This album by Japan, Adolescent Sex, is a pretty good post- punk record. Imagine New York Dolls with way more keyboards. As always here's some links to songs of theirs, but I'd like to point out that we'll now get the most unintentional search result hits since Laurie posted that review of a picture of preteen boys wearing tight pants. In conclusion, welcome, perverts!
Meddle is a Pink Floyd album from 1971. Much like Obscured by Clouds, it's not one of Pink Floyd's more popular albums. Other than the opening track, "One of These Days," Meddle is a pretty mellow album. The closing track, "Echoes" (which may or may not sync up with the trippy space freak-out part of 2001: A Space Odyssey), is twenty-three minutes long and, on the vinyl version, takes up the album's entire B side. Also notable on the album is the song "Seamus," which features a howling dog.
Obscured by Clouds is a Pink Floyd album from 1972, it also doubles as a soundtrack to a movie I've never seen, La Vallée. I first heard this album after I bought it from a crazy French hippie in Québec City. According to him, in the movie La Vallée, some hippies go into the rain forest, they smoke pot, they get naked, and then the natives show up. He's right, as I far as I know, and I'm guessing that his overview of the film was probably more entertaining than the film itself would be. So yeah, "The Gold It's in The..." is a good song.
Live at the El Mocambo is a live album recorded by Elvis Costello and the Attractions at the El Mocambo Tavern in Toronto in 1978. In the 1970's, the El Mocambo Tavern was a popular spot for bands, a number of whom recorded live albums there (See also: The Rolling Stones' Love You Live and April Wine's Live at the El Mocambo). Costello's Live at the El Mocambo was originally issued in 1978 as a heavily bootlegged promotional album, then reissued in 1993 as part of a box set and then reissued again in 2009 as part of the "Costello Show" series of archival live recordings. The El Mocambo recording, renowned among Elvis Costello fans, features energetic performances of songs primarily from Costello's first two albums. The 2009 reissue also restores some of Costello's stage banter which was absent from the 1993 reissue, including a speech where Costello informs the audience that he and the band have come from England to reclaim Canada. 
I was shoveling snow at work today when one of my co-workers played a snippet of Stompin' Tom Connors' "Merry Christmas Everybody" over the two-way radio. I was kind of surprised because I had never heard the song before and I consider myself somewhat of a casual fan of Stompin' Tom. For those not in the know (i.e. anyone who is not Canadian), Stompin' Tom Connors is a prolific Canadian folk/country singer. Having acquired the nickname for his tendency to stomp his foot to keep the rhythm while playing. Stompin' Tom is also known for his extensive discography which include such favorites as "The Hockey Song" and "Bud the Spud."
Let's say you really wanted to hear Elvis Presley's "Blue Christmas" but you only had about 26 seconds to spare. Ugh, that just wouldn't be enough time. Thankfully, back in the late '70s, the Misfits covered "Blue Christmas." And wouldn't you know it, their rendition just happens to be 26 seconds long. It's a Christmas miracle*.
If you were to hear Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody" on its own (though I highly recommend watching the video, buddy's sideburns are epic), you might think, "oh wow, I didn't know Quiet Riot put out a Christmas song." And if you were to have that thought, you'd be wrong, but not that wrong. Quiet Riot got big in the '80s covering Slade's "Cum On Feel the Noize" and it would seem that they aped a lot of Slade's style in general. There's a pretty good chance though that you haven't heard this song, you haven't had that thought, and probably only ever think about Quiet Riot when you're flipping through the channels and you notice that VH1 is having one of those all '80s hair metal marathons. 
Things are done a little differently in the UK. They drive on the wrong side of the road and the word that they use for vagina is fanny. So with that in mind, the Kinks can be forgiven for calling their song "Father Christmas," when it's really about Santa. Also, if the lyrics are to be believed, when confronted with a department store Santa, British children will likely try to rob him. Whereas, if my recent trips to the mall are any indication, North American children are more likely to cry and pee in his lap.
One year for Christmas, Paul McCartney got some sleigh bells, a synthesizer, and a big bag of weed. Sometime later, in a foggy (yet festive) haze, he came up with the delightful "Wonderful Christmastime." If you don't believe me about the weed part, it should be noted that the b-side to the song's 1979 single was a track called "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reggae." Though all of the former Beatles would go on to record Christmas-themed songs individually, McCartney's song is especially remarkable because it does not suck and/or make you want to kill yourself.
Peanut butter and chocolate, lemon and lime, punk rock and badly misinformed Marxist arguments - history is just full of great combos like these, and while only two of them can (so far, science?) be eaten, at least the third makes for a pretty decent album to blast from the speakers of my Honda Accord LX with leather interior as I'm driving through the poor parts of town. Solidarity my friends! After slogging away with the other proles for 10 hours today at work I don't feel like creating an analogy to describe Gang Of Four's sound that at first would seem hilarious and witty but on second read would turn out to make no sense whatsoever for describing any type of music, but here's some links, so maybe you can crack open some PBR to listen for a second. I also just relistened to Franz Ferdinand's first album and that one is fun, but not fun enough that I feel like writing about it (and I barely wrote about this album if that tells you something).
Speaking of the nerdiest rock album of all time, here it is. Sure, it has rock classics such as Black Dog, Rock And Roll, and Stairway To Heaven, but it also has a song about Lord Of The Rings. I'm not sure why Led Zeppelin continued to write rock songs after they created every necessary classic rock riff for Led Zeppelin II, but I guess it's worth it to hear the supposedly coolest people of the 70s sing about Mordor and Gollum.
Agharta was the second to last thing Miles Davis recorded before going on a six year retirement from music in order to spend more time doing drugs. It was recorded live, and I gotta say there's drugs all over this thing. It's a frantic, directionless cacophony in which Davis himself only plays the trumpet for about 8 minutes of the 97 minute run time. Still, it's pretty awesome, and like I said before if I had known about Miles Davis in high school I would have never stopped playing the trumpet.
Everyone likes "Raise a Little Hell" and "Here for a Good Time" when they're drunk, but if Trooper come to your town and tell your friend that they'll buy him a case of beer if he can score them some weed, tell him not to believe them because they're LIARS.
One of the reasons I like stupid punk bands is because a) they are fun, and b) they sound like oldies sometimes. Well, those aren't great reasons I guess, but there isn't much more to say about this debut album by the Ramones. It's a great and fun little album. The songs are simple, but they're catchy in not a bad way.
Everybody knows that Gary Numan (pretty much the sole creative force here - after this album he would just release under his own name) is a great pioneer for post-punk/industrial/goth/blah blah blah. Anyway, this album is a lot of fun and sort of sci-fi. A lot of the songs on it, probably because of the synthesizers used, remind me of the Doctor Who theme song. Well why not take a listen to some of the hits that you probably already know.
This is an ok compilation album with some great songs like Transmission and Love Will Tear Us Apart, but it's pretty uneven. I guess that's to be expected because it was never intended to be an album, but Ian Curtis hung himself because he wanted his band members to leave the underground punk scene in favor of setting the dance standard for the whole decade of the eighties. Anyway, you should definitely own this album but you'll probably skip a lot of songs like I do.
As many of you know, I am a huge Devo fan. And while I love the synthesizers and general new waviness of later Devo albums, this one is the most flawless despite being the most guitar driven. So basically if you like having your faced rocked away in a novel and exciting way, you might as well give this album a listen because it's probably in my top 25 or whatever.
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