Almost finished with the top 1000 albums!

[BleuPanda]

I currently have 12 left:
De la Soul is Dead
The Lion and the Cobra
Hysteria
Diesel and Dust
Talking with the Taxman About Poetry
Meat Puppets II
High Land, Hard Rain
Monarchie und Alltag
One Step Beyond...
Germfree Adolescents
Killer
Woodstock


This has been a goal since I first found this site (I literally hadn't listened to a full album in my life beforehand). It feels weird to be so close. Of course there's another 2000 to get through (minus the ~500 I already have), but this feels like a big milestone.

[Nick]

Nice! I'm almost done with the top 500 myself, but I have a fair amount of the top 1000 under my belt too.

Any albums you didn't expect to love but ended up loving in your top 1000 quest? Any albums you've flat out hated in your top 1000 quest?

[babydoll]

Wow, you haven't heard Hysteria yet? I thought everyone had heard it in the U.S. despite whether they liked them or not. The Lion and the Cobra and the Woodstock soundtrack are very high on my list to hear. Congratulations, though, on this stunningly spectacular feat!

[Nick]

Wow, you haven't heard Hysteria yet? I thought everyone had heard it in the U.S. despite whether they liked them or not.

I'm guessing it's a generational thing. If you were a teenager/20 something in the late 80s, I'm sure it was inescapable. But I doubt many of the forumers who were either in diapers or yet to be born in 1987 could recognize more than "Pour Some Sugar on Me". I know I probably couldn't.

[Romain]

Wow, you haven't heard Hysteria yet? I thought everyone had heard it in the U.S. despite whether they liked them or not.

I'm guessing it's a generational thing. If you were a teenager/20 something in the late 80s, I'm sure it was inescapable. But I doubt many of the forumers who were either in diapers or yet to be born in 1987 could recognize more than "Pour Some Sugar on Me". I know I probably couldn't.

I think you are right, because me, it's Diesel and Dust and One Step Beyond who surprised me.

[Nassim]

Wow, you haven't heard Hysteria yet? I thought everyone had heard it in the U.S. despite whether they liked them or not.

I'm guessing it's a generational thing. If you were a teenager/20 something in the late 80s, I'm sure it was inescapable. But I doubt many of the forumers who were either in diapers or yet to be born in 1987 could recognize more than "Pour Some Sugar on Me". I know I probably couldn't.

I think you are right, because me, it's Diesel and Dust and One Step Beyond who surprised me.

In this case it's not just generation, it's country. Def Leppard never were big in France, while Midnight Oil and Madness kind of were (even if for a short time).

[spiritualized]

In this case it's not just generation, it's country. Def Leppard never were big in France, while Midnight Oil and Madness kind of were (even if for a short time).

Totally agree - I have vivid memories of "Beds are Burning"

[BleuPanda]

And, as I said, I literally hadn't listened to a full album before finding this site about 6 years ago. Hard rock isn't really my style, so I've been putting Def Leppard off (I have listened to Pyromania, though).

I think the biggest surprise to me is some of the more upbeat pop music. After disliking their songs quite a bit, I immediately fell in love with both Lauper's She's So Unusual and Duran Duran's Rio. My opinion of both artists flipped since listening to their album.

Probably my least favorite aspect of the list is the overbearing amount of classic rock. There's just so much of it, and I really can't figure out what makes some of them top 1000 worthy. The most consistent disappointment is Clapton; of his many projects on the list, Cream is the only one I truly enjoyed.

[Nick]

Just out of curiosity, Bleupanda, if you had never listened to a full album before coming to this website, what lead you here and what sparked your interest in full albums?

[luney6]

Just out of curiosity, Bleupanda, if you had never listened to a full album before coming to this website, what lead you here and what sparked your interest in full albums?

Actually, even I hadn't heard a full album. In fact, I used to listen only to pop music on the charts, but it was beginning to get a little boring. I was really getting into looking up lists, like the one on Rolling Stone magazine and all.

I hadn't even heard a single song by the Beatles, or any of the top 10 for that matter.

[notbrianeno]

Part of the reason I feel I fell into music/lists/ranking as a hobby was because of the fact that I barely listened to music at all until high school, when I finally got a computer with the ability to watch youtube/stream spotify. Before then my iPod consisted solely of the U2 discography and a Coldplay album. In eighth and seventh grade, when I started to realize how behind I was on music, I used to read reviews of Radiohead and Modest Mouse albums, since they were listed on U2's wikipedia page as being influenced by them, and imagined what they sounded like.

