Musical Meme-age

Two very similar memes are making the rounds on FaceBook:

Think of 15 (one says albums, one says songs) that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world.

Thinking about all this really hammered home again the huge debt of gratitude I owe my parents on a musical front. They never flinched at buying me new stereo equipment, from my first tiny, tinny turntable up through a 5-disc CD player after I graduated from college. Music was inescapable in our house, and there were times when friends of mine were horrified to learn I wouldn’t listen to something or other because, “Oh, god, my parents have been playing that for months. SO sick of it.”

Songs are easier. Songs first.  And apparently I am a relentlessly cheerful person, given the majority of these are major-chord 4-4 fasties.  Is it odd that there are artists on this list not on the album list and vice versa? I hope not.

Silly Love Songs (McCartney)– You have to admire McCartney thumbing his nose at Lennon. And this song was on the radio every single time my mom drove me to swim lessons when I was five, so it is indelibly synched up with my mom, her orange Camaro, the San Fernando Valley, and the smell of chlorine.
Something About You (Level 42) – not all that great a song, but it has sentimental value.
New Song (Howard Jones) – Always cheers me up.
Morning Fog (Kate Bush) – Hope. Renewal. Nuff said.
Long Gone Long (Rainmakers) – Resonated with my small-town high school experience.
Standing There (The Creatures) – For when I want to be fierce
Here Comes the Flood, (Peter Gabriel, acoustic version.) For sort of the opposite reasons as Morning Fog, but I still find it a song for bravery.
Can’t See (Oingo Boingo) – Always makes me cry.
Only Makes Me Laugh (Again with the Oingo Boingo)– When I couldn’t stand myself in breakup misery mode any more and was done with the crying already, this song was good for what ailed me.
It Must Be Love (Madness) – Meant to be sung loud and offkey.  (Curtsies to Heather H. and John B.)
Rosie (Jackson Browne) – I just love this song. It’s perfect on so many levels. 
In My Life (Beatles) – Best day of my life up to that point.
I Will (Beatles) – Pretty much the only lullaby I ever sang to the kid.
Danny Boy (Erm, yeah. Frank Patterson? Chieftans?) – Pretty much the only lullaby JB ever sang to the kid.
Dunford’s Fancy (Waterboys) – If my kid gets married and there’s a mother-son dance, this will do.

Albums of personal relevance is a tricky category, because I don’t necessarily interpret that to mean “albums I love.” These are not all albums I love, by any stretch, and in fact some of them I don’t listen to at all anymore. But they all marked turning points in my development as a human being.

Tales From the Ozone -- Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
An early childhood memory. The album cover was so incongruous with what I thought the music looked like. I know that makes no sense, but that is the best I can articulate it. This might have been the first album to which I memorized all the lyrics. Honestly – and yes, this is shallow, -- discovering what Commander Cody and Bob Dylan actually looked like were two of my biggest disappointments in early childhood.  I still like Western Swing. Am not so much on the Dylan. (Curtsies to parents)

That Was the Year That Was
God bless him, Tom Lehrer taught me more about 1960s history than any schoolteacher ever could have hoped to. I listened to this album over and over during summers at my grandmother’s house, and then I’d go up and ask her random questions about it, yet she never seemed to miss a beat. (Like, what’s a Good Humor Man? And what’s he got in common with an usher and a nurse?) And another generation is sopping it all up as we speak. (Curtsies to parents and grandparents.)

Double Fantasy -- John Lennon
I think this and Blondie’s Autoamerican are the first two legitimate music albums I remember specifically requesting my own copies of rather than cadging from my parents or studiously ignoring. The Beatles and assorted afterwork was pretty much always the domain of my dad and sort of absorbed by me as just part of the safe and cozy landscape of home. But it was sort of hard to be alive and listening to music in December 1980 and not know the significance of this album.  On a personal level, this was the first album where I first really understood that song sequencing – pre-CD, anyway --  was really a manipulative little bugger. It was hard to skip the needle over that Ono crap, but it was even harder to sit there trying to listen to it.  Watching the Wheels is still a great song.

Sports -- Huey Lewis and the News
I’m amused and somewhat embarrassed to admit that Huey Lewis was the object of my junior high crushdom.  So bland and square and Is That Your Dad. And yet MTV ate him up with a spoon and so would have I.

Then again, I met him years later in the parking lot of the USF Sundome one night when his concert had let out and I’d had a late class and my car was being cranky about starting, he was a perfectly wonderful gentleman and warm human being, going so far as to offer me a ride home. So maybe my instincts were right ….

