A week or so ago we posted a little poll, asking readers what they thought was the best album ever. Given the number of people who pass by here every day, I thought we’d see a lot more responses — it’s something that everyone has an opinion about, and unlike most topics, you won’t get any arguments in the comment thread — but we did get some, and a lot of them were on my short list, too.
I asked for just one choice apiece, because once you get started it’s hard to stop. Just off the top of my head I’d name as candidates Sgt. Pepper’s, Revolver, Rubber Soul, Bitches Brew, Live/Evil, One Size Fits All, Overnight Sensation, Absolutely Free, Led Zep I, Led Zep IV, Axis: Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland, Truth, Kind Of Blue, Avalon, Tommy, Who’s Next, Beggar’s Banquet, Let It Bleed, Disraeli Gears, The Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East, Innervisions, Abraxas, American Beauty, Synchronicity, Fragile, London Calling, My Aim Is True, In The Court of the Crimson King, Trout Mask Replica, and… well, I could just keep on going, including a bunch you’d probably agree with, and probably some you’ve never heard of.
A few people have written to ask why I chose Close to the Edge. What can I say? It’s easily the best prog-rock album ever made, one of my all-time favorite bands at the apogee of their creative arc. It’s really just about a perfect record, and it includes the best song Yes ever wrote: the incomparable And You And I. Even the Roger Dean cover design is a masterpiece. If there’s anything at all I would have changed about that album, it would only have been the sequence, which I think was exactly backwards: the title track should have been all of Side Two, and Side One should have opened with Siberian Khatru and closed with And You And I. But that’s just a teensy quibble.
Yes, it was hard not to pick Sgt. Pepper’s, in deference to what is surely the most influential and important album of all time, but there’s just something about Close to the Edge. It just kills me, every time. Still.
Anyway, thanks to those of you who named names. For those who didn’t, the thread is still open.
11 Comments
The liner notes to a Jascha Heifetz album includes his statement identifying one of the compositions as being “unquestionably the greatest piece of music ever written.”
The thing that always got to me was the unquestionable part, as though any sentient being would certainly make the same choice. I suppose that since it’s so obvious, there is no need to identify the piece.
I _really_ appreciated the topic material, and responses, by the way. Consequently, I’ve revisited a lot of fantastic music, even if it isn’t from the ‘top album’, Led Zep IV. :-)
– M
Peter,
The opinions expressed on this website are solely those of its cranky old author.
Mike,
Glad to hear it!
Any sentient being knows it is Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.
Fabulous, I agree, but not an album.
Once we go there, the floodgates open. The 9th. The sonata “pathetique”. The late piano sonatas. Mozart’s Requiem. Bach’s Mass in B Minor. Chopin’s preludes. Etc.
I should have been more specific, Mal. My reply was addressed to Peter’s remark about the liner notes to a Jascha Heifetz album: “unquestionably the greatest piece of music ever written.”
Heifetz’s pick was the Chaconne from Bach’s Partita for Violin #2.
Of course, he made this assertion long before Roger Miller recorded Little Green Apples.
Nobody listens to Heifetz, anyway.
I’ve got a great recording of those partitas here at the office by a violinist by the name of Gregory Fulkerson.
Beautiful playing, and well engineered, too.
I got the one by Hilary Hahn. She plays beautifully, and she’s well engineered, too.
BTW, here’s a good recording for today:
“La Marseillaise“