If you could only keep 5 record albums, what would they be?


I am looking at my collection this evening and trying to determine my favorites.  If I had to narrow it down to 5 it would be: Dan Fogelberg...The Netherlands; Roy Clark...Yesterday When I Was Young; James Taylor...Flag; Talking Heads...77; and last but not at all least, Commodores...Greatest Hits. All oldies but goodies that I still enjoy listening to as much as when I bought them many years ago.
awhittington

Coming at this topic from a different direction, there are some albums I have to possess just for one song; it’s a bonus if the entire album is good. Here are some of those songs:

- "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys. On their Pet Sounds album, a pretty good one ;-) . There is a video on You Tube of a music teacher sitting at a piano, breaking down the structure and composition of this majestic Brian Wilson song. Watch it and have your musical consciousness raised!

- "What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted", written by William Weatherspoon, Paul Riser, and James Dean, sung by Jimmy Ruffin. A really, really great song, with a glorious chord progression and melody (and superb bass part by James Jamerson). Available on any Jimmy Ruffin Greatest Hits/Best Of album, or Motown V/A collection.

- "No Time To Cry" by Iris Dement. The wife of an old friend, knowing of my record collection, asked me for an album recommendation. She’s a professional therapist/counselor with her own clinic, is pretty smart and sophisticated, and a good dancer. I had just discovered and fallen in love with Iris, and told the wife to get her My Life album. When I heard back from the friend, he told me the wife found the album severely melancholy. For me, it’s like what the old Bluesmen said about their music: To sing about what they did helped soothe the pain. "No Time To Cry" is as heartbreakingly-beautiful as Pop music (non-Classical) can be. The entire album is fantastic, but not for those with a distain for Hillbilly music.

There are many other albums I have solely for one song (there are far more excellent musicians than songwriters), but that’s enough outta me.


Was going to mention that no one has mentioned the whole collection of Roy Orbison. @Fayetteville just did. What a set of pipes that guy had. If just one album, "a night in black and white" would be it. His back ups are Springsteen, Elvis Costello, KD Lange, Jackson Brown, and others. Filmed live and on YouTube. 
Cudos to bdp24 for bringing up Dave Edmunds/Rockpile.

I know a lot of folks look to their systems to bring them back in time to experience the performance as it was being recorded and most of these lists reflect this fact. So I thought I'd make a list where the production shines and transports you someplace else. 

ABC-The Lexicon of Love produced by Trevor Horn
Pulp-Different Class, Chris Thomas
Ultravox-Rage In Eden, Connie Plank
Kraftwerk-Computer World, Ralf Hütter
Joy Division-Closer, Martin Hannett
I suffer tremendously from paralysis of analysis, so it would take me weeks/months to whittle down to 5 records to keep. That said, I'm going to change my rules for replying, so I can not waste too much time thinking about it.

If the house was burning down and I have time to grab 5 albums TODAY, I would pull the following from my record shelves:

Pete Townshend - "White City - A Novel"
The Tubes - "What do you Want From Live"
Supertramp - "Brother Where You Bound?"
dada - "Puzzle"
The Jayhawks - "Hollywood Town Hall"

and if my wife could carry 5 more of my records through the burning house, I would give her:

World Party - "Goodbye Jumbo"
The Who - "Who's Next"
Elvis Costello - "Spike"
Robben Ford - "Robben Ford and the Blue Line"
Rush - "Hemispheres"

If I wasn't in a hurry and had more time to think I might............ ;~)

@baffler65, the ABC Lexicon Of Love album has SUCH incredible production! My fave from that era of English Synth-Pop.

For those who nominated Roy Orbison, there have been a couple of audiophile reissues of his Monument recordings (first by Classic Records), and the sound of them is absolutely incredible! They almost sound like a direct-to-disk LP they are so alive and immediate. His recording engineer Bill Porter was one of the all-time greats.