December 19, 2006

Curious George the Nostalgic Audiophile. A simple, yet not-so-simple question: What three albums changed your life?

Compare and contrast, point form acceptable. Marks added for summaries of how these albums changed your life. Bonus marks for revelations of teenage angst. Show your work.

posted by Capt. Renault 18 years ago
  • Just three? I'm going to have to get back to you on this one. Though be prepared for one or more of the following: Radiohead, Joy Division, The Cure, The Golden Palominos, Portishead, Tool, and Peter Gabriel.
  • I cannot answer this question on the grounds that The Smiths released more than three albums. And including Pornography by the Cure would make it even harder.
  • Come on it's such a joy! Come on it's such a joy! Come on and take it easy! Come on and take it easy! Take it eeeeeeeeasay! Take it eeeeeeeeasay! Everybody's got somethin' to hide 'cept for me and my Koko! *riff* Hey!
  • *grumble* My koko! *grumble*
  • I can't discount the music "foundation" laid by my mother since it's the foundation upon which my musical taste is built (whether by embracing or rejecting parts of it). My earliest music memories include my mom playing ELO, the Eagles, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Bee Gees, and Elvis. However, as a teen, the following albums rocked my world (pun intended): New Order - Substance. The first New Order album I bought. It opened up a whole new world of music for me..the world outside of mainstream radio. Kate Bush - The Whole Story. Another "singles collection," like the album above. Really opened my eyes to musical and vocal techniques that I never knew existed. Also, this album began my love of strong, independent female singers. Siouxsie and the Banshees - Juju. Once I found Siouxsie, I was a "goth" for the rest of my teen years. I was even voted "Most Individual" (altho, I must admit that I went to a very conservative high school where one step over the line of convention caused an uproar). Unlike New Order and Kate Bush, this gave me a place to scream and howl and thrash about.
  • Allright, I guess it's up to me. *sigh* 1. I'm Your Man -- Leonard Cohen. Not my favourite album of his now, nor the first album of his that I ever heard, but it was the one that got the whole fixation going as an impressionable 14 yr old. Yeah, I was a weird kid. Tell me you're shocked. 2. Mindbomb -- The The. Probably not his best, nor was it the first I was exposed to, but another one that got that fixation going, and later shunted me off into Philosophy and other omphaloskeptic pursuits. 3. Back to Basics -- Billy Bragg. Actually my second Billy purchase, after Don't Try This at Home. But it's the one that knocked my socks off, with its mix of wounded guitar and clever/naive lyrics. Another record for the loner's collection, I suppose. There are other contenders, of course, Cure (though being younger than kit, I'd opt for Kiss Me), Substance, You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess, and later Folsom or Chet's Let's Get Lost soundtrack, but three albums is the rule.
  • Coming up with the first two were easy, the third was harder: 1. The White Album by the Beatles. This is the first album I bought with my own money, when I was about ten (my mom made my buy my own copy because she was afraid I'd ruin her albums). It was impossible to like teenybopper stuff after getting into this. 2. Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me by the Cure. This is one of my first forays beyond the stuff my parents liked, and it was also one of the first albums that convinced me I wasn't as weird and wrong as the popular kids wanted to make me feel (or if I was weird, that it was a good thing). 3. Anything by the Smiths. The Smiths (along with the Cure) helped me get through high school. I made good friends just based on liking these bands, and survived the American high school experience with my "self" intact. What more can you ask for from music?
  • (I suspect that there being a certain monkey demographic, some commonalties may appear...)
