catching up on memes - musical
Feb. 27th, 2009 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leedyTen albums that made me! A difficult one, but here's what I picked...
Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells
I was a child of 70s muso parents, and we listened to this a lot in our house. This was the first album that my infant hands learned to put on the turntable, and I loved it to the extent that when my Junior Infants teacher asked us to bring our favourite things in for some sort of show and tell, everyone else brought toys, and I brought Tubular Bells.
ACOUSTIC GUITAR!
I am afraid to think of how much my musical tastes are influenced by this album - I remember the first time I put Orbital on at home, Dad went "Ooh, I like that - just like Mike Oldfield!".
Rick Wakeman - White Rock
The shame, the shame. Yes, my prog childhood knew no bounds. Another one from Dad's collection. For some reason I totally latched on to it when I was about eight and listened to it over and over and over again. I thought it was the most beautiful thing ever. I even worked harder at my piano practice on the basis that I, too, might play keyboards like Rick. History does not record whether I also wanted a cape.
(TOTAL PROG INFANT MOMENT: Me, under the stairs with a torch, eating biscuits, listening to this and reading The Lord Of The Rings)
I haven't actually heard it since said infancy, and sadly/mercifully dad can't find his copy and I've only seen it for sale second hand for a squillion quid. But perhaps it is best not revisited.
Also is the fact that I make poncy instrumental music now seeming kind of ... inevitable?
The Monkees - The Monkees
This was the other thing I listened to a lot during my PROG CHILD phase, because I liked The Monkees on telly. Via this, Dad managed to wean me onto the Kinks, the Beatles, the Byrds, and a host of other Proper Bands With Guitars.
Sadly, none of the Monkees albums we had featured "Valerie", which I heard on an episode of the TV show and loved. I remember once really wishing it would come on the radio during a very long car journey, and it did, and then being temporarily convinced that I had uncanny mental powers.
The Smiths - Strangeways Here We Come
My first Smiths album, purchased when the Smiths were actually a going concern because I am very old. I first got it on tape from my friend Deirdre, who pressed it upon me with a "Don't tell C. I made you a copy! She'll want one too, but I think she only wants it cos it's cool, I only want people who'll REALLY LIKE IT to have it." I remember listening to it at home and ... didn't not like it, in fact I liked it, but somehow I didn't know how to like it. It didn't fit with my musical reference points, which were mostly Music Dad Had, or Music That Was New But Which Dad Liked (and Dad hated them, with the weird exception of "London"). But I wanted to listen to it again. That feeling, that slight edge, that ... not being sure, is something that I love getting with albums to this day. Being kicked out of my comfort zone.
Also the guitar riff in "Stop me.." was probably the beginning of a longstanding love affair with the visceral punch possibilities of the electric guitar (and the fact that bleedin' Mark Ronson replaced it with a prissy little string section in his cover is one of the many reasons why I HATE HIS VERSION WITH A WHITE HOT HATEY HATE).
Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left
Annnnnnd we're back to Dad's record collection. I know these days Nick Drake is a touchstone for every would-be guitar'n'voice troubadour, but when I first noticed this I don't think I'd heard anything quite like it before, even in a house that regularly resonated with the sounds of Men From The Sixties And Seventies Singing Songs With Guitars. I loved the odd tunings, the effortless-sounding fingerpicking, the jazzy bits, the voice, the clever lyrics. Tapes of this (and subsequent albums) pretty much got me through my shit first college summer, working in the crappiest Dunnes Stores supermarket IN THE UNIVERSE. I'd go and sit in St. Stephen's Green before my shift, read my book, listen to Nick.
Anyway, this album is probably the reason why I like stuff like Elliott Smith and Sufjan Stevens. And hate most whingey crap singer-songwriters who try to do this sort of thing AND ARE JUST MADE OF WHINEY SELF-INDULGENT FAIL.
Blur - Modern Life Is Rubbish
It's not very fashionable to like Blur, is it? I liked Blur. I particularly liked this album (which I think about three people bought) because it had jaunty Kinks-esque pop songs on it (see above re: pater's record collection). I spent the summer after I graduated from my first degree on the dole, listening to this in the back garden of 11 Whitworth Road. I actually bought it with money I got from a clerical error in the bank (they lodged a cheque to my account twice and resisted several attempts on my part to give the money back). Good times.
Steve Reich - Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint
Pretty much the only good thing about the three months I spent working in the classical music department of HMV was that I was largely allowed to play whatever I wanted, so I worked my way happily through the 20th century and contemporary sections, discovering a lot of weird and wonderful stuff I still love today and alarming many customers ("That's not classical music! Have you not got any Placido Domingo?"). Pushing more boundaries. Ending up going to concerts of people playing drums with sellotape.
