Another first-timer! And a bit of a late entry - which might explain its rather high position.
Referring to the original North American release, here. It doesn't have the covers "Evil Woman" and "Crow"; and both "Wasp/Behind The Wall of Sleep/Basically/NIB" and "A Bit of Finger/Sleeping Village/Warning" are counted as single tracks.
My roommate had this in college and for some reason, we got it into our heads that this was a goofy stoner-space-jazz record. So we never listened to it much. But, I wanted to give it another chance, 20 year later, so I bought it this year. This time, I was blown away.
No, it's not a jazz record. It's really more of a blues-rock record with scary lyrics than a metal record. But it's a grimy, sludgy, ominous blues; not as deliberately messy as, say, Blue Cheer, but it's nothing like Clapton either. It's definitely not about precision of technique, purity to the form, and the worship of old blues legends. The blues is the foundation, not the goal. And there's more than blues, of course; there's that yummy tritone thing - those unmistakably metal notes that you hear in the first seconds of the first song ("Black Sabbath"). Instantly, you know this isn't going to be a Cream record. Hell of a debut.
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Wow, bunch of favorites of mine in this chunk.
White Album: this one confirms for me that George Martin was as critical to the Beatles success as the Beatles themselves. It’s a perfect contrast to Let It Be, where random studio experiments peter off into nothing; on The Beatles, those same half-finished attempts get developed into something worth listening to.
Dark Side: speaking of producers, I’m willing to suggest that engineer Alan Parsons is the small factor that sets this record apart from PF’s other works of this period (WYWH and Animals, both great but nowhere near as commercially successful).
Houses of the Holy: as I got interested in Zeppelin in college, this was the first album that really called to me, in spite of the obvious power of II and IV. I think it’s the variety, and the jagged time signatures.
Discipline: such an appropriate name. This is a tight unit, as the title track attests.
Chutes Too Narrow: Still my favorite of theirs, and the singles off the upcoming release aren’t making me expect to change that soon.
Shins. ditto. saw him on SNL this past weekend, and the song was decent. but it was no “Fighting In A Sack” or “New Slang”
ah… George Martin’s influence. yes, that would explain a lot.
I am really opposed to country music, which has everything to do with where I grew up (farmy midwest) and getting into music that had everything to do with being the opposite of that. Having said that, I have grown to appreciate the edges of country. And having said that, I am going to check out Gillian Welch just because you say so and I trust your judgement.
The others here. That is my favorite Zep record. I’m not a big metal fan (I was when I was 13 before I discovered punk) but have a massive soft spot for Van Halen, particularly the Dave version. That was the first King Crimson record I bought, which led to me discovering everything else by them. Tony Levin is so awesome. That is my favorite Beatles album, having everything to do with my love for experimentation. I feel the same way about Dark Side. I figure, eh, tired of it. But every time it goes on I get blown away again.
Sorry, I’m a bit late to the party. Where do the “Score” numbers come from? This is your own scores that you’ve kept when listening to your CDs/records over the years?
I also second the King Crimson Discipline and Van Halen. Two of my favourite “guitar oriented” records of that era. I still have the King Crimson on vinyl but i no longer have a record player :^(
Where do the “Score” numbers come from?
here’s how it all went down:
1. i came up with list of records which could be candidates for the Top 100 (which was 2010’s list plus 36 others). so, 136 records in contention.
2. i wrote a web app that would : pick two records at a time, at random, from that list, and ask me which one i liked better, record my vote.
3. i did 4,000 of those votes.
4. then, to tally the results:
4a. each record was assigned a total of 400 points
4b. the winner of each vote received a number of points based on an Elo rating system calculation (which, essentially, gives you more points for ‘beating’ a higher-ranked opponent than for beating a lower-ranked opponent; and losing to a lower-ranked opponent hurts more than losing to a higher-ranked opponent).
the Score is the number of points the record ended up with, after all the votes were run through this rating system.
so, it’s not directly related to the number of wins/losses each record got. it’s really related to the relative ratings of the records each record beat or lost to.
also, this is the same system we used for the 2011 cleek reader’s record poll.