|   Rank the following five classic albums in order of quality | Darius
Feb 27, 2003 2:50 PM | | Here they are alphabetically by artist. Now rank them in order of quality. And, any explanation you provide would make this more fun. (Number 5 would of course still be quite an exalted position in this group.) My ranking will come later.
The Beatles - Rubber Soul
Led Zeppelin - II
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
Rolling Stones - Let it Bleed
Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run
(I stuck with white male classic rock acts, so I'd get the most number of folks that are familiar with all the albums. Once you switch to an album by a black person, or after the Seventies, even if it's widely considered to be a classic, you'll start to lose a couple people on the board. :-) ) |
| Since I love classic rock, I'll play | PwrPopGuy
Feb 27, 2003 3:17 PM | | 1. The Beatles - Rubber Soul - sorry, but I can't place anyone above the Beatles although I probably would have went with Revolver
2. Pink Floyd - D.S.O.T.M.
3. Led Zeppelin - II
4. Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed
5. Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run |
| I'll play, anyway | 3-LockBox
Feb 27, 2003 3:23 PM | | Pink Floyd is no.1, because this album raised the bar in rock'n'roll, both artistically and in sound quality. It's still unsurpassed. It's appeal has lasted decades and is still held to esteem by all generations, and all types of music genres. Every type of music is represented on this disc, and yet its still their most conjealed effort. Timeless music that knows no geographic or cultural boundry.
Rubber Soul would be a solid number two, because it represented what would become a trademark for the band, redefining rock/pop buy pushing and stretching boundries. While other artists from that era rested on their laurels and repeated the same formula over and over again, the Beatles would try horn sections, string sections, as well as dabbling in other cultures, bringing it all together on one album. This is where they broke from the rest of the British Invasion pack, and stayed ahead.
Rolling Stones Let It Bleed is not as consistant IMO as Some Girls or Beggars Banquet, but still has some of the bands finest moments ever recorded (Gimmie Shelter and Can't Always Get What You Want).
Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run is one of those albums that everyone has in their collection that they rarely listen to, in part because its a 'must have', but the over all mood is very somber and plodding at times. It's got its moments (first two songs and the title track), but this is the point when Springsteen is starting read his hype, and tries to hard to be the next Bob Dylan. (ironically the same year, Dylan reminds everyone who 'Dylan' is by releasing Blood On The Tracks) I usuallly tell people that the difference twix this album and The Wild, The Innocent & The E St Shuffle... is that on the 'Wild, Innocent' Springsteen celebrated life, on BTR, he wallowed in it.
Led Zep II was issued in the state of TN along with my drivers permit. OK, not really. I can't say I've listened to this album in a long time, because I own two boxsets. This is many a whiteboy's introduction to blues the way it was meant to be played. But that aside, I think that the legal repricussions of plagerism kinda marred the experience for me. |
| Nice descriptions! (nt) | Darius
Feb 27, 2003 3:50 PM | | |
| I'll play too...... | tentoze
Feb 27, 2003 3:29 PM | | Since this is all obviously personal preference:
1. Rubber Soul- Like PPG says above, can't justify them not in 1st place.
2. Born To Run- because the Boss is the Boss.
3. Let It Bleed- the only Stones music I own.
4. Something to fill the gap
5. Tie between DSOM and LZ II- I never cared for either of them. |
| re: Rank the following five classic albums in order of quality | Snowbunny
Feb 27, 2003 3:39 PM | | The Beatles - Rubber Soul
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
Led Zeppelin - II
Rolling Stones - Let it Bleed
Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run |
| The key word being <i>rank</i> | Slosh
Feb 27, 2003 4:09 PM | | Just kidding.
The BeAtles - <i>Revolver</i>
Led Zeppelin - s/t
Rolling Stones - <i>Exile On Main Street</i>
Pink Floyd - <i>Animals</i>
Bruce Springsteen - <i>Nebraska</i>
~Slosh - no good at following directions ;-) |
| re: Rank the following five classic albums in order of quality | Audio Girl
Feb 27, 2003 4:51 PM | | 1. The Beatles -- Rubber Soul -- some of the best songs ever written by L&M on this release. Norwegian Wood still gives me goose bumps.
2. Rolling Stones -- Let It Bleed -- This effort, as well as Exile, define who the Stones are. Too bad that cannot find that magic again in their releases.
3. Pink Floyd -- DSOTM
4. Bruce Springsteen -- Born to Run
5. Led Zeppelin II -- This release is actually one of my least favorite. If you had listed their first, it would have been in the #3 spot, followed by PF & BS. |
| re: Rank the following five classic albums in order of quality | Troy
Feb 27, 2003 4:59 PM | | 1. DSOTM. 3LB nailed this pretty well. A groundbreaker in so many ways.
