Continue reading »]]> (This is the first of ten part series exploring the “Top 100 Albums of All Time.” For more on the idea behind the series, and the formula used for developing the list, please read the introductory piece.)

100.) Use Your Illusion II

Guns N’ Roses

Geffen; 1991

Geoausch Score: 3.64

Cultural Score: 4.0

Cumulative Score: 3.76

We start the countdown in 1991, a year we will continue to visit throughout the countdown. Among the albums released that year, none were more eagerly anticipated than the Use Your Illusion combo put out by Guns N’ Roses. Of the two, Use Your Illusion II is a far superior album. “Civil War,” the almost 8 minute long epic, kicks off the album and shows a more socially conscious side of a band known for being about “sex , drugs & rock n’ roll.” The song also happens to be the last GnR song to feature the work of Steven Adler on drums. “You Could Be Mine,” the first single off the album, captures the classic GnR sound, with wailing Slash riffs and the pounding Duff McKagan bass line. However, it is the hidden jewels like “Get in the Ring” and “Yesterdays,” as well as inspiring cover of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” that really make this album stand out and helped it earn a spot in the “Top 100 Albums of All Time.”

99.) No Need to Argue

The Cranberries

Island; 1994

Geoausch Score: 3.90

Cultural Score: 3.5

Cumulative Score: 3.77

A few years ago, No Need to Argue probably doesn’t make this list, but that’s simply because I had never given the album much of a shot outside of “Zombie” and “Ode to My Family.” In all honesty, like many, I hadn’t given The Cranberries much thought at all since the mid 90′s. But then I began digitizing our music library, I rediscovered this album when going through my wife’s CDs. Since then, songs from No Need to Argue have consistently been a part of my daily playlists. Without a doubt, Dolores O’Riordan, both as lyricist and vocalist, makes the album. She penned songs unique to her own experiences and nailed them. While the album possesses a relatively low cultural impact score–there were much more influential albums being made during this time–it has a higher Geoausch score, thanks in part to the album’s cohesive nature. Politics, history, love and literature, No Need to Argue touches all the bases, leaving this listener completely satisfied.

98.) Red Headed Stranger

Willie Nelson

Columbia; 1975

Geoausch Score: 3.67

Cultural Score:  4.00

Cumulative Score: 3.78

Nashville country is a business built on selling radio singles, not albums. It should come as no surprise then that Willie Nelson, the most famous country artist to make a career out of rebelling against the Nashville machine, gave us country music’s only contribution to my “Top 100 Albums of All Time” list,  Red Headed Stranger. Recorded in 1975, Nelson had complete creative control on Stranger, and it serves a symbolic middle-finger to what Nashville is and was–without a doubt the most important album in the country cannon. Without it, there would be no outlaw country, no “Texas music” scene, and, arguably, no Americana genre that has produced many of the great singer-songwriters over the past 30+ years. As with most great albums, Stranger is best experienced as a whole, and not in pieces, which flies in the face of the conventional Nashville wisdom. Indeed, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” a cover, might be the only familiar song to the casual music fan, but it’s the story the album tells, with its eternal themes of love, heart break, loss, grief and redemption that draw the listener in and makes me question whether or not Stranger deserves to be much higher up on my list.

97.) Energy

Operation Ivy

Lookout Records; 1989

Geoausch Score: 3.67

Cultural Score: 4.00

Cumulative Score: 3.78

Operation Ivy took The Clash and added a dash of California. This resulted in a punk renaissance that began in the San Francisco Bay, moved southward down the California coast line, and then spread like wildfire across the country during the 90’s. What Op Ivy did that was so amazing, and which Energy captures so perfectly, was to take the underlying themes of punk—suspicions of government, inevitable change, resistance of rules, self-sufficiency, individual freedom, etc.—and blended together with a more harmonic, more accessible brand of music than their predecessors. Listen closely and you will hear the sound that provided the blueprint for Green Day, Sublime, Goldfinger, Blink-182 and many others. If you’ve never experienced Energy in its entirety, I highly recommend picking up a copy and doing just that. However, if you’re looking for just the highlights, download “Knowledge,” “The Crowd,” and “Unity” and give them a go on your iPod. You will not be disappointed.

