Take away your favorite album from a favorite band/artist...

[KevShmev]

and how far do they fall down your ranking of favorite bands/artists?

I got this idea when seeing Colin Cowherd talk about how in any industry, when someone has enough time to put in, take away the best day/year and their worst day/year, and look at everything else and that is who they are.

In the case of favorites for me like Rush, Porcupine Tree and Neal Morse, if you took away my favorite album by each, they'd still all rate about the same for me, but on the flip side, in regards to the topic, I thought of Queensryche.  My favorite album of theirs is Promised Land by a wide margin.  If I had to rank them, they'd probably around 30-35 for me all-time, but remove Promised Land and, as much as I still like Rage for Order, Mindcrime and Empire, they'd be lucky to then break the top 50.

[HOF]

Let’s see, off the top of my head...

Marillion:
Take away Afraid of a Sunlight and you still have Brave, Marbles, Clutching as an epic top 3, plus many more albums I love.

Genesis:
Take away Duke and you still have Selling England, Foxtrot, Trick, W&W (and on and on)

Rush:
Plenty of great albums left if you dropped Power Windows!

Big Big Train:
It would hurt to lose The Underfall Yard, but there’s not a bad album that’s been released by this band yet.

The Blue Nile:
Losing Hats would be devastating, but A Walk Across the Rooftops and Peace at Last are also wonderful. They also have a ton of great material that didn’t make an album. 

Spock’s Beard:
Not even totally sure which is my favorite, which means losing any one album probably wouldn’t do them in very much. Plenty of great stuff throughout.

I think the Blue Nile might drop out of my top 5-10 bands, but I don’t think the others would. Those are my favorites in large part because their catalogs are so deep and their releases consistently great.

[Cool Chris]

They don't fall down my list very much at all, if any. My favorite bands/artists have at least a couple albums that help establish them as my favorites.

[pg1067]

and how far do they fall down your ranking of favorite bands/artists?

I got this idea when seeing Colin Cowherd talk about how in any industry, when someone has enough time to put in, take away the best day/year and their worst day/year, and look at everything else and that is who they are.

First of all, Colin Cowturd is a complete nob, and I'm baffled he has the job he has.  Fortunately, his mid-morning time slot means I almost never have occasion to listen to him.


Rush:
Take away either Hemispheres or Moving Pictures, and they drop somewhat, but there's still so much great material left.  On the other end of the spectrum, take away Roll the Bones or Hold Your Fire and I'd be happy, but it wouldn't move the needle too much.

Dream Theater:
Take away SFAM, and they really drop a bit, but I wonder how losing that album would change my or others' opinions about SDOIT.  The other possible candidate for DT's best would be I&W, and if you lose that album, DT basically doesn't exist as we know the band today.  On the other end of the spectrum, taking away Systematic Chaos or The Astonishing certainly gets rid of a big clunker, but it wouldn't change things much.

Fates Warning:
Taking away A Pleasant Shade of Gray would drop the band a good chunk, and the combination of Disconnected and FWX, without APSOG, probably would have caused me to abandon FW altogether.  On the other end of the spectrum, losing FWX or Night on Brocken wouldn't have any impact at all since I rarely spin either of them.

Iron Maiden:
If you take away Piece of Mind, I probably wouldn't be nearly as into the band.  On the other end of the spectrum, getting rid of No Prayer for the Dying wouldn't have much of any impact.

Queensryche:
Getting rid of Operation: Mindcrime would be a HUGE blow.  On the other end of the spectrum, getting rid of Promised Land might have caused me not to lose interest in the band going forward.

[Phoenix87x]

Luckily most of the bands I like, have a long list of other decent albums. But I can think of:

Audioslave - Take away the debut album and I don't care about the next 2

The Cure- yes, the have other decent albums, but I mostly listen to disintegration

Offspring- I only listen to smash

[bl5150]

Top 5 in my DTF Top 50 (most influential albums) were Van Halen , DT , Ozzy , Savatage and Queensryche.

Out of all those I would say DT suffers the most if I remove the album in question......Images and Words.   I was a fan of WDADU & thought Awake was a good follow up , but they basically lost me in terms of anticipating new material from FII until the Mangini era.

The other albums (VH1 , Randy Rhoads Tribute, Gutter Ballet, Operation: Mindcrime) were "surrounded" by a more consistent run of albums IMO.

