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The River
(more) »rank: 4495by: Bruce Springsteen
: essential recording:Despite the acclaim accorded Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, this is the album that broke Springsteen into the big leagues, thanks to 'Hungry Heart,' then his most pointedly commercial song; it had new fans swooning but some old ones grumbling for the 'poetic' Springsteen of days gone by. Not to worry--though more economical lyrically, The River had something to offer nearly everyone: There's old-time frat rock ('Sherry Darling'), empathetic character studies ('The River,' 'Stolen Car,' 'Independence Day'), passionate rockers ('Out in the Street'), dramatic ballads ('Point Blank'), and even a couple of good-natured goofs ...
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Night Moves
(more) »rank: 5291by: Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band
: : Bob Seger Photos More from Bob Seger Smokin' O.P.'s Nine Tonight Face The Promise Greatest Hits Stranger in Town Against The Wind Amazon.com:After more than 10 years working the Midwest club circuit, Detroit's Bob Seger hit mainstream American paydirt with this distillation of working-class values and juke-joint rock & roll. His regional success had been brewing throughout the mid-'70s, but after Bruce Springsteen connected with Born to Run (copping Seger's traditional rock values, to say nothing of his husky tone), it was only a matter of time before Seger found his ticket. Seger scores here with the nostalgic ...
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Get Your Wings
(more) »rank: 4434by: Aerosmith
: :While not quite as exemplary of the Boston quintet's '70s sound as Toys in the Attic or Rocks, Get Your Wings was impressive both in terms of its material and its measurable improvement over Aerosmith's debut. From the R&B inflected 'Same Old Song and Dance' to the power-rock 'Woman of the World' to the rollicking cover of 'Train Kept a Rollin',' Wings showed the band solidifying their sound and really taking flight for the first time. --Genevieve Williams
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Katy Lied
(more) »rank: 4857by: Steely Dan
:Album Description:Japanese only SHM-CD (Super High Material CD - playable on all CD players) paper sleeve pressing. Universal. 2008. essential recording:The last of the truly classic first four Steely Dan albums, the 1975 Katy Lied also sounds like the best. While retaining a solid rock foundation, the music finds Walter Becker and Donald Fagen engaging their jazz influences more successfully than ever; Fagen's piano fills alone are some of the most impressive music laid to tape in the '70s. The songs, too, rate with the team's very best, whether coolly anticipating global financial collapse ('Black Friday'), celebrating the legacy of ...
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Can't Buy a Thrill
(more) »rank: 5760by: Steely Dan
:Album Description:Japanese only SHM-CD (Super High Material CD - playable on all CD players) paper sleeve pressing. Universal. 2008. :Songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen launched Steely Dan with a seductive, poker-faced 1972 debut as smoothly accessible in its music as it was elusive in its thematic concerns. The opening 'Do It Again' snagged swift commercial success as one of the most mysterious pop hits in history, a sultry rock cha-cha that chronicled a series of harrowing catastrophes far removed from the reheated love songs and pro forma countercultural rebellion of the day. Though the core band boasted two formidable guitarists, ...
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Killer
(more) »rank: 2945by: Alice Cooper
: :The fact that Alice Cooper's fourth release housed the gritty 'Halo of Flies' would be reason enough to buy the CD, even if the rest of it were garbage. An essential piece of the rock canon, it may not have served up the hits that his other releases did, but it still stands as a classic. Loud, brash, sloppy, and hard, it's the kind of listen that makes you check for grime under your nails. Cooper's rock/shock aesthetic was coming into full bloom here and 'Dead Babies' shows he was satisfied with his formula of hard rock, bad taste, and images ...
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The Best of John Hiatt
(more) »rank: 14282by: John Hiatt
: :John Hiatt has had such extraordinary success as a songwriter that, even if you haven't followed his career as a performer, you'll find you know most of these songs by virtue of their hit cover versions. Bonnie Raitt ('A Thing Called Love'), Suzy Bogguss ('Drive South'), Rosanne Cash ('The Way We Mend a Broken Heart'), Jeff Healey ('Angel Eyes'), and Aaron Neville ('Feels Like Rain') have all dipped into the Hiatt songbook with spectacular results. Hiatt's originals (plus a couple of new tracks) are terrific in their own right, thanks to his gritty vocal style and stellar accompaniment on some tracks ...
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Live at the BBC
(more) »rank: 2610by: The Beatles
: :The surviving members of the Fab Four spent much of the 1990s belatedly reuniting to document, promote, and occasionally awkwardly burnish their unparalleled pop music legacy. This double-disc anthology of live-in-the-studio performances originally recorded specifically for the BBC during the most frantic years of early Beatlemania was the first chapter in that effort and the first issuance of previously unreleased Beatles recordings since the late '70s. In many ways, it remains the most artistically revealing. Capturing them at their early '60s live-performance peak, these recordings pay homage to both the band's eclectic musical influences (including Chuck Berry, Phil Spector, Little Richard, ...
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Every Picture Tells a Story
(more) »rank: 3394by: Rod Stewart
: essential recording:Once upon a time, Rod Stewart was not vamping indiscriminately about 'Hot Legs' and asking 'D'ya Think I'm Sexy?' He was a singer with a gravel-voice approximation of Sam Cooke and excellent taste in cover material. Here, he's toned down with folksy covers of Tim Hardin ('Reason to Believe'), Bob Dylan ('Tomorrow is Such a Long Time'), and Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup (via Elvis, 'That's All Right Mama'). He tops his interpretive abilities with two originals that have since become standards ('Maggie May, ' 'Every Picture Tells A Story'). Quite a different Rod from the one the world has ...
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Full Moon Fever
(more) »rank: 1572by: Tom Petty
: essential recording:Ten years had passed since Petty's last solid outing (Damn the Torpedoes in 1979), and Full Moon Fever fully resuscitated the artist's career, which--some would say 'arguably'--had been losing steam. With the album's four major hits and rave reviews from the critics (these things do not always go hand-in-hand), Petty must have breathed a sigh of relief. He left the Heartbreakers behind, hooked up with musician, writer, and producer Jeff Lynne, and rocked out with 'Runnin' Down a Dream,' got mellow and introspective on 'Free Fallin'' and 'A Face in the Crowd,' and paid tribute (finally) to the Byrds ...
