The Greatest Albums of 1977

Despite my preconceived notions about the late 70’s, 1977 provided quite a diverse selection of albums for my top ten. It wasn’t just punk rock and disco in the year of the Sex Pistols and Saturday Night Fever.

Against my better judgment, I’m undertaking a project to determine my top 10 albums of every year since 1960.  Instead of just picking my favorite stuff out of my collection, I intend to explore, re-visit and discover.  While I can’t promise to leave no stone un-turned, I am going to go deeper than I ever have before.  Why would I partake in a journey that will inevitably take many years and that I ultimately may never finish?  Most importantly, to uncover great music that I’ve never heard before.  Second, to boost my knowledge of music history and get a sense of what was happening at a macro scale in a snapshot of time.  Finally, I want to share my passion for music with you and, fingers crossed, generate a dialogue down in the comments.  So without further ado, here is #26 in the series. My random number generator says that our next year to tackle will be 1999.

Check out my previous entries here.

The Greatest Albums of 1977

For many, 1977 would have to be considered the year of punk music. There were two Ramones albums released, the debut of the Clash, and Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, among others. I have personally never been able to foster much of an appreciation for punk music, however, and so 1977 was more accurately the year of afrobeat and reggae to me. Particularly with afrobeat, or more broadly African funk music, the year was a treasure trove of great music to discover. Alas, none of those albums made my top ten, but that speaks to the vast cornucopia of musical styles that had strong offerings. You had the inescapably catchy disco of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, the ambient experimentation of David Bowie’s Low, the country-influenced rock-light of Slowhand – none of which cracked the year’s best, either. Don’t get me wrong, I heard some bad music while preparing for this post as well. While I have lamented the dearth of rock and roll in modern music, the genre’s proliferation in the seventies had its own set of issues. For all the varied and exceptional rock in my top ten, I encountered way more that resembled Thin Lizzy’s atrocious Bad Reputation or the eye-rolling work of Kiss and Ted Nugent. I get that brand of dumb rock has the same nostalgic connection for many people that Motley Crue or Poison does for me, but it also leaves me as completely cold as those 80’s acts do for those who didn’t grow up with them. Ultimately, 1977 followed the template of most years I’ve covered:  Three or four stone classics at the top of the list, some great but not transcendent material in the middle, and a handful of albums that landed on the list due to personal preference rather than a clear difference in quality compared to the copious honorable mentions. Fortunately, if you love music, even an unexceptional year still has a ton to offer.

     1.  Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome – Parliament

I tend to get a little grumpy when people treat Parliament and Funkadelic as the same band. They clearly had their own vision and aesthetics, at least until the two sort of converged on 1978’s One Nation Under a Groove. Yet, almost everyone else in the world seems content to treat the mass collective of P-Funk musicians as a single entity, and the rosters between the two bands are both massively overlapping and fluid, so its probably pretty pedantic of me to be bothered by it at all. If you contend that Parliament and Funkadelic are two sides of the same coin, distinct only by the name on the album cover, then they are the best band the 70’s produced. Of the four years I’ve covered from this decade so far, they have made five appearances in the top ten, including back-to-back #1s. It won’t stop there, either, as I’ve only scratched the surface of their output, and have yet to tackle the most iconic albums of each iteration, Mothership Connection and Maggot Brain, respectively. If Mothership isn’t the greatest p-funk album, it’s this one.

Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome is a concept album that continues the dense mythology of the space-dwelling funk peddlers led by Starchild in service of the diety-like Dr. Funkenstein. In the war to set the galaxy’s asses in motion, FVtPS introduces some heavy artillery (the “Bop Gun”) and a WMD (the “Flashlight”) as well as giving a name to the embodiment of conservative, anti-funk forces in the tellingly dubbed “Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk”. The Parliament discography is a masterclass in internal world building, creating a mostly intelligible universe of characters and confrontations that all serve the band’s ultimate mission statement: Be yourself and don’t conform to the pressures of society. The fact that they manage the burden of a complex, multi-album concept while producing music this great and inimitable is kind of a miracle. P-Funk influenced all of their peers in the funk game, rock acts like the Talking Heads, and seemingly every hip hop artist who released music between 1989 and 1995, yet no one has ever remotely approximated their sound. Look at “Wizard of Finance”, a track that was probably considered very slight in relation to the album’s heavy hitters at the time, and one of the occasional tunes that give a respite from the canon-building of most p-funk songs. It admittedly doesn’t demand the attention of the title track or “Flashlight”, but in isolation, it is such a sexy and smooth little masterpiece of funky soul. If any other band had released it, it would be revered as must-hear song of 1977, and of course En Vogue would go on to ride its slinky groove into a massive hit in the 90’s. For Parliament, individual moments of genius tend to get lost in the shuffle relative to the rest of their exceptional work.

The only song here that doesn’t reach the level of masterpiece is “Placebo Syndrome”, but that’s only because it isn’t supposed to. As the representation of anti-funk, it has to somehow approximate mediocre pop pablum, but still be enjoyable enough that you don’t skip it every time it comes on. Then, when the album closes with the concentrated funk bomb, “Flashlight”, it sounds even more revolutionary in comparison. George Clinton is a master of threading various musical phrases and elements throughout his compositions, and the four tracks that FVtPS was built around exhibit that talent in the most concentrated fashion of his career. “Flashlight” closes with the iconic chant “Everybody needs a little light under the sun, under the sun, under the sun!”, but notice how he introduces that phrase halfway through the song, then immediately pivots to “Shinin’ on the funk!” so we get a hint of what’s coming but never in any predictable way. “Funkentelechy”’s second half blends in the newly introduced chant “How’s your funkentelechy?” with “fuuuunk-entelchy… fuuuunk-en-tel-ech-y” from the bridge with “When you’ve taken every type of pill” from the first verse, and it all meshes so well that you forget that they were ever disparate elements at all. Similarly, “Bop Gun” and “Sir Nose” exercise incredible combining of polyrhythms, nursery rhymes and horn lines to intoxicatingly immersive effect. There is not a wasted moment on Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome, or even a moment that hasn’t been utilized to maximum effect as Clinton builds each track into something exciting and then uses those tracks to build an even more special whole. On most days, its my favorite p-funk album, and it will always be my favorite album of 1977.

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     2.  Aja – Steely Dan

I have only heard three perfectly-crafted albums in my lifetime. Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys, and this album, Aja by Steely Dan. Now, “perfectly-crafted” doesn’t precisely mean “best”, so these are not my very favorite albums of all time. I’m not talking about the off-hand genius of improvisatory works like Astral Weeks or Kind of Blue. I’m talking about three bands, each with a nearly infinite option set, who seemingly made every right choice. It means that these artists could not have succeeded more fully at what they set out to do. Now, that level of execution requires commitment and painstaking labor, and Aja is famously Steely Dan’s most meticulously crafted album out of a whole discography of fastidious music making. Primary members Donald Fagen and Walter Becker commissioned a bunch of solos, and then assiduously mixed and matched them with the other individual components to construct the album they wanted. They even scrapped entire songs, opting to fly to the opposite coast and re-record them with different musicians to better capture a particular feeling. All of that obsessive care pays off in an album that is beautifully assembled and engineered yet allows for moments of spontaneous beauty like the blistering saxophone solo the great Wayne Shorter contributes to the title track. It’s a work of paradoxical soulfulness, despite its Frankenstein-like origin. Equal parts R&B, jazz and pop, every track comes across as fully realized and unlike anything else you’ve heard.

