KevShmev's Top 50 Albums!!!! (Number 1!!!!)

[Lolzeez]

Is On An Island that good? A friend of mine gave it to me as a present like years ago and I haven't touched it yet because I'm not the biggest fan of Gilmour's solo work.

[Ruba]

Oh yes Promised Land! 

[jingle.boy]

Gotta be something from Floyd in there.  Perhaps something else from the 80s.  No Eagles yet?  Skynyrd?  Breakfast in America?

[KevShmev]

Is On An Island that good? A friend of mine gave it to me as a present like years ago and I haven't touched it yet because I'm not the biggest fan of Gilmour's solo work.

Yes.  To me, it was the natural follow-up to The Division Bell, albeit a bit more mellow, and is lights years ahead of any of his other solo albums.

   No Eagles yet?  Skynyrd?  Breakfast in America?

Supertramp was covered in the honorable mentions.  Those other two have songs I like, but don't have any one album I would call great enough to come close to making a list like this, especially since I like so many bands.

[KevShmev]

Time for the top 10!  I will be doing them one at at time, but more than one a day.

10. U2 - Achtung Baby


I was a big U2 fan in the 80s.  In fact, by the time the 80s ended, they were one of my two or three favorite bands.  However, once I discovered classic rock and other forms of rock from 1989 to 1991, U2 kind of fell by the wayside on my list of priorities.  In fact, when Acthtung Baby came out, I heard Mysterious Way, hated it and thought, "If this is the new direction people are talking about, they can have it."  Being that I was no longer watching MTV anymore, I didn't see any of the videos for the other hits, and when I did listen to the radio back then, it was classic rock, so for years, the only song I knew from this album was Mysterious Ways.  It wasn't until 1995 that I finally got around to actually hearing it.  I think I heard Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses somewhere, liked it, mentioned it to a friend who liked the album and he let me borrow his copy.  I was pretty flabbergasted when I listened to it; it was a lot better than I thought it was gonna be.  In fact, I liked it quite a bit.  However, when Pop was a major flop in 1997, even though I liked some of it, U2 fell by the wayside for me for literally about a decade.  But then about five years ago, I suddenly got a hair up my ass to listen to some U2 again, and when I did, I not only discovered that most of their music had aged really well, but that Achtung Baby was a flawless record from start to finish.  I even like Mysterious Ways quite a bit now!  So, when I finally saw U2 on the 360 tour a couple years ago, you can only imagine my euphoria when they began the show with five straight songs from Achtung Baby.

Favorite songs: Until the End of the World, Ultraviolet (Light My Way), The Fly, Acrobat, Love Is Blindness and One

[jingle.boy]

Probably my LEAST favorite U2 album.  I think I'd even take How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb over this. 

I will end this post by saying something nice though... I'm really looking forward to #9 - whatever it is will be an improvement. 

[Lolzeez]

Can't stand U2. Sorry. You still got 9 more coming. 

[KevShmev]

Probably my LEAST favorite U2 album. I think I'd even take How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb over this. 

I will end this post by saying something nice though... I'm really looking forward to #9 - whatever it is will be an improvement. 

    Wow.

Number 9 is coming up a little later today...

[Scorpion]

Probably my LEAST favorite U2 album.  I think I'd even take How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb over this. 

I will end this post by saying something nice though... I'm really looking forward to #9 - whatever it is will be an improvement. 

Chad, I had no idea that you even liked U2. I dunno, it never seemed like something that would fit your taste.

[nicmos]

Great pick.  Until the End of the World and The Fly are great songs.  I don't know if this album reaches the highs of say the Joshua Tree, but it is consistently very enjoyable.  I think I skip one song (So Cruel) but the others make up for it.

[jingle.boy]

Probably my LEAST favorite U2 album.  I think I'd even take How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb over this. 

I will end this post by saying something nice though... I'm really looking forward to #9 - whatever it is will be an improvement. 

Chad, I had no idea that you even liked U2. I dunno, it never seemed like something that would fit your taste.

Oh totally.  Joshua Tree is an all-time classic.  Unforgettable Fire, October, War... all great stuff.

Let me correct ... Zooropa had been purged from my mind, so I'll correct that Acthung is not my least favorite.  And I don't really know much of the post 90s stuff... didn't follow them much after Achtung.

[Sketchy]

Glad Power To Believe got an HM. That album is so damn good. Three years ago, it probably would have been in my 50.

[Jaq]

I figured U2 would make the top 10-call it a hunch-but I didn't expect this album. Totally expected Joshua Tree.

[KevShmev]

I figured U2 would make the top 10-call it a hunch-but I didn't expect this album. Totally expected Joshua Tree.

Great pick.  Until the End of the World and The Fly are great songs. I don't know if this album reaches the highs of say the Joshua Tree, but it is consistently very enjoyable.  I think I skip one song (So Cruel) but the others make up for it.

I think it does.  Plus, so many of U2's albums, The Joshua Tree included, have songs that became much better live, but with Achtung Baby, they brought out the best on nearly every song on the studio versions.

With regards to The Joshua Tree more specifically, the studio versions of Streets... and Bullet the Blue Sky almost sound like warm-ups compared to the beastly live versions that followed for years.  Same for Exit, which is rather limp in the studio, but slayed on Rattle & Hum.

Glad Power To Believe got an HM. That album is so damn good. Three years ago, it probably would have been in my 50.

Same here.  But over time, King Crimson is just not a band I listen to hardly at all anymore (and never really did that much, honestly, except for the "getting into them" phase).  That said, Starless and The Power to Believe II are still two of the greatest songs I have ever heard.

