By Jordan
My Year in Lists chronicles one blogger’s quest to understand why music matters to us and what makes it a lasting aspect of our existence. To facilitate this examination, three music fans have contributed a list of 52 essential albums. Each week this year, one album off of each list will be analyzed in an attempt to understand why some music sticks with us and what it means for our lives.
My Year in Lists: Interlude is an intermittent addendum to the feature that takes a step back from the quest to examine music from other perspectives.
Welcome to the first My Year in Lists: Interlude, a planned occasional respite from the quest at the center of the feature in which we will look at music in different ways. Sometimes this will involve asking the list contributors to sound off on a topic (as it does today) and sometimes it will involve me discussing an issue or an event that wouldn't fit into the feature proper (for example, look for an Interlude on the Coachella Music Festival in April). This week, I have asked the three list contributors, Tab, Collin, and Ashley, to discuss Talking Heads, why they consider the band essential, and why they selected the album they did for last week's installment of My Year in Lists. Without further ado, here they are:
Tab, on More Songs About Buildings and Food and Fear of Music:
I lived in a small town in Nebraska from 1977 to 1979. It was a cultural wasteland where the only conduit of music was classic rock FM radio and Rolling Stone magazine. Thank god for Saturday Night Live. It introduced me to two influential bands. DEVO was on in the winter of 1978 and Talking Heads were on in February of 1979. Both bands were great and were unlike the boring old rock and roll that I was exposed to at the time. Because both of these bands were on Warner Brothers labels I was able to buy their cassettes in a chain record store at the mall. In DEVO’s case it was Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO! for the Talking Heads it was More Songs About Buildings And Food. Each of these records turned out to be very influential for me and represented a sea change compared to the boring old rock and roll of Boston, Styx, lame Springsteen, or the Cars. Both of the records were also produced by Brian Eno. I think that their second release More Songs About Buildings And Food and third release Fear Of Music are the best Talking Heads records. More Songs was unlike anything I was listening to and I still love the bass line on "Warning Sign" and everything about "Found A Job", one of the greatest songs ever. Fear Of Music is a darker more rhythmic album than its predecessor with "I Zimbra" representing the future sound of the band and "Cities" and "Life During Wartime" being other all-time favorites. Both records are great from first to last cuts and the records that were released after these, from Remain In Light on, were more collaborative efforts, eschewing lead singer David Byrne's creative vision and resulting in derivative sounding songs rather than the pure Talking Heads sound found on their second and third releases. When I was trapped in the bleakness of Nebraska, Talking heads were a beacon of light.
Collin on Remain in Light:
So once upon time in the early 1970’s a couple art-punks by the names of David Byrne and Chris Frantz met at the Rhode Island School of Design. What began as the two-piece outfit, The Artistics, soon evolved into the highly influential and infinitely enduring four-piece new wave band known as Talking Heads. Within a year or two the band would be performing their revolutionary combination of avant-garde, funk, and rock before The Ramones upon CBGB’s legendary stage. Very few musicians have experienced an evolution in artistic style over the course of a career like that of Talking Heads, who eventually incorporated elements from pop, ambient (thanks to Brian Eno), afrobeat and world music into their sound. Accordingly, no single album can capture their unique brand of music categorized as post-punk / new wave. Four albums probably aren’t enough, but they certainly bring us closer to identifying, comprehending, and appreciating (perhaps, even worshiping) the band’s vast and permanent contribution to popular music and American culture. I chose Remain in Light because, for one, I am a mainstream Talking Heads fan likewise embarking on a mission to consume and bask in their entire aesthetic; for two, it marks the beginning of the band’s longest studio hiatus (3 years); and, lastly, it represents the mid-point of their discography as their fourth effort, an effort that I believe to be their most experimental, wide-ranged and ground-breaking, especially in light of the new decade – a decade in which the term “new wave” would surface on MTV’s television screens and project from the mouths of their very own talking heads.
Ashley on Speaking in Tongues:
For this interlude, I’d like to talk about my favorite Talking Heads song, “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody).” A predictable choice perhaps, but sometimes the best is just the best. It’s not a sweeping tour-de-force on the level of “Once in a Lifetime” or as sonically experimental as many of the other tracks on Speaking in Tongues, but it’s one of the most emotionally resonant, nuanced songs in the Talking Heads’ catalog. Even Oliver Stone couldn’t ruin it for me by using it as frosting on the layer cake of mediocrity that was Wall Street and Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps. The song has experienced a renaissance in the past few years as a go-to cover for bands like Arcade Fire and MGMT, and it even got the PS22 treatment.
