25 Reasons to Love Music

If you get a chance, please read my initial post (“Start Here“) for a glimpse into why I decided to write an album review blog in the first place and maybe begin to understand the diversity in my choices for review. I would love to foster and encourage a deep love of music in my grandchildren and hope that these entries will survive me to guide them towards developing a sense for what I believe to be excellent, worthwhile and enduring. Again, your preferences may be entirely at odds with mine but, you know what? – that is just fine. In fact, it’s wonderful, because then I may have an opportunity to introduce you to a band, and album or a song that cracks open that door a little and expands your ability to appreciate the wide , infinite universe that is music.

Here are 25 albums that I will not review on this blog site because they are so intrinsically important to me that I don’t want to even start trying to analyze or squeeze them to reveal their secret hold over me – I will just continue to play them over and over until the day I shuffle off this old earth to my heavenly reward where, I am totally convinced, music will continue to play a huge role in my enjoyment of God, family and life.

• Artist: Various
• Title: Rick’s Recommended 25
• Released: 2020
• Format: Cassette, Vinyl, CD, FLAC, Streaming
• Genre: Various
• Beverage of Choice: Whatever brings a smile to your dial and a skip to your step

In no particular order and no rating/ranking implied (I love them all):

Title	Artist	Release Date
IV	Led Zeppelin	1971
Physical Graffiti	Led Zeppelin	1975
A Night at the Opera	Queen	1975
Moving Pictures	Rush	1981
The Wall	Pink Floyd	1979
Tusk	Fleetwood Mac	1979
Van Halen	Van Halen	1978
Obsession	UFO	1978
The Joshua Tree	U2	1987
Wildflowers	Tom Petty	1994
Live and Dangerous	Thin Lizzy	1978
Stop Making Sense	Talking Heads	1984
Dire Straits	Dire Straits	1978
News of the World	Queen	1977
Couldn’t Stand the Weather	Stevie Ray Vaughn	1984
Stephen Stills	Stephen Stills	1970
Metallica	Metallica	1991
Superunknown	Soundgarden	1994
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band	The Beatles	1967
Sound of Silver	LCD Soundsystem	2007
In Through the Out Door	Led Zeppelin	1979
Heaven and Hell	Black Sabbath	1980
Use Your Illusion II	Guns N’ Roses	1991
Mixed Up	The Cure	1990
Wish You Were Here	Pink Floyd	1975

Wow, that was tough! There are at least another 25 albums that could make this list on any given day. I love listening to albums from start to finish but, with the amazing capabilities of Plex, I also love ‘on-the-fly’ playlists, jumping from artist to artist and genre to genre as mood dictates.

This is a hobby/passion that is endlessly fascinating and infinitely rewarding; there is always some new artist, new album/old-album-that-I-never-heard-before to discover and enjoy. Join me on the journey and let music take you to unexpected and exciting places.. whenever you like and wherever you are!