Essential Studio Albums

[liebzz]

Cat Stevens - Tea for the Tillerman

Add this to the list of classic albums I never got to before this. It’s really remarkable how well honed these songs are - they have in innate instinct for when to kick up the intensity and when to lay back to maximize impact. Wild World is the real can’t miss classic on here. There’s plenty else that are shouldn’t misses though, especially with that intense/relaxed dynamic that makes the songs have 3 dimensions, like Miles From Nowhere, On the Road to Find Out and Father and Son. This is an altogether excellent album that runs well from start to finish.

The Essential Track: Wild World

Up Next: Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water

[wease]

Chicago II

Despite the inclusion of 25 or 6 to 4, an all timer for Chicago, this album seems to lose a little shine from the first. It is again a double album, and there’s good songs on this one, but not quite the same. They replaced the long instrumental jams with quick bursts of tracks, and I don’t think it serves them quite as well. But Make Me Smile and the aforementioned 25 or 6 to 4 do dominate this album.

The Essential Track: 25 or 6 to 4

Up Next: Rod Stewart - Gasoline Alley

I agree with your assessment. 25… is one of my all-time favorite tracks

[liebzz]

Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water

This album is a rare victim of bloated expectations for me. I figured the whole thing must be incredible if you’ve got The Boxer, the title track, and Cecilia, 3 all time great tracks. Throw in a live version of Bye Bye Love. And yet, really the rest didn’t quite grab me. Keep the Customer Satisfied was pretty good. Other than that, I can’t really remember what the rest sounds like. Just kinda went by without grabbing me the way their other albums here did.

The Essential Track: The Boxer

Up Next: Kris Kristofferson - Kristofferson

[liebzz]

Kris Kristofferson - Kristofferson

Actor and OG outlaw country star’s debut album. Tongue-in-cheek or not, Kristofferson shows a nice sense of humor on the opening Blame It On the Stones, where he not only starts with the most rock of these tracks, but blames society’s ills on The Rolling Stones. Similarly, The Law is For the Protection of the People makes similar gripes of hippies in contrast to the decent people. The country vibes though are where he is at his finest, from Me and Bobby McGee to Casey’s Last Ride and beyond. This is a much better album than I expected, perhaps a beneficiary rather than a victim of expectations.

The Essential Track: Me and Bobby McGee

Up Next: Little Feat

[liebzz]

Little Feat

Interesting that their debut album focuses more on a pseudo Stones sound than their signature sound that would develop in the 70s as the southern answer to The Band. Surely that’s all an oversimplification, but the point being driven is we are looking at an album steeped somewhere in southern country and blues, though you know it’s them from their loose and easy sound. The subject matter is irreverent at times, but you can’t help but love Willin’, Hamburger Midnight, Crack in Your Door, Forty-Four Blues/How Many More Years, Strawberry Flats and Truck Stop Girl. Snakes for Everything is a nice cover. Nearly everything works well here, and I look forward to their more signature sound, but this checks the country and blues rock boxes.

The Essential Track: Willin’

Up Next: Fleetwood Mac - Kiln House

[liebzz]

Fleetwood Mac - Kiln House

This is a real oddity of a record. Breaking from Peter Green resulted in an album jumping in different directions, from straight ahead rock (and calling it such), to some bluesier stuff to 50s pop literally referencing and splicing Buddy Holly songs, to instrumentals. It makes for a fun and quirky listen, with Blood on the Floor, Hi Ho Silver, and Buddy’s Song bring the aforementioned wrinkles, and Tell Me All the Things You Do providing a must listen keeper. It’s as if Peter Green was the head of the chicken and the rest of the band didn’t know what exactly to do without its head.

The Essential Track: Tell Me All the Things You Do

Up Next: The Kinks - Lola Versus the Powerman and the Moneygoround, Pt. 1

[doug rr]

Little Feat

Interesting that their debut album focuses more on a pseudo Stones sound than their signature sound that would develop in the 70s as the southern answer to The Band. Surely that’s all an oversimplification, but the point being driven is we are looking at an album steeped somewhere in southern country and blues, though you know it’s them from their loose and easy sound. The subject matter is irreverent at times, but you can’t help but love Willin’, Hamburger Midnight, Crack in Your Door, Forty-Four Blues/How Many More Years, Strawberry Flats and Truck Stop Girl. Snakes for Everything is a nice cover. Nearly everything works well here, and I look forward to their more signature sound, but this checks the country and blues rock boxes.

