VMP Magazine

The rules of being a country music star used to be simple: you sing the songs the label picks for you, you show up to sing at the Opry when the label tells you to, and you’ll be off on a nice little singing career. This factory-esque system flourished — with a couple of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash shaped exceptions — from the first time a poor southerner with mandolin skills walked into a recording booth.

But rock music, particularly the Beatles and Dylan, had showed a generation of performers in every genre that it was possible to choose what you sing, and furthermore, be the one who writes it. You could be a star by following your own gut and doing what you wanted to do not only in the bars of Nashville, but in the recording studio too.

That’s how outlaw country was born; a whole wave of young stars — who liked the weed those hippies from the coasts were smoking — decided to take agency over their own careers and make the music they wanted to make, some of them even in a major label system. The genre title wasn’t clever: a lot of the songs were about how they saw themselves as outlaws, smoking dope and pillaging the American south on their tours.

Despite all odds, outlaw country has become an ensconced genre conceit in country music. Anytime a country singer does an album that doesn’t sound like mainstream country, it gets labeled as outlaw country. That doesn’t mean that it’s not outlaw country; it’s just hard to imagine Waylon Jennings trying to make an album that sounds like 1933 in 1973 like the people labeled outlaw country in 2016 are making albums that sound like 1976. That said, there are some modern albums that ascend the outlaw country throne. Doing what you consider to be “true” is the only hallmark of a good outlaw country album, and these 10 are the most true.

Soul music combines elements from R&B and African-American gospel music. It is born from the spirit and the secular, having an emphasis on vocalists and making use of a traditional call-and-response between the lead singer and chorus, but instead of strictly spiritual themes, it melds those themes with desire and heartbreak. It began in the '50s with artists like Sam Cooke and James Brown. By the '60s there were more distinct regional sounds like Southern and Memphis soul and Chicago soul with those differences inspired by record labels like Stax, Atlantic, Chess, and Motown (Detroit soul).

Over the last several years there has been a renewed interest in classic soul. Revivalists like Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings and Leon Bridges are keeping traditional soul alive and other genres like hip-hop and pop are doing their best to pay homage to their soul influences. In addition to artists are the fans themselves. As vinyl consumers, our interest in analog is a reflection of our interest in authentic connections with music. And there’s nothing like listening to a classic soul record where you can literally feel how deeply the singers are connected with the songs they’re singing, how the rhythm sections keep time with the melody, helping it stay down-home or lifting it up sky high. To quote the opening lines of one of my favorite classic soul songs by Arthur Conley (co-written with Otis Redding): “Do you like good music? That sweet soul music?” If so, here are 10 classic soul records you absolutely need to hear.

Where does one begin when writing about an artist on the level of John Coltrane? Do you write about his unbelievable influence as the father of spiritual jazz, the sub-genre in which so many fantastic records reside? Or do you talk about the journey that brought him there, one of addiction, recovery, and finding himself in spirituality? Or do you simply say, hey, this man was one of the greatest artists, of any genre, to live on this planet?

I’m inclined to go with the last statement. It’s not just that Coltrane personally welcomed me into a world of music that had previously only intimidated me. There are plenty of other gateway artists for jazz, and perhaps even too many to name. If it hits you the right way, Coltrane’s music just sticks to your brain, never allowing you to forget bits and pieces of his work much like you’ll always remember the hook of certain pop songs.

Unlike manufactured tunes made for radio (no shots, I love some of ‘em, too), properly digesting the work of John Coltrane does require some work. But on that note, I’d like to share this quote from Coltrane himself, as part of this discussion shared by Blank On Blank, because I think it’s important to keep in mind when listening to jazz:

“If there’s something you don’t understand, you have to go humbly to it. You don’t go to school and sit down and say I know what you’re getting ready to teach me, you know? You sit there and you learn. You open your mind. you absorb. You’ve got to be quiet, you’ve got to be still to do this.”

Before moving on to our list of Trane’s best 10 albums to own on vinyl, it’s worth noting that we already covered perhaps his most essential record, A Love Supreme, in our first jazz primer. So, yeah, we didn’t want to cover the same ground here. Lucky enough for us (and anyone interested in his music), the man has plenty of other material to study and adore. And yes, I’ve once again worked with my friend/jazz musician, Ryan Kowal, on this list. Dig it.

Back when A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip was a teenager, the legend goes, his father overheard him playing some hip-hop and said it reminded him of bebop. That connection, drawn in the opening seconds of Tribe’s 1991 album The Low End Theory, at first seems a little odd. Musically, late ’80s rap and mid-’40s jazz have very little in common, the former defined by 4/4 rhythms and looped melodies, the latter by its “anything goes” approach to rhythmic structure and melodic composition. But if you look at each genre as a cultural movement, paying particular attention to the backlash each initially received, hip-hop and bebop share more parallels than you’d expect.

Both genres succeeded in infuriating the majority of the preceding generation, usually a sure sign of their cultural importance. Sure enough, jazz and hip-hop have both stood the test of time, and as is also nearly inevitable for two genres that have been around more than 20 years, commingled in extraordinary ways. Tribe’s Low End Theory kicked off a very fertile era of jazz-influenced hip-hop, with artists on both coasts coming to treat Roy Ayers and Art Blakey records with the same reverence that producers viewed James Brown and the Incredible Bongo Band’s drum breaks 10 years prior.

