 | The Köln Concert by Keith Jarrett
Buy new: $13.99 / Used from: $8.76 The single most important cd in my life, and has been for 20 years. The master of solo piano improvisation sets the bar.
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 | Music for 18 Musicians
Buy new: $14.99 / Used from: $7.95 I can get lost in this one. Steve Reich's monolithic minimalist masterpiece.
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 | Kid A by Radiohead
Buy new: $10.99 / Used from: $3.99 Difficult to choose between the 4 most recent Radiohead cds as to which is best. This is just the first one I heard. OK Computer is probably more important, but this holds a special place in my heart.
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 | Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd
Buy new: $12.99 / Used from: $8.43 Might have been Animals, but WYWH has won by a nose for my favorite Floyd record. This one has spent a lot of melancholy time in the player.
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 | The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis
Buy used from: $13.67 The pinnacle of progressive rock, right here. Peter Gabriel, soon to quit the band, at the first of many artistic peaks.
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 | Up by Peter Gabriel
Buy new: $11.99 / Used from: $2.40 Speaking of Peter Gabriel: his most recent brilliant effort. I listen to this often and it makes me want to write songs.
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 | Stravinsky: Rite of Spring
Buy new: $11.98 / Used from: $2.48 This is another piece of music that changed my life. The Rite of Spring is perhaps the most intense, complex, and rewarding pieces of western art music ever written.
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 | Close to the Edge by Yes
Buy used from: $2.00 #2 after LLDOB on the progressive rock best-of. 3 songs, no waiting. They were never this good again, but they came close.
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 | Knoxville Summer of 1915
Buy new: $16.98 / Used from: $2.99 Knoxville Summer of 1915 is my favorite piece of vocal music, soprano and orchestra, absolutely gorgeous. You can safely ignore the rest of the cd, but that might just be relatively speaking.
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 | A Copland Celebration Vol. 3
Buy new: $8.99 / Used from: $5.17 For the 12 poems of Emily Dickinson. Many of the other recordings of the full 12 are just terrible in terms of recording quality or performance, or only do the orchestrated 8.
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 | The Forgotten Arm by Aimee Mann
Buy new: $11.98 / Used from: $2.11 The perfect rock album, and it's a concept album to boot. Flawless rock songs. Aimee is one of the best traditional songwriters out there.
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 | The Grand Wazoo by Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention
Buy new: $6.99 / Used from: $4.99 Yes, it's true: it's possible to mix jazz and rock and not be totally lame. FZ does it up right with Grad Wazoo..
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 | Aja by Steely Dan
Buy new: $7.97 / Used from: $4.27 Speaking of Jazz-rock that isn't lame.... Steely Dan's masterpiece.
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 | A Passion Play by Jethro Tull
Buy new: $8.99 / Used from: $5.56 Another prog-rock bellweather. Get this and Thick as a Brick and listen with an open mind, and you won't be dissapointed.
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 | John Adams: Road Movies; Hallelujah Junction; Phrygian Gates; China Gates
Buy new: $13.98 / Used from: $5.50 Difficult to choose just one John Adams cd. This just happens to be the one I'm listening to right now. Don't get John Luther Adams by accident.
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 | Ohm: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music Special Edition 3CD + DVD
Buy new: $44.98 / Used from: $27.99 If you even have a passing interest in electronic music, get this. Now. It will transform your level of understanding and the way you hear music.
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