Well liked albums from each of the 50 years of my life (1971-2021)

  The first album from Van Halen, just wow!  This is one of those albums that makes me wish I was born 7-10 years earlier so that I could have experienced it when people were hearing it for the first time!  I think it would blow my mind!  Even the cover, I would say, "Whoa, these guys look cool!" followed by a Butthead type laugh!  They had the rock chops along with so much groove, bounce and swagger!  Eddie was able to tame a very saturated guitar tone with great muting of string noise and techniques that would change electric guitar forever!  Michael Anthony's bass playing complimented the guitar nicely.  David Lee Roth had the perfect charisma for this band.  Let's go through the tracks... Runnin' With the Devil : Starts out with that bass thump and the song pulls you in to the album to come.  It is a solid opener.  Eruption : Starts with a killer drum fill and goes into one of the most famous guitar solos ever.  You got tha...

Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols , it's just a kick-ass rock 'n roll album!  It's got lots of attitude, big power chords and Chuck Berry inspired riffing.  The songs are catchy and John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) has a snarly vocal that has influenced many a punk and non-punk since.  Many of the songs on Bollocks have been covered by other bands over and over, songs like Holidays in the Sun, God Save the Queen, and especially Anarchy in the U.K. The Sex Pistols only toured the US once on a short 2 week tour of the deep south in 1978.  It was a crazy tour that Noel E. Monk managed.  Noel went on to manage Van Halen from 1978 to 1985.  This a spoiler alert for a future blog... Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols was important in shaking up the mid-seventies music scene.  I think it was a similar shake up to the "grunge movement" of the early 90's, more on that later.  Some of my favorite music ever came out of the...