#199 - Out Of Time, R.E.M.

"Where previous R.E.M. records captured a stripped-down, live sound, Out of Time was lush with sonic detail, featuring string sections, keyboards, mandolins, and cameos from everyone from rapper KRS-One to the B-52's' Kate Pierson. The scope of R.E.M.'s ambitions is impressive, and the record sounds impeccable, its sunny array of pop and folk songs as refreshing as Michael Stipe's decision to abandon explicitly political lyrics for the personal." (allmusic guide)

#198 - Fragile, Yes

"The band's breakthrough album, dominated by science-fiction and fantasy elements and new member Rick Wakeman, whose organ, synthesizers, Mellotrons, and other keyboard exotica added a larger-than-life element to the procedings. Ironically, the album was a patchwork job, hastily assembled in order to cover the cost of Wakeman's array of instruments. But the group built effectively on the groundwork left by The Yes Album, and the group had an AM-radio sucker-punch." (allmusic guide)

#197 - The Pretender, Jackson Browne

"...he delivered "The Pretender," a cynical, sarcastic treatise on moneygrubbing and the shallow life of the suburbs. Primarily inner-directed, the song's defeatist tone demands rejection, but it is also a quintessential statement of its time, the post-Watergate '70s; dire as that might be, you had to admire that kind of honesty, even as it made you wince." (allmusic guide)

#196 - Live Dead, The Grateful Dead

"The album's four sides provided the palette from which to replicate the natural ebb and flow of a typical Dead set circa early 1969. Tomes have been written about the profound impact of "Dark Star" on the Dead and their audience. It also became a cultural touchstone signifying that rock music was becoming increasingly experimental by casting aside the once-accepted demands of the short, self-contained pop song." (allmusic guide)

#195 - Silk Degrees, Boz Scaggs

"Boz Scaggs' augmented his solid blues rock credentials and smoky blue-eyed croon with mellow Philly soul strings on his biggest seller. Silk Degrees contains the brilliant, strutting, hipster taunt "Lowdown," the disco-rocking "It's Over" and the megahit "Lido Shuffle," making it the soundtrack to mid-'70s condo life, pool parties and bay cruises." (real music guide)