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As I prepared for my current 12-hours-each-way trip to visit my parents in Florida (making sure to leave my hoodie at home and not anger the self-appointed watcher of their neighborhood pool; he tried to kick me out last time), I was tasked by my traveling companion to put together a small stack of my favorite CDs. (The car in which we traveled does not have an in-dash turntable, so LPs were out of the question). Rather than go with my current faves or a stack of albums in the queue for upcoming review, I selected a dozen or so of my \u201cblue chip\u201d albums, ones to which I turn again and again for enjoyment. I left out the really obvious ones (Beatles<\/strong>, Pink Floyd<\/strong><\/a>) and below is what I came up with. The ones with hyperlinks are reviewed or otherwise mentioned in some way elsewhere on my blog.<\/p>\n Big Star<\/a> <\/strong>\u2013 #1 Record\/Radio City<\/em> \u2013 The best 70s albums nobody bought the first time ’round are now among the most influential of the era.<\/p>\n Dennis Coffey<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 Dennis Coffey<\/em> \u2013 the master of guitar funk’s fairly recent album is both current and backward-looking in the best possible way.<\/p>\n Crowded House<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 Temple of Low Men<\/em> \u2013 The \u201cdifficult second album\u201d is much darker than their debut, but showed the depth of Neil Finn<\/strong>‘s songwriting ability. I’ll admit that this one often makes me cry, and I’m not generally a \u201clyrics guy.\u201d<\/p>\n Dungen<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 4<\/em> \u2013 Rarely has an album that includes vocals done so much to successfully convey thoughts and emotions without requiring the listener to understand what’s being sung (like all Dungen albums, it’s in Swedish).<\/p>\n The Flaming Lips<\/strong><\/a> — The Soft Bulletin<\/em> \u2013 For me, one of the best albums of the 1990s, right up there with Olivia Tremor Control<\/strong>‘s Dusk at Cubist Castle<\/em> and Radiohead<\/strong>‘s OK Computer<\/em> (see below).<\/p>\n The Go! Team<\/strong> \u2013 Thunder, Lightning, Strike<\/em> \u2013 Quite different from most else of what I listen to, this delightful album features loads of samples, loops and vocals that sound uncannily like inner city schoolgirls chanting doggerel while jumping rope. And it rocks<\/em>.<\/p>\n Jellyfish<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 Spilt Milk<\/em> \u2013 The group’s second and final album took the best qualities of the 70s and updated it, in the process creating muscular, joyous, transcendent progressive powerpop. Or something.<\/p>\n King Crimson<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 Red<\/em> \u2013 The heaviest of the heavy, and the best of the best of prog. Red<\/em> can be credited with (unintentionally) inventing progressive metal.<\/p>\n Love<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 Forever Changes<\/em> \u2013 Along with Moby Grape<\/strong>‘s debut, it was for many years the most under-appreciated great album of the 1960s. That wrong has since pretty well been corrected.<\/p>\n Porcupine Tree<\/strong><\/a> — Deadwing<\/em> \u2013 The most commercially appealing entry in the band’s deep catalog, it contains my favorite track of theirs, the long-form \u201cArriving Somewhere (But Not Here).\u201d<\/p>\n Radiohead<\/strong> \u2013 OK Computer<\/em> \u2013 A fairly obvious choice, but fifteen-plus years later this record continues to reveal new wonders to me on each successive listen.<\/p>\n