Twenty-five years (almost to the day) after The Low End Theory’s release, jazz rap’s heyday has come and gone, but a new era seems to be dawning in all corners of the genre. Today, there’s a weekly club night in L.A. called “The Low End Theory” that’s the epicenter of a jazz/electronic/hip-hop melting pot, jazz bands cover hip-hop tracks, and mainstream rappers regularly recruit horn players for their albums. On this cusp of an exciting era of cross-pollination, we take a look back at 10 jazz rap fusion attempts that are must-haves in your vinyl collection if you’re a fan of either hip-hop or jazz.

Before we get into the most sensual list that's ever been run on Vinyl Me, Please, some background on quiet storm. The quiet storm genre takes its name from a late-night D.C. radio show in the late '70s, which in turn took its name from a Smokey Robinson album (more on that later) whose title track became a kind of theme song for host Melvin Lindsey. This format became incredibly popular with urban adult audiences and similar quiet storm shows popped up at radio stations across the country. It’s a catch-all term for R&B ballads and pop, a kind of soft soul version of soft rock.

In the '90s quiet storm evolved to include neo-soul, another catch-all label for a style of music that didn’t seem to fit in the R&B/pop of the time. More than just smooth R&B and slow jams, it’s music that unwinds a long day, music that makes us feel human again, when we want to focus on ourselves or have some adult time with our significant other, acknowledging that our needs and desires are important and universal. We love. We feel. We are real. In those intimate moments of alone time or together time, any one of the following albums can help set the mood. If you are looking to unwind or looking to get busy, pour yourself a glass of your favorite beverage and turn down the lights. You’re about to enter the Quiet Storm.

When I was a kid, my parents bought me a guitar and got me lessons from a local teacher. He asked me to list 10 songs I wanted to learn and, outside of a couple alt-rock songs that were popular on MTV at the moment, I leaned more heavily on acts I learned about from my parents: Hendrix, the Stones, Cream, Zeppelin, the Doors, etc. Rather than just lead me through those tracks and have me mimic along, he said, "A lot of what you like is based on the blues, so I'll teach you about that, and then you'll be able to figure out the rest (though, to be fair, we did start with "House of the Rising Sun" and "Sunshine of Your Love" as the gateway into learning chords). From there, we worked backwards, learning the scales, and a lot of the history, like who influenced, covered and/or ripped off who.

Thanks to that teacher, a public library with an expansive CD and book selection, a lot of friends to jam with and understanding parents who'd take me to the local Cajun restaurant to see some great cover bands and, later, the Stones at Madison Square Garden, I got to know the blues at a relatively early age. So, based on personal experience and some hindsight after further exploration, here are 10 albums for anyone looking to start a collection of essential blues albums, with many apologies to the dozens of pioneers I left out.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a time when bands took to its logical conclusion the one-word band name; a time when you could grab three random CDs from your binder and end up with either the proper ingredients for a meal (Cracker, Cake, Cranberries) or an impromptu construction job (Helmet, Tool, Pavement); a time when bands loved doing things (Smashing Pumpkins, Throwing Copper, Counting Crows) and juxtaposition (Spacehog, Soundgarden, Candlebox). It was a time when “alternative” rock saturated the airwaves, and perhaps not all of it has received the respect it deserves, for the '90s was a decade of abundance.

Full disclosure: my father bought me a turntable during one of the Christmases I had during high school, when I was right in my purist phase and middle-class enough to ask for expensive shit like a turntable in the first place.

I disclose this because I never used the damn thing and it’s probably still under my childhood bed. Question my credentials if you want, but I know precisely what I’d cop to start my collection when I eventually exit the stage of freelance-broke-boy. Here are the 10 Best Underground Rap Albums you need to own on vinyl.

Psychedelic rock is an increasingly problematic blanket term. Originally coined as a way of talking about music made under the influence of LSD, and often completely bewildering to those unfamiliar with hallucinogens, it’s a term increasingly applied to wah wah-indulgence and a tired brand of faux-occultist imagery; not to mention the insufferable 60’s revivalist image that often comes with the term in the modern day. If you dig a little deeper, though, there’s a mass of great neo-psychedelic records that are worthy peers to the pioneering records that changed subculture forever. It’s entirely possible in the modern day to make transcendent, hypnotic and utterly immersive records - even with such a rapid-paced music consuming culture. Whether it’s psychedelia via mass guitar tumults or bizarre lyrical narratives, there’s a unique energy to the kind of music that can channel attention back inwards.

Good psychedelic rock should never be at the forefront, it should gently probe creativity and emotion from afar, which is why the following ten records are such a necessities to any record collection — and should be appreciated away from the distractions of digital music consumptions.

Heartbreak is one of the hardest things to go through. It manifests itself emotionally and physically, the turmoil seemingly never-ending. As music lovers we turn to music to help us ease the heartache because songwriters also get their hearts broken or their egos bruised or have an all-consuming sadness that only music can exorcise, be it through self-wallowing rock or uplifting dance music (just because it’s got a beat doesn’t make it any less gut-wrenching). The following breakup albums were either inspired by a particular breakup, about relationships in general, or just have that sound that matches what we feel, putting despair or indignation into music that our own pain identifies with.bre

Tom Waits is unlike any other working artist today. With equal parts vaudeville, blues, jazz, industrial, and experimental, Waits has made a body of work that spans nearly four decades and seventeen studio albums, with a slew of fantastic live albums to mention as well. He’s been covered by everyone from Bruce Springsteen and the Eagles to Rod Stewart, all the while maintaining his staunch personal mystique - part beat-poet-crooner, part bastardized Americana survivor, stalking the streets alongside the gin-soaked characters in his songs. So it’s no surprise that a walk through his catalogue is a journey certainly worth partaking in.

