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Glen Campbell ‘Southern Nights’ (1977)
In many ways Southern Nights served as Glen Campbell’s mainstream follow-up to the success of the impeccable Rhinestone Cowboy, especially since it arrived at the peak of his crossover influence in early 1977. Produced by Campbell alongside Gary Klein (a figure instrumental in broadening country’s reach into mainstream pop) this release blended Campbell’s guitar virtuosity…
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Custard ‘Wisenheimer’ (1995)
If you’re a parent of a kid under the age of 8 years old you are well aware of the Australian TV show Bluey. We covered the album a few years back, but the headline is that over a seven-minute episode the show will have you crying, laughing, and reflecting on how beautiful this time…
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Saosin ‘Translating The Name’ (2003)
When Saosin dropped Translating the Name in 2003 I was just getting into post-hardcore scene. And holy shit did this album hit like an earthquake. I remember listening to this 15-minute EP almost non-stop with my friends riding around in my buddy Mark’s white Jeep or Nick’s pickup truck. It basically became our gateway to…
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Foster The People ‘Torches’ (2011)
When I think of Foster The People I think of Coachella and the music festival scene of the 2010’s. I never saw them live during any of their stints at Coachella, but damn do they embody the sound of that era and the feeling of being young and free. Torches is kind of a low-key…
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Bowling for Soup ‘Drunk Enough To Dance’ (2002)
Bowling for Soup carved out a pretty cool niche as a band who could make comedy rock songs that had element of truth to them. There was their iconic “Girl All the Bad Guys Want” single off this album that made them super popular and regaled a story that pretty much every dorky high schooler…
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Black Oak Arkansas ‘Black Oak Arkansas’ (1971)
As I mentioned a few weeks back I’ve been reading Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography over the past few weeks during my down time. It’s a great little trip through his early life and career. Every once in awhile he’ll recall a story from one of his early shows, and one that stuck out was a show…
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Roy Clark ‘The Lightning Fingers of Roy Clark’ (1963)
The Lightning Fingers of Roy Clark is perhaps one of the more apropos album titles I’ve seen over the past three years. This guy could absolutely shred with the best of them in a way that’s nearly inconceivable, especially for a guitarist operating in country music during the early 60’s. Every single riff he plays…
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Run D.M.C. ‘Raising Hell’ (1986)
Raising Hell made history as the first hip hop album to go platinum (and then multi-platinum) and marked a pretty significant turning point in pop culture where rap broke into the commercial mainstream. The album was released in 1986 and blended hard-hitting beats with rock guitars, most famously with their crossover hit “Walk This Way”…
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The Beaches ‘Blame My Ex’ (2023)
Every once in awhile it’s great to listen to some good old fashioned pop rock music. Enter The Beaches (great band name) who on Blame My Ex channel their cheeky heartbreak into a hook-heavy blend of pop rock polish and garage rock grit. The band leans pretty hard into crunchy distortion and throwback alt-rock textures…
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Tony Rice Unit ‘Manzanita’ (1979)
Tony Rice Unit’s Manzanita blends traditional bluegrass roots with the free-flowing feel of folk and acoustic jazz with a loose, natural swing to it. All the stringed instruments (guitar, mandolin, fiddle, bass) dance around each other in the background while Rice’s flatpicking remains front and center. It sounds like a front porch jam session played…
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Vanilla Ice ‘To The Extreme’ (1990)
Vanilla Ice’s debut album To The Extreme may be remembered more for its cultural spectacle than its musical legacy, but it undeniably left a permanent mark on pop history. Catapulted to fame in 1990 by the ubiquitous “Ice Ice Baby” (which most definitely lifted its bass line from Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure”) Vanilla…
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Teddybears ‘Soft Machine’ (2006)
I went and saw Superman this weekend (fun flick) and at the end of the movie during the closing credits was Teddybears’ song “Punkrocker” sung by none other than the legend Iggy Pop. I hadn’t listened to this song for a good 15 years but as soon as it came blasting through the speakers I…
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Bloodhound Gang ‘Hooray For Boobies’ (1999)
