Favorite DBT record ???

[coornelius]

TDS
DD
SRO
--------
EO
BTCD
PD
--------
TBTD
ABAAC
GB
--------
GGB

[Tequila Cowboy]

Looking back through this old thread, was revtodd banned or did he cancel his account? I know he pops in from time to time under TDB these days.

Apparently RevTodd is no longer with us but TDB is.

Dearest family, friends and follower’s around the world
If you are reading this…..
I regret to inform you Rev. Todd is no longer with us

We all kind of expected it earlier to be honest..
I mean, he had a pretty long run considering:

His daily beer consumption
Addiction to Cigarettes
Love of Marijuana
Penchant for morally questionably women
Insurmountable credit card debt and manic spending habits
It was bound to catch up with him eventually.

And let’s face it…..
He was a bad Sam Kinison/Bill Hicks tribute act…..at best.

But, if it makes you feel any better, he went peacefully in his sleep….
With a $2,500 a night “lady friend” by his side. (charged to Visa)
So, raise a drink or fire one up in honor of
Rev. Todd Baker

P.S. He had no life insurance, so donations are being accepted at….

['Scratch]

Tie between Decoration Day and Dirty South with Pizza very close on their heels.

[Tequila Cowboy]

Mine's looked like this for a while:

DD
GGB
BTCD
SRO
TDS
PD
ABAAC
TBTD
GB

English Oceans won't surpass DD but will almost certainly be in the top 4. Just too soon.

[dbtfan4life]

heres my take:

1. Pizza Deliverance
2. The Dirty South
3. Decoration Day
4. English Oceans
5. Southern Rock Opera

6. Brighter Than Creations Dark
7. A Blessing And A Curse
8. The Big To Do
9. Gangstabilly
10. Go-Go Boots

[DebbieTrucker]

1) English Oceans
2) Go Go Boots
3) Brighter Than Creations Dark
4) The Dirty South
5) Decoration Day
6) Southern Rock Opera
7) Pizza Deliverance
8) The Big To Do
9) A Blessing and A Curse
10) Gangstabilly

[The Fool in Me]

1) Dirty South
2) English Oceans
3) Southern Rock Opera
4) Brighter Than Creation's Dark
5) Decoration Day
6) Pizza Deliverance
7) The Big To-Do
8) A Blessing and a Curse
9) Gangstabilly
10) Go-Go Boots

[ranger185]

The Dirty South

[ranger185]

The Dirty South

[Mike127]

As of today:

1. BTCD
2. GGB
3. DD
4. TDS
-----EO----- Too soon to really tell as I've only listened all the way through twice, but I'm guessing it will land somewhere around here.
5. SRO
6. TBTD
7. ABAAC
8. PD
9. GB

[LastLawson]

1) Southern Rock Opera
2) A Blessing & a Curse
3) English Oceans
4) The Dirty South
5) Pizza Deliverance
6) Decoration Day (I do think it's a better album than TDS & PD, but don't listen to it nearly as much)
7) Brighter Than Creation's Dark
8) The Big To-Do
9) Go-Go Boots
10) Gangstabilly

[Bill in CT]

Southern Rock Opera
Decoration Day
The Dirty South
English Oceans
Brighter Than Creation's Dark
Pizza Deliverance
A Blessing And A Curse
Go-Go Boots
Gangstabilly
The Big To-Do

[beantownbubba]

Decoration Day
The Dirty South
Southern Rock Opera

English Oceans
Go Go Boots
Brighter Than Creation's Dark

A Blessing and a Curse
Pizza Deliverance
The Big To Do
Gangstabilly

Rankings w/in each group change regularly. Rankings between groups are unlikely to change much other than English Oceans, which is still in its debut phase.

Bill, we seem to be pretty much in agreement except for Go Go Boots.

[Southern IL Trucker]

1) Dirty South
2) Decoration Day (first DBT record for me.)
3) Southern Rock Opera
4) Go-Go Boots
5) English Oceans
6) Pizza Deliverance
7) Brighter Than Creation's Dark
8) The Big To-Do
9) Gangstabilly
10) A Blessing and a Curse

[beantownbubba]

Decoration Day
The Dirty South
Southern Rock Opera

English Oceans
Go Go Boots
Brighter Than Creation's Dark

A Blessing and a Curse
Pizza Deliverance
The Big To Do
Gangstabilly

The implicit message of this ranking is that I think that English Oceans is DBT's best album since The Dirty South. It feels funny saying it that way, but yeah, I think i do think that.

[Zip City]

I just made a poll for each album. You get to vote for your top 3 songs (in no particular order). Poll away!

[Erdlivz]

1. Decoration Day
2. The Dirty South
3. Pizza Deliverance
4. Southern Rock Opera
5. Gangstabilly
6. Brighter Than Creations Dark
7. A Blessing and a Curse
8. English Oceans
9. Go Go Boots
10. The Big To Do

I could switch that top 3 around all day. I could do the same with 4-6. ABAAC would stay put. My last 3 are interchangeable. I think the last three albums are good. Nothing will grab me like the first 5.

