Riot Rock World

Previous Grapefruit genre anthologies have shown how the various strands of British psychedelia developed tangentially in subsequent years: I’m A Freak Baby observed how the blues-based, harder-edged element of the genre gradually morphed into hard rock/proto-metal, Dust On The Nettles examined the countercultural psychedelic folk movement, while Come Join My Orchestra looked at the post-“Penny Lane” baroque pop sound. Our latest attempt to document the British psychedelic scene’s subsequent family tree, Lullabies For Catatonics charts the journey without maps that was fearlessly undertaken in the late Sixties and early Seventies by the more cerebral elements of the underground, inspired by everyone from Bartok, Bach and The Beatles to Dada, Dali and the Pop Art movement. Suddenly pop music was no longer restricted to moon-in-June lyrics and traditional song structures. Instead, it embraced the abstract, the discordant and the surreal as pop became rock, and rock became Art.

It's encouraging that nearly four decades into one of the most impressive careers in indie rock, Yo La Tengo are still finding new ways of doing things. On 2018's There's A Riot Going On, the band upended their usual process of writing material and then re-creating it in the studio by setting up recording gear in their rehearsal space and capturing their music in a freer and more spontaneous manner. For that album, YLT handed the tracks over to John McEntire (of Tortoise and the Sea and Cake) for mixing, but 2023's This Stupid World sees them cutting out the last middleman in their process – this time, the band mixed the tracks themselves, and for the first time they've made an album with essentially no outside input.

The Top 100 '80s Rock Albums span a series of genres as startling and varied as the era's neon-flecked fashions.No one was immune to the early-decade emergence of new wave, from up-and-coming acts to legacy groups – many of whom began incorporating the then-new sound into their bedrock approach.Meanwhile, classic rock and subsequently metal began a transformation into mass acceptance when the edges were smoothed out to form arena rock and hair metal, respectively. The arrival of roots, thrash, and world music influences kept things interesting, along the way. All of it made selecting the period's best releases both intriguing and deeply challenging.Check out the list below, as Ultimate Classic Rock takes a chronological look at the Top 100 '80s Rock Albums.

The 4-disc set contains three discs of live footage taken from the Live 8 shows staged in London and Philadelphia alongside key highlights from the seven other concerts staged across the world. Japanese four DVD box set of the Live 8 Festival on July 2, 2005. Features Pink Floyd performance at the festival, and video of their rehearsal…

Any discussion of the Top 100 '90s Rock Albums will have to include some grunge, and this one is no different. A defining element of that decade, the genre (and the bands that rose to fame playing it) was given credit for revitalizing rock at a badly needed moment. That said, there's far more to the story. Our list of the Top 100 '90s Rock Albums, presented in chronological order, takes in the rich diversity of the period.