The Album Challenge

My blog is called Panis Circenses. Panis (bread) is the theology-focused aspect, while the Circenses (circus) is  arts-focused. I was nominated for The Album Challenge. Choose ten albums that had an impact on you. I’ll do my top ten in alphabetical order, giving some description and analysis.

 

My first choice, Abbey Road, by The Beatles (1969), has been a favorite since I first listened to it on vinyl from my late uncle’s record collection back in 1990. Though Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s, the White Album, and Let It Be are all in my top 50 favorites, I think Abbey Road is still the pinnacle of Beatle song-writing composition, execution, and album construction. All four Beatles are hitting it with full cylinders, while finding a balance between the production excesses of Pepper’s and White and the attempted stripped-down basics of Let It Be. At the same time, I think the neat construction of the album (like Pepper’s and White) leads the listener on a journey through both sides of the album. There is a cohesive mood of claustrophobic melancholy and subdued finality about the album, like the works of Nick Drake. Even the lighter songs are about the desire to escape. This is the Beatles at the point of exhaustion, feeling cramped and oppressed, wanting to unleash themselves of their burden. All this shows the creativity one can dispense through suffering.

My second choice has been called an unusual choice. Bigger, Better, Faster, More, by 4 Non Blondes (1992) was the band’s only completed album, and they are considered a one-hit wonder for "What's Up?" However, that song is probably only my seventh favorite on the album. In truth, this has been one of my favorite albums since it first came out. I still listen to the whole album regularly (just last week!). It starts off with bluesy-rock of an approaching train ("Train") and then breaks out with a harmonica and guitar rock until everything bursts all over with Linda Perry’s deep, thundering vocals. The next song "Superfly") is funk-rock. Next, their hit, followed by a boogie-blues-rock ("Pleasantly Blue"). The whole album jumps back and forth between rock, blues, funk, and psychedelic, all driven by great song-writing, great superb playing and arrangement, and what I consider to be the most magnificent female rock vocalist ever. And the penultimate song “Drifting” is a heavenly acoustic guitar and cello lament. Again, this is the only 4 Non Blondes album. There are a few other singles from compilation albums, an EP, some live recordings and demos, but that’s it. Unfortunate.

My third choice is not as unusual as my second. Freak Out! by Frank Zappa (and the Mothers of Invention, 1966) has been called this first concept album. It's definitely an ambitious double album debut by Zappa, who I consider one of America’s musical geniuses (along with Gershwin, Davis, Wilson, Dylan, and Beck). The first time I listened to the album I was sitting in a friend’s dorm room at ASU. I had been aware of Zappa and liked a few of his songs but had never heard an entire album. When my friend put Freak Out! on in its entirety I was mesmerized by both the creativity and song-writing. After it was over, I immediately walked across campus to by a copy at the local record store.

The album is, of course, odd, even by Zappa standards. It’s a mix of rock, doo-wop, mock-pop, rhythm and blues, psychedelic, musique concrete, orchestral arrangements, and avant-garde sound collages. Lots of experimentation, humor, and creativity. The conceptual theme is a satirical look at American pop culture and the emerging hippie scene. Zappa sees through the 1967 Summer of Love veneer straight through to the pessimism of 1969 riot explosion. Particular subjects include teen frivolity and angst, pop music superficiality and decadence, American indifference, news media manipulation of racial violence, and self-censorship. More than anything, the songs are just great. It’s a pleasure to listen to and get caught up in journey Zappa takes you on in his first musical outing.

My fourth choice is London Town, by Paul McCartney and Wings (1978). I became aware of London Town in high school when a friend mentioned this was one of her favorites. It wasn’t until college that I finally purchased a copy for myself. If Abbey Road is the pinnacle of Beatle creativity, then I think London Town is the pinnacle of McCartney’s solo work. It really is the culmination of everything he was doing from McCartney (1970), Ram (1971), and through his Wings project, the latter starting with Wild Life (1971) and onto Wings at the Speed of Sound (1974).

