Token rock album

Sgt Pepper, duh.

all albums in collection should be rock cos rock is only real music everything else shit. jazz wank shit richie blackmore better than jon coaltrain. soul is ok like sam and dave real music.

well, not sure about the older sgt pepper style stuff, but at various points through the 90s this seemed to be screamadelica, whats the story morning glory, urban hymns

Exile on Main Street. Sergeant Pepper is not rock. It was kind of revolutionary more than 30 years ago but now it is just plain boring.

Jazz fans - 'Aja', 'Rain Dogs'. Classical fans - 'Abba Gold', 'Lateralus'. Techno - 'OK Computer', proving once again that techno bods are the most boring and pretentious people on Earth

Alex, I would stick up for Sgt Pepper but here is not the place. The point is surely this isn't about picking what you think is the best rock album but about choosing the equivalent of Kind of Blue (ie. canonical 'greatest' album ripe for clueless/begrudging crossover purchase potential). Take Gareth's point about a younger generation being a different story.

Nick, Sgt Pepper does in no way stand up to Kind of Blue. Pepper sounds extremely DATED, Kind of Blue is an all-time classic, sounding as fresh as 40 years ago. Sgt Pepper does simply not stand up to this standard. Therefore I propose Exile. Firstly it is a true rock classic, secondly it did not age as Pepper did.

alex, isn't the question about what is most likely to be found in someones house/collection than anything to do with the actual perceived quality of any record?

i like exile, but i have a hard time believing that it would be the ONE rock record that somebody owned.

Most Stones fans I know don't even own it

gareth is right in his understanding of the question. Assuming that kind of blue or What's going on (or Exodus) are the most *rockist* albums of their genre, rephrase it to find which rock album is the most jazzist or soulist or reggaeist (I know that sounds truly appaling but bear with me...). Nb This isn't the same thing as saying that it sounds jazzy, but has the characteristics which would probably appeal to a jazz fan i.e technical excellence, improvisation etc

All right. I misread the question. I thought it said "Which token rock (or pop) album SHOULD someone who loves jazz etc. have in their collection."

But I still doubt it would be Sgt Pepper. Maybe Michael Jackson's Thriller or something like this. Sgt Pepper did simply not sell enough, not even to jazz etc. afficionados.

I ph34r dq is a tad premature with that Tool suggestion. Nice thought, tho'. I vote for Queen's "A Night At The Opera" for the classical dude and probably a Jimi Hendrix LP for our jazz-loving freak.

Thriller???!!! I think not. Do you know any classical/jazz aficionados, alex?

Dire Straits.

Tim is OTM.

Though there's an interpretation of the question Which token rock (or pop) album would someone who loves jazz, classical,soul or any other genre have in their collection? that somehow makes me say: Frank Zappa. I mean that's the artist jazz/classic/soul bores always rate.

Do you know any classical/jazz aficionados, alex?
One of my cousins plays violin. He loves classical music. One of his faves is Thriller. But actually I was arguing from the statistical pov in terms of album sales.

But anyway why does the jazz lover's rock album have to be jazzy? The rock lover's choice of Kind of Blue as jazz album reveals that he does not choose the rockiest jazz album. That would be Bitches Brew or something else of Miles jazz rock period. I think the pop/rock choice of the jazz/classical aficionado must be very typical for pop/rock and not close to the genre he really loves. Otherwise he would prefer to buy a real jazz/classical album.

Alex - rock has an inferiority complex in relation to jazz/classical, so I think a rock fan is more likely to defer to the idea of a "proper" jazz album, whereas a jazz fan is more likely to go for a rock album that "takes rock further"/"transcends rock's limitations".

These are totally baseless predictions, of course.

I agree with Tim. And in my experience these things aren't based on sales or closeness to favoured genre, but on what people are told is a 'good album', one of the 'peaks' of a genre's achievement. That's why I, as someone totally clueless about jazz, bought 'Kind of Blue'. I had no idea what it sounded like, but it always seemed to appear in those 'best records of all time' lists.

a jazz fan is more likely to go for a rock album that "takes rock further" etc
Which is Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms"?
I feel a contradiction here, am I the only one?

