1. The Who - Sell Out
For most people, this is not the most memorable album by The Who, but it contained “I Can See For Miles,” the song that made me decide I HAD to learn how to play drums. Also, it mixed fake commercials in with the songs, a practice which for better or worse has been a feature of most mix tapes or CDs I have made.

2. Beatles - let's say Revolver, or Rubber Soul
It was hard to choose a single Beatles album. The first one I really listened to was Sgt. Peppers, because before that my older sister was a major Beatles fan and of course i couldn’t like anything she did! But looking back, Revolver still stands out as a watershed, and there's something about Rubber Soul that keeps me coming back (though I have to say "Drive My Car" doesn't feel like it belongs with the other songs). Honorable Mention goes to the Love album, the mashup from a couple years ago that reminded us all over again what an amazing band the Fab Four really were.

3. Led Zeppelin - IV (or whatever it was called)
Too many wasted nights sitting in a college dorm room with wasted friends, figuring out Bonham’s drum parts by tapping on my knees. A few years later, the first time I ever set up in a big club, I played “When the Levee Breaks” for a drum check, just to hear that reverb. This was before “Stairway to Heaven” became a total cliche, of course.

4. Firesign Theater - How Can You Be in Two Places At Once (When You’re Not Anywhere At All)
Firesign Theater’s brain-twisting surreal albums had a major effect on my sense of humor and world outlook (for better or worse). “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye,” side 2 of this album, was the first one to get me hooked. “It's okay, they're speaking Chinese.”

5. Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
To me, a trio of albums by Stevie Wonder all but defined '70s pop music: Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness' First Finale. Not only listening to the music, but staring at the semi-cubist cover art was a complete revelation for a white boy from Kansas. “All In Love Is Fair” is still one of the most heartbreaking ballads I've ever heard. And I've given up ever trying to capture the feel of the drums on “Too High.”

6. Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
Yeah, I know—one of the most commercial albums ever made, and if I never hear "Don't Stop" again it will be too soon. But at the time, it was world-changing, a sonic revelation, and I really do think it is one of the great pop/rock albums of all time. I still want to cover “I Don't Want To Know” in a band some day.

7. Joni Mitchell - Hejira
I keep coming back to this album in particular, as well as Court and Spark. Lyrically, there are so many phrases that resonate deeply with me. Certain summer skyscapes always make me remember, “These are the clouds of Michelangelo/ Muscular with gods and sungold.”

8. The Records - The Records
It's been decades since I heard this great power pop record, so I can only guess that it's as good as I remember. I do know that during the sessions of the first real album I was on (co-produced by Stan Lynch of the Heartbreakers and Greg Penny), I listened to this record every night back in the hotel room, hoping that we could come up with something as good.

9. Pretenders - Pretenders
I think Pete Townshend said it best: this record is like a drug. As much as I love the Pretenders' subsequent stuff, they never equaled this album again.

10. Joe Jackson - Beat Crazy
I've got a lot of reservations about Joe Jackson, though he certainly has recorded a lot of great songs. This album was a total winner, from the wacky cover art to the mesmerizing blend of pop, punk, and reggae. Very close runner-up: Body and Soul, still one of the best-sounding records I've ever heard, but marred by a couple of horrible wannabe-commercial clunkers.

11. XTC - English Settlement
In 1980, a friend said there was a band coming to Lawrence that I just had to see. She was way into punk, and that was what i expected. XTC turned out to be way beyond punk, and in fact one of the very best live acts I've ever seen—and less than a year later they stopped touring forever. As my former piano teacher said, XTC took the harmonic ideas implied by the Beatles to their logical conclusion. Four or five XTC albums are among my all-time favorites by anybody, but English Settlement was the first one I bought, coming out a few months after I saw them live. I was obsessed with it for months, maybe years. A close runner-up for mind-blowing ideas and obsession was Apple Venus Vol. 1, an amazing blend of orchestral and rock sounds wrapped around a sort of Wiccan season cycle.

12. Missing Persons - 1st EP
In the heady early days of MTV, music seemed to have been reinvented. I helped put together a band which did a lot of the MTV playlist, and we did amazingly well for about six months, when interpersonal clashes blew the whole thing apart. The emotional intensity made for some great gigs while it lasted. We did four or five songs by Missing Persons. Terry Bozzio remains one of my favorite drummers of all time. Unfortunately, the excellent first EP was followed by a succession of weaker and weaker albums. I'm not sure this record is really one of the best, but that was a very influential time in my life and those songs were a big part of it.

13. The Police - Ghost in the Machine
Stewart Copeland may have had a bigger influence on the way I play drums than anyone except maybe Ringo (of course I do steal from everyone I hear). Zenyatta Mondatta was the album that completely blew me away first, but Ghost remains my favorite Police album. Besides possessing mind-boggling technique, Copeland also knew when to leave lots of space, as in “Spirits in the Material World.” Plus I love the dense harmonies on that record.

