In the Order that I discovered them from roughly the ages 9 to 18
Beastie Boys License to Ill
Weird Al Dare to be Stupid
Iron Maiden Powerslave
Poison Open Up and Say…Ahh
U2 The Joshua Tree
Janet Jackson Janet
Nirvana MTV Unplugged in NY
The Offspring Smash
The Pogues Rum Sodomy & The Lash
Dire Straits Alchemy: Dire Straits Live
I still listen to most of them with the exception of maybe Iron Maiden and Poison.
Some of these are a bit hard to put in actual chronological order, as you will see, but here is a stab.
I know the order is weird, but I jumped around with my musical preferences (and still do). It’s hard to narrow down to 10, but here it goes:
Men at Work - Business As Usual
Run DMC - King of Rock
Beastie Boys - License to Ill
INXS - Kick
U2 - The Joshua Tree
The Smiths - Strangeways, Here We Come
New Order - Substance
The Clash - London Calling
Radiohead - The Bends
Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Honorable Mentions:
Air Supply - Lost in Love
Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
Depeche Mode - Violator
Pearl Jam - Ten
Clinic - Internal Wrangler
**1981: The J. Geils Band, “Freeze Frame” (1981)
**First contemporary, non-children’s album I ever owned. Holds up as a good-but-not-great listen today.
**1985: Pink Floyd, “Animals” (1977)
**Given to me by an older cousin. The first album — first art of any kind really — that I had to work to understand. It somehow didn’t seem to care whether I liked it, a quality I discovered I loved. Had the unfortunate side effect of making me an insufferably pretentious and snobby teen, but you take the bad with the good. If one album set me on my musical path, it was this one.
**1986: Pink Floyd, “Dark Side of the Moon” (1973)
**I was in full-fledged Floyd mode by this time. Guys in muscle cars would see me on my bike, wearing my Pink Floyd shirt, and yell “Dark Side of the Moon!” While my fellow high school freshmen were listening to “Slippery When Wet,” I was listening to this. It helped keep me sane in the profoundly unsettling world of high school, though didn’t bring me any closer to most of my classmates.
**1986: Bob Dylan, “Bringing It All Back Home” (1965)
**My first Dylan album, bought secondhand on vinyl. The song that stuck out on first hearing, oddly enough, was “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream,” because I had no idea that this supposedly ultra-serious Voice of a Generation indulged in such rampant silliness. Thus begins my lifelong Dylan infatuation.
**1987: The Beatles, “Help!” (1965)
**I had been slowly getting into the Beatles for a few years by this point, but when Capitol released the British albums on CD, I dove in headfirst. I don’t actually remember if this is the first Beatles CD I bought, but if not, it’s close, and is a good proxy for all the rest of them, which I acquired as soon as my allowance/Christmas/birthdays permitted. Thus was cemented my lifelong Beatles infatuation.
**1987: The Doors, “The Best of the Doors” (1985)
**Again, this is kind of a proxy album. I got into classic rock in a big way and was really into a lot acts from the period, like Styx, Kansas and the Eagles. The Doors lasted longer on my shelf than the others; I was still rocking to “Roadhouse Blues” freshman year of college but soon after wanted nothing further to do with Jim Morrison and his narcissistic ilk.
**1987: Violent Femmes, “Violent Femmes” (1983)
**If you were a disaffected suburban teen in the 80s, I don’t see how you couldn’t embrace this record. I feel like my friends and I grew up with this album.
**1987: Concrete Blonde, “Concrete Blonde” (1986)
**My introduction to alternative rock, not counting Violent Femmes above. I didn’t know many people into Hüsker Dü or the like, but a couple of friends and I played the crap out of this album.
**1995: Los Lobos, “Kiko” (1992)
**If it’s not already apparent, I very rarely vibe with what’s going on around me, at least music-wise. Nirvana and their ilk never did it for me. When I first heard this, several years after it came out, I was blown away: the “La Bamba” guys made a record this good, this weird, this well-crafted? Still probably my favorite album of the 90s.
**1996: XTC, “Oranges & Lemons” (1989)
**A friend introduced me to this album when it came out — and I didn’t like it. Took a while to see past the surface whimsy and appreciate the incredible songcraft and generous spirit undergirding it. When I broke up with my (first) fiancée, this was the album I played over and over. Today I rank XTC as my favorite band after the Beatles, so I owe this album a lot.
Hence the username, I assume?
Yeah, kind of a tell, huh?