For the otherwise uninitiated, a foray into the immense discography of Tom Waits is a daunting task. Where does one begin? What period of his music is the best to listen to first, in order to best grasp the essence of the artist? Which of his seventeen albums contain the most interesting songs, but aren’t so far into the stratosphere of weirdness that they become tough to digest? After all, through his career Waits has made his way through a number of genres and styles, with guest musicians ranging from Les Claypool of Primus to Keith Richards to Carla Kihlstedt of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.

Below are ten fantastic Tom Waits albums to get you started on his immense body of work.

Twee pop: the gentle revolution that could. Often found underneath the indie rock umbrella — twee pop is best defined as melding pop songwriting to an aesthetic that recalls the sweet, the innocent and the past. Twee is as divisive as it is complex; much like emo, there are plenty of bands who have rejected the label out of fear of being distilled into something insulting. For every band like Belle & Sebastian that have staked out a musical identity out of tradition and history, there are others, like the Shop Assistants and Los Campesinos, that have shown how fun it can be to tear up the rulebook and do something else.

Twee pop’s modern roots can arguably be traced to one band that ruled 1980s’ England: the Smiths, a band who took the twee ethos and brought it to a massive audience. Morrissey said it took strength to be gentle and kind and people really took that to heart. But the same could be said about the work done by independent labels like Sarah Records provided a formative ground for acts or NME attempting to will entire trends into existence with their C86 tape. Meanwhile, American bands like Beat Happening and Tullycraft took the simplicity-via-purity ethos and used it to inspire an entirely different set of bands, leveling out the playing field for a more diverse set of musicians.

Here’s a selection of 10 albums that provide a varied introduction to twee, both past and present. And one note: Historically, twee’s strong associations with DIY meant releases were generally designed with the cassette and CD formats in mind, with vinyl releases a rarity. As a concession, albums that were readily available were chosen for inclusion when possible.

Unlike its bigger, more well-known siblings in the hip-hop subgenre hierarchy, instrumental hip-hop still hasn’t had its true breakout moment. And truth be told, it probably never will. We as music addicts tend to prefer music with words, be they meaningful and deep, melodic and fluffy, or some combination of other adjectives. Really, we’re at a point where instrumental music doesn’t reside on the same plane as its vocal-laden siblings. And that’s okay! As much as I love jazz, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I could put on Blue Train and most people would either think nothing of it or start wondering if they had been teleported to a cafe.

But that doesn’t take anything away from instrumental hip-hop. Much like the jazz to which it’s forever indebted, people either come around immediately to it or have some kind of experience that keeps them listening.

But without a massive amount of listeners or not, instrumental hip-hop will endure and, more importantly, prosper. That much has been evident following the biggest releases in the subgenre, such as groundbreaking albums from DJ Shadow and J Dilla. On the surface, these two producers and their respective “big” records couldn’t be more different, what with Entroducing’s beautiful and sprawling canvas and Donuts’ choppy, emotional, and immense movements.

At their core they’re really not that different at all. While their intentions may have not necessarily been exactly the same, what you get from listening to these two artists is their desire to manipulate sound without relying on the addition of someone else’s voice. The voice, in this case, is established by the manner in which they chop up, loop, and layer samples. And that right there, for me, is what keeps me coming back to instrumental hip-hop. It’s also why I think that if you’ve felt anything I’ve read here, you owe it to yourself to listen to other albums on this list too.

Oh jazz, you magnificent and beautiful genre. You’re having a bit of a cool-kid comeback, aren’t you, with all those young, hip cats toying with your sounds and messing with your traditions. Good, I say, because you’re a genre that’s incredibly unique and, as a result, seemingly difficult to get into for some. We’ve all been there. “Jazz? Nah, I don’t listen to that unless I’m at the dentist or in an elevator.” Fuck Kenny G and his majestic curls. Jazz deserves more than being relegated to uncomfortable situations. It deserves to be consumed by anyone and everyone willing to open their ears and feel what often isn’t being said but played.

That’s where this list can help. As a jazz lover myself, but nothing close to what I’d call a proper aficionado, I reached out to my close friend and gifted jazz musician, Ryan Kowal, to help compile this list and share his insight. Dude is a seriously talented composer, vibraphonist, drummer, pianist, etc., and you should check out his music on his website. And you should listen to these albums. If not all of them, at least one or two. Jazz is more than filler noise used to drown out the anxiety that comes when you’re praying to the dental gods for no cavities. It’s also more than a genre for uptight folks who’d sooner tell you why you should listen to one artist over another.

Let’s cut the bullshit, embrace the genre, and just listen to some of the best jazz albums ever recorded.

Covering another artist’s music is very much like babysitting someone else’s child. You can overfeed it, forget to change it, let it stay up past its normal bedtime, nurture it like your own, expose it to heretofore unknown influences, or neglect to give it the attention it deserves because you were too busy chugging tall ones and making out with the skinny adolescent from next door.

In the world of fantasy literature, you’re nobody until you’ve written a series of books. Preferably, a trilogy. While the recent awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Bob Dylan has (though a little controversially) stressed the similarities between literature and popular music, comparable trilogies in music are not all that common. They exist though, and when they occur, they account for some of pop music’s greatest pieces of cohesive storytelling. Even if the three albums are not explicitly tied together when it comes to their themes, album trilogies still succeed in painting a vivid picture of the artistic period the musician was going through at the time of recording them.

Three's a charm, so let us celebrate the 10 best album trilogies to own on vinyl, including the works of icons like Bob Dylan and the late David Bowie, as well as records from modern masters of hip-hop and electro.

