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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 Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Before I was a fully formed individual with my own music tastes, I loved the Beatles. It seems less obvious now, because my taste in music has expanded in many different directions, and the Beatles are just about the oldest music I still listen to with any regularity. But I’m old, and when I was…
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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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The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
(Album ©1967, EMI/Capitol Records) Here is the other most important album in rock-n-roll, in my opinion. The Beatles had heard Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (which itself had been heavily influenced by The Beatles’ Rubber Soul), and responded with perhaps the most ambitious album to date. Paul McCartney had an idea…
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Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited
(Album ©1965, Columbia Records) This is (IMO) one of the two most important albums of all time (along with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), containing songs that brought a depth to rock-n-roll. (Read Greil Marcus’ Like A Rolling Stone to learn more about the impact of this album.) The cover image was a photo taken…
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Meet The Beatles! – The Beatles
(Album ©1964, EMI / Capitol Records) This record was the first “official” LP released by the band in the US, and the photo on the cover is truly iconic, having also been the image used on the UK LP With The Beatles, released a few months earlier. The photo was taken by Robert Freeman, and a…
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Kiss – Rock & Roll Over
This record is the first rock and roll record I ever owned. It came out in late 1976, and I heard it soon after when a second-grade classmate (TJ Rapaport, where are you?!) brought it in for show-and-tell. Up to that point, I had really only heard The Beatles and a lot of Motown that…