[krands85]

Images and Words is my favourite album by anyone, so it would suck to lose that, but DT would stlil be my favourite band as they have so much other music that's brilliant.

I wouldn't call them one of my real favourites, but one band that came to mind that would drop quite a lot are Mastodon. Crack the Skye is incredible, but I never listen to the three albums that came before it. I didn't like The Hunter much either, but Once More 'Round the Sun was a decent improvement. Emperor of Sand is pretty good though.

[Peter Mc]

Can’t think of too many of my favourite bands, if any, where my love for them is largely based on one single album. They all have a bunch of albums I love or they wouldn’t be my favourite bands.

There are some bands further down the list though where, if you take one album away, I would not be a big fan. For example, if you take the album Apex out of Unleash The Archers catalogue, I would have zero interest in them.  If you took Rage Against The Machine’s debut album out of their catalogue, I’d be much less of a fan of theirs.

[DragonAttack]

For me, there has always been 'something', that if push came to shove, Queen's 'Sheer Heart Attack' would win by a hair as my favorite album of theirs.  But, if one asks me 'what's my favorite album?', then I'd say 'A Night at the Opera'.  Does that make any sense?  Maybe because it's just so easy to say 'the one with BoRhap on it.'

So, that leaves me with 'A Night at the Opera', 'A Day at the Races', 'Queen II', 'News of the World', 'Innuendo' and 'Made In Heaven' (yes, I'll count it,and it's a fitting send off).  Oh, and the BBC Sessions.  And 'Live Killers', 'Milton Keynes', 'Wembley', both 'Rainbows', 'Hammersmith '75', 'Montreal' and  all the terrific bootlegs in between. And then.... I get to drop 'Hot Space'. 

(btw....I've been 'home' for months, and still haven't seen a second of Cowherd or Bayless. Not even an ad, or heard their voices. Life is good)

[Anguyen92]

Well, let's see here.  If Alter Bridge's Blackbird or Fortress got taken away, then you still have one of those really strong albums along with One Day Remains, AB III, The Last Hero, and Walk the Sky and all of those albums are pretty great (with The Last Hero being the weakest, mainly due to the fact that it's too bombastic and too layered for my taste).  I still would love the band.

That's just me though.  To some fans though, you take away an album like One Day Remains and they wouldn't be too impressed with the band on the backs of the other albums (I don't blame them honestly for thinking that way.  The producer for the latter five albums can be quite polarizing with the way he records the guitars and the vocals, but I can tolerate it to an extent.)

As for other bands I really like if one of my favorite albums are taken away, would I really like them less as a favorite?  For Breaking Benjamin, take away Dear Agony, I think I would still rate them ok on the backs of Phobia and Dark Before Dawn and the other albums are good, but not great.  For Skillet, take away Comatose, and you really take away that middle ground period of them in the band between them going either sounding like Bush, industrial NIN rock, and Nu-metal and them being very watered-down mainstream hard rock that they have been going nowadays.

For Rush, nothing that hasn't been said before in this thread.  You take away one favorite album of theirs (to me that's Moving Pictures and Clockwork Angels) and you still have a very strong album and a lot of albums full of great stuff.

[Stadler]

Yeah, I'm a band guy.  So this question doesn't really work for me.  Probably the closest band that would "fall" a bit is Marillion, but only because - in my eyes - Clutching At Straws is SOOOO much better than anything else in the catalogue.  That is the perfect album.  Everything else has at least one song or part that I skip over.

There are too many bands I can't even NAME my favorite album.   

Take away Hotter Than Hell?  I can live with Rock and Roll Over, The Elder and Creatures.
Take away Sgt. Pepper? Okay, I can live with Abbey Road.
Take away Wind and Wuthering?  Duke and Abacab are just fine, thanks.
Take away Going For The One?  Hello, The Yes Album, Drama, and Fragile.
Take away Fair Warning?  I've still got ADKOT, VHI, and Diver Down.

Queensryche, you take away O:M they are by FAR a lesser band, but Empire is still good (but take away both and I'm out completely). 

[DTA]

Two bands that nobody's mentioned:

The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness. Siamese Dream is fantastic and I love everything from Gish through Machina 2, but Mellon Collie is the absolute pinnacle of this band and losing that album would be devastating to their catalog and my overall interest in it. Not to mention it spawned an entire double album's worth of b-sides and that's 50+ songs that are lost to the world.

