the best ef the 1990's The Ramones

by matthew mackay

We’re Outa Here After thirty years and a

Beastie Boys

Hello Nasty

This album is so musically lush and dense it’s almost symphonic. The 90s answer to Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, Hello Nasty proves that maybe, just maybe, “the kids are alright.”

Captain Beefheart Grow Fins This new box set documents one of the best minds and voices in music. Now a painter, this box is ’ unfortunately as close as many will get toa Beefheart concert. In the beginning, Beefheart was Zappa’s guide, and this box shows Zappa's debt to “the man from Venus.”

Miles Davis

On the Corner

Jazz lovers universally hate this album, but the work has been re-evaluated in the 90s. Miles invented hip hop-in 1972, and you can hear echoes of this in much of today’s tunes. Unfortunately, the Columbia CD is a poor remaster. Wait for the upcoming Mobile Fidelity Gold CD version, due out next year. Best $50 bucks you’ ll ever spend.

Steve Earle EI Corozon A dried out Steve Earle

wins the war against banal

cross over country music

with this knock out punch. This album is what Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks was to

songwriters in the 70’s. It

either inspired you to work

harder, or quit altogether.

billion sets of two minute tunes, the Ramones bow out gracefully with a star studded cast of guest performers. Still the best group to ever dodge beer

R.L. Burnside bottles at CBGBs.

Come On In

This remix of hard core Chicago blues by rap producers should have been a travesty, but it works. This new perspective on the blues will bring a new audience to a great American art form.

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Ry Cooder

Afro Cuban All Stars The best Cuban musicians you never heard tastefully

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if yj aie original Velvets, and lets sounded better, and Zappa Ravelt stay ous yy y l ry Sa collectors retire their fo was at his pop music best in albums in the 80s. Have a tian esyY 1971 Bolivar and build a eee lan zm ees. Lets “i oa ore shire to Ricky Ricardo. 7 / “AY: percha stons sy Ba ) _ 6, Alexander Spence i i] rc Oar Uy, fi Oasis Conceived and written while a iallilcaeat R A Be Here Now resident of Bellevue Hospital, Oar — oF o he. m If being the Beatles means sums up the psychedelic 60s. The ce : a a firs A cranking out meaty power worst selling album in Columbia ee ze a a eM, ee Le e/ pop, well, these guys are history, most of us had to do with a : a . el, a ae e EAN the Beatles. If they can fifth generation bootleg. This is the is — s nie e : ORI avoid drug-induced comas, only album you’d need to explain the y 3 Dye ona L iS RORY the Gallaghers will have 60s to an alien (or someone who zh oF e a | : wy one of the strongest insists on wearing a hat backwards). >:- *«~ ecade. There are better r catalogues of the next Spence died penniless in a trailer park

musicians, but none as exuberant and playful as Forbert in front of the fans. This live set captures him at his best.

Van Morrison

The Healing Game

Hope for us all. You can get older, fatter, balder-and better. Van finally sheds his new age slumming and returns to his alcoholic Christian soul roots. Work so personal you almost feel like a voyeur.

XTC

Apple Venus

Andy Partridge reinvents himself as the quintessential Englishman, self effacing and pantheistic. The most druid album of the decade, a few listens of this will have you hugging rocks and sacrificing pets.

Z (Wee

decade.

chicken wire. in honky onks have putified his

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Patti Smith Peace and Noise

Older, wiser, sadder, better.

America’s best poet, and

logical heir to Ginsberg and Kerouac. One of the few of

us who tragedy makes stronger. And the hairy armpits are a bonus! I fell in love with her when she opened for the long forgotten Blondie in 1975.

Tom Waits

Beautiful Maladies

This greatest hits collection is a musical time capsule. In a tad over an hour, Waits gives the listener the history of American music from Steven Foster to John

« Cage.

Velvet Underground Peel Slowly and See

Brian Wilson :

I Just Wasn‘t Made For These Times Updated “teenage symphonies to God”, with help from high priest Don Was. A mix of new and older Beach Boys tunes __ updated for the 90s, Wilson proves he never went away. The bad news is the CD is barely 30 minutes long.

Frank Zappa

200 Motels

After years of legal wrangling, Ryko finally _ pried this soundtrack from the corporate lawyer’s clammy hands. We can retire our treasured, ravaged vinyl

copies and hear one of the

last April, and Oar, remastered by | Sundazed Records this year and packaged with outtakes and alternates, is the best tombstone he could have.

Gram Parsons and the Grievous Angels Live

A 1996 remix of the classic 1973 concert by the man who single handedly bridged country and rock. The rare gold CD is sonically superior to the muddled 1982 pressing and worth searching out. A cornerstone album by a man who was a comerstone.

Elvis Presley

The Complete 50s Masters

No one will ever be this brilliant and intense. Elvis was the foundation of rock and roll. It doesn’t matter that the king died in exile. This was where it started, and we all should be eternally thankful for those first five years. No artist will ever equal those sessions.