{"id":3859,"date":"2017-05-08T12:48:08","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T17:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=3859"},"modified":"2022-10-18T06:45:11","modified_gmt":"2022-10-18T11:45:11","slug":"greatest-albums-of-the-lp-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2017\/05\/08\/greatest-albums-of-the-lp-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Greatest albums of the LP era"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recent social media meme\u00a0listing 10 concerts people have attended accompanied by one they didn’t (“find the lie!”) has incited\u00a0me to complete a list that started out as a “50th anniversary of the concept album” brainstorm over drinks one night last year. The question here is a little different: <\/em>What are the most formative and significant albums of the album era?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

(Note<\/em>: This is version 2, with a handful of additions and tweaks made to the original list. One could endlessly tweak such lists, so somebody take away the controls, please. <\/em>I should mention that this list is being made in time for the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ <\/em>Sgt. Pepper’s —\u00a0mentioned below, but not listed in the top 10 —<\/em>\u00a0with deluxe editions of that album being planned for release on May 26. Happy birthday to Sgt. Pepper\u00a0and to that year, notable for several albums listed below.)<\/em><\/p>\n

From the perspective of a process-relational<\/a>* ecocultural<\/a> aesthetic, the best art is that which brings together disparate elements in novel ways to open up\u00a0new channels for creative expression — channels\u00a0that in turn enable\u00a0novel\u00a0ways of<\/a> appreciating beauty, responding to social and ethical challenges, and understanding the ongoing evolution of the universe (in its local and\u00a0regional variations).<\/p>\n

In the era of the long-play album<\/a> \u00a0— an era that only really came into its own\u00a0about 50 years ago, and that continues only in muted (and mutated) form today — music has had to respond to multiple challenges: these include war and poverty, sexual revolutions and social unrest, racial conflict and cultural diversification, national identity struggles\u00a0and ecological reckonings. The best albums have addressed some of these challenges (occasionally even all of them) and addressed them well.<\/p>\n

While “concept albums” can be dated back much further (perhaps to Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads<\/em> of 1940), the idea of an album as a total work of art — musical, poetic, aesthetic,\u00a0philosophical, and physical\/material — could arguably be dated to roughly\u00a050 years ago, with the 1966 release of\u00a0a trio of albums: The Beach Boys’\u00a0Pet Sounds,<\/em> The Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out!<\/em>, and The Kinks’ Face to Face. <\/em>These albums set precedents to be matched and topped over the coming decade<\/a> by the Beatles’\u00a0Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band<\/em>\u00a0(1967), The Who’s\u00a0Tommy <\/em>(1969) and\u00a0Quadrophenia\u00a0<\/em>(1973), Dark Side of the Moon\u00a0<\/em>(Pink Floyd, 1973), The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway<\/em> (Genesis, 1975), Tales from Topographic Oceans\u00a0<\/em>(Yes, 1975), and\u00a0others. To concept album aficionados, holding an album cover while listening to the album straight through (getting up only to lift the stylus and turn the vinyl\u00a0mid-way) was akin to beholding a sacred object: the cover could be\u00a0read and re-read, held and caressed, admired and marveled at as one listened to the music and plunged into the album’s\u00a0sonic, aesthetic, and metaphysical\u00a0world.<\/p>\n

With process-relational criteria<\/a> in mind, the following is my attempt to propose a “ten greatest albums” list of the album era’s classic period<\/a>, which I would date from roughly the mid-1960s until the mid to late 1990s or so. Great albums continue to be made (head nods to OutKast, Beyonc\u00e9, Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Bjork, Sufjan Stevens, and Bon Iver, among many others), but the practice of sitting down to listen, with care and single-mindedness, to an album “straight through” has become a retro activity for connoisseurs\u00a0with time on their hands that most of us no longer have. Or so it seems.<\/p>\n

I grew up in the heyday of the concept album, so several of those listed fall either into that or the looser “song cycle” category. This\u00a0can hardly not<\/em> be a subjective list; these are albums that, to one extent or another, have shaped my own appreciation of music and its possibilities, which accounts for its eccentricities.<\/p>\n

Here, then, are\u00a0my nominations for the 10 Greatest Albums of the Album Era’s Classic Period<\/strong>. Starting from the top; all (mostly) here, no clickbait, no ads.<\/p>\n