Your Top 5 Favorite Rock Albums Of All-Time

[Marc]

Not Pink Moon?  (+1 for Revolver, BTW.)

In the 'end', 'River Man' and 'Cello Song' made me pick Drake's debut.

(My sincere apologies. )

[Florestan]

Ah, sweet recollections of my youth... in no particular order:

[Draško]

Could probably come up with several of these lists based on the when and where. This one is of the first music I consciously got into when I was a teenager, and these particular albums stuck with me till this day.

 

Madness is a compilation rather than a regular album, but that was the ubiquitous one in local stores when I was growing up.

 


Bad Religion - Against the Grain

[Pat B]

Funny, Yazoo's debut album was one of my first 'bubbling unders'.

I forgot! We Yanks prefer to misspell their name.

[Marc]

I forgot! We Yanks prefer to misspell their name.

AFAIK, they were called Yaz in the USA/Canada to avoid confusion with the American record label Yazoo. So, you're entirely 'entitled' to call them Yaz.
(To avoid more confusion: from now on, let's call them Vin & Alf. )

Anyway: I love their 2 albums, with a slight preference for the debut Upstairs At Eric's. Their 2nd album You And Me Both was too slick sometimes... but the song 'Anyone' is a true favourite of mine.

It's also nice to see someone who picked VU's Loaded. I love that album, even though Lou Reed should have stayed one or two days longer to sing 'New Age'. Doug Yule is just too sweet for that song.

[NikF]

This changes approximately every five minutes.


The Beach Boys: Love You (1977)

I was in a car with a wee guy named Norrie who was about to form a band he initially wanted to call 'Teenage Fannies'. I put a cassette tape of this album into the player and after a couple tracks he asked who it was and on hearing my answer was astonished. That's how different this is compared to the more well known Beach Boys music.

Squeeze: Argybargy (1980)

But behind the chalet,
My holiday's complete,
And I feel like William Tell,
Maid Marian on her, tiptoed feet.
Pulling mussels from a shell.

You should try and catch Glenn Tilbrook doing a one man show in a pub. And if you do and he asks for requests, suggest Brahms.


Steely Dan: Can't Buy a Thrill (1972)

'Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me)' - including my favourite non yee-haw pedal steel playing.


Blondie: Parallel Lines (1978)

The year after this release I fought my way down to the stage of the Apollo where craning my neck up resulted in seeing the beautiful and petite and womanly Debbie Harry. One day I might recover. I hope that day is far away.


American Graffiti soundtrack (1973?)

I see Draško has included a compilation. I will too.
My friend drove a Mini Clubman (https://i.imgur.com/cqnB8QF.jpg very similar) It was patiently and painstakingly customised on the back of only the wage from his job as a car washer and so we would occasionally take Sunday trips to out of the way isolated scrapyards, in order to find various used bits of engine and suspension for much cheapness. When the car was finally put together we'd drive a circuit around the city centre streets, cruising American Graffiti style to the music from this compilation. Want the maximum authentic lo-fi experience? Put the album on one of those plastic 1980s record players that were aimed at teenagers. Place a (mono) cassette recorder next to one speaker. Press 'Record' and drop the needle. Take the cassette tape and player and some batteries, hit 'Play' and stick it under one of the car seats. That's how we did it when we were 17 and cool.

[Sergeant Rock]

Blondie: Parallel Lines (1978)

The year after this release I fought my way down to the stage of the Apollo where craning my neck up resulted in seeing the beautiful and petite and womanly Debbie Harry. One day I might recover. I hope that day is far away.

Sarge

[DaveF]

In the 'end', 'River Man' and 'Cello Song' made me pick Drake's debut.

(My sincere apologies. )

That's OK.  They're both deeply beautiful, haunting pieces.  If Pink Moon didn't exist, I'd pick this one too.  The album is almost worth it for the story of how Drake broke the news of its existence to his sister: walking in with a newly-pressed copy, throwing it on the bed and saying "There you go".  Apparently that was the most anyone had heard him say for 3 years or so...

I made a "pilgrimage" a few years ago, starting from Stratford at first light and walking up via Henley-in-Arden to Tanworth to see the Drake family grave in the churchyard.  A good morning's walk, and if you set off early enough you can get to the swanky and overpriced Bell at Tanworth in time for lunch, if being ignored by waiters and ripped-off is your idea of fun.  Now to have lines from the last song on your last album incised on your tombstone - there's a sort of perfection in that.

I like this thread for two reasons: seeing other people's choices and acquiring a great number of new listening suggestions, and because it's made me realise that there are exactly 5 "rock" albums (interpreted in the widest sense, in the same sense that Hildegard von Bingen and Guillaume de Machaut are "classical" to most of the world) that I really wouldn't want to live without, all probably fairly obvious choices:

Revolver
Led Zeppelin IV/Untitled/Zoso, whatever
Genesis: Foxtrot
Dylan: Blood on the tracks
and Pink Moon.