When you talk to pretty much anyone about jazz, be he or she a novice or expert, you’re bound to discuss certain names. And among them, perhaps none is said more often than Miles Davis. The king of cool (shouts out to that lady in Billy Madison) has a storied career worthy of years upon years of studying, so I can understand any listener’s apprehension when it comes to diving into his discography. And it’s not just the fact that he released a lot of albums; dude also jumped into different ends of the jazz pool throughout his time on this planet. Whereas some of his earlier stuff is straight-ahead, laid-back jazz made for dinner parties, other records are more or less guaranteed to floor you with their experimental approach.

But hey, just as my good friend/jazz musician Ryan Kowal and I aimed to introduce readers to jazz as a genre, we’re here to do the same with Miles Davis’s extensive catalog. And if you read those articles, you will know that we covered two of his best records already: Kind of Blue and Live-Evil. As phenomenal as those albums are, we just didn’t want to retread any previously covered ground. Yes, you need to listen to them—seriously, you need to do that right now if you haven’t yet—but you also need to hear these if you’re looking for the essential Miles Davis albums. In addition to being his finest efforts, they also cover his varied and groundbreaking approach to jazz, a genre that surely wouldn’t be where it is today without Miles.

Look, if you’re reading this list on a website for a vinyl company, you are well aware of Bob Dylan. The guy who’s written the best body of work of any songwriter ever, the guy who made more classic albums in the '60s than anyone except maybe the Beatles, the only musician to ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s possible that Dylan is both overrated and underrated; his run of classic albums in the '60s are probably more revered than they should be, but his output since is actually considerably better than most critics or boomers would have you believe. He’s the only '60s musician who made essential music after 1979; he’s made recorded music for almost 55 years, and most of them have yielded great music.

I’m working on the assumption that basically everyone with a turntable has the Bob Dylan Vinyl Starter Kit: The Times They Are A-Changin’, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits and Blood on the Tracks. Those five albums are as prevalent in record stores as plastic placards separating albums, as prevalent as 45-year-old dudes looking for Captain Beefheart rarities. I would say roughly 78 percent of vinyl collectors don’t go further than that; the perception of Dylan writing mostly “terrible” albums since Blood on the Tracks, and the fact that it’s hard to tell which Dylan albums are worth it, throw that wall up for a lot of people. So, assuming you have those other five — if you don’t have those, you need them — here are the 10 best Bob Dylan albums to own on vinyl.

Lee Hazlewood is much more than a great moustache and the occasional Nancy Sinatra collaborator. In 1966, Hazlewood wrote and produced the (lady) Sinatra classic, “These Boots are Made for Walking.” He spent most of his career playing off the notoriety of this song, lingering in the shadows and writing country pop songs as catchy as anything on the radio. Still, fame often eluded the singer in a way it eludes many behind-the-scenes songwriters. But Hazlewood had no intention of ever staying behind the scenes. He was a rather prolific songwriter, releasing 18 records from 1963-1973. Not all of these albums are great — in fact, much of his best work came after this period of constant production — but Cowboy in Sweden (1970) is perhaps his best recording — and is out via a reissue by Light in the Attic — and Nancy & Lee is filled with fun covers and sultry originals.

Some time after Hazlewood died in 2007— his last album, released in 2006, was titled Cake or Death — Light in the Attic began excavating his best albums and re-issuing them for wide consumption. The label dove into his work with LHI Industries — a label he founded to release both his own music and the work of others. On November 25th, the label will be re-releasing Cowboy in Sweden, an album that has deserved proper release and reception since its inception. Hazlewood’s impact on modern music — both country and pop — has been immeasurable. His psychedelic tendencies slip into the cracks of Tame Impala’s backwards looking time warp, while his country delivery finds itself in the work of Sturgill Simpson. His vast discography can be tough to crack, so here are 10 Hazlewood albums worth checking out immediately.

By now you know that we're reissuing Miles Davis' Sorcerer as our Record of the Month for December 2017. Here are 10 more Miles Davis albums to get to continue your Miles Davis Studies.

When you talk to pretty much anyone about jazz, be he or she a novice or expert, you’re bound to discuss certain names. And among them, perhaps none is said more often than Miles Davis. The king of cool (shouts out to that lady in Billy Madison) has a storied career worthy of years upon years of studying, so I can understand any listener’s apprehension when it comes to diving into his discography. And it’s not just the fact that he released a lot of albums; dude also jumped into different ends of the jazz pool throughout his time on this planet. Whereas some of his earlier stuff is straight-ahead, laid-back jazz made for dinner parties, other records are more or less guaranteed to floor you with their experimental approach.

But hey, just as my good friend/jazz musician Ryan Kowal and I aimed to introduce readers to jazz as a genre, we’re here to do the same with Miles Davis’s extensive catalog. And if you read those articles, you will know that we covered two of his best records already: Kind of Blue and Live-Evil. As phenomenal as those albums are, we just didn’t want to retread any previously covered ground. Yes, you need to listen to them—seriously, you need to do that right now if you haven’t yet—but you also need to hear these if you’re looking for the essential Miles Davis albums. In addition to being his finest efforts, they also cover his varied and groundbreaking approach to jazz, a genre that surely wouldn’t be where it is today without Miles.

Since we've already gone over 10 blues LPs for beginners, we're back with another 10 to get you even more into the genre, its history and how it connects to the present. This time around, we've got more legends and tragic tales, big-name influencers along with some guys who've never quite attained the same amount of fame as their peers. It's a mixed bag that also brings in elements of country, ragtime, folk, gospel, soul, rock and funk, with the common thread of some amazing singing and guitar.

