4 Way Street
Artist: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Community Score: 8.85

This 1992 expanded version of the original double live album (originally released on April 7, 1971) by CSN&Y is now an indispensible part of any collection, with additional Neil Young and Graham Nash material (and even a version of "King Midas in Reverse," the old Hollies tune) that any serious listener will want. Some of the extended guitar... Read More

After the Gold Rush
Artist: Neil Young
Community Score: 8.35

In the 15 months between the release of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and After the Gold Rush, Neil Young issued a series of recordings in different styles that could have prepared his listeners for the differences between the two LPs. His two compositions on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album Déjà Vu, "Helpless" and "Country Girl,"... Read More

Closing Time
Artist: Tom Waits
Community Score: 8.77

Tom Waits' debut album is a minor-key masterpiece filled with songs of late-night loneliness. Within the apparently narrow range of the cocktail bar pianistics and muttered vocals, Waits and producer Jerry Yester manage a surprisingly broad collection of styles, from the jazzy "Virginia Avenue" to the up-tempo funk of "Ice Cream Man" and from... Read More

Stephen Stills
Artist: Stephen Stills
Community Score: 9.25

Talk about understatement -- there's Stephen Stills on the cover, acoustic guitar in hand, promising a personal singer/songwriter-type statement. And there is some of that -- even a lot of that personal music-making -- on Stephen Stills, but it's all couched in astonishingly bold musical terms. Stephen Stills is top-heavy with 1970... Read More

Tea for the Tillerman
Artist: Cat Stevens
Community Score: 7.89

Mona Bone Jakon only began Cat Stevens' comeback. Seven months later, he returned with Tea for the Tillerman, an album in the same chamber-group style, employing the same musicians and producer, but with a far more confident tone. Mona Bone Jakon had been full of references to death, but Tea for the Tillerman was not about dying; it was about... Read More

Bridge Over Troubled Water
Artist: Simon & Garfunkel
Community Score: 8.48

Bridge Over Troubled Water was one of the biggest-selling albums of its decade, and it hasn't fallen too far down on the list in years since. Apart from the gospel-flavored title track, which took some evolution to get to what it finally became, however, much of Bridge Over Troubled Water also constitutes a stepping back from the music that... Read More

John B. Sebastian
Artist: John Sebastian
Community Score: 8.00

When he led the Lovin' Spoonful from 1965 to 1967, John Sebastian experimented with a variety of styles, expanding from the folk, jug band, and rock & roll that were the band's basic mixture to include everything from country ("Nashville Cats") to orchestrated movie scoring ("Darling, Be Home Soon"). Freed from the confines of a four-piece band,... Read More

Gonna Take a Miracle
Artist: Laura Nyro

With the 1971 release Gonna Take a Miracle, pop composer and vocalist Laura Nyro completed her four-album/four-year deal for Columbia. Nyro's passion for R&B can be traced back to some of her earliest compositions, such as "Wedding Bell Blues" and "Stoned Soul Picnic" -- both of which were covered by the R&B vocal quintet the Fifth Dimension.... Read More

Veedon Fleece
Artist: Van Morrison
Community Score: 9.25

The final album of Van Morrison's remarkably prolific and innovative 1968-1974 period (followed by three years of silence), Veedon Fleece brings the singer full circle, returning him to the introspection and poignancy of Astral Weeks. Composed following his sudden divorce from wife Janet Planet and subsequent retreat from the U.S., the songs are... Read More

It's Too Late to Stop Now
Artist: Van Morrison

While Van Morrison is, to be kind, an erratic and temperamental live performer, he's in stellar form throughout the double album It's Too Late to Stop Now, a superb concert set that neatly summarizes his career from his days with Them (represented by scorching renditions of "Gloria" and "Here Comes the Night") through 1973's Hard Nose the... Read More

The Good Book
Artist: Melanie
Community Score: 10.00

Another surprising record, most notably Melanie's wonderful cover of Phil Ochs' "Chords of Fame," which is superior in many ways to Ochs' own, good as that is. The packaging, which includes a cover photo and small-size booklet with lyrics in the center of the jacket, makes this a difficult record to find completely intact two or three decades... Read More

Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)
Artist: Melanie
Community Score: 9.00

Melanie always sang about the '60s like she meant it, with passion and fervor -- that's one of the reasons why she's taken a little more seriously than a lot of other rock survivors of the later part of that decade; one had a sense that the sensibilities were genuine, and that she was (and is) the real article. "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)"... Read More

Over the Rainbow
Artist: Livingston Taylor

Taylor's third recording for Capricorn was remastered and reissued in 1999. Though he began his career before brother James, and curtailed it early due to a psychiatric disorder, Livingston was obviously never as successful as his brother. It's hard to figure; his clear tenor is almost indistinguishable from his brother's, and even song... Read More