In a column for spinmagazine.com, John Andrew Fredrick, shared a deeply personal ranking of the five albums he considers essential to his existence, offering a window into the records that shaped a career spanning back to 1988.
The Beatles and the Peak of Revolver
Fredrick named The Beatles’ 1966 classic Revolver as his absolute everything, describing it as the nonpareil of poppy-psych perfection. He noted that he rarely goes a day without auditioning the Fab Four, arguing that the band reached their peak on this record before scaling subsequent heights, pointing out that Abbey Road was originally slated to be named Everest.
From The Glove to New Order’s Brotherhood
Moving past standard rock canon, Fredrick highlighted The Glove’s Blue Sunshine, specifying the Deluxe Edition where Robert Smith’s vocals replace Jeanette Landray’s. He called the record a great big mushroom trip of a psycho-tropic experience that demands to be spun immediately again. Turning to New Order, Fredrick championed their 1983 release Brotherhood, noting it was much maligned at the time. He pushed back against Peter Hook’s autobigraphical criticism that the record featured too many guitars, insisting that one can never have too many guitars.
Fredrick Recalls Saving Money to Buy Classic Records in His Youth
Recalling his youth as a suburban kid in the 1960s, Fredrick remembered saving up to buy Jimi Hendrix’s Axis: Bold As Love, a sacred relic he initially refused to let neighborhood friends borrow down the street. Rounding out his list, he selected Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in its original mono version. He admitted that his heavy rotation of the LP in college prompted his roommates to hide the record from him—a prank he returned in kind by playing Ummagumma on repeat.
