To discourage hierarchcal and mechanistic thinking, I've left them unnumbered, though they are arranged with the ones I like better nearer the top. Also, I don't think there are exactly 25. Instead of interfiling Hawkwind albums, I've clustered them below.
Also check out my Top 100 Songs.
Camper Van Beethoven, Key Lime Pie
Key Lime Pie is an album of the highest quality in every way. I was obsessed with it for two years after it came out. Traveling in Europe, I went a week without speaking any English except singing CVB to myself, and I started to develop David Lowery's rural California accent. Their third, self-titled album is also excellent, sloppy but alive.
Gordon Lightfoot, Sit Down Young Stranger a.k.a. If You Could Read My Mind
Gordon Lightfoot is not as good a lyricist as Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, but he's a better songwriter. This album has Lightfoot's weirdest great song (Cobwebs and Dust), his best exercise in rocking out (Baby It's Allright), the most poetic "baby come back" song ever written (Your Love's Return), and the best fantasy song I've ever heard (The Pony Man). And none of those are even the best song on the album! Another great Lightfoot album is the Gord's Gold compilation, but I recommend getting it on vinyl since the CD is missing one of the best songs, an improved version of "Affair on 8th Avenue."
Big Star, #1 Record / Radio City
You probably won't find these albums any other way than sold together on one CD. "In The Street" became Big Star's most famous song when it was picked as the opening for
That 70's Show -- even though it was probably played on the radio about three times in the 1970's. That was a Chris Bell song, which are brilliant, but the Alex Chilton songs are even better. #1 Record has more great songs, but Radio City has deeper, stronger music.
Beat Happening, Black Candy
Beat Happening's highest highs are on their previous album, Jamboree, but Black Candy is great all the way through. If the test of a song is how good it sounds played by terrible musicians, then Calvin Johnson is the best songwriter of my generation.
Bob Dylan, Blood On The Tracks
Years after he supposedly peaked, Bob Dylan came out of nowhere with his greatest album. It makes Highway 61 Revisited look like a coloring book. His next album, Desire, was damn good too.
The Ramones, Leave Home
Often the first album I hear by a band turns out to be my favorite, but this was almost the last Ramones album I heard, and it was a revelation! They've never been this catchy, this tight, or this sweet-sounding. Appropriately, it was later repackaged to include "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker," the only other Ramones song that could hold its own against this bunch.
Hüsker Dü, New Day Rising
Not obvious at the time, but this is Hüsker Dü's masterpiece, from that magic space few bands find, where they become technically skilled before they become too polished or lose inspiration.
Violent Femmes, Hallowed Ground
Just as catchy as their first album, but smarter and more challenging. Every song kicks ass in a different way!
Tom Waits, Swordfishtrombones / Rain Dogs
I tend to take Tom Waits for granted. He's got everything: great lyrics, great songs, great style, and endurance. Rain Dogs has the best individual songs of any Waits album, but his previous album, Swordfishtrombones, has better music and works better as a whole.
The Muffs, Blonder and Blonder
As above: the best songs are on their self-titled first album, but this one, their second, works better as a whole. Also they're much better at playing their instruments. I think Kim Shattuck is a superhero, Joan Jett and Joey Ramone rolled into one, and more. As I overheard a fan say, in awe, after one of their shows: "She's angry
and happy!"
Pink Floyd, Meddle
Before Dark Side Of The Moon, but after Syd Barrett left, is Pink Floyd's forgotten masterpiece. Every song is strange and beautiful.
Neutral Milk Hotel, In The Aeroplane Over the Sea
Sounds like a lost tribe of genius hillbillies playing a punked-up version of a 70's art rock album with instruments they found in a shed.
Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One
A great band's best album. They're kind of like Sonic Youth without the attitude. Nothing showy here, just sounds really really good all the way through.
R.E.M., Fables of the Reconstruction
Reckoning and Automatic For The People are REM's best albums by any reasonable standard, but this one is my favorite. I like its old-fashioned aura and its slow pretty songs. (But I hate "Can't Get There From Here"!)
Galaxie 500, Today
Their three studio albums are about equally great. This one is less dreamy-sounding (but still very, very dreamy-sounding) and less varied than the others, but it has the best songwriting.
Red House Painters, (rollercoaster)
Red House Painters have two self-titled albums. The one you need is the one with the roller-coaster on the cover. No sad album is so powerfully sad or sounds so good.
Bone Cellar, Now That It's All Over
Great band that went nowhere. They have the Seattle grunge sound but with absolutely no pretention, and awesome guitar solos, and they played the best live show I ever saw. You probably can't even find these songs on the music-swapping networks. Their second album, Lost in the Light of Day, is almost as good.
Peter Gabriel, (car)
Peter Gabriel has three self-titled albums. This is his first solo album, the one with a blue-filtered rainy car windshield on the cover. Featuring "Solsbury Hill" and "Here Comes The Flood."
