Lifetime Albums

How about a thread for albums you reckon you will like for the rest of your life?

I have a few albums - the real special few records I reckon I will never stop liking. Other records may come and go but I am pretty sure these ones will remain. Some I have known for decades, and others I have known for less than one year about but I have a feeling about.

I reckon it would be interesting to hear other people’s lifetime albums. I imagine this thread has one album per post, with the post’s author saying why the record is special to them and why they think they will keep coming back to it.

Here are some suggestions for other things that could be included

  • A picture of the cover!
  • When you first heard it. This could be long ago or last week - if it is new, why do you think it will it go the distance?
  • What’s your history with it? What prompted you to get it and has your appreciation of it changed over the time you have known it?
  • You could say how many versions you have got.

One rule please: no negativity - especially no criticising others’ choices. This thread should be about what people hold dear and others should respect that.

I hope this will be interesting and worth contributing to!

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Here is one of mine to kick things off:

Tangerine Dream - Ricochet, 1975

I first got it in 1987 on LP from my local record shop for about £3.99. I was buying all I could from TD after seeing Risky Business on the telly and liking the music in that (which turned out to be a bit of Force Majeure). I first got Underwater Sunlight, which was released in 1986 and then soon after I got Ricochet. I was surprised at the difference between the two records. Initially I preferred Underwater Sunlight because I thought Ricochet sounded a bit dark and old school (no sparkly 80s synths), but the spareness and atmosphere of Ricochet overtook and I have liked it ever since.

I got the LP in 1987, then I got a CD of the 1995 remaster in the early 2000s and then recently I got the 2015 Japan SHM flat transfer CD and then last summer I got the In Search of Hades box mainly just because there was a new master of Ricochet. There are a few mixes in this box and the one I listen to the most is a stereo downmix I did from the 5.1 Steven Wilson mix - nice and clear and well spaced out.

This record is actually an augmented live improvisation recorded from one of the golden TD times - when they used to improvise concerts. I have been fond of this record for 33 years and it shows no sign of getting stale - I can put it on and its always good. I like the sound of it - the sound textures and the way it changes its mood and sound over its playing time. I think it is very atmospheric and it kind of seeps into my head (especially if I have had a few ales). It has sounded better with every gear upgrade and remaster I have thrown at it!

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First heard back in the early 70s and been playing it ever since.
If, for whatever reason, I was allowed only one album, this would be it.

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First heard this in my teens. One of the most influential guitar albums ever made. East meets west meets blues and folk. Davy was never given the credit he deserved.
I saw him play live towards the end of his life which was a bitter sweet experience.
I still play this album at regular intervals.

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I was a young at the time and wasn’t particularly fond of the rock and roll or crooner records that lived in my parents cabinet and then one day I found this and it sparked my interest in music. It is an absolutely wonderful album and sounds every bit as good more than 55 years later.

I first heard this album around the time my favourite author, Eleanor Farjeon, died. I learned lots of her lyrical songs at school and the style was reminiscent of Folk Routes, New Routes.

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This is a difficult thread to interpret, because it could apply to most of my collection of ~1200 albums as I don’t buy music I don’t like, and my taste doesn’t change to make me dislike things I used to like…

But if I absolutely had to thin out and keep the ones really most important to me, I guess they’d be the maybe 100 or so albums that I replay most often - quite a few of which I’ve had for 50 years or best part of already!

The following came to mind as fast as I could write them down. 72 I think - but if I spent a little longer thinking I guess I’d reach that hundred…

Beatles - Sgt Pepper, Abbey Road & Let It Be
Blach Sabbath: Black Sabbath, Paranoid
Edgar Broughton: Sing Brother Sing, The Edgar Broughton Band, Inside Out, Oora, Superchip
Budgie: Never Turn Your Back On A Friend
Deep Purple: *The Book of Taliesyn, Deep Purple, Fireball, Made in Japan”
Focus: Moving Waves
Genesis: From Genesis to Revelation, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
Guns ‘n’ Roses: Appetite for Destruction
Jethro Tull: Thick as a Brick, Too Old To Rovk’n’Roll
King Crimson: In The Court Of The Crimson King
Led Zeppelin: LZ1, LZ2, LZ3, LZ4
Marillion: Script For A Jester’s Tear, Misplaced Childhood
Moody Blues: Days of Future Past, In Search Of The Lost Chord, On the Threshold Of A Dream, A Question Of Balance
Hazel O’Connor: Breaking Glass
Pink Floyd: Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, DSOTM, The Wall, Final Cut
Quatermas: Quatermas
Queen: A Night At The Opera
Sniff ‘n’ the Tears: Ride Blue Divide, Love Action, Fickle Heart, The Game’s Up
Strawbs: *By Choice
Ten Years After: Sssh, Cricklewood Green
Tanita Tikarum: Ancient Heart
Twelfth Night: Live and Let Live, Collectors’ Item
U2: Under A Blood Red Sky
Uriah Heep: *Look at Yourself”
Roger Waters: Pros & Cons of Hitchhiking, Amused to Death
Rolling Stones: Through The Past Darkly, Sticky Fingers
The Who: Tommy, Who’s Next
Wishbone Ash: Argus
Yes: Fragile, The Yes Album, Tales from Topographic Oceans
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Van Cliburn, Symphony No. 6
Grieg: Peer Ghynt full version with vocals
Orff: Cumina Burana
Puccini: La Boheme, Turandot
Schubert Trout Quintet Members of Vienna Octet with Walter Panhoffer
Verdi: La Traviata
Vivaldi: Four Seasons Nigel Kennedy, Cantatas Bellezza Crudel

Now, I know I haven’t complied with the request to pick out individual albums and say why - maybe when I have a bit more spare time I’ll pick some of those out and do just that.

