Timeless Rock Albums

[Zarathustra]

Don, nothing wrong with sloppy, necessarily. Sometimes it's better than technical accuracy and fretboard pyrotechnics. Page was sloppy. I like Slash (though he is certainly no Page). I think feeling and inventiveness is sometimes more important than technical proficiency.

... at least for guitar. That doesn't apply to drums. You can play bar chords with passion and make it sound awesome. There's no way to hide sloppy or just simplistic drumming. I think GnR's original drummer was definitely their weak spot. I can't stand to listen to any Yes with Alan White. It's got to have Bruford!

Jagged Little Pill was a great CD. I love her voice. My wife was into her music when we met.

[Cail]

JLP is not my thing at all, but yeah, that was a defining album.

dAN, it's interesting that you list 90215. That, to me, has not aged well one little bit. I have absolute, unshakable faith in your taste in music (and no, I'm not being a smartass), so I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Truthfully, I don't think I've listened to the whole thing all the way through since the late '80s.

[dANdeLION]

Honestly, 90125 was my first real contact with Yes. I heard the 5 big hits they had off the Yes Album and Fragile, but until 90125, that was it, and even then I only heard them a couple of times. I knew I liked them, though, even though I was only 11 or 12, and nobody else I knew liked them. Anyway, once I moved out of my parents house, I bought Close to the Edge and Tull's Thick as a Brick, and started realizing that what the radio chooses to play down here is the safest stuff imaginable. No pre-Dark Side Floyd, 1 Gabriel-sung Genesis song (Lamb), 1 King Crimson tune (Court), and they basically play the same safe stuff today. Anyway, I picked 90125 because it was so HUGE down here; I think I heard every song off it on the radio before I even got the album! Their first six albums are way better, but none of them really hit down here like 90125 did.

As for Alanis....well, she's interesting. I tried to ignore JLP for the longest time, but then she sang one of the songs on whatever that award show is called (Grammys?), just her and her producer on piano, and it sort of clicked for me. Then I started paying attention to the lyrics, and that did it for me.

And let's not talk about (the lack of) Zappa's radio time down here.....Tampa radio sucks.

[Zarathustra]

Thick As A Brick, damn what a quirky piece of music. I haven't listened to that in forever. Pretty neat stuff in there, if you have the patience.

As for Alanis....well, she's interesting. I tried to ignore JLP for the longest time, but then she sang one of the songs on whatever that award show is called (Grammys?), just her and her producer on piano, and it sort of clicked for me. Then I started paying attention to the lyrics, and that did it for me.

Was that Uninvited? If so, that's one hauntingly beautiful piece of music. The version I'm thinking about has violins, too, so maybe it's a different song. It starts out with just her and piano, though. I think.

And let's not talk about (the lack of) Zappa's radio time down here.....Tampa radio sucks.

Ah, Zappa, I want to like him, but he's just too damn goofy. I do love his Shut Up and Play Your Guitar CD, which is just a bunch of his live solos strung together. Thankfully, no nasal singing. It's freakin' badass.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Reading through this thread again, I have a few observations, reactions and additional nominations.

In the first place, what is rock music in its pure form? I would suggest strongly that rock 'n' roll at its essence is at least theoretically danceable and grounded in boogie and blues grooves. In my opinion that eliminates most of the various forms of metal (with some exceptions such as Pantera's Vulgar Display of Power) as well as the more abstruse and jazzy veins of art rock.

Using this criteria I think it is also possible to graft in rock that has been influenced by other musical forms so long as it remains rooted in propulsive grooves. For that reason I include The Police, as Dan already has, though Zenyatta Mondatta is their timeless offering IMO.

Other additions or agreements: though poppy, I think JLP does qualify as a rock album and it does have a timeless quality to it.

Getting back to The Beatles, it is almost impossible for me to decide between the White Album and Abbey Road. So I don't think that I will. You really can't go wrong with including their entire catalogue.

Although it seems strange to assert that Black Sabbath is danceable, Paranoid is infected by boogie woogie blues grooves throughout so I think it qualifies as a rock album, albeit a very heavy rock album that paved the way for all forms of heavy metal.

