Top 10 Best County Albums Ever

Keep in mind, these are just the ones that I love the best. NOT a list of the Most Important/Influential or what have you. Just my favorites. Some might be considered classic country, folk, alt.country, country-rock… doesn’t matter. I promise these are all great records. In no particular order, but numbered anyway. Ah screw it, I’ll give ya 11:

1.Whiskeytown – Strangers Almanac
2.Gram Parsons – G.P./Grievous Angel
3.Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
4.Loretta Lynn – Van Lear Rose
5.Johnny Cash – The Legend of Johnny Cash
6.Ryan Adams & the Cardinals Jacksonville City Nights
7.Old Crow Medicine Show – Big Iron World
8.Old 97’s – Too Far To Care
9.Bob Dylan – John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline
10.Drive-By Truckers – Decoration Day
11.Grateful Dead – Workingman’s Dead

Best Albums of the Decade 2000’s

Originally, I set out to compile my list of the Top 20 Albums of the Decade. The 2000’s. Or the Aughts. Yea, I guess we never got around to naming this decade and now it’s already ending. I thought I was realistic by not even attempting a Top 10 Best Albums of the 2000’s, but it turns out even 20 proved difficult. And once I passed 20, the albums just kept flowing and then I thought “okay, Top 40 would be good, since “Top 40” is sort of a tried and true phrase in popular music. Then I hit 50. OK, I’ll do a Top 50, why not! Then I got to 52 and beyond and finally just gave up and let myself list all the great albums I loved this decade and not worry about cutting any out just to keep the list at 20, 40 or 50. So I ended up with 65. Seems a bit excessive, sure. But it’s still only about 6 or 7 per year. And I easily could have added a few more. Actually, I could just call this a Top 50 Best Albums of the Decade list because they’re not numbered, and if you actually read through it and count the exact number of albums, I’m just glad you’re reading our blog.

Please add your Top 5, 10, or 65 favorite albums of the decade (or point out my glaring omissions) in the comments section. Now, on with the list…

Mos Def – Black on Both Sides (1999)
First album on the list and I’m already cheating. This one came out just a couple months before 2000, and is such a great album. One of the best hip-hop albums of all time, even if you don’t see it on such lists in the mainstream media. So why not kick off this list with the last great album of the previous century?

2000

Queens of the Stone Age – Rated R

OutKast – Stankonia

Aimee Mann – Bachelor No. 2, or the last remains of the dodo

Talib Kweli & Hi Tek – Reflection Eternal

Radiohead – Kid A

U2 – All That You Can’t Leave Behind
It’s pretty easy to hate on these grandiose mega-stars, but this was and is a truly great U2 album made several years after most of us figured they’d never do it again.

D’Angelo – Voodoo

Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker

Ghostface Killah – Supreme Clientele

2001

Bob Dylan – Love and Theft

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
This one would probably make the list even there were only 5 albums on it. Songwriting, atmosphere, and using the studio as an instrument without getting too cute or overdoing it. It’s all here, a classic peak from a great band.

Tool – Lateralus

Jay Z – The Blueprint

Whiskeytown – Pneumonia

2002

Sonic Youth – Murray Street
This is how I love my Sonic Youth. This album and the three that have followed are all really good. I actually like this (and those other recent ones) more than their old classics. Blasphemy for hardcore SY fans and a nation of hipsters, I know.

Elvis Costello – When I Was Cruel

Bright Eyes – Lifted, Or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

The Roots – Phrenology
A bit all over the place stylistically and a bit long, but still mostly brilliant. It’s like their White Album.

The Death of Michael Jackson

So there was Johnny Carson doing his nightly show up in heaven. He was particularly giddy to have been recently reunited with longtime sidekick Ed McMahon. Then they were joined by the incomparable Farrah Fawcett. She was the hottest woman on the planet back when that title was only held by one person. Back before the internet and Maxim magazine plastered half-naked chicks all over the walls of society to the point that we stopped noticing. No, back then, it was just Farrah and that over-the-top white-tooth smile shining down from the infamous poster of her in that now-modest one-piece bathing suit.

Johnny was cracking jokes about yet another disgraced and disgraceful politician who’d cheated on his wife. This time another Republican who’d previously railed against gay marriage and how it would allegedly “destroy the sanctity of marriage.” Ha. Well that South Carolina Governor was soon the happiest man in the world: he was quickly pushed off the front pages. They say things come in 3’s, and sure enough right after Farrah and Ed had joined Johnny…the surprise musical guest showed up: Michael Jackson was dead at the age of 50.