The music is mostly soft pop, hard rock, and folk, with many Beatle-esque touches: orchestration, vocal harmonies, etc. There’s also McCartney’s experimentation with Moog synthesizers and synth-driven funk (often working like a sitar) that would (electro-)pop up again on subsequent albums. In many ways, this is Sgt. Pepper's without the psychedelia. Songs like the catchy opener “London Town” observe ordinary people in everyday life, like that of “Penny Lane”, but with notes of melancholy and detached boredom and notes of silver linings in the dreary rain. This partially sets the tone of the album. “Café on the Left Bank” is similar in theme put with more guitar-driven energy. One can also see the influence of the Bee Gees on songs like the easygoing "With a Little Luck" and “Girlfriend”, originally intended for Michael Jackson (and later covered by him). “I've Had Enough" shows the frustration of life, as does "Deliver Your Children" with its up-tempo, folksy, country, rambling instrumentation. Other great songs include “Backwards Traveler”, “Famous Groupies”, and “Don’t Let It Bring You Down”. There are many thematic similarities between this album and Abbey Road: growing frustration and alienation, exhaustion, the desire to escape, but also anger, the need for relief, the desire for justice, and the inability to relate socially with those outside one’s bubble. At the same time, there is both humor at the absurdity of the situation and the brief possibility that things just might work out after all. More than anything, of course, this is just an album with many fabulous, high-caliber songs with great arrangements. My own personal standard for designating a great album is for it to have four great songs and several good ones. London Town has seven great ones and several good ones. A classic.

Despite my overwhelming enthusiasm for the album, it was created in a troubled production, resulting in negative reviews, lack of promotion, and subpar sales. This was the beginning of Wings’ dissolution and the virtual end of McCartney’s ascendant musical creativity, with only repeat successes of individual songs and (even including the very good Off the Ground) his last great album.

You can find online bootlegs of the London Town Sessions for educational purposes.

My fifth choice is Mellow Gold, by Beck (1994). Ah, Beck. Ah, Mellow Gold. One of my favorite albums by my favorite artist. Having listened/seen his “Loser” video on TV and loving the song, I bought the album when it came out. Immediately, I was bowled over by sheer imagination, fusion, and complexity of the music. Everything about the album was vibrant in its constant shifting of styles and mobius strip, picturesque metaphors of lyrics. Look at “Loser”. Looped Delta blues slide-guitar riff, hip-hop, sitar, funky bassline, drumbeat, and Mexicana all in one opening song. The lyrics are freestyled but full of metaphors and self-referential character sketches. The theme is of being a loser, out-of-place, failing, struggling. It’s all tongue-in-cheek, with a bit of novelty to it, but nevertheless with an authentic feel. Get beyond the initial (but false) reputation of Gen X slackerism and both the song and the album open up new worlds of what music (and Beck!) can do. I immediately knew we had a musical genius on our hands, and the subsequent quarter century has proven my initial thought correct.

Pre-Mellow Gold Beck (the era that can mostly be discovered in bootleg demos and obscure tapes) is a mix of folk, blues, and the occasional punk distortion [see 1992 Demo, Banjo Story, Beck and Dava, Don't Get Bent Out of Shape [Tapes 1-2], Fresh Meat and Old Slabs, Golden Feelings, Golden Leftovers, etc.). In hindsight comparison, his creative jump with Mellow Gold is quite shocking. While you can certainly see future glimpses in his earlier work, the fusion (particularly the introduction of hip-hop), the sampling, and the lyrical ingenuity of Mellow Gold is startling. More importantly, the selection of the songs, their placement, and the overall construction of the entire album shows a supreme aesthetic sensibility and album conceptualism that would dominate his later works. Beck isn’t just filling an album with random songs; he’s deliberately and carefully thinking artistically about the arrangement of material as a holistic work.

