Heartily seconded. I’d add The Wall as well. I remember back in high school hanging out at a friend’s house. His dad came home and, being Friday, he’d have a couple of beers and listen to his old records. He grabbed The Wall and started it right as The Trial begins. My jaw dropped and I was a true believer.
Of course The Beatles belong on the list too. Abbey Road was great, but the stand out song to me has alway been Something. Best love song ever!
Finally, for the jazz lovers, JJ and Kai +8 doing The Peanut Vendor or Rise and Shine. The former in particular changed everything about the way I looked at playing trombone.
AC/DC- Back in Black- Hells Bells is the song that opened my eyes to Music in general and Hard Rock at the forefront.
Bat out of Hell -Just… epic love songs.
Nirvana’s Unplugged Album. Just… mind blowing period.
NaS- Stillmatic- this is the album that caused me to get into Rap music, as it just blew me away.
Limp Bizkit- Significant Other- this is the music of my “generation” the MTV TRL years of Britney spears, boy bands and all that. I still remember the summer that this album dropped and being glued to the TV watching the performances and all- and loving Limp Bizkit’s nu-metal as a rebellion to all the boy band pop shyte.
Gun and Roses: Appetite for Destruction - this album was incidentally the first time I’d ever heard the word “fuck”- and the first hard rock album that featured “Adult content” if you will. Just kinda destroyed my naivety.
Abbey Road- I was a fan of the Beatles White Album but this album just blew me away when I first gave it a listen. I didn’t expect anything to top my White Album love.
NERD- In Search Of… - I still recall where I was watching my uncles and cousins playing madden as I popped this into my CD player to listen and i never took the controller to play- this album had me entranced the WHOLE time.
Daft Punk- Alive 2007. I hate techno and electronic. This album however… however showed me what it has the potential to be. Just… good stuff.
The first one I can recall was the cassette single of Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever when I was about 7. I loved the imagery, the tone, their accents. I still count Penny Lane as one of my favourite songs. I listened to that tape 100 times or more.
When I heard Luke Kelly singing *On Raglan Road *I was blown away and it introduced me to Irish traditional balladry or more to the point showed me it wasn’t all shit. It’s the first song I learned to sing in its entirety.
The most recent one was *Glenn Tipton *by Sun Kil Moon. The beauty and pathos of the song moved me to tears and I’ve listened to it so many times but it never loses its lustre.
“So In Love” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. When I first heard it, back in high school, it was like a glimpse of heaven, like a window into transcendence, like I’d just met a gorgeous redhead who liked me.
I’ll list a few of them, along with my impressions upon my first few listens. The impressions are, of course, snapshots of who I was at the time as much as comments on the music itself.
Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation
“OMG!!! Someone has distilled the essence of what it feels like to be really, really high - the transcendent ecstasy, the iron-fisted panic, the bottomless depression and the bemused confusion - and condensed it onto a tape. And the tape case smells like patchouli!”
Ramones, Ramones
“OMG!!! This is some of the most powerful music I’ve ever heard, and the louder you turn it up, the more layers of harmony you can hear in your head…and best of all, I can play it right now on the guitar, at my current rudimentary skill level!”
The Smiths, The Queen is Dead
“OMG,” he sniffled into the damp, silent recesses of his pillow, “someone understands me.”
The first time I ever heard James Taylor’s You Can Close Your Eyes was two weeks after my younger brother drowned. My mind very nearly came completely unhinged.
Beach Boys, Pet Sounds (duh!)
Ars Nova Ensemble, Portuguese Polyphony
Beatles, Revolver
Alexander Borodin, *Piano Quintet *(perf. by New Budapest Quartet)
Cafe Tacuba, Re
King’s X–Gretchen Goes to Nebraska. An incredible mix of metal, funk, soul and blues.
Metallica–Kill 'Em All. An experience that survives to this day. Simply the most perfect metal album ever. It don’t know what it was like when Zeppelin or Sabbath released their first albums, but I imagine it must have been similar to my experience with Metallica. An album that changed the genre forever. Very closely followed by Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets.
Pink Floyd’s *The Wall *was an album I saved my allowance for for weeks when I was nine years old. The imagery and cynicism haunt me still. Shaped me in some ways, too.
Most post 1965 Beatles stuff is pretty amazing, and Jimi Hendrix too.
I rate stuff on the amount of arm-hairs it raises as I listen and/or sing along.
It’s interesting to note how few full CD’s one can listen to all the way through without skipping “hated” songs.
*Blood Sugar Sex Magik *was like that, too. Great CD.
R.E.M. - Chronic Town EP -The dark, portentous Mitch Easter production, combined with Pete Buck’s jangly guitar and Michael Stipe’s weirdly obscure lyrics just blew me away. I first heard it walking past a dorm room, and was drawn inside by the strange, spellbinding sound. It was unlike any other music being made at the time.
R.E.M. - Murmur - Unbelievably, it was even better than the EP. The first time I listened to it I turned off the lights and just immersed myself in the sound. Then I made my plans to head for Athens.
Zero 7 - Simple Things
Shpongle - Are You Shpongled?
Moby - Play
Peter Gabriel - Passion: Music For The Last Temptation Of Christ
Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2
The Orb - The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld
Niyaz - Niyaz
Armin van Buuren - Boundaries of Imagination
Midnight Oil, Diesel and Dust
I’d heard a couple of their albums before, but that was the first one where I had access to complete lyrics in the liner notes & could read the words I couldn’t understand through Garrett’s accent.
Gotta go with Bach on this one. I was in Music Appreciation 101, kinda dozing, when the Professor put on E. Power Biggs playing Bach’s “Little” Fugue in G-Minor, BWV 578 on the Flentrop organ at the Busch-Reisenger museum at Harvard. I can literally date the hundreds of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc CD’s that I’ve owned since, from the moment I lifted my head off the desk.
I chart my life based on what albums and songs have blown my mind over the years. Waaay too many to mention - I bet practically every meaningful moment in my life has a song listed in my soundtrack. So out of 100 such songs, probably 3 - 5 not only are the sound track for a given moment, but the music is so good that it stands out, too - it’s not just a cheesy 70’s hit I would just as soon forget, its a great song worthy of a place in my mental jukebox…
Yep. I think some people in this thread have a different definition of ‘blowing your mind’. It’s good music is all. Nothing has ever ‘blown my mind’ but the Throwing Copper album really took me to a different place.
In college an ex-boyfriend made me a mix tape with the song “Big Sky Country” by Chris Whitley. I bought the album Living With the Law and have never been the same. It’s as close to perfection as it gets, and is my desert island album.