Our Favorite Albums

For a Las Vegas band, it would be difficult to get noticed with the audacious spectacle of Sin City. The Killers, however, had their sights focused on superstardom and they achieved it on their debut album. Listen to us discuss an album that defined pop rock music for an entire generation.

As a final effort to save a struggling 80's new wave pop band, a 70's powerpop icon was enlisted to produce their record and keep them under budget while balancing attitudes and a power struggle with the band's leader.

The result: album is now listed on all review sites with the highest reviews and is considered one of the greatest albums of the entire decade.

We will readily admit that country music is not our favorite genre of music. So, when one of our friends said he could not only find a country album we would like, but specifically a red dirt country album that would change our minds, we took him up on the challenge.

Recorded in front of a live audience at Pratt's Books (PrattsBooks.com), we go head-to-head with our buddy, Dan, to discuss The Turnpike Troubadours 2015 self-titled album. Think he can change your mind, too?

Four albums in, the members of King’s X felt like their career wasn’t going like it should and were looking for their identity. They had a legion of loyal fans, but never really found success in the mainstream. They were at a crossroads, both collectively and individually.

So, they enlisted a burgeoning supernova producer to help them create a new sound on their albums that was more representative of their live act, literally taking inspiration from themselves.

King’s X recorded one of the most influential albums of the grunge era that, oddly enough, most people have never even heard. Hopefully, that changes a bit as we introduce you to one of our favorite albums of all time, the 1994 album by King’s X: Dogman.

2020 may have sucked, but at least the tunes were good.

In 1981, The Boss asked one of his roadies to find a tape player that he could mess around with some songs in his house. He ended up making what I consider to be his finest album that went to #3 on the charts for that year, is considered one of the greatest albums in the entire decade, and frankly the album could be credited with creating a whole new genre of songwriting.

And he didn’t even have COVID to thank for it.

In this episode of Our Favorite Albums, we invited one of our buddies into the studio to help us break down Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album, Nebraska.

Eddie Van Halen died on October 6, 2020, at the age of 65. Born in Amsterdam and raised in Los Angeles, Eddie and his brother Alex were the heart and soul of a breed of music that dominated the world for over a decade, and will continue to inspire musicians around the world as long as the guitar is played.

In this special episode of Our Favorite Albums, we answer the question: “Just who the F#!@CK is Eddie Van Halen?”

I think we take nostalgia for granted these days.  At one time, pioneer music makers created a brand new style that would spark a revolution in the music industry and in popular culture overall.  That style would be copied and improved on and then be ubiquitous.  By typical lifespan burnout, it would eventually burn out and be replaced by the next fad or style.

Trust me, no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people.

By the time the 90’s rolled around, our society burned thru 4 decades of constant shifts in popular styles in music, and by that point the idea of nostalgic parody became in and of itself a style of its own.  Think B-52’s as a perfect example of that concept, although Weird Al Yankovic created his own style thru masterful parody all by himself. 

In 1990, a group out of Atlanta called The Black Crowes hit the scenes with a truly iconic album, Shake Your Money Maker.  A callback to classic blues mixed with soul inspiration from 70s rock gods like Faces or The Rolling Stones, the entire album’s tracklist reads like a greatest hits album, highlighted by a revamped rocking version of Otis Redding’s Hard To Handle.  They even mixed in their reworking of 80s ballads with She Talks To Angels, and suddenly these guys were giants on rock radio.

Two years later, they followed up with their sophomore album, The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion which was just as popular but had double the musicality and skill.  It was the very first album in history to feature four separate #1 hits on the rock charts.  Everything these guys touched turned to gold.  Suddenly, they were rock cornerstones for their generation playing their version of inspired rhythm and blues southern rock that was all but dead up until that point.

Led by brothers Chris and Rich Robinson, the group then set out to create their masterpiece album.  However, as brothers are sometimes apt to do, Chris and Rich began fighting for creative control, both in the studio and in physical altercations.  That dynamic of strife coupled with personal crisis created a toxic environment.  The final product was a commercial failure but one of the most brilliant albums of our generation.

Music and Social Protest are proper bedfellows.  The inclusion of human struggle against its own society goes back as far as the birth of human civilization. 

In the mid 80’s, the US became infatuated with a continent a half a world away on the exact opposite side of the globe.  At the dawning of the MTV generation, we were introduced to Olivia Newton John getting physical, and to Mad Max fighting a roving band of post-apocalyptic biker savages battling over a hot dry desert.  Australia was a euro society, but one that seemed almost archaic yet cosmic, almost like another planet than another country.

Then suddenly, we were baptized in full Australian lore in 1986 with the movie Crocodile Dundee. 

Suddenly, America was infatuated with Australian culture and we couldn’t get enough of it.  In the middle of the Australian craze, one piece of art stood out above all the others and that’s where we focus today.

In this episode of Our Favorite Albums, we head to the Land Down Under to break down Midnight Oil's album, Diesel and Dust.

In 1991, the city of Austin, Texas, officially adopted the moniker “The Live Music Capital of the World”, and for good reason.  A city like no other on the planet, Austin combines Texas hill country nostalgia with the beating pulse of a bass drum that never seems to fully go to sleep despite the fact that on any given night, you could find close to 100 live music venues with some of the most spectacular musicians alive, performing all within a just a few blocks of one another, and it happens almost every single night.

What began in the Lone Star State capital at a bar called Threadgill’s in the 1930’s was perpetuated by Willie Nelson flipping the bird to Nashville in the 60’s and moving back home, dragging with him a band of outlaw musicians that would forever shape the south over and over again like an ecosystem in entropy that somehow redefines itself on a nightly basis into something bigger and better every time the downbeat occurs.

Fast forward to 1994, and the Austin music scene evolved into a burgeoning super nova of every genre you can imagine.  Blues guitar maestros, grunge rock flannel, overbearing funk, western swing, outlaw country, 3-beat german oompa waltz, or even avant garde syncopated noise all floated in the ether, hovering like fog above Austin mainstays like Antone’s Nightclub on 5th street or Waterloo Record Store at the corner of 6th and Lamar.

There are few better examples of that feel…that spirit…that zeitgeist…than a local band of austin dudes who stayed together just long enough to create the most PHENOMENAL album you’ve never heard of.  In this episode of Our Favorite Albums, we are listening to SoulHat’s 1994 album Good To Be Gone.