That Facebook "15 Albums That Changed Your Life" Thing
A friend hit me with this Facebook thing where you're supposed to list 15 albums that changed your life. The instructions dictate that you list the albums "without thinking about it too long." This was more than a year ago, and I let it slide, but now again another friend has sent me the link, like some Internet version of an old chain letter.
OK, two issues here. One: as a writer, I tend not to write things unless I do think about them too long. So I am totally and unashamedly violating the spirit of the Facebook thing.
And instead of putting it on Facebook and sending tags to my pals, which I honestly don't know how to do anyway, I'm posting it here, for anyone to see.
But also: 15 "life-changing" albums? Seriously? Can your life truly change 15 times before the age of 37? If you're not schizophrenic?
Rating albums by life-changingness automatically favors albums you listened to when you were younger, and were trying on different personalities, and discovering everything anew, all those aspects of this world still untouched and shimmery. Now I'm a staid 36-year-old; I've loved plenty of new albums over the last five or six years, but have any of them actually changed my life? As much as I dig Interpol and Spoon and Franz Ferdinand and the Detroit Cobras and the Kills, am I a different person as a result?
So, with that in mind, here are, not necessarily my favorite albums, but the most life-changing ones, in chronological order (as in, when I bought them, not when they were released). I'm also violating another rule by listing 16, not 15. Take that, Facebook!
1. Kiss, Destroyer, because I was like 6, and my friends and I spent hours drawing potential Kiss album covers, inventing cool song titles (what I wouldn't give for one of those old sheets of paper; maybe our Moms saved them?) and painting our faces like Gene and Paul and Ace.
2. Phil Collins, No Jacket Required, because I think it was the first cassette (remember those?) I ever bought with my own money (you don't even want to know what the second was).
3. U2, The Joshua Tree, which I despised when it came out and everyone and their big sister was listening to it and talking about how deep and serious and important it was, and then three years later during their post-Rattle and Hum quiet period I secretly started listening to it and realized, wow, all those people and their sisters were right, every single one of them. It's that good. And so I became a Bono acolyte for a good 10 years, even growing my hair Bono-style in college, and also really loving their sadly overlooked Pop album, and remaining a huge, huge fan until that awful Things You Can't Etc album came out.
4. Midnight Oil, Blue Sky Mining, which convinced me at age 15 that only music with important political themes was worth listening to (which I wouldn't outgrow for two or three really pretentious years).
5. Led Zeppelin, because in high school I hated them so, so much, and I so hated the high school guys who always listened to them, that it became completely impossible for me to appreciate anything remotely "classic rock" until my Beatles phase hit in the late 1990s. I now dig this album, and lots of other classic rock, but my hatred for it throughout my teen years was pretty life-changing, or at least life-defining.
6. Miles Davis, Kind of Blue, and
7. Wayne Shorter, Adams Apple, both of which got me into jazz, and I went out and bought all their albums and then all the albums by all their side players, and then the side players' side players, etc, sort of like a musical precursor to social networking. A great way to learn about an unfamiliar genre of music. (Though as a result I now have way too many Blue Note albums and not enough older stuff, like swing or big band.)
8. Pearl Jam, Ten. Just forget about all that later stuff. This album brought me such joy for at least five hugely important years, age 17-21. Coolness points: Me and some friends saw them in October of 1991, a totally obscure band opening for Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Smashing Pumpkins, a couple of weeks after their first album came out. Hardly anyone had even heard of Nirvana yet. It was a tiny club (my first show at a club), before even "Under the Bridge" was out, and RHCP were still an underground thing, let alone the Pumpkins. It was our somewhat terrifying introduction to moshing and crowd surfing. Someone actually kicked me in the head during "Once." An amazing, amazing night. Long live grunge, and plaid shirts, and long unwashed hair. I would love to go back in time and relisten to that concert; God only knows how many hours I spent listening to their stuff over the ensuring years.
9. Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dream. See above, even though they actually sucked the night of that concert (and this album wouldn't come out for a couple more years, but when it did, wow).
10. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Orange, because it helped me realize that all that dark grunge stuff wasn't going to last much longer if there were people out there making rock music that was this MFing fun. And because the time I saw them play at the Roxy in Boston in May '97 really did change my life, in some indefinable way.
11. Soundtrack for The Commitments, which is so much less cool than putting an album by Sam Cooke or Al Green, but, in truth, this was the album that made me discover soul music. During the dead period between grunge and the indie revival, I bought this CD (of soul covers by an Irish band, from the movie based on Roddy Doyle's absolutely exhilarating first novel). I then made it a mission to find the original version of every song on it, thus discovering all the greats, such as:
12. Sam Cooke, Live at the Harlem Square Club
13. Al Green, Greatest Hits
14. Marvin Gaye, What's Going On
15. The Old 97s, Too Far To Care, because they're the first band that my wife and I discovered together and have seen many, many times together. Their song about proposing (on a later album) came out right around when I proposed to her.
16. The White Stripes, White Blood Cells. Because I liked them before they were popular, goddamnit. And Jack White's my favorite musician, still putting out great material on a near-annual basis. And they're the only band I've seen on consecutive nights in different cities. I'm not the type to follow a band around the country and all that, but I do think it's cool that I've seen them play seven times in five different states, with many of my best friends (and the missus).
Honorable mention: Beck's Mellow Gold and Odelay, R.E.M.'s Out of Time and Green, The Beatles' White Album, James Brown Live at the Apollo, anything by Elvis (it pains me that he didn't make the above list; I must have done something wrong), my 1950s Rockabilly Box Set, The Rapture's Pieces of the People You Love, Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights, the Pixies' Doolittle, Otis Redding's Greatest Hits, Curtis Mayfield's Superfly.