Bloodhound Gang is one of those bands that only could have really blown up in the late 90’s. I remember being in middle school and laughing my absolute ass off after hearing their hit single “The Bad Touch” on the radio. I think it was on 92.3 KSJO, which definitely had an edgier sound, but…
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Jim Reeves ‘Good ‘N’ Country’ (1963)
There’s nothing like some good old fashioned country music from the 60’s on a weekend morning with the kids, and the velvet baritone of Jim Reeves was the soundtrack of today for me and the kids as we went to Sky Zone together. Reeves’ brand of country is a throwback to a simpler time that…
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The Trees ‘The Wizard of BA’ (2017)
I’ve been rolling solo with my kids all week with my wife on a work trip and one part of our morning drop-off and evening pick-up routine has been listening to “The Poo Poo Song” by The Trees. When I say I’ve listened to this song over 50 times this week I’m not kidding– it’s…
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Modern Color ‘From The Leaves of Your Garden’ (2020)
I’m seeing Thrice live for the first time in like 20 odd years later this year (November 21st, circle the date) and stumbled upon Modern Color since they’ll be opening the show for them. And hot damn did Thrice ever pick a banger of a young band to open up for them in Modern Color.…
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Rancid ‘Rancid’ (1993)
Rancid is one of the best piss-and-vinegar pure punk rock bands still operating out there today, which is pretty incredible considering it has been over 30 years since their debut LP from 1993. I’ve waxed poetic about the band’s 1995 magnum opus …And Out Come The Wolves (still one of my favorite all-time albums hard…
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Rhythms Del Mundo ‘Rhythms del Mundo’ (2006)
I popped into a Mexican restaurant in San Francisco this weekend to get a glass of water (yes, I was that guy) and heard Rhytms Del Mundo’s version of “Clocks” by Coldplay and immediately was taken by it. Basically the premise is that a bunch of prolific Cuban musicians (including a couple from indie-darling Buena…
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Sha Na Na ‘The Golden Age of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ (1973)
I’ve been reading Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography Born to Run over the past week or so (it’s excellent) and in detailing his early career growing up in Freehold, New Jersey The Boss makes a ton of references to the Doo Wop group Sha Na Na and how they influenced his life. Beside being a foundational band…
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Mammoth ‘Mammoth WVH’ (2021)
If you’ve played guitar somewhat regularly at any point in your life you’ve 100% got Eddie Van Halen’s solo from “Eruption” saved somewhere on a guitar inspiration playlist somewhere. So when I remembered that his song Wolfgang had a band of his own it dawned on me I hadn’t given his debut album a full…
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Dead Boys ‘Young, Loud, and Snotty’ (1977)
Young, Loud and Snotty encapsulates the raw, no‑holds‑barred ethos that defined early American punk rock. Channeling the ferocious energy of Iggy Pop and the Stooges with the swagger of Keith Richards, their sound was an untamed, furious blend of taut precision and primal impulse. From the feral opening of “Sonic Reducer” (which has been covered…
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Fuzz ‘Fuzz’ (2013)
Fuzz is a heavy, garage-inflected alternative rock band that channels the raw power of early Black Sabbath, the scuzzy lo-fi energy of Ty Segall’s solo work (unsurprising, since he drums and sings for the band), the sludgy psych tendencies and weirdness of Primus, and ultimately sounds like a dirtier and more unhinged cousin of Wolfmother…
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Skid Row ‘Skid Row’ (1989)
If you name your band Skid Row in 1989 you better be fully ready to bring the glam metal heat front to back, especially if you’re an East Coast based band. It’s a bold stake to smash into the ground considering the history of how Skid Row in Los Angeles basically defined that era of…
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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers ‘Self-Titled’ (1976)
I’ve talked about Tom Petty a fair amount over the years on here so it probably makes sense to start off with what I shared about his career and sound during my write-up of his magnum opus Damn The Torpedoes when I wrote about that album in May of 2023: For my money Tom Petty…
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MxPx ‘The Ever Passing Moment’ (2000)
I’ve previously waxed poetic about MxPx and how they were one of “gateway” bands into the magical world of punk rock music during my middle school years. I’ll always hold Life In General a notch above everything else in their discography for the simple fact that it was the first album of theirs I listened…