Right, then, in chronological order of me encountering them, but with their release dates (I encountered all of the first 3 in 85-86)
Depeche Mode, Construction Time Again(1983)
Bauhaus, Mask(1981)
Einstürzende Neubauten, ½ Mensch (1983)
Cocteau Twins, Blue Bell Knoll(1988)
My Bloody Valentine,* Isn’t Anything*(1988)
Sundays, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic(1990)
The Stone Roses, The Stone Roses(1990)
Red Hot Chilli Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magic(1991)
Gorillaz,Gorillaz (2001)
Wagakki Band, *Vocalo Zanmai * (2015)
Excellent post.
mmm
For Swinging Livers Only by Allan Sherman - released in 1964 - this was one of 4 records in my house growing up. I knew they were parodies early on, but often didn’t know the source material. It made me think music was fun and want to hear the real songs.
Tommy by The Who released in 1969. I was given a cassette of this by a friend in 1975 aged 13 and hammered it all summer. My first exposure to longer form writing with recurring melodic themes. And banging tunes!
How Dare You! by 10cc released in 1976. My brother’s album but he liked the singles and no more. I still have that copy but it’s scratched to fuck by too many shitty record decks. I love looking at it. It is a masterpiece.
Songs In The Key Of Life by Stevie Wonder released in 1977. I started here and went backwards. He’s Stevie Wonder! I love all the 70’s albums but started with this.
Seconds Out by Genesis. Released in 1977. I different friend played it to me and I obsessed on it for months. I vividly remember lying on my bed with my feet up the wall when I heard the instruments separate - there’s the bass; that’s what the keyboard is doing; guitar here -etc. during Apocalypse in 9/8. I’ve never heard music any other way since that moment.
Hope and Anchor Front Row Festival 1978 (released in…1978) various punk/new wave nobodies. Man I loved the thrilling energy and felt at the arse end of the world.
The Undertones by The Undertones released in 1979 - I AM good enought to be in a band! I can play these!
Black Sea by XTC - released in 1980 - and I want to write songs like this! Clever, political, funny, dry, weird chords - the energy of punk and the knowing wink of 10cc - I’m in.
Bop Till You Drop by Ry Cooder released in 1979 but I didn’t hear it until 1981. First exposure to this kind of music at all and I dug deep. I soon saw this was a commercial record for him but still love this album over everything before or since. Also it makes me think of Ruth - where are you now Ruth?
Want One by Rufus Wainwright released in 2003. I liked Poses, always liked his dad, but this was incredible craft to my ears. His voice, the humour, texture, musical quotes, having Levon play on a track - everything about it said genius.
That was fun - thanks Mean Mr M!
MiM
Criteria: a) Approximate chronological appearance in my life and, as such, the list stops before I reached 20 years of age. b) The picks are albums that I’ve owned or had in my house, as opposed to a track or three that might have gotten radio airplay or were in someone else’s collection. c) The picks are music that still sounds good to me.
Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: First album I ever bought. I was very young, and I noticed it at a garage sale in the neighborhood.
Beethoven’s Symphony No. Five and Prometheus Overture, André Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra. Still very young, I’d read a book about Beethoven and I think it was a birthday gift.
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass Greatest Hits: From my parent’s record collection. Tracks like Tijuana Taxi made me laugh, just as I might have laughed at a cartoon (still very young). Listening again over forty years later was like a reencounter with old friends.
Simon & Garfunkle, Sounds of Silence: Still very young; loved almost every track and liked the rest. The first time I heard Elliot Smith, I was struck by the similarity, which I assume is a common reaction.
Elton John, Greatest Hits (the 1974 release). In my adolescence, shortly before buying other albums that had less of an impact on me, like Ted Nugent’s Double Live Gonzo! and Bob Seger’s Stranger in Town.
Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Pictures at an Exhibition. I was wanting to hear Emerson and had a few album titles in mind when I noticed this one. I was hesitant to buy it because I’d never heard of it, because it’s “classical” music, and the weird album cover kind of freaked me out, haha. Blues Variation is still one of my favorite jams.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Smash Hits (US version). Couldn’t get enough of this. Nearly perfect on every level.
Led Zeppelin II. Same as above, but without the fake stereo mix. This may be the album that made me notice the wide range of very different sounds that can be produced by a guitar.
Rush, 2112. Learned to play bass and guitar with this album. It wasn’t the first or the only album in that sense, and I think I spent more time listening to other Rush albums like Hemispheres and All the World’s a Stage. What makes it memorable for me is that it coincided with my musical coming of age.
Pink Floyd, Animals. When we weren’t playing Rush tunes, my friends and I would listen to this a lot.
