Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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REP'S TOP FIFTY ALBUMS OF ALL-TIME

50. The Rolling Stones / "Their Satanic Majesties Request"
49. Bob Dylan / "Blonde On Blonde"
48. The Saints / "All Fool's Day"
47. The Sex Pistols / "Never Mind The Bollocks..."
46. Bill Cosby / "Why Is There Air?"
45. The Proclaimers / "The Best Of The Proclaimers"
44. Manfred Mann's Earth Band / "Manfred Mann's Earth Band"
43. The Kinks / "You Really Got Me"
42. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds / "No More Shall We Part"
41. The Clash / "The Clash" (U.S. Release)
40. The Dave Clark Five / "Return!"
39. Mott The Hoople / "Brain Capers"
38. David Bowie / "The Man Who Sold The World"
37. The Beatles / "The Beatles"
36. Van Morrison / "The Best Of Van Morrison"
35. Slade / "The Very Best Of Slade"
34. David Bowie / "The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust"
33. The Alarm / "Standards"
32. Nick Lowe / "Basher"
31. T. Rex / "The Slider"
30. The Beatles / "Rubber Soul"
29. Elvis Presley / "Elvis' Gold Records Vol. 5"
28. The Rolling Stones / "Flowers"
27b. Giorgio Moroder / "Son Of My Father"
27a. The New York Dolls / "The New York Dolls"
26. Wreckless Eric / "Big Smash!"
25. The Bee Gees / "Best Of The Bee Gees Vol. 1"
24. Alice Cooper / "Killer"
23. The Hardy Boys / "Here Come The Hardy Boys!"
22. The Velvet Underground / "1969 Live"
21. The Monkees / "Headquarters"
20. Lou Reed / "Rock 'n' Roll Animal"
19. The Move / "The Best Of The Move"
18. Nilsson / "Son Of Schmilsson"
17. Status Quo / "The Early Works"
16. Roy Wood / "The Roy Wood Story"
15. The Rolling Stones / "Exile On Main Street"
14. The Move / "Split Ends"
13. Larry Norman / "Only Visiting This Planet"
12. The Beatles / "Revolver"
11. The Clash / "London Calling"
10. Mott The Hoople / "Mott"
9. Lou Reed / "Transformer"
8. Led Zeppelin / "Physical Graffiti"
7. Paul And Linda McCartney / "Ram"
6. The Velvet Underground / "The Velvet Underground & Nico"
5. The Beatles / "Beatles '65"
4. The Velvet Underground / "Loaded"
3. The Monkees / "Pieces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd."
2. The Move / "Shazam!"
1. Honeybus / "Story"

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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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50. Mott The Hoople / The Hoople
Year Of Release: 1974
Top Tracks: "The Golden Age Of Rock 'N' Roll", "Roll Away The Stone", "Marionette", "Alice"

Almost a cookie-cutter follow-up to "Mott", "The Hoople" seemed rushed and hurried as opposed to the "done with loving care" sound of it's predecessor. Even with Mick Ralphs departing to form Bad Company, the band still kicks butt when it has to and touches the heart when it wants to. The album was the basis for their record-setting and ill-documented live shows of 1974 which resulted in the "Live" LP which was to follow this one (and sadly went on to become their biggest U.S. Billboard album). Somewhere around here I probably still have the WHAR-AM "Music Survey" sheet with "The Golden Age Of Rock 'N' Roll" listed on it. Ian Hunter and the boys would go on to do two more singles ("Foxy Foxy" and "Saturday Gigs") before he would go solo and they would become just Mott and then The British Lions.
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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49. The Rolling Stones / Their Satanic Majesties Request
Year Of Release: 1967
Top Tracks: "In Another Land", "2000 Man", "The Lantern", "She's A Rainbow", "2000 Light Years From Home"

Bottom line in a sentence: it blows "Sergeant Pepper's" away. Although it had no real hits like all of their pre-1967 albums did and although it wasn't as AOR-friendly as what was soon to come ("Beggar's Banquet", "Let It Bleed"), many Stones aficionados consider this to be one of their stronger, albeit "weirder", albums. Ace Frehley and KISS did a bang up cover of "2000 Man", Bill Wyman got to sing on "In Another Land", and "She's A Rainbow" was the first Oldie played on WMQC at "The Great Format Switch Of 1990". Get yer iTunes card out and check out "The Lantern" and "Citadel"...heck, even "The Gomper"! Aside from the big dud, which happens to take up eight and a half minutes of the entire project ("Sing This All Together"), this is quite the oft-overlooked masterpiece. If you are into vinyl, always try to find the 3-D cover.
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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48. Bob Dylan / Blonde On Blonde
Year Of Release: 1965
Top Tracks: “Stuck Inside Of Mobile”, “Visions Of Johanna”, “Absolutely Sweet Marie”, “One Of Us Must Know”