Thematically, Aja finds Becker and Fagan reckoning with the ghosts of their jazz heroes and all of substance abuse they subjected themselves to. It is simultaneously romantic and cynical, as exemplified by standout track “Deacon Blues”:

Learn to work the saxophoneI’ll play just what I feelDrink scotch whiskey all night longAnd die behind the wheel

More broadly, the theme could be expanded to encompass the impact of fame, as the second half of the album sees lyrics about an aspiring actress (“Peg”), a local celebrity of some description (“Josie”) and, because 60’s and 70’s rock guys had an inexplicable hard-on for Homer’s The Odessey, Ulysses is the subject of “Home at Last”. Of course my interpretation of what was on Becker’s & Fagan’s minds is debatable. They are song-writers who leave a lot to the imagination, no matter how evocative their writing is. What is universally clear about Aja is the flawlessness of the musicianship. As mentioned above, it is perfection personified, and in particular, one of the greatest drum albums of all time. It was a drummer who introduced me to it, in fact, and at just the right time in my life. Prior to my twenties, when my musical palette was expanding exponentially, such a sophisticated and controlled record would have turned me off of Steely Dan for good. In life, as in drumming, timing is everything, and I’m glad that it worked out in my favor.

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     3.  Exodus – Bob Marley & the Wailers

Is it possible that Bob Marley is the greatest artist of the 70’s, which also happens to be my favorite decade of music? While he never seems to have my absolute favorite album of the year, the ten studio recordings he made between 1970 and 1980 are uniformly excellent. Stevie Wonder, Van Morrison, Led Zeppelin – even P-Funk, who I just proclaimed the 70’s greatest band – all had higher highs, perhaps, but they also had far more pronounced lows. Marley, in a musical genre that generally does not have access to as wide an array of sonic elements to pull from, ended up with a whole catalog of passionate, dynamic music that evolved from release to release. Exodus could be his best album, but then again, so could Catch a Fire or Rastaman Vibration, because he’s just so damn consistent. Ranking his efforts is really just an exercise of splitting hairs. The particular factors that make Exodus a contender center around one of the greatest three-song stretches on any album: “Exodus” -> “Jamming” -> “Waiting in Vain”. The title track is an example of Bob trying a brand new sound and finding monumental success in doing so. It is mean funk track, made for Jamaican dance halls as much as American consumers. It has a combination of spiritual and political content that is one of Marley’s many specialties, both a plea to God (Jah) to set all people free and also a rallying cry for activism among those on earth, metaphorically comparing the move to a more liberated society to the biblical movement of the Jews out of Egypt. And you can dance to it. If that sounds a bit intense, then next you have the ultimate chill-out song, “Jamming”. The laid-back head-nodder is no less funky than “Exodus” in its own way, and it actually contains some similarly high minded and inspirational lyrics, but for whatever reason it will always be synonymous with getting blazed and kicking your feet up. That’s the beauty of Marley, his spoonful of sugar is so intoxicating that you never see the medicine coming. Finally, my favorite reggae song of all time, the suavely romantic “Waiting in Vain”. It’s an irresistible come-on, with Bob admonishing the object of his affection for stringing him along, while still sounding like the coolest motherfucker on the planet. His delivery is so relaxed, and his phrasing is so interesting: “I know that I’m way down on your line, but the wait-ing feel-ahs fine.” The chugging rhythm and jazzy guitar couldn’t be further apart from “Exodus”, but all three songs flow together beautifully. The rest of the album is not quite up to the standard of that tryptic, but it is still fantastic, with the hazy opener “Natural Mystic”, the sweet love song “Turn the Lights Down Low” and the closing duo of Bob’s most purely hopeful tunes, “Three Little Birds” and “One Love/People Get Ready” (among the other excellent tracks).