96. Ride the Lightning

Metallica

Megaforce/Elektra; 1984

Geoausch Score: 3.67

Cultural Score: 4.00

Cumulative score: 3.78

Certain songs are indeed timeless. Recently, I heard “For Whom the Bell Tolls” for the first time in years. From the pounding of the double-bass drums, to the opening bass and guitar riffs, it was as if I knew every beat of the song intimately, the product of having listened to the track countless times as a teen. The fact that a metal band would be inspired by Ernest Hemingway makes it even better, but Ride the Lightning is much more than simply “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Indeed, it’s not even the best song on the album. That honor goes to “Fade to Black.” From top to bottom, Lightning is filled with tracks that will stay within your memory forever—and that my friend is a good thing.

95. Born in the USA

Bruce Springsteen

Columbia; 1984

Geoausch Score: 3.67

Cultural Score: 4.0

Cumulative Score: 3.78

1984 was a big year for me. I turned 6 the same year L.A. hosted the Olympics, the Karate Kid and Footloose were both released in their original incarnations, and Ronald Wilson Reagan won a second term as President of the United States. It also was the year Bruce Springsteen released Born in the USA, which would get a lot of airplay in the Ellis household over the next two years. While I celebrated these events, the reelection of Reagan no doubt  upset The Boss, and if you were to ask him, I’m sure he would tell you that Born in the USA was written, in part, as a repudiation of the policies of the Reagan Administration. This doesn’t take away from the overall beauty and power of the album.

94.)  Meat is Murder

The Smiths

Rough Trade; 1985

Geoausch Score: 3.70

Cultural Score: 4.00

Cumulative Score: 3.80

Before I was hip, I remember seeing a Smiths’ Greatest Hits CD in Sam Goody (circa 1993) and thinking, “The Smiths? Must be the most the most generic band ever.) I was 15, give me a break. I didn’t discover Morrissey and The Smiths until college and since then, it’s been complete infatuation. Meat is Murder served as my introduction and it continues to get massive play on my iPod. It contains The Smiths’ most commercially successful song, “How Soon is Now,” but there are many other, lesser known, gems as well, including, “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore,” “What She Said,” and “Barbarism Begins at Home.”

93.) Off the Wall

Michael Jackson

Epic; 1979

Geoausch Score: 3.70

Cultural Score: 4.00

Cumulative Score: 3.80

Off the Wall signaled Michael Jackson’s evolution from Motown legend to pop superstar. You can think Quincy Jones for that. His influence is heard throughout the album and it serves as harbinger of what was to come over the next 20+ years. No longer was Michael a little kid singing for the Jackson 5, now he was his own man, making music for adults. Ironic, I know, but still a damn good album and more than worthy of the #93 spot on our countdown.

92.) Me Against the World

2Pac

Interscope; 1995

Geoausch Score: 3.47

Cultural Score: 4.5

Cumulative Score: 3.81

2Pac–the greatest rap artist the world has ever know–PERIOD. This is where it began–at least his mass market appeal. Prior to Me Against the World, Pac was known as more of a straight up “gangsta rapper,” but with the beat he dropped in this album, he began to move more towards the G-funk sound that defined most successful West Coast acts. Pac was always known as a master lyricist, but now he had the smooth beats to accompany it, helping it become a huge crossover success among fans of other genres.

91.) Disintegration

The Cure

Fiction; 1989

Geoausch Score: 3.75

Cultural Score: 4.00

Cumulative Score: 3.83

Break out the eyeliner and tease your hair, The Cure makes an appearance at #91. As a hardcore fan of The Cure, I have a difficult relationship with Disintegration. There are some great songs on the album–”Prayers for Rain,” “Fascination Street,” “Lullaby,” and “Love Song” to name a few–but these are overshadowed by the abomination that is “Pictures of You.” That song causes true fans of the band so much pain and heartache that’s it hard sometimes to listen to the album in its entirety. Even so, the good far outweigh the bad, and it is the bands most successful album commercially (thanks in large part to “Pictures of You” ).