I’ll never forget watching that Motown 25th Anniversary TV show when MJ and the Jacksons rocked the house and Michael in particular was off the hook, performing “Billie Jean” with that moonwalk and the other dance sequences. It was amazing.

Watching it now, he’s obviously lip synching. I can’t remember if I knew that then or even cared. His stage presence, the buzz from the crowd, the fact that he was basically just dancing and pretending to sing along with a pre-recorded track, and yet he connected with both the live audience and the TV viewers. That just doesn’t seem to happen like that anymore. People are spoiled. They DVR it or wait to catch it on youtube or they read on the internet ahead of time what songs will be performed. But that night we were all glued to the TV “live,” and the actual live audience was on their feet, clapping along, screaming at the very beginning like “holy shit we’re about to watch a dude who does what he does better than anyone does anything!” like Michael Jordan was about to hit the game winning shot or Joe Montana was gonna drive the 49ers down the field to win the Super Bowl.

And then, toward the end, he goes into some dance moves and all of a sudden he’s just inexplicably gliding backwards in that moonwalk. At the time it was like “WHAT? I didn’t know humans could do that!” It was like someone had just levitated on the street before our eyes. He even hit the moonwalk again a minute later. As if to confirm, yea, you saw that right…. I’m magically gliding backwards. And then eventually the track starts fading and he’s still sorta lip-synching along. Like they didn’t even need to try to pretend that it wasn’t a lip synch. Why bother. It didn’t matter. He’d nailed it.

I was never a big MJ fan per se…. certainly appreciated the hits from Off The Wall and Thriller (and of course the timeless Jackson 5 hits) as an impressionable young music fan at the time. So I’m not terribly sad or shocked today. I’ve made plenty of Jacko jokes in the past and perhaps will again in the future… but this isn’t really the time for that. It’s nice to reflect a bit on the talent that made him such a big deal before all the weirdness happened and the Thriller went from Bad to worse…

I recently saw the bust of O.J. Simpson at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was an amazing football player, but then he became O.J. from the movies and Hertz commercials, then the O.J. we all know and loathe now. Like different people. Similar type thing with Michael Jackson.

The Michael Jackson that everyone is remembering and celebrating today has actually already been gone for a long time.

Pink Floyd Discography Review

The following are reviews of every Pink Floyd studio album from 1967-1983. There are no greatest hits, compilations, solo, live recordings, or post-Waters albums reviewed:

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967)
Floyd’s unheralded, and underrated, debut album.  Recorded at the same time as The Beatles Sgt. Peppers (and in the same studio-Abbey Road), it’s hard not to notice a few similarities between the two. Rumor has it that Lennon and McCartney used to sneak into the Floyd mixing sessions to hear what they were up to.  This is Pink Floyd as a psychedelic-pop band, not the artsy, self-indulgent “acid rockers” that they later became known as.  Whereas The Beatles were well into their careers by this point and first starting to experiment with drugs and the wonders of the recording studio, Floyd was still a young, undeveloped pop act that was writing tripped out songs about gnomes, strange cats, and galaxies.  Lyrically and musically, this album belongs to Syd Barrett. The underground London hippie scene was in full effect at this point, and this album reflects those times. Listening to it now, parts are dated and somewhat corny. But if you put yourself in the mind frame of 1967 and compare this album to other “psychedelic” albums of the time, you could sense that Floyd wasn’t just some drop in the pan band that was going to disappear. They were just beginning.

Highlights: Astronomy Domine, Interstellar Overdrive, Bike, Lucifer Sam
Could Do Without: The Gnome, Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk

A Saucerful of Secrets (1968)
By this point, Floyd was still a struggling band on the circuit and Syd Barrett’s drug abuse and mental state were taking their toll. Syd was relieved of his duties during the recording and replaced by David Gilmour. This is the only Floyd album that technically contained a 5-member lineup, with Barrett and Gilmour splitting the guitar parts.  The tensions within the band at this time are apparent on the album. Waters was starting to take over the writing from Barrett, but was still far off from his future works. This album sounds like Floyd at a crossroads trying to define themselves. It was also the beginning of the change in sound for the band. With the absence of Barrett’s LSD laced lyrics and song structures, longer, more atmospheric numbers started appearing. This is NOT a pop album.

Highlights:  Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun, A Saucerful of Secrets, Let There Be Light
Could Do Without:  Jugband Blues, Remember a Day, See Saw