Favorite 25 + 5 Albums Trivia

Top albums (25 studio + 5 live) by decade:

1960s – 3

    #14  The Temptations – In A Mellow Mood (1967)

    #17  Gordon Lightfoot – The Way I Feel (1967)

    #24  Cold Blood (1969)

1970s – 11

1980s – 9

1990s – 3

2000s – 3

2010s – 1

    #4 [LIVE]  Into the Mirror: Del Amitri Live in Concert (2014)

 

Top year – 1971:

    #10  Carole King – Tapestry

    #11  Who’s Next – The Who

    #19  John Prine

    #2 [LIVE]  The Youngbloods – Ride The Wind

    #3 [LIVE]  The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East

LP #1 Daryl Hall & John Oates – Abandoned Luncheonette (1973)

There have been quite a few performers with long and successful careers who nevertheless never topped their debut albums – Marshall Crenshaw, Graham Parker, John Prine, and Sade come to mind. Hall & Oates, however, hit a home run with their second LP rather than their first. (Whole Oates, their debut, has a clever name and includes the brilliant “Fall In Philadelphia” but is otherwise pretty unremarkable.) Every song except for the final track is a pop classic, the production by the legendary Arif Mardin is impeccable, and the album cover is wonderful. I like a lot of their later stuff, but this is by far their best. (And you can still find the CD in some store bargain bins or at Amazon for $5.00!)

 

Favorite tracks:

She’s Gone

Las Vegas Turnaround (The Stewardess Song)

Had I Known You Better Then

When The Morning Comes

I’m Just A Kid (Don’t Make Me Feel Like A Man)

LP #2 Donald Fagen – The Nightfly (1982)

Steely Dan, the long-running collaboration between Fagen and Walter Becker, put out some great albums in their time, but Fagen’s first solo effort actually outshines the best of them. Fagen completely nails the loose concept that he puts forward in the liner notes: “The songs on this album represent certain fantasies that might have been entertained by a young man growing up in the remote suburbs of a northeastern city during the late fifties and early sixties, i.e., one of my general height, weight and build.” “Walk Between Raindrops” would have been a great song for Sinatra – it was actually recorded by Mel Tormé – while “The Goodbye Look” spins a wonderful tale of Caribbean political intrigue. Fagen also does what for me is the definitive version of the Leiber-Stoller classic “Ruby Baby”, eclipsing the fine earlier recordings by the Drifters and Dion.

 

Favorite tracks:

Walk Between Raindrops

The Goodbye Look

Ruby Baby

New Frontier

I.G.Y.

LP #3 David + David – Boomtown (1986)

David Baerwald and David Ricketts came seemingly out of nowhere to record this masterpiece, and seemingly disappeared almost as quickly. Baerwald subsequently released several solo albums, none of which met with much commercial success; Ricketts never released an album under his name. Both stayed in the music biz, however, writing and producing material for other artists. Baerwald is credited with co-founding the “Tuesday Music Club” that launched Sheryl Crow’s career and provided the title for her Tuesday Night Music Club album, for which both Baerwald and Ricketts co-wrote several songs.

 

Boomtown is the album that Daryl Hall & John Oates might have made had they grown up in L.A. and been heavily influenced by Tom Waits and the Police. Most of the tracks depict the seamy side of life in L.A. (or any big city), with characters who are “Being Alone Together” as they are “Swallowed By The Cracks”; the most upbeat track musically (“Ain’t So Easy”) is written from the perspective of a domestic abuser. (No, this is not the CD to put on during your next party.) “River’s Gonna Rise” has broader socio-political implications; it’s apocalyptically brutal, but redemption comes in the chorus (especially for those at all familiar with Greek mythology.)

 

Favorite tracks:

River’s Gonna Rise

A Rock For The Forgotten

Welcome To The Boomtown

Swallowed By The Cracks

LP #4 The Beat Farmers – Tales Of The New West (1985)

While the Beat Farmers did a number of great songs after their debut album – most notably “Riverside”, “Road To Ruin”, and a great cover of Neil Young’s “Powderfinger” – they never put together an entire studio album nearly as great as this one. In addition to “Reason To Believe” (one of the few covers of a Springsteen song that completely surpasses the Boss’s original), the band also did nice versions of Lou Reed’s “There She Goes Again” and John Stewart’s “Never Going Back”. What really makes the album work, however, are the originals, written by current band members Buddy Blue and Jerry Raney, and close associate (and future member) Paul Kamanski. The production by Steve Berlin (of Los Lobos) and Mark Linett is also impeccable.