Fatboy Slim - You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby
Tool - Lateralus
*Alice In Chains - Dirt
*Metallica - And Justice For All
Opeth - Deliverance
Nevermore - Enemies Of Reality
*Katatonia - Brave Murder Day
*Mental Home - Black Art
*John Frusciante - To Record Water For Only 10 Days
*(Arthur Lee and) Love - Love
Asterisks by albums I picked up on after they’d been out for years; in the case of Love, almost 50. Kinda reads as my journey in and out of heavy metal which makes sense. For a few years I got deep into a relatively limited quantity of metal most of which I can enjoy re-listening to, and beyond that I can’t sustain much interest in the genre as far as finding undiscovered stuff. It was challenging and rewarding at the time.
While I have hundreds of albums, I can only count 2 as influential:
Led Zeppelin IV: showed me what hard rock could be when I finally heard it in the late 80s. Expanded my definition of what rock could be to include metal, folk, and a little prog and psychedelia influences as well.
Nothing Feels Good by the Promise Ring: my intro to emo when I first heard it in 2000. There are other albums since that people have called emo that have been my entree into different subvarieties/related styles, but those have only opened my mind to a handful of other artists rather than hundreds like the Promise Ring did. I guess of all the subvarieties of rock that people call emo from time to time, the variety I have the most of is straight-ahead pop punk (like early Saves the Day and Fall Out Boy), but I had already somehow knew what that was by osmosis by the early 90s without any one album turning me on to it or even knowing what the genre name was (if I had been asked I would have described what we now call pop punk as “that music on college radio with punk backing music and whiny singing”.)
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[li]**1975 Spike Jones & His City Slickers (collection) ** – I was 8 and a bit of an odd kid. I wore out that piece of vinyl. I was absolutely entranced with the detail and placement of the goofy sound effects, the musical contrast, and of course the layers of humor. I still like it.[/li][/ul]
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[li]1977 Beatles – Abbey Road (1969) – My brother (whom I revered as a god) advised me this band was simply the best there was. I listened to his entire Beatles collection, patiently, and disagreed. I’ve dutifully gone back to them from time to time just to see if there was something there I just didn’t get, still can’t listen to it.[/li][/ul]
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[li]1978 Boston - Boston (1976) – Now THIS was something. Intricate, aggressive, entrancing.[/li][/ul]
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[li]1983 Pink Floyd – The Wall(1982) – Believe it or not at 16 I was previously unaware of the “concept album”. I worked out on my own what was happening in this one, and it spoke to me on a level that was at once reassuring and alarming (I didn’t know I was bipolar yet). Concept albums led me to the Who, and ultimately Quadrophenia.[/li][/ul]
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[li]1983 Huey Lewis – Sports (1983) – I am not proud of this, but I can still listen to it. I liked it, it got me listening to current music which at least allowed me to relate to my peers on some level. Nobody I knew was listening to Pink Floyd.[/li][/ul]
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[li]1984 The Who - Quadrophenia (1973) – Partly because it was a comforting place to retreat to, and partly because, well, The Who right? Aggressive, mildly dystopic but not hopeless.[/li][/ul]
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[li]1986 The Damned – Phantasmagoria – I had never heard anything like this before. I was enchanted, and disappointed to learn it was unlike anything else the Damned had done before: Punk was not musical enough to hold my attention, I was very much a Pop devotee.[/li][/ul]
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[li]2005 Sex Pistols – Never Mind The Bollocks(1977) Life had become very difficult, and I needed something to echo the anger and venom by bipolar rages could brew up. It was soothing. I returned to The Damned and their early work made a lot more sense to me. I’d gone cold on Pop. Punk could reconcile my natural silliness with my inclinations to despair and rage.[/li][/ul]
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[li]2008 Flight of the Conchords (2008) – Smart & silly, like the lovely lady I’d hooked up with after the divorce. We bonded on our first couple dates Youtubing videos. We’re still together, it’s disgustingly sweet with us.[/li][/ul]
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[li]2015 Bleached – Ride your Heart (2013) – Wait, girls do melodic punk rock? Research digs up The Nuns, a deeper look at bands on the fringe of my radar for decades: Siouxsie, Cramps, Joan Jett, Blondie.[/li][/ul]
I am swamped at work, but been following this thread. Can’t really expand a lot on my list - I am really try to pick examples related to important music moments in my life -
First Hard Rock = Van Halen 1. 1978? Could choose Aerosmith Rocks, AC/DC’s Highway to Hell or Ted Nugent’s Free for All. But Eddie was THE guitar god of my formative years in the U.S. and man, that mattered.
