Led Zeppelin II This is what got me off of that crappy top-40's streak i had been on in my younger years and turned me on to classic rock. Also made me pick up the guitar...so i guess i owe a lot to this album.

King of the Electric Blues First real electric blues album i owned, Muddy Waters is still a huge influence. Did you guys know the blues had a baby?

Stevie Ray Vaughn:Greatest Hits Blues-rock at its finest, dominated a better part of my high school years. Plus this man is just awesome.

Gimme Fiction This was one of my first albums that led up to the realization that I was actually in college. It kinda came like this...spoon--->Holy Crap I'm actually in college!

Edward the Great Taught me where to draw the line between reasonably good metal, and hair metal. Realized that all that hair metal stuff my dad listened to was just really bad.

Signature-worthy quote.
Awesome!

How old are you Jason? Maybe its a question of age and that they were broken up and obscure when you were first getting into music.

Gof4 were one of my favorite bands when I was in jr. high. I'm sure many of us who are my age or older were fans at the time.

I wouldn't list them as an important band to me in the sense of shaping my taste but I loved them then and love them still.

Sting - Ten Summners Tales is SUCH A SPECTACULAR album.......this album totally blew me away. i didnt get to see sting until the next album tour though (mercury falling)

Well, I read the thread as "important works that shaped your current taste"... I mean I hit the Pixies in my late 30's and that's about when my current tastes got locked in... I've been hoping for about 15 years to hear something that completely changes what I think about music... still waiting.

Yeah, I didn't interpret "youth" as being confined to my early teens.

Actually, being from our "youth" wasn't mentioned in PopTodd's post that started this thread...



I was probably 21 or 22 when I first heard GoF, and that was just 4 years ago. Still, a lot of shit happens in those first four years out of college.

i know guys. i'm staying after class for Senator LooGAR's reading comprehension class, k?

XTC - Skylarking
American Music Club - Everclear
The Blue Nile - Hats
Wilco - YHF
Quicksand - Slip

in chronilogical order of its impact on me:

Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine

my introduction into music outside of disney.


Acid Bath - When the Kite String Pops

actually changed my way of thinking as a punk kid, just listening to this album grew my understanding of creativity, insanity, joy, beauty, imagery, randomness, philosophy, society, etc. turned my nine inch nails/cure induced depression into more full fledged creative outbursts.


Portishead - Dummy

began my love for female vocals and for unsynthezised beats.


autechre - tri repentae

important because it was my stepping stone into Boards of Canada, the culmination of everything I love about music.


Nick Drake - Pink Moon

my first real folk album, changed the way I looked at songwriters and the history of music as a whole

Yo! MTV Raps/Public Enemy - Nation/Do the Right Thing
1989-1991
After getting hooked on music following the success of the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC, Yo! MTV Raps became the first music thing I ever paid attention to in the same way that I had probably previously concerned myself with toys and videogames. Although I couldn't begin to grasp half of what Chuck D and co. were going on about, PE's music really took me in and I have oddly vivid memories of listening to the Do the Right Thing soundtrack (for the pre-Fear version of "Fight the Power") and It Takes a Nation...The political conscience/consciousness that PE brought (leaving Prof. Griff and co. aside) certainly led me to the likes of Dischord and directly to studying poli sci. So thanks a bunch Chuck. You done fucked this white kid up for good.

The Cure - Mixed Up (and Disintegration)
Depeche Mode - Violator (and 101)
1990-1993
These 2 kinda go hand-in-hand for me, as I "discovered" both around the same time, after having lost interest in much of where rap was going. My best friend's older brother Justin gave me a mixtape with songs from 101, Disintegration, and related bands from the early 120 Minutes era. I got Mixed Up for xmas in the 8th grade (?) and the whole feedback-drenched reworking of "Fascination Street" set me on my way to playing guitar. "Enjoy the Silence" was one of the first pop/melodic songs that I can remember altering my mood and/or making me stop whatever I was doing to watch King Gahan walk the landscapes of Europe. The fact that both of these "alternative" bands had widespread success set me up for thinking that anyone could make it.

