Some Important Albums (number undetermined)

Hi Patricia,

There was one of them Facebook games that got passed around a couple weeks back. It was about naming the ten albums that changed your life.  I abstained from playing, mostly because it bugged me.  My list felt...inadequate.

Now, my definition of album is thus: a collection of songs, delivered through non-personal means, where one song necessarily follows the other. On an album, song seven is always after song six.  Soundtracks are permissible, but mixtapes are not.  They're too personal a path through the music.  The universality of the routine is a distinction separating the album from any other type of music delivery service.  

Likely this makes me some articulated type of music snob.  Alas, we forge ahead.

So, again, the game called for ten. My list got to four albums (with explanation).

Weird Al "Polka Party"
(Received this on tape, wore it out, and may explain a lot more about my humor than I intend.)

REM "Automatic For The People"
(First CD bought for first CD player with first work paycheck.)

10000 Maniacs "Unplugged"
(Much like Peak Oil and Peak Republicanism, this was Peak Natalie Merchant.)

Frozen "Soundtrack"
(Yup. I've been assigned the boy roles.)

And that's it. There are only four, and there is a twenty year gap between the last two. Also, I may have gone another twenty years except I had Frozen violently foisted upon me by pro-princess factions living in my very home.

In that twenty years, I've listened to hundreds of CDs and thousands of songs. All on random, repeat, mixed playlists.  Plenty of soundtracks and promo albums that got put (and left) in the old CD player for a long cross country drive or finals prep.  In that time, there has been nothing quite like the long final chord of Man in the Moon leading directly into the opening instrumental of Nightswimming. I can feel that two beat pause between the songs, and when the next song is missing, I feel an absence.  That's what an album is to me.

Now, as most nights, I am sitting with the girls as they go to sleep. They have an old iPod docked into a radio and loaded with kids music.  Even with the variety of a thousand songs available, sleep time features a twelve song rotation of calm. Without the most recent addition above, this playlist is the closest I've had to an album in forever.

Actual kids' playlist.  We anticipate therapy for many reasons.

But this is their music now. it's squirreling into some recess in their mind to emerge through medical procedures or French veggies. And it's as ephemeral as Seattle snow. No one else will know that Johnny Cash leads directly to Gillian Welch.  There will be no reminiscing about how the only sound that is right after Death Cab is Allison Krauss.  There is no share for this, and no perpetuity.  With no effort, I could shuffle, randomize, add, or remove a song from here. They will do this. Eventually. When they earn it by going the hell to sleep on their own.

Vonnegut once said that peculiar travel suggestions were dancing lessons from God. I'd sample that by saying that others' weird musical taste are peculiar travel suggestions. Have we lost something by not having our music curated into albums? Is our life, our national discourse, our very souls set adrift by the loss of order in our music?

Cheers,
Ray

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Hi Ray,

I live in a house with literally thousands of compact discs. I thought I had a healthy collection of my own upon joining our family, with my 2 or 3 large Rubbermaid tubs of them.  I had previously hoarded books – those I had read, those I wished to someday read – but heart-rendingly donated the majority of them several moves ago.  Before becoming domesticated, I simply had far too nomadic a lifestyle to keep transporting that many pounds of paper with me every time I needed a change in scenery. They way I figured it, there are always libraries where I can visit these treasures. Then began the acquisition of CDs. Smaller, at least. But the grand collection I imagined I had… oh no, decidedly not.  I now live with two audiophiles – The Buddhist and his 17 year old doppelganger, The Artist. Their appetites for music are insatiable. Post rock, punk rock, y’alternative, folk, folk-punk, emo, hardcore, jazz, shoe-gaze, experimental jazz, J-Pop, Hip Hop, classical, neo-classical, ambient, new age, Gregorian and Medieval monastic prayer chants (no, I’m not kidding)… if it involves voices and/or instruments, at least one of them is interested in hearing it – and probably possessing it.  It's kind of like that Star Trek: TNG episode with the collector (The Most Toys) except they don’t ONLY want the rare and priceless; they want ALL THE MUSIC! Insert mental image of the Hyperbole and a Half girl here.  You know, this one:

from This is Why I'll Never Be an Adult, by Allie Brosh

Okay then.  That was all just to tell you not to worry about sounding like a music snob or something.  Criminy, you’d think I get paid by the word.

I’ve never participated in any of those "Your Top Ten" things on the gigantic, addictive data mine that is FaceBook. I think it's in large part because of the "changed your life" business. Has any album really changed me? There are certainly albums I've listened to a lot during periods of change in my life, but did they do the changing or were they merely the Official Soundtrack of the Change?  I have the same reaction to things that ask me to choose my favorite fill-in-the-blank. Do I really have to?  It’s not like it’s Sophie’s Choice, but it stresses me out.