Continue reading »]]> When I download an album, I immediately put it through the Geoausch test. After loading it on to my iPod, I  put on a nice, comfortable pair of headphones and listen to it all the way through, waiting in eager anticipation, with my finger on the wheel, for the songs to speak to me, so that I can assign an appropriate rating. Every song  begins at a 3 for me. In order to make it into a steady rotation on my iPod, a song needs to score a 4 or higher,so when I purchase an album, one of the ways I judge it is on the number of 4 & 5 star songs it scores.

The Shins are a band that have consistently scored high in the Geoausch test–90% of my Shins inventory has scored a 4 or higher. Based on this history, I had high expectations for their latest release, “Port of Morrow.”  Unfortunately, the album fell well short of expectations.

This does not mean the album is without its high notes. Indeed, the album’s lead track, “The Rifle’s Spiral,” (a 4 on the Geoausch scale) is a delightful glimpse of how I felt this band’s sound should have evolved for their 4th album. Unfortunately, this is the best the album has to offer. It’s all downhill from there. The only other track on the album to score better than a 3 was the Belle & Sebastian-like “Bait and Switch.”

Perhaps even more disturbing is that for the first time in my life, I’ve found music by The Shins I simply don’t like. “Port of Morrow” features two songs–”It’s Only Life” and “No Way Down”–which registered scores of 1. The only comparison I know to make is early Newsboys. Yes, I just compared a couple of The Shins’ songs–a band that rivals Fleet Foxes on the hip scale–to a cheesey 90′s Christian band.

Do yourself a favor and save some money at the same time. Refrain from buying the album. If you really want to sample the new album, download “The Rifle’s Spiral” and “Bait and Switch.” If you still need some more, maybe give “September” a shot. Other than that, you won’t be missing anything except disappointment.

Continue reading »]]> About a  decade ago, I visited Little Rock for a writer’s conference and found myself holed up in my hotel room on a Friday night. Board and hungry, I set out to explore the downtown area and stumbled into a little pizzeria. I hoped only to find a good pizza and a cold beer.

I can’t remember anything about the pizza, but I do remember this alt-country band playing in a space attached to the restaurant. I was an admitted music snob and could find something wrong with virtually any band, but this band was definitely unique and had nothing negative to say at the end of the night. In fact, I wanted to hear more.

I later learned that band was Lucero and I immediately went out and picked up their 2002 release, Tennessee. It did not take me long to fall in love with that album. In fact, I had it as #6 on my “Top 10 Albums of the Decade.”

Tennessee helped earn the band a large loyal following and eventually a major-label. Now the boys from Memphis are back once again with a new album, Women & Work, and this time they have enlisted the services of a couple Memphis legends–Jim Spake and Scott Thompson. The band had previously added Rick Steff on keys. The result is a decidedly more mature-sounding album that appears to be targeted towards a different demographic than the band’s previous releases.

The Lucero I saw in Little Rock back in 2002 were equal parts Merle Haggard and Social Distortion. Indeed, the sound was eerily similar to some of Mike Ness’ solo work, with some critics going as far to describe lead singer, Ben Nichols, as Kurt Cobain with a Southern accent.

Like Sweethearts of the Rodeo and The Gilded Palace of Sin, Lucero’s early work appealed to a young, hip crowd, as opposed to the Confederate flag-flying, NASCAR watching, crowd normally drawn to Southern rock.Their fan base was more likely to listen to Ryan Adams and Wilco than the Allman Brothers or Molly Hatchet. In fact, their fan base was probably more like to listen to Bad Religion and Fugazi than Ryan Adams or Wilco.

