Your greatest albums

not necessarily my all time favourite albums, but albums that touched me at the time and left something with me...

1. beach boys - smiley smile.
heard this at a party in my dissolute years while i was tripping on acid, it blew me away. still love this album more than any other beach boys album.

2. love - forever changes.
just utterly staggering. for arthur lee to write such a great album at such a young age is something else. da capo is a cracking album too.

3. david bowie - hunky dory.
as a child growing up in a less than exotic hartlepool, this album was so otherwordly and gave me glimpses of a life less ordinary. as ive got older i prefer the man who sold the world, but this album is still beautiful.

4. captain beefheart - safe as milk.
the perfect album, simple as.

5. marillion - fugazi.
remember buying this when it came out and was at school and playing it to death.

6. pink floyd - dark side of the moon.
utterly wonderful and beautiful piece of music. i tend to go for atom heart mother when i want to listen to some floyd, but dsotm is a masterpiece.

7. soft machine - volume 2.
something completely different, i am completely in love with robert wyatts voice.

8. leonard cohen - greatest hits.
not a massive fan of greatest hits albums, this is an exception.

9. lou reed - transformer.
another album that give me glimpses of another world, and grabbed my interest.

10. velvet underground - loaded.
in my opinion this is vu's greatest album, i love everything they have done but loaded just strips any pretence away and is just a straight out great rock album.

loads of albums ive missed that i love and i could do a different list every day, but these were just what came to mind as i was writing.
 
A few also rans which kind of flit in and out of my list

Down fell the doves - Amanda Shires - Sexy, sultry and brilliant

and then her husband

Southeastern - Jason Isbell - Sexy (according to Mrs Satanfriendly), talented (according to us both), a great song writer and wonderful guitarist (according to those who know)

I'm Stranded - The Saints - Aussies best and a very pulsating energetic album. Ed Kuepper delivering the drive with his raw guitar sound.

Today we are all Demons - Combichrist - Post apocalyptic heavy duty dance. Mad stuff with seismic bass lines. Makes you want to go out, eat glass and break things

Epsilon - Blood Stain Child - Japanese hybrid. Atmospheric trance dance thrash death metal electronic meets pop with screaming overlays. If ever an album delivered gusto and power. Sexiest looking transvestite guitarist award.

Lexicon of love - ABC - Typical Trevor Horn overly produced album. Not one duff track and has everything a pop album should have. Another HiFi shop record

Rio - Duran Duran - Stylish as hell and a band people wanted to hate but couldn't. Wicked production and wicked songs played by some very talented guys.

Tin drum - Japan - Weird, wonderful and extremely stylish album. Brilliantly produced and brilliantly engineered. Sexy to a point of being the vinyl equivalent of Viagra

White album - The Beatles - Doesn't need any introduction or anything to be said about it. It is what it is. For me one of those most influential albums of all time and defining of a musical period in a similar ilk to NMTB was.

Mutter - Rammstein - See them live and then you'll understand. With Mutter Rammstein declared 'We've arrived'. Awesome

I guess being a very enthusiastic collector of vinyl records there are hundreds of others hiding in the collection which I have overlooked. Isn't music wonderful? and a life without wouldn't be a life.
 
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not necessarily my all time favourite albums, but albums that touched me at the time and left something with me...

1. beach boys - smiley smile.
heard this at a party in my dissolute years while i was tripping on acid, it blew me away. still love this album more than any other beach boys album.

2. love - forever changes.
just utterly staggering. for arthur lee to write such a great album at such a young age is something else. da capo is a cracking album too.

3. david bowie - hunky dory.
as a child growing up in a less than exotic hartlepool, this album was so otherwordly and gave me glimpses of a life less ordinary. as ive got older i prefer the man who sold the world, but this album is still beautiful.

4. captain beefheart - safe as milk.
the perfect album, simple as.

5. marillion - fugazi.
remember buying this when it came out and was at school and playing it to death.

6. pink floyd - dark side of the moon.
utterly wonderful and beautiful piece of music. i tend to go for atom heart mother when i want to listen to some floyd, but dsotm is a masterpiece.

7. soft machine - volume 2.
something completely different, i am completely in love with robert wyatts voice.