I was really getting into looking up lists, like the one on Rolling Stone magazine and all.

Out of curiosity, did you use Piero Scaruffi's website as a tool for discovery? I find many of his picks to be great, despite vehemently disagreeing with him on Radiohead and others, and I noticed much of your all-time list on RYM overlaps with his (Yrself is Steam, Ocean Songs, Geek the Girl, etc.)

[luney6]

.

I was really getting into looking up lists, like the one on Rolling Stone magazine and all.

Out of curiosity, did you use Piero Scaruffi's website as a tool for discovery? I find many of his picks to be great, despite vehemently disagreeing with him on Radiohead and others, and I noticed much of your all-time list on RYM overlaps with his (Yrself is Steam, Ocean Songs, Geek the Girl, etc.)

Yes. I got into his list a few months back, and since then I've been using it. So far, I think he is perhaps the most cerebral critic out there. Not been disappointed by him yet. It may change in the future, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

[BleuPanda]

My evolution with music is a strange one:
Most of my life I listened to whatever was on the radio, and if I listened to music on my own, I'd usually go with video game tracks (hence my video game music poll a few months back).

This started to change as I got into a few video game series that used popular music. The big ones here are Rock Band 2 and Grand Theft Auto IV. Both games had a stellar tracklist, with my first real interest in rock forming around the Smashing Pumpkins. Grand Theft Auto IV also introduced me to some wilder genres, with the most influential pieces on my development as a music lover being "Get Innocuous" by LCD Soundsystem and "Zombie" by Fela Kuti.

A year or so later I stumbled across this site and the name LCD Soundsystem stuck out to me. I was mainly going through modern lists because that's where my interest was based, and I hadn't heard of LCD Soundsystem outside of that one song in GTA. I decided to check out a few of their higher songs and realized I was kind of missing out on a lot by not actively pursuing music.

For my first year or two on the site, I stuck to the song side. The idea of listening to a single artist for 45 minutes seemed overwhelming, because why listen to all that 'filler'? Music still hadn't gripped me yet, but I was quickly turning into a massive LCD Soundsystem fanboy.

It all changed when one of my friends received free tickets to Pitchfork 2010 during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. LCD Soundsystem was headlining and, knowing I was such a big fan of the band, he offered me one of the tickets. As I prepared for the event, I realized there has to be more to the band than just their big hits. Sound of Silver was the first album I sat down and listened to in full, and it opened my mind up to the possibility music held.

Since then I've been trying to catch up with this art form I had been missing. I think it's overtaken all my other interests, but I still feel inadequate, as if everyone else had a decade head start.

Also, after all this time, only one album has supplanted Sound of Silver as my favorite: The Velvet Underground and Nico. It's funny how the first can hang on like that, 1,700 albums later.

[babydoll]

1,700 albums later.

[Sweepstakes Ron]

The total number of albums I've listened to doesn't even reach 300. Of course, I'm 6 years younger than BleuPanda, so I have plenty of time to catch up. But I think there are a lot of highly acclaimed albums where I feel like it will be a while before I even feel the need to listen to them, let alone the want.

[BleuPanda]

The total number of albums I've listened to doesn't even reach 300. Of course, I'm 6 years younger than BleuPanda, so I have plenty of time to catch up. But I think there are a lot of highly acclaimed albums where I feel like it will be a while before I even feel the need to listen to them, let alone the want.

And, as you can tell from the dates, all these albums were listened to over the last 6 years. Though there are definitely some I would have skipped if I wasn't a completionist.

[babydoll]

The total number of albums I've listened to doesn't even reach 300. Of course, I'm 6 years younger than BleuPanda, so I have plenty of time to catch up. But I think there are a lot of highly acclaimed albums where I feel like it will be a while before I even feel the need to listen to them, let alone the want.

And, as you can tell from the dates, all these albums were listened to over the last 6 years. Though there are definitely some I would have skipped if I wasn't a completionist.

Well, it is still an achievement! You could actually rank 500 albums for the last poll - even if you didn't give a nod to Dusty Springfield's Dusty in Memphis, but I'll let that slide in your moment of glory. Any albums from your original twelve left gone yet?