2. Rubber Soul. This album kinda gets lost in the shuffle before Sgt Pepper and Revolver for me. It's a transitional record. A transitional record that would be a masterpiece for most bands, but a transitional album all the same.
3. Born to Run. Still the best Springsteen album because he hadn't gotten all precious and introspective yet. Mid-70s grandiose production and arrangement, yet earthy as all get out. Like a Beaux Arts bar band.
4 & 5 tie. I never was a fan of either band. Yes, I recognize that both albums are classics, but neither album ever interested me at all. I prefer the heavy production and psychedelia of "Physical Graffitti" and "Flowers" myself, so there you go . . . |
| Not sure I'm qualified... | DustyChalk
Feb 27, 2003 5:24 PM | | ...but I still have an opinion.
#1 Pink Floyd -- what 3LB said.
#2 Led Zeppelin -- no good reason, just my second favourite of the bunch.
(You'll excuse the Minutemen reference, but...) 3-way tie for last: Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen -- I don't own any of these albums, not even sure I've ever heard them in their entirety (unless one of my cousins played it for me, or it was in the store). Intend to pick up that one Rolling Stones that DLD described as a must for headphone owners and lovers of good psychedelic music, though I forget which one -- Her Satanic...? |
| re: Rank the following five classic albums in order of quality | HYFI
Feb 27, 2003 5:53 PM | | Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon - Still one of the best all time albums.
Led Zeppelin - II
The Beatles - Rubber Soul
Rolling Stones - Let it Bleed
Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run - I can't even listen to a whole song by this guy.
Not sure what you mean by "Quality". Quality in music as to my taste? Quality in recorded material? Quality as to the influence? |
| ditto HYFI | MasterCylinder
Feb 28, 2003 7:24 AM | | nfm |
| re: Rank the following five classic albums in order of quality | Jack in Wilmington
Feb 27, 2003 6:27 PM | | 1. Led Zeppelin II -
Heard Moby Dick at a club in Charleston, SC in 1970 and was hooked.
2. Beatles - Rubber Soul
Not my favorite album by the guys, but still a solid effort.
3. Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed
Still listen to this 30 some years later. Still some great songs that didn't get played to death on the radio.
4. Pink Floyd - DSOTM
Bought this for the first time about a year ago and I still don't see what all the fuss is about.
5. Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run
Not a Bruce fan at all. |
| Wow...a tough one | Grblgrbl
Feb 28, 2003 6:02 AM | | This is really tough. I'll take a crack at it.
1. Rubber Soul. Even though this is not one of my personal faves (I'd pick either Revolver or Abbey Road), it's hard to pick against the Beatles in a poll like this.
2. Let it Bleed. To me there are 4 Stones albums that are as good as or better than anything anyone other than the Beatles has ever done in rock. Those are Sticky Fingers, Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed and Exile on Main Street. My personal favorite of those is Sticky Fingers, but Let it Bleed is an incredible album.
3. Led Zeppelin II. This might be my favorite Zep.
4. DSOTM. Not my favorite Pink Floyd (WYWH wins out by a mile for me personally), but this may be the quintessential archetype of '70's album oriented rock.
5. Born to Run. Admittedly I'm not a Bruce fan, but this one doesn't belong on this exalted list IMO. I would instead have included Who's Next (not my personal favorite Who album, but it is probably their crowning achievement), which I would have put either 2nd or 3rd. |
| re: Rank the following five classic albums in order of quality | Ex-Lion Tamer
Feb 28, 2003 6:53 AM | | This is a fun thread.
Beatles
Stones
Floyd
Zep
Springsteen
That's how I'd rank them. The toughest choice was between #1 & #2; <i>Rubber Soul</i>, is just a great album, but has no single song as good as Gimme Shelter or You Can't Always Get..., But <i>Let it Bleed</i>, does have a couple of stinkers, so The Beatles get the nod for greatness from top to bottom.
Floyd is #3, and not higher, because though it is certainly ground breaking and of high quality, does not have the great songs of the Stones and Beatles albums. Time is a great song, Brain Damage too, but I think that's it. Don't get me wrong, the rest of the album is not exactly filler, but nothing I could call great.
If you had nominated the first LZ album, it would have given DSOTM a run for its money, but the second just isn't as interesting an album to me.
I just never saw <i>Born to Run</i> as the stone cold classic that Bruce fanatics do, (I prefer <i>Darkness on The Edge of Town</i>, myself). So this one was a no-brainer for me.