[Tequila Cowboy]

So I've been thinking about this again for awhile and I don't know why it matters but I think some of my long held thoughts on where I'd rank the records has changed a bit. What's kind of hard about it is that I tend to listen to live shows more than I listen the records. Still here we go:

1. Decoration Day
- I can't see this ever changing. I think this is a top five of all time.
2. Brighter Than Creation's Dark
- GGB has held this spot for me for the last couple of years, but BTCD probably edges it out. Up until EO it's my favorite mix of Patterson and Cooley songs.
3. English Oceans
- I've been listening to this record since Thanksgiving and I'm pretty sure it belongs here. Shit Shots Count is Cooley's best song since Ghost To Most and frankly Primer Coat, Made Up English Oceans and First Air of Autumn are right there with it. That's not even mentioning Patterson's contributions which are terrific especially The Part of Him, Pauline Hawkins, Grand Canyon and Hanging On.
4. Go-Go Boots
- I like this record better than most and I appreciate it in the way that they set out to make a country soul record and nailed it. Plus Used To Be a Cop is top 5 Patterson for me.
5. Southern Rock Opera
- One of the most ambitious records ever made and it holds up very well. Most of the songs have become live staples and almost all of them are better in that context. Still this is an amazing piece of work made on a shoestring.
6. The Dirty South
- This is a great record, no doubt about it, which says something about DBT that I can still call a record truly great sitting as their sixth best, but there it is. Where the Devil Don't Stay is Cooley's best song not called Zip City.
7. A Blessing and a Curse
- Take away Jason's two songs and this is a much better record. World of Hurt, Gravity's Gone, Space City and Feb 14 are huge favorites.
8. Pizza Deliverance-
Really a much stronger album than its ranking would suggest. Uncle Frank, Love Like This, too Much Sex and a few others are stone cold classics but much like SRO, they're all better live.
9. Gangstabilly-
For a first record this is a solid effort and any first record with The Living Bubba on it has to be paid attention to. Suffers a bit sonically but that might add to its charm
10. The Big To-Do
This is the album I listen to the least, but it still has some really good cuts. You Got Another is Shonna's best track by a mile, but I'm not 100% sure it belongs on a DBT record. There isn't a single song on this record that I don't like which is pretty amazing considering it's my least favorite. That's a mark of a great band right there.

Considering the fact that I pretty much love the whole catalog, this is about the best I can do.

[211poundsofpork]

This is always tough, but my top three usually stays the same. I have found that the bottom feeders have changed a bunch for me lately. (Giving more credit to ABAAC and less credit to The Big To-Do.)

1) Decoration Day
2) Southern Rock Opera
3) The Dirty South
4) Pizza Deliverance
5) English Oceans
6) Brighter Than Creation's Dark
7) Gangstabilly
8) Go-Go Boots
9) A Blessing and a Curse
10)The Big To-Do

English Oceans throws a monkey wrench in everything. It is so good and really stands up to their past work - at least for me.

[Smitty]

DD
TDS
PD
SRO
EO
BTCD
GB
GGB
TBTD
ABAAC

[Iowan]

After months of digesting EO, here goes.

1. Decoration Day. Like TC, this is in my Top 5 albums of all time. Nothing will likely change where it ranks among DBT albums for me.

2. The Dirty South. So many great songs, one big narrative, with a smaller narrative woven in. The album that firmly reeled me into DBT obsession. Contains the most underrated track in both DBT and Jason's catalog - "The Day John Henry Died".

3. Southern Rock Opera. An ambitious titan. So many great songs here, but falls just shy of The Dirty South due to a couple of skipperish tracks that add to the narrative, but don't move me that much. The top 3 are pretty much neck and neck

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4. A Blessing and a Curse. Snarling guitars. Obvious tension. Soaring melodies. The sound of friction. This album is all over the place, and it's a big, beautiful mess. The fact that the Isbell tracks are obviously moving in a different direction adds to the mess (and the beauty).

5. English Oceans. The Mike Cooley show. Lean and muscular. Stripped down around the edges, and lyrically fantastic. Not really a true skipper here. A model of consistently good-to-great songwriting.

6. Pizza Deliverance. The songs here are either brilliant classics, or completely forgettable. Good thing there are more of the former than the latter.

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7. Brighter Than Creation's Dark. There is simply too much fat on this album. Also, I think I rate it low because so many people rate it so high despite the plethora of skippers. If this were 10-11 songs, it might be standing in that first tier, but it's damn near 20, and I let fall back down here. That said, a record that contains A Ghost to Most, Two Daughters, and SDZ can't hit the bottom.

8. The Big To Do. Bad sequencing holds this album back in it's regular form. Birthday Boy is an amazing song, and You Got Another is the best songwriting contribution Shonna Tucker made to DBT. This is another very consistent album, until the end, which would have been helped immensely by dropping the Flying Wallendas and Eyes Like Glue and replacing them with Girls Who Smoke and maybe adding Strutter as well. Those changes would put it in the ABAAC/EO/PD level.