The album’s second song, “Pay No Mind”, is a wondrous, tongue-and-cheek grungy-bluesy-folk satire about commercialism and joining the mainstream music industry. The harmonic solo has far more deep, earthy soul than anything Dylan ever mustered. “(Mountain Dew Rock)” is honky-tonk rock with blues and hip-hop. “Whiskeyclone, Hotel City 1997” is a haunting, Delta bluesy lament about complacent dissolution, mundane dissatisfaction, and Cobain-esque self-loathing, with Beck singing a droning, hypnotic melody. “Truckdrivin' Neighbors Downstairs (Yellow Sweat)” is an astonishing gothic song about two vulgar, fighting dreg grotesques. Beck counterpoints simplistic bare-bone blues and deep vocals with ethereal falsetto and psychedelic Spanish guitar. Unbelievable. This 2:55 of musical composition shouldn’t be possible. “Beercan” is an outlier. I’ve seen nothing like it in Beck’s prior work. It’s hip-hop-folk-Mexicana-funk with sound collage and dance. Then how about “Steal My Body Home”? It’s an eerie, sitar-lead dirge of lament with moans, screeching violins, and talk of impending doom only to break out into a fuzzy kazoo jugband jam of deep-humming optimism. “Nitemare Hippy Girl” is an upbeat but not necessarily unfair characterization of the kind of women you meet in college, which culminates in a seemingly-unending avalanche of metaphors. The whole album comes together in its stunning finale: “Blackhole”. This is an astonishing sitar, hypnotic acoustic guitar, and violin dirge of melancholy. It’s a mantra chant spiraling down into dissolution.

The album itself is simply sui generis in its song-writing, arrangement, and sheer creativity. It’s the sudden burst of musical genius finally given the needed resources to shine like nothing else that has gone before. This is all Beck taking his first step out from bottom-of-the-barrel, dirt poor obscurity. While the vulgar and trashy dregs of society’s underbelly lingers in these songs (and one or two in his follow-up), Beck would refreshingly, authentically, and honestly leave that behind him to embrace mainstream status and recognition.

My sixth choice nicely follows up on my fifth. Odelay, by Beck (1996) is one of the most remarkable albums in music history. After the surprise of Mellow Gold (1994), some wondered if Beck was a one-hit wonder. Odelay eliminated all such speculation. Here was a musical artist of immense talent. Having adored his previous work, I immediately purchased Odelay on its release date. The impact was like a bomb going off in the playground of music. It was like Mary Poppins: practically perfect in every way. The creative leap forward was astonishing, unprecedented. Even given that Mellow Gold was fantastic, Odelay is almost completely different in greatness. Beck had sublime versatility. Granted, some of the difference stems from the production. It appears that many music producers also recognized Beck’s greatness based on Mellow Gold and lined up to help him with his next album; Beck was able to have his pick. He chose the Dust Brothers whose sample-heavy production can be seen on the similar Beastie Boy’s album, Paul’s Boutique (1989). Here, though, Beck would establish a pattern of alternating between acoustic-based albums and those more vibrant, hip-hop-based. Odelay is all vibrant.

The introduction, “Devils Haircut”, opens with thunderous, four-note grungy guitar riff. It flows into a drumbeat and then a mix of rock, hip-hop, sample-heavy complexity, Sixties grooviness, and bewildering bluesy lyrics: a bevy of grotesque, Beat-poetic images. “Hotwax” is sublime honky-tonk country, hip-hop, funk, with some noticeable Paul’s Boutique sound effects. It’s all bluesy slide guitar, stuttering clavinet, buzzing synthesizer, record scratch, basic drum and bass guitar, distorted fuzzy harmonica, basic rap rhythm lyrics, and Spanish chorus. The parts themselves are absurdly simple; he just instinctively knows how to put simplicity together into brilliant, gestalt complexity. It’s my favorite on the album. “Lord Only Knows” is a stand-out, non-single track, which starts with a primal scream, basic drum beat, and slide guitar fuzz. It continues with a wild mix of sounds and layers, two guitar solos (the first is a humorous pseudo-nod to Eddie Van Halen guitar histrionics, while the second is much heavier and more atmospheric), fancy background acoustic guitar, and with lyrics that sum up the creative philosophy of the album:  don't let past successes control your future, throw your meal ticket out the window with a fresh start, don't hesitate when you're in unfamiliar territory, because that's when you're on to something new. The song’s pointed outro is sublime perfection, showing not just an overall mastery but a pointed acknowledgement to the listener that Beck knows exactly what he’s doing with this album. This song also contains the repeated album title, “odelay”: a phonetic English rendering of the Mexican slang interjection "órale", which translates roughly as "listen up". Quite. “The New Pollution” is pure funk-rock with injected hip-hop and jazzy sax sample. “Jack-Ass” is an ethereal ballad standing at the center of the album, with heavy sampling from Them’s cover of Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, though there are several unsampled versions of the song recorded by Beck, such as orchestra-backed “Strange Invitation”, the mariachi, Spanish-lyric “Burro”, and the (mostly) acoustic version of “Jack-Ass” off the Quodlibet bootleg. The song is about that mysterious calling that can sometimes rescue you when you’re drifting through life, pulling you out of your blues, putting together the puzzle of your life, waking you up, calling you forward with a strange invitation. The song concludes with a funky beat, nice guitar solo, atmospheric harmonica, and some strange murmur vocal effects (not to mention an actual jackass). Next is “Where It's At”, a funky hip-hop epic of musical composition and construction. It starts from the sounds of a needle to a record groove to a sensuous riff. It was the first single off the album, setting the mood for its upcoming success, and announcing that Beck was here to stay. “Sissyneck” is a unique song of country and hip-hop: an excellent example of Beck's ability to effortlessly mix styles. The album ends with the low-key, subdued “Ramshackle”, a simple acoustic ballad that recalls Mellow Gold’s “Blackhole” and exemplifies the thorough thought that Beck took in his construction of the album.