  • I am not even going to try to answer this. I continue to find new music that continues to profoundly impact my life. right now I highly recommmend: One Night at Momo's - Kemia Bar tasty samples: side one: Suba's Felicidade (Buscemi Mix) #7 side two: Woody Braun & Allonymus' Finding Words Ain't Easy (Capt. Comatose's Cut Your Dreads Mix) #8 unfortunately the sound files are v e r y slow on this site :(
  • My three: The Beatles - 1962-1966 -- Yeah, it's a compilation album, but it was my first Beatles album. And the first album where I took notice of songwriting. The Clash - London Calling -- opened my eyes to the very concept of protest in song. Tom Waits - The Asylum Years -- yeah, another compilation album, but this is the album that led me to understand and appreciate personal expression and individualism in song. So... Pop, Protest and Personal Expression.
  • Difficult one, but let's try: John Coltrane, My favorite things where I discovered it is possible to do beautiful, complex and atemporal music. Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan where I learnt you can do beautiful music being overtly political. Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere, something personal: right album at the right place and time.
  • Okay, three albums that I've bought multiple times (tape/vinyl, cd) and return to repeatedly: Stiff Little Fingers, Inflammable Material. This has 10 fantastic songs out of 13 on the LP.. Led Zeppelin, IV I know Stairway could be considered irredeemably overplayed, but the rest of the album is fantastic.. The Undertones, The Undertones. Fergal Sharkey before he sucked, plus the guitars that went on to form That Petrol Emotion.
  • Meh, I'm old. "Surrealistic Pillow" -- Jefferson Airplane (1966) Yeah, I had a crush on Grace "Live Rust" -- Neil Young (1979) Distortion has been my way of life ever since "Dancing" -- Mike Keneally and Beer for Dolphins (2000) I might just possibly be growing up. A bit.
  • Damn, music still changes my outlook on life today... but a few oldies from eons past: Talking Heads Once In A Lifetime "how did I get here?" And the question resonates louder and louder as time goes by... Wendy Carlos et al, A Clockwork Orange soundtrack The movie/music one-two punch rattled my then young, impressionable mind. The Tubes The Tubes (The completion backward principle) I started understanding the lyrics with this one. Got a little disillusioned, but it was worth it underworld Second Toughest in the Infants It unmoored my already stagnant mind at the time of its' release.
  • OK Computer - Radiohead Grade 8. No friends. The perfect music to start listening to when no one's talking to you anyways. Rooty - Basement Jaxx Electronica meet tempest. Tempest meet Electronica. Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia - The Dandy Warhols This album single handily changed the way I play guitar.
  • I can tell you the top three books that changed my (outlook on) life, or even the top three movies or pieces of fine art, but music as such has never really given me any epiphanies. Over time I've come to realize that I prefer the cold and austere over the lush and sentimental, which tends to be the domain of music. Most of my favorite music tends to be strictly codified instrumental pieces; and sometimes even that sounds too gay, and I turn the music off to listen to the hum of my fridge or the distant cacophony of traffic.
  • Monkeyfilter: listen to the hum of my fridge
  • [derail] I loved the steady, soothing sound of clockwork in my youth. Now I realize there's not one mechanical clock or watch where I live. That makes me sad.
  • No order or any sort, but three that come to mind: 1. Misfits, Walk Among Us Teenage angst climaxed with this album... I recall being "grounded" during my senior year of high school - the same weekend that I was to attend another schools prom; locked in my bedroom, I put this album on high volume, and screamed along with they lyrics - - I think my mother was very, very scared. 2. Mid-1987 brough profoud change with these three albums lumped into one: The Smiths, Louder Than Bombs The Cure, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me Pixies, Come On Pilgrim Viva the revolution! All three albums gave me realization that I was not alone in this world after all... and this in South Dakota of all places - - I had to special-order all of them. I can still smell the plastic wrap as I ripped it off of each and every one. 3. Barry Manilow, Live Thanks a bunch, Mom... Points for the angst please, Capt!
  • *ahem* profound
  • Oh, you definitely get angst points, smt. And Manilow! Even better. Didn't realize until this year that Manilow didn't even write "I write the songs". FRAUD.
