After a bad day - or, indeed, a good day - you slop down in your chair behind a glass of your favourite beverage, with perhaps a modest snack on the table next to you. But first you cue in... which album? Which one comes most readily to mind on such an occasion, the one you resort to most often when you just want to chill?

My choice is very often this one:



a selection of old singles by the French group Air.
To be honest, I only play tracks one to five as
these make a wonderful sequence.

What might yours be?

AVALON - Roxy Music

Nice album. I like side two the best.

"To Turn You On" has some great chord changes, especially the little descent in the instrumental break just before Ferry returns.

A Hard Day's Night by The Beatles

Smiley Smile!!!

Yeeeah, especially the beginning of "Little Pad"

100% brother.

Yeah and the whole track what an awesome track it is.

How about the entire Smiley Smile/Wild Honey twofer including bonus tracks?

Another album I often put on to chill to:


Oh, and this one:

Oh... how could one forget that.

Any Beach Boys cd.

Cool, John!

An old beloved album serving this purpose ideally for me was the Moody Blues' "In Search of the Lost Chord"... or just about anything else they did.

The Memory of Trees--Enya
or
Any Beach Boys CD
or
Any U2 CD
I can`t choose! There are so many!
It`s a dilemma, it`s a dilemma!
So I usually don`t end up chilling out, do I?
Days of Future Passed--Moody Blues
or
ah forget it!

Funny stuff, RLA!

You know the sitcom caricature of the woman driving herself (and everyone else) crazy by trying to figure out what to wear on her night out? Well, that's a pretty good illustration of the stew I can work myself into trying to decide which album will make me feel great for that moment.

Great album choices, guys!

Hmmm. That album again...

Usually what happens is I end up trying to find a good book to read or a good movie to watch. Then I fall asleep anyway.

Yeah, I know, I know, redundancy might be my middle name.
Or maybe consistancy. Then again being the oddball that I am, 'Rock Lobster' by the B-52s. I would
do a Brian-Wilson-listen-to-the-song-over-and-over-again type of thing.

Meddle - Pink Floyd

I didn't meant that, RLA. Don't belittle yourself. I meant that with all the namechecks it's getting perhaps I should investigate that Enya album before too long...

You`re cool. And sweet!
I just (finally) got The Celts on CD. I`ve had it on vinyl and since I no longer have a turn table I wasn`t able to listen to it.
(Seems like most of my favorite albums are on vinyl. It`s been a long time since I`v e listened to Replicas ) I just wish I
had a lot more money to invest in music. I`m glad my Beach Boys and (most) of my U2 are on CDs! I put all of my Enya CDs
in the player and just listened to my favorite cuts. I can program up to 32 tracks so sometimes I do that instead of just putting on
one album. I do that with the Beach Boys as well, sometimes different artists.

My all-time favorite "chill-to" album, which is now in storage, sadly (I wasn't smart enough to retrieve it last time I went to Pennsylvania) was SONGS OF THE WEST by the Norman Luboff Choir. A choir singing songs like "I'm A Poor Lonesome Cowboy" and "Old Chisolm Trail." This album never failed to calm me down and cool me out whenever I came home from a too-long day. Soothing.

Others:

AQUELLA NOCHE by Tish Hinojosa is a lovely, atmospheric set of Mexican folk songs. Her version of "Estrellita" gets me every time.

THE PEACEFUL SIDE OF BILLY STRAYHORN is about the last thing you would have expected from Duke Ellington's right hand man-- an instrumental piano album with small trio and "jazz voices." It's an easy listening album with a jazz tint, and it works beautifully.

PIANO REFLECTIONS by Duke Ellington.

(Not an ad for the sponsors of this board, but both of those last two albums are on Capitol.)

JOHN COLTRANE AND JOHNNY HARTMAN, which, I hate to go along with the crowd, but has to be the all-time greatest jazz vocal album.

A trio of Frank Sinatra albums:
CLOSE TO YOU
MOONLIGHT SINATRA
FRANCIS ALBERT SINATRA AND ANTONIO CARLOS JOBIM or the follow-up, side one of SINATRA AND COMPANY, which was tracks that were tagged for a second Sinatra-Jobim collaboration. Funny how, right when Sinatra complained that "no one's writing songs for me anymore and I don't know what to do about it," along came Jobim.
(SINATRA SINGS FOR ONLY THE LONELY and NO ONE CARES are just a little too dark to chill out to sometimes)

A recent discovery:
VOICES IN LOVE by the Four Freshmen, which Brian Wilson called the greatest pop vocal album ever.

Also THE GENTLE SIDE OF JOHN COLTRANE is a compilation, but that's not ITS fault. Still a great album to chill out to.

The closest thing I can think of by the Beach Boys is FRIENDS, maybe, or side two of TODAY.

And speaking of album sides, side two of A1A by Jimmy Buffett is a lovely chill-to album...side two of George Harrison's LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD is nice... SILVER AND GOLD by Neil Young is a nice one, although Neil admittedly is not the kind of person whose music you usually put on to RELAX.

CHET BAKER SINGS is a good one. Like Brian in his prime, a natural high sweet voice... and that HORN, too.

I'm sorry... did you only want me to list ONE??

On the subject of The Voice, I may possibly be interested (famous last words perhaps, as with Bob Wills ) in a vintage Sinatra album with orchestra (as opposed to a big band). Any ideas, BM? Something with "The Moon Was Yellow" on it perhaps (remember that one from my youth)?

MOONLIGHT SINATRA. I don't have the disc here in front of me, but I'm fairly sure "The Moon Was Yellow" is on that one. Also SINATRA AND STRINGS, which had a lovely version of "Night and Day" on it, as well as a unique version of "Star Dust" in which Sinatra sings only the verse!

Both of these are lovely discs and they're anything but brassy...

Wow, thanks a lot. Next thing is to get off my @ss and actually do something with this information...

Another good chilling album from the mid-1970's:

Autobahn by Kraftwerk