Again, obviously, I’m a tremendous fan of this album. Not only did it solidify Beck as a preeminent musical sensation of immense talent, but it’s simply a brilliant tour de force of musical joy.

My seventh choice is The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, by Pink Floyd (1967). Having been introduced to Pink Floyd by a friend in high school, I used much of my graduation money to buy up their albums, specifically Ummagumma (1969), The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), and The Wall (1979). It was only that following autumn that I began to slowly purchase the remainder of their albums, including Piper. Most people seem to favor the 1973-1983 Pink Floyd years; I much prefer to 1969-1972 years. Nevertheless, Piper is my favorite Pink Floyd album and, of course, one of my top ten favorite albums of all time.

Piper is their debut album and the only one made under founding member Syd Barrett’s creative leadership. Piper has been called a pivotal psychedelic rock album, with embryonic elements of what was to become progressive rock. It was recorded at Abbey Studios while the Beatles recorded Sgt. Pepper’s next door. Both bands would peek in on each other during the process to see what the other was doing. The title of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn derives from chapter seven of Kenneth Grahame's children’s book, The Wind in the Willows. That chapter concerns the search for the lost child, Portly, and includes heavy spiritual overtones, including a fleeting, mystical experience with a god. The album itself reflects, both in tone and lyrical content, themes of childhood and spirituality, divided into two different classes of songs: lengthy improvisations from the band's live performances and shorter songs that Barrett had written.

The album opens with "Astronomy Domine” a space adventure of almost Gregorian chant. A voice reads the name of planets, stars, and galaxies through a megaphone, sounding like an astronaut over an intercom, and the music, built around a descending riff, proceeds with aggressive bass line, powerful drums, organ, kinetic slide guitar, and punctuated lyrics, while a Morse code beeps in the background. This song is followed by others that reflect a childlike quality: “Lucifer Sam” as psychedelic ode to Barrett’s cat; “Matilda Mother”, which quotes fairy tales as read from a book and represents the theme of nostalgia for childhood and awareness that cannot be regained. “Flaming” (my favorite) has hallucinogenic imagery, while prominent organ, clavicle, acoustic guitar, and driving bass guitar carry the up-tempo music. The song is tight, ethereal, and punctuated. "Pow R. Toc H." is an instrumental, with vocal effects, beatboxing, screams, and prominent piano. "Interstellar Overdrive" is a near ten-minute abstract instrumental composition, opening with a distorted, descending guitar riff and then drums until it turns into an improvisational tract of almost structureless, free-form tempo and strange guitar noises. “The Gnome” is a fun, catchy, fairy tale song. “Chapter 24” is inspired the I Ching (The Book of Changes). “Scarecrow” is a song of simple but beautiful nascent existentialist themes. Barrett compares his own existence to that of the scarecrow, who, while "sadder" is also "resigned to his fate". It concludes with a deep, a baroque, psychedelic folk instrumental section consisting of 12-string acoustic guitar and cello. The final song, “Bike”, is peppy song about lending all that one has. It’s a wonderful, sublime production that collapses into an instrumental section that is a piece of musique concrète: a noisy collage of oscillators, clocks, gongs, bells, a violin, and other sounds edited with tape techniques, giving the impression of the turning gears of a bicycle, and a tape loop of the band members laughing reversed and played at double speed. The whole album bursts with 60s psychedelic creativity with themes of childlike nostalgia and existential spirituality. Every song is a work of art in of itself but, put together, creates a brilliant album of complete fun. It’s an album far more optimistic than the existential pessimism of later Pink Floyd albums, but with far more playful creativity.

