Chisel Chin

I'll agree with Geoff. I don't know anyone else who buys CDs any more. However those that do listen to music probably aren't as "into" their music as some of us who cherish our collections, post on discussion forums, and give % ratings to all our albums!! Casual listeners of music probably don't care what format something is on, since they just want to hear the music. I will also add that the people I know who listen to digital files on their mp3 players etc. these days don't actually buy any of their music, they just acquire whatever they listen to from wherever they can get it without paying. At least people used to pay for CDs.

Paint me unsurprised. With 13,000+ posts to his name, I guess he has to write something on every thread.

I got into Fates Warning during the Ray Alder era (maybe around the mid-90's), so once I'd got used to those albums, I tried the earlier ones with John Arch but found they weren't really to my liking, so I didn't keep them. My rankings in order of preference would be: 1. Disconnected 2. Inside Out 3. A Pleasant Shade Of Gray 4. Parallels 5. Darkness In A Different Light 6. FWX 7. Perfect Symmetry 8. No Exit Not keen on "No Exit" and "Perfect Symmetry". I think the latter is supposed to be one of the best regarded albums amongst their fan-base... maybe it works as a technical prog album, but I don't find it as tuneful as the others, which makes it a difficult listen. Don't like the vocals on those two either, so "Parallels" is where it really starts for me. I also love the Redemption albums with Alder on vocals, with the first two being particular favourites ("The Fullness of Time" and "The Origins of Ruin").

I listened to a few samples of Richie's last album on Amazon, but nothing stood out and it sounded too loud (I think I read about it being badly "brickwalled") so I didn't bother getting it. Never mind, still got those first two albums of his to enjoy...

Even if he were still in the band, there doesn't sound like there would have been much for Richie Sambora to get excited about on these new songs. Maybe he got out at the right time. I wonder what his next work will sound like... Wikipedia says he's working with girlfriend Orianthi. Hope it's not going to be like this, otherwise he'll be another guitar hero who left Rock like Ritchie Blackmore did. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTQyDm7-USA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTQyDm7-USA

Pay to "rent" the music from Apple to listen to, and pay additional data usage charges to the mobile network provider?? Sounds a bit costly considering you don't own anything at the end of it, but I guess there will come a time where it is seen as normal because they kids won't have experienced any other way.

If the youngsters of today are only used to downloads and streaming, they may be less likely to become future "collectors". There may be fewer of them that savour their music, and instead would just tune in to listen to whatever happens to be hip and trendy at the time, particularly when all the music is easily accessible at the click of a mouse button for a monthly subscription. I've already read elsewhere of instances where download-only releases are now "deleted" (e.g. some recent film soundtracks which may have only been licensed to a label for a couple of years), and it's almost like there's no record that they ever existed in the first place. How would the collector get hold of something like that when there's no second-hand market to search through?

When CDs were new, you would often find they would contain bonus tracks not on the cassette or vinyl versions, to tempt people to buy them. How long did it take for the mass market to adopt CDs, and thereby letting cassettes and vinyl fall by the wayside? Now, you're more often seeing bonus tracks with the download version, or at least several different bonus tracks split across multiple versions (download, standard CD, digipack CD, different countries with different tracks). In the movie soundtrack market, you can find complete 2hr+ film scores on iTunes, whereas the CD release may be a single-disc of the highlights. The music industry will push for whatever format they want the consumer to switch over to. How many times have people bought the same music on different formats over the years (cassette version, multiple CD versions, download version) as technology has changed? But it is still a physical product that you own. You can listen to it as many times as you like without paying extra money. You can make your own digital version from it for free. You can sell it in the secondary market and make some money back without the record company getting the proceeds from that sale. Etc. If they can successfully move to streaming, whereby the consumer owns nothing (not even a download stored on your PC), then they can charge you every time you want to listen to it. Whether it makes them more money or not is another matter, but it is possible that they would prefer to have that sort of control. Once that has fully happened, they could also then have complete control to start changing pricing structures to bring more revenue back to them. That's all assuming there will be any "record companies" left by that point... it could just end up with the artists working directly with streaming service providers, which at the moment doesn't make anyone much money apart from the likes of Spotify etc.

