Floydy's All-Time Top 1000 Favourite Albums

Gary US Bonds.That’s a surprise,I didn’t think he had survived the 60’s.

Another big Tom Petty fan here :slight_smile:

Hi Ffosse.

As promised, here is a list of Van Morrison’s albums I have in my list. The others noted may or not be coming up :wink:

819-Born To Sing: No Plan B-2012
796-Back On Top-1999
719-Common One-1980
535-It’s Too Late To Stop Now-1974
408-Saint Dominic’s Preview-1972
370-Irish Heartbeat-1988
345-Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart-1983
310-Tupelo Honey-1971
296-Days Like This-1995
269-Van Morrison, His Band & The Street Choir-1970
???-Avalon Sunset-1989
???-Moondance-1970
???-Astral Weeks-1968
???-No Guru, No Method, No Teacher-1986
???-Too Long In Exile-1993
???-Hymns To The Silence-1991
???-Poetic Champions Compose-1987
???-A Sense Of Wonder-1985
???-Enlightenment-1990
???-Into The Music-1979
???-Beautiful Vision-1982

Hi gang, time for a marathon sesh today methinks…
No.250: “Live At Donington ‘91” by AC/DC (1992)
Regarded as the best AC/DC live album with or without Bob Scott (this was without), this Donington Festival double album featured the band at their absolute best, not least by the inclusion of a spellbinding version of ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’.

No.249: “On An Island” by David Gilmour (2006)
The final appearance of a David Gilmour solo album in my list, although we may see something ‘live’ later on. On An Island was a very laid back affair and was big news spawning a world tour and quite a few accompanying DVDs and all the other razzamatazz. It’s a mellow record but apart from the title song which is Chris Rea territory (and Rea does that sort of thing better, incidentally), it’s just nice to wallow in Gilmour’s majestic guitar solos. A classy record.

No.248: “Evolution” by Journey (1979)
Third day in a row that we’ve seen an album from Journey trouble this visual tome. Neal Schon, Steve Perry et al with their final 70’s offering. Same kind of FM U.S. radio thing.

No.247: “Nebraska” by Bruce Springsteen (1982)
After the massive success of Springsteen’s biggest album to date, the wonderful double record entitled The River, Bruce surprised everybody - perhaps including Capitol Records (who must have been sweating somewhat) with the extreme opposite to stadium rock in the shape of this very low key personal record. Recorded by himself on a basic 4-track device, Nebraska shone through with it’s intensely deep and meaningful lyrics on a bunch of songs he based on his upbringing.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51n9%2B5kJLbL.SY300.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3eu1gW-bQ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4pSkj6ZsXs

No.246: “Ummagumma” by Pink Floyd (1969)
With the long gone departure i.e. sacking of founder member Syd Barrett plus a rather good soundtrack (“More”) in the works running parallel to this release (coming later), Pink Floyd decided on a rather different sort of record to keep the fans happy. Ummagumma was a double album with one record featuring live performances, mostly from previous album A Saucerful Of Secrets, plus a second album in which all four members submitted solo songs (of varying degrees of brilliance!). This kept people occupied until they would score a UK No.1 with their next release.

No.245: “Peace At Last” by The Blue Nile (1996)
Glaswegian band led by Paul Buchanan The Blue Nile are one of those rather enigmatic outfits who will only surface when they are entirely ready, once in a blue moon in fact. But when they do appear they usually come out an album so beautifully serene and intricate with its nature that it entices the listener into repeated listens. (You can tell I run out of things to say can’t you?!).
Peace At Last is such an album, their finest in my opinion. let’s just play the music shall we?..

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41PjHQe77nL.SX355.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98kL2eXzKlY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZzSFt5YOZg

No.244: “Departure” by Journey (1980)
You won’t believe this etc etc, it’s just the way the list turned out, honest! Another Journey record. Nothing wrong with that though, let’s just play the vids…

No.243: “Power, Corruption & Lies” by New Order (1983)
Second (or third?) appearance from the Macclesfield band in my list so far, New Order carried on that Joy Division tradition of being obscure and obtuse with their music and whole design package (no singles on albums, little info on the sleeves, rather uncommercial songs), but they were an indie music phenomenon regardless.
Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner, Steven Morris and later to be his wife, Gillian Gilbert made the best of what they had following the great Ian Curtis’ death three years earlier with this second album. I saw them on this tour which was helped in no way insignificantly on the back of the corresponding success of the groundbreaking 12" single ‘Blue Monday’.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7e/NewOrderPower%2CCorruption%26Lies.jpg

No.242: “Live And Dangerous” by Thin Lizzy (1978)
One of the most famous live albums of all time, always in those best of lists for concert performances Thin Lizzy released this exceptional record after finally breaking through after years of moderate success. Check out their sublime version of Bob Seger’s ‘Rosalie’ here.

No.241: “Lodger” by David Bowie (1979)
The final album in the “Berlin Trilogy” of releases (Low and Heroes were the others), this was decidedly the least popular. It was helped along in a major way though with the gloriously high camp, cross dressing video which preceded it, the brilliantly cool ‘Boys Keep Swinging’.

No.240: “Glass Houses” by Billy Joel (1980)
On the strength of Joel’s instant classic album The Stranger, plus the rather less good 52nd Street a year later, Billy Joel was now a megastar and put out his first record of the 1980’s, fitting in perfectly with that decade with the great single ‘It’s Still Rock ‘n’ Roll To Me’.

No.239: “Ammonia Avenue” by The Alan Parsons Project (1984)
Former Abbey Road errand boy and junior engineer Parsons moved onto great things with Pink Floyd - more of that later - and formed his own studio-based project in 1975 having incredible worldwide success, though very little in his homeland. Ammonia Avenue was a lesser album than its massive predecessor Eye In The Sky, but had some classy music on it and even ventured into Phil Spector territory with it’s first single:

No.238: “Beatles For Sale” by The Beatles (1964)
Second time so far in the list for The Beatles, this time with their album which was named “Yesterday And Today” in the U.S., adding recent singles . To me, this album seemed to be filling a gap between the initial Beatlemania of ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ and ‘She Loves You’ and the following ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. Contained some future classics though all the same.

No.237: “Hatful Of Hollow” by The Smiths (1984)
Yes, true it’s a compilation and I’ve been deliberately abstaining from including any (except The Amazing Darts! earlier for personal reasons), but this has been allowed as most of the tracks were either b-sides or were unreleased previous to this record. Their only other album so far was their debut in any case, so there we go.

No.236: “The Way It Is” by Bruce Hornsby & The Range (1986)
One of the most played songs in America (and indeed universally) in the 1980’s was Bruce Hornsby’s breakthrough single ‘The Way It Is’ with its socio-political images of poverty and depravation on the streets of America.The parent album contained many more similar and very well-written songs and made Hornsby briefly a big name attraction.

Last one today and no list would be complete without some more Gary Numan would it?

No.235: “Tubeway Army” by Tubeway Army (1978)
The first album by this fledgling new-wave synth band featuring the soon-to-be massive Gary Numan. This record is very different from the more polished Moog music we would see shortly after, in fact it’s very post-punk indeed in places. A shortage of clips, so we have the first single in audio format, plus a more recent version of one of the early songs from the album performed live a few years ago.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41PdK%2Bo98ZL.SX300.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJZ4kKoryhE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkN-hzGY72Y

More tomorrow night. :slight_smile:

Superb album. I played this to death in the early eighties.

Reel Around The Fountain is one of my favourite Smiths songs.