Gary, thanks for starting this thread. I love Top Ten Lists!

Here's mine:

Arthur Russell: "First Thought, Best Thought"-Every one of his posthumous releases makes me feel stupid for not being aware of him when he was alive.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse: "Live at the Fillmore East"-The cover shows the marquee of the Fillmore East. Neil Young was on the same bill as Miles Davis (and apparently the Steve Miller Band). Trapped in a bad relationship with a woman whose musical tastes differed from mine, I attended a different show also advertised on the marquee: Joe Cocker and Brian Auger. What was I thinking?

Knopfler/Harris: "All The Roadrunning"-The album that inspired the greatest parody of a rock review ever to appear on these boards. I won't name names on the odd chance that it wasn't intended as parody, but it's still out there in the archives.

Wolf Eyes & Anthony Braxton: "Black Vomit"-The title says it all.

Tortoise: "A Lazarus Taxon"- Sure it's a collection of "odds and sods" but it's my favorite Tortoise album and the value of the year: 3 CDs plus a DVD for twenty bucks!

Raconteurs: "Broken Boy Soldiers"-A Jack White side project that rocks harder than the White Stripes.

Beck: "The Information"-Best driving music of the year, partially because it really only sounds good in the car.

The Klezmatics: "Wonder Wheel"-An odd sub-genre: putting music to Woody Guthrie unpublished lyrics. Even better, to my ears, than the two Wilco/Billy Bragg albums on the same theme.

Sandy Bull: "Still Valentine's Day 1969"-Struggling live with new equipment and a recalcitrant tape deck and featuring more reverb than your ears can stand it's a fascinating document.

Peter Walker: "A Raga For Peter Walker"-A comeback album and tribute album in one. I have always treasured his first album on Vanguard and apparently so does Thurston Moore and James Blackshaw among others. Four new Walker tunes bookend six tributes by guitarists described as "under the influence" (the "influence" of Peter Walker that is).

1 thru 10: Los Lobos - The Town and The City

I'm still wondering if there's any need to add any other recordings to my list. The Los Lobos CD is that good. Of course if we were talking jazz I would have a full ten items listed but for rock I only need one and the boys from East LA get the nod.

Felicidades, amigos!

I knew this thread would come, but it always frustrates me because I can never remember which albums were this year vs. another year - you know how those damn years have a habit of running together after age 21.

So, I'll call this the start of my evolving answer with more to come later:

In no particular order...

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I'm with Jazzfan on the greatness of Los Lobos' "The Town and the City."

It's up at the top of their best. Please go buy it.

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Bobby Dylan's "Modern Times" is great, too. I'm over the mild plaigerism thing. The songs are spectacularly good.

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Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins "Rabbit Fur Coat." A little idiosyncratic, but well recorded and a little in the vein of Julee Cruise's classic, "Floating Into the Night." I'd call this Jenny Lewis disc an example of what David Lynch might come up with if he hooked up with a stoner bluegrass girl band.

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Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Show Your Bones." I hated it the first time I played it, but I couldn't get myself to yank it out of the play drawer. It's a grower. It's got a little Siouxe Sue hovering in the back of Karen O's vocals, with nice, proto-punk musical style - good tunefulness under the sturm and whatever.

Interesting side note: Imaad Wasif is a current member of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and released a solo project that, if anything, is a guy version of Mazzy Star. I can't decide if it's way cool atmospherics or wussy man noodling yet...but it is of a kind with Mazzy's sound.

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Yup, The Raconteurs is pretty good. I need more time with it, but it's good.

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Cat Power's "The Greatest" is a great disc, too.

So is Neko Case's "Fox Confessor..."

I used to want to run away with Liz Phair, but now I wanna run away with Neko Case.

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Tim O'Reagan, I think the album name is eponymous, is good...if you like Freedy Johnston, it's really really good!

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Best part?

All those albums are on vinyl with the exception of Tim O'Reagan, and Imaad Wasif!

I'm a jerk. The Dylan album should have been on my list. It's on my Top 10 all-time Dylan album list so how could I leave it off the yearly list?

I'm a jerk for another reason. I love Los Lobos so much that to celebrate the birth of my first child I played the entire initial box set while drinking champagne and smoking a cuban. So why haven't I picked up their latest? I'm running right out to Tower to pick it up.

What? Really? They did?

You aren't a jerk!

This whole thread will probably serve to remind us to smack our foreheads and yell, "Of course!" several times as it progresses.

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I haven't picked up the Tom Waits set yet, nor the Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler discs...but I bet people will be right about them.

*Edited to add a conjunction.

Thanks Buddha. But to show you how silly I feel, I put the Raconteurs on my Top 10 list and the only reason why I even knew about them is because I saw them open for Dylan about three weeks ago. And this from a guy who was there at Newport in 1965.