They say not to judge a book by its cover, so the same would hold for purchasing music, right? However, the Grammys recognize there is admirable skill and creativity required to channel the vibe of an album via its artwork. Presented to the art director, not the performer (unless they are also the art director), this ultimate industry appreciation for visual aesthetics dates back to to 1959.

Originally categorized as “Best Album Cover,” the prize was split into classical and nonclassical divisions from 1962-1965. 1966-1968 saw separate awards for both graphic arts and photography. The Grammy then became known as “Best Album Package” in 1974, changing again in 1994 to “Best Recording Package” as music formats varied. The next year, box sets were split into its own “Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition” category. Though the specifics may have changed, the memorable impact of an album’s presentation can brings as much joy and reminiscing as the music contained within. Of all the winners over the years, here are our all-time favorites and the story of how they came to be.

Oh, you thought we were done?

Given that we’re talking about an entire genre here, especially one with such a huge number of important players, it’s impossible to just throw out a single list of 10 records that newbies need in their collection. Hell, it’s difficult to just stick to 20! But look, once you get through those first 10 records and this additional batch, we’re confident that you’ll at least have a better grasp on the genre.

The almighty soundtrack is a very special kind of album. When we think of great soundtracks we think of how well a song fits a particular scene or how the score was an integral component to the story, successfully manipulating the emotions of the audience. I like to think of the soundtrack as the mixtape for the movie. Like any mixtape put together for a significant other, the song selection reveals things about the curator. In a soundtrack’s case, it's the filmmakers or music supervisor, and what the curator wants you to think about. The selections provide insight into the characters or scene, more than any amount of great acting and dialogue can tell you. A well-placed score cue lets you know that it’s time to be scared or nervous. A song can get the adrenaline going before the chase begins. It can be the punchline to a comedic scene. Whatever is happening on screen, it’s all there in music.

There are a TON of great soundtracks out there. Some soundtracks transcend the medium and are the best of all time no matter the format. There are also a lot of fantastic soundtracks that get overlooked for one reason or another. Without further ado, here are the 10 best soundtracks to own on vinyl.

Punk is an attitude. Punk is diverse. Punk is non-adherence to status quo. Musically speaking, if we put Classic in front of Punk, the sounds stand the test of time. For an LP to be Classic, it must be at least 26 years old; these Classic Punk albums broke ground before 1990. The records here are cornerstones of punk rock 'n' roll history; the bands represented both obscure and original in their own fantastic way. The formulation of punk music in the '70s and '80s, and it’s aforementioned greatness, paved way for modern acts that we now love; it may be the most influential movement in music history. If these 10 albums were never made, record collectors would have suffered mightily, and punk rock would surely have been of different mold. Think of them as the huge redwood tree in a field of shrubs, or the fast Aston Martin on a highway full of beaters. If you don’t have the albums summarized (drooled over) below, then it’s going to be really hard to be trusted.

Big factors with punk: weirdness, volume, aggression and ambition. Large misconception with punk: It doesn’t have to sound like a lo-fi piece of shit. There is no Ramones, no Sex Pistols, and no “how-did-you-leave-this-band-out” drama; each delegate is here for being a super spectacular version of it. Since everything revolves around time and place, we’re going in chronological order. These records are pillars in the house of bad religion, each a masterpiece of punk.

Since the mid-’90s, there has been wave after wave of “disco revival,” either in music or pop culture at large. Still, the genre can be a difficult one to navigate without the ideal context: on a good system in a good DJ set. Music lovers who get deep enough into soul or more recent dance music will eventually have a hard time ignoring disco. While the “(re-)edits” craze of the 2000s saw every producer /DJ and her dog bring ‘70s classics and obscurities more into line with contemporary dance sounds, there are staples whose original versions are well worth hunting down.

The disco era aldo gave birth to the 12” single, which spaced out one track across an entire side, resulting in a much louder product than an LP. As such, the format, catering to DJs, soon took over the genre. Accordingly, disco LPs run the gamut from those with one hit and mostly filler, to albums split between sappy ballads and dance grooves, to strong and sometimes overlooked full-length statements. Exploring these mixed bag recordings can often be more rewarding, and easier to come by, than that elusive $250 original promo 12” the disco nerds are fawning over. Here are ten foundational disco albums to give your collection a solid footing.

The first thing you should know about black metal is that it takes itself very seriously. Between the corpse paint, the blazing churches, the sex-starved nuns and the satanic rituals, it’s easy to see how Westerners could find the morbid aesthetic a bit much: and that’s the point. Just like punk, heavy metal and aggressive music at large, this notorious subgenre is all about challenging authority with brutal honesty. In conjuring terrifying images of social collapse and animalistic desires with the most tortured lexicon pained screams, howling guitars, ferocious drums–black metal confronts the listener with a warped, funhouse mirror-reflection not only themselves, but the corrupt world at large.

Once you’ve peered into black metal’s void, it’s damn near impossible to shift your focus elsewhere–especially if you’re experiencing it on vinyl. Read on for ten works of musical necromancy that belong in every collection.

The 1995 Source Awards are legendary mostly because they signaled the apex of the East Coast/West Coast hip-hop rivalry. They’re where Snoop Dogg called the East Coast out for not having love for him and Dr. Dre, they’re where Bad Boy’s Puff Daddy proclaimed he was going to die in the East, and they’re where Death Row impresario Suge Knight delivered his famous “Come to Death Row” speech. But they’re also where Andre 3000 and Big Boi, a pair of funky upstarts from Atlanta who rhymed together as OutKast, were booed after they won the Source Award for Best New Artist. Rather than backing down or acting defensive, Dre squared up to the mic and proclaimed, “The South got somethin’ to say, and that’s all I got to say.”