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Extreme ‘Pornograffitti’ (1990)
As I wrote about yesterday I’ve been binge-watching the hell out of sets from “Back To The Beginning” which was Ozzy Osbourne’s final live performance of his career. It’s been a helluva ride and an incredible celebration of heavy metal music. One guitarist that really stuck out to me through the day was Nuno Bettencourt,…
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Ozzy Osbourne ‘No More Tears’ (1991)
If you’re like me this weekend you’ve been binging clips from “Back To The Beginning”, the all-day heavy metal festival in Birmingham England that served as the final show of Ozzy Osbourne and his original band Black Sabbath’s career. The fact that all members of that band have made it into their mid-70’s is nothing…
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Pat Reedy ‘Make It Back Home’ (2024)
Make It Back Home is a good old-fashioned trip of honky tonk nostalgia, with heavenly slide guitars and a rumbling rhythm section clashing with Pat Reedy’s road-weary voice that tells a story in and of itself even if you aren’t paying attention to the lyrics. Solid highway music through and through. Standout Songs: “Make It…
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Carnivores ‘Let’s Get Metaphysical’ (2014)
Carnivores’ were a pretty unknown band from Glasgow (74 monthly listeners) that I stumbled on a few weeks ago via a random Spotify playlist. I popped them on and was incredibly impressed in a short matter of time– it’s like garage rock meets post-hardcore in a very fun and frenetic way. Basically if you’re looking…
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Good Charlotte ‘The Young and The Hopeless’ (2002)
I was never a huge Good Charlotte fan (they always struck me as sort of synthetic) but there’s no denying the massive cultural impact the band had on the early-2000’s MTV era of punk rock music. The Madden brothers were all over the celebrity circuit, ended up marrying Nicole Richie and Cameron Diaz, and cut…
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Social Distortion ‘Social Distortion’ (1990)
Social Distortion carved out a sound as raw and restless as the Southern California streets they came from, fusing the sneer of punk with the swagger of rockabilly into a sound that sounds like the flick of switchblade in some biker bar in Nowhereville, USA. When lead singer (and primary songwriter) Mike Ness howls through…
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Jeff Kashiwa ‘Sunrise’ (2021)
I was hanging out with the kids this weekend and at the risk of showing my age we were listening to the free “Music Choice” channel on television while we played in the living room. For those unfamiliar it’s just a television station that plays songs on a loop ad-free. We had one the smooth…
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John Lee Hooker ‘House of the Blues’ (1959)
John Lee Hooker was a seminal figure in the development of modern blues, known for his raw hypnotic guitar style and deeply emotive vocal delivery that bridged the gap between Delta blues and electric urban blues that were starting to become en vogue by the end of the century. His distinctive approach to guitar– marked…
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Big Brother & the Holding Company ‘Self-Titled’ (1967)
Big Brother & the Holding Company’s self-titled debut album is best known as Janis Joplin’s first band before she went solo and blew up as “The Queen of Rock” before her untimely passing at the age of 27 years old. The whole thing was recorded in a mere three days following an appearance at the…
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Moby ‘Play’ (1999)
Play is one of those album that remains a cultural touchstone considering how it redefined how musicians made money through their music. Up until the spring of 1999 it was a pretty straightforward math problem– artists recorded music, sold music, and toured on that music. But Play was different in that it was the first…
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Fountains of Wayne ‘Welcome Interstate Managers’ (2003)
Fountains of Wayne was best known for their 2003 hit “Stacy’s Mom” which was basically everywhere (and I mean everywhere) when I was first starting high school. The band was fronted by Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger and basically was more of a creative side project than a career-defining pursuit for its members, which is…
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About the Author
Jason Matthew Plank listens to copious amounts of music and writes about one album each day. He is currently active in the bands Related to Strangers (post-hardcore) and Kindergarten Cartel (punk covers of children’s nursery rhymes).
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