100 Favorite Albums by Monkeypunch

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I'm not old, you're just 12.
I am, it must be said, a music nerd. I get so much out of listening to a favorite cd, it's like visiting an old friend.

Sadly, my hearing is deteriorating. I've lost 90% of my hearing in my right ear (due to an accident while serving my country), so using headphones is pretty much not happening anymore. But before I eventually lose the ability to hear entirely, I decided to make a list of my favorite 100 albums, and I decided to share it with you fine people. Maybe you'll enjoy it, maybe you won't. Oh well.

(These are in no specific order but I'll do five at a go.)

-Tom Waits, Rain Dogs

Tom Waits is an acquired taste, I know, but this is one of those CD's I go back to fairly often. It's loud, raucous, quiet and moving all at the same time. It fits pretty much all my moods. The first time I heard it, I had no idea what I was listening to, the second time, I was listening to a new favorite.

-The Mothers of Invention, We're Only In It For The Money

It's tempting to make this list all Frank Zappa cd's, but I won't. He will be well represented, however. This album blew my fragile little mind when I was about 17 or so. It's...challenging. I mean there's good songs, and I often find myself singing along, but it's also a concept album based on a short story by Franz Kafka, it spews contempt for everyone in all directions, and often degenerates into noise and weird sound effects. Man, I love Zappa.

-Alice Cooper, Killer

Alice Cooper...This album is probably Alice at his most aggressive. Loud, fast Detroit garage rock nastiness right from the get go, as well as sinister slower songs, dripping with menace. Even if this only had one song, the savagely funny "Dead Babies," this would still be on my list. But this whole album is all killer no filler.

-David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars

Okay, everybody loves this CD, but if I'm being honest, it's one of the most played selections in my entire library. I don't even remember why I picked it up, other than I felt like it was something I should know about, and then it just struck a chord in me, and I connected with it. That's when you know something's good art. Put this on, turn off the lights in your room, plug in a string of Christmas lights, and float away to the world of the album.

-Pink Floyd, The Wall

The CD that made me like Pink Floyd. It's the musical equivalent of losing your mind, I'd imagine. The quiet songs are covered in dread, the loud songs are sonic hammers, and even the "singles" like "Young Lust" and "Another Brick in the Wall" ooze nastiness and anger. It's an experience. I have heard people say you should be high during it, but I don't believe that. I do think we should all be afraid of Roger Waters just a tiny bit for creating this though...

And that will do it for tonight. More to come...
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"You, me, everyone...we are all made of star stuff." - Neil Degrasse Tyson

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Good whiskey make jackrabbit slap de bear.
+rep for The Wall, and also for Bowie and Waits (I haven't heard the albums you've posted yet, but I'm beginning to get into their work). I've been wanting to do this kind of list for ages, but I haven't listened to enough types of music to make a definitive list of my tastes.

But there will be huge rep coming your way for sharing your love for the art that is music. I look forward to the rest of your list.
__________________
"George, this is a little too much for me. Escaped convicts, fugitive sex... I've got a cockfight to focus on."



I'm not old, you're just 12.
Okay, Five more...

-The Modern Lovers, Precise Modern Lovers Order

If ever a CD could capture the pain of lovesick adolescence, this would be it. It's sloppy, chaotic, barely in tune or on tempo, but there's something about Jonathan Richman and his band's music that's heartfelt and heartrending. It's funny, too!

-The Pixies, Come On, Pilgrim

I love this one probably even more than Doolittle. I came to the Pixies late, after they called it quits, but before they embarked on their never-ending cash grab reunion. Everything I love about them is here in the roughest form, and it's a really fun album.

-Cheap Trick, Cheap Trick

I have a thing about first albums. It's awesome to hear where a famous band came from, and this is Cheap Trick minus all the shiny 1970's and 80's studio production gloss. It's too hard to be a pop album, but too melodic to be a hard rock album, and the lyrics are pretty harsh. But a lot of my favorite Cheap Trick songs are on this one, so here it is.

-Weezer, Weezer (Blue Album)

Weezer maybe have overstayed their welcome a little bit, their "nerd rock" image not really ageing well now that the band is in their forties, but this first CD was a brilliant bit of fun. Lyrics about surfing, D&D, the X-men, and Kiss butt up against more serious concerns like alcoholism and abandonment, all in a CD that sounds amazing coming out of your car speakers.

-Janis Joplin, Joplin In Concert

Is it possible to fall in love with someone's voice? Cause that pretty much happened here. Janis Joplin put her entire soul into the things she sang, and this live CD captures that moreso than her studio output. I love the boozy rant during Ball and Chain, her rambling stories before songs, and the swaggering duet Ego Rock, with Nick Gravenites.

More to come later.



Chappie doesn't like the real world
I love Jonthan Richman and the Modern Lovers and Tom Waits ( who doesn't love Tom Waits?). The Ziggy Stardust album is brilliant and The Pixies are solid. And yes, Janis has one, if not the, of the best voices ever recorded. That women sings like a wound hurts. Her song Work Me Lord is the most painful song I have ever heard.

There are a couple of songs I like by Weezer. Most of it I don't like.



I don't get around to listening as much new music as I do movies, but a thumbs up for The Wall, and especially Rain Dogs. Tom Waits is in a very exclusive list of artists that never gets old to me. Rain Dogs is one of my favorites that I've listened to, alongside Mule Variations, and Bad As Me. You gotta love that raspy voice, best described by this guy...

"like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car." -Daniel Durchholz
Great actor, too. That scene in Seven Psychopaths, where he was telling Colin Farrell's character his story of woe was all his.



I'm not old, you're just 12.
I totally abandoned this thread, and I should not have! Let's do some more...

-Foo Fighters, The Colour and the Shape

This has been one of my favorite CD's since it's release back in 1997. I don't even feel like the Foo Fighters have made anything this good since, and I do like the band a lot. I listen to this constantly.

- R.E.M. Monster

This is the 1990's section of my list, apparently. I am obsessed with this record. I liked R.E.M. before it came out, sure, but this one...blew my mind. Gone are the middle of the road mandolin ballads and adult alternative trappings, this one has loud guitars, confrontational lyrics, and weird sonic experiments. I one time attempted to make a comic book based on this, it was incredibly difficult and not entirely successful. I still go back to this well often.

- The Lemonheads, It's a Shame About Ray

This is my favorite Lemonheads album, even though my favorite song by them, "Big Gay Heart" is actually on the one after this. But for me, It's a Shame About Ray is just perfect. It encapsulates what I love about the band, the songs are even in a great sequence (minus the bonus track "Mrs. Robinson," which ruins the flow of things kind of, but that was the record company's doing).

-Alice Cooper, The Last Temptation

Gotta put another Alice Cooper on here. He's probably my favorite musician ever. This was kind of his big 1990's comeback CD, and it's great. Working from a concept co-written by British fantasy author Neil Gaiman, it also has Chris Cornell shredding his vocal cords on two songs. This is a fantastic cd for late in his career, and the beginning of his creative resurgence.

-Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dream

I don't care that Billy Corgan is an arrogant control freak, if this is the end result, what has he done wrong? Swirling psychedelic guitars, bruising screams and gentle harmonies, and unbridled creativity. I've gone back and forth on this one, loving it and hating it alternately, but I always come back to it, so it has earned it's place here.