I can honestly say that I feel Bob Dylan’s whole career started HERE. Not counting compilations, this is the first of four double albums on the list. While everybody knows “the hits” off of this (“Rainy Day Women”, “Just Like A Woman”), the real “album” lies in the word pictures painted in “Visions”, “Stuck Inside” and “One Of Us”. Even the deeper cuts (“Most Likely You Go Your Way”, “Temporary Like Achilles” and the epic “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands”) are prime Dylan and one wonders how much better this may have been received by the record buying public in general had it been whittled down to a single LP. You could have gone “Rainy”, “Just Like”, Stuck Inside”, “Visions”, “Absolutely”, “One Of Us”, and “Sad Eyed” and had possibly THE greatest album of all time...
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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47. The Saints / All Fool's Day
Year Of Release: 1987
Top Tracks: "Just Like Fire Would", "Temple Of The Lord", "Big Hits On The Underground", "Hymn To St. Jude"

Chris Bailey was most widely known as the leader of The Saints who recorded one of the finest punk albums of the early years of the genre ("(I'm) Stranded" from 1977). He (and they) had basically disappeared for ten years until someone at TVT Records obviously "heard something" in the British-made demo of this LP. Even though the label had previously issued nothing but compilations of old TV show themes and commercials, they took a swing at this one and hit a home run. "Just Like Fire Would" was gigantic at College Radio and "Temple Of The Lord" went to Heavy Rotation on MTV. I got to see them at a little club in Pittsburgh on this tour. There were 21 people in the crowd (I counted). Backstage, Chris Bailey asked me, "What just happened out there?" My reply? "Twenty one people just experienced the greatest concert of their lives". Found it funny that the sponsoring radio station did not have backstage access and sent their stuff to be autographed back with me!!! Check out the four tracks listed above along with "Love Or Imagination" and the title track.
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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46. The Sex Pistols / Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols
Year Of Release: 1977
Top Tracks: "Anarchy In The U.K.", "God Save The Queen", "Holidays In The Sun", "Seventeen", "EMI", "Pretty Vacant"

I happened to be in London the week it was released. It was bedlam. Posters everywhere, stores immediately sold out, lines forming outside shops waiting for a shipment that MIGHT come in...all stuff you will never see again, thanks to the iTunes age. Who cares if Glen Matlock maybe didn't really play that well or that much? Who cares if Chris Spedding was brought in to "augment" the guitar work? Who cares if they were "assembled" in a boutique? This stands as a great monument marking a new lane merge into the history of rock and roll. The proof that the band could really cook (pun maybe intended) was the fact that the two singles released after the death of Sid Vicious and the departure of Johnny Rotten ("Silly Thing", "Lonely Boy") were the perfect symbols of the bands musical abilities minus all of the political and controversial trappings. Most people overlook the fact that The Sex Pistols backed Joan Jett on the ORIGINAL version of "I Love Rock And Roll", which was only released in somewhere like Sweden. Played it a good one and a half to two years prior to it's "hit version" taking over America in 1982. As for "Bollocks", you can't argue with the four hit singles ("Anarchy", "God Save", "Pretty Vacant", "Holidays") and the best of the album tracks ("Seventeen", "EMI") put it over the top of "above average" to near-five star territory.
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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45. Bill Cosby / Why Is There Air?
Year Of Release: 1965
Top Tracks: "Kindergarten", "Hofstra", "$75 Car", "Driving In San Francisco", "Shop"