For introduction’s sake, here’s one of the most sublime incarnations of the song, a live performance from Jonathan Demme’s brilliant concert film Stop Making Sense (1984):
I think “This Must Be the Place” sounds like a fairly straightforward love song, mostly due to its lilting (naive) melody and unusually warm vocals. There was a time when I wanted to dance to this song at my wedding, possibly with a man wearing an oversized white suit who would look into my eyes and say, “Out of all those kinds of people, you’ve got a face with a view.”
Unfortunately, as Byrne insists, he only writes about love with “reservations and twists,” and in this case, the twist is that "TMBTP" isn't much of a love song at all. The version that I think illustrates this idea most clearly is the music video for the cover by Miles Fisher, which contextualizes the song in the ultimate 80s satire, Mary Harron’s American Psycho (2000):
Maybe it’s just because the words are coming out of Patrick Bateman’s mouth, but seeing this video was what convinced me once and for all that “This Must Be the Place” isn’t about being in love; it’s about someone else loving you, and struggling against your overwhelming ennui to return that affection. Byrne seems to be willing himself to feel something throughout the song - there are few sadder sentiments in rock music (or life) than “Home is where I want to be / But I guess I’m already there.” In fact, the entire first verse is downright tragic:
Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb, born with a weak heart
I guess I must be having fun
The less we say about it the better
Make it up as we go along
Feet on the ground, head in the sky
It's okay, I know nothing's wrong, nothing
Though obviously Byrne's lyrical point of view lacks Bateman's homicidal tendencies, Miles Fisher's elaborate music video works because both narrators are hollow; Bateman's insistence that he is "simply not there" isn't far off from Byrne's self-descriptors in that first verse. Yet based on the highly accurate and representative source that is the SongMeanings.net comments section, "TMBTP" is still generally regarded as the height of new wave romance. Commenter benfoldsfan insists "This must be what finding real love is like," while UNCWDMBfan says "I love the lyric, "Did I find you or you find me?" i think thats true love...i have no idea what this song means, but its great, what love should be about." A couple of people mention it as a wedding song. There are a few voices of reason throughout (the aptly-usernamed brokenfireescape notes "i think everyone's reading of this song is way off. this is one of the most depressing songs i've ever heard") but the majority seem to think of it as lyrically equivalent to "My Heart Will Go On." It reminds me of the public perception of "Hey Ya" by Outkast - a song about the futility of love and commitment, with a music video that prominently features a coffin, somehow becomes the feel-good hit of the decade.
Personally, I'm pretty content to have my favorite song be horrifically depressing. Besides, "This Must Be the Place" is successful because, not in spite of, the inherent contradictions and disparity between its lyrical content and listener perception. It's a Talking Heads "Choose Your Own Adventure" game, where one can emphasize the beautiful sentiment over the crushing doubt, or vice versa.
Read more My Year in Lists here
Showing posts with label Collin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Collin. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Friday, December 31, 2010
My Year in Lists: An Introduction
By Jordan
My Year in Lists chronicles one blogger’s quest to understand why music matters to us and what makes it a lasting aspect of our existence. To facilitate this examination, three music fans have contributed a list of 52 essential albums. Each week this year, one album off of each list will be analyzed in an attempt to understand why some music sticks with us and what it means for our lives.
Over the next 52 weeks, I intend to offer an analysis of roughly 168 albums as a showcase of music in as many of its forms as possible. I hope for this feature to be partially critical in nature (that is, I will be discussing what I think are the merits and weaknesses of the albums), partially an effort to put each album and artist in context within the development of music and in some cases movements, and partially an effort to better understand some heady ideas. I want to use My Year in Lists as a way to learn about music writing and expand my own abilities, but also as a chance to examine and discuss the way that music influences our lives and the indelible mark great music leaves with us.
Starting next Friday I will be looking at one album off of each of three lists and evaluating it while also discussing the larger issues surrounding music as a whole. Before I begin in earnest, I have asked each of the three people who contributed a list to give a small introduction to their lists, explaining a bit about their musical background and biases, and giving some insight into the philosophies inherent in their lists. Ashley, you’ve heard from before around Review To Be Named. Collin will be joining us this year as a recurring contributor focusing on music. Tab is my uncle, and a musical collector and expert to be envied (with a collection of over 5,000 cds, not counting his vinyls and cassettes from years past). I chose these three to contribute lists both because I trust their musical knowledge and because I believed they would give me lists with enough divergence to keep things interesting for the next year. I look forward to where this project will take me, and can't wait to dig in next week. Without further ado, here are the introductions by each of the contributors.
