Post by salparadise on Jul 3, 2006 4:09:25 GMT -5
5. Paul's Boutique- The Beastie Boys
I know it seems a bit juvenile to have this record, of all the records of the 80's in my top five. I have good reasons, hear me out.
The Beastie's brought, almost all by themselves, the most significant shift in pop music since the Beatles to white people:
Rap and Hip-Hop.
While they certainly did not invent the genre, they really are responsible (arguably along with Run DMC) for mainstreaming the whole genre...a genre that fills nearly every top-ten slot in every chart in pop music since License to Ill. That's quite a feat, no doubt.
So you ask, why Paul's Boutique and not License to Ill? Because Paul's Boutique was the essential lesson for every good Rap/Hip-Hop producer that followed in its footsteps. PB is far more mature and talent-laden than a lot of people give it credit for. The Dust Brother's use of sampling and studio savvy that went well beyond drum beats and guitar riffs were the blue-print for everyone from Dr. Dre to Sean Combs, all the way to undergrounders like Madvillian. Where LtI was checkers, PB was chess, and it is another essential piece to the Rock puzzle.
4. Disintegration - The Cure
The only thing bad to say about Disintegration is that the unfortunate "mope" tag that the Cure gets stuck with all the time is largely because of the success of this particular album. Disintegration is indeed a very gloomy record without exception. The thing about it is that it is so fucking good... I mean absolutely solid from beginning to end. The songwriting and instrumentation on this record is truly in a class of its own, and would never be matched by anything Robert Smith put together afterwards.
So for real. Bust out the incense and that bottle of cheap vodka, don yourself in baggy black clothes...don't forget the eyeliner...and retreat into the unforgiving blackness that is Disintegration.
3. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Public Enemy
At just about the same time the Beasties were revealing Paul's Boutique, Rick Rubin had moved from the party-rap themes of License to Ill and taken the reigns of Chuck D's far more dangerous, explosive, and serious minded rhymes of It Takes a Nation of Millions.
While the Beastie's natural progression took place with The Dust Brothers, Rubin was taking a very similar approach to Public Enemy. A well-developed studio mind along with arguably the greatest MC of all time (with the possible exception of Ice Cube), Chuck D led to an atmosphere and a creative spin that exists to this day in rap music.
While "Bring the Noise" and "Don't Believe the Hype" are the tracks most remembered from this record, the real highlights are in the deeper cuts, such as "Louder than a Bomb" and "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos".
Some of the best beats and rhythms that you will ever have the pleasure to hear in your entire life aside, one of the coolest things about It Takes a Nation of Millions is the in your face and fuck you lyrics of a smart and well-educated black guy...and the shock and fear white America responded to Public Enemy with as a result. Good shit.
2. Surfer Rosa / Come on Pilgrim - Pixies
What the Velvets were for the coming 70's and Joy Division was for the coming 80's, the Pixies were for the oncoming 90's. With just about everyone worth listening to locked out, forever, from the accolades of Billboard success, the Pixies kept the fire burning for hundreds of under the radar greats of the 1990's through their willingness to be Earth-shattering without catering to anyone. The Pixies gave us the frantic salavic screaming vein-popping raw energy of the Stooges...but with melody and a higher order of pop-sense.
Surfer Rosa and Come on Pilgrim, with frighteningly violent themes of sweaty, primal sexual references, murderous desert landscaped Spanish insanity, motorcycles, bloody dresses, real left-wingers and Peachy-Peach talking about Kissy-Kiss have the rare ability to boast both a grinding, stratospheric level of unstable vitriol tempered by a melodic rhythm section and the endless vocal beauty of Mrs. John Murphy.
If you don't get it you just don't get it, and you don't belong among us.
1. Daydream Nation - Sonic Youth
Chaotic noise doesn't always make a statement, and is rarely organized by the exacting faculty of sound-alchemists such as Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Lee Renaldo.
Noise obeys Sonic Youth. They are its masters. It does what they tell it to do. No one since Hendrix has possessed these incredible super powers. Sonic Youth are the standing alpha-figures of feedback and messiness.
The point in which Sonic Youth beat down and rendered utter dominance over the entire sonic landscape was with Daydream Nation. The album is an experience. Get it and do not stop listening to it until you love it and it is a part of your cerebral make-up, because you will never witness a more vile and insidious use of what can be done with amplifiers.