[Nassim]

Since then I've been trying to catch up with this art form I had been missing. I think it's overtaken all my other interests, but I still feel inadequate, as if everyone else had a decade head start.

Yeah if you compare with some people on the forum, you will always feel way behind, but the average AM guy like me still have a lot to listen to.
I actually have listened to 1028 AM3000 albums from start to finish (+about 20 I'm not 100% sure and over 100 I have listened to more than 2/3). If you add unranked albums by artists I love, albums I listened to for forum polls and albums from the past 10 or so years where I followed releases and picked albums from reviews, I think I'd get somewhere around 1600 (though I no longer have an up to date list for that specific regard).

I didn't listen to albums in AM orders to more than half of the AM albums I have listened to have been released in 95 or later, though thanks to the recent bracketology I now have listened to 254 of the top 256 (I dislike Layla too much to get through it all, and somehow always had to stop Superunknown within 2 or 3 tracks to the end for various reasons).
The longest stretch of albums I have not listened to is from #2628 Stranger in Town by Bob Seger to #2656 The Kinks/You Really Got Me, though that should change soon since I will listen to the Lion's Roar for the Moderately Acclaimed poll (my next stretch is only one album shorter anyway)

[Kingoftonga]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who knew very little about popular music before discovering this site! In my case, I was a big classical music fan for years, during the ages that most people find popular music, I think (I listened to nothing but classical from ages 16-22 or so). I finally stopped being such a snob and started listening to some rock music, and realized it was pretty good, but the world of music is so big I didn't know where to look next. So I started looking up lists for guidance. I found both AM and the Rolling Stone 500; AM's list was better.

[BleuPanda]

Now down to the final 5! Would have been 3 but I double-checked my list and found I was missing two below, plus Dog Star Man which I have since listened to.

Diesel and Dust
One Step Beyond...
Woodstock
The Pretender
Setting Sons


Germfree Adolescents was my favorite of the batch so far, with Meat Puppets II placing second. Cowpunk is a genre I want more of. I think I'll save Setting Sons for last, since The Jam is a band that I always enjoy. Either that or Woodstock as a journey through many of the bands I found through this site.

[babydoll]

I think I'll save Setting Sons for last, since The Jam is a band that I always enjoy. Either that or Woodstock as a journey through many of the bands I found through this site.

Woodstock seems more fitting to me. Not only is there a renowned documentary for filmmaker Bleu, but a good majority of the artists have albums in the top 1000. It would be a fitting finale to feature a good mixture of those artists in one album in honor of your ardous task.

[BleuPanda]

I did a comparison of my list to the AM list. Here are my biggest surprises and disappointments. The number in parenthesis is approximately how many spaces there are between my ranking and its ranking on AM.

Most undervalued top 1000:
1. The The - Soul Mining (850)
2. Perfume Genius - Too Bright (800)
3. The Waterboys - This is the Sea (700)
4. Savages - Silence Yourself (700)
5. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours (650)
6. The Sonics - Here Are the Sonics (650)
7. Modest Mouse - The Lonesome Crowded West (650)
8. The Pop Group - Y (600)
9. The Knife - Shaking the Habitual (600)
10. Laurie Anderson - Big Science (600)
11. Aztec Camera - High Land, Hard Rain (600)
12. blur - Think Tank (550)
13. Julia Holter - Loud City Song (500)
14. The Horrors - Primary Colours (500)
15. The Soft Machine - Third (500)
16. Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Welcome to the Pleasuredome (500)
17. Big Black - Songs About Fucking (450)
18. Big Black - Atomizer (450)
19. Cowboy Junkies - The Trinity Session (450)
20. Mogwai - Young Team (450)
21. Tom Waits - Bad as Me (450)
22. My Morning Jacket - Z (450)
23. Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II (450)
24. Gorillaz - Demon Days (450)
25. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz (450)

Most underwhelming top 1000:
1. Derek and the Dominoes - Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (850)
2. The Who - Tommy (750)
3. Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story (700)
4. Frank Zappa - Hot Rats (700)
5. AC/DC - Back in Black (700)
6. George Harrison - All Things Must Pass (650)
7. John Lennon - Imagine (600)
8. Hole - Live Through This (600)
9. AC/DC - Highway to Hell (600)
10. Neil Young - Everybody Knows This is Nowhere (600)
11. Roxy Music - Roxy Music (600)
12. The Byrds - Sweetheart of the Rodeo (550)
13. Todd Rundgren - Something/Anything (550)
14. Big Star - Sister Lovers (550)
15. Aretha Franklin - Lady Soul (550)
16. New York Dolls - New York Dolls (550)
17. John Mayall - Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (550)
18. Grateful Dead - Live/Dead (550)
19. Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul (550)
20. MC5 - Kick Out the Jams (550)
21. The Byrds - The Notorious Byrd Brothers (550)
22. Van Halen - Van Halen (500)
23. James Brown - Sex Machine (500)
24. Big Star - Radio City (500)
25. Thin Lizzy - Live and Dangerous (500)

[Jirin]

Top albums I have not heard.