The Essential Track: Willin’

Up Next: Fleetwood Mac - Kiln House

dallas alice, baby...all you need

[oasisfan35]

Little Feat

Interesting that their debut album focuses more on a pseudo Stones sound than their signature sound that would develop in the 70s as the southern answer to The Band. Surely that’s all an oversimplification, but the point being driven is we are looking at an album steeped somewhere in southern country and blues, though you know it’s them from their loose and easy sound. The subject matter is irreverent at times, but you can’t help but love Willin’, Hamburger Midnight, Crack in Your Door, Forty-Four Blues/How Many More Years, Strawberry Flats and Truck Stop Girl. Snakes for Everything is a nice cover. Nearly everything works well here, and I look forward to their more signature sound, but this checks the country and blues rock boxes.

The Essential Track: Willin’

Up Next: Fleetwood Mac - Kiln House

dallas alice, baby...all you need

Saw Tom Petty at Red Rocks in '14 and Willin' is what I actually remember most.

[liebzz]

The Kinks - Lola Versus the Powerman and the Moneygoround, Pt. 1

Arthur… may be king, but this one’s damn close to it. There’s quite a bit of dark humor hanging around an album contrasting the pureness of Lola against the hungry money making machine, but it adds a sense of charm to an already charming band. I’d have a hard time finding a single poorly executed song here, for even when they take chances they work, like on the ridiculous Apeman, or even The Moneygoround. Lola is classic stuff, but don’t sleep on the opener The Contender, Rats, and the closing Powerman. He’ll everything is great here.

The Essential Track: Lola

Up Next: Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother

[liebzz]

Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother

The title track here is the heart of this album, a precise orchestral movement that hits the 23 minute mark, but doesn’t quite feel all that long. It’s a moment where the future of Pink Floyd can be seen in its careful arrangements, every moment feeling intricately planned versus say the psychedelia of the Grateful Dead, where sketches are made and altered in the live setting. There’s certainly virtue and considerable legend behind both approaches. The album of course doesn’t stop there, with the Waters’ If being of a Waters tune, Fat Old Sun building nicely around Gilmour’s guitar, Summer ‘68 which is maybe the most accessible song on the album, and Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast, which is a collage of sounds that includes musical interludes around everything from what sounds like pouring cereal, cooking bacon, chewing, and the sounds of cups and utensils on a table. It’s a strange album for sure, but one that ushers in an even better era to come.

The Essential Track: Atom Heart Mother

Up Next: The Stooges - Funhouse

[VinylGuy]

yeah Atom Heart Mother is such a great album. Its never discussed as one of the greats from PF and it is. I remember being surprised on how much i loved it when i listened to it the first time.

[liebzz]

The Stooges - Funhouse

From a meticulously crafted Pink Floyd piece in Atom Heart Mother (at least the song), to a beautiful mess in the Stooges’ Funhouse. This album comes off as even more raw and unsettling than the first, in large part in doing away with much of the classic rock-isms that are present on the first to raw drive in the second. In here, you can hear a band many years ahead of its time, and every badass the early 90s rock band pretty much owes their career to this thing. Down on the Street, Loose, Dirt, 1970, and Fun House are all epic throwdowns melding the yet to be formed punk and yet to be realized metal and grunge all into one concocted pot of pure visceral energy. The guitar tones here might be the star, emotive and powerful without bluesy signatures - pure rock and roll mayhem.

The Essential Track: 1970

Up Next: Black Sabbath

[liebzz]

Black Sabbath

There are just those moments and those albums that are so impactful when you hear them that every time you are reminded at how they changed your perspective on what rock music is and can be. For me, it had been the opening of Led Zeppelin I, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Radiohead’s Everything in its Right Place, the whole rush of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and the like in the early 90s… on that list is Black Sabbath, the song and the album. It may not be my favorite of theirs offhand, but taking those big guitar riffs that had been filtered though the heavy blues of a Cream, Led Zeppelin, or even the stuff we’d just covered with Jeff Beck, and stripping out the blues for a pure heavy rock expression is the true start of a new genre. This document is up to that task from the opening notes until the end. Paranoid has the most epic and known tracks, but this one sets the stage for that.

