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When a CD Is More Than a CD
Lurking in every music fan's collection is an album that changed a life in some way, big or small. Today we ask you about "The Album That Changed Your Life," a record that compelled you to pick up an instrument, start a career in music, or make a big decision. Music writer Michael Azerrad and DJ Rekha, whose work fuses South Asian bhangra with hip-hop, join us to explain how certain albums changed them.
Soundcheck Blog: The album that changed John Schaefer's life
Tell us: 1) What album changed your life? 2) How would your life be different if you had never heard it?
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What album changed your life? And how would your life be different if you'd never heard it? We'll share your stories on Thursday's Soundcheck.
1. John Coltrane's "Transition" changed my life by proving that anything is possible musically. The quartet plays so tight that it's almost like the have ESP. Especially on the title track.
2. If I had never heard that album, I probably would have stopped my interest in jazz.
1. The Avalanches - Since I Left You
2. The sheer number of samples, layering of different genre's and integrating it to make a truly unique album blew my mind at the time. it was impossible for me to describe to friends at the time, for the best, it's an album that changes the way you hear sounds. I'd probably still be a sucker for crappy guitar pop and way less open minded to musical styles, from African to Oldies to underground Hip Hop
The Dark Side of the Moon
I was 24 years old and I was trying to learn English by learning song's lyrics. The first song I memorized completely was "Time"
It changed my life...it was my first realization that eventually and inevitably I was going to die and I was just sleeping through my life.
"And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun"
I got hooked up to the whole album
Nevermind by Nirvana.
I was a young teen when that came out (on cassette), and I laid in bed listening to it over and over again with my headphones at full volume.
When I woke up the next morning, the world was a different place. I was in a different place mentally, like I had just moved away from a former life, and woke up in a new house, in a new town.
This was my Zeppelin
A Song For Me (1970) - Family
1)The third album from the British progressive band Family - their first since bassist Rick Grech left to join Blind Faith - changed my life in that it changed my way of hearing rock and roll. It demonstrated an array of possibilities in different muscial forms within any one of its ten tracks, and it made me think more about how music can smash the generic boundaries imposed on it.
2) My life would be different had I not heard 'A Song For Me' because I never would have been encouraged to think as creatively as I now do in my own work as a writer. Also, this LP made me a fan of Family and enocouraged me to seek out more obscure British rockers.
Beatles '65. The music on that album became entangled with all the political and personal turmoil of the time.
The Clash. Their self titled album. I heard the first lines of Janie Jones without understanding their exact meaning. I was 16 years old. There was something "urgent" in the air. Something that had to be done without postponement. Ever since (I am now 34) the album works as a reminder in my life: reminds me that I have to move forward and become a better person whatever the circumstances are.
Alfredo Zitarrosa, "Solos y Juntos"
I had to pick this one among others that greatly influenced me because it was the first big influence (others were Kind of Blue, Stardust, Return to Forever, a recopilation of the Nat King Cole Trio, Waltz for Debby, Joao Gilberto, Astor Piazzolla...)...
(Sorry to pick somebody problably unknown to most Soundcheck friends. Zitarrosa was a major artist, and even though his work is very local, I read that Woody Allen is a big fan of his).
It changed me by helping me realize how suttle and connecting music can be. It was with this album that I first sat down to actively listen to music.
Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" changed my life because I feel like it saved my life. Going through a most painful breakup, this album expressed everything I felt and articulated it in a way that I couldn't.
1) Echo & the Bunnymen "Ocean Rain"
2) If I had not heard that when I was 13, I probably would have thought that NKOTB was what music ought to sound like. It opened up a whole catalog of music to me and,for better or for worse, led me to always be looking for new music in new places. I still have that original record and still listen to it.
2 records changed my life...
1) Nevermind - prior to this record coming out, I was a rap fanatic trying to fit into a culture that I didn't fit into. Without Nevermind I may have never learned how to play the guitar.
2) Bakesale (Sebadoh) - this record changed my idea of what music could be. I learned that I could write music without the need for over production or the rules that seemed to apply to mainstream media. It was also the "gateway" record to a world of underground music that for over a decade has molded not just my musical taste, but also my way of thinking.
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
The first time I heard the album I was driving along the Cambridge/Somerville border, sitting next to the girl i loved and the one I would grow to love. I don't know how my life would be different now, if I hadn't heard it. I had never heard a love poem so completely realized before this - and Aeroplane is, in it's most basic definition, a love poem for Anne Frank - and I didn't understand that music could move someone to a place of paralyzing emotion. I still can only listen to it on certain nights, when the light is just right.