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     4.  Luxury Liner – Emmylou Harris

Luxury Liner is mostly an album of dreamy ballads, but it starts with a kick. The title track is probably the most high-octane song in Harris’ catalog by a pretty wide margin, a little too much boogie to be bluegrass but with all the chops you’d expect from a group of instrumentalists dubbed the Hot Band. The next track is my favorite version of country classic “Pancho and Lefty”, even moreso than Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard’s iconic performance of the tune. She injects so much pathos into the lyric, which is fitting for a song that asks us to spare some pity for the man who betrayed his life-long partner to save himself. Pathos is pretty much Harris’ stock-in-trade, which makes her the perfect country balladeer. Every note she sings is so incredibly poignant, you barely care what she’s singing about. The album picks up the tempo on occasion – such as the surprisingly fitting Chuck Berry cover, “(You Never Can Tell) C’est la Vie” – but it is largely a showcase for Emmylou’s ethereal voice and world-class harmonizing on slower tunes. That’s probably why it remains my favorite album of hers. She’s just cut out for that type of material, and country music, by and large, is most successful when it is trying to wring emotions out of its listeners. For their part, the Hot Band provides a classy, dynamic backdrop for the singing, even if they never really get the chance to cut loose again like they do on the opener. Harris would go on to be a more prolific songwriter later in her career (she shares co-writing credit on only one song here), but I don’t really dock her points for that. Country music and jazz are two forms that lend themselves to supporting multiple interpretations of the same song, and there aren’t many country songs I wouldn’t want to hear filtered through Harris’s sensibility during this time in her young career.

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     5.  Animals – Pink Floyd

In my review of Dark Side of the Moon, I intimated that Pink Floyd’s version of the concept album had no room for subtlety. That was less true on their subsequent album and career highlight, Wish You Were Here, but Animals finds the band back in true form, comparing the British class system to pigs, dogs and sheep in the type of broad metaphor that has been exploited in literature and movies countless times (Orwell’s Animal Farm being a clear inspiration). If you’ve ever suffered through an ostentatious concept piece that only holds together in the addled mind of its creator, though, you understand that a heavy hand is preferable to a lack of clarity. Part of the reason that Pink Floyd is so popular despite its art rock pretensions, is that the band excelled at making high concepts easily digestible. The three epic character studies that make up Animals still resonate because of that gift for intelligibility and a willingness to avoid unnecessary obfuscation. “Dogs” is a song about the backstabbing corporate world, and the highlight of the album. In fact, it is likely a top-5 Floyd song, period. Clocking in at more than 17 minutes, the song has Roger Waters spinning a wonderfully biting (no pun intended) character study of a self-serving businessman who steps on everybody on his way to the top, then acts shocked when he is given the same treatment. “And it’s too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around,” has got to be one of the most well-crafted lines in rock history. Despite the great lyrics and playing by the rest of the band, “Dogs” is really a David Gilmour showcase. Displaying some of his most incendiary guitar-playing (not an adjective I would often use for Gilmour), he finds a way to keep us interested through multi-layered soloing and multiple extended instrumental sections. Yes, it is all a little self-indulgent. What is Pink Floyd, though, if not self-indulgent? “Pigs” keeps things rolling with a great groove and even-more-caustic lyrics by Waters. The subjects this time are the political upper class, who Waters suggests in no uncertain terms are self-important, self-righteous and pretty much worthless to anyone else in the world. Another lengthy song, but again made interesting by the group’s great playing and the strong songwriting. “Sheep” is the most dynamic song in terms of transitions and tempo, but it still manages to drag the momentum of the album down a bit. Partly it’s the fact that labeling working class consumers as sheep is the most trite among a whole host of unoriginal ideas, and partly it’s that the band fails to match the ambitious compositions of the previous two tracks. The most exciting thing going on is the first minute and a half of Richard Wright’s soulful organ playing, which is truly fantastic, but by the time they get to the robot-voiced skewering of the 23rd Psalm it is clear that Waters was stretching a bit to flesh out another ten-minute opus. Book-ending these three tracks is the lovely, acoustic “Pigs on the Wing”, which offers the slightest glimmer of hope on an album that is otherwise relentlessly dark and cynical. Overall, Pink Floyd continue their string of great albums with Animals. Out of the big four Floyd records (Dark Side through The Wall), this is probably the slightest, but remains excellent in its own right.