Three Stacks’ words were profoundly prophetic. Though for much of the '90s hip-hop was dominated by New York and Los Angeles, as time has passed, rap fans have actually discovered that there are actually several other cities in America, and that those cities have been creating rap music for quite some time. And while Atlanta has been the focal point of the rap industry for the past decade and a half, hip-hop has only been kind to the south in retrospect. For the better part of the ‘90s, the south had to fight tooth and nail to prove Andre’s words true. When national record labels wouldn’t sign southern artists, they made their own labels. When major touring cities weren’t interested in booking them, they’d chart their own tours. When New York rap—so concerned with jazz—and the funk-leaning Los Angeles wouldn’t accept them, they forged their own traditions, informed by soul and the blues, with lyrics that proudly illustrated the good, the bad, and the ugly of the southern experience.

Before we get into the actual list of southern hip-hop records you should own on vinyl, a couple more notes. One, there are lots and lots of cities in the south, and each of them have produced lots and lots of great music—this could have easily been a list of ten New Orleans or Houston records—so I tried to keep the list both geographically diverse and sonically representative. Two, there’s a truly galling number of southern rap classics that just straight-up aren’t available on vinyl. Records such as Juvenile’s 400 Degreez, DJ Screw’s June 27th, Boosie’s Youngest Of Da Camp, and Waka Flocka’s Flockaveli are all in their own ways vital albums, and the fact that they are unavailable on vinyl is almost impossible to understand.

The word “revival” in this genre seems artificial because it is. The truth is, emo never died, it just had a heart attack. There were significantly less people making this music with any sort of consistency from 2002-2010, but it never died out. I’m a natural cynic and maybe the last person to advise on the use of the term, “emo revival,” but in writing this list, I thought that maybe it’s not the quantity of the music but the actual aspects of the art itself. I still don’t like saying that term, but I’m more at peace with it now.

The act of listening to records, for me, has always been “emo.” It’s about isolating myself, sinking into emotions for 40 minutes to an hour, and thinking about what I’m taking in. What’s a better way for a dude to spend his time alone listening to other dudes sing about being alone? If that’s what you’re into, these are the 10 best records for doing exactly that.

Pete Townshend unwittingly named power pop. In the '60s, the Who guitarist used the term to describe the style of his group as a way to link them to groups such as the Beach Boys and other smart, melodic pop acts Townshend admired. Power pop, as it grew, became a lean sister to punk rock’s “burn everything down” ethos yet its musical conservatism gives it a rather nerdy air. The Weezer video for Buddy Holly where the band performed in suits and glasses was not far off from the truth.

Power pop is somewhat easy to define yet it is a sound that is easily malleable. After acts like Big Star and Cheap Trick defined the foundation in the '70s, a lot of acts began incorporating different aspects of the sound with varying degrees of success. It made a resurgence in the '80s with bands like The Knack and the dBs giving it a new wave spin. The 1990s alternative rock boom introduced a new guidebook - Kurt Cobain described Nirvana as the '90s version of Cheap Trick and the paradigm shift they inspired with Nevermind created a fertile ground for pop-minded songwriters and musicians to hit the charts running. With that in mind, here’s an exploration of ten releases that are essential for the power pop genre and also important for your rock/pop collection.

With the spring release of a collected Saetia discography, simply titled Collected, coming out on vinyl through Deathwish imprint Secret Voice, it’s worth taking a look at several other seminal screamo releases that should be cornerstones of your vinyl collection. Most of these are readily available on vinyl, while some will require vigorous eBay crawling.

The South is the land of the short shrift. Ever since people were quite literally convinced to live on swampland, the region has been passed by and glossed over for "cooler" climes (in all senses of the word). Left to their own limited devices after industry and tastemakers alike took one look and said "nah," the region's rockers developed their own unique sound without having to worry about anyone looking for them.

Bruce Springsteen is hardly an artist in need of a career renaissance, but 2016 was one of the biggest years of Springsteen’s post-2000 output, even without him putting out a record. Despite the lack of new music, The Boss managed to put out a new memoir, a massive tour playing the entirety of The River and some emotional cover songs. Springsteen’s continued appeal lies in the fact that he never really went away in the first place. His albums have been consistent and high quality while his live show remains as legendary as ever, with most nights eclipsing the three hour mark. The New Jersey native’s style has endured for the past 40 years with The Boss still electing to wear tight denim jeans, leather jackets and solid black tees.

What is great about owning Bruce Springsteen on vinyl is that he is one of the few artists that is readily available at record stores and thrift stores across the globe, who has also put out a lot of great music (sorry Barry Manilow). Much of Springsteen’s '70s and '80s output can be found used at a relatively affordable price tag due to the sheer quantity of these records that were produced at the time. Amassing a respectable Springsteen collection can be done quickly without breaking the bank. These are the 10 best Bruce Springsteen records to own on vinyl.

These days, most albums are impossible to separate from the story of their creation. In a lot of ways, the creation is as much of a story as the album itself. Think of the band Tennis recording their album on a sailing trip, or Gucci Mane recording Everbody’s Looking while on house arrest. But the opposite can be true too: Sometimes, the music itself has a story, and an album isn’t just a collection of songs: the album has an overarching story you can trace throughout the album.

So, here’s a celebration of those albums that have that bigger story. We present the 10 best concept albums to own on vinyl.