Pavement - Trigger Cut EP
Fugazi - Repeater+3
1993-?
I bought these 2 CDs on a trip to southern France in 1993 and couldn't stop listening to either for a long while afterwards. I already had a few Pixies CDs and a tape of 13 Songs at the time, but these 2 set me on a course that I'm more or less still on. Both sounded really alien, but familiar to me and possessed that odd balance of melody, emotion, and hardcore dynamics that I grew to really obsess about with the Pixies.

Youth of America and Over the Edge are far better than Is This Real?, although all three are great. I wouldn't compare them to grunge though...definitely more along the lines of the Buzzcocks or later-era Husker Du.

Grand Funk - Grand Funk
The first time I discovered heaviness and melody don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Rolling Stones - Made in the Shade
Where I came to understand the importance of depravity in rock.

Willie Nelson - Shotgun Willie
How I found out there's more to country music than what I saw on Hee-Haw...a LOT more.

Devo - Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are DEVO!
The revelation that weird doesn't have to be silly.

Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking
Finally figuring out during my next-to-last year of college that this is what college kids should be listening to, instead of all the Van Halen, Rush and AC/DC I'd clung so tightly to since high school.

TALES FROM THE SATELLITE HEART

36 CHAMBERS

MAJOR THEMES & MINOR CHORDS

FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK (WE SALUTE YOU)

200 KM/HR IN THE WRONG LANE

Enigma - The Cross of Changes
It's basically the album that turned me into a serious music fan back in the late 90s.

Front Line Assembly - Implode
Got me into industrial and electronic music in general. Along with Enigma, FLA was probably the band that turned me into a serious music collector.

Dr. Dre - 2001
Helped me rediscover hip-hop after being turned off for a few years by the whole Puff Daddy thing.

Steve Roach - Structures From Silence
Started my obsession with ambient music.

New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
I've probably played this album more than any other within my lifetime, so I suppose it should be on here.

Crap, I've only got three that really stand out.

1. The B-52's debut. I've told this story here many times--it's the first record I bought with my own moolah, it's the record that got me publicly ridiculed in 7th grade music class, it's the album of freaks that scared the bejeezus out of my parents, etc. etc.

2. The Wedding Present "George Best". I heard this for the first time at the radio station orientation meeting during pre-semester week freshman year at college. This, along with The Chills "Brave Words" are what I associate most with my first semester, the one that saw me get a show as a freshman.

3. Robyn Hitchcok "Element Of Light". This, along with The Jazz Butcher's "Bloody Nonsense" opened my horizons to what I'll describe as adult alternative (contrast to juvenile punk and adolescent power pop).

That's it, three. That's not to say there aren't albums I've played to death, and albums that lots of people associate with me ("oh, that's Bill music"), but none that have had impact far and above anything else like these three have.

I guess King's "Steps In Time" could be a fourth, because it led to a freshman summer fling at the country club where I worked and lived.

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust 1972
The first "big" concert I ever went to was Bowie. I was 15. That show and this album opened my headspace to a whole new world of possibilities. I don't think I can reduce into words, the way that this music made me think and feel.

Queen - Sheer Heart Attack 1974
Tough call on this one, as "A Night At The Opera" was certainly bigger, what with "Bohemian Rhapsody" and all that, but it was the layer upon layer of sound on this record that kept the Sennheisers planted on my ears, for hour after hour, trying to pick out every nuance. My kids don't understand what Side 2 Track 1 means.

The Clash - The Clash 1977
Oh it's all changing now. Attitude!!!

U2 - Boy 1980
What, he's only 17? Fuck me!

King Crimson - Discipline 1981
I like the sentiments expressed earlier about this one leading to that one and on and on. This one scattered me to the winds. I discovered the catalogues of Eno, Belew, John Cale, Tony Levin, Bill Bruford, David Sylvian, Harold Budd, Kruder & Dorfmeister, XTC, Peter Gabriel .........

These "records" are all tied to the live experience. It's tough to limit any music list, and as soon as it's drafted, second thoughts arise. How could I leave out The Police, The Jam, Roxy Music, Talking Heads? Oh I suppose now I didn't. I tried I really did.

I'd list mine but it'd defeat the purpose of my thread.


KPH - You should check out my second entry.