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Not Quite Ten Years of Listening to Almost 1001 Albums

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At the start of the decase I purchased a copy of 1001 Albums To Listen To Before You Die with the intention of doing just that. Fate has been on my side, and I finally reached the end of the book last week.

Of course, I didn’t quite manage to listen to all 1001 albums – some were unavailable on Spotify (i.e King Crimson, KLF et al) and some I couldn’t stomach after the first few songs (e.g. Slipknot). Additonally, I didn’t bother with the albums I already owned – deciding to skip those and move onto more unfamiliar terriority instead. I started a blog and tried to review everything I heard but eventually gave that up as it descended into nonsense.

Additionally, I’ve tried to purchase every album I gave 8 or more out of 10 to.

There were a number of albums and artists I was already familiar with, beyond name recognition, but some of my favourite listens from the book were Steely Dan, Brian Eno and Sonic Youth.

Some thoughts on some random albums in the comments…

2

Comments

  1. Kiss – Destroyer
    Another terrible album from 1976, but not the worst. Kiss tread that fine line between stupid and serious, art and artificial. The album begins badly, improves a little at the end and then collapses with an awful song called ‘Beth’. Ballads by heavy-rock artists are usually bad, and if rumours are to be believed, it’s a surprise Gene Simmons remembers the girl at all.

    Parliament – Mothership Connection
    Back in 1975, Cabinet Ministers, Denis Healey, James Callaghan, Roy Jenkins, Barbara Castle and Peter Shore recorded a P(arliamentary)-Funk album, thumbing their noses up at the Monarchy in the process. The result was this album. It is arguably one of the best funk albums around, and it also an album that is clearly intended for the pre nine o’clock watershed as phrases like ‘mothersucker’ and ‘I wanna get funked up’ are bandied about.

    Laura Nyro – Eli and the 13th Confessional
    The last time I ‘discovered’ and immeditely loved an artist I knew nothing about during these listening sessions was probably the time I heard The Louvin Brothers album. I knew I would want to buy this album about thirty-seconds into the opening track, and the rest of the album didn’t disappoint. It’s bold, brash and beautiful. It’s also clearly an inspiration of Carole King’s ‘Tapestry’ which is definitely a bonus.

    The Pogues – If I Should Fall By The Grace of God
    Though not as immediate as the previous album from the Pogues, I really warmed to this towards the end. I was particularly impressed with the one about emigrating to the USA.

    Prodigy – Fat of the Land
    Between reviewing ‘Music For The Jilted Generation’ and this album, Prodigy front-man Keith Flint has sadly taken his own life. Therefore, I’m listening to this record in slightly different circumstances than expected. That said, it is still The Prodigy’s best album, and will be the one that most people remember them for. The album cover is one of the 90s most iconic

    The Who – Who’s Next?
    Finally we have a great studio album from The Who. After the relative disappointments of the previous releases, I have always approached The Who with trepidation. ‘Live at Leeds’ is the first of their albums I wanted to buy and this one is even better. A lot of the songs are already familiar – ‘Baba O’Riley’, ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ etc – but the unfamiliar ones are just as good. Only ‘Going Mobile’ felt as though it could’ve been scrapped.

    The Beau Bummels – Triangle
    Back in the 80s the Pet Shop Boys release a song called ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This?’ which I can only assume was written about this album. It’s called ‘Triangle’ but it would be much more preferable if there were no sides. I know nothing about the Beau Brummels – which is a terrible name, by the way – and Wikipedia seems to confirm that they didn’t even have a hit in the UK.

    Killing Joke – Killing Joke
    This is an album that is hyped by a plethora of future residents of this blog – Nirvana, the Foo Fighters, Mariyln Manson, Soundgarten etc. It is however, not up my street. In fact, I’m not even sure if it’s in the same town as me.

    Brian Eno – Before and After Science
    Brian Eno has been one of my favourite ‘discoveries’ of recent weeks. I expected his music to be difficult to get into, but it’s rather more accessible than I thought it would be. This is the third album in the book, and probably one that represents him best. There’s not really a bad song on the album, but my favourites were “Backwater” and “Here He Comes”.

    Napalm Death – Scum
    My favourite thing about this album is not the content (which is awful), it’s the fact that the original band split up halfway through recording, so the two sides are essential two different bands. I can only assume the band realised how shit they were and split up halfway through.

