Under the Influence

Three Albums that Shaped My Life

This article is about that classic question. That one you get at 1am at the bar when you’re with your music loving friends and winding down the evening’s festivities. At least it’s the one you get from my friends anyway. That question is usually something around the likes of, “Who are your three favorite musicians ever, or what are your top five albums of all time?” Something nearly impossible to answer in any type of linear way.  

“It changes”, is the answer we give more than not. This is true. Ask me today and I’ll tell you a list that will start short and concise and then the more I think and talk about it, that catalogue will grow exponentially. One band makes us think of another and then another. The mention of a song takes us to a place with a friend from years ago and puts our mind in a location that no longer exists, and it causes us to think deeply. That song, with that band, with that friend in that spot and those laughs or tears or both and nothing, and then another song.  

So, here’s what I am going to do. I am going to give you a list of three albums that mean a lot to me. They are not my top three albums, nor are they necessarily my top three artists, but rather a triad of meaningful records that evoke a certain feeling. For me. These are the tracks that speak to me, and when I play them, I am no longer of this world. This is the playlist that transports me somewhere else in time. Not in any order either, they are: 

The Doors/ Self-Titled (debut album 1967)- I had heard rock n’ roll throughout my lifetime. I had heard jazz and blues, but I never heard them all together until I truly discovered the incantation of The Doors. I must have been around 15 or something when I first really listened to them. I knew who they were already, but I never lent an ear to them in heavy focus until high school. Thats when I discovered a new category of sound that would alter my life, Psychedelic Rock. The poetic language and the mysticism of this lead singer, intertwined with the blues beats, jazz chords and classical keyboard cuts just blew, well, the doors, off everything I knew. This album would lead me to all kinds of new places such as Donovan, Cream, Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa and of course Jefferson Airplane. It was also the first piece of wax I bought with my own money. 

Pixies/ Doolittle (1989)- Andy Feldman and Cj Talaber get credit for this one. Those two guys probably influence my musical choices more than the music itself. This is the time in my life when I really grasped onto music for solace and found endearing escapism between the notes. Those two introduced me to The Cure (CJ), The Smiths (CJ), The Velvet Underground (Andy) and countless others, but we are talking about all things Pixies right now. Talk about discovering a new sound. If The Doors were an amalgamation of many sounds that I had heard before, The Pixies were composers of feedback and distortion in chaotic classification that all made sense. Black Francis and Kim Deal were like these angelic shadows in my head that kept telling me that it was all going to be okay. This surf-punk-noise-rock makes me excited and hopefully every time and makes me think of my friends and all those memories that we shared.   

Green Day/ Kerplunk (1991)- I had a girlfriend named Amanda right at the end of High School. Her older sister was out in Berkley, California and kept telling her about “this band”. Amanda went out to visit her sister and came back with a cassette tape in hand and literally told me, “These guys are going to be just as big as The Rolling Stones!” This was 1992 and the cassette was Kerplunk. They were loud and fast and witty, and the songs were in your face. I didn’t really know too much about punk rock at this time, but this album caused me to go backwards and research the pioneers before. Billie Joe, Tre Cool and Mike Dirnt introduced me to The Ramones, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop and the likes. It was only then that I realized the magnitude of British influence on these lads, and that CBGB’s was a place that hosted all of this for years. This is the majestic nature of music. The journey that I was talking about in the beginning of this diatribe. I have seen Green Day five times in concert and Amanda wasn’t far off. 

So, that’s it for now. Those are the three in my arsenal that built the landscape of the person before you today. I can name ten more easily and tell the stories that they are connected to, but it’s just the three today.