The Voices of Reason: Top First Three Albums

The Voices of Reason: Top First Three Albums
by Various Authors

Question: What band had the best first three albums to start their career?

Bradley Lewis—The correct answer undoubtedly is Public Enemy: Yo!
Bum Rush the Show, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, and Fear of a Black Planet. I will not argue about this.

Brenda McAlice—One of the only bands that has maintained a mass following with generations from the baby boomers to Generation "Z" (or whatever the name is for the current youth) is U2. Clearly, their first three albums put them on the path to greatness.

U2 started rocking in 1980 with Boy, reining in fans with their passion for politics, and the "hard rock" sound of Edge's highly processed guitar. "I Will Follow" is the highlight song of their first album.

They stumbled a bit on their second album, October. I say it is still an album that made them great, though—they got to learn the important and tough lesson of how to stand up, brush themselves off, and continue to make great music.

Good thing they didn't give up, because their next album, War, kicked some serious ass. Maybe they were pissed off that October wasn't well received. Maybe they were pissed off about the f-d up situation with the IRA in their homeland. Whatever they were pissed off about, it worked. This is the album that put U2 on the map with the awesome passion and politics behind "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Years Day."

So U2 it is. Their first three albums were the launch pad that eventually got them into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Boy and War specifically put them on the map, and started the massive following of loyal fans that they continue to impress

Vance Macdonald—Led Zepplin might own this category, if only we we had the number 3 stricken from existence. Of course, it's not really a level playing field—given the way artists cranked out the albums in those days, LZ can certainly be forgiven the middling III, when sandwiched with the masterpieces of I, II, and IV.

CCR is another contender here, but again, when you churn out 5 classic albums in just 2 years, you are going to pay the price somewhere. With CCR, they really didn't have a clunker in their first 3 albums, but they weren't exactly deep—only a total of 24 songs on all 3 albums (compare that to Pete Townsend's songwriting spasm from 1965-1969).

But enough hippie nostalgia—my vote is going to the The Clash, for so many reasons that I think it would warrant a separate article. As with the examples above, it could be argued that their second album was a bit flat compared to their debut, but their third album, London Calling, was so cataclysmic that the first two albums could have been a collection of Alvin and the Chipmunks cover songs and The Clash would still be my pick for this category.

Postscript: I believe an interesting case could be made for Prince, but only if we could ignore his first two obscure ablums, and jump right to the Dirty Mind - Controversy - 1999 troika. And after I finished writing this, I began to build a case for Bob Dylan, but I lost the energy.

Jeff Lewis—In my opinion, it is Public Enemy in a rout, a landslide, a laugher, by a mile. Yo! Bum Rush The Show is a great, old-fashioned type of rap album, with lots of space between beats and boastful rapping. PE followed it up with It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, which possibly is the greatest album ever made. It commonly is described as a revolutionary album, both in its lyrical content and
dense, sample-heavy production; for me it certainly was revolutionary and a revelation, because it single-handedly changed the music I listened to. The moment I heard the second track, "Bring The Noise," my music collection—Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, Cream—became obsolete. PE's third album, Fear Of A Black Planet, is in the same vein as It Takes A Nation Of Millions, and also is a classic—nearly as good as its predecessor.

Brant Wellman—For me, this is far from an easy question, because most of the bands that I love don’t end up sticking around long enough to put out three albums. I thought about writing about Fugazi, but their first album really isn’t even a true studio album, but it’s a compilation of their first 13 singles that were previously released. I also considered REM, but despite the absolute wonder they had on their first two albums, they did have a bit of a let down when they put out Fables of the Reconstruction.

Then it hit me. I had to go way back to the first band that I ever fell in love with—Oingo Boingo. I don’t know of any other band that didn’t have any let down through their first three albums. The genius of Boingo’s first three albums is that they were able to maintain their manic/new wave/ska/punk style and energy throughout, without becoming stagnant and boring.

It all began with Only A Lad, which includes the best fuck-you-anthem of all time by the same name. Along with the song “On the Outside,” this album may be the most beloved by social outcasts from all backgrounds. There was no let down with the release of their second album, Nothing to Fear. Songs like “Private Life” and “Wild Sex (In the Working Class)” became instant classics. Oingo Boingo even took it up another notch for me with their third album, Good For Your Soul, which is my personal favorite of all their material. The energy level in this album just rises above all the others.

Things did change a bit following Good For Your Soul. Not only did Oingo Boingo leave A&M Records for MCA, but for some crazy reason someone decided to put Danny Elfman out front. Boingo’s next release was disguised as a solo album by Danny Elfman (called So-Lo, no less), even though the composition of the band was essentially unchanged. The subsequent Oingo Boingo releases are all solid for the most part, but none of them capture quite the same intensity that they were able to produce in their first three releases.

