#96 - 33 1/3% Dead

Progress report on 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die list. I've listened to 317 albums so far. So I'll be about 1/3 of the way through by the end of the year. Revising my goal down to 500 albums or so. I'll be happy if I hit 50%. Looking back perhaps an album per day was ambitious.

What was definitely ambitious was my fantasy of blogging about every album. Lester Bangs I am not.

So, I'll just highlight a few albums that I was most surprised I liked.

1) Peter Tosh's Legalize It. - Never thought I would like reggae as much as I do but this album by ex-Wailer Tosh proved me wrong. Till Your Well Runs Dry is a great song.
2) Arular by M.I.A. Great hooks.
3) Viva Hate and Your Arsenal by Morrissey - I liked these better than I liked The Smiths' albums. Not that I disliked The Smiths, but I think they are better as singles than as albums. Well, maybe excepting Strangeways, Here We Come - that hangs together well.
4) Sweetheart of The Rodeo by The Byrds - I never knew the folk rock pioneers had cut a great country album. I maybe shouldn't have been surprised at this one since The Flying Burrito Brothers (Gram Parsons' band post-Byrds) were already a favorite.
5) Get Rich or Die Tryin' by 50 Cent - I love this album like a fat kid loves cake!

Albums that I wasn't necessarily surprised I liked but just had never encountered before in their entirety:

1) Rust Never Sleeps by Neil Young - Mostly for the excellent and haunting Thrasher.
2) Most of The White Stripes catalog - I hadn't listened to them much before, but now they are some of my go-to albums.
3) Ramones by the Ramones - Straight ahead punk rock.
4) The Doors by The Doors - More great song bang for the buck then any other album. Particularly a debut album.
5) Nevermind by Nirvana - Even though I was in high school in the early 90s I think I let grunge mostly pass me by, but I can see why this was such a turning point in music. You just let Smells Like Teen Spirit roll over you and the rest of the album keeps going.

Overall I am very happy with how this is going. I'm being exposed to a lot. Hopefully breaking out of my bubble. As an ex-girlfriend told me as she was becoming my ex: "There is more out there than the Beatles and The Rolling Stones". Turns out she was right. Though Let It Bleed still rocks.