This was probably my favourite of the albums I bought on my staff discount, and the last movement of Electric Counterpoint is still one of my favourite things ever. I danced round the kitchen to it last night after thinking about what to put in this entry. And then danced round the kitchen again to Music For 18 Musicians, which is also one of my favourite things ever.
(Dad: "Ooh, I like that - just like Mike Oldfield!")
Underworld - Second Toughest In The Infants
As this is "albums", I can't put in the First Piece Of Dance Music I Liked ("The Green Man" by Shut Up And Dance), so I'm going to use this instead, which also gave me the abovementioned "I don't know how to like it!" feeling when my friend Eoghan taped it for me. Slightly like I shouldn't be listening to it. Too much rhythm! Not enough tune!
Also coughformativepillexperienceunderworldsfxcough.
While Underworld are pretty mainstream festival stalwart fare, this was probably the first faint stirrings of my Nerdy Intelligent Dance Music phase (well, and my less intelligent dance music phase, but my tastes very definitely gravitated towards Detroit techno and stuff on Warp). I spent much time wearing a hoodie and combats and going to clubs filled with weedy blokes with beards talking about obscure synthesisers. Oh the glamour.
I still listen to a lot of stuff that is, frankly, bleepy.
Laura Nyro - Eli And The Thirteenth Confession
And we're back to Dad's record collection again! This was my total Morning After The Night Before album for YEARS. Getting the bus into Hodges Figgis for a 9am start on two hours sleep, clutching my Lucozade and banana breakfast (in whose curative powers I had a touching faith), head still a bit buzzy, it made all seem well with the world.
A lot of people find her a little histrionic, but I love the organic, slightly unfettered, slightly naive, "I see no reason why I shouldn't stick a two octave jump in here" quality of her songs (see also: Kate Bush). And her album of soul covers was one of the things that pushed me into investigating Proper Soul.
The Jimmy Cake - Brains
Ok, so it is a tad egotistical to put in an album I made myself, but it was the first album I made myself: I/we'd had tracks on compilations before, but this was a Proper Album, with a Proper Cover, that was in Proper Shops, etc. Something that went out into the world and developed a life of its own, a significance for other people. I'm still very tickled if I go to Last.fm and see people listening to tracks from it in Japan, or Canada, or, well, anywhere.
I think I still have a photo of me standing in front of a display of it in Tower Records like some kind of giant (proud) dweeb.
Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells
I was a child of 70s muso parents, and we listened to this a lot in our house. This was the first album that my infant hands learned to put on the turntable, and I loved it to the extent that when my Junior Infants teacher asked us to bring our favourite things in for some sort of show and tell, everyone else brought toys, and I brought Tubular Bells.
ACOUSTIC GUITAR!
I am afraid to think of how much my musical tastes are influenced by this album - I remember the first time I put Orbital on at home, Dad went "Ooh, I like that - just like Mike Oldfield!".
Rick Wakeman - White Rock
The shame, the shame. Yes, my prog childhood knew no bounds. Another one from Dad's collection. For some reason I totally latched on to it when I was about eight and listened to it over and over and over again. I thought it was the most beautiful thing ever. I even worked harder at my piano practice on the basis that I, too, might play keyboards like Rick. History does not record whether I also wanted a cape.
(TOTAL PROG INFANT MOMENT: Me, under the stairs with a torch, eating biscuits, listening to this and reading The Lord Of The Rings)
I haven't actually heard it since said infancy, and sadly/mercifully dad can't find his copy and I've only seen it for sale second hand for a squillion quid. But perhaps it is best not revisited.
Also is the fact that I make poncy instrumental music now seeming kind of ... inevitable?
The Monkees - The Monkees
This was the other thing I listened to a lot during my PROG CHILD phase, because I liked The Monkees on telly. Via this, Dad managed to wean me onto the Kinks, the Beatles, the Byrds, and a host of other Proper Bands With Guitars.
Sadly, none of the Monkees albums we had featured "Valerie", which I heard on an episode of the TV show and loved. I remember once really wishing it would come on the radio during a very long car journey, and it did, and then being temporarily convinced that I had uncanny mental powers.
The Smiths - Strangeways Here We Come
My first Smiths album, purchased when the Smiths were actually a going concern because I am very old. I first got it on tape from my friend Deirdre, who pressed it upon me with a "Don't tell C. I made you a copy! She'll want one too, but I think she only wants it cos it's cool, I only want people who'll REALLY LIKE IT to have it." I remember listening to it at home and ... didn't not like it, in fact I liked it, but somehow I didn't know how to like it. It didn't fit with my musical reference points, which were mostly Music Dad Had, or Music That Was New But Which Dad Liked (and Dad hated them, with the weird exception of "London"). But I wanted to listen to it again. That feeling, that slight edge, that ... not being sure, is something that I love getting with albums to this day. Being kicked out of my comfort zone.
