Greatest Keyboard Albums

1. Brain Salad Surgery - Keith Emerson (ELP)
2. Close to the Edge - Rick Wakeman (Yes)
3. Machine Head - Jon Lord (Deep Purple)
4. Tarkus - Keith Emerson (ELP
5. Tumbleweed Connection - Elton John
6. The Six Wives of Henry VIII - Rick Wakeman
7. Scenes from a Memory - Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater)
8. Fragile - Rick Wakeman (Yes)
9. The Doors - Ray Manzarek (The Doors)
10. Wish You Were Here - Richard Wright (Pink Floyd)
11. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John
12. Selling England by the Pound - Tony Banks (Genesis)
13. John Barleycorn Must Die - Steve Winwood (Traffic)
14. Dark Side of the Moon - Richard Wright (Pink Floyd)
15. On the Threshold of a Dream - Mike Pinder (The Moody Blues)

Greatest 'Live' Keyboard Albums

1. Made in Japan - Jon Lord (Deep Purple)
2. Welcome Back to the Show that Never Ends... - Keith Emerson (ELP)
3. Live at the Star Club Hamburg - Jerry Lee Lewis
4. Yessongs - Rick Wakeman (Yes)
5. 11-17-70 - Elton John

SEbtP should be top 10 more so than WywH

How did Elton John beat Emerson, Wakeman, and Lord to a top spot for the Live Albums list?

Made in Japan should be #1 because of its massive influence on rock keyboard playing in general. It was one of the first live albums to demonstrate what a rock keyboardist was truly capable of, and Jon Lord's organ-guitar battles with Ritchie Blackmore showed that a keyboardist could easily do whatever a guitarist could do.

Welcome Back My Friends should be #2 because of its technicality and for having some of the first truly amazing live synthesizer playing.

The Yessongs for the same reason.

Then JLL and maybe Elton. I haven't heard anything about 17-11-70's actual influence on piano playing in general.

Not gonna lie, I was pretty subjective about those. I'll fix that soon

Looks good now man.

Beaver -- any suggestions to round out a top twenty?

Live?

Live Scenes from New York - Dream Theater (Jordan Rudess)
End of an Era - Nightwish (Tuomas Holopainen)
Genesis Live - Genesis (Tony Banks)
Pulse - Pink Floyd (Rick Wright, Jon Carin)
Before The Flood - The Band (Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel)

I need to decide on more, but it's probably going to be dominated by prog.

I meant studio, but I'll take suggestions for either. And for both, prog will probably dominate the lists, I agree.

Studio:

New Orleans Piano - Professor Longhair
Music from Big Pink - The Band (Garth Hudson/Richard Manuel)
Illusions on a Double Dimple - Triumvirat (Jurgen Fritz)
Spartacus - Triumvirat (Jurgen Fritz)
Images and Words - Dream Theater (Kevin Moore)
Awake - Dream Theater (Kevin Moore)
Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory - Dream Theater (Jordan Rudess)
Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence - Dream Theater (Jordan Rudess)
Oceanborn - Nightwish (Tuomas Holopainen)
Century Child - Nightwish (Tuomas Holopainen)
In the Region of the Summer Stars - The Enid (Robert John Godfrey)
Gris Gris - Dr. John
Rising Force - Yngwie Malmsteen (Jens Johannsson)
Meddle - Pink Floyd (Rick Wright)
Relayer - Yes (Patrick Moraz)
Octopus - Gentle Giant (Kerry Minnear)
The Power and the Glory - Gentle Giant (Kerry Minnear)
Fireball - Deep Purple (Jon Lord)
Everything before 1990 that ELP released
Mothership Connection - Parliament (Bernie Worrell)
Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome - Parliament (Bernie Worrell)
Head Hunters - Herbie Hancock (if it's eligible, but funk is generally included on rock lists)
Talking Book - Stevie Wonder
Songs in the Key of Life - Stevie Wonder
Innervisions - Stevie Wonder
Selling England by the Pound - Genesis (Tony Banks)
Mirage - Camel (Peter Bardens)
The Soft Machine - Soft Machine (Mike Ratledge) (DEFINITE contender for Top 20)
For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night - Caravan (David Sinclair)
Anything The Doors did
Green Onions - Booker T. and the MGs (Booker T. Jones)
Hot Rats - Frank Zappa (Ian Underwood)
Origin of Symmetry - Muse (Matt Bellamy)
Absolution - Muse (Matt Bellamy)

Bolded will probably be included when I expand. I don't think I'd include Hancock though.

Yeah I wasn't sure. Head Hunters definitely is a funk album in every sense of the word though, and it seems like excluding it would be like excluding James Brown from the Greatest Rock Frontmen list. It was extremely influential in the development of funk because of its use of the Moog as a bass instrument and the replacement of guitar with clavinet.

I added the stuff with Worrell on it for the same reason. They were ridiculously influential on the use of keyboards in rock music.


And for Ratledge, here's an insane performance demonstrating what an organ was capable of, even before Jon Lord. The guy is ridiculously underrated everywhere except prog circles.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwo3ht8sxJo

Two suggestions:

Wendy Carlos - Switched-On Bach (1968)
(This album started the Moog craze in 1968, and its influence is often overlooked, given the fact this record is more or less obscure to not-so-dedicated listeners. In terms of quality, it is actually classical music played on a synthesizer. What else could be more progressive? I'm pretty sure its seriousness alone would outdo the quality of many of the keyboard attempts of some of the lesser prog rock bands who managed to expose good keyboards playing through improvisation/jamming.) His other album, "The Well Tempered Synthesizer" was a slightly more refined effort, but, as far as I'm concerned, the original, influential piece, was S-OB. If there's an album to blame for the explosion of Moog abuse throughout the 70's, it would be this one, which beats Abbey Road (a more exposed early Moog album) by one year. It sold 500,000 copies, and, later, its impact led Stanley Kubrick to ask Wendy Carlos to produce the "futuristic" score for his 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange.

Citing Wikipedia:

Entering Billboard's pop Top 40 charts on March 1, 1969, it climbed quickly to the Top 10; it stayed in the Top 40 for 17 weeks,[1] and in the Top 200 for more than a year. In the 1970 Grammy Awards, the album took three prizes: Best Classical Album, Best Classical Performance – Instrumental Soloist or Soloists (with or without orchestra) and Best Engineered Classical Recording.

Yes - The Yes Album

I was going to suggest "Switched-On Bach", but it's not really a rock or a keyboard album. It's all layered synthesizers, which pretty much makes it a studio engineering masterpiece. Remember that the first Moog synthesizer only had one working key at a time, so any and all chords and multi-hand parts had to be overdubbed.

So basically, it's not really eligible for the list, or I'd place it VERY high.

I actually think Strange Days could be Manzarek's highest. Not only does it feature one of the first uses of the Moog synthesizer, but there's just awesome stuff throughout - the harpsichord on Love Me Two Times, the trippy-as-hell organ sound on Unhappy Girl, the now legendary intro to When The Music's Over, etc.

Selling England by the Pound - Tony Banks (Genesis) > WYWH