Alex - i never said they weren't mentalists.

these things aren't based on sales Come on Nick, Kind of Blue must be one of the top ten jazz albums in terms of sales of all time. As there are quite a lot of people reading those best of lists and buying those records. Anyways to get on one of those all-time best of lists an album usually must have sold already quite a lot.

Yeah but Kenny G = v. popular as well and no one's mentioned him yet (although to come to think of it, perhaps he *should* be included).

i never said they weren't mentalists.
Who? Dire Straits or the jazz lovers? DS are not exactly extending rock's limits are they? But it could well be that DS have made the token rock album for jazz lovers. In that case jazz people would not exactly have bought a rock watershed album. Tim, I still did not get your argumentation.

1) Mentalists = jazz fans, although Dire Straits too.

2) For jazz fans, making jazzy rock = taking rock further.

3) This is correct in one sense and absolutely incorrect in another.

4) "Token" != "Watershed".

Even the very limited assumption of common tastes implied by this question may not happen in practice. I was speaking to a couple of orchestral musicians (trumpet and trombone) at a New Year party. Having struggled to keep up as they discussed classical music I asked them if they listened to pop or jazz. Of course, they said: they both liked the Dave Matthews Band and Harry Connick Jnr. The trumpet player liked Arturo Sandoval. Of course, while all this sounded like stuff I would not much like, I could hardly express an opinion having heard very little Connick and nil DMB or Sandoval.

the only rock albums i have are 'the who sell out', 'a quick one', and 'are we not men?'.

You mean you're not counting Belle & Sebastian as rock, ethan? You minx you! Mind you: Devo?? I have a feeling Billy meant pop or rock anyway.

Having know quite a few jazzers in my time, I think they're much more likely to have 'Thriller' in their collection than 'Sgt. Pepper' - 'Thriller' was produced by Quincy Jones, apart from anything else, a name that means quite a bit to lots of jazz fans. Besides, jazzers - esp. of the 'Acid'/'Soul' variety - tend to be fairly down on unfunky white guys like the Beatles...

I am familiar with some undie-kids who dug the 'mats and little else rock.

I concede the point on 'jazzers'. Although in my defence I was thinking more George Melly than Gilles Peterson. I stand my choice for classical fans though, esp. of a certain age.

indie-pop is not rock! those are the only albums with HEAVY ELECTRIC GUITARS that i have (except king of rock and rock the bells and uh mezzanine heh).

Some people use 'rock' to cover all that shit. Like others use 'pop'. Whether hip-hop fits into it I don't know.

Just looked at the question again to see Billy clarifies the point by saying 'rock (or pop)' later on.

isn't jazz 'pop' to a classical-lover? and soul to a jazz-lover? the question isn't very well-phrased in that respect, surely the pop records in a soul fan's collection would be everything? anyway regardless of the question it's always much more fun to restate that the only rock bands i like are the who and devo.

Non-rock fans don't generally go for rock that mixes with their thing. ie, country fans don't cotton to Will Oldham, jazz lovers don't dig the Lounge Lizards and so on. Their token rock album is an extreme cartoon headbop they file next to comedy which they might throw on when the mood strikes. So, Metallica or AC/DC.

I'll leave it up to the ILM massive to decide what is pop or rock, it's too big a task for me (you can throw in hip hop if you want but finding which hiphop lp appeals to classical listeners could be tough (unless you include Dre's baroque string stylings)).

I'm sure jazzers would be infuriated by the way all jazz(be-bop, dixieland, big band, free jazz etc) is lumped into one by *rock* listeners. Similarly the way classical or soul or whatever is dealt with in the same way...

Jazz: Jethro Tull - Aqualung, Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms, Beatles - Rubber Soul

R&B/Pop: Aerosmith's Greatest Hits

Classical: Probably all sorts of Beatles stuff, ELO? Yes? Pink Floyd?

