Just off the top of your head... they can be old or new... don't cheat and look at your cd or mp3 collections... the entire album must be good... ONLY LIST FIVE - no more, no less.

Burning Airlines - Mission: Control
Reggie and the Full Effect - Songs Not To Get Married To
Fuel - Monument To Excess (or Discography)
Screeching Weasel - My Brain Hurts
Hot Water Music - The New What Next

The Posies - Frosting on the Beater
Verbena - La Musica Negra
Folk Implosion - One Part Lullaby
Twilight Singers - Blackberry Belle
Blinker The Star - August Everywhere

The Format- Interventions and Lullabyes
John Ralston- Needle Bed
Anberlin- Never Take Friendship Personal
Straylight Run- Straylight Run
Howie Day- Stop All The World Now

Some of these are kinda popular, but these are the 5 must have albums I have that many don't have/know about.

Another more popular must have for me is Taking Back Sunday's Tell All Your Friends.

I kow my picks are a bit more mainstream, but that doesn't mean most people do have these.

The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
Tool - Anema
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
Broken Social Scene - You Forgot it in People
World Party - Goodbye Jumbo

Dream Theater - Metropolis, part II: Scenes From a Memory
Ayreon - the Human Equation
Pain of Salvation - Be
An Evening With John Petrucci & Jordan Rudess
Opeth - Damnation

Mogwai - EP+2
Porcupine Tree - Signify
Eels - Souljacker
Future Sound of London - Lifeforms
Girls Against Boys - Freak on ICA

Black Lab - Your Body Above Me
Juliana Hatfield - Only Everything
Collapsis - Dirty Wake
Cake - Comfort Eagle
Gob - Foot In Mouth Disease
Sister Hazel - Chasing Daylight
Muse - Absolution
Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary
Stroke 9 - Nasty Little Thoughts

I tried to pick lesser known albums that would have close to universal appeal, therefore, no PiL, Zappa, etc...

Love - Forever Changes
Eno - Another Green World
Rainy Day - Rainy Day
The dBs - Reverberation
Randy Newman - Sail Away

When I think universal appeal, the first thing that comes to mind is Zappa's Joe's Garage. Everyone should own it!

Ocean Machine - Biomech
Infected Mushroom - I'm the Supervisor
De La Soul - ...Is Dead
Killswitch Engage - The End of Heartache
The Haunted - The Haunted Made Me Do It

I think that album sucks, and is incredibly offensive and insulting to boot.

Badlands - Voodoo Highway (it sold horribly but is a fantastic album!)
Webb Wilder - Doo-Dad
The Shazam - Godspeed The Shazam
D.A.D. - No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims
Johnny Cash/Bob Dylan duet album - unreleased from 1969 (are bootlegs acceptable in this list?) One song can be heard on Dylan's Nashville Skyline album (Girl from the North Country). They sound like two buddies having a beer or twelve and singing some country songs.

The Slits - Cut
Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones
Can - Ege Bamyasi
Devo - Duty Now For The Future
Buffy Sainte Marie - Illuminations

Here My Dear - Marvin Gaye
A Wizard, A True Star - Todd Rundgren
Lewis Taylor - Lewis Taylor
The Lost Album - Lewis Taylor
Odessey & the Oracle - The Zombies

freudguy: That song is awesome and is also on the Johnny Cash boxset The Essential Johnny Cash, put out by Columbia in 2002.

That said, I have heard of maybe half of these albums. It would help if you guys put it into a context, so I can decide whose opinion to trust. (For example, Mike Corvin's seem to be Five Must-Have Hard Rock/Prog-Rock/Metal Albums --- not my cup of soup).

Feel free to contact me for more information on any of these.

Basehead - Play With Toys (1991)

Michael Ivey, a Maryland suburbanite, sits down in the early 90's and crafts hip-hop's unknown masterpiece using the tools of late 90's indie lo-fi'ers and eons before Common or his contemporaries. Michael plays guitar, uses tambourines, drum sequencers, real drums, bass, organ, and a ton of other instruments to craft a masterpiece of an album, a lot of it while he's in his bedroom. The album sounds fresher now than it did fifteen years ago, and it's still universally relevant and completely undated. It's lack of commercial success can only be attributed to the label which originally released this folding (causing the album to be out of print for a couple of years) and subsequent albums being less than stellar (get this one).

Manu Chao - Proxima Estación: Esperanza (2001)

Ask most people outside of the U.S. and they may have heard of Manu Chao, or his earlier, ultra-political rock group Mano Negra (think Sandinista!-era Clash). By the time the 21st century rolled around, Manu Chao had mellowed out, but only slightly. His songs can still be political (Algiers, global warming), but the music and lyrics are livened by bright sunny songs about having a good time or love (in general, as his love for a girl, or a certain soda, or pot, or mountains). Think the early unstructured music of Beck, only channelled through reggae music, all whipped up in a blender. This is one of those albums that works best as a whole, as the album is so fragmented (that's good) that it feels like you're sitting on a beach with this guy while he's improvising for an hour. Although the album is in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Arabic, you don't mind, as it is simply blissful.

