RIP Hall and Oates (and my favorite 14 H2O albums ranked)

It was 41 years ago - on March 2, 1983 - that I saw my first real rock n' roll concert. My dad and his girlfriend took me and my new junior-high friend Mark to see Daryl Hall and John Oates on the H2O tour at Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. Mark and I were in the second row and it was epic.

I was already a huge music lover thanks to my older brothers' Beatles, Stones, Who, Jam, Cars, and many other albums in the house. But they weren't Hall and Oates people. This was all mine. This felt like my area in which I could excel, be an expert in, and mostly just love.

I don't remember what was played that night. There are no setlists online. Surely there was "Kiss on My List," "You Make My Dreams," "Maneater," "Rich Girl," "Sarah Smile," "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)," "Family Man," and the list goes on.

I still love Hall and Oates and it was sad to wake up this morning and realize that something that's been around my whole life if apparently around no more. The writing has been on the wall for many months, as the two have been bickering over business matters, but Oates has now told Rolling Stone that the musical relationship is kaput.

I understand why people come and want to hear the big hits. Those songs are going to live forever. But I wanted to relegate them to the classic file that they’re in. And I wanted them to be heard in the best possible light, the way they were when the spark was on fire in the ’70s and ’80. That’s when those songs really resonated. To keep playing them, for me, was no longer interesting. I just wanted to do something else.

We have a different strategy for our lives, and we have a different strategy for our business lives as well as our personal lives. And that’s that, so be it. We’re old guys. We deserve to be allowed to do whatever we want to do.

I mention Hall and Oates quite a bit here at the Lunch Box, and they remain one of my favorites, but the three times I've seen them since have been far inferior performances. The show at Wolftrap in Virginia in 2009 was really good but the show just a few years ago at the Capitol One Center in Washington D.C. was kind of a stinker (with Tears for Fears opening and being, I thought, the best band of the night, and Squeeze may have been better as an separate opener as well).

One thing I haven't touched on yet: everyone knows about H2O's 1980s content, but should you decide to dig deeper, they had amazing music in the 1970s before their Beatlemania-like MTV era. These are my 14 favorite Hall and Oates albums ranked, all of which I consider valuable parts of my overall record collection:

14. Do It for Love (2003)

13. War Babies (1974)

12. Whole Oats (1972)

11. Along the Red Ledge (1978)

10. Beauty on a Back Street (1977)

09. Sacred Songs (Daryl Hall solo) (1977)

08. X-Static (1979)

07. Bigger Than Both of Us (1976)

06. Daryl Hall and John Oates (1975)

05. Abandoned Luncheonette (1973)

04. Big Bam Boom (1984)

03. Private Eyes (1981)

02. Voices (1980)

01. H2O (1982)

Listen to especially those top 10 albums on the list and try to tell me these two musicians weren't masters of creating perfect power pop.