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
The first time I heard the album I was driving along the Cambridge/Somerville border, sitting next to the girl i loved and the one I would grow to love. I don't know how my life would be different now, if I hadn't heard it. I had never heard a love poem so completely realized before this - and Aeroplane is, in it's most basic definition, a love poem for Anne Frank - and I didn't understand that music could move someone to a place of paralyzing emotion. I still can only listen to it on certain nights, when the light is just right.
Years later, when love faded, Richard Buckner's Devotion+Doubt would provide an equally powerful mirror.
After hearing every song on the album Takk, by Sigur Ros, I have to say that I know for a fact - my life was changed. The mood, setting, and acoustics, for which I had eleven memorable experiences, contributed greatly to the tears of joy that streamed across my face while listening. Each song was filled with a happiness that one could only hope for in a fairytale of stories, and in this case, it was a story with a most happy ending.
I was blown away when Takk came out. Sigur Ros did a fantastic job and the overall mood of the music is very light, happy, and full of joy. Each song has got a climax with this very incredible, emotional euphoria: which can compare to no other music I've ever heard before. Sigur Ros's music is so original, it opened up my eyes to what music is really about. True art is the manifestation of love, and I tottaly felt it when listening to their album Takk.
Beck - Odelay
Odelay was the first album that I considered my favorite. I was given the cassette for Christmas soon after it came out. I was in sixth grade at the time. The album was popular enough that I felt like I was making my first significant tread into popular culture, but it was still such strange music that I felt it was my own discovery; that other people wouldn't get it like I did. The way Mr. Hansen explores and deconstructs such a variety of genres over the course of the album has been immensely influential on my taste in music since. I would listen to the tape on my Walkman on the bus to school every morning and think about how much farther this mix-and-match approach could be taken and know that music doesn't need mass apeal to be truly wonderful.
1) The velvet underground and nico
2) decidedly average. I would be among those who believe that lyrics in rock and pop songs make no difference.
1. The Smiths: The Queen is Dead
2. When I first heard this album, I finally felt like I was not alone. In addition, my fascination with this album led to me becoming really involved in the UK indie scene, eventually leading to me being a DJ and music director at my college radio station, meeting people all over the country and world to show me cool indie record shops in places such as Auckland, Brisbane, London, Chicago, Indianapolis, etc., a junior year abroad in London, and some life-long friendships built on common experience of feeling like an outsider and then finding a home in indie music.
I was weaned on Rock, settled into classical and opera and then at someone's behest, I listened to Shakira's CD, Donde Estan Las Ladrones. Ciega Sordomudo - one of its songs - opened up an avenue that would ultimately traverse Latin pop of the succeeeding decade, and then branch out into other music in general.
I think we all have affective seeds that need to be watered by specific sounds that help them grow. In this way, Reggae, Rock, Rodgers & Respighi have all enriched my sensibilities. To edit Shakespeare: If music be the food of feeling, play on.
The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails - Its excellent use of pop structures, meticulously crafted samples, synthesizers, and noise introduced me to a whole new aesthetic. It ultimately changed my view about the types of music I enjoyed and even carried over to me discovering new artists by researching band members, influences, and remix artists (Some of whom I grew to become a big fan of, like Meat Beat Manifesto, David Bowie, and Coil.) which is still how I research and dig for new music and genres to this day.
Without a doubt, Black Love by the Afghan Whigs. I saw them in '96 with none other than Sound Check producer Joel Meyer, who almost instantly wrote the band off as mere douchery. I on the other hand, on the verge of an especially painful break up and being appropriately inebriated and disenchanted, was absolutely mesmerized. Me and another friend who went to the show hightailed it to a record store that was open until midnight (I would later work at that very store and drive my co-workers out of their minds with the aforementioned album) and bought every Afghan Whigs record on the shelves, and the rest is history. As dismal and bitter as Black Love is, I oddly find solace and comfort in knowing that someone had it bad enough, worse than I ever have, to be driven to make that record. Testify!
The album that had the biggest impact on me was SPK's Information Unit. Without that album I might not have been inspired to start making electronic musick and there might not have been a Schloss Tegal (my band) We are the masters of dark ambient according to our fans in Europe!
Hotel California- The Eagles
My own coming of age song.