Don Byron - A Fine Line: Arias and Lieder (2000)

Don Byron is an extremely talented clarinetist, and his work is usually on the edges, always improvising and experimental. If I've turned you off, don't leave --- you could put this album on over dinner and be thoroughly delighted and entertained. Don Byron, along with an impressive roster of guest stars (Pat Metheny Group vocalist Mark Ledford, singer Cassandra Wilson, pianist Uri Caine), look at the classic Europen idea of arias and lieder (songs) and interfusing them with newer material... Roy Orbison, the Four Tops, songs written by Steven Sondheim. The result is incredible and rewarding for both pop enthusiasts and jazz purists.

The Russian Futurists - The Method of Modern Love (2003)

Matthew Adam Hart is The Russian Futurists. He plays hauntingly beautiful lo-fi pop music that sounds like its recorded in his bedroom in Ontario. You can almost hear the snow hitting the glass outside, and him taking sips from a warm hot cocoa between choruses. This is Badly Drawn Boy via Brian Wilson, and unlike Damon Gough, he's not getting worse with time. The songs are hidden in droning bass drums, horns, muddy percussion, piano melodies coming out from the deepest part of the ocean, organs clapping on strings like out of the dream of a child. The lyrics are (amazingly) intelligible and heartfelt, like when he sings, in "A Mind's Dying Verse (You and the Wine)":

When our love was born / The Earth was torn / By such things

We rang out like horns / On Austrian morns / In the spring

The sounds that we made / Endlessly fade / Like a curse

And now you and the wine / Have become intertwined / And that's worse

All while the drums kick in so heavily like you're just a bit too drunk, and at the end, a cacophony of whistles, howling cries, and organs carries you away.

Electrelane - The Power Out (2004)

Electrelane is a four-some from Brighton, England, who just happened to make the best album from 2004. The songs are Krautrock and art-punk without being grating or effusive. Their music is eerie, spiritual, airy, and menacing all at once. (Think of Stars, Stereolab, Sonic Youth, Velvet Underground, Clinic). This Steve Albini-produced album finds them at their most focused and international: lyrics are often taken (in German) from Nietzsche. One song, "Oh! Sombra" is a sonnet written by 16th century Spanish poet Juan Boscan (again, sung in Spanish). All this sounds incredibly complex, overly intellectual, and just plain boring. It's not. Put this album in and you'll be captivated within the first minute.

Fiction Plane - Everything Will Never Be Ok - extremely catchy rock from Sting's son's band
Doves - The Last Broadcast - if someone doesn't like the song 'Pounding', I can't imagine liking them very much
Our Lady Peace - The Age of Spiritual Machines - the album revolves around the ideas in Ray Kurzweil's book of the same name and is an excellent example of a 'concept album' that truly works
Trashcan Sinatras - Weightlifting - beautiful pop music, great lyrics
The Shore - The Shore - anyone who liked The Verve should own this album

What did you think of Dove's last album? I hope they're not going the Travis route, where a band has one or two great albums, then sort of muddles in nothingness for a while. I wasn't really impressed and gave the albums a couple of listens and nothing grabbed me.

My favorite Doves songs are the instrumental "Crunch" from Rarewerks II and "Hit the Ground Running" from the Last Broadcast bonus disc.

Bloodhound Gang - Hooray For Boobies
Mesh - Who Watches Over Me?
Elegant Machinery - Yesterday Man
Camouflage - Sensor
De/Vision - Monosex

I second Electrelane's The Power Out.

Rubydiver - "Superremote"
Hooverphonic - "The Magnificent Tree"
The Beta Band - "Hot Shots II"
Trey Anastasio - "Trey Anastasio"
Thrice - "The Illusion of Safety"

When I first got it, I loved it. It's faded a bit and I'd put it below Last Broadcast or Lost Souls, but it'd still be in the top ten favorite albums I've picked up in 2005 so far. 'Snowden' & 'Sky Starts Falling' are my favorites on it.

Probably would say my overall favorite songs of theirs are 'Pounding', 'The Man Who Told Everything' and 'There Goes the Fear'. Haven't heard either of the two you mentioned, but after looking up info on Rarewerks II, it sounds like a disc I should pick up.

Breeders - Last Splash
Alejandro Escovedo - More Miles Than Money
Blue Oyster Cult - Spectres
Matthew Sweet - 100% Fun
The Clash - Sandanista!

third!

not to rag, but hasn't this album sold zillions of copies?

Death - Symbolic
Holst - The Planets (André Previn/Royal Philharmonic Orchestra)
FSOL - Dead Cities
The Chemical Brothers - Exit Planet Dust
Nada Surf - High/Low