Led Zeppelin is practically the same problem as the Beatles: where do you stop? At a very minimum, II, IV, and PG qualify.

If I can shoehorn Black Sabbath into the rock category, I can do the same with Alice in Chains Dirt.

[Brinn]

Cream's Disraeli Gears, Smashing Pumpkins' Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, U2's Joshua Tree, Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, Moody Blues' In Search of the Lost Chord.

[Zarathustra]

I wouldn't worry about limiting it to "propulsive" music, despite what a great word that is for describing danceable music. I'd certainly put metal and jazz fusion into the category of rock.

[Krazy Kat]

In the first place, what is rock music in its pure form?

I would like to have picked Pink Floyd - Animals. If only for the climactic hit of those 5 strum chords - Get out ov th'road, few wonna grow old.

Or I would have chosen Mike Oldfield - The Songs of Distant Earth, purely for its unusuality - being the soundtrack to the Arthur C. Clarke novel of the same name.

Mike's Amarok sums up rock music in its pure form. If you know the story behind the album, Mike dig at Richard Branson asking for a 45' after he'd already fired him out off Virgin...yeah, its rock'n'roll'n'much'much'more!

But will it go down in history with the rest of them...?

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

I wouldn't worry about limiting it to "propulsive" music, despite what a great word that is for describing danceable music. I'd certainly put metal and jazz fusion into the category of rock.

Do you consider head banging and moshing to be forms of dance? I'm trying to decide. I guess I look at albums like AFD and it seems like there is a strand that joins GnR to Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, The Stones, The Allman Brothers, and Bob Seger. Is that strand wrapped around the Sex Pistols? Undoubtedly. I think metal for me (and I am fundamentally a mëtälhëäd) has incorporated a jazz aesthetic that make it less participatory and more of a listener experience than music that makes you want to jump up and dance. Clearly jazz fusion, art rock, and prog rock have a similar resonance with jazz as well. Not that they aren't rock, but they've strayed too far from the boogie to be, simply, unhyphenated "rock 'n' roll." You gotta have the boogie, baby! Yet, certain heavy metal acts have such a powerfully realized groove (i.e., Motörhead, Pantera, Anthrax, Down) that I want to let them back into the tent...

Am I crazy or just talking out of my ass?

[Cail]

I think you're overthinking it.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Yeah. Wouldn't be the first time.

[aTOMiC]

If someone gave me a time machine and a gun, and told me I could either go back to the 30s and kill Hitler, or go back to 1970 and kill KISS, I'd really really have to think about it.

Cail, I think it would be impossible for me to agree with you more.

[I'm Murrin]

If you asked me to describe rock, I don't think "something you can dance to" would have come anywhere near my thoughts. I mean, do people dance to it? Jump up and down, wave their arms, sing along... but actually dance, in a way that's distinct from metal/punk/etc concerts?

[Vraith]

If someone gave me a time machine and a gun, and told me I could either go back to the 30s and kill Hitler, or go back to 1970 and kill KISS, I'd really really have to think about it.

Cail, I think it would be impossible for me to agree with you more.

Heh...old line, but: don't hold back, tell me how you really feel!
I'm allowed my little peccadilloes though.
Here's a few that I think some would say deserve to at least be considered, [and since we're not being too picky about what is rock] but I feel about roughly as y'all do about Kiss:
Bob Marley
Eric Clapton
Bob Dylan

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

www.spin.com/articles/myth-no-2-nirvana ... hair-metal

MYTH No. 2: Nirvana Killed Hair Metal

The legend of Nirvana has always demanded that the band be viewed as a sea change in popular taste -- the meaningless but oft-rehashed factoid that Nevermind knocked Michael Jackson's Dangerous off the top spot on the album chart, as if sales turnover didn't exist until Kurt Cobain came along.

But the most enduring fable has always been the one about how Nirvana, and grunge in general, rid the world of foofy coiffures and pink guitars and power ballads overnight.

By the time Nevermind charted in October 1991, hair metal was already long on the way out.

Glam poodles had wiped off their mascara and were trying to get serious -- Cinderella's 1990 Heartbreak Station was a purist blues-rock record; Skid Row's Slave to the Grind, out in June 1991, was pop-shunning arena turbulence that went to No. 1 without a hit single.