Coheed & Cambria - In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth:3. Very strong catalog but this is the album that defines them imo and without it, the trajectory and lore of the band just isn't the same. I'd be a very middle of the road fan without this album in the mix.

[MirrorMask]

Without Iron Maiden's Piece of Mind I still have the rest, especially Seventh Son. I don't have however Revelations, the song that turned me to Bruce's voice and therefore Iron Maiden and therefore heavy metal music.

Without DT's Scenes I still have the rest, especially Images and Words and Awake, but losing SFAM would be a big blow. I had become a fan before SFAM however so I'd probably still be to this day.

Losing either Imaginations from the Other Side or Nightfall in Middle Earth for Blind Guardian still leaves each, and all the rest.

I think all my favorite bands have enough strong albums to survive the loss of my favorite. But I'll go along with Stadler and Queensryche: without Operation Mindcrime, they drop so far behind that I probably wouldn't be even interested in listening to them. It's only the sheer awesomeness of Mindcrime that got me even interested enough to check out Rage, Empire, Warning and Promised Land.

[Indiscipline]

Funny game.

Deep Purple: take away Burn, I'm afraid I would be the only one to notice.

Dream Theater: take away Images, and you still have a monster catalogue, but given the particular circumstances of my DT discovery, I would have hardly become a fan.

Dire Straits: take away Love Over Gold and you take away their best song (Telegraph Road). Still, all their studio albums are excellent and their live ones stellar, so no tragedy.

The Beatles: take away the White Album. I would be sorry, they would still be the focking Beatles.

Jethro Tull: luckily for the world my favourite (Benefit) is not their best (Aqualung) and doesn't feature their best song (Heavy Horses), so good times.

Pink Floyd: take away Animals, same as for the Beatles.

Iron Maiden: take away Piece of Mind and they are still the best 80's band ... without a perfect album.

Metallica: take away Ride the Lightning and I can't fathom how they manage to jump from Kill'em All to Master.

[dparrott]

They don't fall down my list very much at all, if any. My favorite bands/artists have at least a couple albums that help establish them as my favorites.

Same here.

[Adami]

Hmmm, interesting question.

Favorite band is Pain of Salvation, favorite album is The Perfect Element.

If that goes away? I'd be sad, but I think with Remedy Lane, BE, Entropia, One Hour, ITPLOD and such, they'd still be my favorite.

[SoundscapeMN]

Marillion - Take Away Brave, and they still have 4 5-Star Albums (Clutching at Straws, Marbles, Misplaced Childhood, Aftraid of Sunlight), which would likely still make them my favorite band considering I rate many of their other records and songs especially, pretty high as well

Kevin Gilbert - Take away The Shaming of the True, he still has 2 classics with Toy Matinee and Thud. And you add the 2 Giraffe records and even NRG+Kaviar and his COVERS, I would still love his music immensely. But I'm not sure I could find a landmark, statement record in his discography, so I'm not sure if he would be #1 over others like Casey Crescenzo or Jimmy Gnecco.

[lonestar]

Ok...

IQ- Take away Seventh House, and there's still the strongest 6 album run out there in Ever-Subterrenea-Dark Matter-Frequency-Road of Bones-Resistance

Marillion- Take away Clutching, and you still got Script, Fugazi, Misplaced Childhood and the whole  H era.

Dont think this'd effect any of my other top bands like DT, The Who, Rush Haken or Yes

[ytserush]

No movement whatsoever from a lot of bands although taking away Abacab, Duke or Genesis would probably move the needle quite a bit. That's on of the few bands that the era influenced how much I like them.

Of course taken another way, if I don't ever find out about When Dream And Day Unite, I'm very probably not on this messageboard.

[Evermind]

I don't think this would affect any of my favourite bands much, but losing The Human Equation from Ayreon and by extension, The Theater Equation which was the first concert I travelled abroad for and also is my favourite concert experience by far because holy shit was that beyond great, would hurt a lot.

[Kotowboy]

If GREEN DAY didn't put out dookie - I wouldn't have heard Basket Case and investigated further.

However - there is a chance i'd have heard Insomniac and still liked it - or even Nimrod or American Idiot.

[ReaperKK]

I don't think it'd have that much effect. As previously stated in this thread most of the bands that I would consider my favorite are my favorite because of multiple great releases.