[KevShmev]

09. Transatlantic - SMPTe (2000)


It was early in 2000, and several of us were knee deep in DT and all of its greatness surrounding Scenes from a Memory, and it was my older brother Tim who one day told me, "Hey, I bought this CD that Dream Theater's drummer plays on; it's good; you should check it out."  So, I did.  And the rest, as they say, is history.  I was taken immediately with the voices of both Neal Morse and Roine Stolt, the vintage-sounding prog music and the overall scope of the disc.  This CD is single-handledly responsible for getting me into The Flower Kings and Spock's Beard (and later by extension, Neal Morse's solo career).  I cannot count the number of hours I have spent in the 13 years since listening to all of those acts.  Really, I could have picked any of the three TA records, as they are all such great, but SMPTe gets the nod because of its impact and influence on my musical direction.

Favorite songs: All of the Above, My New World and We All Need Some Light

[Sketchy]

Oooh, nice. I've heard the other two TA albums, and I've been meaning to get this one for a while.

[Lolzeez]

I gotta admit,I've only heard The Whirlwind from the band. And that was like a year ago. I think I gotta listen to it again and then check out the others.

[Jaq]

I heard of the first TA album, I believe, via a bit of news on the Marillion site, and my reaction to it was this "Wow, Pete from Marillion's gonna be in a band with MP and...two guys I've never heard of!" I wasn't very deep into the current prog scene then, what can I say? By the time it came out, though, I'd heard it was five songs and nearly 80 minutes, which sold it. Bought the album, went home to play it, and was in love with it by the time the vocals came in for All Of The Above, which remains, still, my favorite TA song. Much like Kev, this album led me to listening to Spock's Beard and the Flower Kings and broadening my knowledge of "modern" prog, so it wins out as my favorite TA album for the same reason; it had such a strong effect on the music I would listen to for the next decade that it gets the nod, though all three albums are largely even in terms of quality.

[jingle.boy]

I was right, this was a way better update than #10!  .  BAF was my first Transatlantic experience and wowzers!  Didn't get SMTPe until a few years later.  It was excellent, but honestly ... I was a little underwhelmed, given how wow'd I was from BAF.  I should probably revisit it.

[KevShmev]

08. Devin Townsend - Terria (2001)


This is another one of those CDs that I was not a big fan of on the first several listens, outside of a few songs, but I was persistent and kept plugging away and the light eventually went on.  And did it ever. Looking back, it seems laughable that I didn't always think this was wondrous, but shit happens, right?   This is like the ultimate road trip CD, which is fitting considering Devin was inspired to write it while driving across Canada.  I get that his music is not for everyone - his wall of sound throws some people, and his occasional screaming vocals are not everyone's cup of tea, and they usually aren't mine - but there is just something about his writing and style that is so inviting and so majestic. And Terria is him at his absolute best.  While the DTP had him showing off his many sides on four different-sounding records, Terria manages to do it with just 10 songs and one record.

Favorite songs: Tiny Tears, Earth Day, Deep Peace, Stagnant and The Fluke

[Lolzeez]

Now that's a good album. 

[Scorpion]

Best Devin album. Good pick!

[Mladen]

My favorite Transatlantic album right there. 

[Perpetual Change]

Kev, most of this list is quality, but some of the sequence is absolutely killing me

Stuff like,


49. Sigur Rķs - ( )
48. Van Halen - Van Halen

40. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
39. INXS - Kick

24. Queen - Sheer Heart Attack
23. Liquid Tension Experiment - Liquid Tension Experiment

14. Yes - The Yes Album
13. Queensr˙che - Promised Land

11. The Beatles - Abbey Road
08. Devin Townsend - Terria

I guess it all comes down to personal tastes, and again I think the list is full of quality music, just the sequencing raises so many red flags

[Shadow Ninja 2.0]

DEVIN!

[KevShmev]

It's called diversity, man.

[ariich]

Hell yes Terria!

[Dr. DTVT]

Terria is a god-tier album.

[KevShmev]

07. The Flower Kings - Flower Power (1999)


Your first love with a band really is the best band sometimes, and that was certainly the case with The Flower Kings.  I got Flower Power shortly after getting into Transatlantic and wanting to check out Roine's Stolt's full-time band.  As soon as I heard the first three tracks of the Garden of Dreams suite, I was sucked in.  Now, it admittedly took a bit of time to get into some of the rest of the suite, particularly a lot of the second half, but trying to get into something that grand in scope all at once is not always that easy, so I doubt was alone in that regard.  And for some strange reason, I never bothered listening to the 2nd CD until literally over a year later after first getting Flower Power, but when I do, I was like, "Holy crap, the 2nd disc is amazing, too!!!"  The Flower Kings are one of my favorite bands ever, and to me, Flower Power is their crowning achievement.  It is a masterpiece of modern progressive rock.

Favorite songs: Simple Song, Business Vamp, All You Can Save, Psycedelic Postcard, Deaf, Numb and Blind, Attack of the Monster Briefcase, The Final Deal and Stupid Girl

[Tom Bombadil]

Interesting. Never heard of this band, but I'll be sure to check them out now.

[Sketchy]

That album is badass. I love Garden Of Dreams. Excellent choice, dude.

[KevShmev]

That album is badass. I love Garden Of Dreams. Excellent choice, dude.

Thanks!

Interesting. Never heard of this band, but I'll be sure to check them out now.

They are all kinds of awesome.  Start with Flower Power, Stardust We Are, Space Revolver or Paradox Hotel. 

[Jaq]

Flower Power was the first Flower Kings album I bought after hearing Transatlantic, and I was beyond awed at it. Like a lot of Flower Kings double albums, it tends to be a mood album for getting through ALL of it, because you're investing over two hours to do so, but it's always a worthwhile journey.

[jingle.boy]

Haven't really explored TFK much.  This seems like a good place to start.

[Rattlehead]

I'm going to have to check TFK out as well. The album cover is awesome though