Fugazi's "Repeater"
This one snuck up on me but it stuck forever. Ian MacKaye and friends have been a driving positive force in my life ever since.
hearing john coltrane's "ascension" for the first time when i was 19 was like emerging fresh from the womb, covered in amniotic fluid.
Since I was young, I'd always listened to pop music. But I never knew what I was missing until I heard Sex Pistols Never Mind The Bollocks. Rock and roll is about attitude, fashion, rebellion and, most important, that back beat. What could encompass those traits more?
Caetano Veloso: TRANSA
Jorge Ben: FORCA BRUTA
Which proved to me that there was more good pop music in the world than whatever the mob was selling to the public in America (at the time it was disco), and that all the music we loved here -- Jazz, Beatles, Dylan, Motown -- could reach an even higher level in the hands of really good instrumentalists, performers and producers, with maybe a slightly different slant.
(Yet, Tropicalia was initially reviled in Brazil for being too American, too rock.)
When punk and grunge came along, it was painfully obvious that, at the mass level, in the USA, they were just marketing maneuvers.
Caetano Veloso: TRANSA
Jorge Ben: FORCA BRUTA
Which proved to me that there was more good pop music in the world than whatever the mob was selling to the public in America (at the time it was disco), and that all the music we loved here -- Jazz, Beatles, Dylan, Motown -- could reach an even higher level in the hands of really good instrumentalists, performers and producers, with maybe a slightly different slant.
(Yet, Tropicalia was initially reviled in Brazil for being too American, too rock.)
When punk and grunge came along, it was painfully obvious that, at the mass level, in the USA, they were just marketing maneuvers.
Caetano Veloso: TRANSA
Jorge Ben: FORCA BRUTA
Which proved to me that there was more good pop music in the world than whatever the mob was selling to the public in America (at the time it was disco), and that all the music we loved here -- Jazz, Beatles, Dylan, Motown -- could reach an even higher level in the hands of really good instrumentalists, performers and producers, with maybe a slightly different slant.
(Yet, Tropicalia was initially reviled in Brazil for being too American, too rock.)
When punk and grunge came along, it was painfully obvious that, at the mass level, in the USA, they were just marketing maneuvers.
Caetano Veloso: TRANSA
Jorge Ben: FORCA BRUTA
Which proved to me that there was more good pop music in the world than whatever the mob was selling to the public in America (at the time it was disco), and that all the music we loved here -- Jazz, Beatles, Dylan, Motown -- could reach an even higher level in the hands of really good instrumentalists, performers and producers, with maybe a slightly different slant.
(Yet, Tropicalia was initially reviled in Brazil for being too American, too rock.)
When punk and grunge came along, it was painfully obvious that, at the mass level, in the USA, they were just marketing maneuvers.
Caetano Veloso: TRANSA
Jorge Ben: FORCA BRUTA
Which proved to me that there was more good pop music in the world than whatever the mob was selling to the public in America (at the time it was disco), and that all the music we loved here -- Jazz, Beatles, Dylan, Motown -- could reach an even higher level in the hands of really good instrumentalists, performers and producers, with maybe a slightly different slant.
(Yet, Tropicalia was initially reviled in Brazil for being too American, too rock.)
When punk and grunge came along, it was painfully obvious that, at the mass level, in the USA, they were just marketing maneuvers.
For me it was Miles Davis' rendition of Summertime on the Porgy and Bess album arr. by Gil Evans. That sound stopped a hyperactive 10 year old (me) in his tracks.
If I hadn't heard that sound I probably would have saved a lot of money.
Believe it or not: McCartney, Sir Paul's first solo outing, the original DIY. The work of a genius in post Beatle turmoil left alone with a 4 track.
I was a kid growing up in Karachi Pakistan and getting your hands on music was tough, I found McCartney in a dusty old flea market and spent much of my teens imagining Myself taking turns playing each instrument much like Macca did in 1970. Visualizing playing the drums or the guitar solo to Maybe Im Amazed in front of a fantasy school assembly set me on a path I'm stil on.
Captain Beefheart: "Trout Mask Replica"
I first heard Beefheart when I was 13 and a family friend played "Tropical Hot Dog Night" (admittedly a bit pop-ier than Trout Mask). About a year later our local community station, WTJU, in Charlottesville, VA played "Trout Mask Replica" in its entirety for their annual rock marathon fundraiser, I think I stayed up till 2am to record it on tape off the radio. Mind blowing! Needless to say, I was way too young for this stuff! I went straight from the Beatles to Beefheart, didn't even stop to stay hi to Zappa on the way. As Beefheart said "Fast 'n bulbous/Tight also"
I'm Breathless - Music from and Inspired by the film Dick Tracy -- MADONNA
As stupid as this my sound, this so-so album introduced me to another type of music and eventually to Jazz. Without it, I will never know Armstrong or Coltrane.
