Everybody else is doing it, so why can't I? The full list of recent 33 1/3 pitches is up, 449 strong, and as the comments show, a lot of folks are weighing in on what they'd like to see chosen. I'm going to go the opposite route: Here are 25 albums that weren't pitched I'm surprised weren't and/or would love to have seen proposed:

• The “Chirping” Crickets (“a ’50s Rubber Soul”--Greil Marcus; also, Buddy Holly is a great figure and would be great to read about in detail outside of a straight-bio context)
• The Genius of Ray Charles (a friend was going to pitch this before choosing something else, but it seems wrong to me that there isn’t a single Ray pitch here)
• Moby, Play (if someone else had done Sign and I hadn’t already written one, this is the one I’d pitch: the story of rave and the dot-com boom and bust are all here)
• The Indestructible Beat of Soweto (the interviews with Trevor Herman and Jumbo Vanrenen alone would be incredible)
• The Grateful Dead, Live/Dead (lotsa Dead pitches but not the one probably more responsible for induction into the cult than any? Weird. Also, that mail-order box from last year makes things even easier.)
• Black Flag, Damaged (kind of blindingly obvious, isn’t it?)
• Green Day, Dookie
• Rancid, . . . And Out Come the Wolves
• Jimmy Cliff et. al., The Harder They Come
• Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors
• Incredible Bongo Band, Bongo Rock (another one I’d have pitched had I not etc.)
• Eric B. & Rakim, Follow the Leader (no one pitched any EB&R albums, wtf)
• The Notorious B.I.G., Ready to Die (ditto)
• The “5” Royales, Dedicated to You (though Ed Ward probably ruined it for everyone with his untoppable Stranded essay, just like Simon Reynolds ruined a slew of postpunk albums with Rip It Up and Start Again)
• The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (ditto Toure’s Rolling Stone piece)
• Funkadelic, The Electric Spanking of War Babies (the last days of P-Funk, who could resist? Or remember, for that matter?)
• Tricky, Maxinquaye
• Willie Nelson, Stardust
• Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band
• Madonna
• Van Morrison, Saint Dominic’s Preview (divorced, searching, hungry, rambling--not his best album, but a lot more interesting at this juncture, surely, than Astral Weeks)
• Stereolab, Emperor Tomato Ketchup
• Big Youth, Screaming Target
• X-Ray Spex, Germfree Adolescents
• Todd Rundgren, Something/Anything