10 albums a day #56

The Who
- Tommy (1969, double CD)
- Who's Next (1971, CD)
- Who Are You (1978, CD)
Yes
- Going for the One (1977, LP)
- Tormato (1978, LP)
- Yesshows (1980, cassette)
- Classic Yes (1981, LP)
- 90125 (1983, LP)
Yngwie Malmsteen - Rising Force (1984, cassette)
Yothu Yindi - Tribal Voice (1992, CD)

I guess it was the prompting of a co-worker that got me buy any of The Who's albums. They are one of the great bands of rock music, and they have a few songs that I would count among my overall favorites. I just never seriously went out to learn all about them in the way that I did with some bands. My favorite song of theirs is not one of their most popular: "905" from Who Are You.

Those five Yes albums are all I have, and all I intend to ever have. My favorite by far is 90125. In fact it's the only one I would load up and listen to straight through; listening to any of the others is sort of a chore, especially the live tape Yesshows. Going for the One was picked because I heard some good keyboard stuff on it, Tormato was a purchase of opportunity, Yesshows was in a bargain bin and Classic Yes is a compilation album that I thought would give me a better idea of what I should be looking for, when in fact it was the point at which I finally gave up. I had a college class-mate who was a Yes fanatic and so I blame him. I've said it before: I like their instrumental work but Jon Anderson's voice gets on my nerves after a while.

Like I said about Uli Jon Roth, I would probably have been more interested in Yngwie Malmsteen if I had understood at the time what he was getting at. My own personal opinion is that he should have kicked the singer and just went all instrumental, but I guess you have to have a couple of actual songs to get any radio play. I like this album much more now than I did 25 years ago.

This looks like it might be the end, but for one thing: I skipped my "Various Artists" directory, which I think might be an adventure in itself. So I'm not quite finished yet.

Album count: 577.