8. Buddy Holly & The Crickets - The "Chirping" Crickets [1957]

Well I never claimed there was never going to be any bias in this list, I mean why bother making it otherwise if I was just going to blindly agree with what everybody else thinks.

Some albums are good because of the music on them, some albums are good because of the memories associated with them. Although I have never heard this album in my life I am familiar with the material on it. That's because in my house when I was a kid Elvis was never the king of Rock n Roll according to my Father, Buddy Holly was.

Listening to this brings back many memories of going through my parents record collection as a small child just discovering records for the first time (More singles than albums) and seeing album covers of this bespectacled geeky guy staring back at me in that kind of over-coloured half portrait/half photo thing that they tended to do on albums in the 50s.

The music as you would expect is faultless, it's like being pummelled in the face with hit after hit after hit. Oh Boy!, Not Fade Away, Maybe Baby, That'll Be The Day... and hell we're still only halfway through the album after all that. Like I said this is an extremely biased review but I loved hearing all this stuff again and I have no hesitation in making it the first album on this list to get full marks.

Rating 5 / 5