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First Album, First Song
If you’ve read my blog, you already know that I am a HUGE fan of Guns N’ Roses’ debut album Appetite for Destruction. So I won’t bore you more by gushing about “Welcome to the Jungle.” But in writing about that album three other times already, I got into a conversation with my buddy Eric…
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The Most Impressive Debut Albums
I’ve written about great Third Albums already, but in doing so, I glossed over acts that hit a home run right out of the gates. Given how hard it has been historically to get a record deal, and how different recording is from performing live, and how little money most new acts get to invest…
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The Most Influential Albums of My Life
In 2018, a “challenge” went around Facebook that I was able to get behind and participate in – the first (and only) one ever. No Ice Bucket Challenges for me, but the 10 Most Influential Albums in 10 Days challenge was appealing. My college friend Leigh forwarded me the challenge, which had been almost universally…
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Guns-N-Roses – Appetite for Destruction
(Album ©1987, Geffen Records) 1987 was a weird year in popular music. The top selling album for the calendar year was Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet (released in ’86) and, while the mid-’80’s were split between the era of hair metal and mainstream mega-stars like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen, by 1987, hair…
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Guns-N-Roses – Appetite For Destruction
(Album ©1987, Geffen Records) Here’s another record that I’ve already written about on this blog. This is one of the all-time great albums, and it really came out of nowhere, shocking the rock music world that was deeply stuck in the hair metal era. At first glance, this appeared to be part of that genre, but…
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Guns-N-Roses – Appetite For Destruction
So far, if you’re following along, we’ve gotten through high school. Van Halen joined Bruce, The Stones, The Kinks, and The Who as my favorite bands – all of whom I got to see live at least once. 102.7 WNEW-FM was my station, playing the ’60’s – ’80’s rock-n-roll before it was labeled “classic rock.”…
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Van Halen – Van Halen
Bruce, The Kinks, The Stones and The Who got me through Middle School, but by 1983, I knew there was other exciting music out there. I had already picked up on snippets of harder rock, from Rush (“Tom Sawyer”) and the aforementioned Kiss to Queen and AC/DC (“Back in Black,” “For Those About To Rock”)…