A certain kind of boogie-based hard rock had also been on the way back ever since Guns N' Roses and the Cult broke through circa '88; Black Crowes' debut album reached No. 4 in 1990.

By the turn of the decade, even the breakthrough metal-leaning acts had a pronounced boho bent: Living Colour, black Manhattanites led by their slumming avant-jazz guitarist; St. Augustine–quoting Houston eggheadbangers King's X, led by their black gay Christian bassist; proggish San Francisco reformed rap-punks Faith No More. And maybe most significantly, given the emerging Lollapalooza Decade, new-age L.A. sideshow beatniks Jane's Addiction, whose Ritual de lo Habitual went Top 20 in 1990.

One of the biggest rock hits the year before "Smells Like Teen Spirit" even came from Seattle-namely, Queensryche's "Silent Lucidity," a Pink Floyd pastiche by thinkers-of-big-thoughts more given to high-flown concept albums about technological conspiracy than lowbrow groupie gropes.

So what changed after Nirvana, exactly? Well, the haircuts, maybe. And within a couple years, radio and MTV were overrun by such innovative new bands as Collective Soul, Candlebox, Live, and Silverchair. The more things change...

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Interesting discussion(s) of GnR / AFD: blogs.westword.com/backbeat/2012/07/welcome_to_the_jungle_turns_25.php

www.rollingstone.com/music/news/guns-n- ... l-20070809

McKagan and Adler would hold daily practices of their own — they'd spend hours playing along together to funk tunes by Prince and Cameo ("Word Up!" was a favorite), locking in tight and growing comfortable with swinging rhythms that were unusual for hard rock. McKagan says the groove of "Rocket Queen" owes a particular debt to Cameo.

[Mortice Root]

St. Augustine–quoting Houston eggheadbangers King's X, led by their black gay Christian bassist

Ok, that is awesome!! I love King's X - they are one of my favorite groups. Never seem to get any love, ever, from anyone, but that is a hysterical one line description.

[Cail]

www.spin.com/articles/myth-no-2-nirvana ... hair-metal

MYTH No. 2: Nirvana Killed Hair Metal

The legend of Nirvana has always demanded that the band be viewed as a sea change in popular taste -- the meaningless but oft-rehashed factoid that Nevermind knocked Michael Jackson's Dangerous off the top spot on the album chart, as if sales turnover didn't exist until Kurt Cobain came along.

But the most enduring fable has always been the one about how Nirvana, and grunge in general, rid the world of foofy coiffures and pink guitars and power ballads overnight.

By the time Nevermind charted in October 1991, hair metal was already long on the way out.

Glam poodles had wiped off their mascara and were trying to get serious -- Cinderella's 1990 Heartbreak Station was a purist blues-rock record; Skid Row's Slave to the Grind, out in June 1991, was pop-shunning arena turbulence that went to No. 1 without a hit single.

A certain kind of boogie-based hard rock had also been on the way back ever since Guns N' Roses and the Cult broke through circa '88; Black Crowes' debut album reached No. 4 in 1990.

By the turn of the decade, even the breakthrough metal-leaning acts had a pronounced boho bent: Living Colour, black Manhattanites led by their slumming avant-jazz guitarist; St. Augustine–quoting Houston eggheadbangers King's X, led by their black gay Christian bassist; proggish San Francisco reformed rap-punks Faith No More. And maybe most significantly, given the emerging Lollapalooza Decade, new-age L.A. sideshow beatniks Jane's Addiction, whose Ritual de lo Habitual went Top 20 in 1990.

One of the biggest rock hits the year before "Smells Like Teen Spirit" even came from Seattle-namely, Queensryche's "Silent Lucidity," a Pink Floyd pastiche by thinkers-of-big-thoughts more given to high-flown concept albums about technological conspiracy than lowbrow groupie gropes.

So what changed after Nirvana, exactly? Well, the haircuts, maybe. And within a couple years, radio and MTV were overrun by such innovative new bands as Collective Soul, Candlebox, Live, and Silverchair. The more things change...

Errr.....no.