258. Notorious BIG - Ready To Die
286. Parliament - Mothership Connection
324. Frank Sinatra - Songs For Swingin Lovers
350. John Mayall - Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton
353. LIttle Richard - Here's Little Richard
371. Bob Marley And The Wailers - Live!
386. The Crickets - The Chirping Crickets
392. Aerosmith - Rocks
402. Miles Davis - In A Silent Way
421. The Beatles - Please Please Me

Other in top 500:

426. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Willy and the Poor Boys
431. Thin Lizzy - Live and Dangerous
433. The Police - Outlandos D'amour
439. Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto - Getz/Gilberto
468. Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
474. Sonny Rollins - Saxiphone Colossus
479. Randy Newman - 12 Songs
490. The Wailers - Burnin

Anything I'm really missing from this list? Most of them are from bands I've heard stuff from and didn't like as much.

[BleuPanda]

Of those, Getz/Gilberto is phenomenal, and I'm always a fan of Buddy Holly. Ready to Die and Live! are also essential. The only one I have anything against is Blues Breakers.

[luney6]

I think 12 songs, Saxophone Colossus and Mingus Ah Um are pretty good. I haven't heard a couple of these, but from what I have, I don't really think you're missing out on all that much.

[PlasticRam]

Along with what has been mentioned, I would recommend the two Bob Marley albums and The Police album. Please Please Me is a really energetic album, but I guess I wouldn't recommend it if you're not a fan of the Beatles.

[spiritualized]

OK, guys, I am officially feeling old.
But for the record, and since we are comparing our listening skills, I have rated 8700 albums on RYM since I became a member on this site, i.e. 12 years. The vast majority of those are albums, but the EP's and singles are largely offset by my listening years before 2004.

I "discovered" music thanks to a radio show, Les Inrockuptibles, hosted by Bernard Lenoir at the time (the magazine took its name from this show). One day I got bored with the usual crap the "classic" radios used to ram down our throats (and still do, to be fair) and I changed channels. Discovered the Sugarcubes and fell in love with it immediately (I think that must have been my first bought record)

Since then, it has been a loooong road to an everyday discovery of great music.

There, pissing contest over for me

Edit : *sheeeesh* just looked at the most active RYMers... the administrator has rated 300k releases. I suddenly feel pretty small !

[Sweepstakes Ron]

OK, guys, I am officially feeling old.
But for the record, and since we are comparing our listening skills, I have rated 8700 albums on RYM since I became a member on this site, i.e. 12 years. The vast majority of those are albums, but the EP's and singles are largely offset by my listening years before 2004.

What's your RYM username?

[Nick]

Top albums I have not heard.

258. Notorious BIG - Ready To Die
286. Parliament - Mothership Connection
324. Frank Sinatra - Songs For Swingin Lovers
350. John Mayall - Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton
353. LIttle Richard - Here's Little Richard
371. Bob Marley And The Wailers - Live!
386. The Crickets - The Chirping Crickets
392. Aerosmith - Rocks
402. Miles Davis - In A Silent Way
421. The Beatles - Please Please Me

Other in top 500:

426. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Willy and the Poor Boys
431. Thin Lizzy - Live and Dangerous
433. The Police - Outlandos D'amour
439. Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto - Getz/Gilberto
468. Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
474. Sonny Rollins - Saxiphone Colossus
479. Randy Newman - 12 Songs
490. The Wailers - Burnin

Anything I'm really missing from this list? Most of them are from bands I've heard stuff from and didn't like as much.

Ready to Die, Mothership Connection, In a Silent Way, and Please Please Me are all personal favorites from this list. I'd highly recommend them all.

[spiritualized]

OK, guys, I am officially feeling old.
But for the record, and since we are comparing our listening skills, I have rated 8700 albums on RYM since I became a member on this site, i.e. 12 years. The vast majority of those are albums, but the EP's and singles are largely offset by my listening years before 2004.

