10 Day Music Challenge:

Day 1 – My 10 favourite albums.

This list may not contain my ten favourite bands or my ten favourite songs; this is my ten favourite albums where every song (or nearly every song) is worth a listen.

I find it very hard to listen to whole albums due to the inconsistency that is the very black heart of the music industry. I am sure there are plenty of bands out there that can produce (if left to their own devices) albums of extraordinary greatness but the music industry can not wait for that level of perfection and has no patience for the excellence that could be achieved by a maturing genius but instead, demand album material on time and on budget, regardless of quality and I am sure the bands do their very level best to supply that demand, unfortunately we the listeners are the ones who have to suffer.

Thankfully iPods, mp3 players and downloads have put an end to that. I now load albums on to my iPod and slowly through the attrition of random shuffle, delete albums one track at a time until only the very best songs survive (my personal choice of course). Every time a song irritates, grates or annoys it gets marked with five stars (because it is the easiest rating to apply) to be deleted the next time I synchronise it with iTunes, which is exactly the opposite of what Apple had intended for their irritating star rating system.

I currently apply one star to songs that I am considering to include in a mix tape, two stars are for songs that have something wrong with them (sound quality, unnecessary chit-chat or intro’s, the wrong artwork, genre, or title), three stars are for songs my daughters have expressed an interest in having a copy of and I don’t use four stars for anything unless I have too many mix tape ideas and I need to separate my memory of them more clearly.

Anyway, back to the task at hand my ten favourite albums are (and if you have never listened to them you really should):

Ladies of the Canyon by Joni Mitchell

Cockadoodledoo by Momma Stud

Lifeforms by Future Sound of London

Bleach by Nirvana

Violent Femmes by Violent Femmes

Les Fleurs by Minnie Ripperton

Bellybutton by Jellyfish

Keeping it Unreal by Mr. Scruff

The K&D Sessions by Kruder & Dorfmeister

Ill Communication by Beastie Boys