Without Beefheart, I can't say I know how my life would be different--
Maybe I never would have read Baldwin or Burroughs, maybe Tom Waits wouldn't have made Swordfishtrombones, who knows?
Art begets art I guess--
You hear something like Trout Mask Replica, though, and you have to re-adjust your relationship to just about everything
This comment is a bit different. When I was 30 years old, some years ago, I heard a recital of Bach piano music, and decided I should hear more. I bought the album of the Well Tempered Clavier by Rosalyn Tureck, not Glenn Gould, and this changed my life. I rented my first piano and began playing, which I have continued, some 50 years. I still play mostly Bach.
B-52’s – Bouncing Off the Satellites (1986) (EX: Summer of Love)
My wife and I met with a common interest in this album. I still listen to it and it brings back so many happy memories. Isn’t that what it’s all about?
Pixies – Come on Pilgrim (1987) (EX: Ed is Dead)
It’s my all-time favorite. I hadn’t heard this album until 90 after I heard Doolittle. If not the cause, it was the soundtrack to changing my life. I quit my job, went to collage and I have continued to make my life about change. Kurt Cobain lists the Pixies as another major influence.
(Bands influenced by the Pixies quiet-loud-quiet style: Radiohead, Weezer, Smashing Pumpkins, Pavement.)
THE MARS VOLTA'S Debut almbu:
DE-LOUSED IN THE COMATORIUM
(Even if the band members claimed
That Rick Rubin ruined it).
This album is just timeless: it could be from 20 years ago, or 20 years in the future.
The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
On my 12th birthday my mom gave my a copy of The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. When I popped in my cassette tape, I remember thinking that I'm watching a movie through my ears.
Each song had a smell, a taste, a sense of place and a sound, a magical sound that transformed the way I thought about music.
The Beatles are very special to me not only for their own incredible music, but also for how they gave me an appreciation for other artist that explore the concept album.
And now I look for albums, Rock, Jazz, Electronic, classical that strive to create a cohesive artistic vision.
Thanks for a great show!
Brian
alice cooper, love it to death for rock and roll done right.
david bowie, honky dory for the diversity of it all.
and last but not least nick drake, pink moon for showing how to laugh and cry all in one record and one song for that matter.
The Modern Lovers
On the Bomp label
Recorded in 1972 by Kim Foley
Jonathon Richman with future members of the Cars ,TalkingHeads
This was way ahead of The Ramones and Punk etc of 1976.
The sex pistols later very badly covered Roadrunner.
Im still listening to this album in absolute awe.
cheers
Catch 22 Keasby Nights
I saw them play when I was 15 at a VFW hall in my home state of New Jersey, and they made me realize that music was not exclusive and that I could find my own way when it comes to what I listen to.
Jeff Beck - Wired
I was 14 when I bought this album - the guy at the record store was impressed! This album taught me songs were more than rhyming lyrics.
A great guitarist, somehow I could match the titles with the songs (since we parted as lovers; eg) without verbal indicators. It's a timeless album, sounds as good today as it did 35 years ago.
1) My Bloody Valentine - Loveless.
2) It wasn't so much that Loveless opened broad new vistas for me. What really happened is it was the coalescence of the things I really loved about a diverse range of music distilled into a single album.
I recall my first hearing of it on a friends stereo and saying aloud something like, "I've been waiting my whole life for music to sound like this, and I didn't know it until now." It was immediately clear that someone had made a record of the perfect sounds for me.
It was still pop music but it was noisy, it was tuneful, it had moments of accident and subversion and surprise. It was dense and beautiful. Since then it's really opened my ears to a breadth of new music, very little of it pop, much of it wonderful.
I'll always love that record.
Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
Pearl Jam - Ten
Micheal Jackson's Thriller. I knew after that I would never be a Star. I lacked the talent, training, and business conections. I grew up with punk & raps "just do it" mindset. Street music. Thriller is not street, it's professional. Music became more a corprate machine after Thriller. Had the album and videos not came out. I would have a starving Musican rather than the starving artist I am today.
