I had an interesting discussion with a music buddy about some of the least popular, best discs of the past few decades.
The challenge: Name 5 outstanding Rock and Roll albums that 90% of the music buying/downloading public are unfamiliar with.
3 rules:
1. Rock and Roll (including Pop)! No jazz, classical or world music
2. Obscure: Not a big seller, relatively unknown, not a top 40 song or a top 100 Album;
3. Outstanding album: The disc must be great, listenable from start to finish, cohesive, with one good song after another and a handful of great ones.
Defining what obscure is was also a challenge — a popular UK album unknown in the US counts, but vice-versa didn’t.
We set an arbitrary cut off date of 25 years — there is simply too many great albums from the 1960s and 70s, and those unknowns are more a function of age than obscurity (UPDATE: The older mega-hits “discovered” in comments confirms this). Anything released after 1985 is fair game. And we went with Rock, because there are simply too many obscure Jazz recordings out there.
Cutting it down to just 5 was difficult, but gave the exercise some focus. I will publish my list next Friday.
What are your 5 favorite unknown CDs?
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