Mark |
| ARRRGG!!! | Mr MidFi
Feb 28, 2003 8:16 AM | | Born to Run is an absolute rock-solid classic! It's on my all-time top 20 list! But so are DSOTM and Let It Bleed...anyway, here we go:
1. (tie) DSOTM & Let It Bleed - Apples & oranges. But I just can't pick one over the other.
3. Born to Run - Not in the top spot by only a slender margin. This album changed the rules, just when the rules needed some changing.
4. Rubber Soul - Not really a Beatles guy, but this is one of their best!
5. Zep II - Not as good as their s/t or u/t releases, but definitely has its moments. The soundtrack of my misspent youth.
Side note, concerning Darius's paranthetical point: My favorite Classic Rock album not from the 70s is REM's Reckoning. And my favorite album by a black person is probably Bob Marley's Legend. |
| re: Rank the following five classic albums in order of quality | Darius
Feb 28, 2003 8:23 AM | | 1. Rolling Stones - Let it Bleed. Not a heck of a lot to say on this one. There's so much on this album that is exhilerating or devastating for me. It truly bleeds. Gimme Shelter is one of the greatest rock songs ever. This one just packs the biggest punch. (Jagger singing "Love . . . Sister . . . It's just a kiss away . . .) And I think this is one of the defining rock albums.
2. The Beatles - Rubber Soul. Not my favorite Beatles album, but definitely in the top 3 or so. Most of the songs on this album are just perfect, and song for song it's a better album than Let it Bleed. One of the albums when John and Paul were the most even in the quality of their contributions ("You Won't See Me" and "Nowhere Man" back to back, oh baby). And George has two great contributions. Also an even more innovative album, in its time, than the highly innovative Let it Bleed. Let it Bleed only wins because of visceral rock -n- roll impact, but this is perfect pop.
3. Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run. It's a close call over DSOTM, but I have to pick the excellent but slightly inconsistent Born to Run over the flawless DSOTM because of the title track, in my mind just about the hugest, most exhilerating rock single (or song) ever. Played loud on a car radio, this one can bring me to tears it's so good. (And I have to chuckle when I hear this song on Classic Rock radio sandwiched between stuff like "Alright Now" and "China Grove".) Also Thunder Road, Jungleland, Back Streets: these songs are gorgeously lyrical true rock epics that make me understand why so many of the long songs of the seventies (that confuse instrumental and structural inventiveness with emotional power) don't deserve the name epic.
4. Pink Floyd -- Dark Side of the Moon. Perhaps the second most perfect album on this list after Rubber Soul. Beatifully contructed, atmospheric, rich, pristine. Waters' writing and Gilmour's singing ("Breathe . . . Breathe in the air") are at their peak. When Side 1 is over I'm like whoa, that soon?; that was no time at all. And this album is also timeless; it doesn't really fit into any historical context; it's just this gem shining there. Then why isn't it number 1 or 2 or 3? Because it's highly formalist, pristine, emotionally distant, even a bit cold. This is tightly, hermetically contructed music made by among the most skilled craftspersons that ever worked in the rock genre. It doesn't have that emotional <i>"pow!"</i> that the best <i>rock -n- roll</i> has for me (it doesn't bleed like Let it Bleed); nor does it have the simple melodic genius of something like Rubber Soul; nor does anything on it have the incandescent, liberating glory of the best parts of Born to Run. Still, one of rock's great masterpieces.
5. Led Zeppelin - II. One of the defining albums of hard rock/heavy metal. Everything about this album is larger than life. It's dirty, disreputable, offensive and gloriously adolescent. The songs are blues songs taken to their most obnoxious extreme. Just the drumming on this album is worth a paragraph. Not my favorite Zepplin album (that would be "I"), but quite great. It just isn't as good, in my mind, as the others on this list because its pleasures are a bit more narrow. |
| Just curious. If these aren't your favorites.... | BradH
Feb 28, 2003 8:48 AM | | ...then how did you come up with this list? |
| Just curious. If these aren't your favorites.... | Darius
Feb 28, 2003 9:17 AM | | I wanted albums that stood off nicely from each other, and that represented different facets of the music that different types of rock fans on this board would value to different degrees.
I picked Dark Side first because I've been thinking about it a lot lately, because I have strong opinions about it (only a couple of which I set forth above), and because it's a nice separater between different kinds of rock fans -- I knew some would rank it at the top of the list, and others would put it more towards the bottom.
