Top five records

With my decade lists completed (follow the links in the toolbar on the right hand side), it’s time to declare my five favourite records of all time.

Narrowing the list down to 50 records hasn’t made this task any easier. However, I think I’m finally comfortable with my selections.

As with the decade lists, please note the caveat that these are my own personal favourites; I don’t presume to tell anyone what the “best” records of all time are.

Apart from the first two (the only two I didn’t hesitate to put on the list), these are in no particular order.

 

The Clash – London Calling (1979)

Full disclosure: this is, in my mind, the greatest rock record ever made.

Upon hearing the opening chords and Paul Simonon’s unforgettable bass line in “London Calling”, you’re acutely aware that this record is something special. It’s hard to explain with any brevity so let me simply say that I don’t think I’ve ever felt so immediately and permanently enthralled by anything else I’ve ever heard.

All the way through “Train in Vain” there is not a single poor track on the record—remarkable given that this is a double LP. Some of the Clash’s best and most memorable songs are here: “Rudie Can’t Fail”; “Spanish Bombs”; “Lost in the Supermarket”; “Clampdown”; “Guns of Brixton”; “Death or Glory”; “I’m Not Down”; and “Train In Vain”.

Most important, I think, is the profound effect this album had on rock music—and the burgeoning punk rock scene, in particular. It signaled that punk rock wasn’t entirely reducible to wanton nihilism or tearing down the decaying façade of rock music that had reached an advanced state of decrepitude by the mid-1970s. Punk could also be—and should be—a vessel for expressing ideas about social, political and economic change; to not only challenge orthodoxies in music and society but to overcome them and map out a potentially different landscape.

In my mind, London Calling showed us the way.

 

The Replacements – Let It Be (1984)

Next to London Calling, my favourite record ever.

If you’re aware of the ‘Mats primarily due to their major label output (Tim, Pleased to Meet Me, Don’t Tell A Soul and/or All Shook Down) and you enjoyed any of those records at all, you owe it to yourself to listen to this one.

Let It Be captures better than any other record the essence of the ‘Mats. “I Will Dare” is the best song the band ever recorded. It remains an example of what the ‘Mats could have been if they had cared more about being rock stars.

“Favorite Thing” is dripping, if not entirely drenched, with the self-deprecation and loathing that was part-and-parcel of Westerberg and the band’s ethos (“You’re my favourite thing/But I’m nothing”).

Only a band so audacious and unwilling to conform could cover KISS (“Black Diamond”) or offer up a side two where “Gary’s Got a Boner” (taken in context, one of the most amusing musical ‘fuck you’s to peoples’ expectations in rock n’ roll history) shares space with “Unsatisfied” (one of Westerberg’s most affecting and introspective gems), “Seen Your Video” (excoriating the pretension and falsehoods that abound in ‘modern rock’), “Sixteen Blue” (one of the best songs I’ve ever heard about the difficulties of being a teenager) and “Answering Machine” (a raw recording of Westerberg singing about leaving that desperate message we’ve all left at one time or another).

Let It Be was, in a way, a perfect storm for the ‘Mats. Paul Westerberg had finally built up the confidence to assert himself enough to be granted the latitude to explore his more introspective, heart-on-the-sleeve side while the band still played with the edge that characterized their first few records. This tension between what the band was and what Westerberg, in particular, wanted the band to be is a fundamental element of the record.

I’ll never get tired of listening to it.

 

Kinks – Something Else by the Kinks (1967)

I think the Kinks are probably my favourite pre-punk era band. Something Else is my favourite Kinks record, which is saying something considered their prodigious and impressive recording output, especially in the 1960s.

Truth be told, my gateway into the Kinks was the Jam. The Jam’s cover of “David Watts” on All Mod Cons led me to pick up this record and I never looked back. It’s obvious that Paul Weller is heavily influenced by Ray Davies and, therefore, no surprise to me that I’d fall hard for this band.

Something Else is a tremendously interesting record – largely due to the fact it represented a marked shift in the band’s sound and songwriting. Some people have described it as the band going “pastoral”. While I’m not sure it’s entirely fair (“David Watts”, “Death of a Clown”, “Situation Vacant”, “Love Me ‘Till the Sun Shines” definitely hold up to the earlier mod rock), it’s easy to see why people think so. The band definitely takes the foot off the gas, turns down the guitars and turns up the harmonies on a number of tracks that wistfully evoke a quieter, more peaceful existence. Speaking of which, “Waterloo Sunset” might be the best pop song ever written.

 

Wire – Pink Flag (1977)

In three successive years, Wire managed to release one of the definitive albums that shaped punk rock (Pink Flag), a seminal contribution to its evolution into post-punk (Chairs Missing) and an album flush with experimental, atmospheric, electronic rock music (154). Having pushed the boundaries of rock music so far so quickly and collectively unsure about how to proceed further, the band decided to call it quits (only to reunite in 1985).

Like many great records, the importance of Pink Flag is measured not so much in terms of its popularity at the time but its impact and influence on a disparate variety of musicians and musical styles. American hardcore bands like Black Flag and Minor Threat took inspiration, as did college rock bands like R.E.M. and Guided By Voices and Brit-pop bands like Blur and Elastica (the latter were even successfully sued by the band for blatantly ripping off “Three Girl Rhumba” from Pink Flag on their hit single “Connection”).

But Pink Flag isn’t one of those ‘take the medicine that’s good for you’ records you should enjoy simply for its importance. In my mind, it’s probably the best punk rock record (as a whole) to come out of the early days next to London Calling. “Ex-Lion Tamer”, “Start to Move”, “Fragile”, “Mannequin” and “1 2 X U” brilliantly capture and convey what made punk rock exciting to listen to.

 

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – Tyranny of Distance (2001)

Tyranny of Distance is my favourite album of the 2000s. Truthfully, nothing else even comes close.

Once in a while a record comes along that comes to mean more to your life than simply enjoyment of the music—and for me Tyranny of Distance is one of those records. You see, in the early 2000s, while at grad school in Kingston, this was a record I would implore anyone I met to listen to. I’ll admit I took some pride in championing a musician and band most people (at the time) had never heard of and I’ll acknowledge that it meant a lot to me that people liked it.

In a way this record was a window into my world. By listening to it, you could better know me and appreciate my personality, tastes and disposition. Punk rocker getting older and hopefully wiser; still romantic but increasingly alienated and discontented; open-minded but resolute; sensitive but increasingly vulnerable; and reflective to the point of being wistful. If you couldn’t like this record I couldn’t fathom how you would ever like me (though I’ve long forgiven one of my best friends who didn’t love “Dial Up” when I asked him to listen to it).

In strictly musical terms, this record—and Ted Leo more generally—showcases an impressive array of influences I can fully appreciate: everything from the Who and the Kinks to the Clash, the Jam and Wire. (Incidentally, the album title is drawn from the song “Six Months in a Leaky Boat”, later covered by Leo, by Kiwi new wavers Split Enz, led by the Finn brothers of later Crowded House fame.)

Indeed, I like to think of Ted Leo, in a way, as America’s less celebrated answer to Paul Weller (they both certainly share in common a baffling lack of widespread popularity in the U.S.). Every time I listen to this record I can’t help but long for an opportunity to spend an afternoon with the man listening to records. It’s a testament to a love for British mod/mod revival and punk/post-punk from the late 1970s that I wholeheartedly share.