First Guitar Wake Up Call = Jeff Beck Group, Truth. 1979-80 I have told this story here a few times: was in math class. Talked with the substitute, a cool young guy whose name I can’t remember (argh). Mentioned I listened to Ted Nugent. He asked my address and told me he’d show up at 6:30. He did, with a stack of albums, talked with my mom, and we went upstairs to listen. I got turned on to BB King, Cream, Muddy and Wolf…and Jeff Beck. The second track, Let me Love You, has guitar work that was playable, but the hardest stuff I had ever heard due to phrasing, note choice, etc.
Getting past Hard Rock = The Pretenders. 1980. I just told this story in the Chrissie Hynde book thread. I was a record reviewer for my HS paper. Gave The Pretenders 2 out of 4 stars. Went to college, got my head blown open a bit, and within a year, it was one of my favorite albums. That pivot was humbling and educational to this silly young man. In hindsight, its just a toe outside the stuff I was listening to, but it was opening a door.
Opening my mind further = David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust 1983. My first mindfuck college girlfriend and I listened to this album endlessly, along with a couple of others. This is the one that stuck - just beautiful outsider lyrics.
Deeper dive in Funk and Hip Hop - Prince, Sign O’ the Times - 1986 could be other early Prince (Dirty Mind!!) Stevie, some Run DMC, Whodini, Eric B and Rakim. My roommate between college and grad school was a Black guy who had amazing musical taste. We hung out and went out to clubs in the SF SOMA area so many nights. I got James Brown’s Star Time greatest hits, too. But Sign O’ the Times was IT (pun intended for those who know the song on the album). It’s variety, it’s quality from song to song - it was what put me over the top in loving Prince.
Deeper Appreciation for R&B/Soul - Marvin Gaye, What’s Goin’ On 1987 - I had always listened to R&B, but went deeper. Marvin isn’t deep in any obscure way - its generally ranked one of the best modern albums ever - but I just used it as a gateway to immerse myself in music I had heard in the background of my life (Bill Withers, o man) but not focused on.
Forming Opinions - Beatles, Revolver - 1988 The Beatles have always been a big presence. But I was listening more actively now, and one day, as I was listening to Revolver, something inside me said “THIS is much better than Sgt. Pepper - it is The Beatles’ best.” That can be debated - art isn’t “best” - but having that knowledge settle in felt like I was figuring out what my opinions were. Another example here would be Bach - I was listening to Glenn Gould and the cello suites and realizing how core Bach was to the music I love most.
Jazz Doors opening more - Miles Davis, Kind of Blue - could be a wide sample of Dizzy, Charlie Parker, Ben Webster, But Powell, etc. But Kind of Blue is my all time favorite. I was very much in Music Open Mind mode between college and grad school, and while I had R&B friends, I also had Jazz friends - one at work and one I hung out with. I listened more and was at a play where I got it. I did a thread in the past about how to listen to Jazz - once I cracked that, I was off.
Mind bendy stuff - Thelonious Monk, Composer - 1990’s could also be Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians, Arvo Part’s work, etc. opened my head to weird harmonies, sparse minimalism that establishes waves of sound, etc.
Less is More guitar - Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers - 1990’s. I was figuring out my guitar voice and realizing I was not a guy who dweedled and shredded on a guitar with a locking whammy. I began to simplify my gear, and part of that was getting into Keith Richard’s style of playing. Open G tuning, few chords - all about groove and feel. Immersing myself in the intro to Can’t You Hear Me Knocking was another form of wake up call for me about how I want to play guitar.
So there you go.
Days of Future Past - The Moody Blues - 1967
Abbey Road - The Beatles - 1969
Led Zeppelin II - Led Zeppelin - 1969
Greatest Hits - Sly & The Family Stone - 1970
Deja Vu - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - 1970
Greatest Hits II - The Temptations - 1970
Honkey Chateau - Elton John - 1972
Trilogy - Emerson Lake & Palmer - 1972
Dark Side of The Moon - Pink Floyd - 1973
Blood On The Tracks - Bob Dylan - 1975
Are you aware of the Still On The Run doc? It was on BBC 4 last weekend. Not a Beck superfan myself- admire his playing obviously, but I really enjoyed it.
MiM
I haven’t heard of it! In the US they show it coming on iTunes. I gotta check that out! Thanks!
Found it on Amazon - to be released on May 18. Bought!!
This was hard. Some people may have had trouble narrowing it down to ten, but I had trouble getting ten because “landmark” is a tall term. Here’s my best shot:
P.S. Damn, I didn’t actually know what year a lot of these were released in. Apparently half my albums came out of only two calendar years!
Mine are shown below but there are a couple of anomalies. My no. 7 was produced and sold by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), which used to make and sell music compilations of different genres. My no. 8 is one of a series of Canadian compilations showcasing female artists.