OT: - Favorite Concept Albums - Any Genre | Page 2 | The Boneyard

OT: Favorite Concept Albums - Any Genre

Group = Pink Floyd.
Concept Album = Wish You Were Here.
Released = September 12, 1975.

Two parts of the album. (1) Lament for their former band mate Syd Barrett. (2) Cold inhuman aspect of the music business.

 
Beatles - Rubber Soul. This was their first concept album, they began to veer away from primarily boy-girl love songs to exploring new studio instrumentation and arrangements. I had a copy as a kid, and played it relentlessly:

 
Group = Genesis.
Concept Album = The Lamb Lies Down.
Released = 1974.


Double album. Peter Gabriel's last with Genesis.

“I’m not sure if the story made much sense to most people, but it did mean something to me, in essence, it was about an awakening. He [Rael] was on a journey to find himself, in a seductive, magical place." - Peter Gabriel.


 
Band = Alan Parsons Project.
Concept Album = I Robot.
Released = June 1, 1977.


"Originally was intended to relate to Isaac Asimov’s classic story ‘I, Robot’, but as Asimov had sold the rights some years previously, it was adapted to a more general theme of human versus artificial intelligence."


 
Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman
Z(1).jpg
 


Theme Song above:

Songs of this Outlaw Opera were:
Side one
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Time of the Preacher"Willie Nelson2:26
2."I Couldn't Believe It Was True"Eddy Arnold, Wally Fowler1:32
3."Time of the Preacher Theme"Nelson1:13
4."Blue Rock Montana" / "Red Headed Stranger" (medley)Nelson / Carl Stutz, Edith Lindeman1:36
5."Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain"Fred Rose2:18
6."Red Headed Stranger"Carl Stutz, Lindeman4:00
7."Time of the Preacher Theme"Nelson0:25
8."Just As I Am"Charlotte Elliott, William B. Bradbury1:45
Side two
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Denver"Nelson0:53
2."O'er the Waves"Juventino Rosas, arranged by Willie Nelson0:47
3."Down Yonder" (played by Bobbie Nelson)L. Wolfe Gilbert1:56
4."Can I Sleep in Your Arms"Hank Cochran5:24
5."Remember Me (When the Candle Lights Are Gleaming)"Scotty Wiseman2:52
6."Hands on the Wheel"Bill Callery4:22
7."Bandera"Nelson2:19
 
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Aluminny69 said:
Don't tell that to Billy Shears!

But seriously, from WIKI:

The album was loosely conceptualised as a performance by the fictional Sgt. Pepper band, an idea that was conceived after recording the title track. A key work of British psychedelia, it incorporates a range of stylistic influences, including vaudeville, circus, music hall, avant-garde, and Western and Indian classical music.

Sgt. Pepper is regarded by musicologists as an early concept album that advanced the roles of sound composition, extended form, psychedelic imagery, record sleeves, and the producer in popular music. The album had an immediate cross-generational impact and was associated with numerous touchstones of the era's youth culture, such as fashion, drugs, mysticism, and a sense of optimism and empowerment. It is considered one of the first art rock LPs, a progenitor to progressive rock, and the start of the album era. In 1968, it won four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, the first rock LP to receive this honour;

In November, during his and Evans' return flight from Kenya, McCartney had an idea for a song that eventually formed the impetus of the Sgt. Pepper concept.[14] His idea involved an Edwardian-era military band, for which Evans invented a name in the style of contemporary San Francisco-based groups such as Big Brother and the Holding Company and Quicksilver Messenger Service.[29][nb 2] In February 1967, McCartney suggested that the new album should represent a performance by the fictional band.[31] This alter ego group would give them the freedom to experiment musically by releasing them from their image as Beatles.[32] Martin recalled that the concept was not discussed at the start of the sessions,[33] but it subsequently gave the album "a life of its own"

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band​

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Eh, what do they know?
 
Rush had several.

Farewell to Kings would be my favorite.

Another Jethro Tull concept album was "Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die."
 
Freak Out! by the Mothers was one of the first concept albums and one of the first double albums. I've been listening to it for almost 50 years and still every time I hear it I like it more. In fact, I'm gonna go down to the wood shop and listen to it as soon as I'm done typing. It features songs in so many different styles, from doo-wop to avant-garde. Here's one that has the Mothers' almost omnipresent tuned percussion (marimba? vibes?) and also features a kazoo.

 
UHF said:
Band = Queensrÿche.
Concept Album = Operation Mindcrime.
Genre = Progressive Metal.
Released = May 3, 1988.

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I hadn't thought of this album in years till a month or so visiting my wife's brother-in-law and had a metal playlist on that featured a song from it. I had no idea they'd done a followup to it 20 years later.
 
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Bigboote said:
I hadn't thought of this album in years till a month or so visiting my wife's brother-in-law and had a metal playlist on that featured a song from it. I had no idea they'd done a followup to it 20 years later.
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They did? What's the name of the album?
 
man oh man - those mentioning wakeman/who/zappa/rush/genesis/tull - we gotta get together for a listening session some day...
might i suggest a couple more:
pink floyd - dark side of the moon
spock's beard - snow
 
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UHF said:
Group = Jethro Tull.
Concept Album = Thick as a Brick.
Released = 1972.

43 minute song.

"Ian Anderson meant for the album to be a send up of rock pretentiousness, critics, and the band itself. The album cover claimed, outrageously enough, that the lyrics had been written by an eight year old boy, Gerald Bostock, and set to music by the band."

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I think this still holds up. I listened to it during a walk not too long ago.
 
This is the first album of a trilogy, although it’s the middle on in terms of the story. Basically, a woman becomes the goddess of purgatory. The singer/composer has a great voice

 


From Largo, an ambitious undertaking and one of my favorite albums; produced by Rick Chertoff and Rob Hyman of The Hooters. The album name is taken from The New World Symphony by the composer Antonin Dvorak, which written in 1893. The songs are ”kind of” based on that work. Tremendous collaborative music featuring appearances by Levon Helm and Garth Hudson from The Band, Taj Mahal, Cyndi Lauper, The Chieftains, Eric Brazilian from The Hooters, amongst others. This song, Largo’s Dream, features David Forman on vocals.
 
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I've got two - pretty diverse from each other. The first from 1969

 
Slipperman's post of The Snow Goose reminded me of another Camel album -- Nude, which was about a marooned soldier. That reminded me of Remember the Future from Nektar, about an ET named Bluebird. I think most if not all of Nektar's albums have themes or plots.

 
One last album from me. Gentle Storm was a project of Arjen Lucassen and Anneke van Giersbergen. It was two separate discs with the same songs. One was the “gentle version” that’s pretty laid-back, and the “storm version” which is somewhat noisier, but still not full-on metal.

The album is called “The Diary,” and it’s based on a diary from (IIRC) a16th century woman whose husband is at sea. It’s one of those that I love top to bottom. This is the first cut from the gentle version.

 
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