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     6.  Before and After Science – Brian Eno

Nobody approaches music like Brian Eno. His ambient works are always interesting and thoughtful, but I have pretty limited patience for ambient as an art form so I’m talking more about his pop/rock-leaning records in the mid-70’s. At the most surface level they approximate music that thousands of artists make, something that you could hear on the radio, but that familiarity dissolves pretty quickly as soon as you pay them much attention. Eno strikes me as a bit of a mad scientist, someone who loves making music but has no interest in learning how it has traditionally been done by everyone who came before him. Its like he sees cars on the road, and appreciates what cars can do, so he sets out to build his own car without bothering to research how such a thing is done. And he actually succeeds, just that his car harnesses geothermal energy instead of internal combustion and you drive it with your feet. The closest analog to Before and After Science outside of the other artists that Eno has been involved with is probably Miles Davis’ alien soundscape from 1969, In a Silent Way. Many of the songs are an almost convincing simulacrum of funk, rock or ballads, but still feel like you are listening to them through a transmission from some other dimension. Eno obviously shares a lot of inspiration with the Talking Heads (“King’s Lead Hat” is famously an anagram of that group’s name), but even their jittery new wave feels more tethered to the contemporary music scene of the time. Digesting Eno’s lyrics can be confounding, and potentially pointless like on the clearly meaningless “Kurt’s Rejoinder”, but this album does have a fascinating through-line of oceanic imagery and a theme of being lost, or more precisely being at peace with being lost. It plays like a dream where the songs are connected by certain elements, but the specifics are always changing. The opening track describes a ship lost on the water, with “No One Receiving” their radio signal, while the next track shifts subtly into a canoe floating down a dangerous river where a porter’s daughter is presumably dragged under by some sea monster after dipping her hand in the water. Later, Julie, in “Julie With…” languidly drags her fingers through the water as she and her lover drift aimlessly, lost to the rest of the world. In the very next song, a couple are sitting next to the water, coming to grips that they are metaphorically lost, if not geographically so. And so on… it’s a very unique album for those who have the patience to sit and immerse themselves in it, and while it is somewhat haunting, it is also quite soothing, particularly on side B when Eno’s ambient tendencies start working their way into the material. It’s a bummer that he only really made four solo albums in this mode during that time period, but they are all well worth any music fan’s time.

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     7.  Talking Heads ‘77 – Talking Heads

The Talking Heads burst onto the scene with a sound that was all their own. They would evolve it over time to incorporate the funk and polyrhythms of afrobeat and Parliament-Funkadelic, and then again to lean towards a more poppy, Cars-influenced sound in the mid-80s, but that foundation of new wave art rock never wavered. New wave is often conflated with punk music, and most experts seem to agree that the two genres that came into prominence at the same time are intertwined. That may be true for an act like Blondie, but despite cutting their teeth at CBGB, I don’t think about Talking Heads as a punk act, or even punk adjacent. They are far too musical, far too complex, and far too finicky about how their music sounds for that association. Their debut album, for instance, kicks off with the bouncy baseline and steel drums of “Uh-oh, Love Comes to Town”. Guitar is present, but it’s more of an accent than the lead instrument that every other 70’s rock sub-genre leans on. The whole album is bright and quirky, but feels on edge, nonetheless. The Talking Heads are always able to harness an incredible amount of nervous, frenetic energy, and because of that, their albums are always highly engaging. Another factor that contributes to that engagement is that there is really no reference for the way their songs are structured, or at least there wasn’t in 1977, so you don’t get lulled into anticipating where they are going. Straight blues riffs give way into anxious funk, and AM-ready soft rock sits next to stilted reggae licks and robotic flamenco. Adding to the disorienting nature of the music are David Byrne’s lyrics and idiosyncratic delivery. Simply put, nobody writes like Byrne. How does this section from “Tentative Decisions” strike you?