8. leonard cohen - greatest hits.
not a massive fan of greatest hits albums, this is an exception.

9. lou reed - transformer.
another album that give me glimpses of another world, and grabbed my interest.

10. velvet underground - loaded.
in my opinion this is vu's greatest album, i love everything they have done but loaded just strips any pretence away and is just a straight out great rock album.

loads of albums ive missed that i love and i could do a different list every day, but these were just what came to mind as i was writing.
Nice list, @isaiah53.
 
A few also rans which kind of flit in and out of my list

Down fell the doves - Amanda Shires - Sexy, sultry and brilliant

and then her husband

Southeastern - Jason Isbell - Sexy (according to Mrs Satanfriendly), talented (according to us both), a great song writer and wonderful guitarist (according to those who know)

I'm Stranded - The Saints - Aussies best and a very pulsating energetic album. Ed Kuepper delivering the drive with his raw guitar sound.

Today we are all Demons - Combichrist - Post apocalyptic heavy duty dance. Mad stuff with seismic bass lines. Makes you want to go out, eat glass and break things

Epsilon - Blood Stain Child - Japanese hybrid. Atmospheric trance dance thrash death metal electronic meets pop with screaming overlays. If ever an album delivered gusto and power. Sexiest looking transvestite guitarist award.

Lexicon of love - ABC - Typical Trevor Horn overly produced album. Not one duff track and has everything a pop album should have. Another HiFi shop record

Rio - Duran Duran - Stylish as hell and a band people wanted to hate but couldn't. Wicked production and wicked songs played by some very talented guys.

Tin drum - Japan - Weird, wonderful and extremely stylish album. Brilliantly produced and brilliantly engineered. Sexy to a point of being the vinyl equivalent of Viagra

White album - The Beatles - Doesn't need any introduction or anything to be said about it. It is what it is. For me one of those most influential albums of all time and defining of a musical period in a similar ilk to NMTB was.

Mutter - Rammstein - See them live and then you'll understand. With Mutter Rammstein declared 'We've arrived'. Awesome

I guess being a very enthusiastic collector of vinyl records there are hundreds of others hiding in the collection which I have overlooked. Isn't music wonderful? and a life without wouldn't be a life.
Nice work, @Satanfriendly.
Couldn't agree more on Jason Isbell. If I was picking a top ten songs list, 'Elephant' would be on it for sure. Another album released around the same time and with a similar vibe and quality is John Murry's 'The Graceless Age".
 
Nice work, @Satanfriendly.
Couldn't agree more on Jason Isbell. If I was picking a top ten songs list, 'Elephant' would be on it for sure. Another album released around the same time and with a similar vibe and quality is John Murry's 'The Graceless Age".

I've seen him live a number of times including on his back door step in Mobile Alabama, and oddly the Shetland islands. Every concert memorable. My wife would agree with you on the Elephant Song

 
I've seen him live a number of times including on his back door step in Mobile Alabama, and oddly the Shetland islands. Every concert memorable. My wife would agree with you on the Elephant Song


Wow - both those gigs sound brilliant. He's been to Australia a few times, but never to the West Coast where I am.
 
Nowadays I mainly listen to classical music. But rock-wise there were a number of favourites:

King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King
Deep Purple - In Rock
Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA
Marillion - Misplaced Childhood
The Who - Who's Next
Caravan - In the land of grey and pink
Crosby Stills Nash and Young - Deja Vu
Van der Graaf Generator - H to He who am the only one.
Lindisfarne - Fog on the Tyne
Soft Machine - 3

And plenty more.
 
Music is everything to me. From an early age it fascinated me and it's always been there through the good, the bad…and the heartbreak, oh the heartbreak. I'm also really into Hi-Fi and spent more than I care to mention on my set-up.

The list below is in no particular order:

Album 1. (The Band that changed my life) The Smiths 'The Queen Is Dead'.

The Smiths literally changed my life. If I hadn't been such a massive fan I wouldn't have gone to a Smiths convention in Manchester (1989) where I would meet my first love and also heard another band* for the first time coming up later on this list.

Every album they made was a classic but it's TQID which holds a special place in my heart. I was lucky enough to see them on The Queen Is Dead tour in Wolverhampton. It's still up there as my favourite gig of all time. When they arrived on stage the world stopped. I looked around me with people screaming and crying, totally losing themselves. I thought to myself "This must of been what was like see The Beatles". Total Mania.