 

The Beat Farmers are one of the best exemplars of the 1980s “cowpunk” movement, although unlike bands such as the Long Ryders their music steered clear of political overtones. Allmusic.com probably summarized their sound best:  “country, rockabilly, and roots rock with punk energy and a raucous sense of humor.” While “Lost Weekend” is probably the song that best summarizes these elements, their best-known track is probably the short-and-strange “Happy Boy”, which was popularized by Dr. Demento and still gets some airplay today.

 

Favorite tracks:

Lost Weekend

Goldmine

Reason To Believe

Bigger Stones

Selfish Heart

California Kid

LP #5 Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run (1975)

There certainly was never any doubt that a Springsteen album was going to be high on this list. There was a lot of doubt, however, about whether it would be this one, or the previous The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle.

 

Let’s see: “Thunder Road” and “Jungleland” vs. “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” and “4^th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)”. “Born To Run” or “Kitty’s Back”. It was a close call, but as someone said recently, sometimes you gotta make the hard choices.

 

Favorite tracks:

Thunder Road

Jungleland

Born To Run

Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

LP #6 Patti Austin – The Real Me (1988)

Although I don’t really keep track, I’m pretty sure I don’t buy as many albums as I did 20 or 25 years ago. (While I do buy singles on iTunes, my album purchases are still on CD.) One of the reasons for this decline is the disappearance of physical music stores that have enough of a selection to make browsing through the bins a worthwhile endeavor. One of the best places for browsing, of course, was Tower Records; before they opened a store just down the road from me at Congressional Plaza in Rockville, I would make special trips to their more distant stores, in quest of something that no one else would have to add to my collection.

 

Of course, Tower always had music playing over the store’s sound system. Very little of it made much of an impression on me, but one day while I was in their Foggy Bottom store in DC they put on an album that grabbed me immediately. I had never been a big Patti Austin fan, primarily because the songs of hers I’d heard on the radio always sounded pretty generic, but these songs were classics (admittedly some more of my parents’ time than mine) and the arrangements were wonderful. She even manages to surpass the Platters’ version of “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” (which I didn’t think was possible) with a slightly off-the-beat rendition here.

 

Favorite tracks:

Someone Is Standing Outside

Lazy Afternoon

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

How Long Has This Been Going On?

They Can’t Take That Away From Me

LP #7 Marshall Crenshaw (1982)

While Marshall Crenshaw went on to write and record plenty of other great songs during his career – the 2000 compilation The Best of Marshall Crenshaw: This Is Easy is well worth checking out – he never released a better or more consistent set of power-pop nuggets than on his 1982 debut album. Although he did creep into the Top 40 for the first and only time with “Someday, Someway” (which peaked at a modest #36), Crenshaw may be better known for playing Buddy Holly in the 1987 Richie Valens biopic La Bamba. The casting would have been apt even without the physical resemblance; Crenshaw’s tunes do sound something like Holly’s work, but they sound even more like tracks Holly probably would have recorded had he come of age in the 1980s rather than the 1950s. It also doesn’t seem like an accident that Crenshaw co-wrote “Til I Hear It From You”, which was one of the biggest hits for the Gin Blossoms.

 

“Someday, Someway” is my favorite song from the album, but they’re really all pretty great (and if you like that one, you’ll almost certainly like the rest). I was tempted to just write the names of the other songs on slips of paper and draw them out of a hat, which would have produced a list about as good as the one below.

 

Favorite tracks:

Someday, Someway

Rockin’ Around In N.Y.C.

Soldier Of Love

Mary Anne

There She Goes Again

She Can’t Dance

LP #8 Gin Blossoms – New Miserable Experience (1992)

I’ve posted a longer discussion about the Gin Blossoms elsewhere, so I won’t repeat it here. New Miserable Experience didn’t catch on immediately, but it was all over the radio from the summer of ’93 through fall ’94, with 5 of its 12 tracks getting significant radio airplay. The other tracks are well worth a listen as well, especially the poignant “Pieces Of The Night”, which was among the 6 songs on the album written or co-written by the late Doug Hopkins.

 

Favorite tracks:

Pieces Of The Night

Hey Jealousy

Until I Fall Away

Allison Road

Found Out About You

Mrs. Rita

LP #9 Chuck Brown and Eva Cassidy – The Other Side (1992)

If it’s cheating to have this album on my list when I’ve already declared Eva’s Live at Blues Alley to be my all-time favorite live album, then so be it.   ;-)  If you love standards, particularly R&B classics like “Drown In My Own Tears” and “Dark End Of The Street”, and you like (or at least can tolerate) Chuck’s baritone, this one is definitely for you; the two both sing on the first 6 tracks, while the rest feature a couple more duets plus solo turns by each of them. I’ve pretty much exhausted my superlatives for Eva by now (and there’s also a little more about Chuck in the entry for “Bustin’ Loose”), but if you do want more, check out this great 1998 Washington Post column by Jefferson Morley.