Ashley’s Intro:
When I began to put together a list of my 52 essential albums, it became clear to me almost immediately that I needed a theme to build around. 52 is a small number, especially when you consider that music critics frequently select 50 albums from a single year to highlight in their “Best of (Year)” wrap-ups. I quickly abandoned any pretense toward objectivity, since I know my internal music library is hardly far-reaching enough to catch some of the lesser-known but truly great albums. Meanwhile, an intensely personal list would probably be both boring and embarrassing (I would never ask anyone else to listen to Ani DiFranco). I settled on the loosely-constructed theme of “20 Years of Alternative.” This is primarily a tribute to my formative years spent listening to alt rock radio in the 90s, before the medium fell victim to rap rock and that Nickelback/Hinder/Daughtry bullshit and became irrelevant. There’s a sampling here of the music that I heard and grew to love, from the early stuff (Talking Heads, Violent Femmes, Joy Division/New Order) that used to play during “80s Rewind” hours, to the shoegaze, grunge, Britpop, trip-hop, and indie rock of the 90s.
I chose to exclude more mainstream rock (there’s no Bowie or U2 here) since I wanted to focus on alternative as a loosely-constructed movement. Furthermore, I’ve obviously fudged the “twenty years” so that it’s a bit closer to twenty-one; there was just no way to not include 1979, during which Joy Division, Devo, Gang of Four, and The Cars all released incredibly important LPs that year.
Collin’s Intro:
This list of 52 essential albums that I’ve compiled for Jordan’s personal consumption and eventual critique is as near a historical retrospective of the last 52 years of recorded music that I could conceive of as an young, alternative adult male (re: “fucking hipster”). I constructed this list to represent a chronological narrative of music, to embody an audible arc of American culture. My intent in designing this catalog was to share some of my favorite albums with my good friend, engage his critical faculty, expand his taste, expose him to forms of musical expression he discounts, and discover a few new gems myself. There’s something for everyone here. The list encompasses almost every major genre of music from blues, jazz, folk, rock, r&b, hip-hop, pop, and electronica (excepting country and classical, although their influence is undoubtedly discernible), and their respective subgenres like acid jazz, rockabilly, freak folk, hard rock, prog rock, psychedelic rock, post-rock, “indie”-rock (Canadian, Brooklyn, and Portland), ambient, disco, new age, new wave, punk, grunge, rap, trip-hop, pop-hop, industrial, house, trance, minimal techno, downtempo, shoegaze, IDM, world music, two-step, dubstep, afrobeat, big beat, break beat, dance hall, glitch-hop, experimental, etc. Let it be known that my love for music is second to none, and yet I am no musician. I know nothing of music theory. It could be said that this illiteracy is the bane of my existence (that, or Herpes simplex). Luckily and ironically (or beautifully) enough, there is comfort in the sensation of rhythmic vibrations. Thankfully, my inability to translate musical notation doesn’t negate my sense of and taste for sound. I can still feel it (“like your mother felt the love last night, Trebek”). What I am saying is fortunately the relationship I share with my greatest passion is not a total tragedy, complete hoax, utter fallacy, or phenomenal failure: just a little bit of one.
This difference between the visual and audible modalities of music points towards my main purpose in presenting such an extensive collection before Jordan’s eyes and ears: to challenge him. Music – that is, moving emotions – transmits its message audibly and engages its audience through exceptionally different means and much more abstract forms than visual moving pictures. Concepts like instrumentation, lyric, voice, melody, rhythm, time signature, harmony, movement, syncopation, key, and (my favorite) chord replace character, dialogue, scene, symbolism, direction, and plot in the overall development of the artistic work. Although the aesthetic and thematic questions provoked by music remain somewhat similar to those incited by film, the nature, shape and scope of their answers remain as undisciplined, amorphous, and unbounded as desire itself. It is with this prologue that I counsel, encourage and applaud Jordan for his acceptance of such a vast and foreign mission.
