It's all subjective though isn't it? I mean if we're talking influential then i don't know why Queen would be on anyone's list, how many bands today really show a Queen influence, yes they were a huge band but also pretty much a one off, The Darkness might have tried (and failed) but i can't think of anyone else who show a huge Queen influence in their sound.
Valid point. It was the only Queen album I put on my list and that only because it has Bo-Rap on it, which I think has been hugely influential. In the same way, I put a couple of Abba albums on my list - not that I particularly like the music that was influenced by Abba, but because the way other made music and tried to get to the top of the charts like they did is clearly evident.
Queen and Abba show, as with Flashing Blade's point about the Sex Pistols, that in those days the singles were often more influential than the albums. I agree that if the Sex Pistols had not released Never Mind the Bollocks, they would still have been massively influential (though there would still have been many people who discovered them and got more influenced by the album). But because of the singles on the album, I'd rate it as one of the, if not the, most influential albums of the decade. Same reason I went for the Wailers 'Burnin' over 'Catch a Fire'.
Yes it is all subjective, but one of the reasons I thought it was worthwhile is that by thinking about why and how an album has been influential deepens our appreciation of the music and helps us get more out of it. If you remove Milton's Paradise Lost out of its historical context, it might not grab you at all - but when you realise the impact of the words at the time it was written, it stuns you. The same principle holds for many of these albums. Thinking about what was most 'influential' as opposed to what was 'best' had a deepening effect on my appreciation of a lot of these albums.
'74 was one of the finest years of the 70's, just off the top of my head we have King Crimson "Red", Joni Mitchell "Court And Spark", Sparks "Propaganda", Randy Newman "Good Old Boys", Neil Young "On The Beach", 10cc "Sheet Music", Little Feat "Feats Don't Fail Me Now", Robert Wyatt "Rock Bottom", Gene Clark "No Other"....i could go on, it really was a great year for albums.
There's a few there that I need to find and check out. It also seems that I need to re-discover Big Star.
Good thread. Anyone like ot have a go at the sixties and the eighties?