Ahh, feel that? That’s the cool breeze of fall. You know what that means: sweaters, pumpkin flavored soap, squashes, cute lil ghosts, lovely leaves, and the stabbing reminder that everything inevitably dies. Luckily, the changing leaves and crisp air create a top-notch environment to pop on your favorite record and assume a shaking fetal position on the floor. Plus, it’s never too early to get a head start on this year’s bout of Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Before the likes of the Clash, the Police, Rancid, the Specials, No Doubt, etc., there was Bob Marley. And before Bob Marley became an international sensation in the '70s, he was one of the Wailers, a vocal group that performed ska tunes. And while the word "ska" might conjure some bad memories from the '90s, the traditional sound of the genre is much more akin to classic soul and rhythm and blues. Inspired by the songs they heard coming from American radio stations, Jamaican artists started putting their own spin on the music, most notably emphasizing upbeats and scratchy guitar parts, the sound of which likely led to the naming of the genre.

In the late '60s, a portion of Jamaican music evolved into rocksteady, which was generally slower and had more emphasis on the bass. Rocksteady shortly thereafter into reggae, which blended elements of the prior genres, used more modern instruments and recording technology, took more influence from Jamaican songs and culture, such as Rastafarianism and marijuana, and took an added focus on social and political issues like the widespread poverty and crime throughout the island.

Reggae memorably spread to the wider world thanks in large part to Eric Clapton's 1974 cover of Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff," and has inspired plenty of sub-genres and interpretations. Ska had its revivals with the '70s and '80s British 2 Tone movement, with bands like the Specials, the Selecter and the Beat, and later in the '90s with third-wave bands like the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, No Doubt, Operation Ivy, the Slackers, Reel Big Fish, etc., who played it with varying degrees of traditional, pop and punk influences.

While those artists (mostly) get their fair shares of credit of recognition and praise, there are many who are overlooked by casual enjoyers of reggae. If you count yourself among that crowd, here are 10 LPs that will give you a better understanding of the reggae's history and evolution.

“I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name,” sang Dewey Bunnell of America in 1971. It was there that Bunnell saw “plants and birds and rocks and things.” Had he been wandering through the desert of Coachella Valley in, say, 1989 Bunnell might rather have seen “pot smoke and beards and amplifiers and things.” For it was here that bands such as Yawning Man and Kyuss were formed around generator parties where musicians could get high and jam through the night.

A world apart from LA’s glitzy and glamorous sunset strip scene, desert rock had more in common with the DIY ethics of punk rock. The desert environment isn’t particularly well suited to the frantic pace and urban politics of punk, so inspiration was found in 60s and 70s hard rock giants such as Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer, and enabled by distortion, amplification, alcohol, marijuana and psychedelics.

The fuzzy desert rock sound overlaps with similar genres such as stoner rock and doom metal, and not every band below comes from a region rich in coyotes and cacti. Does this branch of heaviness have to be performed by bona fide desert dwellers? Does it have to be recorded at studios like Rancho De La Luna, the makeshift home of Josh Homme’s Desert Sessions and birthplace of albums by Masters Of Reality, Fu Manchu and Keith Morris’ Midget Handjob? Not necessarily. No more than Witch House has to be made by card-carrying necromancers. Though Kyuss and their bearded brethren struggled for recognition back in the day, the influence of the relatively small Palm Desert Scene has since stretched far and wide. You’ll now find musicians practicing, refining and redefining the desert rock sound in locations across the world, while DesertFest and similar festivals take place in locations as gray and drizzly as London and Antwerp. After all, it does feel good to be out of the rain, as I’m sure Dewey Bunnell would agree.

It’s not easy being a Canadian musician. The vast size of the country — and the spread out metropolitan centers — makes touring an incredible slog. That, coupled with a music industry that was, for a long time, behind the times, meant musical luminaries like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell had no choice but to make the trip down to the States to make it. In the ‘90s, the joke was unless you were Alanis Morissette or Celine Dion, your highest hopes were to become household names in the country and learn to deal with playing small bars when you dipped down to the States. All that has changed now. A lot of the top leading lights in rap, rock, folk and pop all hail from Canada. The world’s biggest star is a Jewish guy from Toronto. We did it, and now we’re taking over.

With that said, here’s a smattering of Canadian albums that should be considered essential for diving into the national canon. “Canadian-ness” is a hard thing to define in records, but the idea was to try and pick albums that reflected the times and scenes surrounding it in some way. Sometimes that’s an overt reference to the 6, sometimes it’s something more. The Canadian music industry is a small place; while a lot of the works represented here differ from one another, you’d be surprised at how many players and musicians pop up on others’ work, or how respect for an elder group transcends tribal lines. Everyone likes the Tragically Hip. Chantal Kreviazuk and Chilly Gonzales have appeared on Drake albums.

You might be hoping that listening to these records will give you a better appreciation of the finer things of Canadian culture like poutine, maple syrup and the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song. Unfortunately, that’s not something easily promised.

For all of its stylistic reference points—floods of effects pedals, venue-emptying feedback sections, indecipherable vocal melodie—shoegaze has always been a difficult genre to pin down. The term itself was supposedly coined by British music journalists in reference to the myriad of bands (the likes of A.R. Kane and My Bloody Valentine) who made little eye-contact with the crowd, instead being transfixed by their sea of wah-wah and distortion pedals; From the earlier outings of M83 to Deerhunter, that definition leaves the scope pretty wide.