The two biggest questions that concerned me about doing my all-time 50 albums list was whether to include comedy and whether to include compilations. Well, this answers the question about comedy and as for the compilations: further on I do include compilations THAT SERVED TO INTRODUCE ME to an artist. In other words, The Beatles' "Past Masters Vol. 1" is one of the greatest song-by-song compilations ever...but it did not introduce me to their work. Anyway, back to ol' Number 45. I have actually run into people that can quote the whole album word for word. On a regular basis I run into folks that drop "the soap dish game", "a leaf blew in front of the car", "put a bullet in the furnace", "I had never seen a hole, playing for Hofstra" and, of course, "come around, idiot, come around!". You have to keep in mind this was an era before VHS and DVD when comedy on LP was basically the only way it got around, and during that time, Cosby was king...with this being his first Billboard Top 20 album. And the best thing? Not a cuss word anywhere. Not even the slightest bit of innuendo of any kind. And he was HILARIOUS! I guess today's comedians have not studied enough, if at all...
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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44. The Proclaimers / The Best Of The Proclaimers
Year Of Release: 2002
Top Tracks: "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)", "I'm On My Way", "There's A Touch", "The Doodle Song", "What Makes You Cry?","Let's Get Married"

Ever notice how noisy an Outback Steakhouse can get on a Friday night when things are rockin'? Sixty two TV's on, the crowd is boisterous, the bar is a menagerie of sound and...somewhere buried in all of that...they have music playing. So it was on such a night in 2002 in Bridgeport when I was eating my steamed vegetables with remoulade and I heard something. Not the couple in the next booth. Not the bartender. Not the announcers on the TV. But music. Music that I knew I was SUPPOSED to hear. Having never heard it before, I had to go home and look it up on thisy here internet thing. All I knew was "I'm on my way from misery to happiness today...uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh". Turned out it was Charlie & Craig Reid, also known as The Proclaimers. Sure, I'd heard "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" before, but that was about it. I had to HAVE this song! Turns out that the "Best Of" that had just been released was exquisite throughout. Many of us old TCS guys...along with many other non-radio/music biz people... happen to believe that A-Ha's "Take On Me" is the greatest music video ever made. Well, the video for "There's A Touch" has to be second. Combine that with other great tracks like "Let's Get Married", "Letter To America" and the ones listed above and you have a winner of an LP where every song does NOT sound like their biggest hit. It also includes possibly the finest cover version of a song that I have ever heard. I remember hearing a song on WDVE at 4am one morning back in 1976 and immediately thought, "Wow! Somebody owes Keith Richards some royalties!"...never knowing exactly what the song was! Well, I finally found out by hearing the cover version of Frankie Miller's "The Doodle Song" included here. Having just heard the original for the first time, I would put this up against it, and it does feature another great video!
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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for me somehow Donald Fagan's 'The Nightfly' would find itself on the list. And 'Abacab', by Genesis. Scott, are you familiar with the artist George Elliot? I think you would like him. Simple, yet brilliant. Mostly.
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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Darin wrote:Scott, are you familiar with the artist George Elliot?
Any relation to Bob Cumpston?
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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Scott Reppert wrote:
Darin wrote:Scott, are you familiar with the artist George Elliot?
Any relation to Bob Cumpston?

Ha! No, this is the REAL George Elliot.
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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43. Manfred Mann's Earth Band / Manfred Mann's Earth Band
Year Of Release: 1972
Top Tracks: "Living Without You", "Please Mrs. Henry", "California Coastline", "Part Time Man", "Captain Bobby Stout"

You think my rankings are whack? I'm yelling at MYSELF right now for only bringing this masterful debut album in at #43! Most folks know Manfred Mann from the British Invasion hits "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" and "Sha La La" or their "middle period" singles "Pretty Flamingo", "Fox On The Run" and "The Mighty Quinn". But after all that, Manfred formed the Earth Band and had later hits with "Blinded By The Light", "Spirit InThe Night" and "You Angel You". But the Earth Band started with this amazing debut from 1972. Still relying on outside material like the Dylan material earlier and the Springsteen items to follow, this project draws from Randy Newman ("Living Without You") and Dylan ("Please Mrs. Henry"). The real winners, though, are the originals...most notably "Part Time Man", which features an actual vocal from Manfred Mann. As with a lot of early 70's LP from many artists (Bowie and Zeppelin come immediately to mind), the original release of this had HORRIBLE sound. Make sure you pick up remastered copies of the CD when shopping. The sound is so much better overall and the production WAY less muddled than any previous issues, including the original. Can be found on double CD's with the almost-as-good "Glorified Magnified" which features the best Dylan cover ever ("It's All Over Now, Baby Blue").
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42. The Kinks / You Really Got Me
Year Of Release: 1964
Top Tracks: "You Really Got Me", "So Mystifying", "Beautiful Delilah", "Stop Your Sobbing", "Just Can't Go To Sleep"