    Moby Grape – Moby Grape
    Moby Grape were another psychedelic group from San Francisco, along with the likes of Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Bruce Forsyth, and Elsie Dee and the Acid Pill Dropout Factory etc. In fact, guitarist Skip Spence was the original drummer for Jefferson Airplane before he went on to co-form Moby Grape. Out of all the ‘classic’ albums from this scene, this is one of those that had completely passed me by. I was expecting it to be similar to some of the recent albums I’ve heard by other bands who were influenced by chemical substances, but I was pleasantly surprised.

  2. Good to hear it wasn’t just me that went on this quest.
    I do love a list and saw this as an opportunity to broaden my musical horizons.
    I haven’t reached the end yet getting stuck around the mid 90s with flagging interest and a pile of new stuff to listen to.
    Time for a re-start I think

    • I started this in 2011. Gave up. Carried on in 2015. Gave up. Went back to it again in 2017. It got both easier and took longer as we got to the 1990s and beyond. I owned more of the albums already, but the ones I didn’t own were (on average) longer than those from previous decades (presumably due to the invention of CDs)

  5. You’re right about
    Who’s Next
    Thousands Are Sailing (the best song on There But For The Grace…) by a country mile, an absolute stunner.
    Before and after Science
    Fat of the Land cover (first two album covers are boring and naff – especially the inside cover of Jilted with an oil painting of a crusty escaping from the beanfield and giving the plod the finger after cutting a rope bridge. Nearly as good as Hard Nose The Highway.

    You’re wrong about
    Killing Joke – a brutal masterpiece. The quintessential ‘why didn’t they just split up as it’s unimprovable’ debut.
    Fat of the Land – Music for the Jilted Generation is their best, FOTL made them megastars but isn’t their best music.

  7. wow, well done. I too am embarked on that journey, but currently still only about a third of the way through after around 4 years – I think it highly unlikely I will get all the way through as I suspect it will start to become a chore sometime in the 80s. Listened to the Dictators over the weekend which I rather enjoyed. Tangerine Dream was also a lot more interesting than I expected. Queen and Supertramp on the other hand entirely lived down to expectations.

    Interesting you pick out the Laura Nyro – i would also pick that out as one of the real discoveries for me.

    Unlike you I always listen to the ones I know and love; in fact they often come as a blessed relief…

  9. I’d thought of doing that too but the completest in me meant that it would be pointless if I didn’t do it ‘properly’ so, faced with the likelihood of having to sit through an entire Led Zep album among others, I gave it a miss. I think your way is the only sane approach and, like my trawl through the magazine and website lists of albums of the year, I think I’ll go back to the book(s) and just listen to the stuff I know I won’t hate.

  10. It’s tricky when you commit to doing a big project like this, as you’re undoubtedly going to be tested several times. When I listened to my iTunes library from A-Z I spent a few weeks listening to Beatles bootlegs and that dragged a bit, particularly a few dozen albums from the Let It Be sessions. There were other challenges too – Metal Machine Music, Lennon’s unfinished music, Yoko Ono, but the only one that I eventually gave in with were the albums belonging to the wife. I can’t remember which straw broke the camel’s back, but I know I’d gritted my teeth through every ABBA album, Adele and even some Coldplay ones, but I knew things like Take That and Scouting For Girls were lurking over the horizon.

    The Current project, of ranking all my albums (CDs & downloads) per year, is actually good fun. I ranked around 2000 albums pretty quickly, as I either knew them well, just needed a flick through to refresh my memory or didn’t really want to listen to them all the way through in the cases of albums I have just to complete collections (hello, Ringo!). A year and a half in and I’ve listened to 1668 albums in full, leaving 2049 left. I’ve actually dropped below 2000 twice already, but then gone on mad sprees, so I’m not making it easy for myself. I’m about to start a new year, which I haven’t selected yet as I have a pile of new CDs I want to listen to first. Of the years I have left to do it could mean 26 albums to listen to (1972) or 115 (2015). Going to take another couple of years to finish it though.

    But as for your 1001 albums project, well done, but you need to listen to one more. The KLF’s The White Room is my number 1 album of 1991, number 3 albums of the 1990s (behind Prefab Sprout’s Jordan: The Comeback and The Pernice Brothers’ Overcome By Happiness) and my 10th favourite album overall. It’s fab and it’s available in full on youtube,

  13. I have all of the books referenced above as well as a few best 1000 albums ever which made at least three separate appearances every 2 years in the 1990s…linked to Melody Maker/Uncut I think.

    When I retire at 67 I mght pass my time away this way.

  14. I always thought Laura Nyro’s “Christmas and the beads of Sweat” was her masterpiece – particularly side 2. That’s the problem with lists. Paul Stanley of Kiss was a big fan of Laura Nyro apparently.

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