Classic albums any true music fan should own or at least listen to

To be honest I don`t think either of those banRAB made one great album.If you are going for their biggest albums then you`d have Ocean Rain by Echo & The Bunnymen and you`d have Drums & Wires by XTC.
But personally I think Heaven Up Here & English Settlement were much better albums , but they never get anywhere near as much attention.
 
The thing though with Pavement, and Malkmus' songwriting generally, is that its never lost its uniqueness. Slanted was the record that had the lo-fi sound quality that sounded like it was like a 27th generation dub or something with loaRAB of tape noise. Crooked Rain has a far more professional sound to it but the compositions and arrangements on that are still as weird and idiosyncratic as Slanted in my opinion.



I do. I love her. She's my favourite artist. I wrote A History of Cat Power for the history thread but I dont think anybody read it. I don't know about the article though. Im on the Matador forum and somebody who read the Magnet article posted there saying that its a piece of trash and said that its misrepresents her fans, something Im used to journalists doing because they cant resist it, and saying that they just question her at every turn.

I can't think of many articles Ive read about her where the journalist seems to get what shes doing and what shes about. Theyre usually too busy trying to portray her as some kind of female Nick Drake when really what they should be doing is paying attention to what shes saying.
 
Dude,

Nice comments on ELP and Greatful Dead. I actually learned to play Tarkus all the way through (I'm a keyboard player) and it's one of my all time favorite musical works. I really dig the way they did it on the Live Album - 45 minutes long!

Trilogy is definitely a groundbreaking album and has some incredible piano work as well as the best sounding rock-organ in the universe!

Greatful Dead - yes, American Beauty is one of the best albums ever and has a couple of really cool songs.

I agree with all of what you said. Nice to find someone who knows these albums - Rock on!
 
You forgot Pearl Jam's Ten. Maybe the only Pearl Jam album to reach high enough on the radar, but it's still worth listenning to, if you want to capsule the early 90's well and listen to awesome music doing it.
 
I dunno. You can often tell if an album is amazing and is destined to become a classic or not by the 2nd listen or 3rd listen. Also, if you hear an album referenced often in conversation, it's a clue it might become a classic.

There are obvious loopholes in that statement, like how Parris Hilton's album gets referenced a lot in conversation making her album a classic, you know the point I was getting at.
 
I find that sometimes albums I thought were amazing seem less worthwhile to me later on...and vice-versa. I think an album neeRAB to stand the test of time before we can call it a classic. "might become" a classic and "is" a classic are two different things.
 
I couldn't disagree more, that album has only one weak point, and that's Rosebud. Even the hidden track rocks my socks off. I'm sure it'll soon be considered his most accomplished album. He could have done without "29" or "Jacksonville city nights" though. That was just overreaching.
 
The Queen is Dead - The Smiths (brooding post-punk that made darkness and melancholia cool in pop music and made it acceptable for those characteristics to comprise a masterpiece).

The Ramones - The Ramones (for showing us a new direction that pop could take, where it was simpler, catchier and better than it had been in years).

The Velvet Underground and Nico - The Velvet Underground (forget Sgt. Pepper's...these guys invented art-rock and propelled the trash aesthetic to new heights simultaneously. Lou Reed's got the X-Factor like almost nobody else).

Rubber Soul- The Beatles (This planted the seed, and music would never be the same).

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Wilco (This showed us it was ok to use pro-tools type effects on folksy alt-country gems and still retain their grace and dignity...who else would have done that? Now we have Fruitbats, The Shins etc... If you start the album and you're unsure about it, skip straight to "Jesus ETC...". Argument over.)

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan (This made folk music cool again. If you wanted to make music with just your guitar, that was once again acceptable.)

Grace - Jeff Buckley (I think this is what heaven sounRAB like.)

Kind of Blue - Miles Davis (A rainy New York night for your ears).

Exile on Main Street - The Rolling Stones (If every bar band was this good, I'd be an alcoholic.)

Pinkerton - Weezer (Pop punk with a brain, and the creative spirit.)

Astral Weeks - Van Morrison (a swirling maelstrom of mystical bliss and vocals with miles of soul...one of the most passionate and spontaneous sounding albums ever to hit wax.)

Superfly - Curtis Mayfield (at least in this case, blaxploitation is more than camp or ironic retro cool. Mayfield exploits the system that's trying to exploit him and makes a statement. Plus, some of the most creative grooves I've heard.)

Headhunters - Herbie Hancock (Speaking of grooves, by taking it to exciting new places, this album showed us jazz didn't have to be "just jazz" anymore. If you had this and no other funk album, you'd be doing ok.)

to be continued...
 
This is a very obvious one, and I'm sure it's been mentioned, but I think anyone serious about music should own Highway 61 Revisited.
 
But were those albums (and maybe they were, I'm actually asking) literally considered classic only a few years after initial release? I'm not saying influence is the only factor. But I am saying that a classic has to endure and be beloved long beyond the first few years after it comes out. Sometimes influential music is forgotten...it took many years for banRAB like the Velvet Underground and Big Star to be properly recognized.
 
king crimson _ in the court of the crimson king
Yes_ close to the edge
Burzum _ Dom Set Engang Var
Joy Divison Closer
The Cure _ pornography.
 
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