  • Manilow didn't even write "I write the songs". FRAUD. Whaaa? *burns Manilow albums*
  • 1) black sabbath - volume 4 2) led zeppelin - physical graffiti 3) leonard cohen - death of a ladys man i'll take the points hit for not elaborating
  • New World Record: Electric Light Orchestra Netherlands: Dan Fogelberg Gord's Gold: Gordon Lightfoot
  • Talking Heads, Remain in Light Replacements, Let It Be Charles Mingus, Ah Um.
  • Manilow didn't even write "I write the songs". FRAUD. NO! No! No, that's just not possible *shuffles madly through Google* Bruce Johnston?!? The Beach Boy? . . . An homage to Brian Wilson!?! *klunk*
  • Let It Be Gary's got a.... yup, another good one I could easily add to my list.
  • This exercise is so impossible because music changes my life just about every day of the week.
  • ! I suppose Endless Summer could go on my list. And [teeters perilously close to derail] I was shooting the ... stuff ... with the guys at the guitar shop one day when Bruce Johnston walked in and required some obscure bit of guitar hardware. I was speechless (the guitar shop guys were nonchalant, oh, this happens all the time). Had I known at that time that he wrote "I write the songs" I would have killed him with the used Telecaster I was holding right then and there!
  • Michelle Branch--The Spirit Room Relient K--MMHMM Pink Floyd--The Wall/Dark Side Of The Moon Bon Jovi-- Have A Nice Day
  • 1. Kraftwerk - Radioactivity - first Kraftwerk album. 2. King Diamond and Mercyful Fate - A Dangerous Meeting - first metal album. Now, both of these albums were introductions to new genres. I think the Kraftwerk had a little more impact on other things as well - if I didn't know Kraftwerk I don't think I'd've learned about Satie. On the other hand, I like singing in the car and it's a lot more fun to growl/falsetto than anything electronic music has. Basically, if we're comparing electronic music to metal, electronic music is more important and gives you a certain kind of cred, but metal is just cooler. (Of course, you're talking to someone who thinks 'The Puppet Master' is a Christmas album.) As for personal life impact, early Kraftwerk and imitators were played on PBS when I was younger (the original Newton's Apple theme, for instance) and other sciencey shows, so they have a definite impact as for my personal sense of aesthetics. And the King Diamond came around the same time I was reading some interesting books. Both have been an omnipresent background to my life since I was 14. 3. VAST - Visual Audio Sensory Theater - the first album I ever had to pull to the side of the road for. This was a combination between the haunting sound and the fact that I was still madly in love with the person who gave it to me, although it was unrequited. We remain friends, but I can't listen to the album en toto without crying. This album did not introduce me to anything (except wallowing in misery in late summers) but it came at another major point of self-awareness (I hadn't planned to fall in love with the person who later gave me this album, but isn't that how it works?)
  • Nirvana- In Utero ... because it spoke to the alienation I felt, yet helped me find a group of friends who liked similar music and felt similar ways. Important when I was a grotty 14 year old tomboy. Jean Grae- Attack of the Attacking Things ... because it made me realise it wasn't a contradiction to be strong, weak, scared, brave, delicate, crass, introverted and loud all at once, in the one body, and that it was good to fight for what you want, even if others don't get it. Ween- The Mollusc ... because I realised good music doesn't need to be 'heavy' or 'deep' to be entertaining or to make you think.
  • You guys are all under 35, apparently. Babies. I knew it. Disaffected youth. Angry young men. Snarling contrarians. Captive audience drones. Did audio actually change your life? And why did you let it?
