Bruce Springsteen, "Rising"... a great album, his best in many years, but his recent followup sucks...
Jimmy Buffett, "License To Chill"... getting together with a bunch of country superstars was the smartest thing Jimmy's ever done, he finally got his first number one album... but it's not just all the names on the album, there are a lot of really good songs on it...
Eagles, "Desperado"... if there had been no Eagles, and somebody put that album out today, it would still shoot straight to the top of the charts... it features some of the best dobro work you'll ever hear anywhere...
Dan Fogelburg, "The Innocent Age"... Fogelburg put out a bunch of good albums, this one was the best... it features great song after great song... Dan is just a brilliant musician, perhaps the best in pop/rock today...
Bonnie Raitt, "Road Tested"... if you like concert albums, I've got your concert album to end all concert albums, right here... no matter how many times I hear it, when Bonnie gets down and bluesy on "Love Me Like a Man", I am ALWAYS in awe of the way she can play blues guitar...
Loggins & Messina, "Finale"... their final concert album before they split up... it was the band at its absolute best, with instrumental breaks that were almost like rock symphonies... one bonus is that the sound engineering on this one was some of the best I've ever heard-- on their acoustic set in the middle of the concert, you could hear the fret squeak as they moved from chord to chord...
I sure am glad that they've gotten back together for a concert tour this summer, and I hope it leads to a new album or two...
The Beatles, "Let It Be"... memories of my senior year in high school, when a bunch of us went to the theater to see the movie on Senior skip day... the title song was chosen as our class song, though I voted for one off of the next selection:
Simon and Garfunkel, "Bridge Over Troubled Waters"... I was a bit of a folkie as a youngster, and heavy into Simon and Garfunkel... this one was their best...
James Taylor, "Sweet Baby James"... this one is a fave from my college days, and was also heavily folk-oriented...
Jackson Browne, "Running On Empty"... I was actually at the concert at Merriwether Post Pavilion (in the Maryland suburbs of DC) where 2 cuts from that album were recorded... for one summer while I worked at the ski resort, that was THE party album... Jackson Browne was never as good before "Running On Empty", or after it either...
For the purposes of my top ten, I limited myself to one album per artist... I could have given you multiple choices for many of them...
