My Recommendations

Music I think everyone should share

I'm not a music critic. As a DJ, I'm a big fish in a small pond. But I've heard a lot of music. In a lot of genres.

Some of these suggestions will be recent music I just think is exciting, or smart, or uplifing or just plain cool.

Other suggestions will be music I think everyone should hear in their lifetimes.

There will be lists that cross genres, and there will be lists that are defined within genres.

None of it means anything, but you might be introduced to something you'd never heard that you were glad to find.

As with my personal listening page, I'd like this to turn into a conversation. As with that page, it might become a shared page. If everyone plays nice.

Okay, so here goes:

The best rock albums of the 60's. 70's and 80's--Because they are the jones that make music more interesting

Decade		Album		Artist		WHY?
60's		Sgt. Pepper's Heart's Club Band		The Beatles		Hey, It's Sgt. Peppers! It rewrote the rules on what comprised a rock album. It put the focus on the studio. It defined the LSD culture. It was social commentay. It was East-meets-West. It was the Love Generation.
70's		The Wall		Pink Floyd		Yes, even ahead of any Zeppelin. Which is a reach, I admit. And what about the Darkside of the Moon? Darkside has a claim. As does Zeppelin II (rock-and-roll perfectly electrified). As do the Sex Pistols (nothing like them before or since: they had to DE-learn how to play when they reunited--how cool is that? But The Wall stopped the world. It was rock anthems out of context (Springsteen, anyone?), it was social commentary so spot on people avoided it, and it was musical perfection. Every time you listen to it, it's startling, intellectually and viscerally. It's like Salman Rushdie on vinyl. How many albums can do that to you?
80's		Synchronicity		The Police		Okay, this might have something to do with how bland the 80's were (not bad, just bland), and it could be claissified as a 70's album recorded in the 80s, but I look at it as the album that salvaged New Wave from the pop glory that it was. It could rock with the hair bands. It had the coolness of Brit reggae and New World drumming. It had Sting's best lyrics (and some of his creepiest-- let's admit it, Every Breath You Take is about a stalker). It put Carl Jung on the pop charts! It made King of Pain a sing-along! Come on!
And what do they all have in common? They were all the culminations of 3 of the great bands of their decades. The Beatles didn't fade away, exactly, but all the great albums they made later were always eclipsed by Sgt. Pepper. The Wall pretty much ended Pink Floyd, and definitely ended The Police. Only the Police were lucky enough to know it was the end. But if the Beatles had known, we'd never have had Abbey Road or the White Album. So what's best?