Ned, let's talk about your 136 Albums of the 90s.

It occurs to me I still haven't answered Chris's original question. Hm.

Technically. But did they really?

1 Diamanda Galas – Vena Cava

2 Sonny Sharrock – Ask the Ages

3 Gyorgy Ligeti/Par Norgard – Violin Concertos etc (perf Christina Astrand/Danish NRSO) [mostly for the Ligeti]

4 Fred Frith Guitar Quartet – Ayaya Moses

5 Morton Feldman – Neither (perf Sarah Leonard/Radio Sinfonie Orchester Frankfurt)

6 La Monte Young & the Theatre of Eternal Music Brass Band – The Second Dream of the High-Tension Stepdown Transformer from the Four Dreams of China

7 Evan Parker/Sainkho Namtchylak – Mars Song

8 CCMC – Decisive Moments

9 George Crumb – Makrokosmos Vols I & II (perf Jo Boatright)

10 John Cage – The Seasons (perf Margaret Leng Tan/American Composers Orchestra)

11 Pole – CD1

12 Pan Sonic – A

13 Derek Bailey/Pat Metheny/Gregg Bendian/Paul Wertico – The Sign of 4

14 Ryoji Ikeda - +/-

15 Massive Attack - Mezzanine [largely because of what it soundtracked]

16 Jim O’ Rourke - Scend

17 Pulp – Different Class

18 Lalgudi Jayraman - Violin

19 Ground Zero – Revolutionary Pekinese Opera

20 Goodie Mob – Still Standing

21 Eugene Chadbourne/Paul Lovens – Patrizio: A Suite to the Waters of the World

22 Iancu Dumitrescu – ED MN 1005

23 Kadri Gopalnath - Saxophone

24 Boards of Canada – Music Has the Right to Children

25 Terry Riley – Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band “All Night Flight”

26 Hariprasad Chaurasiya – Ragas Durgawati and Mishra Shivaranjani

27 Eliot Fisk – Sequenza! [pretty much only for the Berio sequenza, which is earth-shattering enough to justify including this. Otherwise I have no need to hear Fisk play traditional classical music. He's kind of brittle and dry, if technically flawless.]

28 Iva Bittova

29 Pat Metheny – Zero Tolerance for Silence

30 Ikue Mori – Garden

31 Diamanda Galas – Malediction and Prayer

32 LL Cool J – Mama Said Knock You Out

33 Missy Elliot – Supa Dupa Fly

34 I. S. O.

35 Aube - Cardiac Strain

36 Dr Chitti Babu - Veena

37 Fushitsusha – Allegorical Misunderstanding

38 Voivod – Angel Rat

39 Fushitsusha – Withdrawe, This Sable Disclosure Ere Devot’d

40 Henry Kaiser/Jim O’Rourke – Tomorrow Knows Where You Live

41 Fred Frith – Quartets

42 Dr Balamuralikrishnan – Carnatic Vocal

43 DJ Shadow - Endtroducing

44 Maryanne Amacher – Sound Characters

45 Tony Conrad w/ Faust – Outside the Dream Syndicate

46 Phill Niblock – Music by Phill Niblock

47 Ryoji Ikeda - 0 [degrees] C

48 My Bloody Valentine – Loveless

49 Main – Motion Pool

50 Arto Lindsay Trio – Aggregates 1-26

51 Magic Hour – No Excess Is Absurd

52 Pixies – Trompe le Monde

53 Portishead - Dummy

54 De La Soul – 3 Feet High and Rising

55 Jane’s Addiction – Ritual de lo Habitual

56 Iannis Xenakis – Electronic Music

57 Nirvana – In Utero

58 Almighty Trigger Happy - Disturbo

59 Beautifuzz

60 Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream

61 Sonic Youth – Dirty

62 Radiohead – OK Computer

63 Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

64 Endwar – ENON: One Thirsty Afternoon

65 Sonic Youth – Goo

66 The Dismemberment Plan – Emergency and I

67 Shudder to Think – Funeral at the Movies

68 V/A – The Best of Acid Jazz, Vol 2

69 REM – Monster

70 Sonic Youth – Washing Machine [mostly for "The Diamond Sea"]

71 Soundgarden – Badmotorfinger

72 Nirvana – Nevermind

73 Ol’ Dirty Bastard – Return to the 36 Chambers

74 V/A - Downtown Does the Beatles [mostly for the Lydia Lunch, King Missile, Eugene Chadbourne, and Buddha Pest. All the brass band type stuff sucks.]