Whoever wrote the http://www.allmusic.com review of this LP called some of the songs "abominable". One of those songs was "I've Been Driving On Bald Mountain". "I've Been Driving On Bald Mountain" has been included on over half of the mix CD's I have made since 1990. It is sheer rock and roll glory that proves that old adage “one man‘s trash is another man‘s treasure“ also applies to the realm of music. The cover of "Cadillac" is stellar and the original version of "Stop Your Sobbing" is the poster song of simplistic elegance. While most of the early Beatles and Rolling Stones albums are held in highest esteem today, the American debut of Ray, Dave, Pete and Mick is always overshadowed...I have always thought because of the half-baked production of Shel Talmy. He obviously was no George Martin or Andrew Oldham at this point, but most of the songs sound like the production budget was spent on the singe (the title track). If memory serves me correctly, you can hear some background "chatter" on some of the songs in and around the instrumental breaks and there is the occasional musical "oops!" that probably could have been re-cut or dubbed around. Instead, they are included on the album that basically includes the first Heavy Metal song ever...
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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41. Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds / No More Shall We Part
Year Of Release: 2001
Top Tracks: "Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow", "Hallelujah", "God Is In The House", "As I Sat Sadly By Her Side", "No More Shall We Part"

As I was living it, 2001 seemed like a disastrous year. Looking back, I only remember the good stuff...probably because the bad so bad. Of the highlights, and probably only second to beginning my Hot Wheels collecting adventure on Christmas day, was the evening I was driving through Frostburg, MD listening to the college station because they were playing a punk version of "Jolene" that was absolutely amazing! After that they went into a song about "Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow" and, like all good non-professional stations before them, they probably announced the song and artist four and a half hours later. Flash forward to 2005. My buddy Mark (largest music collection I have ever seen outside of a store or library) had just purchased an auction lot of CD's that included a bunch of homemade various artists stuff. On it was some song that I did not have a copy of in my collection, so I asked him if I could borrow it and I did. When I played the song for the first time in the computer, I did not have it on repeat, so it went to the next song. Guess what? THERE, at least four years later, was "Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow"! That is when I found out it was Nick Cave...who I might have remembered from his days in The Birthday Party, which I DO remember as a band that TCS would never ever touch. Anyway, due to the advent of YouTube as a source to "sample" new music, I looked up a bunch of Nick Cave songs. "Hallelujah"...AMAZING! "God Is In The House"...fantastic! "No More Shall We Part"...hauntingly beautiful. "As I Sat Sadly By Her Side"...lyrical greatness. And then you know what? I FOUND OUT ALL OF THESE CAME FROM THE SAME ALBUM! THAT just blew my mind! One thing I will never forget is seeing the video for "Fifteen Feet..." for the first time. It was a case of having a meaning to the song in your head and then something comes along to completely change it. If you have ever read all of the "Left Behind" books and then seen the movie you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, back to the music: I can't stand the cuts where his language gets vulgar for no apparent reason other than getting vulgar, but aside from that, Nick Cave is up there in my Top Five lyricists along with Mark Heard, Larry Norman, Ian Hunter and whomever you want to throw in at Number Five. Just last week I discovered "The Ship Song" from a few years previous...TREMENDOUS! Me hatey most music made since 1989. Me likey Nick Cave.
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40. The Clash / The Clash (U.S. Version)
Year Of Release: 1979
Top Tracks: "White Man In Hammersmith Palais", "Janie Jones", "Complete Control", "Jail Guitar Doors", "Police And Thieves"

Keep in mind that we are talking about the U.S. version of this LP here...not the British incarnation of it. "The Clash" was the first LP issued by the band in their native England and the SECOND LP issued by the group here in the States ("Give 'Em Enough Rope" being first over here, second over there). That is key to remember due to the "replacement" songs that are on here: "White Man In Hammersmith Palais", "I Fought The Law", "Jail Guitar Doors", and "Complete Control" were all added to the U.S. release, whereas the weakest tracks from the U.K. version were dropped. Combine the additions with "Janie Jones", "Garageland", "London's Burning" "I'm So Bored With The U.S.A." and their cover of Junior Murvin's "Police And Thieves" and you have one stop shopping for a indication of what the best of the earliest years of U.K. punk sounded like. There were the U.K. chart hits, straightforward punk and elements of ska and reggae all throughout this patchwork project...yet it showed the earliest signs that Joe Strummer and Mick Jones had definite ideas about what they wanted to accomplish musically...be it as individual songwriters or as a band as a whole. They were deservedly called "The Only Band That Matters", and their legacy would only grow with the issuance of the next three LP's.
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

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39. The Dave Clark Five / The Dave Clark Five Return!
Year Of Release: 1964
Top Tracks: "Can't You See That She's Mine", "Funny", "Zip A Dee Doo Dah", "Rumble", "Can I Trust You?"