Syd Barrett was something of a madcap genius of musical ingenuity. He excelled at short, playful songs of tight, unexpected progressions (this can be seen in his other recordings with Pink Floyd and his unappreciated solo efforts). Mental illness and drug use curtailed a burgeoning musical career and creative work. Yet the myth about him only grew in his absence and can be seen in Pink Floyd’s own reflections (The Dark Side of the Moon; Wish You Were Here [where he is referred to as a “Piper”]; The Wall). Nothing seems worse in art than the pity of unrealized potential.

My eighth choice is Ships, by Danielson (2006). Here is a Christian album that won’t get any Dove awards or even a nomination. If you are a Christian, you probably haven’t heard of it, but it’s the greatest Christian concept pop album ever recorded. Danielson, led by its creative force, Daniel Smith, is something of a “cult artist”. His albums - with their art-rock sensibilities that exhaust the listener with idiosyncratic structures, surprise twists and turns, and high, squeaky falsetto vocals – is certainly not for everyone, despite (and perhaps because of) the high concept themes about God and the Christian faith. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the quirkiness of the sound, the songs are also contagious, gleeful, celebratory, and complex. Back in 2010, I was familiarizing myself with recent alternative albums and bands that had been receiving high praise in recent years. I went through dozens of top ten and top hundred lists of best albums of the 2000s. One of them happened to be Ships. Of the hundreds of albums I listened to that year, Ships was by far the most unique, complex, creative work, and, surprisingly, it was by a Christian artist who wrote on Christian themes. Repeated listenings only deepened the brilliance of the album in my estimation.

The album, which is conceptual in its use of the “ship” as a metaphor for the general worship life of a believer and his child-like faith journey, is ethereal in its delivery with compositions, arrangements, and vocals (lead and backing) that feel like a child-like voyage across the heavens, and with high crescendos and the musical ebbs and flows mimicking waves. It opens with the momentous "Ship the Majestic Suffix", which is a glorious and lyrically-clever call to worship and praise of Christ. The music, as one critic noted, “builds to such immense heights, and increases tension so far past the expected breaking point, that the inevitable release is nearly dizzying.” This song is immediately followed by the energetic “Cast It At The Setting Sail” which continues the naval theme, this time concerned with getting rid of fear, anxiety, and false gods. "Bloodbook on the Halfshell" is about the bible and its books' influence on own’s worship. "Did I Step on Your Trumpet" is a chirpy piece which is more like Danielson’s previous work and concerns socializing with other believers.  "When It Comes to You I'm Lazy" is an easy-going song with interesting turns but sublime sentimentality on the subject of Christian marriage. Other songs deal with fellowship breaks ("Two Sitting Ducks"), the prodigal son ("My Lion Sleeps Tonight"), human violence (the charging “"Kids Pushing Kids"), and time (the clever "Time That Bald Sexton"). "He Who Flattened Your Flame Is Gettin' Torched" is wonderfully crafted song with unsuspected melodies and turns, which (along with "My Lion Sleeps Tonight") expresses the central theme the journey of child-like faith into darkness and back to the source. The album concludes with "Five Stars and Two Thumbs Up", whose lyrics could be seen as a thank you to the listener, but whose title could be a self-congratulatory assessment of the album.