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OK, two issues here. One: as a writer, I tend not to write things unless I do think about them too long. So I am totally and unashamedly violating the spirit of the Facebook thing.
And instead of putting it on Facebook and sending tags to my pals, which I honestly don't know how to do anyway, I'm posting it here, for anyone to see.
But also: 15 "life-changing" albums? Seriously? Can your life truly change 15 times before the age of 37? If you're not schizophrenic?
Rating albums by life-changingness automatically favors albums you listened to when you were younger, and were trying on different personalities, and discovering everything anew, all those aspects of this world still untouched and shimmery. Now I'm a staid 36-year-old; I've loved plenty of new albums over the last five or six years, but have any of them actually changed my life? As much as I dig Interpol and Spoon and Franz Ferdinand and the Detroit Cobras and the Kills, am I a different person as a result?
So, with that in mind, here are, not necessarily my favorite albums, but the most life-changing ones, in chronological order (as in, when I bought them, not when they were released). I'm also violating another rule by listing 16, not 15. Take that, Facebook!
1. Kiss, Destroyer, because I was like 6, and my friends and I spent hours drawing potential Kiss album covers, inventing cool song titles (what I wouldn't give for one of those old sheets of paper; maybe our Moms saved them?) and painting our faces like Gene and Paul and Ace.
2. Phil Collins, No Jacket Required, because I think it was the first cassette (remember those?) I ever bought with my own money (you don't even want to know what the second was).
3. U2, The Joshua Tree, which I despised when it came out and everyone and their big sister was listening to it and talking about how deep and serious and important it was, and then three years later during their post-Rattle and Hum quiet period I secretly started listening to it and realized, wow, all those people and their sisters were right, every single one of them. It's that good. And so I became a Bono acolyte for a good 10 years, even growing my hair Bono-style in college, and also really loving their sadly overlooked Pop album, and remaining a huge, huge fan until that awful Things You Can't Etc album came out.
4. Midnight Oil, Blue Sky Mining, which convinced me at age 15 that only music with important political themes was worth listening to (which I wouldn't outgrow for two or three really pretentious years).
5. Led Zeppelin, because in high school I hated them so, so much, and I so hated the high school guys who always listened to them, that it became completely impossible for me to appreciate anything remotely "classic rock" until my Beatles phase hit in the late 1990s. I now dig this album, and lots of other classic rock, but my hatred for it throughout my teen years was pretty life-changing, or at least life-defining.
6. Miles Davis, Kind of Blue, and
7. Wayne Shorter, Adams Apple, both of which got me into jazz, and I went out and bought all their albums and then all the albums by all their side players, and then the side players' side players, etc, sort of like a musical precursor to social networking. A great way to learn about an unfamiliar genre of music. (Though as a result I now have way too many Blue Note albums and not enough older stuff, like swing or big band.)
8. Pearl Jam, Ten. Just forget about all that later stuff. This album brought me such joy for at least five hugely important years, age 17-21. Coolness points: Me and some friends saw them in October of 1991, a totally obscure band opening for Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Smashing Pumpkins, a couple of weeks after their first album came out. Hardly anyone had even heard of Nirvana yet. It was a tiny club (my first show at a club), before even "Under the Bridge" was out, and RHCP were still an underground thing, let alone the Pumpkins. It was our somewhat terrifying introduction to moshing and crowd surfing. Someone actually kicked me in the head during "Once." An amazing, amazing night. Long live grunge, and plaid shirts, and long unwashed hair. I would love to go back in time and relisten to that concert; God only knows how many hours I spent listening to their stuff over the ensuring years.
9. Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dream. See above, even though they actually sucked the night of that concert (and this album wouldn't come out for a couple more years, but when it did, wow).
10. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Orange, because it helped me realize that all that dark grunge stuff wasn't going to last much longer if there were people out there making rock music that was this MFing fun. And because the time I saw them play at the Roxy in Boston in May '97 really did change my life, in some indefinable way.
11. Soundtrack for The Commitments, which is so much less cool than putting an album by Sam Cooke or Al Green, but, in truth, this was the album that made me discover soul music. During the dead period between grunge and the indie revival, I bought this CD (of soul covers by an Irish band, from the movie based on Roddy Doyle's absolutely exhilarating first novel). I then made it a mission to find the original version of every song on it, thus discovering all the greats, such as:
12. Sam Cooke, Live at the Harlem Square Club
13. Al Green, Greatest Hits
14. Marvin Gaye, What's Going On
15. The Old 97s, Too Far To Care, because they're the first band that my wife and I discovered together and have seen many, many times together. Their song about proposing (on a later album) came out right around when I proposed to her.
16. The White Stripes, White Blood Cells. Because I liked them before they were popular, goddamnit. And Jack White's my favorite musician, still putting out great material on a near-annual basis. And they're the only band I've seen on consecutive nights in different cities. I'm not the type to follow a band around the country and all that, but I do think it's cool that I've seen them play seven times in five different states, with many of my best friends (and the missus).
Honorable mention: Beck's Mellow Gold and Odelay, R.E.M.'s Out of Time and Green, The Beatles' White Album, James Brown Live at the Apollo, anything by Elvis (it pains me that he didn't make the above list; I must have done something wrong), my 1950s Rockabilly Box Set, The Rapture's Pieces of the People You Love, Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights, the Pixies' Doolittle, Otis Redding's Greatest Hits, Curtis Mayfield's Superfly.
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