As I stated regarding The Kinks earlier: wanna know what sadly gets overlooked? Early British Invasion albums from anybody but The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. This thing right here can be listened to from start to finish with nary a track of inferior quality. Most folks recognize The DC5 as the top British hit makers behind the two groups previously mentioned. I distinctly remember doing this on TCS when we had a "Featured Album Of The Week" thing going and it was so short that I also played "The Dave Clark Five's Greatest Hits Vol. 2" in the allotted time slot! The LP features two instrumentals, one of which is another example of "early heavy metal" ("Rumble"...the old Link Wray tune) and the other of which is the low point of the album ("Theme Without A Name"). Included are two more cover versions: the nice rendition of The Drifters "On Broadway" and the standout "Zip A Dee Doo Dah", which has never been recorded in such a bombastic arrangement before or since! There are a couple of pedestrian "middle of the road"-type songs that are neither heard as enhancements or distractions to the overall sound of the project ("I Love You No More", "Forever And A Day") and, finally, there are the true gems: "Can't You See That She's Mine" was the hit single off the album, while "I Need You, I Love You" rocks just as nicely with a good hook and the signature DC5 sound, and "Can I Trust You?" is one of the groups finest ballads. That leaves us with "Funny"...all one minute and fifty four seconds of it. Sounds like it was recorded in a skating rink. Fits in perfectly when backtiming to the top of the hour. Great lyrics and a fantastic beat change going into the middle bit. Combine it all and it's a "10"! This is the masterpiece of The Dave Clark Five, whose greatness earned them a place in "NINE!" ("...a 'Million Dollar Weekend', featuring the music of one of the world's two great groups..."). Now if I hadn't realized twenty one years later that they stole it all from Kenny Dino...
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

Post by Scott Reppert »

38. Mott The Hoople / "Brain Capers"
Year Of Release: 1971
Top Tracks: "Sweet Angeline", "Your Own Backyard", "The Journey", "Second Love", "Death May Be Your Santa Claus", "The Moon Upstairs", "Darkness Darkness"

I switched up on this one. I was going to put Mott's "All The Young Dudes" LP in here, but just could not. If you have been reading each of these reviews, let me ask you: on how many have I included BASICALLY EVERY track on the whole thing in the "Top Tracks" section? THAT'S how great this thing really is. And you have to realize that there would be no "All The Young Dudes" if it were not for this album. Sure the "Dudes" LP has "Sea Diver", "Jerkin' Crocus", "One Of The Boys", the title track and their version of "Sweet Jane", but it really doesn't MEAN anything to me. This, however, means so much...probably to me AND to them. This represents the high point of the "old" Mott The Hoople (Atlantic Records) and the events that ushered in the "new" Mott The Hoople (Columbia Records). They actually did break up after this LP, only to be talked in to another try at it by David Bowie, who gave them what was going to be a song on HIS next album to record for their own. They wanted "Drive In Saturday", but he held on to it and gave them "Dudes"...which was their biggest U.S. hit. However, none of that would have happened had it not been for "Brain Capers". I distinctly remember thinking that I had EVERY Mott The Hoople LP when "Live" came out in 1974. Then I heard "Sweet Angeline" on "Live" where Ian Hunter says, "The last bit of bad luck, or good luck, we ever had was an album called 'Brain Capers'. We'd like to do a number called 'Angeline'". WAIT! Maybe I didn't have all of their albums! I went to Camelot Music in the Middletown Mall, looked in their big ol' honkin' book thing and saw that Mott The Hoople did FOUR albums I did not have. I immediately ordered "Brain Capers" and the rest is history. This album shows you just how good they were back in the days when nobody ever realized just how good they were. "Sweet Angeline" is one of Ian Hunter's best songs from ANY album, "The Journey" is truly of epic proportions, "Death May Be Your Santa Claus" is as rollicking of an opener as anything you found in 1971 and "The Moon Upstairs" is a near perfect marriage of hard rock guitar and prog rock keyboards. Since their October 2010 reunion shows, I have very much begun to appreciate just how much Verden Allen meant to the original lineup of this band...just as important as Ian Hunter, musically...actually on a level with the guitar work of Mick Ralphs and the rhythm combo of Buffin and Overend Watts. This is evidenced in "Second Love"...which can only be described as a "kick butt love song". And the main reason I chose this album over "All The Young Dudes"? It contains their cover of Dion's "Your Own Backyard". In all matters of life and death truthfulness: I seriously would not be alive today if it were not for Mott The Hoople's cover of Dion's "Your Own Backyard". THAT is how powerful this thing is...
Scott Reppert
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

