1.Vincebus Eruptum...Blue Cheer 1968....Blue Cheer knows that attitude is as important as musicianship in rock, and they exploit that virtue for all it is worth here.
2.Brain Salad Surgery.... 1970..Emerson Lake & Palmer....the trio's most successful and well-realized album [after their first] and their most ambitious as a group, as well as their loudest, is also their most electronic sounding one.
3.England's Newest Hit Makers...1964...Rolling Stones....the group's debut album was the most uncompromisingly blues/R&B-oriented full-length recording they would ever release.
4.Beggars Banquet..1968...Rolling Stones: the Stoes forsook psychedelic experimentation to return to their blues roots on this celebrated album, which was immediately acclaimed as one of their landmark achievements.
5.The Family That Plays Together...1968...Spirit: On this, their second album, the group put all of the elements together that made them the legendary [and underrated] band that they were.Jazz, rock & roll, and even classical elements combined to create one of the cleanest, most tasteful syntheses of its day.
6.Live At Leeds...1970...The Who....this show may not have been the absolute best, it's so damn close to it that it would be impossible for anybody but aficionados to argue.
7.Revolver...1966...The Beatles....All the rules fell by the wayside with Revolver, as the Beatles began exploring new sonic territory, lyrical subjects, and styles of composition.
8.High Voltage....1976....AC/DC....one of the perennial complaints about AC/DC is that they've never changed-and if that's true, High Voltage is the blurprint they've followed all their career.
9.Anthem of the Sun....1968....Grateful Dead...as the second long player by the Grateful Dead, Anthem of the Sun pushed the limits of both the music as well as the medium.
10.Surrealistic Pillow...1967...Jefferson Airplane...the second album by them was a groundbreaking piece of folk-rock-based psychedelia, and it hit-literally-like a shot heard around the world.
11.A Saucerful of Secrets...1968...Pink Floyd....a transitional album on which the band moved from Syd Barrett's relatively concise and vivid songs to spacy, ethereal material with lengthy instrumental passages.
12.Tales of Mystery and Imagination...1975..The Alan Parsons Project....this is an extremely mesmerizing aural journey through some of Edgar Allan Poe's most renowned works.With the use of synthesizers, drums, guitar and even a glockenspiel, Parsons' shivering effects make way for an eerie excursion into Poe's well-known classics.
13.Absolutely Free....1967....Frank Zappa and the Moters of Invention...leaping from style to style without warning, the album as a freewheeling, almost schizophrenic quality, encompassing everything from complex mutations of Louie Louie to jazz improvisations and quotes from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.
14.Decade....1977....Neil Young...given the quirkiness of Neil's recording career, with its frequent cancellations of releases and last-minute rearrangements of material, it is a relief to report that this two-disc compilation is so conventional and so satisfying.
15.Led Zeppelin I...1969....Led Zeppelin...they had a fully formed distinctive sound from the outset, as their eponymous debut illustrates. Taking the heavy, distorted electric blues of Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck and Cream to an extreme.
16.Are You Experienced?...1967...Jimi Hendrix Experience...one of the most stunning debuts in rock history, and one of the definitive albums of the psycheldelic era.
17.The Savoy Brown Collection [Chronicles Series]...1993...Savoy Brown...with one of the smoothest and most compelling guitarists of the blues-rock style, Savoy Brown and the finger wizardry of Kim Simmonds unleased some of the smoothest and most mesmerizing rock & roll of the seventies.
18.Madman Across The Water...1971...trading the cinematic aspirations of Tumbleweed Connection for a tentative stab at prog rock, Elton and Bernie Taupin delievered another excellent collection of songs with Madman Across the River.
19.Highway 61 Revisited...1965l...Bob Dylan...taking the first electric side of Bringing It All Back Home to its logical conclusion, Bob hired a full rock & roll band, featuring guitarist Michael Bloomfield.
20.In Search of The Lost Chord....1968...The Moody Blues...this is the album on which they discovered drugs and mysticism as a basis for songwriting and came up with a compelling psychedelic creation, filled with songs about Timothy Leary and the astral plane and other psychedelic-era concerns.
take care
dave