Desert Island Draft Thread

[Annabelle 0]

the zombies - odessey and orracle (1967-68)

 

the breeziest album ever from the charming zombies. their melodies make the beach boys seemed contrived. even more amazing was that this album was close to not only being released. al kooper saves it from the dredges of nothingness. in fact, this is the album i want played as i go to a desert island. it is everything great about sunshine and sun and fun and kickin' back. the lyrics are not breezy. not the funnest. the dark side of the sun, if you will. listening to this album for the first time is a lot like being born. wiping the sleep (afterbirth) from your eyes, stretching out the arms, and eagerly attacking anything that comes close to this splendor. like the flying over california ride at disneyland. the wind in your face legs dangling over the end. head on the shoulder of your loved on. pure pleasure. not a weakness in this at all. multifacted multilayered. this pop will never be eclipsed. ever. well, maybe i hope so. oh, and times of the season. as if i need to go on.

[Guest Vitamin X]

My last two albums were fairly mellow, so I'm making this a bit more up-tempo.

 

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (1970)

Agent already took Kind of Blue, which is fine, because Bitches Brew is actually my favorite Miles Davis album, and maybe even my favorite jazz album, period. I first started listening to this when I was high, since while being relaxed the psychedelic melodies and groundbreaking rhythms were ever the more vibrant. In a way much like my next selection, Davis' playing is bold and aggressive, intense and complex. The cover art is fantastic as well, when viewed as a whole:

If we were allowed to take box sets, I would've taken The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions here, however, which has a lot more material and contains some more of Joe Zawinul's piano work, plus a few more pieces by Davis (I really like "The Big Green Serpent" and "Lonely Fire" on disc three) which people really miss out on if you listen to just the regular album.

 

Slayer - Reign in Blood (1986)

This selection might piss off a couple other metalheads on here, but I had to take it. Starts and finishes with my two favorite Slayer songs ever (particularly "Raining Blood") and is just an awesome thrash album. The one disappointing thing about this album is its length, but it's a fucking intense, awesome 28 minutes. A couple years ago, when I was listening to a lot more speed/thrash/black metal, I remember having this album playing in my car for days on end. Might be my favorite metal album, but it's definitely a classic and one I had to have.

[Annabelle 0]

john lennon - imagine (1971)

 

gotta keep it real to my classics for now. john lennon's solo masterpiece imagine has it all. love, anger, confusion, phil spector. the highlight of this album is nicky hopkins. the mvp. nearly every song is based around the piano. they have the jingle jangle that lennon never revisited. i'd assume there was a level or personal contentment that we never saw from a lennon album until double fantasy. oh yoko typifies everything john & yoko were about. jealous guy seemingly contradicts that love in an essence but it also proves the passion he had for his damsell. how?, i don't wana be a soldier, and give me some truth is great political soul searching lennon. probably as effective as he got. and how about that fine little kiss off the mccartney in the middle. you cuuunt.

[mw679 0]

Good acquisition on 36 Chambers. I'm pretty sure a lot of people here wanted it. I know I did.

 

Thanks, Milky. Props to you for the PE selection, I had it on my list and I was surprised it went so early. It's a classic, though, so I guess you gotta grab 'em when you get a chance. Yeah, I know a lot of people that aren't really into hip hop that enjoy 36 Chambers, it's just so damn catchy, you get the songs(and skits) stuck in your head and just have to hear it again. "Wu-Tang again?" "Awwww yeah, again and again!"

[TheOriginalOrangeGoblin 0]

Wow the great rap albums are going fast. I have 3 lined up that are still there so here's to hoping no one takes them.

[Mr. S£im Citrus 0]

Well, I wasn't planning on taking a rap album with any of my next three picks, so chances are you'll get at least one.

[Nighthawk 0]

Yup yup. I was aiming to keep my choices scattershot as far as genre, but since rap is proving so popular, I may just have to snag them while the getting is good.

 

Now that it's gone, I'll admit that Doggystyle was one. Every time someone mentions The Chronic, I have to say that Doggystyle was better. In fact, can I just write my blurb for it even though I didn't get to pick it?