I like the way you state it: Some Important Albums.  Here is a sampling of mine, with no explanation but roughly in chronological order of my discovery and/or listening: 

• The Beatles: Revolver, particularly Eleanor Rigby  

• Pink Floyd's discography - really their entire catalog starting with The Piper at Gates of Dawn, but especially the period from Dark Side of the Moon through The Final Cut.  Naturally, The Wall is in there.  

• David Bowie’s discography, particularly The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars 

• Fear: The Record  

• Nirvana: Nevermind  

• REM: Life’s Rich Pageant 

• Black Flag: Damaged 

• Billy Bragg: Talking with the Taxman about Poetry, especially Levi Stubbs Tears 

• Red Die No. 9.  Well, back in the day, they didn’t actually have a comprehensive album (now they do. It’s called The Complete History), but we all knew all the words to every song anyway.

• The Cure, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me 

• The Smiths: Hatful of Hollow 

• The Last Picture Show: Pop Mutation 

• Billy Bragg’s entire discography. Is it cheating to list him twice? In college, I only knew Taxman. My adoration of all things Billy came later. He's The Milkman of Human Kindness and I’m glad I have him to listen to while I’m Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards.

Regarding your point about the artist making the album as a curator of the artform, I think that is sometimes true and sometimes not. In some albums, it is clear that great care went into the selection and order of the songs (see Pink Floyd The Wall); in others, there lacks any thematic or musical connection from one song to the next. It can be somewhat jarring and makes you wonder if the label just threw stuff on there so they could start selling singles. 

I know exactly what you mean about that moment when a song ends and you almost physically anticipate the beginning of the next one, but, as you noted, you can get that from your own playlists after a time. Honestly, with the exception of a few of the albums listed above, the curated albums almost always have a tune or two I skip or would fast-forward through back in ye olde days. The ability to make my own playlists is wonderful, if time-consuming. I have a YouTube playlist that I enjoy when I'm in the right mood; it's calm and a little melancholy and I don’t think it has more than one song from any artist.

The Buddhist is a pro at playlists. I suspect he was once King of the Mixtape. He’s got a driving to South Carolina playlist, a going to sleep playlist… he even made a playlist for when the fam drove to Montreal for vacation. It featured Let’s Get Out of This Country by Camera Obscura, which was perfect border crossing tunage. So I’m a fan of self-curated content, or at least user-curated stuff. Perhaps we do lose the cultural aspect – that phenomenon where you can be listening to an album with a group of strangers and all know what’s coming next. That is cool, but mix and matching a go to sleep mix that Elsa and Anna know by heart and know you made just for them? That’s pretty damn cool, too.

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Hi Patricia,

I approve of your set list. But two ENTIRE discographies?  That's dirty pool.

At some point, we will discuss the Best Beatle.  I do respect your choice of Revolver.  I tend to enjoy the White Album, only because it includes Ob-La-Di.  Contributing the most coverable song ever is a singular achievement in music.  The rest of the tunes went pretty well too.

As a preview to that discussion, I will offer a line from one of George's solo efforts.  "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."  (This is a much better song than I've Got My Mind Set On You, which was appropriately poked at by Weird Al).  I feel some real loss a not being able to navigate modern music as efficiently as I used to.  I'm only kind of sure what good music looks like, and I'm kind of pissed that there are so few roads to get there.

I know Music (capital M) is this just another whore at the capitalist gangbang, mixing intellectual property nonsense with corporate ridiculousness.  There is not a bestselling track list made in the last decade that wasn't synergy tested and focus group approved. This alone creates a bulwark to finding decent stuff.  Once over that wall, there is so much music that I just don't know where I'm going any more.

Perhaps the loss isn't about finding new music.  I guess I lament finding the time.  Maybe that's why we find the pivotal albums to be the ones of our youth. We will never have the weeks to wear out headphones that we did in high school, to immerse ourselves in music like it was our jobs.  So it turns to finding the people I trust to guide me to new music that I enjoy.  And maybe there's some sadness that the artists I adore are passing age 50 and beyond.  

Of course, I will counter my own comment with a line from Gillian Welch.  "If there's something that you want to hear, you can sing it yourself."  Music isn't about what we're handed.  It's what we do with it.  And that is the best part of the Frozen soundtrack.  We do sing along.

Rock and roll all night,
Ray