Albums2010 Project

Some months ago, the Missus and I were in Iowa Falls and I needed a new t-shirt for reasons passing understanding. So we ran into the Wal-Mart and I found this shirt:



Pretty cool shirt, huh? Anyway, one of the bonuses for buying this shirt was that you got a subscription to Rolling Stone for a few months absolutely free. I did my free stint with Rolling Stone and was going to cancel, but got lazy and never sent off the notice and so they keep right on coming and I keep right on reading them. When I read this week's voluminous cover story on the making of the Rolling Stones' epic album Exile On Main Street, I got to thinking. Whatever happened to the album?

Not just any old album, but the concept of the album. We live in an increasingly digital age, where more and more, the music business is moving away from albums and towards singles. We are becoming a society where instant gratification is the norm, so we don't care about the rest of the songs on the hot new CD. We just want that one sexy single we heard on the radio when we were driving to work the other day. iTunes, here we come!

The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. I too was becoming part of the digitized, lazy generation. I too had stopped looking for and buying actual real-live albums and to me, that seemed such a shame. Looking back on my experience with the world of music- my first radio, my first cassettes, I was surprised to see that there were a large number of very good albums from my childhood that I remember listening to and enjoying a great deal- so I thought I should spend sometime listening to them and seeing how well they've done with age and remembering what exactly they meant to me way back in the day.

So, the Albums2010 Project was born. From June 1st, 2010 to June 1st, 2011 I'm going to make it my goal to find, listen to and review 100 albums that have impacted my life and my love of music- and the lives of the people I know. I'll do this in no particular order with no rankings at all. Just whatever I feel like listening to at the time.

I'm hoping some of y'all out there will join me on this venture (or make a suggestion or two), but it's cool if you don't. Either way, hopefully I can listen to some really good music, re-discover old favorites and maybe find some new kick-ass music that I can enjoy.

P.S. I've decided not to count Greatest Hits Albums. There's only one that I can think of worthy of including on a list like this and that's Bob Marley's Legend album. But if peeps out there want to pitch me a Hits collection, feel free. I'm not without feelings and always willing to listen. :-)