  • I would love to list three of my favorite albums, but that wouldn't really be honestly answering the question. So, here are the most influential for me: 1 - Hall & Oates -- Voices This was one of my first albums. I think it was my second album (first being "The One That You Love" by Air Suply). It was influential in the sense that I had always assumed that everyone released their best songs as singles and that the rest of an album must be filler. This album covered a reasonable amount of ground and the biggest hit, "Kiss On My List," is not one of the stronger tracks on the album. The presence of John Oates songs on the album taught me that a band or an artist might have an entire sound that doesn't get represented by the radio songs. 2 - Michael Jackson - Thriller I wanted to dance. It's that simple. I started trying to dance like him in my living room, my bedroom, and anywhere I could. Being black seemed cool. It was impossible for me at this time to turn off "Billie Jean" if I heard it playing. 3 - Prince - Purple Rain No one knew what to do with him. The AOR station played him until Around the World in a Day came out. They didn't know if he was rock and roll or r&b. It was also my first exposure to anything "controversial." The lyrics to "Darling Nikki" caused a furor. He had backward voices on "Let's Go Crazy." "I Would Die 4 U" and "Let's Go Crazy" were about Jesus. It seemed like anything was suddenly possible in popular music. And in the mid-80's, it sort of was.
  • REM / Document was not actually my first record, or my record even, but it was contemporaneous and gave me my first exposure to currents that weren't getting constant play on MTV, but it was, seriously Nine Inch Nails / Pretty Hate Machine that opened up for me the range of emotions in music to something near what I was actually feeling. Wound up listening to a lot of industrial and goth stuff that I'd eventually get bored of, because going into the back catalog, more than any other record, it was English Beat / I Just Can't Stop It that drilled into me the pleasures of listening to bands with really solid songs.
  • cynnbad, I am an angry, over-35 female. just sayin' :D
  • Beastie Boys: Paul's Boutique Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense
  • Just three? Impossible! But if I absolutely had to: Tchiakovsky: Nutcracker Suite. One of the three albums we owned when I was little. The other two were Beethoven V the sheer power of which still resonates with me today and Resphigi's delightful La Boutiuqe Fantasque. It was the Tchiahovsky that really awakened my three year old brain to the sheer beauty and spirit of the best classical music. Miles Davis: Bitches Brew. Hated, hated, hated this at first, but it kept drawing me back until I finally realized that I was swine with pearls in front of me. Weather Report's first record had that effect on me too. I suppose Oscar Peterson had a huge impact at the time too but I "got" that right away. The harder stuff is more satisying for some reason. More recently Ades' Living Toys CD blew me out of the water. It showed me that true genius is still capable of creating something startingly new and that incredible possibilities still lie hidden within the narrow confines of the twelve note chromatic scale. Honorable mention goes to Stravinsky: Rite of Spring, Copland: Piano Concerto, John Coltrane: Live at the Village Vanguard, Keith Jarrett: Bremen-Lausanne Solo Concert, Mahavishnu Orchestra: Between Nothingness and Eternity, Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra, Yes: Close to the Edge, Gonzalo Rubalcaba: Imagine, Edgar Winter: Entrance, John Adams:,Nixon in China, Britten: Peter Grimes, Circle: Paris Concert. All of these a big impact when first encountered. I knew I couldn't do three.
  • 1. Vivaldi's Four Seasons. An epiphany for me; I realized that I could hear the seasons, just as the composer intended. I imagine that someone who experiences synesthesia for the first time must feel the same revelation I felt when I heard it. If someone wants to argue that it's baroque fluff, I won't deny it, but nevertheless it's withstood the test of time. 2. Beethoven's Ninth. I think the Chicago Symphony's 1966 recording but that's lost in the mists of time. I heard it for the first time shortly after I became aware that I was losing my hearing, and it affected me profoundly. I'll pontificate more on that over in the appropriate thread. 3. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon. I think more for the intricacy of it than anything else. It was (and remains, to me anyway) a masterpiece of that era.
  • Also gotta mention Rapper's Delight by the Sugarhill Gang. Used to play white-boys-in-the-'burbs basketball in high school and we usually had a boombox playing WBLS at the court, and this song very clearly signalled a whole new musical thing was coming.
