"1001 Album Club" is a podcast that began in January 2018, that focuses on an interchanging group of music-loving friends going through Robert Dimery's 2005 book '1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die'. The podcast's most frequent panelists include Birch, the host, his friends Rob & Ben, who have had plenty of experiences in bands, his wife Ann, and plenty more from where they came from.
Starting from Episode 327, recorded in Spring 2020 but released in March 2021, the podcast began switching back and forth between recording remotely, in-person, or sometimes a combination, because of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The podcast celebrated its 500th episode in November 2022, along with an exclusive interview with Robert Dimery himself, who talked about his new book, his experience writing the original '1001 Albums Book', and had to sit as the panelists listed their gripes with the original book after going through it for 500 episodes.
It can be heard on Spotify
, but its main website is here.
This podcast contains examples of:
- Cluster F-Bomb: Many of the panelists, particularly Rob, are prone to this from time to time.
- Deadpan Snarker: Each panelist in spades, but especially Birch.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The first episodes had the albums rated on a thumbs-up/down scale, but later Birch incorporated the Positive-Neutral-Negative scale in order to make his panelists really think about how they overall felt about the album, which stuck.
- Heh Heh, You Said "X": In Episode 88, Cream's Disraeli Gears, Birch praised the album for pushing music in a new direction, to which Rob eggs him because it sounds like "nude erection".
- Large Ham: Rob, either when he's very excited or very pissed about an album in the book.
- Only One Finds It Fun: This happens occasionally, for instance, Kyle was the only one who liked "Picture Book" by Simply Red, and Rob was the only one who had any nice to say about The Style Council's "Cafe Bleu".
- Running Gag: The bringing up of reviews by Robert Christgau of the Village Voice, especially when he doesn't have much nice to say about an album.
- Seinfeldian Conversation: Not to the extent of Rock of Ages, which openly cites 1001 Album Club as a main influence, but on occasion the panelists, especially Rob, Ben, and Kyle, will tangent to a subject barely related to the album, only for Birch to rope them back in.
- Special Guest: In tandem with Episode 500, The Cure's "Pornography", a special bonus episode was released with Birch, Ann, Rob, & Ben interviewing the original author of '1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die', Robert Dimery.
- Though he technically isn't a special guest, Adam Turla of the band Murder by Death is an occasional panelist.
- True Companions: Basically almost all of the panelists qualify, they either grew up together or went to college together and made music together, and now as they reach their forties they return to talk about music together.