Hounds of Love -- Kate Bush
One of the first albums that I listened to over and over again and found something new in each time, rather than listening to it for comfort. Also notable for being one of the first albums my mother absolutely hated and wanted to pitch through a window.  This and Laurie Anderson’s Home of the Brave were touchstones around the same time. (Curtsies to Troy D.)

So -- Peter Gabriel
I am always proud to announce that In Your Eyes was one of my favorite songs before it was made popular by Say Anything.  And Mercy Street sent me on a poetry reading binge that probably made my teen angst unbearable but also got me fairly high marks in all those stupid wimminz lit classes I slept through in college.

Madness -- Madness
So many lovely songs. And my entrée into the discovery of so many lovely British pop culture things, including the Young Ones.

Vocalese -- Manhattan Transfer
Intricate, clever, and helpful when you’d rather have lyrics than hum. This was what set me in the way of thinking that covers should never be simple rehashes where the song is performed exactly the same way it was originally, they should bring something new, they should be whole different songs, with different tones and experiences behind them. (Curtsies to parents)

Heaven or Las Vegas - Cocteau Twins
I saw Blue Bell Knoll pop up on a lot of lists, and that one is good, but this was one of my favorite albums for illicit-substance-partaking. New Year’s Eve 1990, playing on a small boom box as I sprawled on top of a construction-site freeway piling and stared at the full blue moon with this huge ice ring around it. I didn’t see God or anything, and can’t vouch for his existence, but I did get as close as I probably ever will to feeling like I had a tenuous grasp on a broader celestial plan.

Of course, then my dickhead psychotic boyfriend got so drunk he passed out and that left me with the choice of staying with a bunch of drunken buffoon college boys in suburban Whittier in a house that for all I knew was not owned by anyone present, or try to find my way home despite the glitter trails each of the highway reflectors gave off. I spent that whole hour-and-a-half-long drive bargaining with that God I hadn’t seen that I’d never be so stupidly irresponsible again if he’d just let me make it home without getting dead or arrested, and am pleased to say that both ends of this bargain were honored.

OG: Original Gangster
The first time it occurred to me that I might not be quite as liberal as I’d always assumed. We were driving through parts of Los Angeles in April 1992 to pick up a friend who’d gotten stuck on campus and seeing buildings on fire, people running around with looted furniture and televisions, and police and fire trucks being obstructed.  This Little Blonde Girl was appalled.  And while my Korean Boyfriend still claimed sympathy for the oppressed, all I could think was, “Hm. Here we are together in a car in a dangerous area and gee, could we be bigger targets? And for what? A Toyota? Get a grip, folks.”

Lyle Lovett and His Large Band
Making the discovery that alt-country was smart and funny was almost as big a shock as discovering that not all male high school athletes grew up to be categorically stupid fuckwits. I discovered this album after Road to Ensenada came out, but I like it better.

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
A culmination of many fond hopes – the discovery of a place and a band devoted to the resurgence of swing music, swing dancing, and Manhattan cocktails. And then Jon Favreau came along and made it all trendy and shit.

Rock Spectacle -- Bare Naked Ladies
My introduction to BNL, and my soundtrack for adjusting to life in Sarasota, wherein all the good things I thought would happen didn’t, and all the good things I was sure would never find me did.  (Curtsies to Mark P. and John B.)

Running on Empty -- Jackson Browne
The first road trip I took as a married woman (ahem, that would be my honeymoon,) had this CD in heavy rotation. As has pretty much every roadtrip since. (Curtsies to John B.)  

Ta-Dah -- Scissor Sisters
I’m not sure I should really include this, as there was nothing particularly life-altering about the music on the album. More, it marked a determined end to my self-imposed exile from buying music and starting to dip my toe back into more current streams. And, there was nothing funnier to me at the time than hearing my kid croon to himself at odd times, “I can’t decide whether you should live or die…” (Curtsies to Mary H.)

Comments

[Heather]

It Must Be Love - The louder, the better!

Rosie - Ah, that song always makes me laugh. It reminds me of when I saw Jackson in DC several years ago, and his guitar player grinned and pointed at himself with both thumbs on the line, "I've got to hand it to meeee." It cracked everyone up.

[ardentdelerium]

Huey Lewis offered you a ride home?! DID YOU TAKE HIM UP ONE IT? I thought he was the bee's knees when I was 8

[average blogger]

Hee. No, Ardent, I didn't. I lived 25 miles away or so and I knew he figured I lived somewhere in town near campus or he wouldn't have offered. I would have asked if he could get me to a phone, but I knew what was wrong with the car, it was just hard to mess with the stupid thing at night with no flashlight. He did wait til I got the thing started, though. I think he thought it was funny.

[Joannah]

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Joannah

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