Album: Tom Waits "Rain Dogs."
No musician/storyteller/songwriter has ever moved me more. I somehow made it to early adulthood before I knew that music could sound like this... so much texture, so many layers, and all by a man with more imagination that anyone I had ever listened to before (or since!)
Between my husband and myself, we own every single Waits ablum and are now indoctrinating our 9-month-old daughter to his genius.
Without a question...
A top 10 best album of all TIME
FELA KUTI's album called EXPENSIVE SH*T
This album open doors to African Music, but also to the Political struggles & injustices in Nigeria during the 60's.
&
Also...any OINGO BOINGO album is good to mention.
'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts'—Brian Eno/David Byrne
This album completely changed my view of the possibilities of music and experimentation with sound.
It opened a door, I entered, and never returned.
I still listen to it today.
How an album has changed our lives???
Despite some sophisticated choices above, this is yet another installment in Adolescent (and Adults-Still-Undergoing-Adolescence) Angst.
Please, if an album changed your life, then get a (real) life.
Another example how low has gone and how pandering the once-great WNYC has become.
When I was 14 years old, I had a crush on this mysterious artsy girl in the 11th grade who had a handpainted denim jacket of Robert Smith, and she lent me The Cure's Disintegration, which really became a huge influence on me and made me want to express myself.
joni mitchell, "blue"
i wouldn't be half the woman i am today without that album.
Modest Mouse Lonesome, Crowded West. I was 20 and I got picked up by an aspiring rock star in a giant buick playing Trailer Trash. That was kind of all it took...I moved with him to Brooklyn and got married. It was indeed a short love and a long divorce, but my ipod is much better for it.
Eugene Ormandy & the Philadelphia Orchestra doing a "greatest hits" classical collection
I would never have studied classical music in college and ultimately go into the music industry if I hadn't started listening to classical music as a teenager. It was this grab bag 2-album collection of classical hits by Tchaikovsky, Bizet and Stravinsky among others that got it all started.
Thanks for the words Michael B..It's OK if you like Elton John..throw it out there..
Two albums totally changed my life. I fell in love with Jim Morrison's voice and the albums, The Doors. and Soft Parade just blew me away.
Jim's voice was so unique and everytime I played those albums, I got lost in his words.
The first Smiths album. My father worked in radio and so I grew up listening to the Stones, Beatles, etc. But the Smiths were MINE. I discovered them and listened to "What Difference Does it Make" over and over. It captured the angst inducing ambivalence of adolescence.
Another vote for Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea...
White Light/White Heat by the Velvet Underground - I just kept listening to it over and over. How many bands were (in)formed by this group?
Pat Metheny's Imaginary Day--enough said. I listened to this when I was only in middle school and it completely changed the way I think of music in general
I have several but the CURE "Standing on the Beach the Singles" fed my teenage darkside, full of angst and crazy heart broken emotion. Perfect for a 15 year old girl. I also loved the Beatles and the song "Help" was great fun. I had poster of the CURE and The Beatles on my bedroom wall....crazy times.
"Leonard Bernstein Conducts for Young People."
My parents gave this 3-record set when I was 10 because I choose Lenny as a Great American for a Social Studies report.
I WAS IN FOR LIFE!
Wouldn't have made it through my 14th year of life without the Smiths' The Queen is Dead.
1) What album changed your life?
The Origian B'way Cast Recording of Les Miserables
2) How would your life be different if you had never heard it?
I was three years old in 1987, when it opened, and my mother was (and still is) a high school French teacher. That tape was ALWAYS on in the car, and I got my own copy when I was 4. I was introduced to concepts of love, compassion, social justice, protest, and reconcilliation at a very young age. At first, I just thought it was cool that there were battles in the show, and I would build a barricade out of wooden blocks and army men with the soundtrack on in the background, but as I matured, I realized that the concept of social justice, as well as gray areas between right and wrong, was engrained in me long before I even knew what it was.
The Replacements Let It Be. This album did so much for me in high school. It turned me on to punk rock and away from prog rock and it still makes me feel less alone every time I hear it. Everything about it is perfect and makes me feel there are other kindred spirits out there who see the humor and sadness in life the way I do.
As I prepare to move house all albums have proved to change my life. Do I take them with me? Or is it time to go virtual? 25 boxes of records. Doh!
magnetic fields - 69 love song
taught me how to listen to music - with open ears
* When I was a teen I listened to what I liked no matter what I liked.