With Women & Work, the band  displays a much different–cleaner–sound. Technically, it’s a much more refined piece of work than their previous efforts. The addition of Sparke, Thompson and Steff definitely helped the musicianship of the band, but it’s lost a lot of the edge that made them so attractive to outliers like myself. Many of the tracks come off sounding like Lynyrd Skynyrd–the current incarnation, not the pre-plane crash line-up. Indeed, you could walk into any bar in Shreveport and hear a band banging out music like the tunes feature on Women & Work.

In spite of that, Nichols continues to prove he is a great lyricist. Now, if the band would just return to their original sound.

Continue reading »]]> The first time I listened to Nirvana’s Bleach, I remember imagining what it must have been like to experience that album before the hype. Like most people, I didn’t realize that Nirvana had released an album prior to Nevermind, until they appeared on MTV’s Unplugged and I heard “About a Girl.” I knew I had to get a hold of the album, but this was before music was readily available on the Internet, and I was a 15-year old kid trapped in the cultural wastelands of East Texas, so it took me a couple of years to find it, but finally, in 1996, I found a copy at a CD Warehouse in Texarkana.

Amidst the primal energy and distortion, you could hear Nirvana’s raw potential, albeit a potential not yet realized. It’s similar to the raw potential I hear in Open Your Heart, the new release from The Men. This high-energy, up-tempo album serves as a reminder that rock n’ roll does indeed still has a pulse and The Men might be just the band to revive it, just as Nirvana did 20 years ago.

I know most bands hate comparisons, but collectively this album speaks to the memory of some of the greatest bands of the past 25 years. It leads off with “Turn It Around”, a track that begs comparison to the Foo Fighters. On the albums second track, “Animal,” we hear the influences of Mudhoney and the Pixies. Ever wonder what would happen if you mixed Texas is the Reason and Buzzcocks? Well, the album’s title track gives us a pretty good idea of how this experiment might sound, which is not too bad.

While The Men experiment with different sounds, it never comes across as stagnant or sterile, adjectives that could describe most P.C. (post-Cobain) bands. Instead, the album reminds us of what rock music should be–fresh, exciting, and, most of all, promising. The Men will never be credited as the world’s most talented musicians and many of the songs leave room for growth, but rock isn’t as much about technical precision as it is a state of mind–a state of mind this band openly embraces.

Some say that music is cyclical, if you examine the history of rock you begin to see a pattern. Every 20 years or so, rock pulls itself up from the mire and reinvents itself, by expanding on its own internal, eternal themes.

Unfortunately, I’ll never be able to experience Bleach as anything other than “Nirvana’s first album,” although I can travel back to 1989 in my memory and understand its significance in historical context. I remember the time well, including the insipid garbage that passed as rock. I imagine that anyone who had the pleasure of experiencing the album back then must have found hope that a rock Renaissance was not too far around the corner. And indeed it was.

For the past two decades, every great traditional rock album has come from a handful of previously established artists–Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen, etc. Not since the early 90′s have we seen a new act emerge  capable of consistently putting out new, quality material. While I don’t want to draw out the Nirvana/The Men comparison too far, listening to Open Your Heart gives me hope a band will rise up soon to carry on that torch, possibly The Men.

If you’re like me and purchase most of your music on iTunes, you will not find the complete album there. Instead, I recommend downloading it from Amazon where it was going for less than $6.00.

Continue reading »]]> In my late teens and into my early 20′s, I amassed quite the collection of Pearl Jam bootlegs of various live recordings and previously unreleased “B-sides.” It began with discovering a CD at the local music store that was filled with songs the band had covered at various shows in the past, everything from “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”, to “Crazy Mary”, and of course “Baba O’Riley.”

At the time, I was still more enamored with the “hits” than exploring the band’s deeper cuts, but I continued to purchase these CDs of their live shows because, can you really ever have too many versions of “Alive” or “Yellow Ledbetter?”

Over the years, as my musical tastes evolved, my Pearl Jam collection suffered through the toils of neglect, some were lost or broken, others trashed because of the low audio quality. The last time I remembered listening to one was pre-9/11, so I assumed that all of the CDs had disappeared. However, last night as I was going through some old CDs, I stumbled across one and ripped into my digital library. Now it stands to become one of the top played albums on my iPod.

