Not necessarily the very best but those that opened up a new direction and influenced many. Miles Davis - Bitches Brew John McLaughlin with Mahavishnu Orchestra - Inner Mounting Flame Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon Dead Can Dance - Spleen and Ideal John McLaughlin/Paco de Lucia/Al di Meola - Friday Night in San Francisco Deep Purple - Machine Head
John Coltrane - Giant Steps Black Sabbath - Self Titled First LP King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures Stravinsky - The Rite Of Spring Ornette Coleman - The Shape Of Jazz To Come Fripp & Eno - No Pussyfooting
Peter Gabriel - Security and So Paul Simon - Graceland Radiohead - Kid A Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow Cream - Disraeli Gears Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced?
- Elvis Presley: s/t debut. He and his band mixed black R & B with white Hillbilly, creating Rockabilly and all the Rock ’n’ Roll that followed. Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others followed Presley’s lead.
- Bob Dylan: Blonde On Blonde, in which he infused Rock ’n’ Roll music with abstract surreal poetry, turning a teenage music into an adult one. IMO the most influential Pop music artist of the 20th century in the long term, more so than Elvis or The Beatles. You may disagree. ;-)
- The Byrds: Sweetheart Of The Rodeo. Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons turned the McGuinn-led Folkie group into a Country one, introducing the modern Rock audience to Hillbilly music. Hugely influential album to Rock musicians, though those of us paying attention had already began to discover Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, The Louvin Brothers, The Carter Family, Bill Monroe, and all the other Hillbillies Elvis and the other Southern white boys were hearing on the regional radio stations in the late-40’s and early-50’s.
- Cream: Fresh Cream. Basically a Blues band (though Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were more Jazz influenced) who introduced long Jazz-type improvisation to the Rock audience. Whether or not that’s a good thing is a matter of opinion. After hearing The Band’s debut album Music From Big Pink, Eric Clapton himself decided it wasn’t.
- And of course The Band: Music From Big Pink. Amongst a "certain" group of young Rock-based musicians, the biggest game-changer of them all. For those who "got it", the rules of the game had been suddenly changed, the rug pulled out from underneath them. Everyone I knew had to start over, learning to approach music and it’s making in an entirely new way: Playing from the "outside" towards the center, rather than the opposite, if you know what I mean.
There are plenty more albums that can be cited, none more so than Are You Experienced by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. That band and album created a music template still imitated today, but for me the it was short-lived (I loved them the first time I saw and heard them live in ’67, but was bored the second time in ’68). It and they now sound dated to me. You may disagree. ;-)
Do. I’ll go with Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake. Mahavishnu Orchestra wasn’t a groundbreaking LP. They toured that before and after. Saw them do play it twice. Saw John again at The Cubby Bear with his guitar synth. Holy Moly. McLauphlin’s Electric Dreams gets my nod. Or Adventures In Radioland. Floyd toured the Dark Side... over a year before they cut it with Alan Parsons. The ground was quite disturbed by then.
Rush Moving Pictures Pink Floyd The Wall Tool Undertow (changed prog metal forever) Yes Fragile Led Zeppelin 1,2,4, Physical Graffiti King Crimson (Agree with above) Jefferson Airplane Surrealistic Pillow Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced...
The list could be somewhat endless as we go through genres.
Mekong delta for the thrash/prog metal, groundbreaking band. Fates warning close second. (More of a power metal w prog influence. Bathory s/t LP. Bathory spawned 2 genres (I despise the genre thing, as me in the early 80’s it was either metal, or it wasn’t.) this album changed music forever. GGGRRRRRR Venom -welcome to hell. INFLUENCED BY MOTÖRHEAD, this release influenced about every metal band since. Release date I think was Dec. 1, or 2, or 3, I do remember it was the first week of December. 1981, this slab of unholiness was released and people flipped out, as did I. Still a personal fav, this album changed music forever.
paul Samson, Paul and Paul alone single handily started the amazing NWOBHM scene. Arguably, I’m a huge fan of the British scene, and the dates of Samson’s releases predate much of the so called NWOBHM movement. Lots of singles and bands were also a huge part of this British influence. Either way, I’m so glad to be a part of the start of metal, the decline, and the rebirth!
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