 

Favorite tracks:

Over The Rainbow

You’ve Changed

I Could Have Told You So

Dark End Of The Street

Red Top

You Don’t Know Me

LP #10 Carole King – Tapestry (1971)

I’d hate to be forced to choose my favorite 1970s singer-songwriter from the likes of King, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, and James Taylor, but this is without a doubt my favorite album in that genre, and it’s certainly the most commercially successful as well, with over 25 million copies sold. Previously, of course, King was half of one of the most successful songwriting teams of the 1960s, writing the music to pair with Gerry Goffin’s lyrics on classics such as “Up On The Roof”, “One Fine Day”, “Pleasant Valley Sunday”, and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.” (I like the Shirelles’ rendition, but King tops it with a slowed-down version here.) The overall quality of the songs here is so high that I wound up picking my 6 favorite tracks while leaving out both “You’ve Got A Friend” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” (In concert, King enjoys getting all of the men in the audience to sing along with the chorus of the latter.)

 

Favorite tracks:

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

Way Over Yonder

It’s Too Late

So Far Away

I Feel The Earth Move

Smackwater Jack

LP #11 Who’s Next – The Who (1971)

I seldom listen to Classic Rock radio stations. It’s not that the music is bad; it’s just that there’s nothing fresh about it. I feel like I’m listening to the same songs over and over and over and … (even when it’s not Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains the Same” – or the Four Tops’ “It’s The Same Old Song”, which of course would never get played on a Classic Rock station).

 

And yet the tracks on Who’s Next, an album that is as “classic rock” as they come, never seem to get old.

 

Favorite tracks:

Behind Blue Eyes

Won’t Get Fooled Again

Going Mobile

Bargain

LP #12 The Kane Gang – Miracle (1987)

While the Kane Gang wasn’t the best 1980s blue-eyed British soul outfit (think Style Council), and certainly not the most successful (think Simply Red), their second and final album stands out for both its music and lyrics, despite production that’s a bit on the slick side. Their Thatcher-era social consciousness is most obvious on “A Finer Place” (which could have made a great anthem for a variety of marches/demonstrations), but it comes out one way or another in the lyrics to most of the tracks here, from the boy and girl in “Closest Thing To Heaven” (“Lonely with no money to spend”) through the motifs in “King Street Rain” (“Good luck is just passing through on the way to somewhere else”) and “Looking For Gold” (“The place I was born in is fading from the map”). My personal favorite, though, is from “Motortown”, which is the closest they had to a hit in the U.S. (reached #36 on the Billboard Hot 100):

 

The cash may have gone

But there’s hope on loan.

 

Favorite tracks:

Motortown

Closest Thing To Heaven

Looking For Gold

A Finer Place

King Street Rain

LP #13 Graham Parker – Howlin’ Wind (1976)

From an excellent 2012 New York Times column by Bruce Headlam:

 

“Before Elvis Costello, the Sex Pistols or the Clash there was Graham Parker and the Rumour, who anticipated the energy of punk and set the bar for smart, literate lyrics married to a danceable beat. Critics in the United States compared the band impact to Bruce Springsteen’s, but American record buyers didn’t follow suit, possibly because they couldn’t surrender Mr. Springsteen’s thrill of the open road for Mr. Parker’s desperation in an English cul-de-sac.”

 

Parker’s wonderful debut album shows his mastery of a variety of styles, from the ominous power of the title track and the all-time classic “Don’t Ask Me Questions” to the lighter approach of “Soul Shoes”. The acoustic “Between You And Me” (which I think is the first of his songs I ever heard) sounds almost mellow until you listen a little more closely to the lyrics. And with all due respect to Pink Floyd, I’ll take “Back To Schooldays” over “Another Brick In The Wall” any day of the week.

 

Favorite tracks:

Don’t Ask Me Questions

Between You And Me

Howlin’ Wind

Back To Schooldays

Soul Shoes

LP #14 The Temptations – In A Mellow Mood (1967)

A man whose taste is eerily similar to mine noted last year that this album is “extremely well done … with great soulful arrangements of show tunes and some other standards.” That pretty much sums it up; obviously the Temps did a great job on songs by Motown writers such as Smokey Robinson, Norman Whitfield, and Barrett Strong, but this LP shows that they could bring a “Lot O’ Soul” (to borrow from the title of their previous album) to other material as well. In more recent years, established artists releasing “standards” albums has almost become a cliché, but this one is one of the best ever in that genre.

 

Favorite tracks:

The Impossible Dream

Ol’ Man River

Try To Remember

Hello, Young Lovers

With These Hands

LP #15 Peter Gabriel – So (1986)

I have to admit that I’ve never been a Genesis fan, either before or after Gabriel left to start his solo career. (Phil Collins’s solo work does nothing for me either, with one glorious exception.) Gabriel has done some good stuff over the years, but So is the high point of his career (commercially as well as artistically), accessible without pandering to the lowest common denominator. “Big Time” is a classic (along with its video), and “Mercy Street” is one of the most haunting songs ever, but there are several other great tracks on it as well.

