There are a lot of bands I like and a lot of albums I like, but I’d have to say that my favorite album of all time, could listen to it straight through, both sides, is The Black Crowes‘ second album, Southern Harmony & Musical Companion. The whole album just flows so smooth, and the gospel-ish backing vocalists (a welcome, but one-off feature of this album) added a warmth and depth to their sound that none of their other albums held.
I was thinking about this, and wanting to know what other folks’ favorite albums are, and why, so I’m going to ask here (and spread the question around) What’s your favorite album of all time, and why? I’m interested in maybe hearing some different music & also seeing what inspires other folks. What makes you shake your butt, nod your head, tap your toes, or hit repeat?
“Sting Me”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GTRqG62Q_E]
“If you feel like a riot/then don’t you deny it/just put your good foot forward”
“Remedy”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qD72NCJSkk]
“Thorn In My Pride”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvqFkVNlWs8]
I guess I was in my sophomore year of highschool when this album came out. I know that’s when I bought it on cassette tape and just listened the hell out of that tape. I had it with me, in my crappy little denim purse, that year when we went out to California for Thanksgiving with my grandparents. I remember sitting all cramped and hunched up in the backseat of Mom’s ’73 Superbeetle, toes freezing, watching interminable Utah & Nevada desert out the quarter windows, Walkman earphones firmly in place, alternating this album with Metallica’s black album and & Justice For All. In college, this was one of my go-to albums for making out. I dunno…it worked.
Crowes covering Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtMPlY3duz4]
Back in the summer of probably 1991, I stayed up late and recorded a special about the Monsters Of Rock show in Moscow, and was just swept up by the raunchy grindin’ groove of the Crowes’ cover of Dylan’s Everybody Must Get Stoned. When I finally heard the Dylan original, I was kind of let down. I don’t know; the Crowes put so much rhythm into their cover, really made it their own. This cover just has so damn much energy & passion that it kind of overshadows the original…at least that’s how I see it.
Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 – original.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUogzf1h2UY]
I think Dylan was writing kind of a tounge-in-cheek novelty song with this one. He had a message, as he does, but he was rolling this one super light-hearted, whereas Chris Richardson delivered the lyrics with all the brio of the hammiest of scenery chewers.
. . . Off the top of my head I couldnt name just one album that is a favorite, but some that I like from start to finish and can listen to over and over again. . .
Mike Watt’s ‘Contemplating the Engine Room’
Morphine’s ‘Good’
Gogol Bordello’s ‘Gypsy Punks’
Plus 44’s self titled album (ok, ok, its Travis Barker, don’t care love the album)
The Raconteurs ‘Consolers of the Lonely’ (Jack White’s latest project is amazing)
god, so many more, I’ll have to think about the ones that have been faithfully played in my stereo for the last 15 or so odd years
Seriously check out the Raconteurs, you’ll like them
one more that I’ve always loved even though I can’t understand a damn lyric on the entire album is
Cranes ‘Wings of Joy’
Steve McQueen aka Two Wheels Good, by Prefab Sprout.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/release/5pzf/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14164968
Probably U2’s The Joshua Tree. That was on super-repeat in my Walkman for like a year straight in high school. I don’t actually listen to it much anymore, but it’s like an auditory security blanket, or comfort food.
I am really old, and I loves me some classic rock. My all-time album list would have to include at least three by the Rolling Stones, in chronological order:
Let It Bleed
Brown Sugar
Some Girls
Another classic from this era is by Cream:
Disraeli Gears
And then there’s my main man, Elvis Costello:
My Aim Is True (if only for Watching the Detectives)
All This Useles Beauty
For something else I nearly wore out in college, there’s the Talking Heads:
Talking Heads ’77
But honestly, there’s one album I have listened to the most over my whole life, starting when it came out when was in junior high. I have owned it on vinyl, cassette, CD, and mp3, and I’ll probably own it on whatever comes next. It’s by (gulp) Elton John:
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
As I mostly listen to everything in mp3 form now, and I am completely obsessed with my iTunes database mania, I hardly ever listen to anything in album form anymore (except classical music where I want to hear the whole flow of the pieces). I hate shuffle, because I just have too much disparate music to mix up that way (this list of white British males notwithstanding), but I am queen of the playlist.
And yet, man, I just thought of one of the few albums I do still listen to from beginning to end, I think partly because it’s essentially a concert album by a concert band, The Grateful Dead:
Dead Set
Go on. I bet you can get all of these from your parents!
I’d have to say my favorite album of all time is Kid A by Radiohead.
“Kite” by Kirsty MacColl. It’s pop, pure and simple, and she was a genius with the voice of an angel. “All I ever wanted was a little more respect from you”… Do yourself a favour, have a listen.