AGREED. They rock so hard it’s not funny.
Haircut 100… “Love plus one” on Pelican West… Kickass album… great voice…and Blair Cunningham (later of The pretenders) on the drums…
Has anyone mentioned “Mirror in the Bathroom” by The (English) Beat yet? If not, I’ll add that to my list.
“Dramamine” by Modest Mouse on This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About.
Richard Thompson - Roll Over Vaughan Williams. You can’t get more of a mission statement than the first verse:
Gentle ladies, gentle men
Waiting till the dance begin
So carefully we come to speak a word for all to hear
If you listen, if you should
We won’t be misunderstood
But don’t expect the words to ring too sweetly on the ear
Live in fear, live in fear, live in fear…
So many of the really good ones are taken…
“96 Quite Bitter Beings” from CKY’s Volume 1
“Voices” from Disturbed’s The Sickness
“Undead” from Hollywood Undead’s “Swan Songs” (okay, so “great” is relative)
“Blister” from House of Broken Promises’s Using the Useless (It’s new and fairly underground, so I don’t know if it qualifies for great…but it fuckin rocks)
“Get Over It” from OK Go’s OK Go
“I Don’t Know” from Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard of Ozz (His first solo album)
“Black” from Sevendust’s Sevendust
“In the Meantime” from Spacehog’s Resident Alien (sharing the name with the Helmet debut upthread)
“Dead & Bloated” from Stone Temple Pilots’s Core
“Balls” from Taintstick’s 6 Lbs of Sound (I’m only half joking…)
Honorable mention to the lead and title track from Pantera’s Cowboys from Hell. Yes, they had four studio albums before that, but that was essentially a different band with the same name and three of the same members. Most people would agree that they so thoroughly reinvented themselves after Phil Anselmo joined the band that CfH is, for all practical purposes, the debut album of the Pantera everyone knows. They don’t even list their early glam metal releases on their own website.
Your Song–Elton John
Waiting Room from the first Fugazi EP (or from 13 Songs, if you prefer).
This one’s a little obscure, but here goes:
The Beatles - I Saw Her Standing There (from Please Please Me)
I was just looking at this thread title again when the mp3 of “The Only Difference Between Suicide and Marytrdom is Press Coverage” by Panic! at the Disco came on. So I thought I’d add that (although it’s only slightly better than average for a song on that album, it’s still great since most of that album is great.)
I have to add “None of the Above” by The Bears and “Mighty Little Man” (my theme song) by Steve Burns (of “Blues Clues” fame.)
“Keep Yourself Alive” by Queen deserves a mention here.
I’ve always been a fan of “Everything Right is Wrong Again” off of They Might Be Giants’ eponymous debut.
The Stray Cats’ American debut album, Built for Speed, opens with “Rock This Town.” Can’t get a much better start than that, IMO.
Afterwards on The Aerosol Grey Machine by Van der Graaf Generator
It Happened Today on Airconditioning by Curved Air
Dominion Road on The Mutton Birds
Operating Tracks on Geography by Front 242 It has aged, though…
Suite: Judy Blue Eyes on Crosby Stills and Nash
also: Hello City off of Gordon, by the Barenaked ladies
I was just telling my kid last week that, thanks to hanging out in Bob’s Cynical Pool Hall Basement™, we got to hear albums before the singles were big on the radio. So while most people were introduced to the Doors with “Light My Fire”, for a couple of us it was “Break On Through”.
Picture the lights out (except the black ones, of course), and the incense wafting and the vinyl spinning, and you get to listen to this entire unknown album called “The Doors”…
Nice.
We chased our pleasures there / Dug our treasures there …
Can’t believe this hasn’t been mentioned - I’ve always liked Dire Straits’ debut album, especially its first track (‘Down to the Waterline’ and ‘Six Blade Knife’, even if ‘Sultans of Swing’ was the big hit track.
Once Bitten, Twice Shy from Ian Hunter’s first solo album.
So It Goes was the opener Nick Lowe’s Pure Pop for Now People. (The UK version, Jesus of Cool, had the less catchy** Music For Money **as the first track.)
It has been: post #44
Argh! How did I miss that?