Indeed some good ideas.
I’m always reluctant to include performances of classical music in my year and decade charts (like I am for live concerts of rock bands) so Rite of Spring might be an idea but I don’t think I will do it.
Thx Seth (I can’t call you Round can I?) 🤔 =P~
hehe
And yes, I think I want to revisit that myself and only have classical works actually written in 1950s there... it's just such a unique era - Shostakovitch, Little Richard, and Miles Davis all in the same decade...
And now two of the best female jazz/blues singers of the fifties which are indeed real classics but sound me a bit too dated to include in my top chart: maybe a bit too mellow, maybe a bit too big bandy, idk.
I finished the fifties albums ranked in the overall BEA top 2500 and I'm also listening to a number of albums outside that top2500 I think are also essential fifties albums:
First the last two in the top 2500 which are country-ish:
Johnny Cash With His Hot And Blue Guitar by Johnny Cash (nr 8 of 1957 and ranked 1440th overall): of course Folsom Prison Blues and I Walk The Line are good songs but the rest of the album was not upto that level. I like his American Recordings more than his earlier albums
And that was that for the top 2500 albums but I found I missed some blues albums and my first thoughts went to John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters until I realised that the first Muddy Waters album was released in 1960. But there were two John Lee Hooker albums to be listened to:
House Of The Blues by John Lee Hooker (nr 17 of 1959 and 3644th overall): this is by no means a bad album but the instrumentation was a bit too sparse to really like it
I'm John Lee Hooker by John Lee Hooker (nr 28 of 1959 and 6445th overall): this was a much better album and it contains one of my personal favorites I'm In The Mood. This one is a worthy addition to my fifties charts.
And I also listened to:
This Is Fats Domino! by Fats Domino (nr 12 of 1956 and 3560th overall): the first tracks and especially Blueberry Hill were good but after that the album dwindled a bit so just not good enough.
I listened to a couple of other fifities albums: Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis etc but none were overall ok so I just selected one more album from the fifties I would like to include
The Everly Brothers by The Everly Brothers (nr 14 of 1958 and 2995 overall): the harmonies make this album and of course mainly on their two greatest hits Bye Bye Love and Wake Up Little Susie. There are also a few good interpretations of some rock 'n roll standards. There are of course a number of less good songs to be found but overall a good addition to my top list of the fifties which has grown to 24 albums:
MyDecade Title Band Year
1 La Valse A Mille Temps Jacques Brel 1959
2 Time Out The Dave Brubeck Quartet 1959
3 Kind Of Blue Miles Davis 1959
4 Blue Train John Coltrane 1957
5 Jacques Brel 2 (Quand On N'a Que L'Amour) Jacques Brel 1957
6 Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers 1959
7 Misterioso Thelonious Monk 1958
8 Buddy Holly Buddy Holly 1958
9 Mingus Ah Um Charles Mingus 1959
10 Moanin' In The Moonlight Howlin' Wolf 1959
11 Pithecanthropus Erectus Charles Mingus 1956
12 Saxophone Colossus Sonny Rollins 1957
13 Little Richard Little Richard 1958
14 I’m John Lee Hooker John Lee Hooker 1959
15 Here's Little Richard Little Richard 1957
16 Chet Baker Sings Chet Baker 1954
17 Chuck Berry Is On Top Chuck Berry 1959
18 Chega De Saudade Joao Gilberto 1959
19 Bo Diddley Bo Diddley 1958
20 The Everly Brothers The Everly Brothers 1958
21 Rock Around The Clock Bill Haley And His Comets 1955
22 The "Chirping" Crickets The Crickets 1957
23 Jacques Brel Et Ches Chansons Jacques Brel 1954
24 Nr 3 Jacques Brel 1958
So after I have covered the fifties I'll cover the other decades for albums of the overall BEA top 2500 I haven't listened to yet starting with the sixties. But unlike the fifties I won't try to make a complete top chart (that is for later) and will try to restrict myself to the BEA top 2500.