75 Okara – Months Like Years

76 Smashing Pumpkins - Pisces Iscariot

77 Shotmaker – Mouse Ear Forget Me Not

78 Nirvana – Unplugged In New York

79 Tactile – Inscape

80 Jack Vorvis/Michael Snow – Black and White: Incredible Drums and Piano Duets

81 Sonic Youth – Goodbye 20th Century

82 Sonic Youth/Jim O’Rourke – SYR 3

83 The Magnetic Fields – 69 Love Songs

84 Gorguts – Obscura

85 Superchunk – No Pocky for Kitty

86 Public Enemy – Fear of a Black Planet [at this point, we get into albums I don't actually listen to much now]

87 Public Enemy – Apocalypse ‘91

88 Kubelka - We're Gonna Do It Like This Now

89 The Magnetic Fields – Get Lost

90 Tori Amos – Under the Pink

91 Fugazi – Steady Diet of Nothing

92 Fugazi – Red Medicine

93 V/A - Firestarter (Century Black compilation)

Dr N Ramani - Fascinating Flute between Magic Hour and Pixies

Henry Threadgill - Makin' a Move and
Marc Ribot - Shoe String Symphonettes between Goo and Dismemberment Plan

Goodie Mob - World Party between Nevermind and ODB

Television's s/t between Unplugged in New York and Tactile [based entirely on pleasant memories from like 5 years ago when I had it]

The Ex - Mudbird Shivers between SYR3 and 69 Love Songs

Susie Ibarra/Assif Tsahar - Home Cookin' between Get Lost and Tori Amos

Anyway, yeah I know I should start another thread or something.

Ned, any chance we'll ever get a 136 Albums of the 80s?

(btw - CDs should be finished burning today)

Anything you'd add or remove? or rank higher/lower than it appears?

Very curious yet -

I was deep down kinda hoping you'd do a Top 136 of the 00's.

Red House Painters, Boo Radleys, The Church, Bark Psychosis!! A Tribe Called Quest and ODB!! Thats so great!! And The motherfucking VELDT!! I loved Superchunk and Polvo and Archers and all but it was great to have a band like that come outta Chapel Hill too. Man what a bad ass list.

Though I always look more and more closely every time I peep the list cause I know I'm only overlooking the SEAM albums.

Alternately, it baffles me that you said (a few years ago, upthread) that a Top xxx Albums of the '80s would likely have about 500 records on it, and thus be too much work to present.

Now, as far as my own collection goes, I have a ton of '90s stuff, but my '80s collection is sorely lacking (hey, i was born in '85!) except for the basics -

. . . Bowie, Eno, Cure, Joy Division, Bunnymen, Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, Psych Furs, Tom Waits, Talking Heads, XTC, Birthday Party/Nick Cave, Siouxsie, Cocteau Twins, Burma, Talk Talk, Chameleons, New Order, Depeche Mode, Smiths, REM, Fall, Dinosaur Jr, Mary Chain, MBV, Replacements, Spacemen 3, Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Galaxie 500 . . .

- and Ned, I know there's a bunch in there that you really love (except Talking Heads, of course; maybe a couple others). Anyway, I feel like I've done my basic homework on the '80s and have a pretty good collection of the well-known 'classics' that I mentioned above - but I often find myself wishing I had a jumping-off point (such as a Ned's 136) for the '80s, because I don't know where to dig deeper at this point.

I discovered a bunch of albums that I now really love through your '90s list - but what am I missing in the '80s??

:-(

Oh god yes. It's great.

I don't know where to dig deeper at this point

Find a copy of the 1989 or 1991 Trouser Press book. Both of those were my initial guides. That said, you need to investigate way more dance, hip-hop and metal, for a start.

You need some EPMD and some SOD. And some NWA and some DRI.