In light of his previous work, in Ships, Danielson brings the best and most unique aspects of his sound together with a grander, more thematic sensibility. A staggering, ambitious triumph. It’s definitely his most accessible album, pulling back his screechy falsetto slightly or muting it under the immensity of the musical arrangements, though his chirpy charisma and optimism still shines through.

My ninth choice is SMiLE, by Brian Wilson (2004), which is also my favorite album. The project was originally conceived in 1966-1967 as a follow-up to the Beach Boys ground-breaking album, Pet Sounds, and as collaboration between Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks. However, the project was abandoned due to personal and technical difficulties with recording. Eventually, many of the songs were parsed out on subsequent Beach Boy albums and on bootlegs but never as a cohesive, thematic whole as Wilson had originally intended. Over the next three decades, SMiLE grew in legend and myth as an unrealized, potential masterpiece from one of America’s musical geniuses. However, Wilson chose to revisit the material with Parks as a specially arranged live concert performance. After receiving an enthusiastic response, a studio-recorded version was then released by Wilson as a solo album.

I first encountered SMiLE in 2005 not long after its release. While I was a huge fan of Wilson and had loved Pet Sounds, I only knew of SMiLE by its reputation as a tragically unrealized masterpiece. I bought the album and was both shook and absorbed into what is the most creatively complex pop album (in both music and lyrics) that I’ve ever listened to. Space only permits a thin treatment of the musical and lyrical complexities of this album which jumps back and forth with different motifs and includes complex lyrical puns, whose meaning is often English transliterations of foreign words.

The album is a teenage prayer to God in three movements, or cycles, that follows a musical journey across America (both geographically and chronologically) from east to west, beginning at Plymouth Rock and ending in Hawaii, as well as traversing some of the great themes of American expansionist history and culture, life cycles, and spirituality.

The first movement is the “Americana” cycle. It opens with “Our Prayer”, a wordless, Beach Boy-esque, a cappella hymn and spiritual invocation, which then segues into a shortened and rearranged version of the doo-wop standard "Gee”, with lyrics suggesting water and anticipating the subsequent song. A lone trumpet then bleeds and stutters into “Heroes and Villains”, which in many ways, is the centerpiece of the album. The lyrics are distinctly Western with some allusions to the American Indian genocides and homesteading but is also about the "heroes" and "villains" in life. The song properly opens with music and vocals imitating the sound of a barreling locomotive, occasionally dipping into thematic and musical motifs that will pop up again as later songs in of themselves, such as “Cabin Essence” and “Barnyard”. “Roll Plymouth Rock" follows, which mimics a rolling sound and includes themes of Indians, westward expansionism, spirituality, environmentalism, travel, and anticipates (lyrically and musically) the album’s eventual historical and geographical destination of Hawaii. In parts it also continues the train mimicry of the sound, and includes pianos that mimic Victorian music boxes. “Cabin Essence” continues the Western homesteading and railroad themes but includes two thunderous train mimics with hurricane group vocals, which the second includes an almost hidden, single vocal.

The second movement is the “Cycle of Life” and opens with the delightfully beautiful, harpsicord-led “Wonderful” which is the story of a girl devoted to God and her parents who is thrown into emotional disarray after encountering a boy. This segues into “Song for Children” (with child-like glockenspiel, clavichord, and pounding floor toms) which explores the father-son theme, with echoes from “Wonderful” and has instances that musically anticipate the album’s conclusion, “Good Vibrations”. The next song continues the father-son theme, blending the sound of “Song for Children” and that of the subsequent “Surf’s Up”, ending with lush orchestration. The title of the latter song is an ironic nod to the Beach Boys' earlier associations with surf music, though there is nothing in the song necessarily about surfing. Instead, the title should be understood, in terms of the end of the cycle, as “Time’s Up”. The song is astonishingly complex both musically and with its stream of consciousness lyrics (full of subtle wordplay and references to French and Scottish songs and Alfred Lord Tennyson). The song (with lyrical and musical echoes of other songs in the second cycle) details a man who experiences a spiritual awakening, resigns himself to God and the joy of enlightenment, and prophesies an optimistic hope for those who can capture the innocence of youth.

