The star album from this selection has to be The Fall's Live At The Witch Trials. This is one of the formative post-punk albums that set the direction of my musical taste.
I've gone on to amass a ridiculous number of The Fall albums over the years and they are (possibly as a consequence) my most-played band on last.fm with over 63,000 scrobbles since 2012. The Fall's debut, it kicked of a splendid series of albums, probably peaking with Grotesque and Hex Enduction Hour. But as John Peel (I think) said - always the same but always different. The Fall may have made some albums that weren't so good as others in their discography but I don't think they made any truly awful ones.
But really there weren't many 5 rated albums I wasn't already familiar with.
I really didn't like the Joan Baez and Mylo albums. Nor was I swayed by another Beastie Boys album.
| 400
Feb 13 2025 |
Live At The Witch Trials | The Fall | 5 |
2.65 |
| I was introduced to The Fall by a room mate back in 1979 with this album. It is an absolutely terrific post-punk clatter of an album with Mark E Smith's vocals to the fore. I still don't think it's the best Fall album, but what a debut. I went on to buy pretty much all their albums as they were released - until Smith died in 2018. This is an essential album. | ||||
| 399
Feb 12 2025 |
Superfuzz Bigmuff | Mudhoney | 4 |
2.93 |
| I thought this was pretty good fun as an album, though the only version my streaming service had was an extended 2CD version. I'm not sure how influential it was, but I definitely enjoyed it. | ||||
| 398
Feb 11 2025 |
Cosmo's Factory | Creedence Clearwater Revival | 3 |
3.92 |
| This is the second CCR album I've had so far on this list, and I think by this album their creative juices were fading. There's a bit to much chugging along in some tracks. | ||||
| 397
Feb 10 2025 |
Chicago Transit Authority | Chicago | 1 |
3.19 |
| Oh, I really don't like this kind of noodly-doodly jazz-rock. This is truly horrible. I never want to hear this album again. | ||||
| 396
Feb 09 2025 |
Tres Hombres | ZZ Top | 2 |
3.43 |
| Texan bar room blues. I didn't find this a very exciting album - if I wanted to play white Texas blues I'd prefer Johnny Winter's The Progressive Blues Experience. | ||||
| 395
Feb 08 2025 |
Live And Dangerous | Thin Lizzy | 3 |
3.32 |
| This is a classic "live" album - live in quotation because of the disputes over how much of this is actually live versus studio overdubs. I saw Thin Lizzy live around this time, and the album does seem to match my recollection of the gig. Despite this not really being to my modern, more experimental, taste in music, I think it remains an important document of the band at their peak and as they navigated the changing musical landscape of the time. I reckon the lyrics are all a bit cliched and trite, but the songs are delivered with great gusto. I eventually grew out of this stuff. | ||||
| 394
Feb 07 2025 |
The Rising | Bruce Springsteen | 2 |
3.04 |
| I'm afraid I find Bruce Springsteen's albums pretty dull stuff, and this is no exception. | ||||
| 393
Feb 06 2025 |
One World | John Martyn | 2 |
2.82 |
| Not really to my taste, though I enjoyed listening to this. The album as a whole had an interesting vibe, and I can see how Martyn attracted an audience for his music. | ||||
| 392
Feb 05 2025 |
The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn | Pink Floyd | 5 |
3.12 |
| This is one of the great Pink Floyd albums and was a key player in the English psych scene. With band leader Syd Barrett at the helm, it's a mixture of psychedelic whimsy, imaginative lyrics, and the beginnings of the 'space rock' jams that Pink Floyd were famous for. Sadly Barrett's mental health meant a line-up change for the follow-up album and the band carried on their experimental ways until the next great album The Dark Side of the Moon. But really this is possibly my favourite Pink Floyd album. I have it on cheap vinyl (in stereo) and on CD in the original mono. | ||||
| 391
Feb 04 2025 |
Music in Exile | Songhoy Blues | 5 |
3.33 |
| This is a cracking good album by a band forced from Timbuktu to Bamako and later to achieve global popularity. They kickstarted the Desert Blues as a genre | ||||
| 390
Feb 03 2025 |
69 Love Songs | The Magnetic Fields | 4 |
2.84 |
| My first reaction was - great, an album I'd not heard before. My second reaction was - it's nearly three hours long! I don't think I can play this many times before I'm presented with the next album... Some of these songs are amusing or interesting, but as a whole the exercise of recording a three hour album of songs about love songs is really rather self-indulgent. Having said that, maybe it's something I'll come back to. | ||||
| 389
Feb 02 2025 |
Peter Gabriel | Peter Gabriel | 2 |
3.23 |
| I don't think Peter Gabriel had moved on far from his roots in Genesis by the time he recorded this album, and it's far from his best. It's not clear why this album makes this list - I thought it pretty uninteresting. I liked the big single from the album (Solsbury Hill), and the cover is very good. | ||||
| 388
Feb 01 2025 |
Paul's Boutique | Beastie Boys | 1 |
3.46 |
| So, an album constructed with myriad samples, plus the usual braggadocio vocals. This all makes for an album which sounds a bit like a single track on repeat. And what's more, my music streaming service only appears to have an extended 20th anniversary version. This isn't a musical style that appeals to me. | ||||
| 387
Jan 31 2025 |
She's So Unusual | Cyndi Lauper | 1 |
3.48 |
| As someone who was really into post-punk music, I'm not particularly familiar with Cyndi Lauper - she always seemed to me to be trying very hard to be wacky, zany and outrageous, but always ending up looking a bit gauche. That coupled with her voice, which always seemed a bit grating to me, has meant I've never spent much time listening to her music (though I heave heard 'Girls Just Want to Have Fun' - rather too many times). So when this album came up on the list, I was keen to give it a go. I think I lasted three tracks. I know this was popular, and Lauper probably shifted gazillions of units, but I don't think this is a great album, nor is it an album one must listen to. | ||||
| 386
Jan 30 2025 |
You Are The Quarry | Morrissey | 4 |
2.87 |
| I didn't expect to see this album come up! I like Morrissey's lyrics - often oblique, often startling, sometimes straightforward - and I've liked his singing since The Smiths, but I find the music a bit anodyne. | ||||
| 385
Jan 29 2025 |
Tanto Tempo | Bebel Gilberto | 2 |
3.06 |
| This album just sort of washes along past me. | ||||
| 384
Jan 28 2025 |
Shake Your Money Maker | The Black Crowes | 2 |
3.29 |
| Played this twice now, and I think this is OK, but really is there anything novel here? the first track put me in mind of Led Zeppelin, other tracks were reminiscent of early 70s Stones and Faces. Sort of bar-room heavy rock/R&B. Might be fun to see live but it does seem a bit derivative to me. | ||||
| 383
Jan 27 2025 |
Clube Da Esquina | Milton Nascimento | 3 |
3.11 |
| It's always good that a non-English langauge album turns up on this list. Unfortunately, this album is a little too long and not of a style that really grabs me - essentially not to my taste, and nor do I clearly see how it fits into influencing music - though I guess it may have been highly influential in Brazilian music. | ||||
| 382
Jan 26 2025 |
Low-Life | New Order | 3 |
3.29 |
| New Order is a band I really tried to like over the years. Unfortunately I never took to them, finding them distinctly ordinary. Lyrics are clunky, boringly delivered, and (mostly) the music lacks engagement. | ||||
| 381
Jan 25 2025 |
Garbage | Garbage | 3 |
3.37 |
| This is a fun album, not the greatest. I'd only heard 'Stupid Girl' before playing this record. | ||||