The new album by Cake, called Pressure Chief, is due out very soon, and being on their mailing list, I was lucky enough to get a cool pre-order special. Their last album, Comfort Eagle, made it onto my All-Time Top 10 list of favorite albums without a problem. Every song on it is nothing short of excellent. It’s rare to find an album by any musician where every song is great, especially in this day and age of prefab musicians and calculated formulas for getting big hits on radio and MTV.
So how’s that for setting a high level of expectation for Pressure Chief? Somehow, I doubt I will be too disappointed, though it might not be the masterpiece that Comfort Eagle was.
Here is my All-Time Top 10 list of Best Albums (in no particular order):
- Cake – Comfort Eagle
- Run DMC – Raisin’ Hell
- Red Allen and Frank Wakefield – The Kitchen Tapes
- Fugazi – Fugazi
- Dinosaur Jr. – You’re Living All Over Me
- Jimi Hendrix – Axis, Bold As Love
- The Pixies – Surfer Rosa
- Slint – Tweeze
- Soulside – Trigger
- The Orb – Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld
Runners up:
- Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland
- Public Enemy – It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
- The Flaming Lips – Soft Bulletin
- King Face – King Face
That’s a difficult to compile, but I think back to what records, cd’s, or cassettes I wore out the most, and those would be at the top. So who is on your list?
so what happened to bluegrass?
There is a bluegrass album on there – Allen & Wakefiled’s “Kitchen Tapes”.
The thing about bluegrass is, I tended to play it a lot more than I listened to it, so there were few complete albums that got spun as much as other genres.
If I were to compile my list of Top 10 musicians or bands, then you would likely see a lot more bluegrass.
Of course, this list changes on a daily, nay, hourly, basis:
1. Double Nickels On The Dime Minutemen
2. Discipline King Crimson
3. De-Loused… The Mars Volta
4. Bachelor No. 1 Amie Mann
5. Apocalypse 91 Public Enemy
6. Surfer Rosa Pixies
7. Ziggy Stardust David Bowie
8. You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 2 Frank Zappa
9. West Side Story Oscar Peterson
10. A Love Supreme John Coltrane
Runners Up:
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Flaming Lips
Haus Der Leuge Einsturzende Neubauten
Millions Now Living… Tortoise
Big Fun Miles Davis