 

Man, I remember when that came out, it was just like a bomb being dropped on all of L.A., where I was living at the time. I was like 10 or 11 back then, and still. The hype for Snoop's album after Chronic dropped was insane, and I feel it was the best example of something living up to the hype ever.

We were all good kids, my friends and I, and I remember the giggling excitement over it. Like, one person on the block would get it, and we'd be sneaking into their bedroom and listening to it, trying to stifle our joy lest someone's parents would hear.

And then in later life, like Ed said, playing it at every opportunity. I could probably quote 3/4 of it verbatim or something.

Like I saw Snoop say on the news at the time... "If you like it, buy it. If you don't, fuck you."

 

I have a specific memory of waiting in the Las Vegas airport while on the way to visit my mom, and being in the waiting room with other unescorted kids, as airports do, and one kid had a boom box. And we were looking through his albums, and there it was. And the girl who liked Nirvana and shit was like "If you play Dogg in here, I'm leaving." and we tore it up anyway.

 

Doggystyle is just a wonderful memory of my childhood that has continued into my adulthood. I wish I had picked it.

 

But since those are mostly personal reasons, I still feel I made the right decision.

[Mr. S£im Citrus 0]

Jeebus... childhood? I was a freshman in college when that album came out.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Heh. That's one of the things I really like about living in 2008. People who were in college when The Chronic and Doggystyle were dominating the airwaves are now pretty far along in their careers. I could make references to "The $20 Sack Pyramid" and my old boss would always get the joke. And the HR director? He'd never admit it, but I know he knows all the words to "Ain't No Fun." I just know it.

 

Pick coming in a little while.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I went back and forth on this pick a few times, weighing it between a few classics that surely won't be around in 30 picks and one of my favorite albums ever, one that I know The Coat Is My Father likes very much too. He already Rain Dogs'd me, so I decided that I had to lock this one down.

 

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

 

If Agent's "sometimes nothing else will do" album is Souls at Zero, this is mine. It's a completely unique, freewheeling tour of Jeff Mangum's head, indescribable song after indescribable song. Essentially 40 continuous minutes of propulsive, unusual collusion between electric, acoustic, and esoteric, it also happens to be one of the most emotionally resonant albums I know. It moves back and forth between sounding like giddy euphoria and total desolation in the span of a minute or two. Lyrically, it's obtuse but not without intimacy, and musically it goes through a tremendous amount of highs and lows in 11 tracks. The whole thing is anchored by Mangum's slightly out-of-tune, fuzzy guitar, which has a very distinct thrum I've never heard anywhere else, and which matches his slightly out-of-tune, on-the-verge-of-breaking voice perfectly. You can hear him pushing his microphone to the limit sometimes, somehow making flat notes beautiful.

 

I don't know what my favorite song is on here. "Holland, 1945" was the first one I heard, but then there's the title track. And "Two-Headed Boy." And everything else. It's easy to see why he hasn't recorded anything after this, despite it being 10 years old now: what could he possibly have done to top it?

[Guest Michael Myers Resplendent]

Oh, I can describe them.

[Darthtiki 0]

 

Spice Girls- Spice (1996)

 

While it may cost me votes, this album is a great overall pop album. Almost every song has a great beat. Songs like "2 Become 1", Naked, and "Who Do You Think You Are" have a very sexy vibe in their own subtle ways.

[Nighthawk 0]

HA!

 

You know I agree, but I wasn't going to go there. I am going to pick a pop album at some point, but not that one.

[mw679 0]

 

Rage Against The Machine- Rage Against The Machine 1992

 

Ok, if I'm stranded on a desert island, there'll be times when I've got some anger brewing. Here is a perfect album for that situation. Only 10 tracks, but it's one I can listen to at any time. The ferocity of the tracks and how they build up slowly to blazing solos by Tom Morello(yeah, maybe his "noise solos" have grown a little tired today, but in 92? This was something so different and innovative at the time). My favorite aspect is actually the bass and drums on the album. The rhythm section of Timmy C. and Brad Wilk just hammer home the songs with such power, it'll knock you back a little when you first hear it. How can you not love the bass intro to "Bombtrack" or the outro to "Killing In The Name"?

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Haha, yesss. Darthtiki wins.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I named myself after a Mountain Goats song.