 

Favorite tracks:

Big Time

Mercy Street

Sledgehammer

Don’t Give Up

LP #16 James Hunter – People Gonna Talk (2006)

Many thanks to ex-Westatian Mark Gallagher, who first brought this guy to my attention 8 or 9 years ago.

 

Allmusic.com characterizes Hunter as an “English channeler of American soul from days of yore”, which is probably as apt a description as any. What it doesn’t capture is that Hunter manages to draw upon his influences while nevertheless creating a sound that is uniquely his own. As both the lead vocalist and only guitar player in his superb band – Hunter now bills the act as “The James Hunter Six” – his sound heavily features his two sax players to drive his melodies, with his alternately edgy or supremely lyrical guitar work mainly reserved for the bridges of the songs. He also writes superb songs, both uptempo and ballads; one of my favorite Hunter lyrics is from “Don’t Come Back”:

 

Never have revenge in mind

‘Cos an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind

But forgiveness is the business of some other diplomat

So baby don’t come back.

 

This is the best of the band’s albums, but the others are well worth owning. They’re also excellent live. And if you do pick up this CD, you’ll find that Hunter also has talent as a sketch artist, in addition to his gifts as a songwriter, singer, and guitarist. (OK, I’m more than a little jealous.)

 

Favorite tracks:

I’ll Walk Away

People Gonna Talk

Don’t Come Back

You Can’t Win

Kick It Around

LP #17 Gordon Lightfoot – The Way I Feel (1967)

This was another early LP purchase (at the bookstore in the basement of the college center) once I arrived at college. I was feeling pretty adventurous back then with my record purchases – I’m not sure if I’d heard any of these songs before, although I was probably familiar with better-known Lightfoot tracks such as “Early Morning Rain” and “For Lovin’ Me”, which were both covered by Peter, Paul & Mary. Lightfoot’s voice is still in great shape here, the arrangements are effective, and the songs (all written or co-written by Gordon) are great. Over time, I wound up buying all of his albums that I had missed, and picked up new ones as they came out through the end of the Seventies. (WARNING: Stay away from the Gord’s Gold collection, on which many of the tracks are re-recordings.)

 

Favorite tracks:

Canadian Railroad Trilogy

The Way I Feel

Softly

Crossroads

Song For A Winter’s Night

LP #18 This Is Ryan Shaw (2007)

Rather than being a man ahead of his time, Ryan Shaw is a man behind his time. He’s a classic soul singer, who probably would have been a big star had he been working in the 1960s. He’s also an incredibly dynamic live performer – after the release of this album, I caught him at a pre-Preakness outdoor show in Baltimore’s Harbor East neighborhood, an outdoor show at Columbia’s Lake Kittamaqundi (on my birthday no less), the WXPN summer music festival in Philadelphia, and a little later at the Birchmere opening for James Hunter.

 

Shaw wrote my favorite song on the album (“Over & Done”), co-wrote two others (“We Got Love” and “Nobody”), and covered three well-known R&B tunes – the classic “Lookin’ For A Love”, which he makes his own; Wilson Pickett’s “I Found A Love”; and Jackie Wilson’s “I’ll Be Satisfied”. He also did some older but obscure soul tracks, most notably “Working On A Building Of Love”, a Holland-Dozier-Holland song that could have been a big hit for the Jackson 5 back in the day.

 

This Is Ryan Shaw got good reviews and a Grammy nomination, but didn’t do much sales-wise. Unfortunately, for 2012’s Real Love Shaw abandoned the canny mix of covers and a few originals that made his debut such a treat, co-writing 9 of the 12 tracks, only one of which (the concluding “Morning Noon & Night”) is particularly noteworthy. Appropriately, he also played Stevie Wonder in Motown: The Musical on Broadway.

 

Favorite tracks:

Over & Done

Working On A Building Of Love

Lookin’ For A Love

We Got Love

I Am Your Man

LP #19 John Prine (1971)

Like Sade, John Prine went on to have a long and reasonably successful musical career, but never managed to top the magic of that debut album. Prine certainly never got much airplay on the radio, but I’d bet that most of what he gets these days (on adult-alternative and Americana stations) comes from songs on this record.

 

Fun fact – “Illegal Smile” was the theme song for a 1974 sitcom on ABC called “The Texas Wheelers.” Despite (or perhaps because of) the music, the show only lasted for 8 episodes, despite starring Jack Elam, Gary Busey, and Mark Hamill.

 

Favorite tracks:

Paradise

Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore

Angel From Montgomery

Sam Stone

Illegal Smile