There's nothing on my list that's particularly obscure. Other than the jazz albums, basically everything in the first twenty albums was not only a hit but a big hit.

Which, perversely, is probably why I don't own much of it. Tell me Big Star is great, and I'll go find a CD, because I haven't heard them and they sound interesting. Tell me an individual Rolling Stones album is great, I'm inclined to say "Yeah, I heard some songs from it on the radio" or "Yeah, I have their greatest hits." I know in theory I should buy the albums anyhow, but there's so much NEW music all the time that using my limited CD budget to buy 30-year-old albums where I already own some songs seems somewhere between pointless and eat-your-vegetables-ish.

I have no idea if this makes sense outside my head, but there it is.

Because the world of music IS VAST. Even if you have "big ears" (musicianspeak for wide-ranging, open-minded taste) you can only get to know little bits of it

It's amazing. I participated in a CD exchange on LiveJpournal a while back. Of the five CDs I got, there were two where I had never heard a single song. And they all sounded like relatively accessible bands.

I learn a tremendous amount from this thread.

I think we did it by lowering the bar from "everybody likes" to "nobody really dislikes."

Yup. He was the de facto choice because he did not garner a diss.

You don't own Zep IV?! COMMUNIST!

yeah, I'm not large with the Zep love. As I've discussed with DX a bit, 70's rock stuff generally missed me. I do have Aerosmith love, but that's a different thing, isn't it?

Damnit! I just realized I missed Jon's show this morning for the 20th Anniv. Pt. II. Are you going to archive it like you did the last one, Jon?

The server was down so you couldn't have listened even if you'd remembered (unless you beamed to Boston). No worries though! I do plan to archive it over the weekend. I'll post here when it's up.

I don't recognize 90% of the bands Jon talks about

Joe, you ignorant slut!

Not a big Zep fan, either. Dislike most of the songs (except "Livin' Lovin' Maid"), and Plant's voice is like fingernails on a blackboard for me.

I always think I don't know Led Zepplin, but I have never failed to recognize their songs when played for me. I think having the room next to my brother is why. (And why I know far too much about the work of Rush, Syx, Cheap Trick, Kiss and Supertramp.)

The server was down so you couldn't have listened even if you'd remembered (unless you beamed to Boston).

Ah. My beaming apparatus was down this morning, so good thing you are archiving.

Speaking of just loving to see/hear/read/witness people with passion for music. I live in this hardcore vanilla apartment complex. And I always feel bad because I am blasting music at all hours. I especially feel bad because when I get into a song or am making a mix I can play the same song over and over for HOURS. I got new neighbors this week and through the relatively thin walls I can't help but notice they are some hardcore music listening folk. This morning, I keep hearing the same song blasting from their apt. over and over - I love it! I actually turned off my stereo a bit ago so I could figure out what it is. It actually makes me giddy just to think of other music freaks nearby - regardless of say whether they might be single, cute, crushable boys my age living right next to me.

All you non-Zep loving people are KRAZY, btw.

having not grown up in a house with any 70s rock listen going on, I am sure I had heard some LZ, but not much. My first real exposure to them was watching the Live Aid concert, my reaction - Robert Plant is a big ol girl and Jimmy Page looks like he is about to hurl any minute.

Now in highschool and college I heard more. I know the names of none of their songs, but can make up sounds that appropriate the words and sing along to some of them.

Had one of the Counterpunch folks picked Al Green's Call Me it would have made my list 'cause it's one of my desert island discs.

Which, perversely, is probably why I don't own much of it... [T]here's so much NEW music all the time that using my limited CD budget to buy 30-year-old albums where I already own some songs seems somewhere between pointless and eat-your-vegetables-ish.

It's not perverse at all, but it's the exact opposite of what I do. Especially now that a) I live in NYC (and have for the last nine years) so I don't have a car, which is where 99% of my radio listening used to occur and b) no longer have cable, so miss out on a tremendous amount of current music either from music channels or on soundtracks, I've pretty much lost all connection to whatever's going on. And I do feel bad about that -- besides the missing out on the music there's also the missing out on the shared pop moment -- but as you pointed out: limited money, limited money, an overwhelming amount of choices. My choice was to pick something I liked and then go from there. And since much of what I liked was from artists who had long, prolific careers I had big back catalogs to work through. And that led to prior influences (and their ouevres) and subsequent influences (and their catalogs), and it just keeps mushrooming and mushrooming. So I love it that you and Jon and Hec and Hayden and Misha and tommyrot and Teppy and msbelle & everyone else here can digitally (in the binary sense) slap me and say, "Hey, Joe, there's some nice stuff going on in the 21st century, too. Try this." And then I can say, "Cool. But the 21st century didn't come out of nowhere. Try this."

And it'll just be one big happy thread. And can't we all just get along.

And now you can slap me for other reasons.

slapping joe is too easy. you actually enjoy it don't you? silly boychild.

we were all getting along, right?