 

[Guest Michael Myers Resplendent]

I knew I wasn't getting away with the Aeroplane slam.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

I don't really like it either, Dan, it's ok.

[The Man in Blak 0]

 

David Bowie - Low

 

Fractured cocaine genius, pure, imperfect, refined psychosis. Side two boasts the most poignant, stirring instrumental of the Berlin Trilogy ("Subterraneans"), a perfect end to begin with before crashing head first onto that patented drum crash on "Speed of Life", that distorted -crack- that drives the entire album, -crack-.

[Nighthawk 0]

 

Metallica - Master of Puppets

 

Metallica has caught nearly as much backlash as the Beatles. Difference is; Metallica deserves it. That doesn't change the fact that early Metallica albums are untouchable. It's Master of Puppets... every second of it is great. Though too young to experience it, this was a smash of the music scene at the time, with chart success and huge sales - for a metal album - accomplished with little to no airplay.

It's a masterpiece. Don't let what Metallica are tarnish what they were.

[Jaxxson Mayhem 0]

Great CD. Been listenin to it the last week or so.

[Mr. S£im Citrus 0]

I'm generally not a big fan of live albums but, in this group's case, I'll make an exception:

 

 

 

Earth, Wind & Fire - Greatest Hits Live

 

One of the most influential (and eminently listenable) groups of the seventies, and this is a live performance of their best hits: September, Shining Star, Let's Groove, Boogie Wonderland, Reasons, After the Love is Gone... Solid Gold, from start to finish.

[Jaxxson Mayhem 0]

 

Led Zeppelin - IV

 

 

I love I-IV and this has Stairway To Heaven on it, so I took it. Great album.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

 

David Bowie - Low

 

Fractured cocaine genius, pure, imperfect, refined psychosis. Side two boasts the most poignant, stirring instrumental of the Berlin Trilogy ("Subterraneans"), a perfect end to begin with before crashing head first onto that patented drum crash on "Speed of Life", that distorted -crack- that drives the entire album, -crack-.

 

I wasn't expecting this to make it all the way around to me, but fuck you anyway.

[Henry Spencer 0]

 

Leonard Cohen - Songs Of Love & Hate

 

Because if I were stranded on a desert island, I would be very unhappy about the situation, and would want something to soundtrack long nights of brooding. No other album I own is as sustained a portrait of a long, depressing night alone as this one. This might drive me to suicide with too much solitary listening, but it's a risk I'm willing to take.

[Steviekick 0]

Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

 

What can you say? This is Brian Wilson's masterpiece, and an album that you can talk about/overanalyze forever. Each time I listen to it, I notice new things. The production is great, it's full out Phil Spector style Wall of sound madness. Lyrically, there are themes of sadness confusion both contrast and work superbly with the pop-ish friendliness of the music. Just great stuff all around.

[HarleyQuinn 0]

theSperm (or whatever his/her name is this week) is still on the clock but the 24 hour limit had expired, thus Stevie Kick could pick.

[Copper Feel 0]

Ah damn, I take a day off from the board and this happens. Luckily, as much as I like Pet Sounds, it wasn't amongst my next few choices.

 

 

The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat (1967)

 

Pure amphetamine fuelled genius. This is where the melting pot of the band's visceral rawness, Lou Reed's smack inspired lyrics and the well masked musicality of John Cale really came into its own. The end result is wonderful: the songs on this record are at times frantic ("White Light/White Heat", "I Heard Her Call My Name"), poetic ("Lady Godiva's Operation"), and at other times even genuinely humourous ("The Gift"). The album's sole transitionary song, "Here She Comes Now", is a fun little melodic number that works well within the context of the album. I personally am not that fond of "Sister Ray", the track that many consider to be the pinaccle of their entire career. Don't get me wrong, the first four minutes or so are fairly awesome, but as soon as it meanders off point my attention goes with it. Cale gets a few nice organ parts in before the song finishes, I suppose. But still, the other half an hour or so of the album is so strong, that despite the song's length, this really is a minor quibble. Absolutely essential listening.

[Guest Beastalentier]

Fuckin' Stephen Thomas Erlewine here all of a sudden.

[The Man in Blak 0]

God dammit. I was looking for WL/WH on the (long) way back around.