#224 - Emerson Lake & Palmer - Tarkus

A conceptual album with very arbitrary sounding songs. By this I mean that the melodies, the chord progressions etc. sound a bit like they came out of a randomizer. It sounds a little bit like jazz, but not the classic jazzy kind, just that it wanders wildly melodywise. Hard to explain.

#223 - Don McLean - American Pie

A very nice acoustic folky album with two major hits, the title track of course, and the beautiful "Vincent" with the recurring first line "Starry starry night". The rest of the album is no less nice, although no other songs can reach the quality of the first two. The title track is an absolute classic, but it can be a little too much after over eight minutes of the same.

#222 - Dolly Parton - Coat Of Many Colors

Pretty much a classic country album without many surprises. Parton's voice is standing out with it's trademark vibrato, otherwise there was no highlight in it for me.

#221 - Elton John - Madman Across The Water

I'm not a fan of Elton John, don't really like his voice, but  this is a very good record, pure great pop music with great varying instrumentations including a choir and various strings and horns. Not a weak song on this one.

#220 - Can - Tago Mago

The keyword here is strange. This album is less music in the traditional sense and more a good hour of experimentation, soundscapes and musical tapestry. It's like they listened to all music that existed so far and said "okay, this is all nice, but now let's do something that's different from ALL that". The album was supposed to be a big influence for many bands that went beyond existing paths, and I can imagine so, because no album so far was more strange.

#219 - The Doors - L.A. Woman

Another Doors album, and sadly there's something missing again. Apart from the last title, the hit "Riders on the storm", there's lots of standard blues and songs without that certain Doors atmosphere.

#218 - Yes - Fragile

Another complex album from yes, this time with several shorter tracks with some 2 minute instrumental gems that almost sound classical. The rest is high quality complex rock again, with lot's of harmonic singing and non-standard song structures. It surely grows on you if you listen to it more often and learn to know the songs, but it speaks for the album if it's pleasant in the first listen, too.

#217 - The Beach Boys - Surf's Up

The dark cover is surprising from a band that's supposed to be about the beach, fun, girls etc. But these times are over, and the album reflects that. It sounds like they are just fed up with their previous sweet happy songs, but still they're blessed with their unique style, harmonies, voices, so they try to do the best  to create a darker, grown-up album with it, and while it sounds very different to the earlier Beach Boys music, it still has some very beautiful songs that do contain the typical harmonic singing and the same instrumentation, but the songs are much deeper, darker, melancholic. A very good and surprising record.

#216 - John Lennon - Imagine

This album contains to absolute pop classics that stand out above a lot of music. Apart from "Imagine" and "Jealous guy" there are some beautiful love ballads as well as some less original blues and rock songs. All in all it's not a constistently great album, but it contains a lot of good material.

#215 - The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers

The blues goes on, albeit in a slightly less strenuous way. This is another typical Stones album with no innovations, there's the occasional neat guitar riff or the heart-wrenching ballad, but otherwise it's just another Stones's take on blues and rock.

#214 - The Allman Brothers Band - At Fillmore East

What an album...I'm happy it's over. Long story short, if you like blues and endless guitar solo jams, this is a great album. If not, it's the most boring and strenuous 76 minutes you had to experience for a long time.

#213 - Isaac Heyes - Shaft

The first soundtrack in the list, and it's a soul funk experience. I haven't seen the movie, but naturally the music is more of the background kind, there are only two with vocals, the rest is grooving funk and soul, perfect for a movie like shaft.

#212 - Carole King - Tapestry

A great piano pop album, slighty jazzy sometimes, always grooving easily, and filled with great and beautiful songs from start to finish.

#211 - The Who - Who's Next

A really good rock album, containing the hit "Behind blue eyes", which is much better in the original version than in the one from the nu-metal group. The songs are very versatile and really good, starting greatly with the captivating intro to "Baba O'Riley".

#210 - The Bee Gees - Trafalgar

A nice pop album by the Bee Gees, containing the hit "How can you mend a broken heart?", that didn't really appeal to me, but several other songs sound really good and interesting. I never heard a Gee screaming before.

#209 - Yes - The Yes Album

An opulent album with 6 long rock songs that have great harmonic singing and are complex and with many elements without confusing or overwhelming the listener. A good album that probably gets better if you listen to it more often.

#208 - Marvin Gaye - What's Going On

A nice smooth soul album, without any especially remarkable songs, but it's perfect dinner music, warm, pleasant and unobtrusive.

#207 - Sly & The Family Stone - There's a Riot Goin on

A heavy funk album, there's not much more to say, if I described it in more detail, I'd just reuse the words "funk" and "funky" over and over again. It's a darker kind of funk, not the more joyful James Brown style. I'm not into funk, so it didn't give me much, but it was an okay listen.

