Lovely Recordings

My music collection is probably best described as eclectic. It all started in my late teens and then particularly in my early twenties when I stopped smoking and picked up a CD habit instead. Perhaps worse on the pocket, but at least I had something to show for it afterwards. And better on the lungs.

List #2 is international, avoiding the ‘audiophile’ albums as per your recommendation.

The late 80s and early 90s were tough times for a teenage music nerd. Pop radio and MTV was all hair metal and watered-down hip-hop, there was no internet to foster discovery of new sounds, and the grunge movement had not yet ignited. Somehow I managed to latch onto some albums that wove big melodic hooks into songs with more than four chords. There tended to be good studio production and instrumentation that leant itself to close listening. While I did not know it at the time, these early exposures to recordings with aural depth set me on a path toward full-scale audio buffoonery.

Thought I would send another batch of things I consider chestnuts of mine...

Beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s a wave of new traditional music spread over the world. Spurred in part by The Band, musicians that were originally more rock oriented embraced trad and trad musicians played with a different kind of drive. This was not fusion -- the point was not to fuse different elements but rather to use the drive of rock (or another radical reorientation – see Kirk and Dilla below) to get back to the essence of traditional forms and to make them forceful for audiences who thought of the music as old fashioned. Here are a few of my favorites, as well as a few others that I think fit into this mold even if the musicians would never admit it! I’ve definitely expanded the category a bit, but they are all lovely recordings.

The following is a list of 15 recordings that I enjoy. They are listed in no particular order, and they are simply the first recordings that came to mind. I expect that I will kick myself shortly after sending in this list for leaving out hundreds of other great recordings that I hold in high regard. I hope that these recordings provide you with as much listening pleasure as they provide me.