My friend Eamonn tweeted attention to this fine tribute to Levon Helm. It contains the following description of the The Band's immortal second album:
[They] followed it up in '69 with a self-titled second album that was arguably even better. They wrote songs so great they sounded like they'd existed for centuries but played them in ways that no one had played songs before - Greil Marcus once wrote that "their music was fashioned as a way back into America." It was experimental art that paradoxically sounded like some timeless inheritance, four Canadians and a drummer from Arkansas forging an avant-garde soundscape for some mythic nation.
That sort of nails it, no? It got me to thinking of favourite albums while WotN and I were standing at the bus-stop yesterday, and I decided I must compile a list. Here it is: not a top anything, just a representative sample of the music I love best - a dozen albums I wouldn't mind having on a desert island. (This is confined to rock, pop and country; classical and jazz can await another day.) There's no rank order here.
The Band, The Band.
Emmylou Harris, Elite Hotel.
Gram Parsons, Grievous Angel.
The Beatles, Abbey Road.
The Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed.
Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks.
The Beach Boys, Summer Dreams - a bit of a cheat, I know, having a greatest-hits compilation, but I gotta have the best of the Beach Boys.
Van Morrison, Astral Weeks.
The Eagles, Hotel California.
Merle Haggard/Willie Nelson, Seashores of Old Mexico.
Elvis Presley, The 50 Greatest Hits - see above under Beach Boys.
Abba, Gold - see above under Beach Boys.
OK, there goes my reputation. (What reputation? - Ed.) But I bow my musical head to no one and fear not the winds of contumely.