159 Cheap Trick - In Color (1977)

In a year where the power of music was fueled by sight every bit as much as sound - the best album of the year may have been dropped by the nondescript Pixies of Boston. Doolittle was this legendary band at their operational peak. Over the past thirty years this band has given me SO MUCH to LISTEN to - yet left me NOTHING to TALK about. Absolute neck-to-nut classic.

During the fall of 1972 David Bowie jumped into a onesie, got the red mullet shaped-up and unleashed his Ziggy Tour on America. The October 20th show from the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was broadcast live by LA radio station KMET and was passed around for years as a bootleg before it got the official release treatment in 2008. This hour-fifteen set is the sound of an awesome rock band discovering their powers in real time. As good as a live album gets.

Person Pitch COULD have been an artsy folk LP piece of trash. But thanks to the mysterious hero who stole Panda Bear's beloved acoustic guitar at the Lisbon Airport in 2005 - it didn't. Instead we were blessed with a Mangina Electronica masterpiece and one of the best 'by yourself' listens in all of recorded music history. Beethoven you can snort adderall to.

An arrogant Satan attempts to manifest one more hit vocal pop record before the decade is over and uses the goddaughters of Latin jazz vibraphonist Cal Tjader as his messengers; Genesis is a wonderful quick listen for the crate diggers.

Before Nick Cave became the legendary gothic grinch we continue to love to present day he was in a shrieking drug band with his college friends called The Birthday Party. They lasted five years but my God what a mess. On their way to the finish line they cranked out one final record called Junkyard - basically a giant musical temper tantrum crafted into a ten-track scuzzball masterpiece. One of the coolest albums of the 1980s.

Eric Clapton puts the theory that he is 'God' to the test by attempting the fulfillment of two prophecies: 1) become the coolest AMERICAN guitarist in the game and 2) nail his best friend's wife. He would succeed at both - and ruin quite a few lives in the process. But not OUR lives - no - we get one of the best double albums ever recorded. Our lives are even better because of his mania. Thanks Eric...I mean Derek.

For over twenty-five years The Verve has been designated as 'the band with the guy with the face that did Bitter Sweet Symphony.' But there is always more to discover. You see - there was an Enya before and after Orinoco Flow; the Baha Men were once Baha Boys; and The Verve's first album A Storm in Heaven is an absolute psychedelic guitar odyssey. Can't wait to get thru it so we can play a nip of Bitter Sweet Sympfff.

Analog Africa is granted access to the Radio Mogadishu archives by vault guardian Colonel Abshir Hashi Ali and commence compiling a mind-blowing collection of funky oddities from Somalia's Golden Age of Music.

Hard work and tireless genital thematics kept Poison consistently near the crest of Hair Hunx Mountain - but they reached the actual peak with their second album - Open Up and Say...Ahh! It capped off Poison's incredible 1988 - one of the best individual band years in the entire Hair Hunx Dynasty. A pair of American classics are on Poison number two and you'd be surprised to learn they actually picked-up some indie cred along the way.

The tireless Cheap Trick’s second album In Color is loved by classic rock fans, critics and music historians alike - but hated by the band. They thought the producer Tom Werman did them dirty - polishing up their sound behind their back - which he did. But too bad - it worked. Underrated classic released a year before this pairing of two oddballs and two hunks became big in Japan.