-Sal
I know it seems a bit juvenile to have this record, of all the records of the 80's in my top five. I have good reasons, hear me out.
The Beastie's brought, almost all by themselves, the most significant shift in pop music since the Beatles to white people:
Rap and Hip-Hop.
While they certainly did not invent the genre, they really are responsible (arguably along with Run DMC) for mainstreaming the whole genre...a genre that fills nearly every top-ten slot in every chart in pop music since License to Ill. That's quite a feat, no doubt.
So you ask, why Paul's Boutique and not License to Ill? Because Paul's Boutique was the essential lesson for every good Rap/Hip-Hop producer that followed in its footsteps. PB is far more mature and talent-laden than a lot of people give it credit for. The Dust Brother's use of sampling and studio savvy that went well beyond drum beats and guitar riffs were the blue-print for everyone from Dr. Dre to Sean Combs, all the way to undergrounders like Madvillian. Where LtI was checkers, PB was chess, and it is another essential piece to the Rock puzzle.
4. Disintegration - The Cure
The only thing bad to say about Disintegration is that the unfortunate "mope" tag that the Cure gets stuck with all the time is largely because of the success of this particular album. Disintegration is indeed a very gloomy record without exception. The thing about it is that it is so fucking good... I mean absolutely solid from beginning to end. The songwriting and instrumentation on this record is truly in a class of its own, and would never be matched by anything Robert Smith put together afterwards.
So for real. Bust out the incense and that bottle of cheap vodka, don yourself in baggy black clothes...don't forget the eyeliner...and retreat into the unforgiving blackness that is Disintegration.
3. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Public Enemy
At just about the same time the Beasties were revealing Paul's Boutique, Rick Rubin had moved from the party-rap themes of License to Ill and taken the reigns of Chuck D's far more dangerous, explosive, and serious minded rhymes of It Takes a Nation of Millions.
While the Beastie's natural progression took place with The Dust Brothers, Rubin was taking a very similar approach to Public Enemy. A well-developed studio mind along with arguably the greatest MC of all time (with the possible exception of Ice Cube), Chuck D led to an atmosphere and a creative spin that exists to this day in rap music.
While "Bring the Noise" and "Don't Believe the Hype" are the tracks most remembered from this record, the real highlights are in the deeper cuts, such as "Louder than a Bomb" and "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos".
Some of the best beats and rhythms that you will ever have the pleasure to hear in your entire life aside, one of the coolest things about It Takes a Nation of Millions is the in your face and fuck you lyrics of a smart and well-educated black guy...and the shock and fear white America responded to Public Enemy with as a result. Good shit.
2. Surfer Rosa / Come on Pilgrim - Pixies
What the Velvets were for the coming 70's and Joy Division was for the coming 80's, the Pixies were for the oncoming 90's. With just about everyone worth listening to locked out, forever, from the accolades of Billboard success, the Pixies kept the fire burning for hundreds of under the radar greats of the 1990's through their willingness to be Earth-shattering without catering to anyone. The Pixies gave us the frantic salavic screaming vein-popping raw energy of the Stooges...but with melody and a higher order of pop-sense.
Surfer Rosa and Come on Pilgrim, with frighteningly violent themes of sweaty, primal sexual references, murderous desert landscaped Spanish insanity, motorcycles, bloody dresses, real left-wingers and Peachy-Peach talking about Kissy-Kiss have the rare ability to boast both a grinding, stratospheric level of unstable vitriol tempered by a melodic rhythm section and the endless vocal beauty of Mrs. John Murphy.
If you don't get it you just don't get it, and you don't belong among us.
1. Daydream Nation - Sonic Youth
Chaotic noise doesn't always make a statement, and is rarely organized by the exacting faculty of sound-alchemists such as Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Lee Renaldo.
Noise obeys Sonic Youth. They are its masters. It does what they tell it to do. No one since Hendrix has possessed these incredible super powers. Sonic Youth are the standing alpha-figures of feedback and messiness.
The point in which Sonic Youth beat down and rendered utter dominance over the entire sonic landscape was with Daydream Nation. The album is an experience. Get it and do not stop listening to it until you love it and it is a part of your cerebral make-up, because you will never witness a more vile and insidious use of what can be done with amplifiers.
-Sal