Three albums that Changed Your Musical Life

The Smiths' Strangeways Here We Come - changed me forever (yes, it was the first Smiths album I had). Maybe it didn't change me, actually. Maybe it was just that I realised it was what I had been searching for.

Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back - looking back, I can't even remember why I bought this, or the effect it had on me other than making me think "Damn, this is good." Maybe it didn't significantly change my musical perspective at all. But it must have done, surely?

It'll have to stay though, cause nothing since really fits the bill at all.

That and Louis Armstrong's Great Hits, my first album. Wow, it was awesome.

2. GYBE - F# A#, more for the live show I caught but wow. Wonderful show near the end of HPX '98, wall of amps, candles candles everywhere, tiny bar in a bad area of Halifax and I dont think I could ever see them in front of 400 or so now days. Album documents that show very well in my mind.

3. Portishead - Dummy. I will ever be confused as to why it was considered a dance album in record stores but even more so then Trickey, it painted everything I was listening to a deeper shade of blue.

Why not? Give the rockist scum a good kicking.

Joy Division "Unknown Pleasures": Did it again.

Lou Reed "Transformer": And again.

love, the rock-ist scum

pan(a)sonic - kulma (this record got me re-interested in music, after i had lost interest)

kid606 - down with the scene (punk rock, baby)

Roxy - Virginia Plain (in '72, along with a few other hits of the period)
Elton John - Someone Saved My Life Tonight (in '79)
Steve Reich - "Come Out" & "Piano Phase" (in '83)
Public Enemy - "Bring The Noise" (whenever that first came out - '87 or '88 ?)

That's four, sorry.

1. Jimmy telling me Who mythology.
2. The night I taped "the history of indie rock" from my local college station.
3. Learning all the words to Outkast's "hand in the ayer" song.

2. Licensed to Ill - Beastie Boys (at fifteen)

3. RetroTechno: Emotions Electric - various (at twenty)

1. The Beach Boys - Smile session tapes (yes, it's not really an "album", but I'll be first in line to buy the boxed set whenever they decide to release the dang thing officially). The most mind- blowing harmonies and arrangements I've ever heard. Before hearing the Smile tapes, I had no idea pop music could be so beautiful and yet so... out there. Definitely a big influence on the music I'm working on right now.

2. The Trash Can Sinatras - I've Seen Everything. It sounds somewhat conventional on the surface, but there's a lot of subtle, interesting things going on with guitar licks, song structure, and production for those who are paying attention. Much of the album flows like the medley on Abbey Road (without ever actually sounding like the Beatles). An underrated masterpiece of guitar pop subtlety.

3. Original Cast Recording - Sunday In The Park With George. I could care less about Broadway musicals, but Steven Sondheim is an exception... He's often musically uncompromising (no Andrew Lloyd Weber schlockfests), always interesting, and IMO the best lyricist, in any genre, ever. :-) A deep and rewarding show, especially if you happen to pursue an artistic endeavor of some sort.

That's probably the foundation of my listening tastes today in a nutshell. Other important albums in my life would have to include:

The Cure - _Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me_
Depeche Mode - _Some Great Reward_
The Smiths - _Louder Than Bombs_
Skiny Puppy - _Bites_
Severed Heads - _Come Visit The Big Bigot_
My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - _Confessions Of A Knife_
Public Enemy - _It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back_
Queen Latifah - _All Hail The Queen_
Various - _Serious Beats, Vol. 3_
The Shamen - _En-Tact_ (European version)
Various - _XL Recordings Vol 3: Breakbeat House_

(1) Hearing my brother's friend's punk cover band. I realized they were playing that music I had read about in TIME magazine, and although I didn't think I ought to like it, I did. A year or two later I found punk again, on the radio (around 1979).

(2) "Violin Phase" by Steve Reich (around 1979/1981). This was at a time when I was suddenly listening to a very eclectic mix of music, thanks to WXPN, but I remember really getting excited about this particular piece when I realized how much was happening in it, despite its repetitious surface. If you don't pay close attention to this music, you miss what's happening, since the change is not as out front as the changes in a more traditional piece of music.