I don't tend to listen to them much anymore. Morrissey's behaviour has got more and more bizarre over the years and he hasn't made anything worth listening to since ‘Vauxhall and I' (1994). Thankfully we still have Johnny Marr who's made some great albums (The Messenger is one of my favourite albums of the last 10 years) and contributed to many of others.

Album 2. Cocteau Twins 'Treasure'.

Basically my favourite band of all. Impossible to describe without sounding like a knob.

I discovered them one Saturday morning on a tv show presented by Gary Crowley back in 1985. Ever since then I've played them on a regular basis and never tired of them. I saw them live many times and actually met Liz and Robin in Sheffield while on tour for ‘Heaven or Las Vegas'. I still have the signed note Liz and Robin.

It's extremely difficult to pick a favourite (they've never made a bad track let alone a bad album) but ‘Treasure' gets the nod today. I actually physically ache when I listen to it. It takes me to another other-worldly time and place. If you've seen the film ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock' I get that sort of imaginary and vibe.

Album 3: Talk Talk 'The Colour of Spring'.

I remember buying the album in Woolworths Cannock back in 1986. I'd bought the single ''Life's What You Make It" first which was pretty poppy and mainstream and not a million miles away their earlier synth pop records. The album (The Colour of Spring) was a move away from the mainstream, especially side two which showed early signs of the direction they would later take on their following albums "Spirit of Eden" and "Laughing Stock". I still play all three albums on a regular basis and are up there as my most played albums, which just shows how great they are. ‘The Colour of Spring' is also my ‘Test Disc' for demoing anything ‘Hi-Fi' related.

Album 4. This Mortal Coil 'Filigree and Shadow'

Writing a list of my favourite and influential albums, it looks like 1986 was the formative year which had a profound effect on the rest of my life. A lot of the albums I bought around this time I still play on a regular basis, including this one.

Although their first album, "It'll end in tears" is a great album I believe 'Filigree and Shadow ' is their Magnum opus.
It's very difficult to try to describe this album to anyone, much like the Cocteau Twins, this album is otherworldly and without comparison.

Album 5. Jeff Buckley 'Grace'

This album was recommend to me by someone back around 1996 (it all gets a little hazy around this time). After a (very) drunken evening I recalled the conversation from the night before (a minor miracle) about the album. Shortly afterwards I bought the album without listening to it (remember the days before YouTube?).
Thankfully it turns out it was a safe bet. The album is a masterpiece. I've since recommend it to many friends who've all gone on to buy it and love it too.

Album 6.* The Stone Roses S/T

In your life you will have one moment or one day which changes your life forever...

(As previously mentioned) it was in July 1989. I went to a Smiths convention in Manchester and on my journey up there I met my first love who would change my life forever.

On the same evening I heard The Stone Roses and "I am the Resurrection" for the first time. This was at a 'Smiths Disco', which wasn't as sad as it sounds, honest!:D

I was on the dance floor (which was a first for me too being a shy ‘box bedroom rebel') as "I am the Resurrection" started. From the opening snare drum I completely lost myself. To this day I've never heard a better song. That breakdown, that bass! Jesus! I bought the album the following week and an amazing period of my life began.

The following year I went to the now legendary Spike Island concert. Ignore knobheads like Noel Gallagher banging on about the sound being sh*t. They sounded amazing down the front! Still one of the best days of my life. You could say the Roses mean A LOT to me.

Album 7. David Sylvian 'Secrets of the Beehive'

No great personal story behind this choice, it's just a stunning album.

Album 8. Hüsker Dü 'Candy Apple Grey'

Difficult to choose just one album by them. ‘Candy Apple Grey' was my introduction to them via the Annie Nightingale radio 1 show on a Sunday evening.

A pivotal band in my life. Thanks to them I got to know a group of life long mates and made a lot of memories along the way. Never saw Hüsker Dü live but managed to see Bob Mould and Grant Hart live. I saw Bob Mould with his band Sugar at ULU in London. An amazing day with the highlight being my first stage dive. The look of fear on the crowds faces is something I'll never forget. Laffin!:D

Album 9. David Bowie 'Hunky Dory'

I've never been one for looking back. There are bands which I like from the 60's and 70's but they don't feature heavily in my collection.