It’s disc 2 from a concert recorded on September 16, 1996, in the iconic Key Arena in Seattle. The muffled recording and continuous looping let me know this was recorded by a fan and not by the band. Pearl Jam has long taken the path of bands like the Grateful Dead and Fugazi in encouraging fans to record their live shows. In fact, the band was so serious about ensuring their fans have a recording of shows they attend, that around 2000, the band began issuing “official bootlegs” (for a price, of course), to ensure fans get the highest quality of recording.

This particular show and CD have particular sentimental value to me. First, the show took place on my 18th birthday and served as the kick-off to the No Code Tour. Over the years, No Code has become my favorite Pearl Jam album and it’s these songs that the band treats with the most care on this particular live set. I only have Disc 2, which begins at the tail end of the set list, but also includes the encore sets.

As I sat down to listen to the CD, I decided I would try something new–tweeting a concert as I listen to it on CD. Below are my thoughts, preserved in no more than 140-characters at a time.

All in all, great experience. Would love to uncover some more great Pearl Jam bootlegs and tweet them in the future.

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Generally speaking, and I realize I stand with the minority on this position, I consider The Beatles, both collectively and individually, to be over-hyped.

When it comes to rock of that period, I much prefer the work of the Grateful Dead, The Byrds or Crosby, Stills & Nash. When it comes to the pop sounds of the 60′s, the Motown sound fits my taste more than anything The Beatles ever released. Even among British Invasion bands, I rank The Zombies, The Animals, and The Hollies ahead of The Beatles.

It’s not necessarily that I don’t like their music. Indeed, I find many of their tunes to be extremely catchy. However, with the exception of the White Album, you will not find any Beatles in my vast music library.

With that said, this new Paul McCartney album, Kisses on the Bottom, intrigues me,  more so for the inclusion of Diana Krall and her band than anything Sir Paul offers, but intriguing nonetheless. Could this be the album that turns me into a McCartney fan?

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Ambrosia, Bread, Chuck Mangione, England Dan & John Ford Coley, these are just a few of the artists that comprise my very exhaustive “Guilty Pleasures” playlist on my iPod. Also on this list, you will find  a lot of the bands from my childhood–RATT, Cinderella, Twisted Sister. On the surface, you might find it odd “Round and Round” would be mixed in a playlists with “Feels So Good” or “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight,” and it’s harrd to say exactly how you qualify for my “Guilty Pleasures” list, but generally it is music that I like that would be considered “dated” by most standards.

Some acts are easier to classify than others, and AC/DC is one of those bands I’ve always had a hard time classifying. It’s hard to deny their impact on the evolution of rock, yet their music is often the punchline of jokes regarding trailer parks and meth. Whatever the case might be, there are certain selections from the AC/DC catalog that have been staples of my musical diet since childhood, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Unfortunately, I don’t own a single AC/DC CD, nor do I have any AC/DC MP3′s. A few years back, I ripped a copy of Back in Black, Highway to Hell, Razor’s Edge, and Let There Be Rock from a friend’s library, but when my iPod was wiped in November, I lost all the tracks and have no way of recovering them. When I went to try and replace these tracks digitally, I discovered that AC/DC has not made their music available for digital download.

I began to research this matter and kept on coming across stories like this one, where the band emphasizes their music is meant to be experienced as an album and not piecemeal. It’s the kind of response I would expect out of Thom Yorke, but not Angus Young. However, it does add a bit of intrigue to what I would normally consider very superficial music. I want to go back and experience all their albums again for the very first time.

But then again, I’ve listened to them all before, and sometimes, I just want to listen to “Thunderstruck.”