Really though, metal was where it was at in the 80's: Metallica, Slayer, Nuclear Assault, Anthrax, SOD, Sacred Reich, Suicidal Tendencies, Excel, Crumbsuckers, DRI, Cryptic Slaughter, Final Conflict, Napalm Death, Carcass.. I could really go on forever.

already love the Wedding Present, though

Need a second opinion...? Tom Ewing's Top 100 LPs of the 90s

Tried to follow this link at the bottom of Ned's 136 Albums page (link) and it's dead. Is the "Top 100 LPs" thing a typo? I've internalized Tom's top 100 singles list (link) but I didn't know Tom also made a Top 100 LPs list... or did he?

He did but it was just a straightforward list and I don't think it's available anywhere now.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010303234320/http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~tewing/bestlps.html

Your welcome,
markers

(P.S. http://web.archive.org rules.)

Ahh there we go, I just found it myself the same way. Still a lot of stuff I like on this list!

Ned, would you still rep. for those Goo Goo Dolls albums? And, just out of curiosity, how far into the depths of hell did you follow that band... er, what was the most recent album of theirs that you heard? Dizzy Up the Girl? Anything afterward...?

Dizzy Up was the last, which I only heard the once. I'll stick with that earlier stretch, though as with a lot of the albums on the list I really haven't listened to any of them in years. There are either newer albums or older ones I hadn't discovered yet to listen to.

ned you put a goo goo dolls album on yr list. you goofus.

Two, not one, FWIW.

i currently own 52 of these albums. that's kind of surprising!

Haha it is! Offhand I'm guessing one of them is Trumans Water.

actually, no. (i should note that some of them are all-time for me, and some haven't been played since this thread was started, probably. but i know they're there, lurking, somewhere, in the house.)

i still love tom's list. i'd love to hear him take on some of these albums again with ten years hindsight. (and ten years of "popular" et al behind him.)

totally didn't predict the mercury rev worship

There are bands I regret never seeing who I would have had no practical chance to ever see, and the David Baker-era Rev is one of them. I don't think the band ever even played California until 1998.

huh, I figured there'd be a larger overlap than 31 albums (and that's actually counting a couple I used to own but were stolen that I haven't replaced yet)

I suspect we bleed over more when it comes to eighties albums. (And the past decade, probably!)

haha true

I dare not count the albums I own from this list... I'm guessing somewhere in the 60-80 range but I may be underestimating a bit.

OWN: 60%, or 81 out of 136 -- and that's including 25 of the top 26, ffs.

USED TO OWN: 8%, or 11 out of 136 -- mostly a lot of Britpop-related (Suede, Oasis, Placebo, Super Furries) and industrial (Manson, Ministry) albums, plus a few others that never clicked (Sundays, Prodigy, Goo Goo Dolls, Veldt).

DO NOT OWN: 32%, or 44 out of 136 -- admittedly there's a few albums in this list that I've meant to buy but haven't gotten around to yet, mostly by artists I already like (Ween, Disco Inferno, His Name Is Alive, Pale Saints, Pelt), plus about 38-39 albums I just haven't gotten around to yet.

(I can't believe I just spent ~15 min. figuring that out.)

Can anyone beat 81/136, besides Ned of course?

Does Ned even own 81 of these anymore?

Not sure, really.

So upon deeper inspection, Tom's list is really great also (even though I understand he's disowned it) and has served as a reminder to pick up several albums I've not gotten around to yet -- Ghost's debut, Beta Band's debut, +/-, Chill Out, Ende Neu, Rock 'n' Roll Station. A look at my stats:

OWN: 41 -- lots of great stuff here. I'm particularly surprised that Tom's included Fushitsusha/Keiji Haino, Dead C, Faust, etc. but maybe I've put his tastes into a box a bit much... a welcome surprise, in any case.

USED TO OWN: 7 -- Mag Fields, Palace, Sundays, Frank Black solo.

DO NOT OWN: 52 -- including those above that I've meant to check out. Admittedly there's a lot more on Tom's list than Ned's that I haven't familiarized myself with... something to change piece-by-piece in the coming years.