There are a couple internet memes going around asking for compilations of “15 Important Albums” and other such lists, and I decided to take a different tack.
Here are 10 of the most influential albums I’ve heard. This is not a “best-of” list, and it’s not a list of “what you need to hear before you die.” It’s a collection of the albums that were significant in the development of my musical tastes. In many cases, these albums were the gateway to other artists and music that I’ve grown to appreciate, and for that reason there are entries here that might not make it to the top of a “favorite album” list, if I were inclined to create one.
Nor does this list take into account single recordings that were highly influential for me. My early listening was centered on Top 40 Radio, and in my college years there were tons of cool 45s and EPs out there (which wound up on concert soundtracks or compilations like Urgh! A Music War and That Summer!). A single track often led me down a path that ended up somewhere awesome– for example, the first time I heard “Senses Working Overtime” drove me to buy that 45 and a bunch of other records that I thought were equally cool– I didn’t buy XTC’s English Settlement LP until a few years later. Perhaps at some point I’ll assemble a list of influential singles.
The albums are listed in no real order, and I could have easily expanded this list but I like to set boundaries for myself. Just be aware that there are many more albums that could have shown up here, but I chose to limit to 10 in the interest of space and a respect for the reader’s time. (See? I do care.)
And here they are:
My 10 Influential Albums
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1. Fragile – Yes (1972): One of the very first albums I ever owned, and one I wore out from listening to it too much. I learned two things from this record: (1) that a song doesn’t have to end after 3 minutes; and (2) that lyrics don’t have to make sense- they just need to sound right. Fragile features a good mix of longer and shorter songs, which makes it that much more accessible, and a great intro to progressive rock for someone whose listening habits consisted of AM Top-40 WLS and WCFL. Gateway to: The birth of my prog-rock phase. The hooks into King Crimson, ELP, and Roxy Music are certainly expected, but this also gave me the “ears” for listening to longer improvisational pieces by The Grateful Dead as well as jazz greats like Duke Ellington. The nonsensical lyrics prepared me for REM years later. It’s also worth noting that I was able to impress a date with my knowledge of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony in E Minor because Rick Wakeman had re-tooled part of it on this album as “Cans and Brahms.” See? If you’re not careful you just might learn somethin’.
2. This is the Moody Blues – The Moody Blues (1974): My sister owned this album, and I was a big fan of “Nights in White Satin,” so I borrowed it a lot. I started to listen to other songs on the album, first “Melancholy Man” (which was the song that led into “Nights” on the record) and then the rest of the tracks. Soon I was hooked on their music. The Moody Blues were never a “singles” band, so when they selected tracks from their 7 “core” albums for this set, they sequenced them in a way that sounded good, as opposed to the order of their release or their popularity. The other cool thing was that the cover showed the band’s discography (omitting their first blues-pop influenced album) so when I started buying Moody Blues records I was able to follow this album cover and go in order. Gateway to: Continuing my prog-rock phase. Emerson Lake & Palmer, Renaissance, Alan Parsons, as well as nurturing a nascent interest in classical music.
3. Yesterday and Today – The Beatles (1966): This album defined pop for me. (We owned the “trunk” cover, not the “Butcher” cover edition.) The neat thing about this album was that it sliced (no pun intended) across the end of the band’s pre-Sgt Pepper era, so the listener got to hear shades of classic “rocking” Beatles like “And Your Bird Can Sing,” as well as the pre-psychedelia of “I’m Only Sleeping.” In later years, the original British version of Revolver became my favorite Beatles album, due in part to the three tracks from that album that appear here. At the time I was listening to this album, there was still a big Beatles influence around even though the band was entering its final phases. They were still showing The Beatles cartoon series on Saturday morning TV, which froze the guys in time for us. Gateway to: Where to start? As I look through my collection, past and present, I could find a Beatles influence almost everywhere.
4. Batman Theme and 19 Hefti Bat Songs – Neal Hefti (1966): I’ll wait for you to stop snickering. My dad brought this record home when I was a youngster, and I’d pull it out of the cabinet (along with the early Capitol Beatles albums) before the training wheels were off my bike. The album featured the Batman TV show theme and more than a dozen instrumental tracks that were “inspired” by the show (but never actually appeared in it, except “The Batusi”). It’s a classic of 60s space-age pop, complete with serious stereo separation and wacky percussion. In 1982, I bought the soundtrack to the movie Cat People, and one of the songs, “Irena’s Theme,” sounded really familiar. It wasn’t until years later that I realized the opening riff was similar to the hook in “The Mafista” on the Batman album: an influence across the years. Gateway to: My interest in the Space-Age Pop revival of the 90s, including Esquivel, Yma Sumac, The Three Suns, Combustible Edison, and an appreciation for movie and TV soundtracks.