There was only one regular album of the sixties in the overall BEA top 2500 I hadn't listened to:
Gal Costa by Gal Costa (nr 56 of 1969 and ranked 2328th overall): here this Brazilian artist receives the help of Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil and sounds fairly standard but would become much more experimental on later albums. Not a classic overall although there are some good tracks.
There were 4 albums of the seventies in the overall BEA top 2500 I hadn't listened to yet:
- In Den Gärten Pharaos by Popol Vuh (nr 56 of 1971 and ranked 2464th overall): experimental but not my thing
- Secos & Molhados by Secos & Molhados (nr 53 of 1973 and ranked 2413th overall): not a bad album but couldn't keep me interested all the way
- Équinoxe by Jean Michel Jarre (nr 49 of 1978 and ranked 2364th overall): fairly good second half and at the time I was even a bit of a fan of JMJ because of the hits 4 and 5 but the first half of this album is soooo boring.
- This Heat by This Heat nr 47 of 1979 and ranked 2340th overall): interesting experimental album especially on tracks like 24 track loop but overall a bit too experimental to be entertaining (I don't mean that in the popular sense).
And then 2 loose ends from the eighties I hadn't listened to yet:
Asia by Asia (1982 album and ranked 2492th overall): terrible aged symphony-prog album with only Heat of The Moment a bit inspired
Streetcleaner by Godflesh (of 1989 and ranked 2424th overall): and the complete opposite: cold, raw but also extremely monotonous and long: I think there are better industrial/doom records than this.
And I had to listen to two more albums of the nineties:
The Great Annihilator by Swans (album of 1995 and ranked 2429th overall): I guess I'm not a big fan of this band because also this album was not really my thing; some tracks like Celebrity Lifestyle are not bad but overall... no
Against The Grain by Bad Religion (album of 1990 and ranked 2381th overall): I'm not a big fan of Bad Religion either but to my surprise I fairly liked this album and some of the songs were more punk and less adolescent than those on some of their other albums.
In fact I only knew the first three and the last album by the Saints and I have always been more an Ed Kuepper fan than a Chris Bailey Fan, but I have to admit, the latter is also a real songsmith.
Finding a bit about their other albums was a bit of a difficult ride: albums have different names in the Australian and International version (I Thought This Was Love, But This Ain't Casablanca aka Out In The Jungle...) or have different names altogether (The Monkey Puzzle is to be found on Apple Music under the name Call It Mine) or an album is released in two different versions (King Of The Sun released in 2012 and King Of The Midnight Sun released two years later): a non-guitar one and a guitar one in which it turns out the former is the better one. And if this is not enough they like to mix up tracks on different versions and other tracks And they're not easy to find: only bits and pieces on Youtube (The Music Goes Round My Head is on which album?). But finally I came up with this ranking:
Their masterpiece of 1977 with countless tracks which should have been major punk hits in a perfect world but with the title track and Erotic Neurotic as real punk classics which should have overshadowed all their UK and US counterparts.
1. of 1977
I don't know how they are connected besides the fact that they both have released a new album but I just felt listening to those bands also to some of their albums I hadn't listened to before.
I think The Hold Steady is a fairly household name for most of you so I won't go into them a lot besides the fact that Craig Finn, the singer was also in Lifter Puller and that his voice needs a bit of getting used to. But they do play fine guitar music, not extraordinary but good.
Indeed I like their most recent album better but all of them are fairly close.
The next band is probably a whole lot less familiar (in fact while being a Boston American band they're only big in Belgium) and I mainly listened back to them because their celebrating the 20th anniversary of their first and best album, New Parade and they're playing a concert as I write this (but couldn't go) as I write this to celebrate this album.
The singer of the band is Aaron Perrino also blessed with a peculiar but very characterful voice which forms the main future of the band. You could describe them as emo but that wouldn't do them enough justice. I always have the impression that the emotions of emo band are a bit false and exaggerated. This isn't the case here at all although many of you would consider their music a bit over the top.
And in this case their newest album is their least good:
All these are albums are very good but are no masterpieces compared to their first album which definitely belongs in that category in my opinion and that track after track with Like A Crminal and especially Hum as the standouts:
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RoundTheBend
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