For the purpose of this list, and in the name of favoring creativity and innovation over revivalism, our definition of shoegaze is the most commonly agreeable one: A niche scene of (mostly) British bands, largely active in the 1990s, who played a sort of dystopian pop music; as comfortable with harrowing feedback-driven assaults as verse-chorus-verse effortlessness. Independent music press won’t let you get away with thinking that shoegaze died out in 1998, though. Endless lists of post-2000 shoegaze bands flood the web, and there are some great ones—Pinkshinyultrablast, Ringo Deathstarr, A Place To Bury Strangers, to name a few—but in 2016, it’s a comfortable formula. It’s a beautiful and strange formula that crashes melody into distortion, and abstract lyrics into striking volume—but a formula all the same. Of course, there’s still experimentation with the blueprint—just take a look at Deafheaven—but it only seems fair to dig at the heart of the genre. So many great, pensive, experimental guitar records became almost instantly redundant when the three-chord yells of grunge came along, and they’re records that deserve to be in your record collection.

Classical music can be stuffy, stodgy and old-fashioned. But when done right, it can jump out of your speakers like no other music. And we’re not talking about being forced to listen to some old fart’s symphony in music appreciation class, or that time you got dragged to a boring concert as a kid. We’re talking about original music by living composers, heard on pristine vinyl.

Your man shot a bottle rocket out of his butt crack on the Fourth of July last year and it was cool at the time. But it's a new year and you need to escalate your game, my pals. This year it's about setting your hair on fire while hitting mortar shells with an aluminum bat, and tackling newspaper stands shirtless after drinking 27 domestic American beers (no craft beers are allowed on the Fourth either). You can do it.

And while we know you'll be BBQing your food and DDTing your drinks, we also know you'll be needing a new soundtrack to the Fourth, because the typical standards are played out (Sousa is washed). So put on any or all of these records to give you the power of poor decisionmaking necessary to burn this Independence Day into the history books.

It’s not just multi-tools or Gold Bond or even children that make you a dad. Sure, those things help, but fatherhood is just as much an aesthetic as it is a stage in life. It doesn’t discriminate by age, nationality or gender. If you meet the qualifications, get fitted for some white New Balance sneakers, because you’re a dad.

A few years ago, “dad rock” became an intoxicating buzzterm, giving a name to the genre that’s been turning regular music fans into Sears-shopping, steak-charring padres for decades. With the vinyl resurgence in full effect, it’s more than likely that a few dad rock classics have worked their way into your record collection.

That’s not a bad thing. There’s a lot to be said for having the confidence to wear a grass stain on your jeans for four consecutive days — a swagger that might not be possible without the transformative dadliness of these 10 records.

Noise rock is about as difficult to define as it is for some people to listen to. Sure, you could say that it is noisy and it also rocks but those two fundamental factors also apply to AC/DC, who are hardly a noise-rock outfit. Noise rock is weirder than standard hard rock or the louder end of indie music but it doesn’t stray into identifiable heavy metal territory. In a punishing kind of way, it is arty, experimental and largely uncompromising, yet it isn’t as purely avant-garde as straight-up noise music. Its bands tend to have a DIY approach inherited from the punk and post-hardcore scenes and tend to be more concerned with creative expression than commercial success. Noise rock sometimes has an industrial edge or a bad-trippin’ brown-acid psychedelic tinge. It’s definitely slower than punk, messier than grunge and there’s often a dark humor in play. Naturally then, the following artists vary in style but are united in some vague sense by their spirit and volume.

As performers, musicians are forced to open up in a different way onstage than they might during a studio recording. Onstage, things go wrong and must move on; in the studio an artist can double back. As fans we want something both familiar and unique in a concert, an occasion to momentarily reside in living versions of the songs we love. We can scrutinize and study a recording, but a concert can’t be paused. Live albums are perilous hit-or-miss endeavors for this reason, but at their best they don’t just capture the essence of an original studio recording, they catapult the familiar into new territory.

With all of that in mind, we’ve rounded up a list of ten essential live albums to own on vinyl.

Post-rock started burgeoning as a bigger deal genre in the early '90s; prior to that, it was even more of a niche genre. Underground music scenes each offered varied takes on post-rock; in Chicago, for instance, bands like Tortoise and the Sea & Cake were mingling it with jazz. It sounded minimalist earlier on but became more maximalist towards the start of the 2000’s, with bands like Sigur Ros, Mogwai, and Explosions In The Sky amplifying post-rock to sonic capacities that could crush the sturdiest of infrastructures. Those three bands have also made the genre more accessible, via their respective soundtrack work—their music has been featured in countless television programs and films around the world. (Explosions In The Sky, specifically, have scored for well-known films like Friday Night Lights and Lone Survivor.)

Recently, however, there’s been a minor revival of post-rock minimalism. Tortoise dropped The Catastrophist back in January, seven years after their last full-length, 2009’s Beacons Of Ancestorship, and along with Tortoise’s return, Explosions In The Sky’s own comeback full-length, The Wilderness, marks a stylistic shift for the band, an album characterized by its concise repertoire. Also, Sigur Ros will be embarking on a tour soon, but they’ll be performing without auxiliary musicians, specifically the brass and strings sections that they had employed on past tours (according to Pitchfork); it’s going be a new and obviously much sparser live approach for them.

What unites both the minimalist and maximalist bands (as disparate as their levels of loudness are), and what essentially defines post-rock, is a thoughtful approach to guitar-based music: the genre is averse to flashy, fast-as-possible musicianship, and instead songs tend to go at a slower tempo, ensuring that each minute musical flourish is emphasized. Post-rock is primal and cathartic, a style that’s most visceral at its sonically purest -- so here are ten post-rock albums that would sound incredible on vinyl, the best format on which to experience this form of music.