Top ten albums

2018-05-23 15:06:52

I just completed the latest Facebook viral game: For ten days, each day you're supposed to post an album cover of an album that made an impact on you, and which is still in your personal rotation. (You're also supposed to nominate someone else to do this, but I didn't, because not everyone appreciates that sort of thing.) Anyway, I came up with the following list, most of which have been on my personal playlist since my high school or college days, or even earlier.

  1. Wish You Were Here, by Pink Floyd. It's difficult to select an album of theirs that represents their catalog, but this album is an outstanding and under-appreciated composition that fits its disillusioned era as well as my own teenage years and the issues I was dealing with.
  2. Ambient 4, by Brian Eno. Although I adore this album, it's hard to say if it belongs on my list ahead of other albums that mean something to me, but it was Brian Eno's birthday that day (May 15).
  3. Prelude, by Deodato. The whole album is pleasant, but I love the first track, his well-known jazz-rock adaptation of the Sunrise theme from Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra (famous from the Kubrick movie 2001 A Space Odyssey). This resonates with me because it was the theme for video that Brookhaven National Laboratory showed visitors; I spent a wonderful summer (1980) at the lab as a student intern, writing Fortran code.
  4. The White Album, by the Beatles. I've been a huge fan of the Beatles since I was 7 years old and heard songs from Sgt. Peppers on the radio in 1967. I choose the White Album because of the rich variety of song-writing on the album, and the often serious tone of the songs.
  5. To Our Childrens Childrens Children, by the Moody Blues. This album brings to mind my days in my late teens working at the planetarium at the local science museum---a wonderful time in my life.
  6. Rubycon, by Tangerine Dream. Part one of this album (the first half) is my very favorite electronic piece. But this also means a lot to me because it is also associated with the planetarium, which made use of it in a 1979 show they gave about the total solar eclipse that year.
  7. One Size Fits All, by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Zappa at the height of his powers---intricate and playful rock and jazz-rock, with several terrific songs (Sofa #1, Inca Roads). Bonus points for being free of material unfit for broadcast airplay (Zappa mocked himself by releasing albums called "Shut Up and Play Your Guitar").
  8. Electric Ladyland, by Jimi Hendrix. An album that places me back in the counterculture of Reed College, when we danced to "All Along the Watchtower" in the student union, or I saw "Jimi Plays Berkeley" (where he plays songs like "Voodoo Chile Slight Return") at the Clinton Street Theater. But it's terrific rock and blues.
  9. Sinfonia Antartica, by Ralph Vaughan Williams (conducted by Bernard Haitink). I decided to put at least one classical album on the list. This piece is magnificent, dramatic and mysteriously beautiful. It also has resonance with me because a snippet was used in one of the planetarium shows I gave circa 1978. This recording is digital, with the clarity and presence of the best recording (marred only by microphone overloading crackle during the pipe organ in the third movement).
  10. Switched-On Bach, by Wendy Carlos. This 1968 album of Moog synthesizer music still sparkles; I absolutely adore the first piece, the sinfonia from Bach's Cantata 29. But this album has always meant a lot to me, because it brings me back to the late 1960s or early 1970s with its futuristic and optimistic sound.