Tab’s introduction:
I chose to ignore the instruction of selecting 52 essential albums. I ignored the instructions not just because of the difficulty in selecting what represents approximately 1% of my music collection. I store my CDs/CDRs in Case Logic plastic cases/containers which hold 64 slim case CDs. Because I was making copies of the CDs for Jordan to review I decided to not waste space and to fill the whole case and make 64 CDs. I made copies on 80 minute CDRs for Jordan to review and with a theme of not wasting, I decided to include multiple releases on CDs if the whole piece fit. Thus many of my 64 CDs have multiple albums/releases on them. The 64 CDs represent music from 45 artists and total 121 releases. In fact many of the CDs also contain singles and in one case the CD contains 16 7”, 10”, and 12” vinyl releases from Organum/David Jackman. I don’t think it’s fair to have music defined by the format and a collection of 16 singles is as essential as any particular release. For the most part I restricted CDs to only one artist but there are exceptions. Also if an artist was releasing music under multiple aliases it is still considered the same artist, e.g. O Yuki Conjugate and Sons of Silence.
From a content standpoint I focused on time period and primarily on artists. My time period was from the 60’s through the present, or the last 50 years. I tried to evenly distribute the selection across the decades but was not successful. From an artist standpoint, I selected who I feel are the “most essential” artists in terms influencing and creating the contemporary modern music, or non-classic rock and roll, that I listen to. I excluded some genres and artists that are essential such as Mozart, Marley, Hendrix and The Beatles because they have been covered enough. I also don’t like to use terms such as Alternative Music because to paraphrase Claude Bessey in The Decline of Western Civilization, which didn’t make the 64 80 minute CDR list but is a very influential album, Alternative Music doesn’t mean shit. The music on my list has been called many things and has been massively plagiarized. In the nineties I was once told that Throbbing Gristle isn’t classified as Industrial Music anymore, even though they invented the term. I was told that that label refers to Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, Ministry and other artists with a rhythmic electronic beat. In fact, I included one artist on my list, Portion Control, because they turned out to have the sound that music industry plagiaristically defined as Industrial Music in the 90s. I loathe the term Alternative Music because it implies that Classic Rock is still relevant and that modern music, or really any other music, is still inferior to Classic Rock. It’s a label created and used by Classic Rock Stakeholders, primarily consisting of the music industry and mass music media. Labels allow for categorization and are a great vehicle for controlling the music markets and artistic freedom.
It’s sad that so much “essential” music has gone undiscovered to most people. Not ever listening to Can, Wire, Throbbing Gristle, Nurse With Wound, The Residents, Captain Beefheart, as well as many other of the artists on my list would be like not ever listening to The Beatles, Hendrix, Marley or Mozart. What is funny is that 100 years from now most of these artists will be more popular than they are today. One artist, The Minutemen, are already much more popular today than they were in their heyday, almost 25 years ago, when I would see them play in Los Angeles on multiple occasions to audiences that numbered about 25 or 30 people. My goal with this list is to provide a list of music that gives an understanding of the artists on the list. In many cases multiple releases are selected for artists because it is needed to either understand the range or the growth of the artist. The list does not represent the most essential albums, it represents selections from the most essential artists. Virtually all the artists on my list are considered very mainstream by a select group of people. Believe me that this is just the tip of the iceberg. I read somewhere online that although there is so much music available one has to be a member of a secret club to know what is really worth listening to. A lot of the members of this club are music collectors who have a vested interest in keeping the knowledge of this music to themselves so that these releases remain exclusive and valuable on eBay. Listen to my list, look the artists up on Wikipedia, see the connections between them and learn some music history as I see it. Buying and listening to The Talking Heads “More Songs About Buildings and Food” in 1978 when Bruce Springsteen and Boston were cutting edge artists and Throbbing Gristle’s “We Hate You Little Girls/Five Knuckle Shuffle” 7” in 1981 when punk rock was considered the most extreme music represented a sea change in the way I thought about and listened to music. I hope that someone can have the same sea change via listening to the artists and selections on this list.
My Year in Lists chronicles one blogger’s quest to understand why music matters to us and what makes it a lasting aspect of our existence. To facilitate this examination, three music fans have contributed a list of 52 essential albums. Each week this year, one album off of each list will be analyzed in an attempt to understand why some music sticks with us and what it means for our lives.
Over the next 52 weeks, I intend to offer an analysis of roughly 168 albums as a showcase of music in as many of its forms as possible. I hope for this feature to be partially critical in nature (that is, I will be discussing what I think are the merits and weaknesses of the albums), partially an effort to put each album and artist in context within the development of music and in some cases movements, and partially an effort to better understand some heady ideas. I want to use My Year in Lists as a way to learn about music writing and expand my own abilities, but also as a chance to examine and discuss the way that music influences our lives and the indelible mark great music leaves with us.