* When I was in college "friends" constantly shoved their ideas of what cool/good music was down my throats and I accepted that for some masochistic reason.
* Now as an adult I can honestly say I am thrilled to have completely ejected the world of fan-boy & indie-rock preciousness obsessiveness that truly stifled my life and spawns concepts such as albums "...changing your life."
I have no doubt music can affect you, but change your life? Please.
Guns n Roses - Appetite
I was young it was the first vulgar album...pre-dates all that hip hop. Now I curse all the time.
Astro Weeks by Van Morrison... Best blue i had ever heard. sad, bad, and lyrical… To Love Somebody by Nina Simone…The best of Nina’s best work. These albums did not change my life—they just smoothed out the edges.
First time was Rolling Stones "Beggars Banquet"
Second time was Led Zepplin's 1st record.
Third time was Sex Pistols "Never Mind the Bullocks"
Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon.
At the time, I was just starting out in college. My musical tastes had been predominantly pop and soft rock. Although DSOTM had been out for quite a few years earlier, I just hadn't been exposed to it. "The Wall" was the big popular Pink Floyd album which I'd not yet come to appreciate. But one evening in a friend's dorm room, the "Dark Side" album started... and I was mesmerized. I'd never heard anything like it before. And it really opened up my appreciation for rock music, what the medium could achieve. The captivating artistry of blending music, synthesizers, voices, and poignant lyrics... The follow-up album, "Wish You Were Here" is also an amazing work of art, my 2nd favorite Pink Floyd album. Both of these works got me through challenging transitions in my life and have stayed with me ever since. :-)
Pink Floyd's "Meddle"
For whatever reason the dark tone of Meddle pulled me out of a severe depression (with a mighty helping of Zoloft). It still lifts me up......One of these days im going to chop you into little peices.
first Violent Femmes
i as 14 in 1984 and starving for something new..this LP opened my eyes.
Still listen to it.
PJ Harvey - Rid of Me
Arc of a Diver/Steve Winwood
My college roommate arrived at college with a hi-fi and hundreds of vinyls. One sunny day, I sat in her bean bag chair and played Arc of a Diver from beginning to end. Now, whenever I hear a track from the album, the sun is shining and the world is full of possibilities.
Mahavishnu Orchestra's "The Inner Mounting Flame" helped me finally kick my rock n'roll addiction and, from then on, I moved progressively towards jazz and classical and eventually became a writer/editor for JAZZ Magazine, and DJ for a weekly jazz radio program. (Currently listening to the Anke Helfrich trio w/Roy Hargrove, "Better Times Ahead," a gift from a German friend. Check it out, John.) All said and done, I still love The Band, The Who, Frank Zappa and have great respect for Pearl Jam, U2, and, yes, Nirvana.
The Smiths: Louder Than Bombs
My life would have been a crashing bore without the Smiths and most of the bands inspired by them. Also Ocean Rain by Echo and the Bunnymen justified being a dark romantic in my teens and forever.
early: van halen, women and children first
of late: mission of burma, signal calls and marches.
both actually came out not to far apart, unfortunately i didn't meet them at the same time.
the first made me want to be a musician, which i did, but was always too afraid to write my own music. the second took away the fear. i just got the pleasure of meeting mission of burma in boston 2 weeks ago. i'm still pinching myself.
-bb
Spiritualized "Ladies and Gentlemen were Floating in Space"
So beautiful it made me cry the first time I listened to it.
#45's pick My Bloody Valentine "Loveless" isn't far behind.
American Beauty and Workingmans Dead were two of the 5 tapes we had on a cross country summer bus trip in 1974. They defined my musical tastes for the rest of my life and combined all the genres that I love today, rock and roll, bluegrass, blues, folk... I still do my daily run with the Dead....
808 State: Utd. State 90
I played the single "Pacific" on a Sam Goody make your own mix machine and immediately bypassed the machine to buy the whole album. It was the first dance album I had heard. It shifted my attention from bands like the Stone Roses to the rave sound coming from England. This shift in musical direction eventually led me to working in the NYC rave scene at the first weekly rave party in the city (NASA). This lead me to other opportunities within the scene which culminated in me learning computer graphic design which is now my career.
first time Stones "Beggars Banquet"
second Led Zepplin "1"
third Sex Pistols "Never Mind the Bullocks"
i'm getting sick of listening to "Toxic" covers.