14. Cocteau Twins - mid ’80s EPs, esp. Echoes in a Shallow Bay and Tiny Dynamine
Such a spooky, wild and lost sound. Elizabeth Fraser is one of my favorite singers ever—when I first heard the Cocteau Twins I thought they had at least two vocalists because she could sound so different. Eventually I thought they got too pretty and lost interest in the band, though lately I've been thinking I need to revisit those albums again. The series of EPs they did in the mid-’80s are my favorites—and what great titles! Besides the two mentioned above, Sunburst and Snowblind and Aikea-Guinea are right up there.

15. The Cure - The Head on the Door, or Disintegration
I am no kind of goth, but Robert Smith is one hell of a songwriter. At the record store where I worked part-time, EPs by the Cure kept showing up and no one else wanted them so I would usually get to take them. Then The Top came out and I was blown away, followed by The Head on the Door which seemed a more consistent album—and besides, it contained “Kyoto Song,” which to this day grabs me by the throat every time. After that, the band seemed to get more dance-oriented and less interesting, though Disintegration sort of became the soundtrack to my life as I went through a divorce last year.

16. Jules Shear - The Eternal Return, or The Trap Door
I think Jules Shear is one of the best songwriters around, though hardly anyone seems to know about him. After the amazing Jules and the Polar Bears records of the ’70s he put out a succession of mostly brilliant solo albums. Watch Dog, the first of these, was great, but The Eternal Return ruled my world for quite a while. 1992's The Trap Door is maybe even better (and not as dated in the production), but it never took over my life like the earlier one.

17. Richard Thompson - Amnesia
I had heard about the legendary Richard Thompson but had never gotten around to listening to him, when a band I was in wound up opening for him in the mid-’80s. They were a stupendous band, including Clive Gregson and Christine Collister, but the centerpiece was of course Richard Thompson. Not just a brilliant guitarist, he’s also a great songwriter and a surprisingly effective singer, and live he is a charming and funny front person. I immediately went out and bought the current album, Across a Crowded Room, but my favorite from that era is 1988’s Amnesia. “Gypsy Love Songs,” “Turning of the Tide,” “Waltzing’s For Dreamers,” “Pharaoh”—most songwriters would be proud to have one of those in a career, let alone on a single album.

18. Sam Phillips - Cruel Inventions, or Martinis and Bikinis
A couple of Sam Phillips albums dominated my life for months at a time: Cruel Inventions, and then Martinis and Bikinis. I've been a fan of T Bone Burnett’s production for ages, and felt his best work was on her albums (they were married until a few years ago). She continues to make great music—NPR recently streamed one of her concerts, and it was amazing—but it doesn't take me over like the earlier albums did.

19. Garbage - Garbage
During the 1996 Rainmakers tour of Norway I was obsessed with this record, and now whenever I hear it I remember the autumn hills and gorgeous fjords of that trip. Butch Vig’s production is incredibly dense, and somehow instead of sounding over-compressed it's bigger than life. I read a review of this album where someone said, “Every time I hear Garbage my world gets a little colder.” Somehow, that works for me.

20. T Bone Burnett - The Criminal Under My Own Hat
This album didn't really grab me at first, but over the years it has become one of my favorite CDs ever. It is a tragedy it is out of print. Simple, mostly acoustic arrangements of simple, straightforward songs—and what songs! “Any Time At All” was played at my wedding. “Primitives,” “Humans From the Earth,” “Every Little Thing,” “Tear This Building Down”—there's not a loser in the bunch.

21. Peter Gabriel - Passion (Music for The Last Temptation of Christ)
Peter Gabriel nearly always seems to break new ground with each album, especially with his sounds—though he is a thoughtful lyricist and amazing singer as well. His album Up from a few years ago still blows my mind every time I hear it. But I keep coming back to this soundtrack to the Martin Scorsese film (which I tried a couple times to watch, unsuccessfully). It is evocative of a place and distant time in a way I didn't know popular music was capable of. Again, sadly, out of print.

22. Morphine - Cure For Pain
I was intrigued by the idea of a rock band without a guitar player. Then I heard the growling sax, 2-string slide bass, and funk drums with film noir hipster lyrics, and I was totally hooked. Every time I hear the intro to “Buena” I'm excited all over again.

23. Crowded House - Together Alone
I love Crowded House, and a lot of the earlier Split Enz stuff, especially Waiata. But there is something about this one…. Maybe because it was recorded in a beach house in New Zealand, it really has a feeling of place about it—specially the ethnic singing and percussion on the title track. Wonderful stuff.

24. Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjun
A friend turned me on to this record without comment. At first I didn't know what to think—a Nordic Pink Floyd, maybe? But I've never been a big fan of Pink Floyd, and besides, this album had overtones of classical music and just a nameless something that would not let me go. It still is my favorite of their expanding catalog. BTW, if you get a chance to see these guys live—do it. They are unbelievable.

25. Pete Yorn - Nightcrawler
As I mentioned, as time goes by, it seems to be harder and harder for an album to get stuck in my head and force itself to be a daily listen. This one did, even more than his excellent first record, Music For the Morning After (the second record is mostly forgettable). Each song is kind of its own little world, but the album hangs together as a whole.