Modern Compostion: Zappa or Beefheart or something

Most Stones fans I know don't even own it

thats so right on.

it took me awhile to buy it because i was afraid of the greatest of it. Beggers Banquet is a token rock album for me. love it to pieces.

Now that I've looked up "mentalist" in the dictionary, half the posts on this board have stopped making any sense at all to me. I'm sure someone will call me a "mentalist" now.

I've never met anyone whose only rock album is something like Tull or Yes. That would really blow my mind. There are definitely a lot of Zappa/Beefheart/Bungle-loving modern jazz fans but I doubt it would be the only rock in their collection. Someone with a token rock album, i.e. someone with no real taste for rock, would have something more mainstream: depending on taste or age U2, Beatles, Radiohead, Guns'n'Roses, maybe Springsteen.

I’ve known only a few music-lovers whose focus was primarily on Western Art Music. Those I've known, I’ve never been close to. They were usually college teachers of mine – and two or three times my age.

(One of my teachers was a world renown authority on Wagner; another is married to the "Curator and Director, Emeritus" of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and a folk musician in her own right. Another had a "Free James Brown" bumper sticker on his car. Guess which one I liked the least?)

One time, though, I got a peek into the mindset of the classical music fan when I attended a get-together my college was hosting for prospective students. It was in a ritzy NYC apartment owned by two married alumni. You could call them yuppies without condescension: no longer young, perhaps, but still beautiful (even if the wife was a little drunk), and they managed to use their Great Books education to make enough money to buy a huge apartment of overlooking Central Park. Maybe they were lawyers, I don’t really remember.

On their bookshelves was The Great Cultural Artifacts of the Western World: every canonical book and classical music disc you’d care to name. I wasn’t able to look through all their records, of course (how nosy do you think I am?) but I spotted only one rock disc in the apartment: The Beatles’ Yesterday…and Today.

These were vinyl records that must’ve been bought around the time it came out, so I imagined that in the sixties, these two were bright young pretentious things on the order of Diane from Cheers. They were classical music…enthusiasts (ahem) who finally condescended to listen to Beatlemusic, what with them putting strings on their rekkids and Leonard Bernstein getting his freak on over the Rock Revolution. The couple studiously listen to it a couple times; then the record was finally judged “interesting” (even if the arrangement for “Yesterday” was ultimately banal) and filed away without even the occasional listen.

They may have also had Sgt. Pepper, but I might be mixing memories up here.

I kept hearing about this rock music. I decided I wanted to find out about it so I bought a best of Supertramp(/Styx/Elton John). I decided I didn't like rock, so I stopped.

A good amount of jazz snobs I know own at least one Elvis Costello album.

Rock records my parents owned before I stole them:

"Aftermath" - Rolling Stones
"Rubber Soul" - Beatles
"Sgt. Pepper's" - Beatles
"East-West" - Butterfield Blues Band

And that was it. Everything else was folk and country.

I have an uncle who's an audiophile type, way into listening to symphonies really loud with headphones on cause he's nearly deaf, whose only rock albums are by Jethro Tull and Dire Straits. His name is Subramanian, oddly enough.

There is only one correct answer to this question: Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon. The token rock album for every non-rock fan.

(can i just point out that sgt pepper = bettah than kind of blue; as is brothahs in arms, come to think of it: kob = the a love supreme of coffee-table ambient noodling)

Ethan, I hope you know that the fact that you only like two rock bands makes you pretty much no different from most hip-hop fans I know.

Surely free jazzers will have a copy of 'Trout Mask Replica'? That is, if they've done the usual thing and sold all the indie rock they used to listen to before they became "enlightened."

The correct answer is probably a GH comp.

The Beatles: Red and Blue albums

Stones: Hot Rocks

Pink Floyd: DSoTM

If the purpose is to have one record representative of the classical "rock" genre: Led Zepplin IV