Sometimes, when I’m sad, I wander the streets, covered with mice, licking a tiny piece of wood that I found in the gutter and I say, “Hey! This wood is good wood… good wood to lick!” like to crank my music loud and scream my guts out, thereby engaging my endocrine system in something engaging while sharing any potential misery with the neighbors. One of the best mood-enhancers, at least for my peculiar brain, is The Moody Blues 1967 opus, ‘Days of Future Passed’, not to be confused with the time Wolverine was incinerated by Sentinels. (Though that’s not to say that X-Men #141 doesn’t ALSO make me feel better, now that I think of it.) A concept piece that emulates the passage of a day, it’s full of emotional peaks and valleys, and ends with the wondrous hunk of perfection that is ‘Knights In White Satin,’ a song that never fails to make me feel better, even as it feels like it should worsen any depression. The experience of listening to this album should not be missed, and it makes me want to extend any drive to last forty-one minutes and 34 seconds, which can be difficult for arranging my commute, but at least begs a query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) likes C&W and R&B and me and the chimpanzee agree that someday, we will be, a celebritee, asking: What’s your fave-rave ALBUM (in the sense of a collection of recordings, not necessary on vinyl) of all time?
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I can’t decide between “Don’t Censor Me” by Audio Adrenaline and “Free At Last” by DC Talk. Both are albums that came out when I was in high school and both bring back memories of driving around with friends yelling lyrics with the windows down. Good times.
Audio Adrenaline did the best cover of “Free Ride” ever.
A great album, as a whole, should be greater than the sum of its songs. There are a lot of albums with great songs on them, but that stand out merely because of those great songs. My personal favorite albums transcend that, and weaker tracks become key ingredients in a greater work.
Helloween’s Keeper of the Seven Keys parts 1 and 2 are my personal favorite examples of this. They represent a whole work over two parts released 2 years apart. These two records are THE power metal concept album, from whence a hundred bands sprang. Extremely influential, and really, really good.
Both Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral and Glassjaw’s Worship & Tribute. Nine Inch Nails became the key album of my life and Glassjaw proved how powerful and experimental hardcore music can get.
A Corky and the Juice Pigs reference? What a way to start my day!
We aims to please…
It’s between either Big Star’s Radio City or Love’s Forever Changes
It’s probably cliche, but there’s a reason it’s cliche. I’ve got to go with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. It’s a fantastic set of songs that are more than the sum of the parts. At the same time, each song is freaking awesome by itself. Nearly every song on the album still gets radio play, which is pretty shocking for a 40 year old album. Even the likes of the Beatles and Hendrix and the Stones can’t say that. It’s got a vast array of musical ideas, emotion, passion, even humor. Add to that the whole “Dark Side of Oz” thing and it’s icing on the cake.
In high school it was blink 182 Dude Ranch. 10 years ago it was Taking Back Sunday: Tell All Your Friends. 5 years ago it was Journey’s Greatest Hits. Now it’s Johnny Cash The Legend. My tastes have definitely changed.
some girls the rolling stones. Why did they call it that? because that forgot all their names.
For several years, I had a few select CDs that would pretty much be all I heard for hours as I played MMOs or read comics or novels. Most were movie soundtracks such as the soundtracks to “The Crow”, “Queen of the Damned” and the occasional rotation of “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie” (Hey, it had some good songs), and a few random CDs like Korn “Follow the Leader”, Nirvana “From the Muddy Banks of Wishkah” and Metallica’s “Garage Inc.”.
But my absolute favorite of them all is probably one of the strangest. “Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits”, a collection of old cartoon and kid show theme songs re-made by various artists. Among others, it had Sublime doing “Hong Kong Phooey”, Violent Femmes doing “Eep Op Ork Ah Ah” from The Jetsons, The Ramones doing the classic “Spider-Man” theme, Butthole Surfers doing “Underdog” and Matthew Sweet doing “Scooby Doo”.
I remember that one. Wasn’t there a song performed by Reverend Horton Heat in there? I think it was the Johnny Quest theme. Great music.
Personally I always loved “S & M” by Metallica. It has to be one of the best live performances I have ever heard recorded.
Yeah, there was. I almost listed that one but if I listed every song I liked, I’d have listed the entire album’s track list.
Reverend Horton Heat did “Stop that Pigeon”–AWESOME
Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden. and also the black album by Metallica.
Rock on \m/
While its basically a Roger Waters Solo album, IMHO Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut is an awesome sonic experience….
One album? Geez, talk about no mean feat picking one single album from all of albumdom (probably not a real word; at least not according to the spell-check).
Since the dawn of the iTunes age, I have kept personal playlists for each decade since the 1960s of my favorite 20 albums for that period. I pick 20 because that’s exactly how many CDs the carrier that I had strapped to the visor of whatever car I was driving from 1992 all the way to round about the end of 2007 / beginning of 2008. And I always have a hard time with keeping those lists at 20.
So one album??? UGGH!
I guess the easy thing to do is to go with a chalk pick. I’ll still no pin myself down to a single answer so I’ll say depending on when you ask me and what my mood is, my answer will be ma favorite album for any one of my five or six favorite bands:
“Abbey Road” – the Beatles
“Dark Side of the Moon” – Pink Floyd
“Physical Graffiti” – Led Zeppelin (my favorite band, FWIW)
“A Night at the Opera” – Queen
“Beggar’s Banquet” – The Rolling Stones
“Ride the Lightning” – Metallica
“Toxicity” – System of a Down
BTW – if you’ve never experienced the wonderfulness that is Queen’s “The Prophet’s Song”, RUN!!! don’t walk and go out and buy the aforementioned Queen album!!!
For the last thirty years I’ve waffled between Dark Side of the Moon and the Heavy Metal Soundtrack. So, I think I’d have to say both! :)
Similar to most people, discovering and recognizing a favorite anything is incredibly difficult for me. These days with such a huge amount of things we can consume and the means to do so easily it seems like a near impossible task. Also, it may be a bit counter-productive. But, in the spirit of the question, here we go.
Whenever I find myself needing to rely on music to get me through anything, I always tend to gravitate towards Third Eye Blind’s self-titled debut. Now, I know that the music isn’t necessarily groundbreaking or classic-worthy but it somehow always gets me through life.
It was one of the first CDs I owned. I was lured in by Semi-Charmed Life, even though I was far too young to realize the subject matter of the song. I played all the radio hits over and over and over again as I casually skipped over the others. But, as I got older I began to pay attention and discovered that there was something to be enjoyed there.
Every song seemed to fit either some deep longing I had or conveyed a sentiment to accompany whatever personal tragedy and success I was experiencing. My love for specific songs even molded my own psyche to push me towards decisions and experiences that mirrored the lyrics. What was an enjoyment of a jaunty tune filled with plenty of “do do do”s transformed into somewhat of a soundtrack and instruction manual.
I still dust off that album from time to time and listen to it all the way through. I’ll admit that it doesn’t have the chops to stand up to some more classic albums. The songs don’t flow into each other and as far as I know it doesn’t tell a longer story. But as I hear each opening note and ponder on a line I hadn’t before, I realize that this album is very much, my life. So I suppose it better be my favorite.