9. Go-Go Boots. Great production and sound to the album, but the songwriting wasn't quite on par with albums past. There's no doubt that one album from the TBTD/GGB sessions would be preferable to what we ended up with. There was a time when this album really worked for me; and whenever I play it I like it, but it tends to sink towards the bottom of the DBT pile for me.

10. Gangstabilly. By default, I guess. Just not enough Cooley, although it contains a few all-time classics, and is a hell of a lot of fun as an album. The Living Bubba is on Patterson's Mount Rushmore, and Late For Church is a damn gem, but the fact that there is only Cooley song (albeit a great one) makes it feel the least "Drive-By Truckers"ish of all the albums, and more of an early Patterson & Friends type vibe.

[LastLawson]

Ah, so we have to explain now!

1) Southern Rock Opera - The perfect album. You can tell how much time was put into it, but it doesn't feel staged either.

2) A Blessing and a Curse - DBT at it's darkest. I don't know if this album would have worked without the trouble going on in the band. Patterson's best singing, Cooley's best guitar playing.

3) English Oceans - Most consistent DBT album, as said before. However, I think it's DBT's most radical departure musically. Most of the songs are really catchy, and the keyboard contributions are incredible. Also, is this the first DBT album with Patterson playing his Mandocello?

4) The Dirty South - This would be top 3 for me if it weren't for the Buford suite & Daddy's Cup (fuck me right?).

5) Decoration Day - Great album, just don't listen to it as much.

6) Pizza Deliverance - Like Iowan said, this has quite a few skippers. The rest are golden.

7) Brighter Than Creation's Dark - Same problem as PD, but on a larger scale.

8) The Big To-Do - Good album, but DBT seems emotionally detached on this one, with the exceptions of You Got Another, Santa Fe, & Eyes Like Glue. Poor sequencing.

9) Go-Go Boots - Half the songs sound the same. Dancing Ricky is one of the more musically interesting tracks.

10) Gangstabilly - Listen to only 5 tracks most of the time. I either don't like the others, or they pale in comparison to live versions.

[Tequila Cowboy]

Ah, so we have to explain now!

Well, you know when you take 4 year old threads and recycle them you gotta find an angle...

[Markalanbishop]

Seems to be holding true that most people's top 2 or 3 favorite albums were recorded right around their point of introduction to the band. Then the rest tend to be scattered. Not ranking these musically, just as my favorites to listen to as a complete album from start to finish. So:

1. EO. My first "new" DBT album. It truly is my favorite. I love everything about it; Cooley's rejuvenation, PH's continued excellence, the new rhythm section, Jay stealing the show on several songs IMHO, the space in the music that wasn't much present on several other albums, and yes, I even love the squeal that I can't hear. I remember talking to Cole at Eddie's Attic right after they finished recording and he told me it was the Trucker's Abbey Road. I agree.

2. Tie between GGB and TBTD. These were the first two albums I bought, simultaneously, on the theory that if I didn't like the Truckers' most recent stuff I wasn't likely to enjoy their back catalogue. Spent just a ton of time listening to both of these albums (still do) and couldn't enjoy them more. If I have to rank them then I'm going GGB before TBTD, but they are both still in my top three.

4. AAW. I'm cheating and combining GB and PD and calling them AAW. AAW completely blows me away. Love the rawness, the power, the songwriting. Only drawback is the lack of Cooley songs except for Love Like This but since I'm cheating I'm including Uncle Frank, Panties in Your Purse, and One of These Days as being on AAW. If I can't cheat then I'm putting PD in this slot and dropping GB to last place.

Gets really difficult from here on out.

5. BTCD Cooley's contributions push this ahead of the others for me. Take out a certain someone's three songs and it's damn near perfect.

6. TDS Pure fun to listen to, and my favorite Isbell songs are on this one.

7. SRO This is actually another tie with TDS but if I have to choose one I put TDS slightly ahead, primarily because I'm an album guy and, you know, SRO is a really long album.

8. DD I know, I know. But now that I'm out of the closet I'll admit that I would like this album a ton more without Outfit and Decoration Day on it.

9. ABAC. I really like this album. A lot. How did it end up way down here? I knew this was a bad idea.

[Tequila Cowboy]

DD I know, I know. But now that I'm out of the closet I'll admit that I would like this album a ton more without Outfit and Decoration Day on it.

Yeah, that just blows my mind, but hey it's all good.

[Markalanbishop]

DD I know, I know. But now that I'm out of the closet I'll admit that I would like this album a ton more without Outfit and Decoration Day on it.

Yeah, that just blows my mind, but hey it's all good.

Yea, I really struggled with that one but as I kept listing the albums it kept sliding down my list. Very weird. But I tried not to overthink it, like I overthink my March Madness brackets each year.

[RoyHandcuff]

1.The Big To Do
2.Southern Rock Opera
3.The Dirty South
4.Brighter Than Creations Dark
5.Decoration Day
6.A Blessing And A Curse
7.English Oceans
8.GoGo Boots
9.Pizza Deliverance
10.Gangstabilly

...but I dig 'em all!