OK.................I'll try and address some of the above issues.
- TAC's request for the full list............I can sorta do something there - see below
- Defenders and Last In Line..............both make it but not top 10......I'll explain the criteria in more detail but to even get an honourable mention in 1984 means I really,really like the album. 80% = mr.com 110%
- Blob believes all who disagree with him are wrong ...............can't do anything about that sorry
At the risk of getting totally boring I'll explain a bit about how I'm doing this. It's all being done very quickly so the rating methods are pretty rough and ready but it gets the job done.
I have never been one for formally rating albums at all , but 12-18 months ago I thought I had better start. I looked at my collection (now >4000 albums) and realised I would never listen to them all before I cark it and that I couldn't remember how good half of them are. Rating the albums would help to sort out the wheat from the chaff and provide a good reference point not only for best tracks but the album ratings would sort out those that are worth listening to as whole albums. Those that come in at <70% (implied album rating of < 4 stars in iTunes) I don't bother to keep in my spreadsheet - they are deemed not worth an "album listen" but I have the song ratings to refer to.
I just use iTunes star ratings for the tracks. I'm thinking something alone these lines when I rate them:
1 star : shit
2 stars: barely listenable - nothing I wish to hear again
3 stars: decent song - good for occasional rotation
4 stars: quality song - good for regular rotation
5 stars: great song that really gets me in- a favourite.
At the end of the album I average them out , convert to a rating out of 100 and then have +/- 4 pts I can use to adjust for things like the whole album experience, production and if I felt some songs may have been more like 4 and a half than 4 etc........... The key point is that consistency plays a big part. Take an album like Defenders - the first 4 songs are about as good as any 4 on any metal album for me (The Sentinel may be my all time fave JP song) but IMO the rest of the album fades from there and so it ends up with a good but not great rating , even though it contains a few of my all time favourite songs. Same goes (even more so) for Holy Diver. I have rated The Last In Line higher than Holy Diver even though it has one LESS all time favourite song.........it makes up for that with almost no filler.
Onto to TAC's request..............I can't give you a totally comprehensive list because a number of the albums I have sampled a few songs and decided not to even bother rating them and haven't recorded those names (there's probably 20 of those already). Then there's albums that I have rated but have come in < 70% (Metal Church is one I have done today).......they are not in my spreadsheet either , as mentioned above.
What I can give you (bearing in mind that 80% is required to make the list) is those that have been rated and made the 70% cutoff for my spreadsheet:
Quiet Riot Condition Critical
KISS Animalize
Black'n'Blue s/t
Armored Saint March Of The Saint
The Rods Let Them Eat Metal
Lee Aaron Metal Queen
Ratt Out Of The Cellar
Manowar Hail To England
Mama's Boys s/t
Y&T In Rock We Trust
Giuffira Giuffria
Dokken Tooth and Nail
Fates Warning Night On Brocken
Saxon Crusader
Icon Icon
Judas Priest Defenders of the Faith
Twisted Sister Stay Hungry
Queensryche The Warning
Dio The Last In Line
Yngwie Malmsteen Rising Force
Autograph Sign In Please
Scorpions Love At First Sting
Whitesnake Slide It In
Metallica Ride The Lightning
Iron Maiden Powerslave
Van Halen 1984
Europe Wings of Tomorrow
Bon Jovi Bon Jovi
Grim Reaper See You In Hell
Sammy Hagar VOA
Helix Walkin The Razor's Edge
Keel Lay Down The Law
Kick Axe Vices
W.A.S.P:s/t
And here's some albums I still need to listen to and rate in coming days ( a couple are likely more AOR and won't make it) :
Krokus The Blitz
Laaz Rockit City's Gonna Burn
Legs Diamond Out On Bail
Loudness Disillusion
Madam X We Reserve The Right
Gary Moore We Want Moore
Zebra No Tellin Lies
Waysted Waysted EP
Tyran Pace Eye To Eye
Triumph Thunder Seven
Tokyo Blade Night Of The Blade
TKO In Your Face
TNT Knights of the New Thunder
Stryper The Yellow and Black attack
Stone Fury Burns Like A Star
Sinner Danger Zone
Savatage The Dungeons Are Calling
Running Wild Gates To Purgatory
Q5 Steel The Light
Pretty Maids Red Hot and Heavy
Omen Battle Cry
MSG Rock Will Never Die
220 volt Power Games
Blackfoot Vertical Smiles
Bronz Taken By Storm
Fastway All Fired Up
HSAS Through The Fire
Honeymoon Suite Honeymoon Suite
Joshua The Hand Is Quicker Than The Eye
Lizzy Borden Love You To Pieces
Meat Loaf bad Attitude
Ted Nugent Penetrator
Rose Tattoo Southern Stars
Samson Don't Get Mad, Get Even
Santers Guitar Alley
Slade Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply
Urgent Cast The First Stone
Warlock Burning The Witches
Vengeance Vengeance
Widow Gone Too Far
White Heart Vital Signs
Fee Waybill rRead My Lips
White Wolf Standing Alone
Zero Nine Headline
Virgin steele Burn The Sun
Jag Panzer Ample Destruction
There'll be a few more..............unfortunately I've been out most of today and fell behind. I am trying to be as comprehensive as possible. Most of these albums are not albums I grew up with and so I've come in later and listened to them only a little bit in many cases. So I feel like I need to give them a good listen rather than rate by memory. That's adding a lot of time to it that I really never budgeted for , but I'm a sucker for going overboard once I set myself a task.
To put it in context the 80% rating required to get an honourable mention means that an album must average 4 stars across the whole thing - not many albums are able to achieve that with me. So anything that gets there in 1984 really deserves it....and there's a heap of them. An amazing year where many that have missed the Top 10 would've made it in past years.