I’m looking for the albums that were, to you, personal breakthroughs in your music education. They may not be your favorites - hell, you may not even like them much any more - but at the time you discovered them, they had a profound effect on your journey into music.
Mine, in chronological order:
1964 - The Beatles - Meet the Beatles
1972 - Elton John – Honky Chateau
1972 - David Bowie – The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
1972 - Lou Reed – Transformer
1974 - Jethro Tull - War Child
1974 - Kiss - Kiss
1975 - Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks
1977 - Steely Dan - Aja
1982 - Elvis Costello - Imperial Bedroom
1986 - Paul Simon - Graceland
Odd that my most recent entry is more than 30 years old. I have found new music that I really enjoy since Graceland, to be sure, but nothing that would unseat the 10 listed above.
1959 - Time Out, Dave Brubeck Quartet
1963 - Live at Carnegie Hall, Dave Brubeck Quartet
1964 - The Times They Are A-Changin’, Bob Dylan
1965 - Rubber Soul, Beatles
1967 - Are You Experienced, Jimi Hendryx Experience
1967 - Buffalo Springfield, Buffalo Springfield
1968 - White Album, Beatles
1977 - Elegant Gypsy, Al Dimeola/Paco de Lucia
1992 - Brasileiro, Sergio Mendes
1994 - Talking Timbuktu, Ali Farka Toure with Ry Cooder
1964 – Man of La Mancha
1968 – Sgt. Pepper
1968 – Urban Spaceman – The Bonzo Dog Band
1968 – We’re Only In It For the Money – Mothers of Invention
1969 – Ummagumma – Pink Floyd
1970 – Third – Soft Machine
1970 – The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus – Spirit
1970 – John Barleycorn Must Die – Traffic
1974 – Who’s Next
1980 – Lights In the Night – Flash in the Pan
I don’t find it odd that the list ends in 1980; I pretty much stopped buying music after that.
May I assume that “chronological order” means the order you discovered them, even if this doesn’t match the order the albums were released?
If anyone wants to add commentary or explanation about why those particular albums were “personal breakthroughs in your music education,” I, for one, would be interested.
Children’s Record Guild, LP with “Carrot Seed”, “Creepy Crawly Caterpillar”, “Sleepy Family”, “A Walk in the Forest”, “Eensie Beensie Spider”, “Train to the Farm”, “Train to the Zoo”, “Nothing to Do”, “Mother Goose Songs”, “Muffin in the City”, “Muffin in the Country”, and “Hot Cross Buns” – 1962
John Gilmore and Clifford Jordan, Blowing In From Chicago, 1957
Jimmie Rodgers, Train Whistle Blues, 1958
Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde, 1966
Rolling Stones, Between The Buttons, 1967
Wilson Pickett, The Wicked Pickett, 1967
Hank Williams, Greatest Hits,1968
Van Morrison, Astral Weeks, 1968
Laura Nyro, Eli and the 13th Confession, 1968
Van Morrison, Veedon Fleece, 1974
Tom Waits, Rain Dogs, 1985
1.Alice Cooper ’ School’s out’
2. The Beatles 'Sgt. Pepper
3.4.5.6. All Beatles albums…I ended up with the complete collection.
7. John Lennon 'Mind Game’s
8. John Lennon 'Walls and Bridge’s
9. Mott the Hoople ?, can’t remember which album.
10. John Lennon ‘Starting over’ ( the last vinyl I bought)
I can’t remember the dates, mostly bought in high school and college. I was late to beatle-mania. Loved John the best.○-○
1959 - Time Out, Dave Brubeck Quartet
1960 - Blues and Roots, Charles Mingus
1966 - Revolver, The Beatles
1967 - This Was, Jethro Tull*
1967 - Are You Experienced, Jimi Hendrix Experience
1969 - Led Zeppelin (I), Led Zeppelin
1986 - Graceland, Paul Simon
1996 - Buena Vista Social Club, Ry Cooder et al.
2005 - Rodrigo y Gabriela, Rodrigo y Gabriela**
2006 - Back to Black, Amy Winehouse
*And pretty much every album released in 1967
**I don’t think this is the name? But I can’t find my CD
Any idea why we still call them “albums”? When they haven’t been actual albums since like 1953.
Well, here are the first 10. I could easily list twenty more…
[ol]
[li]1960 or so: Collection of American Folk Songs (“Old Dan Tucker”, “Oh Shenandoah”. “Get Along Home, Cindy” “There Was An Old Lady”, etc)[/li][li]1965: Thunderball soundtrack[/li][li]1966: Rubber Soul[/li][li]1967: Sgt Pepper[/li][li]1967: The Doors[/li][li]1969: Tommy[/li][li]1969: On The Threshold of a Dream[/li][li]1970: Live At Leeds[/li][li]1971: Meddle[/li][li]1971: Tarkus[/li][/ol]
It should be said that there are way more than ten and any of them could have replaced others in my list. Albums like Days of Future Past that stretched the idea of rock music into the orchestral realm, Gunfighter Ballads, by Marty Robbins, the amazing harmony of The Everly Brothers and The Mamas and The Papas, and the early girl-rock music of artists like Linda Ronstadt. And I wouldn’t even know where to begin with the jazz genre, although certainly Kind of Blue was hugely influential for me, along with the great Getz/Gilberto collaboration.
I was still buying LPs on into the 90s. (And they’re back, although you probably realize that). In the mid to late 70s, a lot of music was distributed on cassette tape, but it was still in the form of an album. When I switched to purchasing my music on CDs, those, too, were in the form of an album. Only when digital tracks, divorced from any specific context, could be downloaded (legally or illegally) did the notion of “album” start to fade, but even then artists tended to produce clusters of tracks that they dubbed with an album title.
1953 ??