Now that I can release my tensions Let me make clear my best intentions Girls ask: Can I define decision? Boys ask: Can I describe their function? Oh the boys want to talk Would like to talk about those problems And the girls say they’re concerned – Concerned with decisiveness And it’s a hard logic to follow And the girls get lost And the boys say they’re concerned

Or what about “Who Is It”, which basically finds Byrne repeating “Who, who is it?” and “What is it?” in a befuddled fashion over and over again. I can’t make heads or tails of most of what he means, but his constant paranoid ramblings prepare us for the album’s most famous song, “Psycho Killer”. With its simple, loping bassline punctuated by bursts of jangly guitar, and occasional forays into French, it is one of the weirdest hit songs to launch a band’s career in rock history. Being weird would go on to define the Talking Heads’ amazing run, even if I don’t get the impression that’s what they were setting out to do. Trying to be bizarre is almost always a failed endeavor, but Byrne and company were just being themselves. 

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     8. Queens of Noise – The Runaways

The Runaways epitomize the rock and roll fantasy that inspires countless teenagers to get together with secondhand instruments and rattle their garage windows in an effort to launch a career playing music. The all-girl rock group was aged 16 and 17 at the time that Queens of Noise was released, their second major label album. Mercury executives no doubt saw them as a marketable gimmick, and I’ll admit to finding similar acts (i.e. the Donnas) a bit gimmicky in subsequent years. This album is kind of magical, though. To be clear, it is not sophisticated musically. Much like their distaff punk counterparts, the Ramones, that is hardly the point. The girls all had a hand in crafting this material, particularly future solo stars Lita Ford and Joan Jett, and they know their way around a catchy tune. Graded on moxie alone, this is an A+, with the group making such an earnest effort to be a legitimate, kick-ass rock outfit, and succeeding on all levels. There will always be those who look down on a collection of straight-forward, 3-minute rock songs with titles like “Born to be Bad” and “Johnny Guitar”, especially if they are as unadorned by irony as these ones are. Those people suck, though.  Queens of Noise is pure rock and roll, unencumbered by lofty pretense or fancy music theory. The group may have been signed in a mercenary attempt to market pretty girls to teenage rock fans, but they delivered the goods nonetheless. I could have slotted their other 1977 studio album on the list, but I prefer the vocals of Cherie Currie alternating with Jett, so “Waitin’ for the Night” suffers slightly in comparison as the band’s line-up had changed. Both albums are full of uncomplicated delights, though, for anybody who ever had dreams of rock stardom as a youth.

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     9.  All ‘N All – Earth, Wind & Fire

My favorite Earth, Wind & Fire songs tend to be the long, multi-textured funk workouts that recall a more cosmopolitan, jazz-influenced Parliament. Tracks like “Power” and “Evil” that are real jaw-droppers in terms of instrumentation and transition. All ‘N All doesn’t actually house any of those tracks, but I do think it is the group’s best overall album. The key to that success is their ability to sustain an intense yet beautiful energy throughout its entire run time. It is a lush album which features complex interplay between the horns and the rhythm section and the vocal lines. While their other albums surround those jazz-funk epics with somewhat flaccid ballads, the slower songs here (“Love’s Holliday”, “I’ll Write a Song for You”) don’t seem to stall the momentum built by the funk tracks, but rather provide a nice counterbalance to them. A song like “Fantasy” straddles the line between a smooth ballad and a more up-tempo dance tune. The addition of short, almost abstract interludes offers some interesting elements that they couldn’t find a way to incorporate into their more conventional tracks,and the record has a terrific sort of feng shui, for lack of a better term. E,W&F always had a little more polish than P-Funk or the Gap Band or Tower of Power, so it’s important for them to include dimension in their music to replace the grit that they leave out. On All ‘n All, that comes in the form of really creative incorporation of Latin rhythms, as well as mind-bending harmonies from the trio of Maurice White, Verdine White and Philip Bailey. It is probably 1977’s most carefully crafted albums beyond Aja.

