Where have You Been All My Life?

How many times have you picked up an album that's thousands of years old, never having heard it, always listening to what a "classic" it is, figuring, 'what the hell?', get home and realize that part of your life was missing until the second the first notes come out of the opening song? Just three hours ago I had another one of those moments. And, of all things, it's Mott the Hoople's "Mott" album from 1973. Who knew? All thirteen tracks (the extended version, this one), it's epic. I'll probably listen to it two or three times tomorrow asking myself again and again, "why not earlier?" My little public library back in the late 70s and early 80s used to have popular music albums (actual lp's) to check out. A couple of Duran Duran and Men At Work records, that one with Linda Ronstadt in the roller skates and short short short shorts, Darkness On the Edge of Town (dude, I thought, comb your hair at least) and Mott. I thought back then they all looked like a bunch of dorks with the disco light and the pastel color on the cover. Great, Brit rock with an edge. Are they prog? Art? Pseudo metal? Glam? All of the above? Whatever they are, they rock and thankfully I have another album for my music class to play.
Also, dang, Steve and Chris, Southern Rock Opera is amazing!!! Great storyline and cool songs. Much better than their latest, A Blessing and a Curse and I like it hearing how a modern Southerner makes sense of such mythic and mythological material, political and social. George Wallace and Lynyrd Skynyrd? Both modern day Icharus (sp?). Two discs for the price of one and much more musicality than then one I just picked up. Gotta go; new Frontline's on with Cheney going to the Dark Side. Then maybe one more listen to Mott.

What are your "where have you been all my life" albums of late?