The Essential Track: Black Sabbath

Up Next: Black Sabbath - Paranoid

[epilogue]

Cat Stevens - Tea for the Tillerman

Add this to the list of classic albums I never got to before this. It’s really remarkable how well honed these songs are - they have in innate instinct for when to kick up the intensity and when to lay back to maximize impact. Wild World is the real can’t miss classic on here. There’s plenty else that are shouldn’t misses though, especially with that intense/relaxed dynamic that makes the songs have 3 dimensions, like Miles From Nowhere, On the Road to Find Out and Father and Son. This is an altogether excellent album that runs well from start to finish.

The Essential Track: Wild World

Up Next: Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water

This is one of my favorite albums of all time. Almost every song in here is better then Wild World.

[liebzz]

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Sabbath up the ante on this one, as the songs are tighter, more focused, and filled with some of the most iconic riffs ever. War Pigs, Paranoid, and Iron Man are so classic that these songs alone make this a great album, and frankly the quality doesn’t let up at any point here. They just found the next level and tore it up. Electric Funeral seems way ahead of its time, Jack the Stripper/Fairies Wear Boots is an epic finale, and Planet Caravan is evidence that they don’t need to be at max volume to be impactful. Such a massive great record.

The Essential Track: Paranoid

Up Next: Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

[liebzz]

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

We start looking at ‘71 albums by finishing a trilogy of albums by Black Sabbath. My initial thoughts on hearing the first half of this album is how much Soundgarden had been influenced by this sound. Sweet Leaf and After Forever are both absolutely killer tracks to start this album, which at that point was at least matching Paranoid. Children of the Grave and Lord of This World are also big highlights here, just absolutely amazing hard rock music. Into the Void is also solid here. Even though I had heard the first two before (and weirdly stopped as if I had reached the mountaintop), this was actually stands up to those albums easily. I guess I learn something new every day.

The Essential Track: Sweet Leaf

Up Next: Jimi Hendrix - The Cry of Love

[liebzz]

Jimi Hendrix - The Cry of Love

A little mini-journey into the post-humous album. There’s considerable legend and debate it at least seemed as to what was coming next from Jimi Hendrix, and he left a whole recording sessions; or perhaps multiples of them, behind upon his untimely passing. And so we have a number of albums that either attempted to answer that question or at least compile the stuff left over. On this one, we get a bit of an uneven but still essential compilation of that, with Freedom, Ezy Ryder, Angel, and In From the Storm worthy of the great output Hendrix put out during his lifetime.

The Essential Track: In From the Storm

Up Next: Jimi Hendrix - Rainbow Bridge

[liebzz]

Jimi Hendrix - Rainbow Bridge

Much like The Cry of Love, this one is somewhat of a mixed bag based on its nature as a compilation of leftover tracks. The live version of Hear My Train A-Coming from Berkeley is awesome no doubt, but in terms of studio tracks, these seem more finished, and again a handful of these are beloved canon for me: Dolly Dagger, Earth Blues, and Room Full of Mirrors. Look Over Yonder is also pretty fantastic as well as is the instrumental Pali Gap. I also enjoy Hey Baby (New Risint Sun), so yeah nearly everything is worthy.

The Essential Track: Earth Blues

Up Next: Janis Joplin - Pearl

[Kevin Davis]

the instrumental Pali Gap

This is quite possibly my favorite Hendrix track. Just lovely.

[wease]

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

We start looking at ‘71 albums by finishing a trilogy of albums by Black Sabbath. My initial thoughts on hearing the first half of this album is how much Soundgarden had been influenced by this sound. Sweet Leaf and After Forever are both absolutely killer tracks to start this album, which at that point was at least matching Paranoid. Children of the Grave and Lord of This World are also big highlights here, just absolutely amazing hard rock music. Into the Void is also solid here. Even though I had heard the first two before (and weirdly stopped as if I had reached the mountaintop), this was actually stands up to those albums easily. I guess I learn something new every day.

The Essential Track: Sweet Leaf

Up Next: Jimi Hendrix - The Cry of Love

You mention Soundgarden being influenced and they did cover Into The Void.