Her Majesty's A Pretty Nice Girl

One of the three Beatles albums of my father's that I ruined from repeated play as a child was Abbey Road; though it never got as much play as the instantly accessible A Hard Day's Night or the mostly fun Sgt. Pepper, I did give it a shot now and again, if only for Octopus's Garden. It is a dense, complicated record -- only later did I understand that one side, the more experimental side with Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam, was to keep the Yokofied John happy, and the songier other side with Come Together and Oh! Darling was to keep the Lindafied Paul happy; to me it was just weird, way weirder to my ten-year-old ears than Pepper and too much for casual listening. It's still not what I would consider "the" classic Beatle album. Today, my fellow XPN listeners voted it the #1 album of all time, while the one I thought would come in at number one, Sgt. Pepper, came in at #2. Rounding out the top five were Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon at #3, Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run at #4, and Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks at #5. I can live with that lineup, especially Bruce and Bob. If you want to see the whole list of 885 albums on the chart, head over to www.xpn.org.