The final movement is the "The Elements" cycle, or alternatively, "Spiritual Rebirth—Elements". "The Elements" are represented by "Vega-Tables" (Earth), "Wind Chimes" (Air), "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" (Fire), and "In Blue Hawaii" (Water), but there is also thematic elements of Earth, Hell, and Heaven present. "Vega-Tables" (and the accompanying "I'm in Great Shape / I Wanna Be Around / Workshop") is a pun-filled song about body, health, and diet [Paul McCartney musically munched on vegetables in the original 1967 recording]. “On a Holiday" (which recalls “Roll Plymouth Rock" and anticipates “Good Vibrations”) is a jaunty song which contains sea and pirate themes, directing attention to the Hawaiian theme, and concludes with wind references. This conclusion then flows both musically and lyrically into the beautiful “Wind Chimes”. "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" (named after the supposed cause of the Great Chicago Fire) is a disturbing, psychedelic nightmare of raging fire. It is an instrumental of kindling catching, spreading, and being whipped by the wind into a raging, out-of-control inferno. It is Wilson’s musical expression of his fear of hell and Jungian ego death. It contains weird chords, cascading up and down, with pounding piano and drums, all a dark, booming, reverb-drenched blur of sound. It’s a giant conflagration, growing intense … only for the water to put out the fire, to wake him, in a prayer to the Lord “In Blue Hawaii”, which pulls out of hell and into holy water. Geographically, historically, musically, and thematically, the album has reached heavenly Hawaii with its destination theme of Western expansion. Lyrically, the song ends with “Aloha nui means goodbye” but it suddenly shifts back musically to a reprise of “Our Prayer” (perhaps suggesting a cyclical nature to this album of cycles). The final track, "Good Vibrations", broadly goes through three distinct phases, as the album does. The lyrics differ somewhat from the well-known version by the Beach Boys but approximate what was initially intended for the original SMiLE project.

In truth, and as referenced above, I’ve only given a thin and generally broad overview of the album. There are numerous musical and lyrical complexities at work, including an abundance of humor (“Barnyard”, “"I'm in Great Shape", and “Vega-Tables” are fantastic comic songs). What the highly competitive Wilson wanted to achieve both musically and lyrically with this ambitious project in 1966-1967 was immense and eventually broke him into failure. There are layers upon layers of meaning present in the notes and words that can exhaust the mind in attempts to conceptualize it as a whole. In the end, it proved too much for Wilson in the sixties who spent himself personally, mentally, and creatively. That he was finally convinced to revive the project nearly four decades later is a pop music miracle.

Again, this is my favorite album. I’ve yet to see any other piece of pop music achieve this tight, conceptualized musical complexity and brilliance.

Recordings from the original Beach Boys' sessions were later released as The Smile Sessions in 2011. It’s great but doesn’t reach the fully-realized heights of Wilson’s solo version.

My tenth and final choice is Tommy, by my favorite rock band, The Who (1969). It’s not an unusual choice, considering it’s often identified as one of the greatest albums of all time. Its recognized brilliance doesn’t need much explanation. Following upon the mini-opera, “A Quick One, While He’s Away” (1966) and the concept album, The Who Sell Out (1967), The Who took a great leap forward with a rock opera about a psychologically damaged deaf, dumb, blind boy who finds spiritual awakening, enabling others to achieve the same.

I really discovered Tommy (and The Who) in college, though I was aware in high school. It didn’t take long for me to greatly appreciate The Who’s considerable oeuvre. In terms of band creativity, only Pink Floyd rivals them. However, Tommy is really in a class by itself as a conceptual piece, creating a coherent narrative readily understood on a basic level. Song after song is just superb, sublime, and fits within an overall story. This is creative leader Pete Townsend hitting all creative cylinders. While subsequent albums might have been more mature in their creative, conceptual brilliance (Who’s Next [1971]; Quadrophenia [1973]), Tommy has a youthful simplicity that elevates the more acoustic-led individual songs into a cohesive whole that surpasses other concept albums.

The album is must-listen-to for all classic rock enthusiasts. Live versions can be appreciated on the Live at Leeds album (1970) and Live at the Isle of Wight (1970),