Mott the Hoople

I could cavil about omissions, "Death May Be Your Santa Claus" especially. But 20 years after the fact, you remember great bands for their sound as much as their songs, and these guys had one. They were prepunk, everybody knows that, but too often the "pre" is given short shrift. So remember this: committed to sarcasm, dystopia, and noise, they never took refuge in punk's inspired-amateur minimalism. On the contrary, their expansive mess was pure '60s, as was their penchant for the elegiac and the lyrical. It's a synthesis 10,000 garage bands have f*cked up since. The 10,001st was Nirvana. (Grade: A)