainiac - Hissing Prigs in Static Couture
9. Dirty Three - Horse Stories
10. Blonde Redhead - Fake Can Be Just As Good

Limited myself to one per artist. Still a lot of Albini.

Never heard either of those albums or anything by Naked Raygun or Pegboy. Will have to look into them.

Thrill Jockey
1. Mouse on Mars - Niun Niggung
2. Tortoise - Standards
3. Trans Am - Futureworld
4. Giant Sand - Chore of Enchantment
5. Califone - Roots & Crowns
6. The Sea and Cake - Nassau
7. A Minor Forest - Inindepence
8. Nobukazu Takemura - Scope
9. Double Dagger - Masks
10. Microstoria - _snd

Limiting myself to one per artist kinda thinned out my choices a whole lot for the bottom 3.

Met Larry (singer) at one of my gigs in the late 90s. As fucking intense as he is in that video (and live, on stage), he was just as humble and soft-spoken the night that I met him.

I started trying to do this with Merge and my head starting hurting.

Too hard to narrow it down to 10.

Todd, I like sound of Naked Raygun. Very Touch and Go. Very Albini.

Here's a fun one:

Atlantic
1. John Coltrane - Giant Steps
2. Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
3. Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Prepare Thyself to Deal with a Miracle
4. Charles Mingus - Oh Yeah
5. Blind Willie McTell - Atlanta Twelve String
6. Melvins - Houdini
7. Art Ensemble of Chicago - Bap-Tizum
8. Willie Nelson - Shotgun Willie
9. Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come
10. Jawbox - For Your Own Special Sweetheart

Of course this would be drastically different if I wasn't limiting myself to one per artist.

No Aretha Franklin or Ray Charles? Makes no sense to me. I tried to come up with an alternative list but Atlantic's catalog is over 250 pages long on RYM and I lost interest after 4 pages. Just looking at what I own though, if I didn't limit myself to one album per artist, a third of the list or more would be AF.

I don't have any Aretha albums, and I don't really like the only Ray Charles album I have.

Sorry!

Drag City
1. U.S. Maple - Talker
2. Smog - Red Apple Falls
3. Silver Jews - American Water
4. Joanna Newsom - Have One on Me
5. Royal Trux - Thank You
6. Gastr Del Sol - Camoufleur
7. Palace Music - Viva Last Blues*
8. Jim O'Rourke - Bad Timing
9. Papa M - Whatever, Mortal
10. Ghost - Hypnotic Underworld

*Pretty sure this is a case of RYM being wrong. They don't have it listed as Drag City, but it's on the DC website and has a DC catalog number.

Counting Palace/Bonnie Prince Billy and Smog/Bill Callahan as the same artists. Otherwise there'd be BPB and Bill Callahan albums on here above Papa M and Ghost.

I don't really have any problems with this.

Bleach is pretty obvious, but I do enjoy that record.

Good stuff, the only ones I disagree with are Mecca Normal and the Microphones. Both had their moments, but not consistently enough for me to enjoy an album.

Mine would be

1. The Softies - It's Love
2. Beck - One Foot In The Grave
3. Heavenly - Operation Heavenly
4. Tiger Trap - S/T
5. Beat Happening - Jamboree
6. Some Velvet Sidewalk - Whirlpool
7. Halo Benders - God Don't Make No Junk
8. Snuff - Reach
9. Lois - Butterfly Kiss
10. Karp - Suplex

If Built To Spill's The Normal Years could count, that would probably be # 3.

Good list for this label, though I would stick in Gaunt's I Can See Your Mom From Here or Kryptonite and bump Microstoria.

here's my no-repeat artists DGC list

01. Beck - Mellow Gold
02. That Dog - Retreat From The Sun
03. Teenage Fanclub - Grand Prix
04. Weezer - S/T (Blue)
05. Nirvana - Nevermind
06. Posies - Frosting On The Beater
07. Sonic Youth - Dirty
08. Pell Mell - Interstate
09. Veruca Salt - American Thighs
10. Jawbreaker - Dear You

that Pell Mell album was impossible to avoid in the cut out bin.