I got into Bowie very late and it's something I regret. As a teenager Bowie was just bright suits and part of that Live Aid clique which was another world away from where I was at the time.

It was around 2010 when I bought Hunky Dory and I finally "got it". I just could not believe one person could be responsible for so much great music. Since then I've played more Bowie than anything else. Choosing one album was virtually impossible. Of the 27 studio albums he released I could've chosen anyone one from 10 masterpieces. A Genius! Hunky Dory is probably the most played album of his, so it gets the nod today.

Album 10. Radiohead ‘In Rainbows'

This list hasn't been in an particular order but I think ‘In Rainbows' could well be my favourite album of all time. I could have quite easily put ‘A Moon Shaped Pool' in this Top Ten but wanted to keep the list as varied as possible. Not sure what the list says about me or the state of music today, seen as there's only one band in my Top Ten still releasing new material?

No great back story with me and Radiohead. I just love ‘em.

Honourable mentions:

The Verve ‘A Northern Soul', ‘Urban Hymns' and ‘A Storm In Heaven'
Doves ‘Lost Souls'. One of most underrated bands IMHO. Everything they've released has been class.
Pink Floyd ‘DSOTM'. An obvious choice but for me it's perfection.
The Jesus and Mary Chain ‘Psychocandy'
Echo and the Bunnymen ‘Ocean Rain' (basically their first four albums)
Pixies ‘Surfer Rosa' and ‘Doolittle' (I kissed Kim Deal you know;):p)
Depeche Mode ‘Violator'
Joy Division ‘Closer'
New Order ‘Low Life'
REM ‘Automatic For The People'
Smashing Pumpkins ‘Gish'
Big Black ‘Songs about F*cking'
Prefab Sprout ‘Steve McQueen'
Grizzly Bear ‘Painted Ruins' (can't stop play it)
Led Zeppelin IV
Easterhouse ‘Contenders'

‘'(that's) the story of my life''……:)
 
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In no particular order.


The Stone Roses : The Stone Roses
Fantastic Album.

Sgt Peppers : The Beatles
At their very best, I can sit and listen to the whole album eyes closed and headphones on and be lost in stereo separation.

Porcupine : Echo & The Bunnymen
Love it from when it came out and always been on my playlist.

Time : E.L.O.
Perhaps not everyone's favourite.

The Man Machine : Kraftwerk
Pioneers of synth. I can remember working at Comet and having this so loud one morning 10ft or so plate glass windows were vibrating to Neon Lights.

Up The Bracket : The Libertines
Played this so much my son at age five would sing along.

Unplugged : Neil Young
WOW ! A chill out moment for me.

Technique : New Order
I've favourite bands and New Order is defiantly one. Top of the crop is Technique.

The Punishment Of Luxury : OMD
Have everything by OMD seen them a few times too. This their last album though is outstanding for me.

Someone Out There : Rae Morris
A young lady with an incredible talent. There's a version of the title track on you tube with just her and a piano that makes the hair stand.
 
In no particular order.


The Stone Roses : The Stone Roses
Fantastic Album.

Sgt Peppers : The Beatles
At their very best, I can sit and listen to the whole album eyes closed and headphones on and be lost in stereo separation.

Porcupine : Echo & The Bunnymen
Love it from when it came out and always been on my playlist.

Time : E.L.O.
Perhaps not everyone's favourite.

The Man Machine : Kraftwerk
Pioneers of synth. I can remember working at Comet and having this so loud one morning 10ft or so plate glass windows were vibrating to Neon Lights.

Up The Bracket : The Libertines
Played this so much my son at age five would sing along.

Unplugged : Neil Young
WOW ! A chill out moment for me.

Technique : New Order
I've favourite bands and New Order is defiantly one. Top of the crop is Technique.

The Punishment Of Luxury : OMD
Have everything by OMD seen them a few times too. This their last album though is outstanding for me.

Someone Out There : Rae Morris
A young lady with an incredible talent. There's a version of the title track on you tube with just her and a piano that makes the hair stand.
+1 0n Porcupine : Echo & The Bunnymen ..I also like Heaven up here.
 
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