The Mothers of Invention "We're Only In It For The Money". I guess I was 11 years old. I think I wrote about this before, but by changing the definition of music for me, and by extension that of art as well, I listened to the world with different ears, for the unintentional music we are all exposed to.
How ironic that The Beatles record that the cover parodied opens this topic!
Glenn Gould's 1955 version of the Bach Goldberg Variations
I studied classical piano with my neighborhood piano teacher throughout elementary school and middle school in NJ... but it wasn't until I heard this in my teens that I could really understand the potential of the piano. I eventually went on to a career in the sciences but I remain a devotee of Bach, Gould and the piano.
The album that changed my life is Stevie Wonder's Innervisions.
The songs are so powerful, and when I found out that Stevie played nearly every instrument on the album it inspired me to make music the same way, and I have been ever since!
At the age of 14, I had yet to put on headphones. So the guy who was about to become my new step-brother let me look through his album collection, and suggested an album called "Elton John" (this is in 1973). My dad had a "record player" and a decent set of headphones, so I set this up at the kitchen table and put on the Elton John album. I didn't know until then there was such a thing as a string section in pop music. I listened to the entire album in one sitting. I immediately became an Elton John fan, and went out and bought my first stereo system within the week from money I had made on a summer job. I have not been without a stereo to this day!
PaVement's "Wowee Zowee"
Although all Pavement music was like a revelation to me, this album just seemed to push the boundaries of what sounds, tempos, ideas could be included in a rock album. It really opened up my mind.
Schubert Trout Quintet
Started a love affair with classical music. Still love rock but never would have expanded my horizons without this accessible beautiful piece of music.
James Booker, New Orleans Piano Wizard
I'm 70, and too old for teenage angst, but not too old to be jolted from my "rocking chair" by the virtuosity of this very fine pianist. Hard life, long dead, but just wonderful.
I'm surprised by my answer to this! PRINCE'S PURPLE RAIN, especially THE SONG WHEN THE DOVES CRY! I would not have thought this album epitomized my musical center, but i find now as i look back over 4 decades, that at the age of 15 this album it galvanized world and my perception of myself more than any other!
i was pretty much a good girl, straight-A student from Athens, Georgia, and that album RELEASED something wild in me that I'm more grateful for than I can say. I would be less creative, less of an artist, less fun and less of a whole person without everything that Prince wailed about on that AWESOME album!
i fell in love with ween when i was 13 and they are still my greatest love to this day (i'm 30).rather than changing my life, their albums molded my life; they taught me the value of zanyness for zanyness's sake and never taking myself or anything too seriously.
Tim by the Replacements
There's nothing quite like the sound of Bob Stinson playing guitar.
1. TOM WAITS
I was 16 and working at a last run movie theatre in Denver when the movie "Ironweed" with Tom Waits showed up. His performance blew me away and then a friend mentioned he was a musician. I went to the downtown punk record store (Wax Trax) and bought "Frank's Wild Years". It blew me away: melding punk, theatre, and cabaret music in to a bizarre mesh that my parents hated and I loved. It made me realize that anything could be possible in music, art, movies, life.
2. BULGARIAN WOMEN'S CHOIR
When I was 23 my girlfriend put a song from one of their albums on a mix tape for me. The totally beautiful and unexpected Eastern European quality of the song made me fall totally in love with her. We stayed together for 12 years. The last four of which were torture. So...I thank and blame the Bulgarian Women at the same time
HI TO MICHAEL AZARAD! We worked together when he was freelancing at MTV News.
Music is a soundtrack to life But as for game changers, I'd have to say the jams/muscial virtuousity brought on by "LIVE/DEAD" by the Grateful Dead, and "BITCHES BREW" by Miles Davis, which were released within months of each other in 1969, brought something very new. Funny how Bitches Brew was the first Miles album I ever heard....only later did I hear so many of his earlier albums.
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Jeff Mangum's masterpiece hammered away at my cynicism and depression track by track and provided me with something new that lacked confusion. The great achievement of the album comes from its ability to maintain beauty in the face of the sad grotesqueness of its (real life) narrative. I would be a significantly different person if I had never heard In the Aeroplane Over the Sea or the other great albums of the Elephant 6 Collective.
DJ Shadow: Endtroducing
I had never heard anything like this when it came out. It was so totally new to me. So beautiful and so street at the same time. Both fresh and dark. This album opened the door for me to what I consider real music. It will always be the standard to which all other popular music will be judged. (In my opinion . . . )
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