Weekly 7

Good morning!

In an effort to improve productivity (and stave off the onset of insanity), I have decided to institute a new Friday team-building, target-focusing, official-sounding ... thing:

The Weekly 7 Question Of The Week!:
This week's question: What are your top 7 favorite albums of all time?
These are my own personal criteria, but feel free to supplement with your own if necessary:

1. Listenability: A favorite album should be one I can just put on and walk away from, letting it play through without wanting to skip over half of the songs.

2. Resonance: A favorite album should mean something to you, wheter it elicits emotion, gets you excited to talk about it, or just makes a great soundtrack for a party

3. Album-like Length: It doesn't need to actually be on that old-school wax stuff to be an album, but it's gotta have at least seven songs. I mean, c'mon, we're not taking demos here.

Addendum: Please don't say "(so-and-so's) Greatest Hits!" That's just cheating, and I won't tolerate it. Greatest hits albums have no character.
Here are mine, to get you started, in no particular order (you can order yours (or mine) if you like):

- In A Major Way, E-40: A great album by an underappreciated pioneer. Anytime you hear some nouveau south-hop thuggadoccio warble out "eezy-meezy, ma cheezy," E-40 (and those guys that made "Double-Dutch Bus") should be getting royalties.

- Rock Spectacle, Barenaked Ladies: Not a greatest hits because it was a live album, BNL's inspired Toronto concert recording has much of the group's best work, along with two really funny hidden tracks.

- Weezer (blue), Weezer: Wow. I just listen to this album and am blown away that all of my geek-age angst could be so well captured in one work of art. Yes, I feel safe and sane in the garage, too.

- Bizzare Ride II The Pharcyde, The Pharcyde: If I had ever been getting high in my dorm in college, this would be my favorite album all by itself ... but, alas, I never went to MSU. And still, this song is testament to a tragically doomed, yet immensely talented hip-hop band. If only Fatlip hadn't lived what they were singing ... Damn, this album's funny.

- The Slim Shady LP, Eminem: Homegrown hip-hop in its purest, mostest-insanest form, Mr. Mather's first Dr. Dre-produced work made ICP look like Marie and Donnie when it came out. I'll never look at mushrooms the same way again.

- The Low End Theory, A Tribe Called Quest: This is the greatest hip-hop album by the greatest hip-hop group ever.

- Coltrane For Lovers, John Coltrane: Is this a greatest hits? Some may say so, but I don't and that's not how it was introduced to me. It is, in fact, a beautiful mood piece (or should it be "mood peace") that has a undeniably powerful effect on people. If you've never heard it, to listen to it is to put your heart in a different context. Perhaps some of the coolest music of our time.
And you?,
Ron M.