While all Spin says is accurate, the fact of the matter is that hair metal was in about the 4th generation in 1991, and as anyone familiar with analog media knows, copies of copies lose resolution.

So yes, hair metal was its own worst enemy at that point, and bands like FNM and Ugly Kid Joe were beginning to move in a different direction, but the fact of the matter is that although the metal scene (such as it was) was sick, it wasn't going to die on its own.

In the most meaningful way since Watergate, the media - specifically MTV and Rolling Stone - created grunge and damn near overnight made a new kind of music popular. Whereas punk was a socially-based explosion from the bottom up, grunge was as manipulated and prefabricated as The Monkees.

It's important to note though, that grunge never would have taken hold had it not been for the other big event of 1991.....The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

[Vraith]

In the most meaningful way since Watergate, the media - specifically MTV and Rolling Stone - created grunge and damn near overnight made a new kind of music popular. Whereas punk was a socially-based explosion from the bottom up, grunge was as manipulated and prefabricated as The Monkees.

It's important to note though, that grunge never would have taken hold had it not been for the other big event of 1991.....The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

On the first...I kinda agree, at least as far as the speed of the "takeover and distribution" in POPULAR media...but they just saw something happening and grabbed it. From the inside/trenches though, Seattle didn't invent grunge, wasn't even the best of it, just got lucky like SF and the '60s...lot's of bands in lots of places and lots of their followers were sweating and screaming blood and ideas...and anywhere in the country that still had live bands that weren't "country," was throbbing with it...literally and/or metaphorically. Spotting a point like that is a "talent" in itself, I suppose, [YAY CORPORATE ART!!]...OH, and doesn't mean particular BANDs didn't deserve what they got.] Even so, it wasn't as manipulated/prefabbed as Madonna, for instance...and much more music and meaning than her.

On the second...that seems pretty true to me. But I THINK that's because, whether actually true or not, if FELT to many not so much like "we free, smart, rich, powerful folk tore it down and let them out," and more like "those enslaved, uneducated, poor, powerless folk tore it down and got out."
The media/history emphasize the impact of the first [reagan "tear down that wall!]...people identify with the second.

But on topic...for folk's consideration...
The Cure "Disintegration" [not my personal fave, but overall maybe most "impactful" [scare quoted cuz it's a stupid fake word].
And, in a different way, pick you're favorite disc...the Grateful Dead. Personally, I find them completely "meh"...nothing good enough to love, nothing so horrible to hate it all. OTOH...a HUGE portion of the population either saw them live, or thinks they missed something if they didn't.
On a similar note, and referencing a different thread...
no one said Rush yet? or did they? did I?...anyway, it's been a long-ass time, but I THINK I recall that back in the day Rush, Dead, and a couple other performance-committed bands were playing 200+ gigs a year. That is Serious Work, and [once upon a time...lack of which probably part of why music is sputtering...neither bands nor audiences are discovering anything] Major Impact/Inspiration.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

I'm visualizing in my mind three intersecting axes:

Edge: Earnest <――――> Decadent
Emotion: Raw <――――> Ironic
Sound: Spare <――――> Indulgent

The hypothesis is that anytime a rock milieu develops too far down an axis, it will induce a cultural break that is at least in part antipode. Let's consider a few test cases:

British Invasion - a roots movement whose raw emotion overthrew ironic popular music

Jimi Hendrix Experience / Dylan Goes Electric (Blues) - a further development of roots from a spare folk aesthetic into a more indulgent sound

Prog Rock & Heavy Metal Kill Hendrix & Joplin - the triumphant return of irony

Punk / NWOBHM vs. AOR / Arena Rock - ironic indulgence put in a cage by snarling raw, spare movements

Glam Is Back, With Mousse - ironic, decadent jailbreak

GnR Kicks the Poseurs To The Curb - irony takes a boot of raw emotion to the skull

Anti-Rockstar Rockstars - take your raw decadence and shove it, says Seattle, we're serving up earnest irony with your Starbucks

Jack White Doesn't Give A Fuck - earnest ironic pop rock bulldozed into an unmarked grave by a wall of raw power

It's just a theory folks, and I'm not sure it really works. Feel free to kick the crap out of it (like you needed permission...).