Let it Bleed is like the anti-Dark Side on this list; I picked it among the Stones albums because it's my favorite single album of theirs (Exile wouldn't have been fair as a double album) and I thought it competed nicely with Dark Side and Rubber Soul. It represents dark, rough rock music.
I picked Rubber Soul because (i) Revolver has been so lionized lately and I wanted more people not to have the Beatles choice as their #1 and (ii) their later albums wouldn't have brought out as many interesting opinions. I think it's easier for a later rock fan (especially one who likes 70s rock) to understand the greatness of Abbey Road than it is to understand the greatness of Rubber Soul. I was hoping someone would undervalue it as just simple pop songs.
Born to Run was because Springsteen is such a polarizer. I was hoping both that (i) there would be someone on the board that would go off about how great it was (as I did) and (ii) there would be others that don't get it, who find it messy or just annoying. I was guessing that most of the folks that would rank DSOTM #1 would rank either this one or Let it Bleed at the bottom. (but of course, people were unpredictable.) Also, selfishly, I was looking for a nice flawed, messy album to rank above Dark Side in my own ranking, which allows me to make a point about some of my general views on the music.
Zeppelin II because it's not as overplayed as IV and it's more widely listened to than I. It's also pretty archetypal and represents the most macho end of classic rock. |
| Born to Bleed the Dark Side of the Rubber Soul. | BradH
Feb 28, 2003 11:20 AM | | If we can refer to
i Dark Side of the Moon
as Dark Side does that mean we can refer to
i Rubber Soul
as Rubber?
No? Okay, just checking.
I also have the highest regard for DSotM and I've never said much about it on this board, it's worth a freaking essy in itself. The despair on that lp is more "quiet desparation" slipping into Cambridge madness compared to the Stones satan wracked blues holler on
i Let It Bleed.
Different drugs, I guess.
I've heard some fairly convincing arguments that Rubber Soul is better than Revolver. The production is cleaner for one thing. |
| Helluva list, love em all | DLD
Feb 28, 2003 10:01 AM | | Born With The Runs had to be one of the most anticipated LPs of 1975. Although it didn't quite live up to its hype and promise, it was still leaps and bounds better IMO that Greetings from Asbury Park and better than the solid Wild Innocent.. Still tho, it has to rank as # 5, well behind these other killer efforts. Not in my all time top 20
1)Rubber Soul
2)Let It Bleed
3)Zep II
4)DSOTM
5)Born... |
| re: Rank the following five classic albums in order of quality | J
Feb 28, 2003 10:33 AM | | Darius, you didn't make a distinction between the Capitol vs. Parlophone versions of Rubber Soul, and neither did anyone else in the thread. They're markedly different albums, and the Capitol version, which is not only shorter, but also has tracks that were originally issued on the U.K. version of Help!, is superior to my ears. So if that's the one you're talking about, I rank it #1. I like Revolver, but I do not understand or agree with the recent push to elevate it to 'best Beatles album,' which does not make as much sense to me as downgrading the importance & perceived quality of Sgt. Pepper. (Adding the three tracks that ended up on Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow helps, but I still think the White Album is better, as is the U.S. Rubber Soul, the U.K. Help! & Hard Day's Night, and possibly Abbey Road) When you mention 'Nowhere Man,' it's clear what record you're talking about. I'd put that version at #3 or 4. In which case I'd have to put DSOTM tops, the only album I really like by these otherwise worthless losers that the whole world thinks was so wonderful. Great album, you can keep the rest of their catalog, with the exception of a spare track or two here & there, outside my threshold. Then I'd say LZ II, which I'm awful tired of, but outside of Moby Dick there's really not a bad song on it & Page's artistic voice, from production to guitar tone, is the star of the show here. Probably my favorite of their first four albums. Then I'd say Let It Bleed. Beggar's Banquet & Exile are perfect albums to me in just about every way, including large numbers of perfect tracks, order, flow, feel, vibe, etc. In these relatively intangible areas Let It Bleed is slightly lesser to my ears (as is Sticky Fingers), though it's really hard to say any of these four records is 'better' or 'worse' than any of the others. For me, Let It Bleed suffers mainly because it's not Beggar's Banquet, just as Sticky Fingers suffers only for the reason that it's not Exile. Then we have Born To Run, which I'm just not familiar enough to rank above any of the other records, though I know it's quite good. I just haven't heard the whole thing in its entirety in a very long time, but #5 on this list is still better than a Fields Of The Nephilim record. However, I will say that hearing anything on a car radio doesn't really do too much for me, because y'all know how I feel about cars. Which is one small reason why I never got into Bruce all that much... |
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