1000 albums to hear before you die?
It’s list time again. The Guardian are making a list of 1000 albums to hear before you die
Despite its faintly melodramatic title, our list of 1000 albums to hear before you die isn’t meant to be definitive, nor is it meant to be one of those Greatest Albums Of All Time lists. It’s supposed to be more of a miscellany, an eclectic collection of interesting albums, (including Various Artists compilations, which usually don’t get into those kind of lists).
In an attempt to get as wide a spread of music included as possible, all artists were limited to one entry each. Where possible, the list tries to opt for something other than the obvious choice from a legendary artist’s catalogue - Beach Boys Today! instead of Pet Sounds, for example - not to be deliberately abstruse, but to try and get away from reiterating yet again the same points about the same handful of albums that always crop up in 100 Best Albums lists.
Despite being The Guardian’s music critics, they’ve somehow managed to avoid the temptation to fill the entire list with half-forgotten post-punk bands and tediously overrated 80s indie. They’ve even found room for Deep Purple and Genesis!
Natually, classic rock, metal and prog are going to be underrepresented on such a list. But, as the article says:
This is where you come in - we’re looking for you to nominate albums that the list misses, complete with a brief summary of why they should have been included. The best ones will get printed in Friday’s Film And Music section.
These are my contributions:
Blue Öyster Cult - Secret Treaties
The third album from the “thinking man’s metal band” is a multi-layered work of inventive hard rock married to truly wierd sci-fi occult conspiracy lyrics. Songs like “Career of Evil” and “Dominance and Submission” exude a genuine air of menace, and they never bettered the atmospheric epic “Astronomy”. BÖC subsequently moved in a more commercial AOR direction and started having hit singles, but this album still remains the creative high point of their career.
Fish - Raingods with Zippos
The former Marillion frontman has had something of a chequered career since going solo, but this album, featuring Mark Daghorn and Steve Wilson, is one his best. As well as a barnstoming cover of SAHB’s “Faith Healer” which manages to top the original, the highlight is the 20 minute “Plague of Ghosts”, an ambitious piece of work which manages to combine ambient dance and spoken word with symphonic pomp-rock, held together with the big man’s impassioned voice.
Uriah Heep - Salisbury
Uriah Heep really deserve better than being known for making Rolling Stone’s Melissa Mills threaten suicide if they were successful, and for being the principal inspiration for Spinal Tap. Their second album was their most varied and experimental, ranging from the hard rock of “Bird of Prey” to the chant-like acoustic “Lady in Black”. Highlight is the lengthy title track which see Ken Hensley’s mightly Hammond B3 accompanied by brass and woodwind sections. Later albums saw greater commercial success, but they were never quite this inventive again.
Once we get to “M”, there are going to be at least two more. No prizes to readers of this blog for anyone that identifies those two bands, which I’m confident The Grauniad’s writers will overlook.
November 20th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Fushitsusha Double Live (PSFD 15/16). I reviewed the earlier live album from their oeuvre (PSFD 3/4) - http://www.thegline.com/disc-of-the-week/2006/10-15-2006.htm - and this one is if anything even more astonishing. Japanese prog at its finest, and if you ask me it doesn’t deserve nearly that confining a description. Someone else called it “the marriage of 12th century Chinese opera, yogic breathing exercises and Blue Cheer”, which is awwright with me.
I’ve got tons of others I could probably throw into such a list.
November 20th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Serdar, you managed to out-obscure me as usual
You’re making me look like a Coldplay fan.
Today, they’ve updated their list to include I,J,K,L,M. They’ve (naturally) ignored the mighty Marillion, but included … Level bloody 42. And as we all know, the only purpose of jazz-funk is to give prog rock something to look down on.
November 20th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Marillion, but did they include Fish in the Fs? (”Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors” maybe?)
And if they don’t have at least one Merzbow in the Ms, aesthetics be damned, then they’re not being true to the label. Not everyone needs to hear all of Merzbow (except maybe a loon like me), but being exposed to something like Amlux at least once in your life seems like a good idea if you want to call yourself a musical (noiseical?) gourmand.
November 20th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
>> Did they include Fish?
What do *you* think?
I’m surpised Iron Maiden, Metallica and Mastadon made the cut.
November 22nd, 2007 at 11:28 pm
They’ve completed the list now, complete with some pathetic excuses for not including enough prog (’because none of us are prog fans’).
They managed to include King Crimson’s “In the Court of the Crimson King” and VDGG’s “Pawn Hearts”, but seem to prefer Rick Wakeman’s “King Arthur” to anything by Yes. I think they’re taking the piss.
And UFO are better than flash-in-the-pan Britpop also-rans Elastica. That’s just a fact.