Artist, Title and Year would be the minimum requirements. I certainly wouldn't care about things like Record Label or Label ID / Catalogue No. But I do make note of the Music Style and Rating, as those benefit me when looking through a long list of my collection. Depending on what I wanted to listen to, I can quite easily scan through a list of Hard Rock or Melodic Rock or Power Metal (etc.) to see what I've got, rather than browsing my CD shelves where everything is ordered alphabetically by Artist and then Year. What about keeping a record of something more personal to you, such as Date Purchased? I knew someone who did that as he liked to occasionally see how his tastes in music changed over time. A spreadsheet is good enough for a list like this, unless you are going to end up cataloguing track listings, for example, where you would need a database for that kind of one-to-many relationship. I expect most of the "office" software packages (e.g. MS Office for Windows) provide spreadsheet and database software if you wanted to make your own, and these days there's plenty tutorials available online to learn how to make a database, which would be the next step up if you've already learnt how to make spreadsheets. Otherwise you're going to be looking at spending money on commercial software, or using internet websites and relying on your chosen one always being available by whoever operates the site.

I've not heard Arcturus, can you recommend something on YouTube for me to check out?

I picked up their debut a couple of months ago, and thought it was pretty good, so I'll be looking forward to this one...

It doesn't matter who asks the question, there will be other people reading the replies as well. There's plenty of stuff on people's lists that I've not heard, so if any of us ends up discovering new bands from these lists then that's a good thing...

I think a lot of the genres had become more "niche" around this time, including melodic rock. And presumably advances in technology meant bands could record more cheaply, and the smaller specialist labels could sign more acts in each genre. Not sure what was mainstream, was it still grunge, or had modern rock like Nickelback become more popular instead?

I've managed to edit posts the following day to make corrections to my best albums lists, but found they were locked when I tried with one that was 2 days old.

Lol, and some of those Flower Kings are double albums as well!! Band leader Roine Stolt is one of my favourite artists. As well as his main band, he has done solo albums, and is part of Transatlantic, and has been in other prog bands like Kaipa and The Tangent, all concurrently with his time in the Flower Kings. He's a very prolific and talented multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter in the genre. I find quite a few of these prog rock bands are very consistent quality-wise with each album. I guess the nature of Prog means they don't have to follow standard conventions for song structures, and can just write long songs with plenty of "noodling". So writing an album of, say, 5 lengthy songs might be easier than trying to come up with twice the amount of different tunes if they were playing standard rock... 30-minute songs can be quite commonplace with some of them! And it is my favourite type of music, hence the reason these bands appear in many of my lists.

My Top 20 best of 2001 (in alphabetical order) Anathema - A Fine Day To Exit The Black Crowes - Lions Dare - Belief Evergrey - In Search Of Truth Flickerstick - Welcoming Home The Astronauts The Flower Kings - The Rainmaker Gotthard - Homerun Lost Horizon - Awakening The World Opeth - Blackwater Park Pendragon - Not Of This World Pride - Far From The Edge Remy Zero - The Golden Hum Rhapsody Of Fire - Rain Of A Thousand Flames Secret Sphere - A Time Never Come Shakra - Power Ride Soul Doctor - Soul Doctor Threshold - Hypothetical Train - Drops Of Jupiter Transatlantic - Bridge Across Forever Zero Hour - The Towers Of Avarice Honourable mention: Mike Tramp - Recovering The Wasted Years (only because the CD is copyright 2001, but apparently released 1st January 2002, so I couldn't be bothered to decide which year to file it under, lol) 2001 saw some great melodic hard rocking albums from newcomers Pride and Soul Doctor (the latter being Fair Warning singer Tommy Heart's new band), whilst established acts Gotthard and Shakra offered up some great albums. I also liked a few of the more modern sounding rock releases around this time in the form of Flickerstick and Remy Zero, as well as Train's second album. Meanwhile, Dare had settled into their lovely mellow Celtic style by this point, miles away from the sound of their classic debut album. Power metal was represented by my album of the year, the stunning debut from Lost Horizon (wow, those high-pitched vocals!!), and also the impressive Secret Sphere with a very heavy but melodic album. Another really noteworthy album is a great release from Rhapsody (Of Fire) with a lengthy "E.P." of songs that they didn't consider suitable for their regular albums, and possibly the reason this turned out to be my favourite album of theirs, because it was different and more varied. More great prog rock albums came from Pendragon, The Flower Kings and Anathema, as well as Transatlantic who demonstrated that their debut wasn't just a one-off project. And on the heavier side of prog, Threshold and Zero Hour were the highlights for me. Finally, my introduction to progressive death metal with Opeth's magnificent "Blackwater Park", although not a style I'm interested to bother following apart from this band. Biggest disappointment for me this year was Marillion's "Anoraknophobia"... come on guys, don't try all that modern experimental stuff now that we (the fans) are advance-funding your albums! Stick with what you're good at !!!

