Some things to know ...
- This is a list of my favorites, and not what I think is the best. Rolling Stone does a good job letting you know what they think the best albums are every 5 years or so, and I am not qualified to tell you what is good or bad. This is strictly a list of what I've connected with over the past 30 years. The first three cassettes I owned were Billy Joel's "An Innocent Man", Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and Adam Ant's "Friend or Foe", and yes, all three have made the list.
- There are a lot of "great" albums that did not make the list. Keep in mind, there are literally millions of albums that have been released, and I've probably only taken the time to listen to about 7,500-10,000 of them. I'm sure if there's an album that you love that didn't make the list, and I made time for it, I'd like it too.
- If you read Fugazzi Grand, you already know that there will be no Kiss, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Nickelback, Creed, Jewel or Train on this list.
- To qualify for this list, I must own the album in at least one format, and I excluded EP's, Greatest Hits and Box Sets. I did include live albums.
After a year and a half of molding this list, I ended up with 650 albums that could have made this final list of 500. Here's the album that was the last to be cut ...
(#501, Storm Front by Billy Joel)
In 1989, while I was getting ready for school, I remember my mom running in my room and telling me that she just heard a new Billy Joel song on 94-WKTI. I'm sure she was listening to Reitman and Mueller, as we all were in the 80's and early 90's. She said, "it's a song where he says a bunch of names". Of course, she was referring to "We Didn't Start the Fire". Now, if you know anything about me, you know that there will be a lot of Billy Joel on this list. Hell, you're probably surprised that this album didn't make the final cut for Fugazzi Grand III. The fact of the matter is, this record has no less than six songs that appeared on his Greatest Hits collection in 1997 (Leningrad, We Didn't Start the Fire, I Go To Extremes, And So It Goes, The Downeaster "Alexa" and Shameless). The thing that keeps this record off of Fugazzi Grand is that, to me, it's a collection of singles, and not one of the most cohesive albums that Joel has released. There was a lot of turnover in the band, and he even decided to go with a different producer, ending his 10 year run with Phil Ramone to work with Mick Jones from Foreigner. I still like to pull it out from time to time, but in comparison to his other records, this one gets less spins than most others.
In 1989, while I was getting ready for school, I remember my mom running in my room and telling me that she just heard a new Billy Joel song on 94-WKTI. I'm sure she was listening to Reitman and Mueller, as we all were in the 80's and early 90's. She said, "it's a song where he says a bunch of names". Of course, she was referring to "We Didn't Start the Fire". Now, if you know anything about me, you know that there will be a lot of Billy Joel on this list. Hell, you're probably surprised that this album didn't make the final cut for Fugazzi Grand III. The fact of the matter is, this record has no less than six songs that appeared on his Greatest Hits collection in 1997 (Leningrad, We Didn't Start the Fire, I Go To Extremes, And So It Goes, The Downeaster "Alexa" and Shameless). The thing that keeps this record off of Fugazzi Grand is that, to me, it's a collection of singles, and not one of the most cohesive albums that Joel has released. There was a lot of turnover in the band, and he even decided to go with a different producer, ending his 10 year run with Phil Ramone to work with Mick Jones from Foreigner. I still like to pull it out from time to time, but in comparison to his other records, this one gets less spins than most others.
Here's Billy Joel performing "I Go To Extremes" from Yankee Stadium in the summer of 1990 ...
No comments:
Post a Comment