  • This is hard. I want to go for the easy punch of the three albums I like the best, but I can't do it. I could also go for albums that happened to be big when my life changed, but that isn't right either. I can't think of music that changed my life, unless it is music that changed the way I feel about music (in a good way). So, here goes: The three albums that shaped my musical tastes the most, chronologically. Bob Dylan - Nashville Skyline. This album, and its friends - James Taylor's Sweet Baby James, Arlo's Alice's Restaurant, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell's Clouds, and of course Abbey Road and Let It Be - these were my parent's records. The first music I ever remember hearing at home. Nashville Skyline was special to me, for some reason - I still love the album. (Hell, when I moved out to go to college I stole it and as many of my parent's other records as I could get - not all of the above, but quite a few.) I cannot hear this music without thinking of my parents and knowing that they influenced me. They made it safe for me to like music that was older than I was. I developed a deep and abiding love for Bob Dylan that extends from his earliest works to his latest (and Modern Times is a damn fine album). Folk, singer-songwriter stuff, I loved it. Soothing, political, silly, amazing. Lyrically complex or simple and sweet, I loved it and still enjoy it (truth be told, I have no Joni Mitchell, but I wouldn't object to any - the rest I still have, and play when I can). I could have been happy as a folk or folk-rock fan, but things changed - I grew up in the 80s (although I missed out on a lot of the music - I lived in Montana, and didn't have cable). I did hear things that affected me, but nothing really took hold, until a friend and I drove to our college orientation, and he popped in a tape on the way: Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti. Although Houses of the Holy became my favorite Zep album (and III is a close second, almost completely on the giddy happiness of Out On The Tiles - yeah, Immigrant Song is cool and all, but there's something I love about Out On The Tiles... oh crap digressing sorry), Physical Graffiti was my introduction to the group. I was immediately hooked. Before this, I really didn't own music - I borrowed from my brothers - but Zeppelin I collected like a starved man, on CD, on vinyl. It was a major turning point for me. I started reading the songwriting credits - names stood out, and many of them were not in the band. The writers were guys like Willie Dixon, or Robert Johnson. Blues singers. I realized that what I had was blues with a faster beat and heavier drums. I liked it. Zeppelin led me to love the bands that took the blues and rolled with it. These bands led me to the blues, because I wanted to hear what inspired them. Nearly my entire music collection grew from the seed planted by this single album - until: Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album. The first album I ever bought that was entirely outside my original comfort zone. Just completely threw me for a loop. I listened to it once because it was so weird. A second time because someone heard me listening and was shocked that I had the album. A third time because it was growing on me - the assault on my eardrums eased, and I slipped into the incredible happiness one only gets when the bass is making the car windows shake and it feels like you're being pounded on the chest by a 303. I realized exactly how much I had been missing during the 90s. Since the acquisition of that album my musical tastes have gone completely different. All of my friends were confused. I am the better because of this. (Thank you, electronica and techno, remix and mash up, glitch and house, trance and ambient, thank you for finding me.) I am what I am. Eclectic. Looking for what comes next. Who knows? I'm open to listening to just about anything at least once.
  • 1. Naked Raygun - Throb Throb Walked into a dive bar on 63rd street called Over Easy. Got stopped by the doorman. "Two bucks cover". What! Two dollars! No way I'm gonna pay that (young and poor). Bouncer says "Dude, it's Raygun". My friends and I look at each other (we have no idea who Naked Raygun was) ... we don't want to look uncool so we pay the two bucks. One of the best nights of my life. Bought a cassette that night from the band. After that I realized that music can change your life. 2. Pixies - Surfer Rosa First heard it on a car trip up to Napa Valley. The sun. The vineyards. The music. It never left me. 3. Bob Mould - Workbook Made me realize that I know nothing about song structure. Changed the way I write music.