What's your RYM username?

spiritual

[BleuPanda]

Starting Woodstock now! This has been a journey.

[Maschine_Man]

Congratulations Bleu!

I don't know how people can listen to so much, I'm a little bit jealous!

It takes me forever to listen to an album. I would say I need at least 5/6 listens before I could get an idea of how I really feel about it. Then another 4 before I can really rank each of the songs on their own merits. I know some people who will rank something on RYM after one listen (not that there is anything wrong with that). To me that seems like a bit of a dis-service to the hard work that went into creating that album, though. In the three and a half years I have been working on my list, I have only completed 450 full album ratings, I need to get a move on!

[Jirin]

Of those, Getz/Gilberto is phenomenal, and I'm always a fan of Buddy Holly. Ready to Die and Live! are also essential. The only one I have anything against is Blues Breakers.

I'll check out Getz/Gilberto and Live.

Would you still recommend Ready To Die to a person who vocally dislikes boasty profanity ridden gangster rap? Lyrics about how the rapper is so awesome because he has lots of money and women and kills people immediately turn me off.

Big Poppa is on Ready To Die, right? A song where he asks his friends to, just this one time, not come in and shoot up the place. He knows that asking them to abstain from this is a major imposition on their friendship, but he wants them to make an exception just once so he can bang a girl he's really into.

[spiritualized]

Congratulations Bleu!

I don't know how people can listen to so much, I'm a little bit jealous!

It takes me forever to listen to an album. I would say I need at least 5/6 listens before I could get an idea of how I really feel about it. Then another 4 before I can really rank each of the songs on their own merits. I know some people who will rank something on RYM after one listen (not that there is anything wrong with that). To me that seems like a bit of a dis-service to the hard work that went into creating that album, though. In the three and a half years I have been working on my list, I have only completed 450 full album ratings, I need to get a move on!

I hear you and applaud the tenacity ! I do know nonetheless if I dislike an album pretty much at the first listen. If it ranges in the 7/10 to 10/10, the record will get another spin at some point in time and my rating will sometimes change. I am however one of those " rate at the first listen" type of person

[GucciLittlePiggy]

It takes me forever to listen to an album. I would say I need at least 5/6 listens before I could get an idea of how I really feel about it. Then another 4 before I can really rank each of the songs on their own merits. I know some people who will rank something on RYM after one listen (not that there is anything wrong with that). To me that seems like a bit of a dis-service to the hard work that went into creating that album, though. In the three and a half years I have been working on my list, I have only completed 450 full album ratings, I need to get a move on!

I wholeheartedly agree. I require at a bare minimum three listens to an album before I rate it, but then I still require one more listen at some point in time, just to be sure. One listen followed by an average or poor rating just seems like a complete dismissal of the album. There have been plenty of occasions where I didn't like an album at first, but by the fourth listen, I loved it.

[spiritualized]

It takes me forever to listen to an album. I would say I need at least 5/6 listens before I could get an idea of how I really feel about it. Then another 4 before I can really rank each of the songs on their own merits. I know some people who will rank something on RYM after one listen (not that there is anything wrong with that). To me that seems like a bit of a dis-service to the hard work that went into creating that album, though. In the three and a half years I have been working on my list, I have only completed 450 full album ratings, I need to get a move on!

I wholeheartedly agree. I require at a bare minimum three listens to an album before I rate it, but then I still require one more listen at some point in time, just to be sure. One listen followed by an average or poor rating just seems like a complete dismissal of the album. There have been plenty of occasions where I didn't like an album at first, but by the fourth listen, I loved it.

Actually and this remains my opinion only, I say this with the utmost respect... There is so much great music out there, that I wouldn't be able to listen to most of it in my lifetime. So the first listen is absolutely critical. It has to have something that draws me in, even if I don't particularly like the style. If it doesn't, it gets the chop. There are plenty more artists out there that vie for your attention that an album which hasn't switched it on for me will rarely get a second or third listen. There are rare exceptions of course.

I guess that my music listening history makes me able to do this. I haven't recently looked at the acclaimed chart, but I am pretty sure I will have listened to most of the pre-2013 albums on that list(off to do that now:)..it makes it that bit easier because most of the albums I am currently listening to are unacclaimed, therefore no peer pressure