The Entroporium

In celebration of my birthday today, I’m republishing this article that I previously posted on Facebook about six weeks ago.  Birthdays are always a good time for summing up, thinking about the past and how it got you where you think you may be going – and as my friends know strong opinions about music have always been part of my personal journey.� As a special bonus, where possible I’ve put links to the albums for download (none of these posted by me nor housed on my site; caveat emptor):

Think of 15 albums 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. When you finish, tag 15 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you’re it!

When I sat down to write this, I thought in terms of the albums that helped me learn how to listen, to form a critical opinion, or opened new worlds avenues & possibilities and so forth. By its nature, then, these 15 albums may not necessarily represent desert island discs, favorite artists, or even the best of a particular artist. In a couple of cases, I don’t even particularly enjoy the album any more though I can still catch the whiff of thrill I felt when I first heard it.

I started with about 50 albums and ruthlessly edited until only 15 remained. Most of the late scratches were albums where I felt that the one that made the final list already epitomized something in common between those albums; examples include Power Lies and Corruption edging out Seventeen Seconds and Remain In Light. (I didn’t say it made sense, I just said it was.)

And so, in rough chronological order:

THE ROLLING STONES, Their Satanic Majesties Request – It’s absurd and in points unlistenable, but to a 4-year old with a close-n-play it’s mysterious and full of whimsy, from the playful idolatrous cover art to the nonsense psychedelia of the songs. I would listen closely, scrutinizing every note cough mumble; it seemed so important to decode it. Though just a curiosity today, it has some of the Stones’ loveliest pop songs before they went on to become the raw, bluesy world-beating band they were over the next 10 years.
PS The remaster sounds amazing.

THE WHO, Tommy – It’s full of filler and the story is absurd, grotesque and more than a little offensive. For me, though, it unlocked the idea that rock could tell a story and that the different instruments could be expressive of character and ideas. On that basis, it beat the hell out of the “Young People’s Guide To The Orchestra” or “Peter & The Wolf.” And the playing still knocks me out. I’ll put Underture up against anything as one of the great instrumental performances.

THE BEATLES, The White Album (for this is what it should be called) –  This list would not be complete without any Beatles, a band that I devoured well into my teens. I don’t think is their best nor is it my favorite – it contains the very worst efforts by all four of them – but its very density makes it the one that I still find the most fascinating – a real songwriters’ battle royale. Oddly, I think my two favorite Beatles albums today may actually be solo albums: Ram and All Things Must Pass. (Bing! Snooty rock critic alert!)

PUBLIC IMAGE, LTD, Metal Box / Second Edition – How did we get there from here? Coming in a bit late for punk, this was my one of my first pick-ups of the genre. But really it couldn’t be further from punk; the trebly in-your-face pop-based guitars replaced by a dominant dubby danceable beats. It was scary and invigorating to hear something so released from pop form but still essentially fun to listen to. I’m sure this set me up for both techno and reggae as I discovered them later.

BRIAN ENO, Ambient 1: Music For Airports – I bought this off the in-store turntable at Leopold’s. (What strange self-absorbed 12-year old does that? [raises hand] That would be me.) But this album was freeing in so many ways. Free from composition & structure. Free from noise. Free from pop and conventional song structure. Yet it was peaceful and engaging. Plus it came with instructions for setting up your speakers properly.

GANG OF FOUR, Entertainment! – Even though the songs, polemics and unique performances are this album’s most obvious attributes, the affirmation I got from Gang Of Four came from what people – especially Greil Marcus – wrote and felt about them. I started reading Marcus in my parents’ copies of New West magazine while he was plowing through many of the same touchstones I was running into working at Universal Records in Berkeley. From this experience – and kudos to my mother the Art History major, too – I learned about art criticism and how it could add value to my experience to be a critical listener, question the narrator’s motivation and look for themes in the music that go beyond the obvious strands of plot. Who needed English class?

KRAFTWERK, Computer World – It seems so tame now in the face of the booming techno genre, but when this came out in 1981, absolutely nothing sounded like this. All synthetic and machinist, yet hinting at underlying humanity. It bespoke a world of machines whispering too each other constantly night day, sharing our secrets. I remember a day in 1993 temping for a bank when I realized that all the machines were secretly connected. The buzz of the wires suddenly seemed alive to me. Kraftwerk foresaw all that and more on this album. Plus, funky as all get out.

NEW ORDER, Power, Corruption & Lies – A transition out of the dark post-punk noise and stifled emotion back into passion and pop. Not to mention my cassette had Blue Monday tacked on as a bonus, the pinnacle sonic achievement of the whole early 80s era without doubt.

ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ATTRACTIONS, Get Happy! (Part 2 here) – 20 perfect pop songs sung & played furiously by a drug-fueled genius with sparks flying out of his head every which way. Most importantly, though, Get Happy led me to explore the album’s true roots, the sounds of classic soul. I dove deeply and found a rich vein of Americana that still remains one of my easiest sources of joy.

MARVIN GAYE, Anthology – Which leads me here. Even singing silly love songs, was there ever a more compelling voice? I thought I could sing – I still think I can sing a bit – but this just humbles me. It humbles everyone! There was a night in freshman dorm when a friend and I got stoned and put on “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.”  We were totally halted in what we were doing, compelled as the voice crashed in, forcing us to Stop and…just listen. I don’t think any other singer ever did that to me so convincingly.

PREFAB SPROUT, Two Wheels Good / Steve McQueen – I was 19 and scared of life, it’s about being 19 and scared of life. (A recent Pop Matters essay guesses that it’s secretly a failed concept album about masculinity.) And as pop songwriting goes, it’s perfection, on par with any you can think of. Light and deep at the same time, as all great pop trifles should be

MILES DAVIS, Kind Of Blue – It’s nothing but a cliche to say that this, the most popular jazz album of all time, opened me to the genre (see, for example, the stoner brother chapter of ‘Sometimes A Great Notion’). It’s embarrassing, like saying “I love reggae, yeah, I’ve got Bob Marley;s Legend and UB40. What, Bob Marley had other records? Sly & who?”  But you know what? Kind Of Blue is that good.
PS In A Silent Way was a late scratch for this list, but I thought Brian Eno and Miles Davis together did enough to fill the same intellectual spot on the list.

PUBLIC ENEMY, Fear Of A Black Planet – Taking the formula of tight James Brown beats and infringing chaos as far as it could go, this album brought down the curtain on the first great age of sampling and hip-hop. It’s a mess, but for sheer sonic inventiveness it’s a pinnacle of the form. Not to mention that in a time of great urban strife, Fear Of A Black Planet sounded like a sonic representation of the horrible crack epidemic striking at the cities I lived in and a bellwether for the shocking racial incidents to come in the next few years.

GUIDED BY VOICES, Bee Thousand – The album that launched me to a thousand shows, or so it seemed like. But really for me it was a return to rock after years & years away. Buried under the fuzz and half-baked ideas, a great classic rock band struggled to break free – which indeed was what happened when they performed live. In a renaissance period for American indie rock, this was the album that led me back to it.

ALVA NOTO & RYUICHI SAKAMOTO, Vrioon – There’s a weird moment during power cuts when the silence blooms and you realize how much static & white noise you are forced to live within, both from the environment and from within. This album expresses both the silence and the buzz – and does both with beauty and surprising emotiveness.