wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

As part of WNYC's weeklong Must Have Festival, each member of the Soundcheck staff selected one album that transformed his or her life.

The Beatles, "Help!"
picked by Irene Trudel, technical director

[Irene's love of music started with her parents, both of whom passed away this year. She writes here about a truly special gift given to her by her father.] Most of us as children start our musical listening habits as an offshoot of our parents’ music collection. My parents had a fairly ordinary collection, consisting of my mother’s classical records (a lot of Chopin, Debussy, a smattering of individual artists, mostly pianists), things like Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass and a number of old 78’s. Weirdly, as a kid I had a phobia about record players—no doubt arising from a severe scolding when caught playing with my dad’s precious hi-fi—and I couldn’t be in the same room when a record was playing.

Weirdly, as a kid I had a phobia about record players -- no doubt arising from a severe scolding when caught playing with my dad's precious hi-fi -- and I couldn’t be in the same room when a record was playing. One album that changed that was an unexpected present from my dad. He worked with a buddy of John Lennon’s, and in 1966 this Beatle stayed with my dad’s co-worker to hide out from the screaming fans. My dad asked if he could get an autograph for us kids. John obliged, signing a piece of hotel stationary and including a little drawing of himself. To complete the package my dad presented us with the autograph, a picture-sleeve “Help!” single and a Paul McCartney bubble bath. (He didn’t know the difference!) Within a day I managed to crack the 45 in two, so he went out and bought the “Help!” album, which included music from the movie soundtrack. I overcame my turntable fears and proceeded to absorb every note of that album. This Beatles album ended up not being my favorite over the years, but it led to a love of more than just pop music. It was the first time I felt I ‘owned’ the music, and I have since gone on to own thousands of vinyl albums and CDs of many musical styles." A photo of Irene's John Lennon autograph is pictured here.

The Beatles, "Abbey Road"
picked by Brian Wise, associate producer

The Beatles “Abbey Road” made a strong impression on a young Brian Wise growing up in the Detroit area. In the 1980’s, the local rock station WRIF (a k a “the Riff”) would take a break every Sunday morning from its usual format of hair-metal and arena-rock bands to present a popular 3-hour “Breakfast with the Beatles” show. While the early Beatles’ material was nice and all, when the DJ played selections from “Abbey Road” it was obvious how the Fab Four were taking rock to a different level. Whether it’s the stormy metal of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” the lush three-part harmonies of “Because” or the almost symphonic medley of “You Never Give Me Your Money” and “Golden Slumbers/Carry that Weight” this was the band’s conceptual masterpiece. It’s an album that continues to resonate to this day.

Caetano e Chico, "Juntos e Ao Vivo"
picked by Gisele Regatao, executive producer

Here are some of the things that Gisele loves the most about her native Brazil: Number one, the songs of Chico Buarque. Number two, the voice of Caetano Veloso. Number three: life in Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia. So her must-have pick is an album that combines the three of them: “Caetano e Chico, Juntos e Ao Vivo,” or together and live, recorded at Teatro Castro Alves in Salvador, in 1972. It’s a rare collaboration of two giants of Brazilian music in a time when their country lived under a tough military dictatorship – but produced some of its best music ever. Here is the end of Caetano’s song "Você Não Entende Nada," (or "you don’t understand anything,") tying with the beginning of Chico’s Cotidiano, or day-to-day.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Let Love In”
picked by Joel Meyer, associate producer

It’s hard to know what to make of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: The crazy Australian baritone. The creepy lyrics. The backing band of twangy weirdos. But that’s part of the fun of a band that has a healthy love of sappy love songs, cartoon violence, and William Faulkner. In 1994, the Bad Seeds released “Let Love In,” an album full of lyrical psychosis and gentle ballads. That summer, Joel met Nick Cave, his hero, after a concert. The two chatted briefly, and Cave told Joel he remembered him from the show and “sang a couple of songs” to him. Perhaps Joel would have become a wealthy doctor if Cave hadn't said that, but instead this future Soundcheck staffer decided to make a career out of getting musicians to talk and play music for him.

Brian Eno: “Another Green World”
picked by host John Schaefer

In 1975, Brian Eno put out The Rock Album That Wasn’t. Not only wasn’t it a rock album, it wasn’t a jazz record, a classical record, or anything else I had ever come across before. Yes, there were elements of prog-rock on it (familiar names from then au courant bands like Genesis, Brand X, and Henry Cow), but much of the album was instrumental. The tracks had evocative names (“In Dark Trees,” “Sombre Reptiles,” and the title track), but even better, the music somehow told its story without words. “The Big Ship” sounded exactly like a huge vessel slowly approaching and then disappearing again over the horizon. “Another Green World” took a single repeating motif (on an electric guitar whose sound somehow never faded away) and repeated it for 90 seconds, and yet still conjured up an image of a lush, alien planet. The actual songs were catchy, with off-kilter, what’s-wrong-with-this-picture lyrics.

For Eno, this album was a watershed moment. He would refine his ideas of making the musical background as important as the foreground, and using the recording studio as a kind of grand musical instrument, in his next album, “Before and After Science.” And then it was on to inventing ambient music, producing early recordings by Britain’s leading avant-garde composers and a young American named John Adams, introducing his rock friends to West African music, and a host of multimedia and conceptual art pieces.

For me, a young teenager heavily under the influence of – well, let’s just say punk rock and leave it at that – “Another Green World” was also a defining moment. It was the first “non-rock” music I really loved. More importantly, Eno’s album was the portal to the electronic avant-garde, to the minimalism of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, to the sounds of world music… in other words, all the things that have formed the core of my “New Sounds” program at WNYC in the past 25 years.