Queen's Greatest Hits / Queen II
There are several "Queen's greatest hits" albums. The one with the best and tightest song selection is the first one, from 1981, including "Under Pressure" and "Keep Yourself Alive." But it's never been released on CD, so you'll have to find the vinyl in a thrift store or patch something together yourself. QGH-1981 and Queen II complement each other well because there's no overlap -- Queen II had no hits, and is generally considered a self-indulgent piece of crap, but I love it! Axl Rose has cited it (along with Never Mind The Bollocks) as his favorite album.
The Pogues, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash
Blows away every other Pogues album, yet most Americans, even if they know the Pogues, have never heard it because for some reason it was never released here.
Rush, Caress of Steel
I'm probably the only Rush fan who likes Alex Lifeson better than Geddy Lee or Neil Peart. They're both
extremely competent, but Lifeson's the spark, the genius, and this album is his peak. It doesn't have any very good songs, but the guitar solos are wonderful.
Apocalyptica, Inquisition Symphony
My favorite all-instrumental album, four Finnish guys playing metal with cellos! Their first album was all Metallica covers, and sounds weak and tinny. They seem to have saved the best songs for this album where they got the sound right. Then on their third album they added vocals and ruined everything.
Sonic Youth, Sister
All Sonic Youth albums have great music. This one has the best songs, and sounds the most like ...
Hawkwind
This is just a sampling of the literally hundreds of Hawkwind albums and singles. Last I heard, the band was still going. For a more complete list, go to:
http://home.clara.net/adawson/ or
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/hawkwind/hawkwind_discs.html
Hawkwind, 1970
Two great folk songs, "Hurry On Sundown" and "Mirror of Illusion," and some interesting drug-music instrumentals. This and the next are total hippie albums.
In Search Of Space, 1971
Some good songs here -- I like "We Took The Wrong Step Years Ago" -- but they're still groping for their sound. The lyrics are still more metaphysical than sci-fi, and the music more psychedelic than space rock.
Doremi Fasol Latido, 1972
Dave Brock is the main guy in Hawkwind, but he gives other people slack to sort of take over the band for a while. This album and Space Ritual are dominated by crazy sax-and-woodwind player Nik Turner and by pre-Motorhead Lemmy Kilmister. Here they find their sound: Long, droning jams, flange guitars, spacy keyboards, and sci-fi lyrics. I was playing "Brainstorm" in 2002 and an audiophile friend said it sounded contemporary -- but strangely, most new bands that sound like Hawkwind have never listened to Hawkwind. They just invented the same thing 30 years later.
Space Ritual, 1973
Double live album of songs from the above two. Most hard-core fans will name either this or the Ambient Anarchists compilation as Hawkwind's best album. I think it has too many boring parts and cheesy spoken word bits, but that's probably because I didn't listen to it enough times, or on drugs. It does have the essential version of one of their greatest songs, "Lord of Light," which sounds dull on Doremi.
Hall of the Mountain Grill, 1974
Anyone who says this isn't Hawkwind's best album is probably just trying to be contrary. It's the only Hawkwind album with no duds, and has a consistent sound that's more textured than Doremi. Also, it has their best cover art. Here's a rare image of the
Hall of the Mountain Grill back cover.
Warrior On The Edge Of Time, 1975
Lemmy is gone, but still a solid album, with Hawkwind's second catchiest song, "Kings of Speed," and one of their prettiest, "The Demented Man."
Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music, 1976
The beginning of the Bob Calvert era. Calvert was a genius, easily the best science fiction lyricist in the English language, a great songwriter, and with a singing style that anticipated (or influenced) British new wave. Dave Brock wisely let him take over the band. But in this album they're still working out the kinks. The songs are lame and the sound is too funky.
Quark, Strangeness, and Charm, 1977
The Brock/Calvert team hits its stride! They replaced the rhythm section and made one of their best albums, featuring "Damnation Alley" and the brilliant "Hassan I Sabha."
Hawklords, 25 Years On, 1978
Briefly, Hawkwind had to change their name to Hawklords for legal reasons, maybe because Dave Brock was the only original member. Anyway, only a couple good songs here.
PXR5, 1979
The last album with Bob Calvert, and one of the very best. Like The Who's best album, Who's Next, it was cobbled together from scraps. It contains their best punk song, "Death Trap," their best social protest song, "High Rise," their catchiest song, "Jack of Shadows," and the closest they've ever come to a love song, "Infinity," with the second best line Dave Brock ever wrote: "I met her in a forest glade, where starbeams grew like trees." (His best line is so good he used it in two different songs: "Already weeds are writing their scriptures in the sand.")
Zones, 1983
Another collection of scraps. The first seven songs are as good as Hawkwind has ever been, and the last three songs are awful.
The Earth Ritual Preview EP, 1984
Quite good, containing the great song "Green Finned Demon."
Independent Days vol 1-2
A great compilation of stuff from the late 70's and early 80's.
other albums
I've listened to Levitation, Live 79, Church of Hawkwind, Choose Your Masques, This Is Hawkwind Do Not Panic, Bring Me the Head of Yuri Gagarin (great title!), Chronicle of the Black Sword, and Xenon Codex, and found none of them memorable. I've heard Electric Teepee is great, but haven't bought it yet.