Also the guitar riff in "Stop me.." was probably the beginning of a longstanding love affair with the visceral punch possibilities of the electric guitar (and the fact that bleedin' Mark Ronson replaced it with a prissy little string section in his cover is one of the many reasons why I HATE HIS VERSION WITH A WHITE HOT HATEY HATE).
Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left
Annnnnnd we're back to Dad's record collection. I know these days Nick Drake is a touchstone for every would-be guitar'n'voice troubadour, but when I first noticed this I don't think I'd heard anything quite like it before, even in a house that regularly resonated with the sounds of Men From The Sixties And Seventies Singing Songs With Guitars. I loved the odd tunings, the effortless-sounding fingerpicking, the jazzy bits, the voice, the clever lyrics. Tapes of this (and subsequent albums) pretty much got me through my shit first college summer, working in the crappiest Dunnes Stores supermarket IN THE UNIVERSE. I'd go and sit in St. Stephen's Green before my shift, read my book, listen to Nick.
Anyway, this album is probably the reason why I like stuff like Elliott Smith and Sufjan Stevens. And hate most whingey crap singer-songwriters who try to do this sort of thing AND ARE JUST MADE OF WHINEY SELF-INDULGENT FAIL.
Blur - Modern Life Is Rubbish
It's not very fashionable to like Blur, is it? I liked Blur. I particularly liked this album (which I think about three people bought) because it had jaunty Kinks-esque pop songs on it (see above re: pater's record collection). I spent the summer after I graduated from my first degree on the dole, listening to this in the back garden of 11 Whitworth Road. I actually bought it with money I got from a clerical error in the bank (they lodged a cheque to my account twice and resisted several attempts on my part to give the money back). Good times.
Steve Reich - Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint
Pretty much the only good thing about the three months I spent working in the classical music department of HMV was that I was largely allowed to play whatever I wanted, so I worked my way happily through the 20th century and contemporary sections, discovering a lot of weird and wonderful stuff I still love today and alarming many customers ("That's not classical music! Have you not got any Placido Domingo?"). Pushing more boundaries. Ending up going to concerts of people playing drums with sellotape.
This was probably my favourite of the albums I bought on my staff discount, and the last movement of Electric Counterpoint is still one of my favourite things ever. I danced round the kitchen to it last night after thinking about what to put in this entry. And then danced round the kitchen again to Music For 18 Musicians, which is also one of my favourite things ever.
(Dad: "Ooh, I like that - just like Mike Oldfield!")
Underworld - Second Toughest In The Infants
As this is "albums", I can't put in the First Piece Of Dance Music I Liked ("The Green Man" by Shut Up And Dance), so I'm going to use this instead, which also gave me the abovementioned "I don't know how to like it!" feeling when my friend Eoghan taped it for me. Slightly like I shouldn't be listening to it. Too much rhythm! Not enough tune!
Also coughformativepillexperienceunderworldsfxcough.
While Underworld are pretty mainstream festival stalwart fare, this was probably the first faint stirrings of my Nerdy Intelligent Dance Music phase (well, and my less intelligent dance music phase, but my tastes very definitely gravitated towards Detroit techno and stuff on Warp). I spent much time wearing a hoodie and combats and going to clubs filled with weedy blokes with beards talking about obscure synthesisers. Oh the glamour.
I still listen to a lot of stuff that is, frankly, bleepy.
Laura Nyro - Eli And The Thirteenth Confession
And we're back to Dad's record collection again! This was my total Morning After The Night Before album for YEARS. Getting the bus into Hodges Figgis for a 9am start on two hours sleep, clutching my Lucozade and banana breakfast (in whose curative powers I had a touching faith), head still a bit buzzy, it made all seem well with the world.
A lot of people find her a little histrionic, but I love the organic, slightly unfettered, slightly naive, "I see no reason why I shouldn't stick a two octave jump in here" quality of her songs (see also: Kate Bush). And her album of soul covers was one of the things that pushed me into investigating Proper Soul.
The Jimmy Cake - Brains
Ok, so it is a tad egotistical to put in an album I made myself, but it was the first album I made myself: I/we'd had tracks on compilations before, but this was a Proper Album, with a Proper Cover, that was in Proper Shops, etc. Something that went out into the world and developed a life of its own, a significance for other people. I'm still very tickled if I go to Last.fm and see people listening to tracks from it in Japan, or Canada, or, well, anywhere.
I think I still have a photo of me standing in front of a display of it in Tower Records like some kind of giant (proud) dweeb.
