I tried to resist, Betty, I really did. But how could I pass up an assignment like this? Here they are, for your delectation:
1. A Hard Day’s Night /The Beatles – my first album ever, from the band that sealed my fate as a rock & roll fan. The red cover is falling apart by now, mended clumsily with masking tape; those black-and-white head shots are suspiciously smudged, especially the one of Paul, the great love of my pre-teen life. I know the
2. Bookends / Simon & Garfunkel – Poetry, social commentary, and Existentialism Lite – just what I needed in the spring of 1968 (meanwhile over in the
3. The White Album / The Beatles – Christmas vacation, 1968. I had begun to think I had outgrown the Beatles. I was wrong. I may have outgrown my teenybopper crush on Paul, but this was something Much More Important. (Not that I haven't since dog-eared the head shot of Paul that was included inside that radical bare white cover.) My copy isn’t so white anymore, and side 4 is a scratched to hell from being played backwards during the Paul Is Dead uproar. But who needs to play it anymore? I’ve got the entire thing hard-wired in my brain.
4. McCartney – That bowl of cherries, the photo of bearded Paul with his baby inside his parka – I was in heaven. There WAS life after the Beatles! FYI, he wrote "Maybe I'm Amazed" for me, too. He just thought he'd written it for Linda.
5. Tapestry / Carole King // Sweet Baby James / James Taylor – Forever yoked in my heart. I saw Carole and James perform spring 1971 at the Indianapolis Coliseum, confirming my conviction that I was the hippest 17-year-old in Indy. (The rest of the audience were just extras in my head-movie.) The next fall I got to college and discovered that every freshman in my dorm owned both records. I had finally found my people.
6. Everybody’s in Show Biz / The Kinks – it arrived one day in my slush pile of records to review for the college newspaper. “Hmm, the Kinks – they’re still around?” One listen and I knew I had found my band for life. I went out the next day and bought every Kinks album available in
7. O Lucky Man! / Alan Price – Summer of 1973, my first trip to
8. This Year’s Model / Elvis Costello – my first few months in
9. More Songs About Buildings and Food / Talking Heads // The B-52s – The apogee of my New Wave mania: seeing these two bands on a double bill at SummerStage in
10. Get Happy! / Elvis Costello – My cubicle neighbor at work, Susan, was my music soul mate in 1979; we went out at lunchtime to buy this album at Sam Goody’s the day it hit the bins. Those savage R&B-drenched tracks, flung out feverishly one after another (20 tracks on one LP, nearly all of them under
11. Artist’s Choice: Elvis Costello – fast forward to March 2005. I’m in a Starbucks in
12. The Convincer / Nick Lowe – It’s the only Nick Lowe I could find in the record store in
13. Other People’s Lives / Ray Davies – next step in my Music Renaissance; re-connecting with the Kinks. I see a TV documentary about Ray Davies and go on-line for info about the Kinks (who have been dormant for 10 years). Six months later, I’m standing for hours in the chill November rain with my new Kinks fan club friends, waiting to see Ray preview his first solo album. It’s a masterpiece.
14. Bring the Family / John Hiatt – I learn that Nick Lowe was in a band called Little Village with John Hiatt. Johnny Hiatt? The fat kid who went to the Catholic school across the street from mine in
15. Ole Tarantula / Robyn Hitchcock & the Venus 3 -- On impulse, I go with my Kinks buddy Dave to see these guys play at the Knitting Factory. I haven’t heard a single song of Hitchcock’s and know nothing about him. He rambles out on stage, tosses his gray mane, and starts to free-associate on stage. I am simply gobsmacked. Might as well stand and face it -- the fangirl is back with a vengeance.
8 comments:
Great list! I'm happy to see AHDN (even if I've never heard the American version)! And also Simon & Garfunkel and Ray... About McCartney, Maybe I'm Amazed and Every Night already make it one of the best albums ever!
Wow, awesome list of albums! I've been thinking about what my 15 albums would be, O Lucky Man would definitely be one of them! That's a record that just blew my mind when I heard it, or rather, when I saw the movie. And for so long that was the only Alan Price CD I could find in the States! I wish Alan was putting out new stuff and touring the States like Nick Lowe is. I remember when the Convincer came out, I was in Washington, DC, and I kept seeing blow-ups of the album cover in CD stores and thinking, "Who is that cool-looking guy?" I should have just bought the CD right then, but I didn't.
Oh Holly, thank you, thank you! I loved reading this and will comment more fully when I'm not getting ready for work!
That's a fun meme. 15 is a lot of albums . . . definitely enough to give a range of styles and reasons for being on the list. I will have to try to come up with my list.
Send us a link when you do, Nick -- it's always cool to see what other people have come up with!
Little Johnny Hiatt was fat? He always looks like he weighs about 90 lb. That's an excellent album! I never dug much by him before or after, though.
Great list. Get Happy!! is my all-time fave followed by Revolver. I don't have an entire top 15 list worked out, but at least one other Costello and Beatles album would be on it, XTC's English Settlement, The Band's second album, maybe Pere Ubu's Dub Housing... Can I include a greatest hits album? The Rolling Stones High Tide and the Green Grass singles collection was mother's milk as I got deep into music. The Who's Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy for that matter too!
frankenslade -- This isn't my blog, but I'm the one who sent Holly the idea and I would say you can include any album you want, greatest hits included. The point is "significant" not "best." I had "Singles Going Steady" by the Buzzcocks on mine.
I do think the idea should correspond to the pop/rock idea of an "album," although one of mine kind of pushes it there. Some of my friends asked about classical music, but to me those are recordings, not albums.
Have fun!
I've posted my list here. It was an interesting challenge to work on.
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