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     10.  Book of Dreams – Steve Miller Band

When I was a pre-teen, my group of friends all enjoyed the popular rock acts of the time – Guns N’ Roses, Motley Crue, even Bon Jovi. It didn’t take us long to use that affinity as a jumping off point for exploring the ill-defined “classic rock” genre. I recall approaching that exploration with little regard for how the pantheon was constructed. I listened to Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and I listened to the Eagles and Dire Straits, and to me it was all the same. Basically, if the local FM station played it, or somebody’s parents had the vinyl, it was fair game.* One of the most beloved albums of my generation from that time was Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits 1974-1978. Now, some thirty years later, I understand that nobody considers Steve Miller in the same ballpark as Jimi Hendrix, probably not even Steve himself, but damned if that collection didn’t dominate my childhood just as much as Smash Hits did. So it makes it hard for me to know what to do with Book of Dreams. I’m not one to second-guess my opinions on music, but is this album really as good as I perceive it to be? Its almost impossible to divorce myself from the nostalgia and take it in with fresh ears. Here’s what I can say for sure. First, it has hooks. It has big, goofy, undeniable hooks that sound great after decades of radio play, and that shit doesn’t just grow on trees. Second, the lyrics are completely insipid. Now, they are insipid and simple, which is way better than insipid and faux-deep, but make no mistake that songs like “Jet Airliner” and “Jungle Love” hide no mysteries to be unlocked. They are about a big ass plane and outdoor sex, respectively, and its good that you know that going in. Fortunately, at some point you are forced to come to terms with the fact that there are only a handful of Neil Young’s and Jeff Tweedy’s in the world and accept banal rock and roll lyricism, or you just stop enjoying rock music. I made my choice a long time ago. Lastly, this is a low-key pot album, if that happens to be your thing. Steve Miller and his self-named band understand how to appeal to 70’s teenagers, and there are lots of fun touches in the way the music is engineered that are designed to gnarl your brain if you happen to be susceptible. So, does that all add up to an album worthy of the top ten, pushing out Fela Kuti and Cheap Trick and Santana? I don’t know, but I know that when I listen to it I am physically incapable of not singing along to half the tracks, and if that doesn’t deserve a spot on my list, then who the fuck am I kidding with this nonsense?

*I recall my first exposure to the Beatles was an elementary school friend of mine playing his parents White Album record for me. Unfortunately, instead of hitting me with “Julia” or “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, he went straight for “Revolution No. 9” in what was surely a “can you believe how weird old people music is?” type of proclamation. I concurred, and it put me off of the Beatles for many, many years. Fortunately, and perhaps inevitably, I eventually came around.

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Honorable Mentions

Afro-beat: Opposite People – Fela Kuti; Sorrow, Tears and Blood – Fela Kuti; K. Frimpong & His Cubano Fiestas – K. Frimpong & His Cubano Fiestas; Crashes in Love – William Onyeabor; Ebo Taylor – Ebo Taylor; No Agreement – Fela Kuti; Mr. Big Mouth – Tunde Williams; Tche Belew – Hailu Mergia and the Walias; I Go Shout Plenty – Fela Kuti; Fear Not of Man – Fela Kuti

Reggae: Heart of the Congos – The Congos; Equal Rights – Peter Tosh; Protest – Bunny Wailer; Wolf and Leopards – Dennis Brown

Rock/Pop: Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes – Jimmy Buffet; Waitin’ for the Night – The Runaways; In Color – Cheap Trick; Cheap Trick – Cheap Trick; Bullinamingvase – Roy Harper; Slowhand – Eric Clapton; Low – David Bowie; Festival – Santana; Pacific Ocean Blue – Dennis Wilson; Let There Be Rock – AC/DC; Taken by Force – Scorpions

Soul/Funk/Disco: Live at the London Palladium – Marvin Gaye; Live: P-Funk Earth Tour – Parliament; Games, Dames and Guitar Thangs – Eddie Hazel; Angel – The Ohio Players; Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack – Various Artists; The Force – Kool & the Gang

Punk/Metal: Lust for Life – Iggy Pop; Leave Home – Ramones; Motorhead – Motorhead

Country: To Lefty from Willie – Willie Nelson; Rides Again – David Allen Coe

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