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ridleykemp · 4 years

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Pandemic Notes #5 (notes on a note-free meme)

If you’ve been anywhere near social media, mostly Facebook I presume, you’ll have seen this one: Day X of "20 Albums In 20 Days". Covers only, no explanations. Albums that impacted your life in some way. Nominate someone else to do the same thing each day.

That kind of list-making is absolute catnip to me. There’s one little problem: “no explanations.” If there’s anything I love more than music it is talking about why I like music. So, while I did the thing over on FB, I’m going to cheat now and provide the stories that go with my selections. Why? I don’t even know what day it is anymore, so cut me some slack on this one.

1. Oil and Gold - Shriekback

“Nemesis” was absolutely all over the clubs back in the day, which is appropriate because it’s a great song. When I finally bought the records, though, I was shocked. It was maybe the sixth or seventh best song on the album. Literally everything on Oil and Gold is great. These albums were in no particular order, but this was as easy a pick as I’d get to make.

2. Viva Terlingua! - Jerry Jeff Walker

I was raised on showtunes (mom) and 70s country music (dad). This was a particularly bloodless era in the history of C&W. The “Nashville sound” just didn’t work for me. This, however, is not Nashville. This was my introduction to “outlaw” country, which was much more my speed. It was my first exposure to country where the band seemed as important as the singer, and the Lost Gonzos were one hell of a band.

Jerry Jeff was my first concert, too, at Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth. I won tickets to a New Year’s Eve all-you-can-drink show. Not a bad first show, huh?

3. Suffer - Bad Religion

Matt, one of my co-workers at the record store, recommended this to me. Or, rather, he recommended Christian Death’s record and I mis-remembered it. Some accidents work out. This changed how I looked at punk with the intelligence, the quality of the vocals, and the energy of the performance. I was reliably told that real punk doesn’t have harmonies, but I can live with that.

4. Hearts of Oak - Ted Leo + Pharmacists

Newly divorced and in a strange city, I was re-discovering discovering music in the early 2000s. Canadian music video channels and especially Spin magazine were two of my more reliable sources. I loved Ted Leo before I heard a single note of his music, so it was a tremendous relief when I finally got hold of this album and found that the music lived up to the hype. Leo was obviously influenced heavily by the stuff from the 80s that I wasn’t cool enough to like then.

5. Loveless - My Bloody Valentine

Sigh. I was given the promo copy of Loveless (on cassette, no less!) at the record store. I listened to it once, decided it wasn’t really my thing, and gave it to Curtis. A decade or so later, I heard “Soon” in some random place and realized I’d made a huge mistake.

6. Fear of a Black Planet - Public Enemy

Stefan, a guy I waited tables with, knew I was heavily into Nine Inch Nails and thought I’d dig this. So I went over to his house and he put on “Welcome to the Terrordome” and damned if he wasn’t right. This did for hip-hop was Suffer did for punk, at least for me. I had to re-evaluate everything I thought about the genre because Fear of a Black Planet is undeniable. And Bob, if you’re reading this, I still remember your take on the title track.

7. Flood - They Might Be Giants

In 1990, there were two albums that were reliably in the record collection of every girl I knew: This one and Yaz’s Upstairs at Eric’s. I was already a TMBG fan, but the fact that they covered a song my mom used to sing to me (“Istanbul”) kind of freaked me out. At the show on this tour, instead of shirts, they sold fezzes, which has to be the most TMBG thing ever.

8. Pretty Hate Machine - Nine Inch Nails

This album was my life for longer than I care to admit. Every track still works for me. In August of 1989, when “Down In It” hit the clubs, none of us had heard anything like it (well, Skinny Puppy fans had…*cough* ). I don’t think I wore anything but black for a couple of years. I got the CD at the most alternative store in Dallas (that would be the Hastings at Valley View and yes that’s a joke) in November and haven’t stopped playing it since.

9. LP - Ambulance, LTD.

One of two bands on this list that were murdered by label issues. I found Ambulance by accident. I went to a SxSW showcase at the Red-Eyed Fly to see Stellastarr* (who were terrific) and got there in time to see an opening act that played absolutely perfect guitar pop, stuff Matthew Sweet might have come up with if hadn’t listened to so much Television. Anyway, the flyer for the show had the band order wrong I thought I was looking for The Unicorns, and it took me a couple weeks to find out who I’d really seen. This is a strong contender for best album of the millennium.

10. Young Team - Mogwai

I choked on this selection. I love the album, and Mogwai Fear Satan is one of my favorite songs to play loudly (if not well) on guitar. But…if I were to pick a Mogwai record, it should probably be Rock Action, which was my first and I still use the intro from “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong” as my alarm song.

11. Electric Version - The New Pornographers

Another Spin discovery. The reviews were glowing but didn’t really give me any sense what they sounded like. Eventually, this album was added to the jukebox at Casino el Camino and I got to give it a listen. It was love at first note. All of their albums are hook-stuffed, harmony-rich power pop perfection, but this one is my pick of that very fine litter. The first four songs would make the best EP in rock history.

