9-12. Grateful Dead – The Closing of Winterland (4 CDs)

There’s going to be a lot of Grateful Dead on this list. Mostly live albums though, I think I only own two studio albums by them. I’ve always felt the Dead were unfairly maligned because of their fanbase (which can be a bit overzealous) rather than their actual music. Many people that slam on them do so because hating the Grateful Dead is “fashionable” to some degree. I don’t doubt that a lot of people genuinely wouldn’t like it, but many people just regurgitate the things they’ve heard others say and have little to no experience with their actual music. And how could they considering the band only made one video and was seldom played on the radio? You’d have to go out of your way to hear them so it’s not like being annoyed by U2 or something… who are everywhere.

13. U2 – War

I don’t own a lot of U2 (that was a great segue though), but the few albums I do own I really enjoy. This is pre-rock star pretension U2 and includes classics like “New Year’s Day” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” This is the album that first grabbed the world’s attention though and set them on the course superstar status though.

14. Shujaat Khan – Shujaat Khan

Shujaat Khan was born into one of India’s most prominent musical families where music is often a hereditary profession. He is the son of Vilayat Khan who is widely considered along with Ravi Shankar and Nikhil Banerjee as one of the three greatest sitarist of the 20th century. Shujaat is poised to hold that distinction for the 21st century. Like his father (and unlike many other sitarists) he frequently sings while playing. This disc contains six short ragas and is a favorite of mine to give people to introduce them to Indian music since no performance goes much past ten minutes. I’ve seen him in concert twice and hopefully will get to see him again.

15. R.L. Burnside – Mississippi Hill Country Blues

This is an album of just R.L. and an acoustic guitar. Hypnotic, pulsating, stripped down Hill Country blues. I’m glad R.L. had some success because too many of the Hill Country blues greats had a lot of critical acclaim, but not much financial success to match it. Granted his came late in life, but it was good to see one of the legends get his proper due. This disc contains many of Burnside’s standards like “Skinny Woman,” “Shake ‘Em On Down,” and “Poor Black Mattie.” These recordings were done over a fifteen year period from the late sixties to the early eighties and the quality of playing is uniform throughout. It sounds like it was conceived as one album and not a collection of singles. One of my favorite albums by him.

16-17. Various Artists – Karma Culture 2 (2 CDs)

Two disc set of Indian (and Indian influenced) electronic and ambient music. I love a lot of that kind of stuff like MIDIval PunditZ, Tabla Beat Science, Karsh Kale, etc., but a lot of stuff in this collection is very forgettable. I think I bought it because it had Karsh Kale and some others that I liked and figured it would expose me to a bunch of new stuff that I’d love, but sadly that wasn’t the case. I still throw it in every now and then as background music, but I don’t recall there really being anything I fell in love with that I wasn’t already a fan of.

18. Frank Zappa – Tinseltown Rebellion

Frank Zappa was one of the first artists from the sixties that I really got into. He was so prolific as an artist that I only own a tiny sliver of his recorded output (over sixty albums) and probably won’t ever have it all because I’m into too many different styles and can’t funnel that much of my limited budget into one performer. Anyway, this live disc recorded in 1979 and 1980 features a lot of the political and social satire Zappa was so well known for. Not my favorite Zappa that I own by a mile it’s still fun to throw in the player occasionally, especially to hear massively reworked versions of “Peaches En Regalia,” “I Ain’t Got No Heart” and “Tell Me You Love Me.”