Milestone Albums

[SteelBlue]

Paul's Boutique-- Beastie Boys. This is the ultimate sampling album. Although the Dust Bros. sampled a ton on Odelay, this is an album never to be repeated due to modern copyright laws.

Paul's Boutique is an all time favorite but if I have to name the ultimate sampling album it'd be De La Soul's Three Feet High and Rising from 1989. Turned it's genre in an entirely new direction too.

[Viking]

Paul's Boutique is an all time favorite but if I have to name the ultimate sampling album it'd be De La Soul's Three Feet High and Rising from 1989. Turned it's genre in an entirely new direction too.

OMG, Thee Feet High and Rising was amazing. It also marked the last time I bot a rap album. It was genius. Thereafter you had to be a gangster to enjoy rap

[Viking]

Boy, U2

[venkman]

can you please articulate why you think that is and how this album is distinct from Bleach or In Utero in that regard?

Pretty much what Mark Grace said...

Nevermind changed the musical landscape overnight. The hard rock music scene had become very stale and formulaic - too much overproduced, soulless hair metal. I still remember exactly where I was (dorm room, John Hall) when I first heard Smells Like Teen Spirit and just thinking "WOW".

So it's not really about which Nirvana album is the best, it's all about the impact Nevermind had that the others didn't. I'm not that big of a Nirvana fan, but I can't deny their impact on the music world.

[SteelBlue]

Nevermind changed the musical landscape overnight. The hard rock music scene had become very stale and formulaic - too much overproduced, soulless hair metal. I still remember exactly where I was (dorm room, John Hall) when I first heard Smells Like Teen Spirit and just thinking "WOW".

So it's not really about which Nirvana album is the best, it's all about the impact Nevermind had that the others didn't. I'm not that big of a Nirvana fan, but I can't deny their impact on the music world.

It's kind of funny that Smells Like Teen Spirit was the wow song for just about anyone you talk to about 90's music. The world had been hearing that Nirvana sound to some extent from The Pixies for years. Frank Black was never as accessible as Kurt Cobain and the Pixies were never going to do what Nirvana was eventually able to do but they should get a little more credit.

From Wikipedia:

In a January 1994 Rolling Stone interview, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain revealed that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was an attempt to write a song in the style of the Pixies, a band he greatly admired. He explained:[4]
“ I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band— or at least a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard.

[MarkGrace]

It's kind of funny that Smells Like Teen Spirit was the wow song for just about anyone you talk to about 90's music. The world had been hearing that Nirvana sound to some extent from The Pixies for years. Frank Black was never as accessible as Kurt Cobain and the Pixies were never going to do what Nirvana was eventually able to do but they should get a little more credit.

From Wikipedia:

If there was ever a SGC anecdote to rock history, I think this has become it. Personally, I think a lot of Kurt's comments were more self-deprecating than anything. Certainly loudQUIETloud was the general template for Nirvana and you could see the Pixies inspiration, but Nirvana always sounded more unique than derivative.

More than anything I think what Pixies gave Kurt was the confidence to pursue the sound that he was after. In the About A Son documentary Kurt talks about his desire to fuse punk and near heavy metal sounds with pure pop. This is when he's in Olympia and things are basically happening contemporaneously with what's going on in Boston (Surfer Rosa was released in '88, Doolittle and Bleach in '89). His fear was that we wasn't going to be accepted in any community -- he was going to be too pop for the punk scene, and too heavy for the pop scene.

When he heard Pixies pretty much pulling off that fusion, I think he figured that he could make it all work. But it's not like he was just hacking them after Surfer Rosa and Doolittle. Channing and Novoselic both said in a recent interview I read that during the Bleach sessions Kurt was obsessed with what he was calling "doom pop," and this is basically at the same time Pixies were just coming out.

[Commando]

It's kind of funny that Smells Like Teen Spirit was the wow song for just about anyone you talk to about 90's music. The world had been hearing that Nirvana sound to some extent from The Pixies for years. Frank Black was never as accessible as Kurt Cobain and the Pixies were never going to do what Nirvana was eventually able to do but they should get a little more credit.

From Wikipedia:

I always appreciate that quote from Kurt, but I can't understand for the life of me how Nirvana got so big and the Pixies didn't. I think Black Francis is X10 more likable than Kurt in every regard-- songwriting, voice, his band, everything. For that matter, everything the Pixies had already come out with (Surfer Rosa/Pilgrim, Doolittle) was more avant garde and angsty than Smells Like Teen Spirit. I won't deny that Nirvana had a helluva marketing team behind them. That video did a lot for them, as well as unbelievable radio saturation.

[SteelBlue]

If there was ever a SGC anecdote to rock history, I think this has become it. Personally, I think a lot of Kurt's comments were more self-deprecating than anything.

I heard Dave Grohl say essentially the same thing about that one song. Something to the effect of "I didn't even think we could release that song at first because it sounded so much like a Pixies tune". I don't think it's self deprecating as much as it is simply acknowledging a heavy influence.

[MartyFunkhouser]

OMG, Thee Feet High and Rising was amazing. It also marked the last time I bot a rap album. It was genius. Thereafter you had to be a gangster to enjoy rap

That is a shame because De La Soul is Dead, Stakes is High, and Bulhone Mind State are all better albums.

[MartyFunkhouser]

DJ Shadow's Endtroducing is supposedly the first album ever created entirely from samples.

That album is amazing.

Endtroducing is an amazing album and belongs on a the list of Milestone albums. I really enjoyed the Solesides/Quannum stuff from that era.

As for my Milestone albums, these are not necessarily my favorite but a few that I consider very important jazz albums.

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue: I like the album but I don't put it on the pedestal of best jazz album of all time like many others. It was a very important album in jazz and one that non-jazz fans can really get into.

John Coltrane - Giant Steps: the album that really made Coltrane a controversial figure in jazz and started the "sheets of sound" era. It isn't experimental, but it is hinting towards that direction for his career.

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme: One of Trane's best albums. It was a nice balance between experimental jazz and traditional jazz. Classic from start to finish.

John Coltrane - Ascension: One of my favorite Coltrane albums and the culmination of his move into free jazz. Yes, Trane is deserving of having 3 milestone albums on this list. He is that good and that important to jazz.

Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz: The first really high profile free jazz album.

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew: I'm not a fan of fusion. Too often fusion takes ends up being the worst of jazz combined with the worst of rock. Davis' did it right and the 4 disc Bitches Brew album is great.

Herbie Hancock - Headhunters: Best selling jazz album of all time and a great funk/jazz album.

[MarkGrace]

I heard Dave Grohl say essentially the same thing about that one song. Something to the effect of "I didn't even think we could release that song at first because it sounded so much like a Pixies tune". I don't think it's self deprecating as much as it is simply acknowledging a heavy influence.

That's exactly why I think Kurt was being self-deprecating and not literal. Being influenced is not the same as ripping off.

[Commando]

Yeah I don't believe anybody in Nirvana would tolerate ripping off anybody (especially as egregiously as they've been ripped off) -- it's understood that "ripping off" was hyperbole.