Essential Music

Gonna try to do something I've wanted to do for years. This will be an amalgam of the music that I consider essential to human ears. Essential in that it's great music, or groundbreaking music, or cool as shit music. Obviously this list is only my very opinionated opinion. My wife despises everything I listen to, other than AC/DC. I have yet to figure out her affinity for them, but I count that as a minor win for me. Regardless, I have close to a billion and a half LPs, cassettes, CDs, and mp3s that have made life better every single day, so here come a few of them right atcha!

The plan is to comment briefly on each selection. However, that may be impossible to do as my computer is so slow that I'll probably snap before I can get three albums completed. I am NOT a musician, so my thoughts will be presented in non-technical terminology. I know what I enjoy and I know what I don't want to hear (hiphop pouring into my yard from the nearby high school would fall into this latter category.)

I'm certain I'll forget a lot of stuff. I'll probably be adding to this for as long as I live, as new music comes into my possession and old stuff that I neglected to post originally will pop back into my cranium. I may list some items simply for the album art (Hipgnosis/Storm Thorgerson did a bunch of covers for a band called Brand X. I don't think I ever listened to any of the LPs I bought, but I loved the cover ideas)...or for just one brilliant song on the album (The Smithereens come immediately to mind). As per the usual, I will ramble incoherently quite a bit, I'm sure. I may have to come back in and make corrections as to songs' titles, who's playing what, etc. as I intend to do this from memory and not bounce around the freakin' internet for hours. So if you discover errors, please let me know...or just suck it up and know that I tried like hell to get it right.

Note: I could and should insert virtually every Beatles album. That would be ridiculous, so I've only plopped a few in here. I could add several more Zeppelin albums as well...Mountain, Traffic, Dylan, Tull, more Sabbath (Ozzy only), etc. Obviously I've already gone beyond "essential" as it is, so I'm trying to be reasonable here.

JethroTull's Benefit. As so many late '60s thru the '70s bands did, Tull had a unique sound. Ian Anderson's vocals and flute and Martin Barre's guitar were part of a great mix on this, their 3rd LP. Beautiful songs, heavy stuff, good lyrics. This would be on my "You can only have ten CDs on an island" list.

Asleep at the Wheel's Texas Gold. Very cool album. "The Letter That Johnny Walker Read", "Tonight the Bartender Is On the Wrong Side of the Bar", and "Nothin' Takes the Place of You" are my favorites. This one was a bitch to find on CD.

Herb Alpert, Whipped Cream & Other Delights. Good memories. A childhood filled with Herb Alpert, Henry Mancini, and Frank Sinatra wasn't all bad...not at all. This cover was seared into my brain at a young, impressionable age. Thanks, Dad!

Alvin Lee and Mylon LeFevre got together and did this monster of an album, On the Road to Freedom, with assistance from George Harrison, Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, and others. Excellent songwriting and musicianship throughout. I looked for this on CD for years before finding it recently.

Wishbone Ash, Argus. Whoohoo! Twin guitar attack...beautiful, melodious playing and heavy as hell, too. This album blew me away on my first hearing and has held up for lo, these many years. Andy Powell and Ted Turner created a sound like no other band then or since. Note: when the little fish came dancing up over the foot of my bed in a phalanx formation at the beginning of "The King Will Come", I was ecstatic.


Sabbath's first. What can I say? Wow.




My boys loved "Rock Lobster" on the first B-52s LP. So did I.

(Below)The European cover of Delta Moon's latest. US cover elsewhere in here. Twin slide guitars. Great live band.











Love Dave Walker's vocals on this SB album.

Don't like to throw out "Best Ofs..." and "Greatest Hits", but in Mancini's case, this is a killer collection: "Baby Elephant Walk", "PETER GUNN"!

And this is a damn good buncha Burritos tuneage.

Beautiful versions of "Shouldn't Have Took More Than You Gave" and "Sad and Deep As You".



Terrible shirt choice, Mylon. Makes Seinfeld's "puffy" shirt look manly.
But "Second Hand Lady" is awesome.





















Talton and Boyer's "Please Be With Me"...as good as it gets.

Radio Moscow is a threesome from Iowa. I love that some kids are playing this kind of old-school, blues-drenched heavy music.

Thelonius Monk is unreal. I don't know squat about jazz or piano, but I do know that Bruce and me rode around and around Billingsley, Alabama for three or four hours listening to a tape of this. Long story.

Craig Fuller had a great voice. Pure Prairie League never sounded better.



"Fairies Wear Boots" may just be the coolest song ever commited to vinyl.

Earl Scruggs and family. One of my absolute favorites of all time. Perfect album. Earl is the man. No, not you Lemmy!




Mark Sandman's band before Morphine. Great album.

Only chose this one because I couldn't narrow it down to a
particular Zevon album.

Budgie? Just 'cause I wanted a Budgie album in here.

"Let There Be Rock" is religious. Can I get an "Amen?"