Starting next Friday I will be looking at one album off of each of three lists and evaluating it while also discussing the larger issues surrounding music as a whole. Before I begin in earnest, I have asked each of the three people who contributed a list to give a small introduction to their lists, explaining a bit about their musical background and biases, and giving some insight into the philosophies inherent in their lists. Ashley, you’ve heard from before around Review To Be Named. Collin will be joining us this year as a recurring contributor focusing on music. Tab is my uncle, and a musical collector and expert to be envied (with a collection of over 5,000 cds, not counting his vinyls and cassettes from years past). I chose these three to contribute lists both because I trust their musical knowledge and because I believed they would give me lists with enough divergence to keep things interesting for the next year. I look forward to where this project will take me, and can't wait to dig in next week. Without further ado, here are the introductions by each of the contributors.
Ashley’s Intro:
When I began to put together a list of my 52 essential albums, it became clear to me almost immediately that I needed a theme to build around. 52 is a small number, especially when you consider that music critics frequently select 50 albums from a single year to highlight in their “Best of (Year)” wrap-ups. I quickly abandoned any pretense toward objectivity, since I know my internal music library is hardly far-reaching enough to catch some of the lesser-known but truly great albums. Meanwhile, an intensely personal list would probably be both boring and embarrassing (I would never ask anyone else to listen to Ani DiFranco). I settled on the loosely-constructed theme of “20 Years of Alternative.” This is primarily a tribute to my formative years spent listening to alt rock radio in the 90s, before the medium fell victim to rap rock and that Nickelback/Hinder/Daughtry bullshit and became irrelevant. There’s a sampling here of the music that I heard and grew to love, from the early stuff (Talking Heads, Violent Femmes, Joy Division/New Order) that used to play during “80s Rewind” hours, to the shoegaze, grunge, Britpop, trip-hop, and indie rock of the 90s.
I chose to exclude more mainstream rock (there’s no Bowie or U2 here) since I wanted to focus on alternative as a loosely-constructed movement. Furthermore, I’ve obviously fudged the “twenty years” so that it’s a bit closer to twenty-one; there was just no way to not include 1979, during which Joy Division, Devo, Gang of Four, and The Cars all released incredibly important LPs that year.
Collin’s Intro:
This list of 52 essential albums that I’ve compiled for Jordan’s personal consumption and eventual critique is as near a historical retrospective of the last 52 years of recorded music that I could conceive of as an young, alternative adult male (re: “fucking hipster”). I constructed this list to represent a chronological narrative of music, to embody an audible arc of American culture. My intent in designing this catalog was to share some of my favorite albums with my good friend, engage his critical faculty, expand his taste, expose him to forms of musical expression he discounts, and discover a few new gems myself. There’s something for everyone here. The list encompasses almost every major genre of music from blues, jazz, folk, rock, r&b, hip-hop, pop, and electronica (excepting country and classical, although their influence is undoubtedly discernible), and their respective subgenres like acid jazz, rockabilly, freak folk, hard rock, prog rock, psychedelic rock, post-rock, “indie”-rock (Canadian, Brooklyn, and Portland), ambient, disco, new age, new wave, punk, grunge, rap, trip-hop, pop-hop, industrial, house, trance, minimal techno, downtempo, shoegaze, IDM, world music, two-step, dubstep, afrobeat, big beat, break beat, dance hall, glitch-hop, experimental, etc. Let it be known that my love for music is second to none, and yet I am no musician. I know nothing of music theory. It could be said that this illiteracy is the bane of my existence (that, or Herpes simplex). Luckily and ironically (or beautifully) enough, there is comfort in the sensation of rhythmic vibrations. Thankfully, my inability to translate musical notation doesn’t negate my sense of and taste for sound. I can still feel it (“like your mother felt the love last night, Trebek”). What I am saying is fortunately the relationship I share with my greatest passion is not a total tragedy, complete hoax, utter fallacy, or phenomenal failure: just a little bit of one.
