I had been facing a Saturday morning full of boring productivity, but a friend tagged me on one of the latest Facebook list things -- this time, instead of 25 things about me, pick 15 to 20 albums and explain why they were formational (or transformational) in your life. Yay! Opportunity for procrastination achieved! All engines go!
Of course, now that I've done it, I've found that I've written 1,400 words -- for free! No client to bill, no per word or hour rate to be charged. I'm a sucker. So, I might as well get the most out of it and transfer it over here. Not that I'm giving sloppy seconds or anything.
Anway, picking albums for me is difficult -- I tend to associate times and places and events with very specific songs, so even many of the albums I’ve pulled out of the memory hole are there because of a song I’ve attached to a person or place. That said, in a vaguely chronological order, here are :
1. Andy Gibb -- Shadow Dancing
I saw Andy Gibb on television showing up for the Grammy’s or some such wearing a full-length fur coat and tossing his blond hair around and I was a little boy in love. I grabbed the cassette at Wal-Mart and proceeded to play it into static on my little Radio Shack cassette recorder/player. Earliest childhood parental embarrassment: my dad walking in on me dancing and lip-syncing to “Shadow Dancing.” And yet, later on he was surprised.
2. Police -- Synchronicity
One of my earliest vinyl purchases, totally influenced by my complete devotion to Friday Night Videos, the only cultural lifeline those days before cable TV finally brought devil music and dirty movies to Fredonia, Ky. I really came to love the freakier stuff, like “Mother.”
3. Motley Crue -- Shout at the Devil
Speaking of devil music, this is the album that inaugurated my life-long heavy metal phase. I have never felt as deliciously and sinfully bad as the first time I listened to “Shout at the Devil” on headphones while riding the school bus. Also the catalyst for many an earnest discussion that “They’re saying shout *at* the devil, man, not shout *to* him.”
4. Iron Maiden -- Piece of Mind
Dear god, how this album rocked my world. Literary references, blistering guitars, glass-breaking vocals -- and my then-favorite Australian tennis player, Pat Cash, thanked in the liner notes. Present day: I was excited to find Iron Maiden songs in Guitar Hero, then saddened to discover that I simply no longer have the physical dexterity to play them.
5. Led Zeppelin -- Led Zeppelin II
Fine, it’s a cliche for ‘80s era metal boys to have a soft spot for Led Zeppelin. I still love it. To this day, when I’m playing tennis and need to clear all the useless, distracting junk that tends to bounce around my head, I put “Whole Lotta Love” on my mental turntable. It’s like Metamucil for the brain.
6. Love and Rockets -- Express
The album that lured me out of my hard-rock cubbyhole at college, in large part because of the crunching guitars on “Kundalini Express,” but “All in My Mind” kept me playing the cassette over and over and over as I drove my big powder-blue 1978 Oldsmobile around my college campus, where all the other students seemed to be driving BMWs.
7. The Cure -- Standing on a Beach
I went to college in the ‘80s. It is categorically impossible that I would avoid being influenced by this album. To this day, “Boys Don’t Cry” gives me the urge to bounce up and down doing the frat boy dance.
8. New Order -- Low-Life
Again: College, ‘80s, unavoidable. Interestingly, “Love Vigilantes” is still a depressingly relevant song these days. It deserves a revival/remake.
9. Depeche Mode -- Music for the Masses
I had actually toyed with some secret liking for electronic/keyboard focused music during my high school metal days (I occasionally played “People Are People” at the little radio station where I worked then, and Trio’s “Da Da Da” was a guilty pleasure), but it wasn’t until “Never Let Me Down Again” that I was fully converted. It’s no coincidence that this was the time when I was really struggling the most with knowing I was gay yet trying to stay in the closet until I could graduate -- a struggle that kind of rapidly turned pointless, as...
10. Love and Rockets -- Earth Sun Moon
My fraternity bounced me for being gay about two weeks after I bought this album, so it’s pretty indelibly linked to a particular transitional moment in my life. I latched onto a lyric from “No New Tale to Tell” -- “You cannot go against nature/because when you do/go against nature/it’s part of nature too” -- in large part just to keep my will to live. I’m not so dramatic as to say the album saved my life, but it’s about as close as one could come.
11. Guns n Roses -- Appetite for Destruction
When you’re young, hurt and full of unfocused hate for an uncaring world, there’s really not much better than a dose of Guns n Roses, back when they scorched your ears with goodness.
12. Pet Shop Boys -- Introspective
When you’re young, hurt and trying to get a handle on this new “being gay” thing, there’s really not much better than a dose of Pet Shop Boys. “Domino Dancing” instantly puts me back on the dance floor of Roanoke’s gay club, The Park -- at least, during one of those moments when you had finally convinced the DJ to play something other than the latest Whitney Houston dreck.
13. Nine Inch Nails -- Pretty Hate Machine
Anger and hate I could dance to. Awesome. When I’m listening to “Head Like a Hole,” I’m back in my Mt. Pleasant group house with Jenny, Kate, Megan and Jay -- or the whole pack of us are on the floor of the Roxy’s Wednesday Industrial Night. Also, it was my gateway drug for Front 242, Skinny Puppy, Nitzer Ebb and Ministry. All of which are kind of horribly dated now. But still rock.
14. REM -- Automatic for the People
Under the ‘80s rule, I liked them in college, but it wasn’t until this album that I got a little fanatical about REM. If I were granted to ability to truly sing just one song in this life, it would probably be “Nightswimming,” just so I could make myself cry more. I’m so emo.
15. Cake -- Fashion Nugget
There’s a big gap in my influential music, in large part because as I got older, few things struck me -- plus, I was spending a lot of my time in the ‘90s hanging out on gay dance floors listening to music that does nothing for me (die, Madonna, die!). Cake is the band that snapped me out of it.
16. White Stripes -- White Blood Cells
More for individual songs -- “Hotel Yorba,” “We’re Going to Be Friends” -- than the entire album, but this is another one that got me listening to music attentively again.
17. Loretta Lynn -- Van Lear Rose
I was not part of the country music crowd in my youth, so I’ve tended to take an anti-country stance in my allegiance to RAWK. This album really started to change that for me, with all the sassy honky-tonk and country/blues weepers. “Mrs. Leroy Brown” is flat out one of my favorite songs ever. Plus, it’s the first album that Cavin and I both loved, so it’s instantly on the playlist for any long car trip (otherwise, we alternate between show tunes and Vietnamese pop for him and what’s on this list for me).
18. Dolly Parton -- The Essential Dolly Parton Vol. 2
I’ve interviewed a number of gay and non-gay musicians and performers over the years, including Baby Daddy from Scissor Sisters, and nearly unanimously they say that the person they’d choose to see perform live is Dolly Parton -- for songcraft, for showmanship, for sheer exuberance. It’s actually a little embarrassing that as a Kentucky native, I knew so little about the music that really took root there. Hell, I remember seeing Parton on the Grand Ole Opry (on Granny’s old black and white TV, no less). I’m glad I finally came around -- most of this stuff is really amazing when you give it a listen. It’s like coming full circle and embracing a previously unknown part of my past.
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