Ian Wigley—The best first three albums came from Long Island, NY, in the shape of Public Enemy. I came to my decision by eliminating the rest—namely picking out the bands that had great albums to start their career, and then picking out where they fell short.

The Beatles had a really bad first album; they never hit their stride (for
me) until A Hard Day's Night or Help. The Rolling Stones were awful (again, for me) until about 1967 when their trippy album At Their Satanic Majesties' Request came out, and was better than its Beatles equivalent (Sgt Pepper's). The Beatles and the Stones both fared better later in life, namely the late 60s, and in the Stones' case, the 1970s.

Led Zeppelin had three blinding albums to start their career with, namely
Led Zepellin I, II, and III. They continued to be great until Coda let them
down at the tail end of their career. Everything else was absolutely
fantastic. These guys are the closest we'll get to bettering Public Enemy.

We could argue The Smiths first three albums were the greatest, but then
again, the best Smiths album came when they'd split up (Strangeways Here We Come) and I don't think any of The Smiths albums changed anything in the fashion the first three PE albums did, namely in terms of politics, race and sheer aggression.

Public Enemy changed the landscape with those first three albums. They gave us pure unadulterated anger and vitriol. What Chuck D and crew did from 1987 onwards will be remembered by everyone as the benchmark by which to judge greatness. Public Enemy had everything against them when they set out: they were black, outside of the mainstream, and from the east coast. They set out their stall, and they rocked the world, three times over. We probably won't see better.

Also-rans: Oasis. If Be Here Now was twenty minutes shorter, Oasis would have got my vote for best first three. Definitely Maybe and What's the Story, Morning Glory? rocketed Oasis into orbit around 1996, and if Be Here Now would have been less of a majestic affair, then they'd have gotten my vote, and they'd have been a thousand times bigger than U2 by now.

If Guns N Roses had made three Appetite For Destruction albums instead of one Appetite and two Illusions, they would have been bigger than God by now, forget The Beatles. If the press would have lauded Check Your Head like it did Paul's Boutique, then the Beastie Boys could have taken PE's crown, and if The Stone Roses had made two more albums half as good as their debut, then they would have been in with a shout. Instead, Chuck and Co. get my vote.

Martell—When I began thinking about this issue, two of the bands listed above immediately popped into my head: U2 and Oingo Boingo. These are two of my favorite bands in the world, and if I were to be stranded on a desert island, would most definitely choose an album or two from each of them to take with me.

But I ran into issues with each of them. With U2, their second release October (while a solid album) was not even in my top five for them. I decided that for whichever band I chose, their first three albums must be my favorite three by them. So U2 was out.

With Boingo, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I barely even know their first three albums. I know all the songs, but I've listened to the double-disc Best of Boingo set for so long, I can't even remember which ones go on which album. It just seemed wrong for me to choose them.

I briefly considered Guns N Roses. Appetite for Destruction has such fond memories for me, and GnR Lies was vastly underrated, in my opinion. But then I couldn't decide which album came third—Use Your Illusion I or Use Your Illusion II—since they both came out at the same time. If they had just taken the best songs from both albums and made one über-album, I likely would have chosen them.

After that, I thought long and hard about the Sacramento band Cake, and pretty much had my mind made up that they were it when, all of sudden, it dawned on me. I was thinking about Capricorn Records (Cake's label) and Boingo again when I connected the dots.

I've already written about Boingo's unbelievable final concert, but perhaps even more unbelievable is that Boingo also put on one of the worst concerts I've ever seen. It was at the San Diego State Amphitheater in 1993, and I can't even begin to tell you how bad it was. There was one redeeming factor about that show, though.

You see, for some unknown reason, my friend and I got to the show early. Not only were we early enough to see the opening band, be we saw the band that opened for opening band. We found our seats and started talking about whatever, paying absolutely no attention to the band on stage. And why would we? They were just a bunch of nobodies from Omaha. But when P-Nut launched into his bass solo from that still-unnamed hidden track, he had my immediate and undivided attention. Even today, it still gives me goosebumps to think about it.

That band was 311.

Their debut album Music is still one of the best albums I've ever heard. Even though it's over 10 years old, it was one of the first albums I put into my iPod. Hearing the bass playing on that album was like hearing Eddie play "Eruption" for the first time. It's almost unfathomable that the sound is coming from a debut.

Their next release, Grassroots, goes in an entirely different direction, but in many ways is even better than Music. It's got more funk and an overall richer sound. And their self-named third album, while the worst of the three, is the one that thrust them into the mainstream. The songs "Down" and "All Mixed Up" were the ones that made them stars, but the song I liked the best was "Don't Stay Home." I'll never forget hearing it for the first time on 91X, realizing about five seconds in who it was, and just being so happy that this amazing band had somehow made it.

To submit a topic for The Voices of Reason, or to be added to the VoR Shout Out List, send an e-mail to martell@babblog.com.