Best debut album

+ 1 on the "usual suspects": Doors - Hendrix - Led Zep - King Crimson - Television - Dire Straits - Rickie Lee Jones - Pretenders - Elvis Costello - Joe Jackson & REM.

+ 1 on the "not so" usual suspects: Dada - Jellyfish - Spirit - Velvet Underground.

Here's a few more in the latter category:

JJ Cale - "Naturally"
Jim Carroll: "Catholic Boy"
Lloyd Cole & Commotions: "Rattlesnakes"
"Crack The Sky"
Mark Eitzel: "60 Watt Silver Lining"
Michael Franks: "The Art of Tea"
PJ Harvey: "Dry"
Martha and The Muffins: "Metro Music"

vinowino,

"Fleetwood Mac. ( aka The dustbin album. Peter Greens Fleetwood Mac)"


Green's Mac were a bit like Barrett's Floyd, or Curtis's Joy Division (now there's another great debut album - 1978s Unknown Pleasures) compared to what came later.

Less commercial maybe, but certainly no less good.

@mitchagain 

Mark Eitzel: "60 Watt Silver Lining"

Wow, now there is a blast from the past. I knew Mark when he lived in Columbus and a member of ‘The Cowboys’, a sorta punk/‘new wave’ local band at the time. I still have their only 45 released at that time. In fact, we were sitting in Crazy Mama’s (a club in the OSU area) on High Street, he gave me the 45, (which he had a bunch selling them at the club), and as we sat and talked, wrote a rambling little note on the 45 cover, and signed it ‘Billie Lee’, the name he went by with the Cowboys. That 45 is worth some bucks, but may be more so as he signed it.

Eventually he and others put together another band called The Naked Skinnies (which another friend of mine played drums), I have their only 45 from that time as well, and they soon moved to San Francisco. It was there that he eventually formed The American Music Club.

Mark was/is incredible. Obviously a gifted writer, but also, a very nice guy if you could penetrate his personality. A very interesting mind to listen to, either through his music or by talking to. A larger than life personality even back in the ‘old days’.

@bkeske
Thanks for the Mark Eitzel stories! His concert monologues are legendary. I can only imagine what he is like to talk to. I lived in Ohio for 3 years in the 80's, and my job frequently had me on High Street near the OSU campus. There was a great record store in that area that I think was called Singing Dog Records.

One of my favorite concert stories happened in Columbus. I went to the Agora Ballroom to see The Psychedelic Furs. Right before the show started someone walked up to me and asked "what I thought the first song would be?" This contest idea had never occurred to me, so I went with the first song that came to mind, which was "Into You Like a Train." Turns out I was right; and, the bewildered look that he gave me was priceless!