  • Wow - what excellent taste you Monkeys have - vg to hear shout-outs for Pornography and Juju ... though I have to confess I found Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me slightly disappointing ... Three Life-changing albums??? only three??? that's tough. 0.5) A New Seekers Album and (I think) 'The Times They Are A Changing' by Bob Dylan - both given to my parents for Christmas when I was about five - both rapidly passed onto me as they weren't classical LPs - my first realisation that could choose my own music and that I liked some music over other music (sadly in this case it was The New Seekers, but I was only five). 1) Setting Sons and London Calling - because by now I was 14 and I HAD TASTE 2) Life's Rich Pageant/Document - I'd got bored with Punk/Goth and was running out of options then Life's Rich Pageant completely blew me away and made me fall deeply in love with music and R.E.M. the former infatuation persists - the latter is waning as a result of the last 2 albums! 2.5) The Stone Roses: A Fucking masterpiece. Rock's finest moment. Still blows me away 3) Prisoner's Of Love by Yo La Tengo. Only last month I bought this compilation and I was back in love with a band I hadn't heard before for the first time in years ... 3.5) Mozart's Coronation Mass in C Major. Punk two centuries before Malcolm Maclaren
  • Three is hard. Public Enemy: Fear of a Black Planet. My dad had to buy it for me because I was too young and this was the dawn of the Parental Advisory sticker. He asked to hear it on the drive home. I don't think he cared for it. Ministry: Psalm 69. Best industrial album ever. Autechre: Incunabula. The whole Warp Artificial Intelligence series made me very happy, but this disc in particular never fails to impress me with its smooth architecture and hypnotic soundscapes. Geez, I sound like a critic at Urb or something. Bleaugh.
  • Wowee, the class should be getting very high marks for this assignment! Tough narrowing this down to three but here goes: Yes: Close to the Edge. For demonstrating that music can take you places. Talking Heads: More Songs About Buildings and Food. For opening my ears to completely new possibilities and teaching me there was more to music than my roommate's stultifying James Taylor albums. Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band (the album with Boogie 'til you Puke). For demonstrating that musicians don't have to take themselves seriously and that music can be FUN. I sure wish I could add in some Ian Dury (New Boots and Panties) and an old 78 recording of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (Mozart), the latter of which lulled me to sleep as a baby and gave me something wonderful to carry in my head forever, and the former of which taught me you can laugh, dance and think all at the same time. Ooooh, thanks for the memories, people. Great stuff, makes me want to dig through that old pile of vinyl I've got in the spare room...
  • *Looks at Argh's list and nods in appreciation* I wore my Throb Throb cassette to tatters... I often listened to it very loud as I drove around, alone... Stone Roses... another fine choice. I recall listening to that while driving up the winding roads in the Appalachian Mountains approaching Asheville, NC during a snowstorm. The music was a fine compliment to the natural beauty surrounding me. This exercise is so impossible because music changes my life just about every day of the week. Agree with HW on that, most definitely. For example, our recently departed Fes sent me a mix CD last week. The other night when I returned home after work, I found myself extremely exhausted and at a loss of energy (I'm usually a bouncing ball of craziness with the kids). I popped Fes' CD in, and instantly I was transformed - - energy surged through me, I started dancing around in silly fashion, my 10-month old daughter started bouncing along, and an otherwise uneventful night became fun! Thanks Fes...
  • 1. Beatles 1967-70 - The Blue album. My first evar album. But weirdly my vinyl copy had a defect. On the second LP, it had one of the sides of the Beatles 1962-66 version. Wowee! 2. Who's Next by the Who. C'mon, "teeeeeeenage wasteland"! 3. Highway 61 Revisited. Because "Just Like Tom Thumb Blues" was for young people who feel old. Honorable mentions: Sex Pistols - "Never mind the Bollocks", Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D, piano sonatas, Bach's Mass in B Minor, Well-Tempered Clavier, Schubert impromptus, Joni Mitchell "Hegira".
