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I gotta say Dirty tied with Gang of Four- Entertainment!. The two of them really tore down my notions of rock and roll for me. Devo's the Truth about Devolution was introduced to me at the same time, but that isn't really an album.
Dirty was more about changing what I thought about guitar than what I thought about music.
Entertainment! really changed everything for me though. When I first heard it, I still didn't quite get punk. I liked the Clash, I didn't really like the Sex Pistols, and back in the Napster days of music when I heard about a band, I'd always manage to get ahold of their worst track to sample, so I didn't quite get what the big deal was. So when I first listened to Gang of Four, I immediately noticed how much better than the Clash they were in general, and I thought "this must be what all the fuss around punk rock is about."
I never heard rock music so drum and bass focused. The rhythm was incredible. Before Gang of Four, rock and roll was all about the heaviness to me- I liked Nirvana, Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin for that reason. Then I heard Entertainment! The way the drums and the bass worked together was really incredible to me. The slow helicopter-like drum beat amazed me.
Gang of Four's lyrics were like nothing I had ever heard. A year before I heard the album I did a report about Sartre for honors english. I did my research, and I did decently on the report. But I didn't really understand it. Gang of Four's lyrics really got me to start understanding some pretty deep philosophical concepts, including existentialism. The lyrics hit me as so upfront and observational of society. The mocking of corporate slogans really hit me. I feel Andy Gill and Jon King could really see right through things in society.
There was Andy Gill's guitar playing. His concept of the anti-solo in which he would just stop playing, his incredibly choppy playing, and just his tone in general amazed me. That was pretty different from what I was used to with rock.
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