If you want to correct it, I think you get about one day to edit your post before it becomes locked permanently...

My Top 20 best of 2000 (in alphabetical order) AC/DC - Stiff Upper Lip American Pearl - American Pearl Angel Dust - Enlighten The Darkness Arena - Immortal Joe Bonamassa - A New Day Yesterday Burning Rain - Pleasure To Burn Fair Warning - 4 Fates Warning - Disconnected The Flower Kings - Space Revolver Hardcore Superstar - Bad Sneakers And Pina Colada Iron Maiden - Brave New World Monster Magnet - God Says No Pain Of Salvation - The Perfect Element Axel Rudi Pell - The Masquerade Ball Spock's Beard - V Storyteller - Corridor Of Windows Symphony X - V: New Mythology Suite Tad Morose - Undead Transatlantic - SMPTe Voodoo Hill - Voodoo Hill 2000 was a great year for my musical tastes. The Symphony X and Angel Dust releases were (for me) the second in a consecutive pairing of album high-points of their careers, and adding to the power metal glory this year was Tad Morose with their heaviest and best album. Bruce Dickinson had also returned to Iron Maiden and produced the best album I'd heard from them since 1988's "Seventh Son..." album, whilst the ever-dependable Axel Rudi Pell put out another solid release. Hard rock releases included a wonderful debut album from American Pearl, whilst this year's Hardcore Superstar is the only album of theirs that I really like due to its raw energy (a factor that I found lacking on the next couple of albums of theirs that I heard). On the melodic rock side of things, the second Burning Rain album was another quality release, in addition to Fair Warning and Storyteller. And blues rock saw the great debut release from newcomer Joe Bonamassa. But maybe the unexpected highlight for me was Voodoo Hill, a surprisingly heavy rock album fronted by Glenn Hughes who certainly gives it his all (and a singer who had passed me by up until now). The prog rock genre included more treats from Spock's Beard, Arena and The Flower Kings, as well as the fantastic debut album from "supergroup" Transatlantic. Prog metal, meanwhile, served up my favourite albums from both Pain Of Salvation and Fates Warning.

I included this in my 1999 list. After a quick check (Wikipedia, Discogs, official band site), it looks like the first two Burning Rain albums came out in 1999 and 2000 in Japan, but 2000 and 2001 in Europe. So I'm going to include their second album in my 2000 list (see below).

NB ?

Saturday Night Gave Me Sunday Morning Interesting, not too bad, but not really the Bon Jovi style I'm used to, and I probably won't bother with them now if they're pursuing this direction. It sounded more like pop-rock. What did stand out, however, was the lack of any guitar (or equivalent) solo, i.e. intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, [no guitar solo], chorus, chorus, fade-out... The nearest it came to anything like that was the few seconds as the song concluded. Basically, JBJ is singing all the way through, instead of there being the usual instrumental break 2/3rds through the song. Is that more common of song structures in today's modern rock (which I haven't really followed much)? I think I need educating...

How far are you percentage-wise through rating your collection? And how long has that taken? And how long left do you anticipate to complete the task? I'll look forward to seeing a thread containing a comprehensive list of everything you've got one day...

I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't for the fact that people re-quote the entire list when replying to a post, and again sometimes several more times. Try scrolling down these threads on a mobile phone when you've got the same list of 150 items repeated many times, lol.

Someone started a "1995-Best" thread a few days ago, and didn't follow the same naming convention as the other thread titles, tut tut.

Hmmm, although the booklet and Wikipedia etc states 1994, my CD has "P" and "C" printed as 1993 on the disc. I also checked the "G" album, and it is "P" 1995 (tracks 1-13) and "P" 1996 (track 14), as well as Copyright 1996, so it looks like I may have that wrongly included in my 1995 list. I guess I catalogued them in my database with the earlier dates. Oh well, I guess there's a time-limit preventing me from editing my posts from yesterday. To settle that, I just checked GOTTHARD official website and it's stated that 1994 was the correct one http://gotthard.com/de/music/albums/dial-hard/ so maybe 1993 is the Japanese pressing disc ? sometimes the region got an early advance release like MR.BIG, LAST AUTUMN'S DREAM, and several other Cds were released there first before it hits European and American market Just had a quick check, and I appear to have the German edition of "Dial Hard" with the same barcode number listed here for 1993 (same year as printed on my disc): http://www.discogs.com/Gotthard-Dial-Hard/master/441212 (I'm presuming there are other ones in addition to Germany and Japan)