  • I'm getting some great ideas here on music to check out! As for me... Must... Not... Pick... Three... Magnetic... Fields... Albums.... But I gotta have one, so: 1) The Sixths, Wasps Nests. Not even really a MagFields record, but close enough. It got me hooked on the musical genius of Stephin Merritt-- sort of an unholy hybrid of Cole Porter, the Beatles, and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. Track 4 will cure almost any pain you might find yourself in. 2) De La Soul, Three Feet High and Rising. It's a D.A.I.S.Y. Age! Take those acid washed jeans, bell-bottomed, designed by your mama, OFF? PLEASE? 3) Crud, I can't really think of a third. Most likely it'd be Gogol Bordello's Gypsy Punk. I always feel vaguely inauthentic listening to Irish punk, but hearing GB's Eastern European mongrel lunacy feels like coming home.
  • 1. Kraftwerk - Radioactivity - first Kraftwerk album. Aaahhhh, Kraftwerk. Listening for the first time to a tape of 'Computer World', and doing it on a walkman (the very first time I used one of those then new beasts) is a definitive milestone on my life.
  • I can't do albums, just songs. When I was but a wee thing, Genesis's Land of Confusion gave me some limited political awareness. It still makes me angsty and frustrated. I admit to a fondness for Genesis and ex-lead singers thereof. I thought I was hardcore when I was twelve and my mother bought me Poison's Look What the Cat Dragged In and Def Leppard's Hysteria. Shame is me. I was a pretend rocker for a couple of years listening to big-hair glam metal. The real angst came when I discovered (what else) Radiohead on going to uni. It was probably around the release of My Iron Lung. All my angsty mates and I hung around, playing guitar and singing melancholy and heartfelt lyrics, then getting drunk and being even more angsty and melancholy. In the mornings we'd put on the Presidents of the USA and drink beer for breakfast. Good times. Not so much life-changers as points of reference for the many phases I went through and am still going through.
  • *looks at tracicle and realizes that we must be the same age*
  • *looks at tracicle and sugarmilktea and suddenly realizes that I'm an old man*
  • Good lord, I think I'm the same age as the monkeybashi, too... well, I feel like an UTTER LOSER for not having my own online dominion by now! But seriously... good point about the singles vs. albums. There are plenty of songs that have warped my brain (Then He Kissed Me, by the Crystals) but it's hard to nail down an entire album. Captain, it's your thread-- can we talk about singles, too?
  • I called albums, but have been overruled by our Benevolent Bashi.
  • Well now, if we're talkin' singles as well... 1. Beatles, "Come Together/Something" The first single my tiny hands ever got a hold of... ahh, this thing called music! I played it over, and over, and over... 2. Neil Diamond, "Forever In Blue Jeans" Given to me by my child sweetheart/pal when I was about 8 years old. I never forgot her, and cried when the single broke several years later... 3. Laura Branigan, "Gloria" Aha, capitalism comes alive! The first single I EVAH bought. From that day forward, I amassed a huge collection (much of which has since been sold on eBay), though I never touched Laura Branigan again.
  • *hides from the Wrath of Louis* But I did do some albums!
  • I'm with tracicle on songs vs. albums, except for an album by Bud Shank and Laurindo Almeida which came out on the now defunct Pacific Jazz label in the mid 1950s. Smokey cool Latino jazz with sax and guitar that led me away from Top 40 to explore other music. I've tried to find a new copy, but it doesn't seem to exist anywhere. I can still hear some of it in my head, though.
  • Well, I said that and then decided to try yet another search, and guess what. Listening to the samples requires the DirectShow player, whatever that is. So, I'm ordering it just to see if my tastes have changed since I was 16.
  • The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour. They Might Be Giants, Flood. Jacques Offenbach, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Beverly Sills, Norman Treigle, cond. Julius Rudel.
  • path, that album sounds TASTY. I'm sold! Thanks for the recommendation!
  • Music has never changed my life. It's been a background track. I guess I'm just wrong-headed somehow.
  • Monkeyfilter: I never touched Laura Branigan again