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Riding around with my wife tonight, I heard the Katy Perry song, “California Gurls” (sic), featuring the stylings of one Calvin Broadus, Jr., better known by his stage-name, Snoop Dogg, or Snoop Doggy Dogg, if you’re still stuck in the 90′s like me. I was a huge Snoop Dogg fan in the 90′s; I consider The Chronic (technically a Dr. Dre album, but featuring enough Snoop Dogg to be considered one of his own) to be a Top 10 album. Doggystyle, Snoop’s sophomore effort, was another quality work, but somewhere after he made an appearance in Half Baked, his style began to evolve.

Snoop’s early work was characterized by heartfelt tales from the street. Consider this sample from my favorite Snoop track, “Lil’ Ghetto Boy,” a cautionary tale of the dangers of “bangin’”.

Lil’ Ghetto Boy

Later his work became more superficial. His duet with Perry? Pure philistine shit.

It got me to thinking about the different ways the rock and hip-hop community’s treat their superstars. If a rock star of Snoop Dogg’s caliber–say Eddie Vedder–we’re to record a duet with Lady GaGa, his fans would consider him a “sell out” and boycott him for the rest of his career. Yet in the hip-hop community, over-commercialization seems to be encouraged. Why?

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At some point during college, my friend P.O. made the observation that if it weren’t for the Jackson 5, 90′s hip-hop would have either not existed or sounded a lot different. His point being that so much of the great hip-hop music released during that decade sampled music from the Jackson 5. Indeed, there are songs I loved in high school, which I cannot remember the name of the song or artist, but only the music the song sampled, which made it extremely tricky to try and hunt down the actual song to add to my music library.

And it’s not just limited to the Jackson 5. For years, I wanted to find a Too $hort song I remembered from the early 90′s. I vaguely remembered the lyrics, but definitely remembered that it sampled Kool & the Gang’s “Hollywood Swinging”. Eventually, I remembered the song I was looking for was “Money in the Ghetto” (In the ghetto/you think life is hard/Food stamps and to’ up cars…), but during the time it took me to think of the name of the song I seriously considered creating a database of sampled music.

Today, I had another hip-hop song from youth stuck in my head. This time, I could only remember it sampled the Jackson 5′s “I Want You Back”. In my search for this particular song, I stumbled across Who Sampled, an online database of who sampled who or, as they describe their site, “exploring and discussing the DNA of music.” Within in 20 seconds, I had conducted a simple search and found the song  I was looking for, Father’s “I Beeped You.”

The site is extremely user friendly and seems to include even the deepest of cuts. If you’re a music dork like me, you have to check it out.

I Beeped You

Continue reading »]]> I admit I was a bit dismissive when Fleet Foxes originally released Helplessness Blues. I suppose I was expecting a bit more and felt underwhelmed. However, over the past couple of months, I’ve watched as the album has launched the band into super stardom and I decided to give the album another chance. I’ve come to the conclusion that I may have been a little harsh in my initial assessment of the album.

Initially, the album struck me as self-indulgent–a group of Seattle musicians desperate to become the city’s next big act, yet equally as determined to distance themselves from the “sound” that defined their city, yet signing to gunge’s most iconic label. It would be like Kid Rock signing with Motown. Sure, Kid Rock is a Detroit native, but his brand of music is a little bit different than that of the artists who made the Motown name. But, hipsters do love irony.

Over the past few months, as I’ve listened to Helplessness Blues with more of an open mind, I’ve begun to put away some of my personal bitterness (I accept that today grunge lives only in my heart) and accept the album for what it is–a shining example of post-modern Americana folk rock. This mindset completely changes the listening experience.  I now accept that Blues is probably the best album of 2011, but I’m still skeptical of some of the critical praise heaped upon the band.

Almost every review of Blues that I  have read makes some mention to the band’s unique harmony. Indeed, when you listen to any of their work that is the first thing you notice. But is this really a unique trait? Didn’t Crosby, Stills & Nash create this very sound in the 60′s & 70′s?

Sure, it takes talent to pull off an album like Blues, but let’s tap the brakes on calling it “original.” A great album indeed, but not groundbreaking by any stretch of the imagination.