12. This is the Day…This is the Hours…This is This! - Pop Will Eat Itself

1989 was weird. “Can U Dig It?" got a smidgen of airplay on the corporate-indy station in Dallas for some reason. It was the first time I’d heard music that was largely sample-based that actually rocked. The whole album is a mad cut-and-paste collage with Clint Mansell and Graham Crabb rapping over the top (very over the top, in fact). They’re one of five bands on this list I’ve never seen, but it’s not for lack of effort. They cancelled their last show due to visa problem, and when the opened for NIN on The Downward Spiral (and their own, equally excellent Dos Dedos, Mis Amigos), well…that a memorable night.

13. We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed - Los Campesinos!

I love Los Campesinos! unapologetically, and that is the only way to love them. Their heart is on their sleeve and their sleeve is in your face. The title track, a minor masterpiece of tweeXcore, has one of my favorite lines:

”Oh we kid ourselves there’s future in the fucking, but there is no fucking future.”

They’re a band I can listen to any time I need to feel exactly that way. They also figure several times in Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s Phonogram, and they capture how I feel about Los Campesinos! perfectly:

14. Over-Nite Sensaton - Frank Zappa and the Mothers

“Montana” was my introduction to Zappa. In Jon Lamendola’s car outside Collin Creek mall, he put this tape in and..it was so dumb, and so funny, and yet also so good. It was like listening to a Loony Tunes soundtrack with the smarted, weirdest guy you know making up a narration. It’s probably not my favorite Zappa record, but it’s certainly the one that means the most to me.

15. Dusk - The The

I bought this at the Sound Warehouse on Park and Preston one night after work because I kind of liked the single, “Dogs of Lust”. At the time, I was a little disappointed because the rest of the record is far less aggressive, but it stuck with me through all these years. The bookends, “Love Is Stronger Than Death” and “Lonely Planet” are absolute masterpieces but it’s strong start to finish. I tend to come to things late, and this album got me through the early 2000s in style.

16. Like This - The dB’s

Oh, college radio. KCOU in Columbia, Missouri was my first college radio station and they were playing all the college-appropriate bands of the era (Smiths, REM, U2, and a lot of Zappa), but there’s no question as to the identity of the biggest band of my freshman year: The dB’s absolutely dominated airplay that year. Five songs from Like This got huge play. This is the other band destroyed by their label, which went belly-up right after the release of Like This. The Holsapple-led dB’s should have been one of the giants of their day. Instead, it would be a decade before this record ever made it to CD.

17. Discipline - King Crimson

I was an Adrian Belew fan before I was a Crimson fan. “Big Electric Cat”, from his Lone Rhino album, was the first music video I remember seeing on a video-only show. Anyway, for as weird as their record is (and it ain’t normal), it’s incredibly accessible as well. My sister was on a date with her eventual husband and they stopped by his flat before going out. He told her to put a record on and this is the one she pulled from his collection. He was both shocked and impressed, but he shouldn’t have been; my sister has always been much cooler than me.

18. OK Computer - Radiohead

There seems to be a lot of Radiohead backlash now and I don’t get it, but there’s a lot that I don’t get. I’d heard “Creep” and thought it was pretty good, but I hadn’t really kept up. Driving down to south to go camping with Andi and her mom, we listened to this and The Bends over and over…in no small part because I kept asking her to put it back on. Like the Crimson record, it was weird (duh) but accessible (huh?) and hypnotic. Those two remain my favorite Radiohead albums, with OK Computer getting the nod because the last three songs are perfect.

18.5 Peter Gabriel (third album) - Peter Gabriel

Uh oh…I’ve got too many albums to list and not enough space to do it! So, I cheated and went with 18.5 because I was not going to leave this album out. It’s still my favorite Peter Gabriel record. This is the “melting face” album, and I had a button with the cover of the album on my jacket. At the arcade (because we all went to arcades back then), a kid came up to me, looked at that button, and said “Eww! I bet that’s a sick rock guy!” That’s Pete, all right: A sick rock guy.

19. Reckoning - R.E.M.

I’m an unabashed R.E.M. fanboy and love all of their records, but Reckoning is the one that is “mine” more than any. I saw them do “So. Central Rain” on Letterman and there may have been a great deal of alcohol ingested by the band prior to the performance, but it only served to make it hazier and more southern-Gothic. I’d put side 1 of Reckoning up against any other album side out there.

20. Three Sides Live - Genesis

No, it’s not the best Genesis record. It may not even be their best live record. But, I saw them for the first time on this tour and side three may have impacted my life more than any other piece of music. That’s the side that has “In The Cage” and “Afterglow” with an extended instrumental medley between them consisting almost entirely of Tony Banks keys and Phil Collins’ dueting with Chester Thompson on drums. The instrumental section still gives me chills. The primary reason I’ve owned (and even tried to play) the dozens and dozens of pianos and synths I’ve owned is down to that one section of music.

So, that’s the list from Facebook. It’s not perfect. In fact, it’s not even really the right top 20. If I were to do it again, I’d probably leave Mogwai off the list. I’d have to find some way to shoehorn in The Pixies’ Doolittle or Sisters of Mercy’s Floodland or Arcade Fire’s Funeral. Anyway, those the short versions of the stories behind the 20 album covers.

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