(3) Israeli Folk Dancing. I wouldn't be comfortable with the symbolic aspect of celebrating the creation of the modern state of Israel, at this point in my life, but dancing to Israeli music opened my ears to Greek and Arabic music, getting me used to similar rhythms and singing styles. I did like a lot of the people I met through this dancing, but since then I have become enough of a Palestinian sympathizer that I would feel a bit awkward about it.

(2) FUNHOUSE by the Stooges

(3) NIGHTTIME by Killing Joke

Go West: Bangs & Crashes

The Primitives: Lovely

Belle & Sebastian, If You're Feeling Sinister

I am not quite happy with this answer, though, because it suggests a sort of 'catastrophic' model in which my life was suddenly blasted off in a new direction. I don't think I quite believe this... I think that I would have turned out more or less the same way eventually; and there have been few major changes in my pop life or taste anyway.

*thinks...*

Probably Def Leppard's Pyromania and Duran Duran's Rio. Arguably I've been chasing down loud guitars, synths, beatboxes and glam influences ever since.

2) John Coltrane, 'Live at the Village Vanguard', the first jazz I heard that really gave me that 'oh my god' feeling.

3) Talib Kweli 'Reflection Eternal', the album that made me say, "hey, there might be something to this hiphop stuff after all."

mine are, i suppose:

fear of a black planet

the vu & nico

"one in a million"

Tim Buckley - Starsailor Albert Ayler - Live! In Greenwich Village! and um, (gosh so many) Black Star's s/t

2) David Bowie - Alladin Sane.

3) Patti Smith - Horses.

2) In Flames, Lunar Strain/Subterranean and random songs off of Napster. "So this metal stuff isn't so bad.

3) Momus, random songs off of Napster. "So this pop stuff isn't so bad."

1. Last school day of my 8th grade year: I heard the Violent Femmes' Why do Birds Sing? and 10,000 Maniacs' Blind Man's Zoo. I became intensely interested in music in general.

2. A little over a year later: I first heard Ride ("Taste") on the local college station. Immediately afterward, I first heard the Sugarcubes ("Birthday"). I bugged out.

3. Five years later: Saw NME (or Melody Maker?) had named Dummy album of the previous year. At four a.m. the next morning, I found myself hanging out with this unknown Greek guy while his brother tried to seduce the girl I came with. Dummy was sitting on the coffee table. "Put that on," I said. Everyone else eventually left for breakfast; I spent the next four hours tearing apart their collection, hearing Tortoise, Future Sound of London, Massive Attack, and Orbital for the first time each.

It's ANTICS IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE.

Ally, I am so disappointed in you. A tear runs down Prince Charming's cheek.

My answer to the question will have to come later, too tired to think about it properly now.

1 QUEEN'S GREATEST HITS - first rock album - got into led zep,sabbath, motorhead etc 2 SISTERS OF MERCY FIRST LAST ALWAYS - was GETTING OUT OF metal and heard this became indiegoth 3 The Stone Roses - decided indie waz bllx >>> started ravin

as a muso

1 miles davis - in a silent way 2 brian eno - before and after science 3 public enemy - nation ov millions

The Jesus And Mary Chain - Psychocandy - single-handedly turned me into the feedback-loving dronerocker that I am today.

The Dandy Warhols - self titled first album. Dragged me solidly out of the past and back to paying attention to modern music again. Mixing luscious dronerock and indie pop is OK!

the velvet underground - the velvet underground

queen - II

1.Buttholes: Psychic, Powerless... Another Man's Sac
2.metallica: Master of Puppets
3.Elvis Presley: The Lost Album

Galaxie 500 - On Fire. First heard this in, I think, the winter of 1989. This is kind of embarrassing, but I was taking an introductory astronomy class at that time, and I loved walking back from class thru the snowy campus at night, gazing up at the clear sky with G500 on the Walkman.