#206 - David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name

An acoustic, laid back and rather melancholy album with beautiful harmonic singing and songs that fit the sunset in the cover perfectly.

#205 - Jethro Tull - Aqualung

Definitely a unique sound with the trademark flute, the album contains the hits "Aqualung" and the great "Locomotive breath", and the other songs leave me with mixed feelings. Some songs are very interesting, often with a medieval atmosphere, others fly by and don't leave a big mark.

#204 - Syd Barret - The Madcap Laughs

A very strange album with a dark mood, often incomplete sounding songs and a weird atmosphere. It's mainly acoustic, but any beauty has been thoroughly drained out of this record.

#203 - Santana - Abraxas

A very ugly cover for a nice album. It contains the hits "Samba pa ti" and "Black magic woman", but it is not only the expected Santana guitar showcase, the organ plays a big role in it, too. The mixture of latin grooves, smooth organ sounds and Santana's trademark guitar playing make a good listen.

#202 - Paul McCartney - McCartney

This is kind of the opposite to the opulent Harrison album, 13 songs, out of which only a handful are complete songs, the rest are fragments or just short ideas sounding quickly recorded. You can distinctly hear that an ex-Beatle wrote these songs, the sound shines through some of them, but the quality mostly lacks. Even "Maybe I'm amazed", supposedly one of the best songs of McCartney, can't really click with me, something's missing. Maybe the influence of those 3 other guys. The album seems less like an actual album and more like a "I'm here, too" statement. If this was a debut album by an unknown artist, it would have never seen the light of day.

#201 - James Taylor - Sweet Baby James

A mostly soft acoustic folk album with some sparkles of country and a hint of rock that goes easy into the ear, but it goes out as easily, there are no edges that could stick anywhere, the songs float by like a summer breeze.

#200 - Iggy & The Stooges - Funhouse

A rough badass rock/punk album with some shorter typical punk rock songs and some longer jam-like tracks, out of wich only "Dirt" clicked with me. Mostly attitude on this record, the songs themselves are not that remarkable.

#199 - Traffic - John Barleycorn Must Die

A 6-track album that floats by nicely, but it doesn't leave a big mark. The singer's voice reminds me a little of Peter Gabriel.

#198 - Cat Stevens - Tea for the Tillerman

What an album. I've heard the best-of songs from Cat Stevens hundreds of times, but I never came around to listen to his albums. Now I did, and half of the best-of is already on this incredible record. I won't talk about "Where Do The Children Play?", "Hard Headed Woman", "Wild World", "Sad Lisa" and "Father And Son", not because they don't deserve it, but because they're so wonderful timeless classics that no additional words are needed. The other songs are kept in the same style as the hits, and most of them are really good, too. Again it's a little hard to see the album as a whole because of these heavyweight hits on it, but the other songs don't fall short, which makes this a really great album.

#197 - Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water

This album contains many well known hits like "The boxer", "Cecilia" or "El condor pasa", and of course the title track, which, I have to say, is not one of my favorite S&G songs. I get why many people like it, the dramatics, the piano, the wonderful voice, but the song itself just doesn't click with me. It's hard to see this album as a whole, because I heard half of the songs a thousand times, and the other half I've never heard of, and I know now why, while most of the other songs are nice too, they just can't keep up with the big hits. Besides that it's a typical S&G album though.

#196 - George Harrison - All Things Must Pass

A very big album by the former Beatle, and going from the Harrison songs on the later Beatles albums, it sounds like typical Harrison (not in a bad way). The songs are very different and rich in variety. You can hear that the songs must have piled up while he struggled to get his songs on Beatles records. But not every song on this album is as strong as his Beatles submissions. The last songs are rather lengthy, being vocalless blues jams that don't seem to go anywhere. But especially the first third contains a number of really nice songs.

#195 - Rod Stewart - Gasoline Alley

A decent album with ballads and faster rock songs, and it stands and falls with Stewart's voice. If you like the scratchy yelly tone of his voice, you'll enjoy the album, if not, it's hard to do so.

#194 - Soft Machine - Third

After the third(sic!) minute of noise, when there were some hints of actual musical sounds, I was thinking that this wouldn't be an easy album. And I was right. Four songs in 75 minutes, out of which there is only one with singing. Once there is something like music going on, it's not easy to listen to stylistically. It sounds like jazz without sounding jazzy, like they're making up what they're playing, only that there isn't much that they can think of. The singing in the third track is a nice change, although the quality of the singer is not very high, it sounds thin and he doesn't hit all tones. All in all not an album you have to hear before you or anyone else dies.