This difference between the visual and audible modalities of music points towards my main purpose in presenting such an extensive collection before Jordan’s eyes and ears: to challenge him. Music – that is, moving emotions – transmits its message audibly and engages its audience through exceptionally different means and much more abstract forms than visual moving pictures. Concepts like instrumentation, lyric, voice, melody, rhythm, time signature, harmony, movement, syncopation, key, and (my favorite) chord replace character, dialogue, scene, symbolism, direction, and plot in the overall development of the artistic work. Although the aesthetic and thematic questions provoked by music remain somewhat similar to those incited by film, the nature, shape and scope of their answers remain as undisciplined, amorphous, and unbounded as desire itself. It is with this prologue that I counsel, encourage and applaud Jordan for his acceptance of such a vast and foreign mission.
Tab’s introduction:
I chose to ignore the instruction of selecting 52 essential albums. I ignored the instructions not just because of the difficulty in selecting what represents approximately 1% of my music collection. I store my CDs/CDRs in Case Logic plastic cases/containers which hold 64 slim case CDs. Because I was making copies of the CDs for Jordan to review I decided to not waste space and to fill the whole case and make 64 CDs. I made copies on 80 minute CDRs for Jordan to review and with a theme of not wasting, I decided to include multiple releases on CDs if the whole piece fit. Thus many of my 64 CDs have multiple albums/releases on them. The 64 CDs represent music from 45 artists and total 121 releases. In fact many of the CDs also contain singles and in one case the CD contains 16 7”, 10”, and 12” vinyl releases from Organum/David Jackman. I don’t think it’s fair to have music defined by the format and a collection of 16 singles is as essential as any particular release. For the most part I restricted CDs to only one artist but there are exceptions. Also if an artist was releasing music under multiple aliases it is still considered the same artist, e.g. O Yuki Conjugate and Sons of Silence.
From a content standpoint I focused on time period and primarily on artists. My time period was from the 60’s through the present, or the last 50 years. I tried to evenly distribute the selection across the decades but was not successful. From an artist standpoint, I selected who I feel are the “most essential” artists in terms influencing and creating the contemporary modern music, or non-classic rock and roll, that I listen to. I excluded some genres and artists that are essential such as Mozart, Marley, Hendrix and The Beatles because they have been covered enough. I also don’t like to use terms such as Alternative Music because to paraphrase Claude Bessey in The Decline of Western Civilization, which didn’t make the 64 80 minute CDR list but is a very influential album, Alternative Music doesn’t mean shit. The music on my list has been called many things and has been massively plagiarized. In the nineties I was once told that Throbbing Gristle isn’t classified as Industrial Music anymore, even though they invented the term. I was told that that label refers to Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, Ministry and other artists with a rhythmic electronic beat. In fact, I included one artist on my list, Portion Control, because they turned out to have the sound that music industry plagiaristically defined as Industrial Music in the 90s. I loathe the term Alternative Music because it implies that Classic Rock is still relevant and that modern music, or really any other music, is still inferior to Classic Rock. It’s a label created and used by Classic Rock Stakeholders, primarily consisting of the music industry and mass music media. Labels allow for categorization and are a great vehicle for controlling the music markets and artistic freedom.
It’s sad that so much “essential” music has gone undiscovered to most people. Not ever listening to Can, Wire, Throbbing Gristle, Nurse With Wound, The Residents, Captain Beefheart, as well as many other of the artists on my list would be like not ever listening to The Beatles, Hendrix, Marley or Mozart. What is funny is that 100 years from now most of these artists will be more popular than they are today. One artist, The Minutemen, are already much more popular today than they were in their heyday, almost 25 years ago, when I would see them play in Los Angeles on multiple occasions to audiences that numbered about 25 or 30 people. My goal with this list is to provide a list of music that gives an understanding of the artists on the list. In many cases multiple releases are selected for artists because it is needed to either understand the range or the growth of the artist. The list does not represent the most essential albums, it represents selections from the most essential artists. Virtually all the artists on my list are considered very mainstream by a select group of people. Believe me that this is just the tip of the iceberg. I read somewhere online that although there is so much music available one has to be a member of a secret club to know what is really worth listening to. A lot of the members of this club are music collectors who have a vested interest in keeping the knowledge of this music to themselves so that these releases remain exclusive and valuable on eBay. Listen to my list, look the artists up on Wikipedia, see the connections between them and learn some music history as I see it. Buying and listening to The Talking Heads “More Songs About Buildings and Food” in 1978 when Bruce Springsteen and Boston were cutting edge artists and Throbbing Gristle’s “We Hate You Little Girls/Five Knuckle Shuffle” 7” in 1981 when punk rock was considered the most extreme music represented a sea change in the way I thought about and listened to music. I hope that someone can have the same sea change via listening to the artists and selections on this list.
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