Post by Scott Reppert »

37. David Bowie / "The Man Who Sold The World"
Year Of Release: 1971
Top Tracks: "The Man Who Sold The World", "Width Of A Circle", "All The Madmen", "Running Gun Blues", "Black Country Rock", "She Shook Me Cold"

If there was going to be a "tie" in my "Top 50" Countdown it would probably come in here at #37. I love "Diamond Dogs". From the intro to the title track to the middle of side one medley to "Rebel Rebel" over to "When You Rock 'n' Roll With Me" and "1984". But I give the #37 nod to "The Man Who Sold The World" simply because the lesser cuts here are better than the lesser cuts on "Diamond Dogs". Like The Beatles before him, David Bowie had his first two LP's released on another label (Mercury) other than the one that would eventually make him a star (RCA). That is how I got a hold of this album in the first place. Murphy Mart in Fairmont...$1.99...cut out...with the original "comic strip" cover instead of the later-issued RCA "black" cover. Even though the Mercury pressing had inferior sound, it was a great introductory point to the album (you know, kinda like "You can't go wrong for a buck ninety nine") without spending the full price for the better sounding RCA version. It's almost worth the price of admission just for "The Width Of A Circle". Aside from that eight plus minute masterpiece, you also get the title track and "All The Madmen" as the next tier of great songs on here. I remember a girl that I turned on to "All The Madmen" who quickly made "Can I keep him?" her catchphrase. Many of these songs became staples of Bowie's live show and were documented many times over on bootlegs and then officially on "David Live" where there is a blistering version of "The Width Of A Circle", which I later found out had been chopped down from an original live running time of around fifteen minutes. Okay, get out "Diamond Dogs" and this LP and flip a coin...they are BOTH that good.
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

Post by Scott Reppert »

36. The Beatles / The Beatles
Year Of Release: 1968
Top Tracks: “Back In The USSR”, “Don’t Pass Me By”, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”, “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide”

We’ve had this discussion before: it would make one of the GREATEST single albums of all-time. Hands down, no questions asked. Given that, I am basing the inclusion of this here on a “if this were a single album” train of thought. I even submitted it as a post here that if you had to only choose fourteen (the, at the time, British standard for an LP) songs to construct this album from, what would they be? For clarification on this, here is how I would have laid this bad boy out…leaving more the eventual John-Paul-George-Ringo solo albums that would follow within the next 18 months:

1. Back In The USSR
2. Dear Prudence
3. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
4. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
5. Happiness Is A Warm Gun
6. I’m So Tired
7. Piggies
8. Don’t Pass Me By
9. I Will
10. Birthday
11. Sexy Sadie
12. Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey
13. Helter Skelter
14. Good Night

I don’t want to hear songs about your mother, doing it in the road, raccoons, single digits less than ten and rip offs of what The Monkees did a year earlier. Those are the drawbacks of this sprawling two disc set, in my opinion. I even include three songs on my list of “keeper tracks” that I generally pass by when they come up on the CD player or radio (“Piggies”, “Sexy Sadie” and…yes, I can’t stand it…”While My Guitar Gently Weeps”). This an albums that iTunes customers LOVE, because you can purchase some of the finest rock and roll ever recorded while avoiding the dreck.
Scott Reppert
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WTCS/WFGM/WMQC/WAIJ/WLIC/WRIJ/WKJL/WRWJ/WPCL/WWPN
Operations Manager: Hope Radio, T8WH, Palau
Production/Editor: "Believe Right" and "MFC WorldWide"
"For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation"--Luke 2:30
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Re: Rep's Top Fifty Albums Of All-Time

Post by Dave Allen »

Sure I'm in the minority here but it must be said..The Beatles are the most OVERATED band in history. Number one for the most part..they sucked. Number two NOTHING they did was groundbreaking. From their early days till the end nearly EVERYTHING they did was ripped off from someone else. OK, I'm done.
Titties and beer...thank God almighty for titties and beer!
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