5. Tumbleweed Connection – Elton John (1970): This is the only album I’ve bought five times: twice on LP, twice on CD, and once as a digital download. I was a huge Elton John fan when I was younger, especially the “early classic” period of 1970-1973 (just before the costumes and Kiki Dee). Tumbleweed Connection is the best Southern-influenced rock album to be recorded by a bunch of Brits in London. The songs evoke the Civil War-era South, both literally (“My Father’s Gun”) and in spirit (“Where To Now, St Peter?). The performances have influences of jazz, gospel, folk, and acid rock, and prove that the Elton John we know today started out with a lot of artistic integrity as well as creativity. This record is a perfect complement to Crosby Stills Nash & Young’s Deja Vu. Gateway to: CSN&Y, Grateful Dead, Neil Young, and just about anyone with an acoustic guitar.
6. Simple Dreams – Linda Ronstadt (1977): The albums Linda Ronstadt released during her most successful period (1974-1980) generally followed the formula of: pop cover/country cover/Motown cover/traditional cover/cover-of-songs-by-Linda’s-latest-friend/lover. You couldn’t avoid being introduced to other artists by listening to a Ronstadt album. Simple Dreams was the artist at the very top of her game, and the album shines in production quality and song selection. She covers Buddy Holly’s “It’s So Easy,” Roy Orbison’s “Blue Bayou,” and even lets us finally understand the words to the Rolling Stones’ “Tumbling Dice.” Ronstadt also performs respectable, if toned down, versions of Warren Zevon’s “Carmelita” and “Poor Poor Pitiful Me.” And her cover of John David Souther’s “White Rhythm and Blues” could have inspired a proto-country-rock “emo” movement. Gateway to: Little Feat, Warren Zevon, Jackson Browne, Roy Orbison, The Hollies, Neil Young, Nicolette Larson, CSN&Y, Hank Williams, Elvis Costello.
7. Aja – Steely Dan (1977): What I remember about the first time I heard Aja was how clean it sounded. I knew Steely Dan from AM radio, but I’d lost track of them over the years. One day, my friend Jeff (a talented musician in his own right) put this album on and I was astonished by what I heard. Much has been written about the jazz and latin influences in this album, and it certainly changed my idea of what made a pop record. It also introduced me to the concept of a “band” being a core of one or two people with hand-picked players to create the music. Gateway to: Lots of jazz, fusion, and ambient artists, including Lee Ritenour, Larry Carlton, Tom Scott, Wayne Shorter, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Pat Metheny, and the stable of ECM recording artists. It also led, right or wrong, to my delving into the Smooth Jazz genre for a while. This album also brought me a new appreciation for The Doobie Brothers, via regular Steely Dan backup singer Michael McDonald.
8. Pretenders – The Pretenders (1980): The record label said “PLAY LOUD” so that’s what I did at every opportunity: I’m pretty sure one of my $30 Playback speakers was a casualty of “The Wait.” At the time I had a show on Harper College’s radio station (WHCM) and I was the lucky one who got to unpack our copy of the album when it arrived. A couple songs were identified by the record company as “may be unsuitable for airplay” (e.g. “Precious”) and of course, those were the first songs we played on the air. Pretenders was the first full-fledged “new wave” album in my collection, but it wasn’t one-dimensional: the band played around with reggae and pop along with the straightforward guitar-and-drum-banging stuff. It’s no wonder this album consistently makes “Best of” lists. Gateway to: An entire decade’s worth of new wave, power pop, and punk both good (XTC, The Records, The Clash) and bad (you can fill in your own here).
9. From the Mars Hotel – Grateful Dead (1974): I came to the Dead via a girlfriend (isn’t that always the way?) in the summer of 1980. At the time, I was listening to The Clash, Pretenders, B-52s, Blondie, Nick Lowe and Rockpile, Talking Heads, Buzzcocks, Lene Lovich… you get the picture. I admit that all I knew up to that point about the Grateful Dead was “Truckin’,” “Casey Jones,” and “Uncle John’s Band.” This album turned all that around: when I first heard “Unbroken Chain” it was unlike anything I’d heard before– I got lost in the jam in the middle of the song, and when I came out I didn’t know where I was, but it was pretty cool. (Just go with me on this.) The rest of the album had a similar effect. Gateway to: Hard to say; my Dead excursion gave me a new appreciation for lots of stuff I’d heard before as well as giving me the skills to enjoy albums like Ellington at Newport and a lot of the early Fleetwood Mac material.
10. Brazil Classics 2: O Samba – Various Artists (1989): In January of 1990, a friend handed me this cassette and said, “Listen to this; you might like it.” In the 10 years that followed that moment, I rarely bought a CD that was sung in English. O Samba is a collection assembled by David Byrne as an introduction of Brazilian music to American ears. I grew up thinking Brazilian music was all “Girl From Ipanema,” but this collection showed me the depth of emotional and political messages in the music, mixed in with songs about mermaids and gods. It introduced me to Clara Nunes, Alcione, and Beth Carvalho, and made me insatiable for more of this stuff. I pretty much missed the whole Nirvana/grunge thing because I was always on the third floor of Chicago’s Rose Records looking for the latest Marisa Monte CD. O Samba helped me develop a new way of listening to music, whether I understood the lyrics or not. Gateway to: Many, many World Music artists including Marisa Monte, Ismaël Lô, Manu Chao, Xuxa, Daniela Mercury, Son de la Frontera, Pauline Croze, Nazia Hassan… this could go on.
So there it is: a view into how I fill my ears.