A big problem I have with a lot of rock music is fadeouts, which nearly always seem like a lazy, rude and uncaring way to end a piece.  Hence an album most of whose tracks end "properly" automatically recommends itself to me.  I blame that Italian composer Al Niente, who started all this nonsense off.

[Pat B]

A big problem I have with a lot of rock music is fadeouts, which nearly always seem like a lazy, rude and uncaring way to end a piece.

+1. I don't mind too much with individual songs, but for an album, having a bunch of songs that fade out is a big minus.

EDIT: but apparently not big enough to keep Loaded out of my top 5.

[Alek Hidell]

This is a surprisingly tough task for me. Rock used to be about all I listened to, and I used to sort of keep a list like this in my head. But I haven't thought seriously about it for a long time.

I think it's understood that "Top 5 Favorite" does not at all mean the same thing as "Top 5 Greatest." Those would be two different lists for me (though there could be some overlap).

Anyway:

   

 

... with the proviso, of course, that this list is subject to almost-certain change. I left out Dylan and the Beatles, both of whom could quite easily have cracked the list, and I also notice that only one of these five was released after 1980. That leaves out more recent work that means quite a lot to me, like the Drive-By Truckers' Brighter Than Creation's Dark, The National's Boxer and High Violet, anything by R.E.M., DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs, etc., etc. ...

And do we consider James Brown "rock" in any sense? If so, Star Time displaces one of the above.

[Marc]

[...]
A big problem I have with a lot of rock music is fadeouts, which nearly always seem like a lazy, rude and uncaring way to end a piece.  [...]

+2.

I recall listening to 'The One I Love' of R.E.M. with a good friend, and when it was done we both said: "Ha, a good song with a beginning and an end!"

[Marc]

[...]
And do we consider James Brown "rock" in any sense? If so, Star Time displaces one of the above.

Reading this thread, it seems to me that it very soon became 'Your Top 5 Favorite Pop Albums of All-Time'.

Depeche Mode and Yazoo were mentioned, so...

I, for instance, would have loved to mention Jacques Brel's both Olympia live albums, even though the French chanson genre isn't considered to be 'rock'. Eventually I picked Nick Drake. Some may call Drake's music 'folk' or even 'folk rock', but to me, it's just good music.

(And someone, please mention Barry White. )

[Baron Scarpia]

The Chicago Transit Authority
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Before the real CTA sued them and forced them to change the band name to "Chicago." They had real grit before Terry Kath accidentally blew his brains out with a loaded pistol and the band degenerated to a mill for teeny bopper love songs.

The Beatles Rubber Soul
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Revolver has already been mentioned, so I went with this one.

Cat Stevens, Tea for the Tillerman
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It's a wild world.

Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
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Tangled up in Blue

Bachman Turner Overdrive, Not Fragile
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You ain't seen nothin yet!

[Karl Henning]

A big problem I have with a lot of rock music is fadeouts, which nearly always seem like a lazy, rude and uncaring way to end a piece.

Where I don't mind overmuch, is when it is a live cut, and the fade out is a more or less editorial decision.

But especially in the case of a song being taken out on the road, where they're going to have to devise an ending anyway . . . .

[Karl Henning]

The Chicago Transit Authority
[asin]B000069KGM[/asin]
Before the real CTA sued them and forced them to change the band name to "Chicago." They had real grit before Terry Kath accidentally blew his brains out with a loaded pistol and the band degenerated to a mill for teeny bopper love songs.

As with Tusk, I did not appreciate this when I first heard it, back when;  but now, I love it.

[Karl Henning]

The Beatles Rubber Soul
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Revolver has already been mentioned, so I went with this one.

I perceive that this will be accorded the George nod of approval  0:)   

[Baron Scarpia]

As with Tusk, I did not appreciate this when I first heard it, back when;  but now, I love it.

Was a big fan in the day. They jumped the shark with Chicago 6, I think.

[bwv 1080]

I was going to check out some of these albums, but realized all I had to do was tune into my local classic rock station

[Papy Oli]

As a criteria, In case of a house fire, I'd save those first:

Neil Young - Harvest
Depeche Mode - Violator
Mogwai - Special Moves (live)
Chris Rea - Dancing down the stoney road
Status Quo : Quo + Live

Then I'd run back in for :

Crosby Stills Nash - Deja Vu
Creedence Clearwater Revival - best of
Serge Gainsbourg - Ballade of Melody Nelson
Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues
Gillian Welch - Time (The Revelator)

[vandermolen]

Support from me for Chicago Transit Authority and Rubber Soul.