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The Clash
 
 

London Calling I was a Clash fan before this, even as hard as Columbia made it to appreciate the band's oddly disjointed  American debut, Give 'Em Enough Rope. But London Calling put the band in a whole 'nother universe. On a lot of days if you asked me for my favorite album, this would be it. Simply a great rock n' roll record that manages all at once to capture the loose do-it-yourself vibe of punk, connect early American rock to music from the rest of the world, yet appeal enough to emerging mainstream tastes so that it would become iconic by the turn of the century. You'll never quite understand just how cool it was to hear this when it first came out, just as I'll never quite understand how cool it was to hear Elvis singing "That's All Right Mama" in 1953. But if you listen close enough, you'll get a pretty good idea.