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless. Such a boring choice, but there is no denying it. First time I heard the record was also a very heavy & very nice drug experience, and the combination shifted things considerably, as far as how I hear music. I've paid particular attention to texture in music since.

Various Artists - Modulation and Transformation 4. The new interest in texture brought me to this. After hearing MT4, I knew there was an inexhaustible amount of fascinating electronic music in the world, and that I would spend a portion of remaining time on Earth chasing it down.

Beastie Boys - Licensed to Ill

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue

Why is everyone over here? I had to come off ILE to find some entertainment. *sigh*

Strange Days - The Doors

Washing Machine - Sonic Youth

Come On Die Young! - Mogwai

oh! I like Mogwai, but don't take me as a geeky fan... the title of the record is just great. no fault of mine.

David Bowie - Scary Monsters. OK, I'm now fifteen, doing my mock Art GCSE exam. It's something like a day and a half long. We're allowed to listen to our walkmans. I decide I want to listen to something I'd not really listened to before. I rummage through my brother's tapes. I find a copy of Scary Monsters. As far as I was concerned, aged 15, this was the greatest album ever. I never knew music like this existed.

Momus - Tender Pervert. I think I was maybe seventeen when I first heard this. After listening to this, I spend every Saturday for the next ten or so weeks going into town buying whatever Momus records I can lay my hands on until I've laid my hands on most of them. Oh, yeah - I never knew music like this existed

2. 'London 0, Hull 4' The Housemartins. In short it made me become politically aware. Beforehand I don't think I even knew the difference between Conservative and Labour, right and left 'wing'. After 'London', thanks to tracks like 'Get Up Off Our Knees', I did.

3. 'Substance' Joy Division. I just couldn't believe music like this - booming, brooding, moving - could exist. It opened my ears to musical and emotional extremes.

2. (Tie) Aqua - Aquarium, Macy Gray - On How Life Is. The first one taught me it was okay to be myself and have fun! I dressed, talked, and partied hard like I always did, and I felt proud! The second one taught me about the relationships and feelings I was going through, but in a more "urban" way! I sort of embarrassed myself though, when I was really getting into Macy and I wanted to be like her, and I flew to the Bronx. I walked into a hair salon and asked the stylist, "Hi! Do you guys carry, um, whatchamacallit?.....The OPPOSITE of a straightening comb?!?"

3. Radiohead - Kid A. I had never even seen a shooting star before. 25 years of rotations, passes through comets' paths, and travel, and to my memory I had never witnessed burning debris scratch across the night sky. Radiohead were hunched over their instruments. Thom Yorke slowly beat on a grand piano, singing, eyes closed, into his microphone like he was trying to kiss around a big nose. Colin Greenwood tapped patiently on a double bass, waiting for his cue. White pearls of arena light swam over their faces. A lazy disco light spilled artificial constellations inside the aluminum cove of the makeshift stage. The metal skeleton of the stage ate one end of Florence's Piazza Santa Croce, on the steps of the Santa Croce Cathedral. Michelangelo's bones and cobblestone laid beneath. I stared entranced, soaking in Radiohead's new material, chiseling each sound into the best functioning parts of my brain which would be the only sound system for the material for months. The butterscotch lamps along the walls of the tight city square bled upward into the cobalt sky, which seemed as strikingly artificial and perfect as a wizard's cap. The staccato piano chords ascended repeatedly. "Black eyed angels swam at me," Yorke sang like his dying words. "There was nothing to fear, nothing to hide." The trained critical part of me marked the similarity to Coltrane's "Ole." The human part of me wept in awe.

Madness: The Rise and Fall Kate Bush: Hounds of Love The Smiths: The Queen Is Dead

The me of 2001 is unavailable for reply, as he is engaged in a heated discussion with the me of 1992 about whether "Tender Pervert" should be included.

2. Replacements: Let It Be (specif. Answering Machine)

3. Ice Cube: It Was a Good Day

4. The Fine Young Cannibals: She Drives Me Crazy (the video; the one with the guys with television heads)

I'm sure I've said all of these before.

Kerry is my new heroine. :-)