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Mine used to be:

Hawkwind: The Space Ritual
and
Queen - Shear Heart Attack

Hawkwind because it was the first LP I heard end to end, in my mate’s bedroom on his new stereo (about 73/74?) when were about 12 or 13, and it was different, different from Radio 1’s output.

Shear Heart Attack for much the same reason, it was then what I still like most - good tunes, clever lyrics and most of all distorted guitars. Brighton Rock still gets an occasional outing.

I wouldn’t bin them now, but neither would I make any effort to keep them. Hearing the same music for nearly 50 years wears after a while, and I realised a long while ago that the chase for great hifi that’s now reached a conclusion has also meant that a lot of music that I loved has lost a bit of its appeal. From R1 MW to cheap stereos to ‘hifi’ that wasn’t hifi and eventually this incredible pile of black Naim boxes, for me it was as much about hearing my music how it should sound. I’ve got there now; the search is over. Old favourites and occasionally stumbling onto something new that’s fantastic keep me in front of the stereo, but since last year it’s felt different.

To answer the question, there’s probably not an LP that I’d now class as a Lifetime Album. I’ve heard them enough thanks. :slight_smile:

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Indeed. For me; basically anything made by The Beatles , Pink Floyd, Radiohead… and the list could go on… :sweat_smile::+1:

It’s pretty well impossible to select an album that I’ll love till I pop my clogs. Most of the records I loved as a 14 year old in 1975 - Uriah Heep, Wishbone Ash, ELP etc - I now cannot abide. Punk changed everything but a lot of those records I now find pretty uninteresting. My favourite music these days is chamber music, particularly Bach, and modern European jazz, and I rarely listen to much rock music. If forced to select a single album I think I’d go for Life’s a Riot With Spy vs Spy, the debut album from Billy Bragg. I didn’t own it when it was released in 1983 because it was released as a 45 and my LP12 would only play at 33. But once the Lingo appeared I bought the album. It has seven tracks and is very short, but each is wonderful. The whole range of human emotion is encapsulated in these 20 or so minutes. It gets played now and again and I love it just as much, probably more. But I’d hate to be stuck in time. I like the idea of moving in my tastes, exploring and discovering. When I was a young punk I’d have never believed anyone who said that one day I’d be moved to tears with an old folk song, or spend hours on end listening to some woman in a long dress playing the piano.

Anyway, as requested, here is the picture:

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Funny how people differ, some of us losing interest in music we once loved, and others of us not!

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Was going to be my pick too.

Music full of passion and wit that continues to hit the spot after all these years, as he does when I saw him live in November, some 30+ years after I first saw him.

Bruce

Interesting to see someone else who liked Edgar Broughton. Wasa Wasa was my favourite. Saw them live several times in the late 60’s.

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Unfortunately I was still at school then, and for some reason missed tgem when I first started going to live gigs. It wasn’t until late 70s I first saw them, but then quite a few times through to mid 80s. My moniker on here comes from the Superchip album, when I took to wearing a teeshirt saying ‘Innocent Bystander’ to gigs.

I like Wasa Wasa as well, and only missed it off because I don’t tend to play it as often as the ones I listed.

Didn’t realise you were that old IB. Keep at it. :slight_smile:

It would be weird to be permanently frozen in time as a teenager. Times change, people change. It seems inevitable.

For me it must be The Story of the Who from c.1976 - one of my first LPs. I remember seeing the adverts of the exploding pinball machine and, at the time, I couldn’t get my ahead around how a band could produce something seminal like Baba O’Riley (all that teenage wasteland) and something as odd as Boris the Spider. I wasn’t one for prog-rock then or now.

Remains wonderful music to this day - with Who’s Next having been released in 1971.

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You evidently haven’t been reading the Retiral income thread!

I first came across EBB in Autumn 1970, when I heard and then bought Out Demons Out, to play on my then very recently built first hifi system (emphasis on word ‘built’)

Cheers!

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Indeed. But whilst my tastes (including musical) have broadened, and I have matured (well, maybe…!), the real me is still the real me, and if the values and likes I had 50 years ago were good, why would I lose them? Music in particular is timeless (I don’t class the transient ‘pop’ of the day as music).

Interesting & difficult


LP - I remember I bought this when it was released and played it countless times, I still enjoy this album today

I remember when tis was released, my best friend & I went into the city to buy it, got the bus back to his house ( I did not have a record player) and we played it (quite a few times) - still love it today !

I heard a track from this on Helen Mayhew’s ‘Dinner Jazz’ on Jazz FM (as it was at the time), went up to London that weekend and bought the album in Tower Records (no doubt at a high price) - it is a fantastic album

Having around 100 Miles Davis LPs I think someone on this forum recommended this one, it is just soooooooo good ! - I now have 20 of Enrico’s albums (one to come in the post)

Could not miss out Chet Baker - bought this LP second hande at Greenwich market - it was not off the turntable for a week or two - got me hooked - now have 100+

I still enjoy all of the above but play some more than others, it is a super journey !!!

P.S. I could add lots more

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Apart from the first paragraph I could have written this myself! I have the same purchasing history from vinyl through to the Hades box set. A longtime favourite.

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