Tuesday, February 05, 2008

The 20 Bestselling Albums and the 20 Most Influential

Click here. I love the album that's #1 on the "most influential" list. I bought it, and I didn't form a band. I still have it, of course.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

But did you leave the banana alone? WHITE LIGHT WHITE HEAT is my favorite for VU, but it's an impressive legacy...except maybe for the album without Cale or Reed.

The five albums within the amorphous body of rock and rap that immediately come to mind as missing are:
Ray Charles WHAT'D I SAY
Gil Scott-Heron SMALL TALK AT 125TH AND LENNOX (since he was better at the birth of rap than the Last Poets were)
THE KINKS ARE THE VILLAGE GREEN PRESERVATION SOCIETY
The Byrds FIFTH DIMENSION--the album that has them at the cusp of nearly everything going on in rock at that time
NUGGETS as assembled by Lenny Kaye

Unknown said...

"Peel Slowly and See." I didn't peel it. Some good suggestions in your list, too.

Anonymous said...

And mine took five seconds off the top of my head...Big Star's THIRD/SISTER LOVERS...The Band's MUSIC FROM BIG PINK...Eno and Byrne's MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS...

Randy Johnson said...

My count is ten of the top selling and seven of the most influential.

Cap'n Bob said...

Meet the Beatles changed the world, paved the way for all these others,and sure influenced the hell out of me.

Anonymous said...

None of any of these fly-by-nighters can hold a candle to the enduring legacy and continuing influence of Molly Bee. In your hearts you know I'm right.

Anonymous said...

Burl Ives is the songmeister that did it for me.

Anonymous said...

Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You," while not an album is certainly the song that generated anything "influential" that occured in angst-addled music that to today powers the sturm and drang of the frustrated and disenfranchised writhing musicians screaming and gutterally howling their way down the artistic path toward Armegeddon. True, it was not an album. But then neither is a hot toddy an echidna, as I believe Professor Irwin corey thoghtfully observed while pondering his untied sneakers on Ed Sullivan's program. Excuse me; I am overcome with fury. I must go out to the desert to sing.

Anonymous said...

The Titan of Relevance is mad as a hatter. "I am the god of hellfire and i bring you...........FIAH!....." was the opening salvo of infuriated despair which The Strange World of Arthur Brown unleashed upon this earth that made all further pig-biting musical anger possible. I have just bludgeoned a braying and frightened bull moose to its boney fore-knees in my wrath at all other opinions.

Anonymous said...

"The Singing Nuns Perform the King Crimson Songbook" is often overlooked in all influential album lists. I remember it was the only album that could get ME into my groove thing.

Anonymous said...

Rick Rude of the WWF once contemplated doing an album of songs devoted to describing his wardrobe of wrestling tights, but I don't know if he ever actually completed it. Had he done so, all these other lists would have been significantly altered.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Rogers prodigeously wrote at least one new song for every episode of his 25,000 show marathon. None of them ever made onto any billboard chart. Thus shining a spotlight onto the corruption of the music industry.

Juri said...

No Stooges, as someone says in the comments. Or MC5, whose "Kick Out the Jams" I never get bored with. But all this could do with the Nuggets compilation. Without it the punk rock proper might've well been left invented.

Or Suicide. They invented the electronic rock (well, not of course, with Lothar and the Hand People already in the sixties). At least I seem to remember that their first album predates Kraftwerk's first. And at the same time they also invented psychobilly, which still seems to enlighten some newer bands.

Anonymous said...

ONLY GWAR MATTERS!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Richard and Bebe Barron invented modern music. So modern that madern music still hasn't caught up to them. Thank you, gentlemen.

Anonymous said...

Only Gwar splatters, actually.