In no particular order:
- Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile
- Pain of Salvation - Remedy Lane
- Evereve - Stormbirds
- Dream Theater - Scenes from a Memory
- Opeth - Blackwater Park
- Matchbox 20 - Yourself or Someone Like You
- Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick
- Änglagård - Epilog
- Radiohead - OK Computer
- Letters to Cleo - Go!
You are breaking my heart man. Honestly now, no King Crimson? And as much as I enjoy Black Water Park as my Opeth album of choice, it does have some incredible flaws in it concerning mastering that it hurts.
My top 10 (in no order):
Agalloch-The Mantle
Pain of Salvation-The Perfect Element Pt. I
Nine Inch Nails-The Fragile
Dream Theater-Scenes From A Memory
Evereve-Stormbirds
Acid Bath-When The Kite Strings Pop
A Silver Mt. Zion-Born Into Trouble As Sparks Fly Upwards
Opeth-Still Life
Sigur Ros-()
Novembre-Novemberine Waltz
[...] mail) @ 3:26 pm
I’ll try my own 10 best albums ever recorded, as per Heliologue: Opeth - My Arms, Your Hearse Radiohead - OK Computer Porcupine Tree - Signify Pink F [...]
(sung) One of these bands is not like the others…
You young dudes! Now, I think your lists are more representative of what you “like” than what you know to be “influential” or “high-quality.” (Although some of the albums you mention might creep onto critical lists decades from now.) I guess it’s all how you define “best,” too.
But, just like The Jazz Singer (1927) is not that good a movie, yet was a technical milestone and thereby needs to be recognized on “Greatest” lists, so does any list of “best” albums need to include such otherwise dated material as the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper, some Coltrane, some Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis, Hendrix, dare I say even some Stones. (This does not even address Motown greats like Ray Charles or Aretha Franklin.) That Led Zeppelin and others debatably eclipsed them is not the point; these guys were the progenitors. (And of course, all of these guys were influenced by earlier people, too, most often lost to history. Elvis only became famous because he was white singing music black guys had been singing just as well for decades.)
Even these selections are questionable, because they blur the lines of what “rock” is. But jazz/r&b/rock all started out as the same Afro-centric blues phenomenon, and were much closer in form years ago than they are today (Gershwin, anyone?). For the purposes of this argument, suppose the modern type of rock music began in the mid-50’s.
In which case you cannot just see the roof and ignore the foundation.
Reference: Citizen Kane
I suppose the semantic line between “good” and “influential” hadn’t even occurred to me. I’ve never been one to assert that anything important is necessarily still something to admire. While I will very frankly acknowledge the tremendous influence that, say, The Beatles had on rock music, I neither listen to them nor think them particularly talented, at least not relative to the modern talent pool. (If you’ll pardon the Darwinism) Why celebrate the Monkey when there is Man?
My list does not contain ANY of the bands I would consider influential, such as King Crimson (though Tull makes an appearance), because Anglagard does it better (sorry Abou!), or Ministry, because NIN does it better (although by time of The Fragile, the industrial comparison is blatantly unfair), or The Beatles, because Letters to Cleo does it better. My point here is recognizing the very best, not what helped shaped the very best.
Lies!
OK, This link is useful to know a “musical evolucionist” poin of view, but in real life you have to deal with the fact that others have a solid and prestige poin of view, for example in this link
http://www.scaruffi.com/music/progrock.html
Anglagard is on 99, then 98 bands are bether… but why? some reason are in …
http://www.scaruffi.com/music/unique.html
In ” The Musical Quarterly”, a very prestigious magazine, you cant fin a very scrupulous analisys on many Beatles songs like “Strawberry fields”, etc..I can tell you the year, the number, and the pages, tell me about your “Because of you”, Go! Letters to Cleo TMQ’s analisis. Please, is obvious because you say they does it better. At the end you cant prove your list, because is irrelavant. I cant see your credentials. Any way, who remeber Scarlatti, and who remember Mozart, now we have Reich music, academic occidental music, very intellectual, technologicaly does it better than Mozart, but who can say the Mozart is a monkey and Steve Reich is a man in musical history. “Mozart is in music history like Crist in human history” Igor Stravisnky.
Guy, according to that list you linked to, Phish is the 13th greatest prog album of all time. That more or less immediately invalidates it, despite the fact that it also lists some excellent albums. This Piero Scaruffi guy is supposedly influential (I’ll take that with a grain of salt), but just because he’s written a book doesn’t mean he has any taste. Remember, Ann Coulter has written several books. QED.